A Rather Curious Engagement

by C. A. Belmond

  Moments later I heard a key in the lock, and I stirred drowsily, rousing myself enough to call out, “Jeremy?” so that he’d know he could turn on the lights without waking me.

  “Penny?” Jeremy’s strong voice was so reassuring that I drifted into sleep again. He came up quietly in the dark, and undressed.

  “Hi, Jeremy,” I murmured, as he slipped into bed behind me.

  “Hi, babe,” he whispered, snuggling up against me and putting a reassuring arm around me. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Mmmm,” I said contentedly, “welcome back.”

  Part Eight

  Chapter Thirty-four

  In all the fracas, I really hadn’t had time to imagine what it would be like to actually have a yacht at my disposal. Sure, we’d been working toward this all along, and at times it had seemed as if Penelope’s Dream was destined to remain only that. But now, when we drove down to the harbor where the open sky and sea awaited us in the pale early morning sunlight—there she was, our dream boat, all spiffed, ready and waiting to take us wherever we wanted to go.

  And there was our crew, proudly lined up to formally receive us for our first big voyage: Claude, the captain, with his rugged tanned face and salt-and-pepper hair; François, the elegant steward, tall, dark and lean; Brice, the blond-haired first mate; Gerard, the gruff, barrel-chested engineer; and two young deckhands. They all looked so impressive in their matching navy and white and gold, standing there so proud of the beautiful job they’d done.

  Jeremy and I walked up the gangway together. The yacht had looked lovely when we first saw it, but now, after all the work the crew had done, it shone like a finished gem. The brass railings and fixtures gleamed so brightly in the sunlight that you could see yourself in their reflected polish. The elegant staircase, panellings and flooring glowed with burnished elegance. We now had all our “mod-cons” with the latest in computer and communication technology, but still, the antique chronometers and lamps and furnishings lent a romantic, old-fashioned aura of timelessness to the boat, as if she had floated serenely through one century and would continue to do so for another, as long as her owners cared for her.

  “Jeremy, it’s just so beautiful,” I said, stunned. His vision had finally been realized, and he looked pleased and happy.

  “Well, maybe it wasn’t so stupid to bid on the old tub after all,” he said.

  The crew’s care and attentiveness made me feel as if any path I chose to walk had been smoothed for me, so that every move I made was as easy as gliding down a sliding-pond. Not a single bump on the road, no obstruction. This sudden new taste of freedom was as exhilarating as the salty air and as bracing as the cool sea, and I felt that nothing could stop us now.

  We sat down with Claude in the pilot house to pore over maps and review our course. Then François informed us that breakfast would be served on the aft deck as soon as we were out at sea. So Jeremy and I went out on deck, sitting on the teak steamer chairs with their long striped cushions, so comfortable that I almost dozed off again, yawning sleepily. We were getting an early start, for, depending on the wind and tide, it would take most of the day to reach Corsica.

  “I knew Rollo couldn’t get up this early in the morning,” Jeremy commented. “Well, we’ll just have to shove off without him.”

  “We can’t,” I said. “We need him as our guide to the underworld. ”

  A taxicab came screeching around the corner and roaring down the quay. A moment later, Rollo bounded out and up the gangway. I saw one of the deckhands direct him toward us.

  “Wonder if he won or lost at the roulette tables,” Jeremy murmured, referring to Rollo’s inevitable stops at Monte Carlo.

  “Judging by the spring in his step,” I said, “he didn’t make out too badly.”

  Rollo was out of breath when he reached us, but smiled as he took off his hat. “Got here as fast as I could at this ungodly hour,” he panted, dropping into the seat next to mine, and setting down a leather suitcase he’d been carrying. He paused, taking a deep breath now, his nostrils wheezing, as he surveyed the spiffed-up boat, and it apparently met with his approval because he then said, “Well, what say we bag ourselves a Lion?”

  There was a sudden silky roar of the engine. The crew was running about on deck, dealing with anchor, ropes and everything else that keeps it tethered to its berth.

  “Onward!” Rollo cried.

  As we pulled out of the harbor, the Mediterranean Sea was cool and calm under a pale blue sky with puffy white clouds. It was easy to see why van Gogh, and Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso and Cocteau were so enraptured with the light of the “Midi.” It both softened and heightened the colors of everything—sea, sky, fishing boats, pastel houses, and flowering shrubs in a riot of color—pink, magenta, blue, purple, violet, yellow.

  We began to pick up speed as we left the harbor behind, and the sea opened up. Penelope’s Dream sliced through the water like a sharpened knife.

  “Coffee,” Rollo murmured in gratitude as François arrived with the breakfast tray. “Excellent.”

  Jeremy, Rollo and I got down to business. The plan was to head straight for Calvi, a main town on the northwest coast of Corsica. That’s where the family who’d had the Lion lived, and where, according to Claude, the Count had gone to pick up his mysterious package. Clive had told me where we’d find the sailors’ bar near the harbor.

  “That’s also where, I wager, we will find Mortimer,” Rollo informed us, “and, I daresay, the Lion as well.”

  “You think Mortimer stole the Lion from the boat?” Jeremy demanded.

  “I do,” Rollo said positively. “Not personally, of course, he wouldn’t risk being seen. But it wouldn’t be the first time he hired some—shall we say, unsavory fellows willing to sneak aboard a boat in the dead of night?”

  “But why did his guys steal the whole boat?” I asked.

  Rollo shook his head. “Not sure they did,” he replied. “Could have been someone else entirely, kids, even, like the police seem to think.”

  “Rollo,” Jeremy said, after studying him carefully through all this, “is this a working theory of yours, or do you actually have some proof?”

  “What I have is a plan, to obtain the proof,” he said. “And, hopefully, the Lion as well. People have been talking, and my sources have been listening. The consensus is, Mortimer was behind the original theft of the Lion. But, he really didn’t know beans about the true value of it; he only knew that a photographer was chattering about it, as if it were a nice find. So Mortimer tried, through locals, to buy it, but when the family who owned it refused, he arranged for it to be ‘stolen,’ possibly with the aid of a neighbor. Once the deed was done, he had to get rid of it. Tricky business, that, because he had to wait long enough for the uproar about it to die down again, yet, every week that he held onto it was a liability. So Mortimer was only too happy when the Count was eager to buy.

  “Now, here’s the really interesting bit: Did you know that there might be something hidden inside the damned thing? Nobody knows for sure what it is, but they say it could make the Lion worth ten times what the Count paid for it. When Mortimer found this out, he felt he’d been burned by the Count. My guess is that when Mortimer heard about the sale of the yacht, he ‘arranged’ to have the Lion stolen again. I think he’s still got it, and is holding on to it until the ‘heat’ is off. But as I said, Mortimer’s too smart to hold onto something hot too long. So, I think I can talk him into selling it to me.”

  “And what are you going to use for money?” Jeremy asked.

  “Nothing,” Rollo said dismissively. “Not when I have this.”

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out a very large pen. He clicked it, and said, “Testing, one-two-three,” and fiddled with it, and then we heard his recorded voice come back hollowly with, “Testing, one-two-three.”

  “This is the real thing,” he boasted. “Professional spies use it. You can blackmail Mortimer with it and make him give you back the Lion.”
<
br />   Rollo sat back, looking quite pleased with himself. “Do excuse me,” he said, “I wish to use the washroom.” And he rose, stretched his legs, and went below.

  “Well, what do you think?” I asked Jeremy in a low voice.

  “I think he’s barking mad, to imagine he can pull this off,” Jeremy said, “but I have to admit that I’ve actually heard a few things in Frankfurt which support some of what he said.”

  “Keep going,” I said excitedly.

  “Kurt’s sister is named Marthe,” Jeremy said. “She was a bit defensive at first. I guess her family blames her for being too quick to sell the yacht. Besides, you know, she’s one of those aloof, old-fashioned European aristocrats who only talks to her own kind.”

  “What’s she look like?” I asked, intrigued.

  “Like a female Kurt, except with red lipstick,” Jeremy said. “With lots of little white dogs yip-yipping at my ankles the whole time. I think Kurt must have suggested to her that she should see me,” Jeremy continued. “Anyway, she eventually warmed up, and explained that she’d originally had no idea why her father went to Corsica, and he didn’t tell her about the Lion until long afterward, because it took months for him to recover his memory.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “once he found out the sale of the yacht went through.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “No, according to Marthe, it wasn’t just the sale of the yacht that triggered the Count’s memory. Apparently he got a very nasty call from an Englishman that upset him very much. She seems to think the man was demanding money from the Count, who soon refused to take any calls from the guy.”

  “Mortimer?” I said excitedly. “Then Rollo is on the right track.”

  “Maybe,” Jeremy said. “Marthe also confirmed, as the Count told us, that his collection of aquamanilia had been in the family for years, and he was obsessive and wanted to retrieve the one missing piece that was stolen from the family’s collection. But she knew nothing about the Beethoven connection, so she assumed the piece had been lost when her parents left Germany during the second World War.”

  “But on the phone you said the Count’s grandfather really did find the Beethoven Lion in an auction. How do you know this?” I demanded.

  “Because,” Jeremy said triumphantly, “after I talked to Marthe, I went to the auction house in Frankfurt and spoke to their archivist. In 1890 they had a big auction with lots of important pieces for sale. So they kept a copy of the original brochure on file. The Lion is listed, but there’s no record of its actual sale because the ‘anonymous collector who owned the piece withdrew it.’ Apparently you can do that, even at the last minute. She made a copy of the brochure for me, because she knows who you and I are from all the press about us. The catalogue was printed in German, English and French. Feast your eyes on this.”

  He handed me a shiny sheet of copy-paper. I peered at it.The Beethoven Lion. Aquamanile in the form of a lion. Vienna, circa 1804. Copper alloy, eyes inset with almandine garnets. Copper inlays with incised details. Fine detailing on eyes, teeth and mane. (23.1×12.0×24.5cm. Weight, 2391 g.) Anonymous owner.

  “Hoo-ee!” I cried, staring at the faded print. “It sounds beautiful, ” I added, then, “Oh, no—the metric system again. How big is it?”

  “Almost nine inches tall,” Jeremy translated, “nearly ten inches long and about four inches wide, and it weighed about five and a quarter pounds.”

  I studied it some more as Brice stopped by to tell Jeremy that we were steady on course. I then brought Jeremy up-to-date on all I’d learned from Clive about the Corsican family, and their daughter Diamanta, with whom I was hoping to make personal contact while we were in Calvi. But so far, I hadn’t received a reply to my e-mails. In the last e-mail, I’d shamelessly told her all about the press coverage that Jeremy and I got for retrieving a lost work of art. I figured I might as well make the most of that dumb newspaper story. I also explained that I understood about the pricelessness of family heirlooms and that we would be very discreet.

  “I told her we would come to see her in Corsica, and how to contact Claude on the boat,” I said. “Still haven’t heard back yet.”

  “Okay. By the way, I’ve got a bunch of aquamanilia info in the salon,” Jeremy said.

  “Ooh, let’s see it,” I said.

  We entered the main salon and Jeremy spread out the photographs and illustrations he’d collected, on the round terrestrial-map table. Rollo had been wandering around the decks but now rejoined us, a glass of scotch in his hand from the bar.

  Jeremy said, “I went to a workshop in Germany where modern artisans re-create aquamanilia in the traditional way, which is called the cire perdu or ‘lost-wax’ hollow-casting method,” Jeremy explained. “They even use a lot of the old tools to do it. It’s an arcane process, like alchemy, that was perfected in medieval times.”

  I gazed at the illustration, a reproduction of a woodcut, showing simple figures of aproned craftsmen working with stone ovens, big iron pots of melted metal, and other obscure tools.

  “They start with a ‘core’ of a model made of clay—some of the clay even used to have dried dung in it. The clay is formed into the basic size and shape of the animal, but it has none of the details. That’s where the wax comes in,” Jeremy said. “They used beeswax, which was considered superior to all other waxes, so it was expensive. The artisan molds a layer of wax over the clay core, and since the wax is malleable, he can carve all those beautiful details, right into the wax layer—the animal’s whiskers, eyes, teeth, the strands of fur and the lion’s mane.”

  “But,” I said, intrigued, “how do those details get put onto the metal?”

  “Well, that’s where it gets really wild,” Jeremy said. “They have to actually build a system of wax tubes, extending from the model.

  These tubes will eventually be the means for pouring in the molten metal.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You can’t pour liquid hot metal into tubes made of beeswax. It will melt the wax!”

  “Hang on. You don’t pour the metal just yet. You next have to add what they call an ‘investment,’ which is essentially another layer of clay that goes over the wax. It’s actually a mixture of clay, sand and stone. This has to be placed on very carefully, because it will pick up all the details that you just carved in the wax. Once that dries, what you’ve got is a sort of clay sandwich—clay on the outside, clay model on the inside, and the beeswax in between.”

  “What about all those wax tubes?” I asked. Rollo was peering over my shoulder.

  “They’re still there, and now they, too, are covered with a coat of clay investment,” Jeremy said, pointing to a picture of something that looked like a ball of clay with tubes sticking out all over it.

  “Once dry, the next step is to melt out the wax. The whole clay sandwich is placed upside-down near a heat source, like a fireplace, ” Jeremy continued. “That’s so they could collect the valuable melted wax as it drips out, to use again another day.”

  “Hence, the ‘lost wax,’ ” Rollo proclaimed. “Not lost to the maker. But lost to the aquamanile.”

  “Right. So now what you have is an empty space between the two layers of clay,” Jeremy said. “But before you can pour the hot melted metal where the wax once was, you have to bake the clay in an oven until it gets red-hot, so it will become hard enough. Then you take it out with metal tongs, and bury it in packed earth, all the way to the top. The only thing sticking out are those tubes, which now, like the rest of it, are made of hard clay: one tube for pouring in the molten metal, and the others to allow the hot gases to escape so the whole thing doesn’t crack.

  “After the metal is poured into the clay sandwich, it all has to cool down. Next, they dig it out of the earth, and the outer layer of clay—the investment—is broken away and removed, and you also break off those tubes, and plug the holes with brass. Remember the X-rays that Kurt showed us? That’s really the only way you’d notice the holes, because the entire aquamanile gets polished an
d finished with a patina. And, voilà—you now have a metal lion with all those details.”

  “Sounds like a ton of work,” I said.

  “It is. Very skilled work, too,” Jeremy said. “One false move and you make a flaw—lop off the lion’s ear or a nose.”

  “Wait—what about the original clay model inside?” I asked.

  “That all gets scraped out by reaching into the largest opening—the mouth or the top of the head—because after all, the final product has to be hollow so you can fill it with water,” Jeremy concluded. “Then you make a brass removable stopper for that filling-hole, like a kettle.”

  François arrived and paused politely at the door to the salon. “Lunch will be served in the dining salon.”

  “Fabulous!” Rollo cried. “This sea air really gives one an appetite. I’m so hungry I could eat a lion.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  A day upon the sea soon develops its own rhythm. You slow down, and your mind opens up to new possibilities. Plus, it helps if your chef is French.

  And Rollo was right—walking about on the decks, breathing in the briny, salty air, was so invigorating to every cell in mind and body, that we were all famished by noon.

  When we entered the dining salon, the table was laid with the yacht’s china and tableware and linen napkins. Seeing this, I recalled what I’d heard about sudden storms springing up at sea, which could remove a whole crew with one big wave by washing them right off the deck, leaving behind a “ghost ship” with nobody on board—to be discovered later with its dining table still set for a meal that nobody had survived to eat. I thought of the Count, who’d encountered a storm on this very journey. Resolutely I put all this out of mind.

  Brice pulled out a chair for me at one end of the table, and Jeremy took the one at the other end, and Rollo sat in the middle. Happily, not all of Jeremy’s wine collection had been destroyed. Many choice bottles actually survived the boat-jacking. Brice served me first. François had already consulted with me in advance over this menu. So I knew what was coming, and I watched in delight as Jeremy and Rollo responded to each course.