by Magnus Flyte
“We are not asking for much.” Gottfried flared his nostrils. “We are not asking to be as rich as a man who sells colanders on television. We are only asking that our name not be disgraced.”
“Gottfried.”
“We are only asking to preserve what is rightfully ours and pass it on to the next generation of von Hohenlohes, to keep Austrian treasures in the hands of Austrians.”
“That is true.”
“Very well,” Gottfried said grandly. “It will be easy. Sarah has already suggested the means. I offered to show her Philippine Welser’s book, and she was most interested and anxious to take me up on this. We drive to Innsbruck tomorrow. She will not be a problem.”
“Good,” said Heinrich, showing his small teeth. “Very good. My superiors, too, have a request”—here Heinrich leaned forward—“about the research.”
Gottfried sighed.
“Yes? Let’s have it. I have things to do. I cannot linger here all night.”
“The scientist said she conducted her experiment on an animal. Rat number 134, she called it.”
“Yes?”
“Well . . .”
“Please, brother. You have come this far. Do not hold back now.”
Heinrich smiled weakly.
“They want the rat.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“You can only grasp me with one arm,” said Harriet. “Because you lost the other one in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797.”
“Right.” Max folded one arm behind his back. The linen shirt Harriet had given him to wear was itchy, the white wool vest smelled of mothballs, the dark blue wool jacket with epaulets had a disturbing bullet hole in the breast, and the flap-front trousers were just plain silly. And that was before you got to the two-cornered hat that looked like a giant black banana.
Harriet was doing a kind of interpretive dance around Max’s living room. She was a good dancer and looked very pretty in her linen shift.
“I’ve just done my performance of Medea for you, the King and Queen of Naples, and a select few other guests”—Harriet was slightly out of breath—“and of course my husband, the British ambassador. You’re lounging on the sofa, exhausted after your long journey from Aboukir Bay and defeating Napoléon in the Battle of the Nile.”
Max lounged and tried to look exhausted.
“You’re suffering from malaria, and since we last saw each other five years ago, you’ve lost all your teeth, an arm, and one eye.”
“Jesus. How old am I?” said Max.
“You’re only forty, but you’ve fought a lot of battles. You’ve earned a reputation as being exceptionally brave, but also headstrong. You once chased a polar bear.”
Max nodded approvingly and, using his left hand, sipped rum out of a tiny antique glass.
“That rum comes from Jamaica, where you were nursed back to health after a life-threatening bout of dysentery.”
“Dysentery is not sexy,” said Max, hoping Harriet wasn’t going to want him to enact that part.
“Not to worry. I suffer from amoebic dysentery and so does my husband, Lord Hamilton, probably contracted right here in Naples.”
“Okay, so we all have dysentery,” said Max.
“I’ve been secretly in love with you for five years and awaiting your return.”
“How does your husband feel about you putting me to bed?”
“In later years, we will all live openly in England in a ménage a trois. It will be an enormous scandal.”
“Let’s skip that part.”
“Oh, Lord Nelson.” Harriet fanned herself. “I haven’t laughed this hard since playing charades with Goethe.”
“Please, call me Horatio,” said Max, doing his best imitation of an eighteenth-century British naval hero, downing the rest of his drink.
“Don’t forget to keep one eye closed and one arm behind your back,” Harriet whispered.
Max suddenly felt very tired. Very, very tired. Harriet swam before him. She kissed him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
• • •
Max was dreaming. He was taking a bath with Sarah, but they were not alone. There were several other people there, including Harriet, which was awkward, and Beethoven and Mozart, which was just weird. He started to slip under the water and found he couldn’t use his arms or legs to hold himself up. I’m drowning. No one else in the tub noticed him slip under or moved to help him. I’m dying, he thought, unable to fight his way to the surface. Gasping, Max struggled to open his eyes and finally pulled himself awake. He felt groggy and hung over. He was still wearing his Lord Nelson costume. Had he passed out after sex? But he hadn’t drunk that much. Harriet had insisted on a period glass, quite small, for the draft Lord Nelson needed to take for his malaria. Wait. Had she actually given him eighteenth-century medicine? He struggled to sit up.
Moritz was pacing the floor. Max hauled himself out of bed, pulled on a robe against the chill, and padded over to let the dog out. He stepped into the hallway, then paused. Someone else was up. He could hear someone moving about. Pols? Harriet? The music room was empty. His office door was closed, but he heard the creak of his desk chair. Pols wouldn’t be in his office, nor would Harriet. A thief? He gave Moritz the hand signal for silence, then went to his room and retrieved the small pistol he kept in his dresser. Just in case. Max returned to his office and opened the door silently, just a crack, and was at first relieved to see that the person was Harriet. He could just make her out in the light from the small penlight she was holding. But before he could say, “You scared the crap out of me,” he thought to himself, Why is Harriet in my office at night?
Her back was to him. She was being very cautious, he could see that. Looking at everything on his desk, but putting it back exactly the way it was. Looking for something. She opened the drawers one by one, then pulled something out. From the size he guessed it was the Star Summer Palace folio. Harriet took the folio and tucked it under her coat. She turned toward the door.
Max flicked on the lights and strode into the room, grabbing Harriet by the arms. The folio fell to the floor. Moritz ran into the room, growling and showing teeth.
“What are you doing?”
“My God! My God, Max, What? I . . .”
“What are you doing?”
“Max, you’re hurting me. Please.”
Max let go of her arms and bent to scoop up the papers. Harriet stooped, as if to help him, and Moritz’s growl went up a notch. The dog began backing her into a corner.
“Max, really, call him off. I couldn’t sleep and I was looking for something to read. I didn’t think you’d mind. I’m sorry . . . I didn’t think.” She reached out a hand.
Moritz bit Harriet. Right on her outstretched hand. Quickly, and without hanging on, but a nice solid puncture.
“Bloody hell!”
“Get out,” Max said to her.
Harriet held out her hand, incredulous, as two red spots began to swell.
“He bit me.”
“You drugged me. Get out.”
“Max, don’t be ridiculous. You’re overreacting. Think.”
“No. You’re done here.”
“I haven’t done anything!” Harriet cried. “Just . . . looked. I am a curious person, darling. You know that. I’m a historian. It’s what I do. Darling, this hurts like hell. There could be nerve damage. Put some clothes on and we’ll talk in the car.”
Max wished he had bitten her himself. It must have felt really good, he thought.
“Get out,” he repeated quietly. “Right now, or he’ll bite you again.”
Moritz growled again and took a step toward her.
Harriet backed toward the door that led to the rest of the palace. “You’re not thinking straight,” she said. “We’ll talk in the morning. You’ll see this was all a silly bit of nonsense. And you owe me an apology.”
Max marched her out of the office and down the stairs to his private entrance, Harriet protesting the whole time. He shut the door in her
face.
Back in his office, Max put the folio down on his desk and slumped onto the sofa, his head in his hands. He had a pounding headache from whatever drug Harriet had given him to knock him out, and now that the adrenaline was abating, he felt groggy and exhausted. And angry and disappointed and embarrassed. What had Harriet been up to?
Whatever she wanted, she wouldn’t get it now.
Moritz whined and licked his hand.
“Thank you,” said Max. “God, I’m an ass.”
“You were lonely,” said a voice.
Max froze and looked up at the dog. Moritz was standing in front of him, wagging his tail, staring at him.
No. It was the drug. Max sighed, rolled onto his side, and closed his eyes.
“Sleep it off,” said Moritz. “You must rest the spine you recently grew.”
Max sat up again. “What the—?”
Moritz sat down in front of Max.
Max stood and slapped his own cheek.
“All right. Let’s get back to bed.”
“You could ask nicely.” Max wheeled around.
Nico.
The little man emerged from behind the curtains at the window.
“How long have you been there?” Max demanded.
“Long enough. I was just about to surprise dear Harriet myself when you did such an admirable job.”
“She drugged me,” Max said defensively.
“So I gathered,” said Nico. “Luckily she didn’t drug your dog.”
“He didn’t do a very good job of telling me you were here.”
“Maybe you should feed me more biscuits,” said Moritz. And weirdly, the voice really did seem to come from Moritz and not from Nico.
“You little bastard,” said Max. “I should have known.”
“I’ll teach you the art of ventriloquism if you like. It’s quite useful. And now let us examine what Harriet was so interested in.”
“It’s drawings of Ferdinand’s Star Summer Palace. And lots of notes and the usual alchemical hoo-ha. Maybe you can make sense of it.”
“I will look. You should go back to bed and sleep off whatever Harriet gave you. From the smell I am guessing laudanum.”
Max struggled to focus his sleepy brain. “Okay,” he said, then turned back to Nico. “Did you see Sarah in Vienna?”
“Of course.”
“How is she?”
“Same as you,” said Nico. “Tall and stupid.”
TWENTY-NINE
“Because I have been the worst houseguest since the Pilgrims showed up at Plymouth Rock,” said Sarah, handing Alessandro a boxed edition of the complete run of the television show The Golden Girls, which for reasons imperfectly clear to her, Alessandro had often stayed up late to watch in syndication when they had been roommates together, and insisted was the greatest comedy ever made.
“My ladies!” he cried, embracing both it and her. “For this I forgive you. I even forgive you bringing a rat into my apartment.”
Before Nico had left for Prague, he had handed Sarah another cage. “In case Bettina shows up asking for her rat, you’ll have a decoy.” The rat inside had arched its back, stamped his feet, and gnashed its teeth at her. Sarah had thought of Saddam Hussein, who had used doubles to throw off his enemies.
“Great,” she said. “I’m calling this one Ares, god of war. I can’t believe you found an open pet store.”
“I found an open dumpster. You probably should not touch him.”
“Got it,” said Sarah, as Nico picked up Hermes. “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay. I’ll meet you in Prague.”
• • •
Sometimes life gives you gifts, thought Gottfried when Sarah appeared outside his flat carrying a cage with a rat in it. Signs that you are on the right path.
Getting into the room with Bettina’s laboratory animals had been easier than he’d thought it would be, since someone had apparently torn off the doorknob. But rat #134 was not there.
“I’m petsitting for a friend,” Sarah said, putting the rat in the backseat. “Long story. But I can’t leave him alone overnight. Do you mind?”
Gottfried stared at the little brown rodent. Sarah had known Nina. Knew Bettina. This must be rat #134. Kept under constant watch by the scientist’s cronies. Yes, of course.
It was all falling into place. He was driving Sarah and the rat to the countryside, where it would be easy to get the rat away from her and hand it off to Heinrich. Heinrich would be so pleased, and they would collect all of the money. The Schloss would be saved.
And as for Sarah . . . what? Well, he would see what signs life sent.
“I do not mind,” he said.
• • •
Sarah got into the front seat. If Bettina came after her, let her come. As always, Sarah carried with her in her shoulder bag a small kit containing a Swiss Army knife, waterproof matches, Band-Aids, potable water tablets, lip balm, and a condom. With such fortifications, a woman could survive or enjoy just about anything. She was not prepared to leave Austria without anything to help Pollina, and there were answers for her in the place where Philippine had lived. The woman clearly had mad skills. Maybe there was another recipe in her book that would be useful. Maybe she could find out more about what had been put in the galleon.
Gottfried was wearing a jaunty green Tyrolean hat with a feather in its black and white braided hatband, and he produced a small box of chocolates and a bottle of water. “To sustain you on the journey,” he said with a shy smile. He kissed her. Sarah had a brief flashback of fire, and then she inhaled Gottfried’s particular scent of limes and leather and hay. For a moment she thought she could hear Conversano nickering.
Though Sarah offered to share the driving, Gottfried insisted on doing all of it so that Sarah could immerse herself in the scenery. Sarah would have immersed a little more successfully at a lower rate of speed, but Gottfried, like many European drivers, enjoyed traveling at well over a hundred miles an hour, weaving among trucks, cursing the idiocy of everyone else on the road, and treating the journey as if he were bringing serum to diphtheria victims, with the Mini Countryman in the role of Balto the husky. As they zoomed over mountain passes, through tunnels, and around hairpin turns, leaving the plain of Vienna behind and climbing up into the Alps, Sarah got a brief, tantalizing glimpse of storybook spires.
“Linz,” said Gottfried.
“The pajama makers?”
“That is Lanz, who make ladies’ flannel nightgowns so ugly and impenetrable that we call them Austria’s most effective form of birth control. In Linz, Kepler taught astronomy, and you will be familiar with another famous son, the composer Bruckner. And of course you Americans always want to bring up Adolf Hitler, who spent his youth here before leaving for Vienna.”
“Ah,” Sarah said diplomatically.
“Even though Hitler was Austrian by birth, Nazism was a very German idea. Germans should not rule over other peoples. You want happy times? Let Austria rule over Germany, not vice versa.”
“Being so pro-Austrian I’m surprised you drive a British car,” Sarah teased.
“Ah, but my Schatzi is made in Graz, here in Austria.” Gottfried patted the dashboard with pride. “I make this drive often, but it is nicer with you here.” He put his hand on her thigh. Sarah hoped the villa beds weren’t too ancestral. Well, if need be they could improvise. Look what they had accomplished in a stable.
They passed through Salzburg.
“You will recognize from Sound of Music,” said Gottfried with a sigh. “Seventy percent of the foreign tourists who come to Salzburg visit not because it is the birthplace of Mozart, but to see where the nun Maria captured the heart of Captain von Trapp.”
“I’ve heard that Maria wasn’t actually that popular with the children.”
“Also, they did not walk over hills. Obviously, it is geographically impossible to cross to Switzerland from Salzburg by means of hills. The Von Trapps took the train. To Italy.”
The highway ducked briefly i
nto Germany, then shot up into twisty Austrian mountain roads that made her ears pop.
At last they exited in Innsbruck, which was nestled beneath some truly spectacular peaks, already snowcapped in October. The blue of the sky seemed brighter here, and the pastel buildings cleaner. It was not surreal, Sarah thought. It was hyperreal. It was high-definition reality.
The little car began climbing up one side of the valley in which the town nestled, and they made their way along a densely forested lane over which a huge gray stone wall loomed. Finally Gottfried pulled up in front of a massive iron gate.
“Wait here.” Gottfried hopped out of the car, pulled an enormous ring of keys out of his pocket, and shoved a huge skeleton key into the rusted lock. He swung the gates open and got back in the car.
“The place is in deplorable condition,” he said. “I apologize. We cannot afford a full-time staff.” They continued up a long, winding lane. Sarah could see only another steep stone wall above them. “My father insisted the Kunstkammer be preserved in the right conditions, and the remainder of our fortune went to this. But there is only Heinrich and I to look after it.”
“You can’t open up part of it to tourists, as a museum?”
“We do not have the European Union–required facilities. There is no wheelchair ramp and very few bathrooms. There are no sprinklers for fire safety. No parking lot.”
They passed under the stone wall through a tunneled arch and into a courtyard. Gottfried’s family home was a gigantic hulking Renaissance castle and outbuildings, surrounded by a huge and densely overgrown park. The buildings were red and white, though the white had gone very gray, and the red was black in patches. There had been a fire here, probably more than one. Sarah got out of the car, carrying her overnight bag and Ares in his cage. She stepped over a fallen roof tile.
“It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it, in a wild sort of way?” said Gottfried. He escorted her past the tangled garden and up the hill toward the largest building, which was several stories tall and loomed over them.
“In 1563 when Ferdinand was named Margrave of Burgau and Archduke of Further Austria, which included Alsace and Tyrol, he bought this place, which was then a ruined medieval castle. Ferdinand was an odd person. As the second son of the Holy Roman Emperor he was not in line for the title, so he had great wealth but limited responsibility. He had been a brave warrior. But he was also very whimsical in his tastes.”
