by Magnus Flyte
“I’ll be going to London tomorrow,” Nico continued. “There are some things from Philippine’s recipe that I would like to acquire for Pols. Max, I trust that this conversation will remain very much under your hat?”
“If you mean Harriet,” Max answered stiffly, after a brief glance at Sarah, “then, yes. Yes, of course. I haven’t told her anything about . . . anything. If you think Philippine’s medicines might be helpful, I’ll go through the library here and see if I can find anything related to her work. Worth a shot.”
“And Sarah—”
“I’m leaving for Vienna after Pols’s concert.” She stood up. “I have my own quest.”
“Do you have the key I gave you?” said Nico, moving forward and taking up her hand.
“Yes,” she said, confused. Sarah fingered the key she wore on a chain around her neck. The little man had given her the key during the summer she worked in Prague. As far as she knew, it only opened one door, and that door was here, not in Vienna. “Why?”
“No reason. But watch your step. You must remain en garde, my dear.”
“Don’t worry,” Sarah promised. “What could possibly happen to me in Vienna?”
TWO
Sarah woke early the next morning, surprisingly none the worse for having hauled a fourteenth-century saint out of the Vltava the night before. Of course she didn’t really believe the man was actually John of Nepomuk, whose statue, with its crown of golden stars, she had passed many times on the Charles Bridge. She had also seen the saint’s tomb—a mind-boggling tribute to what the Baroque could do when it got its hands on a shitload of silver—in St. Vitus’s Cathedral. No, the most likely explanation was usually the correct one: the guy she had fished out of the river was a nut job in a costume. She was also not prepared to believe that the nut job was on some sort of rival crusade to find the Golden Fleece. Max imagined mythic quests around every corner. He was about a half step away from seeing Rudolf II on a piece of toast.
Max had been very generous, putting her up for the evening at the Four Seasons, where he said the manager was a friend. Sarah appreciated the high-thread-count sheets, but was horrified by the prices on the room service menu. No eggs should cost that much unless they came with the actual chickens and a handsome farmer who would rub your feet while you ate.
Sarah opened her computer and sent an e-mail to Alessandro, her former Boston roommate, advising him of her train times. It was Alessandro who had alerted her to the work of the nanobiologist Dr. Bettina Müller. He was teaching at the University of Vienna this year, and she would be staying with him.
The events of the previous evening almost seemed like a dream now. Nico. The restaurant. The dive into the river. The shots. Saint John’s pale blue eyes staring at her. Max’s hands. The feeling that she had made a mistake in letting him go. The desire to kiss him. Harriet.
Telling herself she was allowed to be curious, Sarah had done a little Internet search on Harriet Hunter before collapsing into bed the night before.
Max’s new girlfriend was pretty famous in Britain. Her academic credentials were impeccable—her PhD was from Oxford and she had published in her field. But she was best known as the host of a popular television show, Histories & Mysteries. Naturally, Sarah found some episodes of it on YouTube. Dr. Hunter practiced what was called archaeological history. In her programs she re-created the banquets of seventeenth-century kings, spent the night in freezing castles, slept on a straw-tick mattress, and used a chamber pot. She squeezed her petite but well-endowed frame into corsets, donned bonnets, attempted an exit from a tiny horse-drawn carriage while wearing an enormous crinoline. She took a bath in goats’ milk, plucked a goose, fought (unloaded) pistols at dawn. She punctuated her speech with Shakespearean exclamations: “Oh, pish!” “Heigh-ho, what have we here?” “What tilly-vally!” There was nothing she wouldn’t explore, investigate, or ingest.
“It’s 1598 and Oswald Croll is writing his Basilica chymica here in Prague,” ran one documentary clip. Dr. Harriet was dressed in a floor-length magus robe and stood before a table of glass beakers and pewter dishes. “We can—if we dare—follow his instructions for the making of a magical amulet: two ounces of dried toads ground to a fine powder, one complete menstruum of a virgin, one dram of unpierced pearls, one dram of coral, two scruples of Eastern saffron . . .” Apparently Dr. Harriet had not dared to try—or, more likely, was prevented from quaffing on-air—the collected monthly of some suitably innocent schoolgirl, but she promised her viewers that Croll believed his amulet was a surefire preventative from diseases both astral and venereal.
All of this had earned the historian a raft of snarky comments from her colleagues, who accused her of pandering, of trivializing history, of sensationalism, and of—horror of horrors—bad taste. The kind of things that generally got said of any academic who achieved a modicum of fame, published something more than five people wanted to read, or wore lipstick.
But really, the woman was impressive.
And, Sarah had to admit, a good choice for Max, who was also sort of an odd duck. Perhaps the sudden rush of feelings for Max was just the result of having a near-death experience, Sarah thought, as she set herself firmly toward Josefov, where Pollina’s parents kept an apartment for their daughter. Her brain had been flooded with chemicals and she hadn’t been thinking clearly. Anyway, she would be leaving for Vienna in the afternoon. Better for everyone.
• • •
“They tell us her immune system no good, and it worse if she has stress. So we try not to worry her. We act normal.”
Pollina’s caretaker, Jose Nieto, was waiting for Sarah on a street of glassware shops, holding the leash of Pollina’s elderly mastiff, Boris. Jose told her that the girl did not know how sick she was, and they needed to keep it that way.
“But she knows how she feels,” Sarah argued. She was skeptical, anyway, about the ability of anyone to hide things from Pols. The girl’s blindness—and possibly her genius—had rendered her exceptionally observant. A bus pulled up and discharged a single-file line of young Chinese women in pink velour tracksuits. Prague was beginning to feel like a Hogarth painting entitled The Triumph of Capitalism.
“She say she feel fine, fine, fine. But when she think no one hear, she cough bad.” Jose had looked after Pollina since birth. Now he had dark circles under his eyes. “Her parents, they just leave,” he continued. “They go to Afghanistan for the archaeology. They nice people, but they don’t worry! Always I see rich people worry about stupid thing like if bread has gluten, but they just say, ‘Oh, darling, you must rest and not work so hard.’ They no understand her.”
The first-floor apartment was large and luxurious, though Sarah had to assume that while the art had been chosen by Pollina’s parents, the decorative touches had been added by Jose, who had a flair for whimsy. A row of Egyptian statues sported tiny bandanas. Sunglasses and a pipe had been unceremoniously added to an African ceremony mask. The crucifixes, however, had been left in their original state.
Pollina was seated at a grand piano. She was playing a little tune of just five notes over and over again, as if in a trance: E. B. C. A. G.
Sarah, whose mind automatically sought to classify these things, didn’t recognize the strangely compelling little passage, and wasn’t even sure which key the girl was playing in. Pollina stopped abruptly.
“Why did you break Max’s heart?” Pols demanded without preamble.
“I brought doughnuts from Boston.” Sarah placed the carton of requested Dunkin’ Donuts on the coffee table for the expats. Sarah was all too familiar with Pols’s blunt opinions. The last time they had spoken, the target had been her career. Was Sarah sure that teaching was really what she wanted to do with her understanding of music? Pols had an unerring nose for weak spots.
“I thought,” Pols continued now, coming forward and touching Sarah’s hand in greeting, “that people strove their whole lives to find love.”
Sarah sighed. Pollina was a genius, but
she sometimes got very romantic notions into her head and she was only thirteen. How to explain that love and life didn’t always go easily together? It wouldn’t be obvious to Pollina why it was so important that Sarah make her own career and place in the world before she attached herself to someone else, that she and Max were leading very different lives.
Sarah kept her tone light. “Let’s face it, I’m no princess.”
Pols absorbed this as she munched on a doughnut. The changes in the girl were dramatic, but Sarah found them difficult to assess. Was her friend older looking because she was in fact heading into full teenager status, or had her illness aged her prematurely? She was not much taller, still slight, but her face had definitely lost its doll-like roundness. She was moving slowly, but then Pols always moved slowly, unless she was playing the piano or violin, when she was capable of Dervish-like agility and Titanic power.
“I see you as a conductor,” Pols said at last, having demolished the doughnut. “When I’m done with my opera you should conduct it.”
“Was that what you were playing when I came in?”
“Yes. That was the theme.” Pols straightened her back. “The whole thing flows from those five notes, which are encrypted throughout the entire work. Or will be.”
“What’s your libretto?”
“I’m writing it myself. But I need to work fast. Mozart was twelve when he wrote Bastien und Bastienne and La finta semplice.”
“Well, those weren’t great operas.” But it’s good that she’s feeling competitive, Sarah thought. She’s a fighter.
“No, not truly great. They showed ambition but not compassion. The music was there, but emotionally he was still immature,” said Pols. “Like you, kind of.”
• • •
At noon, Sarah slipped into the back row of Lobkowicz Palace Museum’s Music Room. The 7th Prince Lobkowicz had been a major supporter of Ludwig van Beethoven. Word had apparently gotten around that the current Lobkowicz was patron to another extraordinary genius. The place was packed.
I’ll know how Pols really feels, Sarah thought, when I hear her play.
Harriet Hunter took the seat next to Sarah, togged out today in a green corduroy frock coat buttoned over a white silk blouse and green and black vest, with narrow black velvet pants. A sort of nineteenth-century cross-dressed look. You had to give the woman points for style.
“How are you feeling?” Harriet whispered, searching Sarah’s face. “After your plunge last night? Max said you were into the river before anyone else had sorted out what was happening. And you think someone was shooting at you?”
“I might have been mistaken about that,” Sarah said, hedging. “There was a lot going on.” So Max had told Harriet about the gunshots, even though Nico had counseled discretion?
“Max said you’re working on a book?” Sarah asked Harriet, hoping to steer the conversation away from drowning madmen and mysterious plots.
“A novel.” Harriet smiled. “Although it requires a great deal of research. My heroine is Elizabeth Weston—the poet? They called her ‘Westonia.’ No relation of yours, Max says.”
“Weston is a common name,” Sarah said, though the name Westonia had given her a bit of a jolt.
“In her day Elizabeth Weston was more famous than Shakespeare,” said Harriet. “I’m taking a bit of a risk, imagining her as a modern woman, looking back at her life and accomplishments here in Prague. But it’s atrocious she’s been so forgotten. I’m hoping to really make her come alive for a modern audience.”
“Sounds great,” said Sarah. Although in my experience, she thought, it’s not hard to make history come alive in Prague. The hard part is making history stay dead.
According to Nico, Westonia had been the name Tycho Brahe had given to one of his little alchemical experiments, the result of which had been a perception-expanding drug that both Sarah and Max had taken. Westonia allowed you to see the past, see it so clearly that it was like time traveling. Nico had said that Brahe had named the drug after Elizabeth Weston, though Sarah had no idea why. She wondered if Max had said anything to Harriet about it. Probably not. The whole thing was pretty hard to believe and anyway the ingredients for making it were all gone.
Harriet squinted at her program. Sarah wondered if she would take an eyeglass on a velvet ribbon from her waistcoat pocket. “What does dear Pollina have in store for us today?” Harriet murmured. “Oh God. Strauss. Well, we must endure. That’s for you, is it? I hear you’re off to Vienna. I admit I find Vienna something of a sphinx. You’ll meet quite a lot of them there. Sphinxes. And not just on buildings and lampposts.”
Sarah smiled politely.
“Oh, you are prepared,” Harriet laughed. “That was a very Viennese smile. Giving away nothing and concealing everything.”
Max came and sat down on the other side of Harriet, who took his hand. They make a nice couple, Sarah told herself sternly, hoping she wouldn’t be forced to make small talk, since at the sight of Max all her resolution dissolved and she had to admit there was just a tiny possibility that she might leap over Ms. Masterpiece Theatre and grab Max by his monogrammed wrists and tell him that—
Fortunately a hush fell over the room as a tall, silver-haired woman carrying a violin entered the Music Room, followed by Pols, walking slowly with one arm on a uniformed museum guard. The crowd instantly grew silent and attentive as the young girl seated herself at the piano and the violinist arranged her own music on a stand in front of her.
The first piece—“Vienna Blood” by Johann Strauss II—was perhaps better translated as “Vienna Spirit.” It was Vienna as it liked to think of itself: sprightly, charming, and sensual. But Pols seemed to be finding something else in the music, as if the charm of Vienna concealed something broken. She was giving the merry waltz an almost sinister quality, revealing a darker truth. Pollina then launched into Schumann’s “Träumerei,” a piece usually played slowly and introspectively. The young girl broke that convention immediately, handling the ascensions with a nervous and almost threatening pace. Next was Mozart’s Piano Sonata no. 14. The ease with which Pollina played this was breathtaking, but Sarah saw she was distracted. Her thin face occasionally broke into frowns or smiles, as if she were conducting a conversation with the composer, sometimes praising and sometimes scolding. The violinist and a teenage cellist wearing a yarmulke and a prayer shawl joined for the final offering: Luigi’s Piano Trio, op. 97. (Sarah always thought of Ludwig van Beethoven by his favorite nickname.) According to a contemporary account of Beethoven’s performance at the premiere, “In forte passages the poor deaf man pounded on the keys until the strings jangled, and in piano he played so softly that whole groups of notes were omitted.” It had marked Luigi’s last public performance as a pianist.
Pols was in the middle of the second movement when she started coughing. She tried valiantly to keep playing, but finally stopped, chest heaving.
Sarah and Max both ran down the aisle to help the girl to her feet.
“I’m sorry,” Pollina whispered.
“I’m going to find someone who can help you,” Sarah promised. She looked at Max over the girl’s head. His eyes said, Hurry.
THREE
Nicolas Pertusato was not in the best of spirits. This was annoying, since he had been imbibing the best of spirits for a long time now and should have been feeling more cheerful. Of course, plane travel was no more a comfortable experience for him than it was for people with less abbreviated statures. On the one hand, he had more leg room than most adults. On the other hand, he could not make use of the overhead bins without engaging a flight attendant, and there were no attractive ones on this particular flight to London. You had to fly to Dubai to get a shapely stewardess these days. Although the ones on Japan Air were still fairly delectable.
Nico watched the giantess in the window seat next to him attempt to eat her dinner. Like the other behemoths on the aircraft, her arms were wedged so tightly in the seat she could use only wrist movements and a ki
nd of lizardlike head bobbing to forage. That was diverting.
Well, and the appearance of Saint John of Nepomuk in Prague had been intriguing. The whole episode did have the ring of the kinds of practical jokes Nico and his friends used to play in the past. Except someone had shot at Sarah. That was simply not cricket.
“I only sell you one bottle and yet you have three empties.” The depressingly mannish Czech airline . . . person . . . pointed to the row of vodka bottles on his seat tray. Nico sighed. Why would you not take something that rolled past you at hand height?
He was drinking a bit much these days, and he had seen Sarah notice it, but he had a lot on his mind. He really did want to find the ingredients for Philippine Welser’s medicine. It would be nice to do something for Pollina. Sarah was skeptical about the old herbal remedies, but Nico had seen the miracles those healing women had worked. Certainly antibiotics and anesthesia were major improvements over biting a strap while someone sawed your leg off, but modern medicine had its blind spots.
What would modern medicine have to say about himself, for instance? Nico knew that somewhere the cure for his condition must exist. Tycho Brahe had made him immortal from a formula he had stolen from one of Emperor Rudolf’s books. The book of the Golden Fleece. Sarah had seen the book—under the influence of Westonia—but then had lost the trail. Nico and Max had spent the better part of the past two years trying to pick up the trail on their own, with no luck. Sarah had reported seeing Tycho Brahe discussing the Fleece with the old mathematician and alchemist Dr. John Dee, and Nico had been all over Europe hunting through Dee’s old diaries and artifacts. There was plenty to be found—the Bodleian Library at Oxford had a trove of Dee’s diaries, but nothing even remotely Fleece-y.
The thought of blowing the one solid chance he had at shucking off the old immortal coil had thoroughly depressed him. Carpe diem was fun only as long as you had a diem to carpe. Carpe eternum was a drag. If he was hitting the bottle a little harder lately, who could blame him?
