by Magnus Flyte
“Alchemical music,” said Sarah.
“There are alchemical symbols everywhere in Prague.” Nico nodded. “I should give tours.” They were hurrying past the entrance to the crypt at the north end of the cathedral and the little man pointed to a symbol etched into the stone floor before it. Sarah stopped abruptly, bent down, and traced it with her finger. A triangle.
“The alchemical symbol for fire,” said Nico. “And Tycho’s favorite symbol. He used to leave it everywhere, as a warning. I have a tattoo of it, actually. If you’d care to . . .”
“Why did you draw that alchemical symbol on the ceiling of my apartment in Boston?” she asked, standing up again and rushing off, Nico in her wake. “John Dee’s symbol for everything. No more riddles, Jepp. Just tell me.”
“I don’t know,” the little man said simply. “Maybe it was a warning. Knowing everything can be very dangerous.”
FIFTY-SIX
As Sarah and Nico rushed down Jirská she wondered what Max’s cryptic message meant.
The scaffolding that had hidden the palace for the entire time Sarah had worked there was gone. The building was like a bearded man who suddenly shaves—exciting and clean and kind of naked. Sarah and Nico had to produce several forms of ID to get in. There would be dignitaries from all over the world, and Czech security—BIS—was not taking any chances. Catering staff swarmed everywhere setting up chairs and tables and linens and glassware. Florists were hauling in huge arrangements of every shape and color. Everything was freshly painted and dusted. It was nice to see the palace looking so beautiful, she thought, amazed that only a few weeks ago it had been filled with Polish workmen and had seemed a hulking, dusty wreck of a place.
“Sarah!” shouted Suzi, enfolding her in a huge hug. “I came to see you, but you were like Sleeping Beauty, only with more drool. Food poisoning sucks!”
“It was bad timing,” she said. “I’m a little freaked that the opening is tonight.”
Specifically about the fact that at least one woman who wanted her dead would be there.
“We all are,” whispered Suzi, on the move. “My crossbows need to be an inch higher and no one can seem to be able to tell me where my little Silesian pistol is. Miles is going to be thrilled to see you. He’s losing his mind, of course.”
Sarah was impressed at how much had been done. She ran up the stairs to the second floor, passing a beautiful photograph of Grandpa Max with an inscription that told the story of his marriage to Gillian, their narrow escape to England in March 1939, his work in the Underground during the war, their return to Prague in 1945, and their flight to America in 1948. Sarah wondered if the part of her vision had been accurate, when Max shot the Nazi. She realized she would never know. The dead will keep their secrets from now on.
Unless they were able to make more of the drug. Westonia.
At the top of the stairs she met an anxious Daphne, armed with a giant feather duster. Sarah made her way into the second portrait room, passing the large family tree, and the altarpiece that was a wedding gift to Polyxena and Zdenek from Rudy II in 1603. The large gold key glittered inside a glass display case. She studied the portrait of Ladislav. The thin legs and arms were exaggerated, but it was uncannily like the real thing.
A glance at her watch and she was moving again.
Turning right she passed through ceramics, and the Golden Fleece dinner set with its rather sinister-looking bull.
In Decorative Arts, Moses was practically in tears trying to get the reliquary of the head of St. Ursula to sit up straight.
“It’s not funny,” he said as Sarah stifled a nervous laugh. “We’re two hours from showtime!”
Sarah stopped to help him and read the display card. “Did it really turn up in a box of theatrical costumes in the 1930s or did you make that up?” she asked.
“Who could make any of this up?” said Moses. “It’s been a fun summer, but I’m looking forward to getting back to New York.”
Sarah realized that when the museum officially opened tomorrow, most of the academics would head back to their universities, their work done. Curators would continue to oversee the collection, of course, but the task of assembling and verifying the Lobkowicz holdings and getting them on display was largely finished. They had felt like they owned the place, each academic ruling over his or her own little fiefdom of precious art and objects, but in truth they owned nothing. She would be leaving Prague herself. How could she leave now? It all felt so unfinished. How could she live her life knowing what she knew . . . with all these stories half finished . . . Beethoven . . . the Fleece . . . Max.
She thought of Absalom Sherbatsky, her beloved professor and mentor, who was the reason she was here at all. Sherbatsky who had loved music history the way she did, who had taught her how to listen. Sherbatsky should have been here tonight, to see the collection assembled. The Helmer violin. The Mozart annotations on Handel’s Messiah. The Sellas guitar. The Gu. Sherbatsttler lute. The Eroica.
Sherbatsky had asked Luigi to play for her. It was his final gift.
But there was something she needed to find, something Max had alerted her to. Back in her room now, Sarah hurried to the glass case where the music manuscripts were, but as she did, she heard footsteps behind her.
A man appeared in a belted tunic and leggings carrying a lute.
“Seriously?” asked Sarah. Another flashback?
“Is this bad time?” asked the young man, in a heavy Czech accent. “They tell me I am to play in here, but I need to use toilet. Also, this linen is very scratchy.”
Sarah showed him where the bathroom was. Returning to her room, she searched the shelves. Max had carried out her unfinished work perfectly; everything was just as she had planned it. On the second shelf in the corner she spotted an unfamiliar book and pulled it out. Atalanta Fugiens. She unlocked the case and gently removed the book, began flipping through it slowly, glancing at the woodcuts and the large Latin letters.
On the page dedicated to the making of the Philosopher’s Stone she found a slip of paper in Max’s handwriting.
Because I love you.
The musician returned from the bathroom and began tuning his lute.
Max loved her?
Slightly dazed, she moved to the supply cupboard and pulled out a piece of the thick paper they used for display case notations. She would have to say something about the manuscript. What? She studied the engraving of the Philosopher’s Stone. An alchemist figure held a giant sextant against a brick wall, seeming to have just finished tracing a large circle. Within the circle was a triangle, within that a square, within that another circle. Inside the circle were the figures of a man and a woman.
A man and a woman, caught in an alchemist’s symbol.
She printed the name of the book, the date, and the author on her display card.
“Who was Atalanta?” she asked vaguely, pulling out her phone. Wikipedia to the rescue.
“Atalanta,” said the Czech musician from his corner. “She was abandoned by parents in forest and raised by wolves. She came to live with peoples, but she no wish to marry and always she beat the men at hunting and show of strength. She promise to marry man who could win in race with her, because no man fast enough. So one man toss golden apples in her path and she pick the apples up and he run past her so he win race.”
“I guess she really liked apples,” joked Sarah weakly. Max loved her. Was his love a golden apple in her path? Should she stop to pick it up?
“Atalanta was only woman to go with Jason on voyage to find Golden Fleece.”
Sarah shook her head and took a deep breath. She replaced the book in the display case. “I better go get changed for the party,” she said.
Miles was having a small nervous breakdown in the Imperial Hall. Sarah went over to tell him that she was here, she was fine, and she would be in the Music Room that evenhavining to tell donors and patrons and dignitaries from all over the world about the wonderful treasures they were looking at.
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br /> “Concentrate on the rich Americans,” Miles said. “The Europeans are inured to ‘save our treasures,’ but Americans still swoon and pull out their checkbooks at the sight of anything more than fifty years old. And we’re going to need lots more funding to keep the place going. The wife of Chevron will be here tonight, and she is an amateur musician so be particularly charming to her. Let her hold something. Carefully. Oh yes, what is it?” Miles turned distractedly to a gray-haired woman in a black dress and white apron who was hobbling toward them.
“Problem with plumbing,” she said. It was Stefania, the woman who had saved her on the roof. The dancer whose ankles had been broken when a KGB agent intentionally ran her over as she tried to leave the country with her American lover back in the seventies.
“Sarah,” called Miles over his shoulder. “The senator will be here right at six, and will take a private tour of the palace and then leave.”
Miles looked slightly paler as he said this.
Sarah nodded, her mouth suddenly dry.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Sarah sat on her bed in the windowless room and tried to focus. She was doing her job, she told herself. Her job was to bring history to light. To make ancient music and musicians comprehensible and meaningful so that they lived on in the hearts of subsequent generations. She was part of the army of the learned that kept culture and civilization alive so that we didn’t sink into another Dark Ages.
She glanced at the little leather-covered ars moriendi that she had found in the library at Nela. The medieval book on how to die a good Christian death. That might come in handy. She flipped through it absently.
Were they just going to let Charlotte Yates get away with it all? She had betrayed her country. Killed people. Stolen and threatened and murdered. Marchesa Elisa was dangerous. She wanted Max out, had wanted Sarah dead. She might still. Sarah knew too much.
She glanced down at the book in her hands. An engraving showed a man opening a trapdoor on which was inscribed a triangle. Fire surged forth.
“Ostium quod ducit ad inferos,” the caption read. The door that leads to Hell.
She took out the piece of paper from her pocket. Because I love you.
Was that real? More real than alchemy and poisoned dwarfs and an iron casket that carried the secret Golden . . . wait a sec.
She looked more closely at the woodcut. The man opening the trapdoor was holding a large golden key. Another man stood nearby, playing a violin. A large golden key. Maybe Rudolf II hadn’t used the key to lock up the Golden Fleece. Maybe he had used it to seal off a hell portal.
But there weren’t actual hell portals. Except Nico had said that “hell portal” was simply the phrase Brahe used instead of “black hole” or “dark matter,” which wereed n’t things anyone knew a
bout in 1601.
Which weren’t things anyone had named yet. She asked herself if she, Sarah Weston, Bostonian, atheist, scholar, believed in the existence of a hell portal, an actual physical door to another world. Certainly when she had arrived in Prague she didn’t, but things had changed . . . she had changed. The things that one could know . . . the laws of science.
The things Nico had read to her while she was asleep were floating at the edge of her consciousness. Alessandro had once told her that many scientists now believed in a multiverse, an infinite series of possible worlds, looped around like string. And if time had no meaning, and the past was all around us, if our physical world was saturated with traces of everything that had happened in time . . .
So what was a hell portal? Dark matter? A place in the physical world where you could access another dimension?
Prague is a threshold.
She had seen the dead. She had passed over the threshold. She could not go back, like John Dee, and hide from the knowledge. At the very least she would refuse to hide from what she knew about Charlotte Yates and Marchesa Elisa Lobkowicz DeBenedetti. There had to be some way to stop them.
She needed to arm herself for battle. A shower, a black sheath that was only moderately wrinkled, hair up, a necklace her father had given her protecting her jugular.
Atalanta fleeing? No way. This time Atalanta was walking right into the fire. In heels.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Every detail was perfect. Uniformed waiters were ready with trays of hors d’oeuvres. Champagne was chilled and ready to be poured. A table of crisp white gift bags stenciled in gold with “Lobkowicz Palace Museum” contained a Brueghel puzzle, Croll watercolor stationery, a Polyxena bookmark, and a pair of earrings copied from those worn by Maria Manrique de Lara. Plus a handy envelope for making donations to the museum. In the reception rooms, musicians were poised to play. In each display room, an academic was ready to give the guests an up-close and personal take on the treasures within. It was elegant and yet intimate at the same time, although the presence of the U.S. Secret Service slightly marred the effect. Sarah hung her credentials around her neck and made her way through the ground-floor rooms. Some children and adults milled about and she stopped, turned back. There was something familiar about the man with his back to her in the toreador outfit . . .
“Jose?” she said, aghast.
He turned, and suddenly she saw that Pols was there, too, a violin case in her hand.
Oh my God, she thought. This is not good.
Pols was wearing an off-white full-skirted dress trimmed with pearls and red ribbons. She looked like she had stepped out of one of the paintings on the museum walls. This made Jose’s toreador outfit look both appropriate and stylish. Boris the mastiff was also present, in his service bib to which a jaunty red bow had been added.
Sarah hugged the little girl tightly. Boris licked Sarah’s ear. “I hate physical contact,” said Pols.
“I know,” said Sarah, hugging her again. “What are you doing here?”
“The board of the museum invited the finalists from the competition back to play at the opening. We arrived this morning. I wanted to surprise you.” Pols leaned in close. “I keep having dreams of fire,” she whispered.
Sarah looked at Jose, her eyes saying, How could you let this happen?
Jose shrugged. “She is unstoppable force,” he said.
“It’s not safe,” Sarah hissed at him.
“Don’t worry, Sarah,” said Pols. “The Holy Infant will protect me.”
Sarah groaned inwardly as Jana came into the room with a headset on.
“The senator is on her way,” she announced. “Places, everyone!”
Pols and the little Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and North Korean prodigies took their seats and began to play a fugue.
“I’m right upstairs,” said Sarah to Jose as Jana pulled her away.
• • •
Nicolas met her on the stairs. He pulled her into a curtained recess and pressed something into her palm.
“I lied to you,” said the little man, “when I told you that I did not know what happened to the second key that the master made. I did know what happened to it. I took it.” He pulled a gold key out of his suit pocket. It hung from a thin gold chain.
“The master melted down a crucifix and made these two keys. They are identical. I should like you to have this one.”
“I can’t take that,” Sarah said. “It belongs—”
“To whom?” the little man asked. “To Max? He already has one. It’s downstairs on display. To me? It was not made for me. To history? History will not miss it. I would like you to have it. Remember that I am a little psychic and if I think you should take it, you should take it.”
He pressed it into her palm.
“I admit that despite Oksana, up till now this century has been a little dull. Forgive me for not falling into a frenzy of excitement over Facebook and American Idol. I admit iTunes is very useful. And Oksana is good at sexting. My point is that you have reinvigorated me. And I feel a certain . . . protectiveness toward Max. I think he will make a very good Prince Lobkowicz. Most of them started out a little strange, too.”
>
“Thank you for the key,” Sarah said. She hung the chain around her neck and tucked the key out of sight into her cleavage. Nicolas smiled.
• • •
A large man in a black suit with an earpiece disappearing into his collar was stationed in her room.
“Hiya,” said Sarah. The man smiled in a friendly way. Sarah showed him her credentials and he produced a flat wand like the ones used in airports.
“A matter of routine,” he said calmly, waving it over her body. The wand buzzed over Sarah’s watch, and the gold key. As the man bent over, Sarah saw the gun in his holster. She swallowed. Charlotte Yates could have me killed tonight, she thought. She’s done it before. She could do it again.
“Guess you drew the short straw,” said Sarah. “I bet you’d rather hang out in the Gun Room.”
The man smiled politely but said nothing.
Sarah looked at the lute player.
“Play now?” he asked.
“Yeah, go for it,” Sarah said.
They waited.
• • •
Sarah trained her hearing to the rooms behind her. She listened to Suzi jabbering away, then a sudden silence. Then a cluster of voices, a woman’s laugh. Miles’s voice. Suzi’s again. The Secret Service agent stepped forward toward the door. The lute player fumbled a note, then started again. A rustle of silk, and then Sarah turned to greet the most powerful American senator.
Charlotte Yates did have presence, Sarah had to give her that. The off-white Valentino gown was utterly elegant, the hair was perfect, her smile could break glass. She exuded a sense of control, of power, of authority. She held a glass of champagne in one ringed hand, and a Lobkowicz Museum goodie bag in the other. An emerald bracelet glittered. Her teeth were perfect.
Three more black-suited men followed her in. And Miles.
