by Cindy Dees
The fire flared up, giving off a rush of heat that felt wonderful. Now that I stopped to notice, there was a certain chill in the air tonight, and the warmth from the fire was just right to take the edge off of it. I went to my rucksack to pull out my cell phone—
—and started violently as I realized the Black Madonna statue wasn’t in my bag!
“Robert! She’s—”
He cut me off gently. “Not gone. I hid her before we left.”
I watched in suspended panic as he pulled a chair over to the draperies and climbed up on it. He fished around near the curtain rod and emerged in a moment with the beautiful little statue in hand. He set her on the table beside the bed and she smiled up at me, as motherly and cheerful as always.
I sagged in relief.
Then I remembered. My cell phone. I dug it out of the bottom of my rucksack and dialed the phone number for my office at Interpol headquarters. Even though I worked in the lowly Cultural Properties department, even we never slept. There was someone on duty around the clock.
While I waited for the international call to go through, Robert asked, “Who are you calling?”
“My office. I want them to straighten out the glitch in my Interpol identification in case we get picked up by the police.”
He nodded as the phone started to ring in Lyon, France.
“Cultural Property Division,” a harried voice said in my ear.
“François?” I said in surprise. What in the world was François Littmann doing at the office at this hour? He never pulled night shifts. Said it was the boss’s privilege.
“Ana? Is that you? Thank God. Where are you?”
I don’t know what it was, but something in the way he blurted out that last question sent up a warning flag in my head. Normally, I’d have told him I was in Rome right away. But that was before I’d stolen an ancient map. Before men had chased me through a maze and tried to kill me. Before a ghost started looking over my shoulder and giving me strange, but unerringly accurate, intuitions about things.
“Why do you ask?” I replied. “What’s happened?”
“It’s terrible. Just terrible. Armande St. Germain is dead. And they’re saying you did it. I keep telling them it’s not possible. But your badge was found at the scene, and ballistics has matched the ballistic markings of your pistol that we keep on file to the bullets that killed him.”
“What?” I gasped, “That’s impossible! When did this happen?” Sick heat flooded through me followed by an icy chill of pure fear that closed in on me from all sides. St. Germain dead? He was a decent man, a competent manager. A husband, father and grandfather. And there wasn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that his shooting was related to my investigation. Everyone who even got near the Lady was dying. Some life-giving magic she was turning out to have. More like a curse of death.
“He was murdered last night.”
“I wasn’t anywhere near Lyon yesterday!” I exclaimed.
“He was in Paris. He went up to oversee your investigation for Madame Villecourt. They say you sneaked through the catacombs to his hotel, went up top and shot him, then escaped yesterday morning on a private jet.”
“They who?” I demanded.
While he rattled on about all the various Interpol and French police officials who had questioned him already, I rifled through my coat pocket. Sure enough, I pulled out my Interpol ID badge. It was in its usual black leather case, and still had the same dent in the upper right-hand corner it had had ever since I dropped it getting out of a cab and stepped on it two years ago. It was definitely my badge. And police officers were only issued one badge for this very reason.
“Look, François. I’m staring at my ID badge right now. My badge couldn’t possibly be with St. Germain. The one they found has to be a fake.”
“But I saw it,” François retorted. “It was definitely a legitimate Interpol badge.”
“Then someone made a duplicate with my ID number on it.” And didn’t that make the mind spin off in alarming directions! Who had the connections—the raw power—to get a real Interpol badge made and put into the hands of a killer?
“My apartment was ransacked day before yesterday,” I explained with a certain desperation. “I reported it to the Paris police. That’s when my gun must have been stolen.”
“They told me that. They think you staged the break-in to give yourself an alibi for using your own gun to murder St. Germain.”
“They’re working awfully hard to come up with reasons to find me guilty. And you know as well as I do that I would never murder anyone. Who’s pushing this thing?”
Littmann’s voice dropped into a whisper. “Rumor has it the investigation is being run at the very highest levels of Interpol. They got a tip.”
“From where?” For once in my life, I was abjectly grateful that François was an inveterate gossip.
His whispered answer sent icy chills down my spine. “The Vatican.”
The Church was willing to go to any lengths to suppress information it believed to be damaging to the Faith.
Surely not.
Maybe not the Church as a whole, but perhaps certain extremists within the Church. Elise Villecourt was an expert in the history of the Catholic Church. What if she had stumbled onto something? Some knowledge—some Truth—that elements within the Church wanted suppressed? Could they be responsible for the theft of her statue in an attempt to kill her, thereby silencing her permanently? At least her enemies hadn’t succeeded in blocking us from entering the archives. They weren’t all powerful, then.
She’d specifically told me to research ley lines and their relationship to the power outages in France. Was that the big secret? The existence of ley lines? No, wait. Not their existence…
Their power.
If they were knocking out an entire country’s power grid, these ley lines were powerful, indeed. No wonder the folks at the Vatican archives were going nuts over the theft of the map. It was a map of the very thing they were trying to suppress knowledge of!
I realized the phone was still plastered to my ear. François was shouting into it, “Ana? Are you still there? Ana? Where are you?”
I hung up on him. And felt as if I’d just been drop-kicked in the stomach.
I turned around and Robert was there, his arms folding me into a big, warm, cashmere wrapped hug. For a moment, I gave in to despair and buried my face against his chest. I did manage not to cry like a baby, but it was a close thing.
“I gather you’re not having a good day at the office?” he asked quietly.
“My boss’s boss has been murdered. My gun shot him and an Interpol badge with my ID number on it was found at the scene.”
Robert’s body went rigid against mine. He swore quietly under his breath. We stood there in silence for several moments. A log popped in the fireplace, but otherwise, the entire world was quiet around us, as if it held its breath.
Finally he said, “What can I do for you?”
I half laughed, half sobbed, and answered, “Take my mind off all this madness.”
He looked down at me solemnly. “I think I can do that. For a little while at least. I’ll give it a try, anyway. Stay here.”
He let go of me, and I stood there watching him as he piled even more logs on the fire. In a few minutes, that was going to be a roaring blaze. He turned back the coverlet on the bed, and then he lit every candle in the room. And there were dozens of them. By the time he was done, the entire space was filled with a golden glow that seemed to emanate from the very walls, filling the space completely.
And then he came back to me. Standing in front of me, he reached behind my head and released the clip holding my hair up in a loose French twist. It tumbled down about my shoulders, and he ran his fingers through it, smoothing it against the torn remains of the silk blouse. And the magical heat that always hovered close to the surface between us began to bubble up once more. It shimmered through me like a dream I never wanted to waken from.
He reached for the buttons running down my front, and one by one, slipped them free. With each little tug of silk across my breasts, my body ached a little more for him, burned a little brighter. He pulled the shirt free of my skirt and slipped it off my shoulders. Then he took a step closer. My breasts just barely rubbed his sweater and I gasped with the exquisite pleasure of it. But then his arms were behind me and my bra gave a soft pop. And sagged loosely. I shook it down my arms, and Robert pulled it the rest of the way off.
It felt sinful to stand here in shoes, hose and skirt, but completely topless. Robert’s dark head bent to my chest. I expected him to zero in on the obvious targets, but instead, he merely pressed a gentle kiss to the spot right over my heart.
Then, he stood up and continued disrobing me. My skirt unzipped with a quiet slide of plastic teeth and Robert smoothed it down over my hips. Then he hooked his fingers in the top of my panty hose and expertly slid those down, as well. I started when I realized his clever fingers had hooked my panties on the way down, too. Balancing with my hand on his shoulder, I stepped out of my shoes and he finished peeling off my stockings. And then I was naked in front of him. He took my fingertips in his hands and stepped back from me. And just looked at me. At first, I was shy, but the longer he studied me, and the warmer the expression in his eyes grew, the bolder I felt.
By the time he finally led me over to the bed and laid me down upon it, I was perfectly content to lounge against the piled down pillows in all my glory and watch him undress in front of the fire. He didn’t dawdle about it, but neither did he rush. His movements seemed to say we had all night, and he planned to take every moment of it to enjoy this. To enjoy me.
And as I lay there watching him, something happened. The entire universe shrank down to hug the margins of that golden glow filling the room. All without was the blackest of night, and all within was warmth and gentle light. The air around us vibrated with life, bathing us in tangible, but not quite visible, energy. The sexual pull between us became a presence in its own right, a hand on each of our backs, pressing us inexorably toward one another, consecrating the moment with its blessing.
Robert walked toward me, naked and glorious. The fire silhouetted him, outlining his muscular physique and the blending of grace and power that was uniquely male. And something inside me shifted. My heart expanded and opened, and I realized my arms had done the same, welcoming him. He put one knee on the bed beside me and paused, half kneeling as if in reverence to the moment.
His skin was light brown with the exception of a bathing suit line—he must swim for exercise. Outdoors. In a skimpy racing suit. A line of sparse, straight black hair ran down from his navel into that paler flesh, leading the eye toward the secret pleasures to come. Awed at the unfolding power of the moment, I looked up into his eyes.
And I realized that time had stopped again.
His long, dark lashes slid downward with exaggerated languor. The night, the magic, the smiling statue wrapped around us, shrouding us in something more powerful, more fundamental than simple desire. Man and woman. Heaven and Earth. Darkness and light. Our wondering gazes locked together.
And then we were one.
Making love didn’t capture the aching slowness of it. The endless, rocking slide of flesh on flesh. The eternity of each individual breath entering and leaving my body. Each slow motion blink of the eye. Each unfolding smile. Each trembling touch.
Making love didn’t capture the wonder of it. The miracle of two bodies, two hearts, entwining until neither had beginning nor end. The crescendoing straining toward an explosion of such majesty that words fail the moment. And all the while, we gazed directly into one another’s naked souls.
Making love didn’t begin to describe any of it. This was worship at an altar older than time itself. Of Man and Seed, Goddess and Earth Mother. It was a sacred act. Of the very creation of Life itself.
When we had finally collapsed in a tangled heap of exhausted limbs, the golden firelight licking lazily at our skin, we were silent for a long while, as befitted the moment.
And, then, all he said was, “Marry me.”
Chapter 17
M y gaze snapped to his, stunned. Marry him? Was he serious? Surely not. We’d known each other less than a week. We came from completely different worlds. If you could call tonight a date—at least, up till the part where people started trying to kill us—then we’d had a sum total of, let’s see. That would be one. We’d only made love one time.
A wispy voice murmured from the general direction of the fireplace, “Once can be enough to know.”
I mumbled, “If that’s you, Jane, stay out of this.”
Robert added, “Yeah, Jane. Butt out. This is between Ana and me.”
But was it? Was this some magically induced fog of sexual desire that held us in its thrall, or was this the real thing? I had no way of knowing. And as much as my heart screamed for me to accept his surprising proposal, my head told me to wait and see if any of this remained once the pixie dust blew away.
Robert raised himself up on one elbow beside me, propping the side of his head in his hand. With his other hand, he stroked lazy shapes on my stomach. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m as shocked as you to hear myself say those words. But then, I never counted on meeting you, either. I’ll not pressure you into answering before you’re ready, but the offer stands.”
I nodded, at a loss for words.
“Sleep now,” he murmured. “I’ll watch over you.”
And there it was again. That swirling connection of two souls meant for one another. I was safe with him. He’d always look out for me. And I, in turn, couldn’t help but love him back. Cradled in his arms and his protection, I slept….
It was a hellish scene. A roaring blaze poured out heat, turning the chamber into a veritable sauna and tinging the room infernal red. A woman thrashed on the bed, her hands tied to the headboard. A leather strap was clenched between her teeth, and her body, naked from the waist down, was drenched in sweat. She gave a strangled cry and the tendons in her neck bulged as she strained against some terrible agony.
Only one other person was there, bending over a huge kettle by the fire, dipping a bloody rag into the boiling water with a stick. Her dress was bloodstained, and her cheeks were tearstained.
Jane.
She wrung out the hot rag and carried it back over to the bed, pressing it between the woman’s thighs. Good Lord, that was Elizabeth! In the throes of childbirth.
Another muffled cry from the bed.
“The babe. It comes now, m’lady. You must push it out of you.”
The Queen spit out the piece of leather and snarled, “I want nothing more in this world than to do just tha—aagghh.”
Hastily Jane shoved the leather strap back into the queen’s mouth. “You must not scream, else I will not be able to keep out the members of the Court. If you wish for this birth to remain a secret you must be quiet,” she urged.
The contraction eventually passed. Elizabeth spit out the strap once more and cursed in several languages. “Don’t tell me what I must do,” she snapped. “You try being ripped in two in silence. How much more of this must I endure?”
“I…I do not know, Your Highness. I have never attended a birth. I have heard that the length of labor depends on the purity of a woman’s soul. This is God’s punishment for your sins, after all.”
“I could not perpetrate enough evil in my entire lifetime to merit this torture,” Elizabeth groaned, obviously starting into the next contraction.
“I can see the head!” Jane exclaimed. “The babe has red hair just like you!”
My sympathies to the baby. Eliazbeth’s hair was a bright, carrot-orange that clashed horribly with her milky-white complexion. Of course right now, the queen’s face was beet-red as she held her breath and pushed with all her might. Clearly hadn’t heard of breathing through the contractions. Of course, Lamaze was still about four hundred years off.
“Oh, just one more push. T
he head is almost out,” Jane cried.
Elizabeth growled something unintelligible around the leather strap, but it was undoubtedly not repeatable in polite company. Jane reached between the queen’s legs. I didn’t need to be right on top of the action to recognize by the way Jane’s arms were moving that she was catching as the child was born.
Elizabeth let out a triumphant cry.
“’Tis a girl!” Jane exclaimed.
Elizabeth fell back against the mattress, panting. “Thank God. A bastard son might fight for my throne from a legitimate heir. But a girl will pose no threat.”
Jane wiped off a small object covered in red and some white, sticky-looking substance, and the baby commenced squalling for all it was worth. “Do you want to see her?” she asked, in between making frantic shushing sounds.
“No. I want you to take her away from here as quickly as you can. Go to your family and raise her as your own.”
“What do you want to name her?” Jane asked coaxingly as she wrapped a cloth around the child. I had to give Jane credit. She was doing her best to interest Elizabeth in the tiny bundle that was beginning to quiet as she rocked it in her arms.
“I care not. You pick something.”
“I’ve always liked Marie,” Jane cooed down at the infant.
“Not that!” Elizabeth snapped.
Jane and I both started at the sharpness in the queen’s voice. I looked up at the not so motherly mother and saw her glaring over toward her desk. I glanced in that direction.
And I finally saw it.
The Black Madonna statue. The very same one that was sitting on the table beside my bed back in Rome. Why in the world had my mind inserted it into this dream?
“No name that sounds like Mary or Marian,” Elizabeth ordered imperiously. “I’ve had more than enough trouble from women of those names. In fact, they are responsible for all of this!”
I got the distinct impression she wasn’t talking about her Catholic half sister, Mary, from whom she’d inherited the throne. My mind wandered. Could she possibly be referring to the Marians? I thought they were all wiped out by Elizabeth’s time! Had some of them survived? Carried on the cult? Somehow involved Elizabeth in it? That seemed far-fetched. Her religious beliefs were well-known and solidly Protestant. Then what was the connection, other than the statue of the Lady?
