by Magnus Flyte
Nico took a train from Heathrow to Paddington, deciding to detour for a pint at a favorite haunt from the old days. It might cheer him up a little.
The Windsor Castle pub in Kensington loomed up before him. Oh, the divertissements he’d enjoyed with his friends here! Like the time he had dispatched town criers to stand under the Duchess of Kent’s window and announce her beheading. Nobody knew how to punk properly anymore. Or spy! Computer hacking had brought all kinds of boring people into the trade, and the market was flooded, which drove down prices. Barely enough to keep a man out of the circus. Not that he had to worry so much about money anymore. Nico ordered a tankard of pear cider and considered the Barbour-clad Sloane Rangers on their cell phones around him. These days he only picked pockets if he was in a good mood. He watched a couple of lawyers in Zegna suits bend themselves in half to try to squeeze through the door to the back room, which was only four feet, six inches high, then strode through himself, head held high.
“Looks like it was made for you, mate,” remarked the ironically muttonchopped barkeep.
“It was,” said Nico and headed for the loo, recalling—just in time—that it was no longer acceptable to urinate out the front window onto the street. Sometimes when he got drinking, his chronology became a trifle confused.
Several pints of cider and a shot of Irish whiskey sloshed gently in his stomach as he walked down Piccadilly, ignoring the curious—then deliberately uncurious—reactions of passersby to his unusual person. Only very small children were honest about staring, the little cretins. Gods, London had really lost its stink and become incredibly clean. So depressing.
The British Museum was famously enormous, a receptacle for all the loot the Brits had managed to impolitely carry off while visiting any number of foreign countries (and sneering down their noses at the locals). What a mania for collection they had! The Elgin Marbles, endless amounts of statuary, pottery, jewelry, and other artifacts—all had been “rescued” from savage territories in order to be displayed here for all future generations of snotty British schoolchildren. At least the Rosetta Stone was now under glass—until just a few years ago, anyone could rub their filthy jam-stained hands over it. And why not? Full of foreign scratchings, it was.
How I long to be done with you all, he thought, making his way through the lofty hallways, squeezing through hordes of blank-eyed tourists wearing headsets.
He did look forward to seeing the galleon again. According to official records, the ship—which was also a clock and an ingenious automaton—was made by Hans Schlottheim, and it was believed to have once been in the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II. Nico happened to know that Philippine Welser was the one who had given it to Rudolf. It would not be an easy thing to steal, but that only made it more of a challenge. He would . . .
Nico stared at the empty glass display case. Inside where the automaton should have been, where it had been since 1866 when his old friend Octavius Morgan had donated it to the museum, there was instead a small white index card that read simply Removed for curatorial purposes.
This was not amusing. Whenever Nico needed to “borrow” something from a museum, he replaced it with one of his own Removed for curatorial purposes cards. He had them in the paper stock and fonts of about fifty different museums. It was extremely efficient, because it meant days or even months would pass before some nosy curator actually checked with the other curators and realized none of them had the object. He had “borrowed” this galleon himself, the last time he was in London.
What to do now? Nico looked around the museum. All these horrible children running around in perfect health, and Pollina . . .
No. There were other places he could find useful items for Philippine’s recipe. Nico stopped at another pub to mull and had a couple pints of a really lovely amber ale and another whiskey to wash them down, which took the edge off his headache.
It was important that he not get too attached to the idea of saving Pollina. You know what happens when you get attached.
Nico’s next stop was the British Library. It had the only copy outside Austria of Philippine Welser’s Book of Useful Medicines, with marginalia by John Dee and his partner, Edward Kelley. This might be useful, though Nico had gotten very irritated with old John Dee. It was hard to know what the man had truly believed. And by the end, Edward Kelley had filled Dee’s head with so much nonsense that the old necromancer didn’t know his ass from his pointy beard. Poor Dee. And when you knew the details, poor Mrs. Dee.
Nico submitted his request at the library’s desk and waited an unconscionably long time—with a few trips to the loo to fortify himself from his pocket flask—before the Jamaican librarian returned.
“I’m very sorry. The materials you requested are not here.”
“Not here?” Nico pulled himself up to his full height. “And where might they be, then?”
“They have been removed,” said the librarian with maddening indifference. “That’s all the note says. Removed.”
An hour later, and four more members of the staff interrogated, and Nico left the library still no further on his quest. No one seemed to know where Philippine’s book had ended up, and even the records that should have informed them who had last looked at the materials had gone missing.
This required a bit more whiskey. But he wasn’t done yet.
Nico arrived at the Science Museum an hour before closing and made his way to the fifth floor. He skirted a group of foul-mouthed schoolboys and made a brief inspection of camera locations and other security devices. Nothing a few magnets, a mirror, and a little patience couldn’t get past. He made his way to the Giustiniani medicine chest. A nice little example of sixteenth-century pharmacopoeia. One hundred twenty-six bottles and pots within the case still contained their original elements. He only needed two of them for Philippine’s recipe. Theriac and eagle bezoar.
No.
The medicine chest was gone. Not only gone, but in its place stood a small figurine of Khnumhotep, manager of ka-priests in ancient Egypt. Khnumhotep had no business being in this particular case of Renaissance medicine. His presence was an outrage, a deliberate insult.
Khnumhotep was a dwarf.
Nicolas Pertusato had an opponent. Game on.
• • •
Three hours later he was, Nico realized, not quite able to follow the lines of cobbles in the sidewalk. It might actually be that he was truly drunk now. He could not perfectly recall, for instance, what year it was.
Or what century.
Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He had been here often enough. Oh, yes. He was right near Soane’s house. Soane! Soane was excellent company. Soane would be helpful.
Nico made his way to number 13 and rang the bell.
“Soane!” he yelled up at the windows. “Soane! Open up! I want to raid your medicine chest.”
“It’s closed,” said someone behind him, striding past. Some uncouth ruffian without a hat. Where was his own hat? He seemed to be filthy. Luckily, Soane would let you in if your feet were clean.
Nico tried the door again to no avail. Soane must be upstairs, having a wee nip himself. Since his wife had died, he’d hardly gone out at all, and Nico knew he’d be grateful for a visit. Soane wasn’t comfortable at social gatherings, though his perceived deficiency wasn’t height, but class. The son of a bricklayer, he had worked his way up to being a prominent architect for all the toffiest toffs in London’s West End, but his real passion was teaching, and he had opened up his fascinating little house to visitors just a few years earlier, welcoming anyone with an interest in classical architecture and antiquities and offering them guided tours and cups of tea. Soane’s Museum and Academy of Architecture, he called it, which Nico found rather pretentious. Soane’s Future Jumble Sale, more like.
Fortunately, among his collectibles was a certain desk with a certain drawer (number 13) that contained a nice sampling of alchemical ingredients.
Nico made his way around back, where he knew a way up the drainpipe and into t
he second-floor window. It was on a rainy night like this that Nico had helped Soane build a funerary monument to Fanny, Soane’s wife’s dog. They had gone out in the middle of the night and found an unmarked headstone in the churchyard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, brought it home, then Nico had inscribed it. Alas, poor Fanny! it had read.
Soane knew how to laugh.
The window was stickier than he remembered, but Nico eventually jimmied it open and made his way through the darkened house, keeping quiet so as not to wake the dogs. Soane could be a bit squiffy about lending things. He would get what he needed first, and then go wake up his friend. Nico tiptoed down the stairs to the basement, feeling his way in the dark, which wasn’t easy since Soane was perhaps the biggest of all British pack rats. He never saw a Greek or Roman cornice or chunk of masonry he didn’t want to bring home.
There it was. The desk. And there was the drawer and now . . .
No.
Removed for curatorial purposes. But this was Soane’s home. The only curator here was Soane. This was beyond a joke. Furious, Nico charged toward the staircase, tripped, and fell face-first into something very hard.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. He had fallen into Soane’s marble sarcophagus. Soane had bought it from an Egyptian dealer and it was reputed to be more valuable than anything like it in the British Museum. To celebrate its arrival Soane had thrown a party for three hundred people and made them come in and view it in shifts, with the house all lit by candles.
Nico banged his head against the side of the sarcophagus in frustration. It would do him no good. He could bash his head for hours and there would be intense pain, blood, and probably a twenty-year headache, but he wouldn’t die. And Oksana would give him hell about the bruises.
The alcohol was already wearing off. Of course Soane wasn’t here. This really was a museum now. Soane had died in 1837. Nico had attended the funeral.
So many funerals. He would stand at the graves of them all, every last one of them.
FOUR
Sarah had brooded about Pols during the long train ride to Vienna, ignoring her Ohioan seatmate’s breathless, excited narration of every landmark—“A church! Another church! A farm!”
The way Pols had played her first piece, “Vienna Blood,” had felt like a warning. Schumann’s “Träumerei” was also known as “Dreams of Childhood,” but in Pollina’s interpretation the dreams had been twisted and haunted. The girl’s preternatural ability was very like the young Mozart’s, and she wanted time to be able to develop it as he had. But she knew her body was turning against her, as Beethoven’s had. Though she would never say it out loud, she had been sending Sarah a clear message in her choice of pieces: Pols was perfectly aware of how sick she was. And she was anxious, and frightened.
• • •
A crackly “Wien Meidling” had announced her train’s arrival in Vienna. Sarah made her way outside the station to a queue of cabs, greeting the driver with the Austrian “Grüss Gott.” For her ride through the city that was the adopted home of Beethoven and Mozart, she had to listen to ’80s pop blaring on the car radio. Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” then Gloria Estefan demanding party and siesta.
Vienna. Outside the window, low industrial buildings were gradually replaced by lovely edifices of stone, and curving boulevards bisected with tram tracks. Sarah was relieved to see how orderly, how expansive, how cosmopolitan and polished Vienna appeared. After the warren of Prague’s Easter egg–hued streets, Vienna looked refreshingly straightforward. Prague was a place where you could easily believe alchemists were lurking about. Vienna, although geographically farther east, had a decidedly Western European ambience. This was the kind of place where the frontiers of modern medicine were being pushed forward by scientists, not magicians. Sarah began to feel a surge of optimism. It was like Nico said. She wasn’t going to sit and do nothing. She was going to use her talents. No moping, no hand-wringing.
Her friend Alessandro’s apartment was located just outside the “Ring”—the wide boulevard that Emperor Franz Joseph had ordered built in 1857 to replace the old city walls and which now enclosed the historic center of Vienna.
“Bellissima!” exclaimed Alessandro, opening the door of his apartment to Sarah. The lanky and beautiful Italian was wearing an oddly cut dark green suit with leather piping and an Alpine hat, complete with feather. He planted a firm kiss on her lips and grabbed her ass.
“Ah, good,” he said. “So often the acquisition of the PhD is ruinous to the culo. But yours has survived intact. Congratulations, Frau Doktor Weston.”
“Danke,” Sarah said, giving Alessandro’s own perfectly formed culo a good swat. Sarah had heard signorina after signorina testify in operatic terms as to the quality of Alessandro’s lovemaking through the thin walls of their Boston apartment, but had never felt the urge to try it herself. Fortunately, Alessandro had not taken this as a challenge, and he treated Sarah as a sister—or, as he had once said, like a brother. Now he released her and ushered her into a tiny and immaculate living room.
“University arrange this nice place for me. I take down all the Klimt posters. At Harvard, you could tell if a girl would sleep with you by her poster. Modigliani—sì. Klimt—no. I want to set the right mood.”
“Well done. But the outfit? Why are you dressed to go stag hunting with an archduke?”
“It is part of my very clever plan.” Alessandro produced a garment bag from the hall closet and waved it with a flourish. “There is a ball tonight, and the scientist you wish to meet, Frau Doktor Müller, she will be there. You and me, we make friendly with her and then, boom, she say yes to enrolling Pols in the study.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. Alessandro’s charms were legendary, and no woman seemed ever to say no to him. If anyone could sway Bettina Müller, it was Alessandro, especially at a ball.
“Do I dare ask what’s in the bag?”
“This is a Tyrolean Ball. A special event being held at Rathaus. Traditional dress, this is mandatory. These Austrians are very serious about their balls.”
Sarah’s laughter was cut short when Alessandro whipped off the garment bag.
“Yeah, I’m not wearing that.” The gown was an upscale version of the dirndl, or traditional Alpine peasant dress. There were three layers to the outfit—a white scoop-neck cropped blouse with puffy elbow-length sleeves, a midnight-blue velvet dress with an embroidered bodice, and a forest-green silk taffeta apron. It came with white tights and black flat shoes. She would look, Sarah thought, like an extra from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
“You’ll wear it for Pols,” said Alessandro. “And I will promise not to post pictures on Facebook. Maybe.”
Sarah took the dress from him.
FIVE
Alessandro had slightly underestimated Sarah’s dress size and slightly overestimated her shoe size, so once she was dirndled up and shuffling along, Sarah felt like a well-trussed duck. Remarkably, their costumes caused nary a second glance as they strolled through streets where every third building was a landmark of historic or cultural significance. Alessandro pointed out the Secession Building, where artists like Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, and Carl Moll had made their stand against the gemütlichkeit culture of middle-class coziness and complacency that reigned at the end of the nineteenth century in Vienna. And then Café Museum, originally designed by Adolf “ornament is crime” Loos, where the artists had gone to drink coffee, argue, and seduce beautiful women into modeling and more. They reached the Opernring and the lit-up State Opera House came into view, decorated to within an inch of its life in Neo-Renaissance splendor and topped with equestrian statues.
“This has tragic story,” said Alessandro. “When the building was completed, Emperor Franz Joseph said the building sat a little low. And so one of the poor architetti killed himself in shame, and the other died of a broken heart.”
“Never read reviews,” said Sarah, struggling to catch a deep breath in the dirndl.
“Or give them.” Alessandro n
odded. “Franz Joseph felt so bad that after, whenever anyone ask of him what he thought of some building, he just said, ‘It is very nice. I like it very much.’”
They passed a blindingly pink coffee shop: Aida. Alessandro explained that Aida was a chain, but a good example of a Konditorei, a pastry shop favored by women who went to gossip and eat pastries, as opposed to the more macho Kaffeehaus, where men went to gossip and eat pastries.
“Mark Twain said that, outside of Vienna, all coffee was merely liquid poverty,” Sarah commented.
“It is true.” Alessandro sighed. “The coffee is heaven. But the food is awful. Knödel. A crime against pasta.”
• • •
Alessandro steered her toward Maria-Theresien-Platz, so Sarah could take in the enormous white and pale gray edifices arranged around the edges of a vast green square. Beyond this lay the even more massive Hofburg complex, with its monuments to the power of the Hapsburgs and the time when Vienna had been the seat of the Holy Roman Empire, powerful and seemingly indestructible. Now all of these places were simply part of Vienna’s perfectly preserved past. There was something, Sarah decided, a little smug about all this magnificence. Well, historically, Vienna had had the reputation of being a decadent, indolent city. Beethoven had once sneered in a letter that “so long as an Austrian can get his brown ale and his little sausages, he is not likely to revolt.”
Moving along, they passed the Volksgarten, the enormous Greek Revival–style Parliament building, and then turned into the approach to the Rathaus, Vienna’s imposing city hall, dressed to the nines in Gothic splendor, and boasting a statue of a knight in armor atop its lofty spire.
“Cheese and rice,” muttered Sarah (a favorite expression of her father’s) as they sailed into the majestic Festsaal. The ceremonial hall stretched the entire length of the building. She took in the barrel-vaulted ceiling, the parquet floors, the three-sided gallery, the statues and arcades, and the ornate flights of stairs. She counted sixteen chandeliers. Already there was a huge crush of people, all costumed, all wearing expressions of delight and anticipation in the frivolity to come. Members of an orchestra were settling themselves in one of the niches.
