Day of the Djinn Warriors (19 page)

Her aerial route took her east, across the Great Wall of China, Beijing, and Japan, and then the Pacific Ocean. Some of the time she was in tears of joy at the idea of going home. What mother doesn’t look forward to being reunited with her family again? Her heart was full of hope and expectation. And Layla could hardly have expected that one of the three wishes her own daughter had granted to a humble New York policeman was about to radically affect her plans.

“You want to know my third wish?” the policeman had said to Philippa. “I wish no one in New York could eat pâté
de foie gras. That’s what I wish. That no one could eat pâté de foie gras.”

That was what the policeman had wished, and that was what Philippa had made happen. She could hardly know that something as well-meant as this could have consequences.
Disastrous consequences
. For, as has often been said, there are times when granting wishes to a human has unseen, unpredictable results. Even a wish that’s made with a good intent. As Mr. Rakshasas had been fond of saying, “Having a wish is like lighting a fire. It’s reasonable to assume that the smoke might make someone cough.”

And, in this particular case, there was no smoke without a great deal of fire.

Now, because Philippa had caused New York’s entire supply of pâté de foie gras to disappear, the American importer requested another ton of pâté de foie gras to be delivered urgently from France.

Because of that, the French supplier in Périgord redirected the supply of pâté de foie gras from his poorer, more remote customers, in places like French Guiana, to New York.

Then, because Dr. Pierre Chartreuse in French Guiana did not receive the tin of pâté de foie gras he had ordered for his birthday, he took his gun and shot himself a pigeon for supper, which is another French delicacy.

Next, because that pigeon was shot, it did not eat the berries it had spied on the nearby branch of a tree.

Because these berries were not eaten by a pigeon, they
were eaten by a hungry mouse that otherwise would have starved to death.

And because this mouse stayed alive from eating those berries, it later chewed through a wire inside a French rocket that was scheduled to launch a satellite into space.

Now because the wire inside this rocket failed, there was a short circuit inside the rocket’s guidance system.

Finally, because this French rocket malfunctioned, it jettisoned its launch stage prematurely and landed inside the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, which is the world’s biggest active volcano. The supercooled fuel chilled the magma inside the volcano, causing it to crust over and producing a pressure-cooker effect that would be relieved only when explosive pressures were reached. At the same time, a massive underwater land subsidence doubled the size of the magma chamber. And all of this created a major problem for Layla Gaunt because her whirlwind route home was carrying her directly over the crater of the Kilauea volcano at a height of five thousand feet. Just as it was getting ready to explode in the biggest eruption since the island of Krakatoa blew up way back in 1883.

Oops.

N
imrod glanced awkwardly at Marco Polo and then at his wristwatch. He’d hoped to prompt the old Venetian explorer’s disappearance by taking a cloth and rubbing out the Chinese magic square that had brought him into being, but Marco Polo showed no sign of taking this strong hint, and it was clear that Sister Cristina must return from her journey downstairs at any moment. Finlay was already standing anxiously in the doorway keeping a watchful eye on the long stairway that led up to the reliquary in St. Mark’s.

As an English gentleman, Nimrod always recoiled from rudeness and bad manners, only he could see no way around it. He was going to have to come right out with it and baldly suggest that Marco Polo should leave — more or less.

“Um,” he said rubbing his hands and, at the same time, meaningfully kicking the empty brass chest that had housed Marco Polo’s bones. “Well, I’m sure we’d all like to thank the great Marco Polo for coming to speak with us today. Wouldn’t we, children?”

Philippa fixed a rigid grin to her face. “Er, yes,” she said.

“Thank you, sir,” said John/Finlay. “Your story about Yen Yu and the
Dong Xi
was very interesting.”

“Wasn’t it?” agreed Nimrod. “But we mustn’t keep him any longer, must we? I’m sure he has a thousand and one other things he ought to be doing right now.” He smiled expectantly at Marco Polo. After a longish pause, he added, “So let’s show him our appreciation and say good-bye in the usual way.”

Nimrod started to clap, and without much enthusiasm, so did Philippa and Finlay/John.

There was another prolonged pause during which time Marco Polo remained firmly seated in Sister Cristina’s office chair.

“Message delivered,” Nimrod said with an air of finality he hoped would be infectious. “Completely. Absolutely. In full. More or less.”

“Perhaps I didn’t make myself quite clear,” Marco said vaguely. “I’m a little more than a messenger. I’m supposed to help you destroy the warrior devils. I can’t leave until they’re gone. Not now.”

Nimrod smiled awkwardly.

“Sister Cristina’s on her way,” said Finlay. “I can see her, coming upstairs. What are we going to tell her about him?”

“Um,” said Nimrod.

“Use your powers,” insisted Finlay. “And zap us out of there. Or turn the old bat into — I dunno, a bat, or something. But do something.”

“What are you thinking?” Philippa asked her uncle.

By now they could hear her footsteps slowly ascending the stairs outside.

“I’m thinking Sister Cristina is about to discover that there’s a little more to this world than she’d ever supposed,” said Nimrod. “If she can manage those stairs, I think she can surely stand the shock of what we’re going to tell her, don’t you?”

Sister Cristina appeared, looking only a little breathless, in the doorway of the reliquary. To the surprise of Finlay/John and Philippa, she was holding a beautifully wrapped package in her hands. And Philippa guessed that Nimrod must have kindly arranged for a package addressed to Sister Cristina to appear downstairs, so that the old lady’s journey would not seem like some cruel hoax.

“Look at this,” she said happily.

“Wow,” said Philippa. She caught her uncle’s eye and he nodded his admission quietly back at her.

“I wonder what it can be,” said Sister Cristina, not yet noticing the figure of Marco Polo in her chair. “I haven’t had such a beautiful-looking package since I was a little girl.”
She quickly unwrapped the package to reveal an expensive box of Venetian chocolates. And then she saw Marco Polo. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know there was someone else with you.”

Marco Polo stood up politely and bowed.

“Sister Cristina,” said Nimrod coolly. “The box of bones turned out to be this man here. They sort of reassembled themselves when we laid them out in the floor.” He said it as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a famous historical figure to come back from the dead.

“You don’t mean to tell me he really is the blessed Saint Mark,” said Sister Cristina.

“No, no. This is Marco Polo.”

Marco Polo bowed again with great courtesy.

“You mean he’s
the
Marco Polo? The one who went to China?”

Nimrod said he was.

“Oh, my. How wonderful. Would you like a chocolate, sir?”

“Yes, please,” said Marco.

She opened the box and presented Marco with a series of little oblongs of milk chocolate wrapped in gold foil.

“I’m a great admirer of your book,” she said. “And the movie they made of your life.”

Marco smiled politely, although, of course, he had never seen a movie. He picked a chocolate, looked at it for a second, and held it up to show Nimrod and the children. “A golden tablet,” he said.
“Madonna
, if only it was this one, eh?”
Then he unwrapped the chocolate and popped it into his mouth.
“Quando si viene al dunque
… things would be so much easier for us.”

Sister Cristina offered her chocolates to all. Everyone took one. Finlay and John ate two chocolates, one after the other.

“I must say,” said Sister Cristina, “this has been a most remarkable day. It’s not every day one meets Marco Polo.”

The children nodded. This seemed self-evident.

“For me, too,” said Marco Polo. “It’s not every day that one is raised from the dead.”

“No, indeed,” said Sister Cristina. “It’s quite encouraging, really. For someone of my age. After all, if you’re here now, there must be something more after this life. Another chocolate?”

“Sì, per favore,”
said Marco. “These are very good. Not as good as ice cream, though. Have you ever tasted that? I brought the recipe back from China.” He kissed his fingers. “Ice cream is
squisito
… delicious.”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Sister Cristina. “I like ice cream, too.”

“There’s something bothering me,” admitted John. He looked at Nimrod. “I thought you said Marco had been dead for seven hundred years.”

“That’s right,” said Nimrod. “He died in 1324. Is that not so, sir?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

Finlay/John was still looking bothered. “Well, it’s something you said just now,” said John. He was speaking to Marco
Polo now. “About this being a remarkable day. And something you said earlier. About how you’d been summoned from a sleep of two hundred years. Surely you meant to say you’d been asleep for seven hundred years.”

“No, no,” said Marco, helping himself to another chocolate. “I’ve been summoned back from the dead once before. In 1820, I think. And in this very room. I told my story to a young priest. But there was no threat from the warrior devils, so I stayed just long enough to tell my story and then returned to my box there.”

“Including the part about the golden tablet of command?” asked Nimrod. “What it’s for and how you dropped it in the canal and lost it forever?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Just as a matter of interest,” said Finlay, “when you say this golden tablet commands obedience from all, what kind of obedience are you talking about?”

“Giuererei di averlo.”
He smacked his palm with the other hand, as if taking an oath. “Nobody could resist its power, not even if they wanted to. That kind of power.
Supernatural power
. A man who found it might do almost anything with the golden tablet. Advance himself in all kinds of ways, regardless of his merits.”

“This priest,” said Nimrod. “Do you remember his name?”

Marco Polo shook his head. “No. But he was a most charming fellow. We spoke for a long time.”

“What did he look like?” asked Nimrod.

Marco made an Italian sort of face and shrugged as he tried to think of a description. “Like a priest,” he said vaguely.

“Was this the man?” Sister Cristina was holding open a book she’d taken from the shelves. In the book was the picture of a priest.

Marco looked at the book and nodded. “I think so,” he said.

Nimrod looked at the picture. “Cardinal Daniele Marrone,” he said, reading the caption underneath the picture.

“But he wasn’t a cardinal when I met him,” said Marco.

“Then the old story might actually be true,” said Sister Cristina.

“What old story?”

Sister Cristina hesitated. “I’m sorry, but no,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not a long story but I can’t tell it here. Not in St. Mark’s. Somehow it wouldn’t seem right telling you about Cardinal Marrone in this place.” She thought for a moment and then spoke again: “Meet me in room 23 at the Accademia in one hour.”

The Gallerie dell’ Accademia, on the other side of the Grand Canal, has the largest collection of Venetian art in existence. And room 23 of the gallery contained an exhibition of paintings of whiskered people who had been important in Venetian history. There were portraits of several dull Venetian dukes who were called the “Doges,” the astronomer
Galileo, the composers Vivaldi and Monteverdi, the notorious diarist and libertine Casanova, the Emperor Napoleon, the poet Lord Byron, and many others whom Philippa, John, and Finlay had never heard of. Among these was a picture of Cardinal Daniele Marrone, painted in 1820. And it was in front of his picture that they found Sister Cristina waiting for them.

She pointed at the man in the picture who was wearing the red robes of a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. The man was standing in an oak-paneled library and reading a large book from which was hanging a large blue silk bookmark, and on the end of this bookmark was a gold medal. The man was tall, fair-haired, but balding, with a large dimple in his chin.

“This painting of Cardinal Marrone is by the great Italian painter Niccolo Pollo,” she said. “But before he became a cardinal, Father Marrone, as he then was, had been one of my predecessors as the Keeper of the Relics in St. Mark’s. I did not feel comfortable speaking frankly about him in a place for which he did so much. And speaking frankly, I must tell you that he wasn’t much of a priest. He was too interested in having a good time to be at all concerned with spiritual matters.

“Father Marrone was a good friend of Lord Byron, a man once described as ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know.’ For a priest, he was especially dangerous to know. The two men would go drinking and afterward jump into the Grand Canal
to see which of them would be first to swim across. Like Lord Byron, Father Marrone was a tremendous swimmer. It’s said he could hold his breath for four minutes and that he often liked to go swimming at night.

“It was clear to everyone Father Marrone’s career in the church was going nowhere. And yet, in 1816, he took a trip to Rome and soon afterward was made a bishop. Nobody could say why. Nor did his advancement stop there. He was very quickly made an archbishop and then a cardinal. It’s even said he could have been the Pope, but that he turned the job down because he was too lazy. He also became very rich. The church restoration of St. Mark’s in 1820 was paid for by Cardinal Marrone. But again, no one could say from where his wealth had come, and to this day, it remains a great Venetian mystery.

“There are some who thought he discovered some hidden source of wealth in the reliquary,” continued Sister Cristina. “But nothing was ever missed and nothing was ever proved.” She looked at Marco Polo. “I was thinking that if it was Father Marrone to whom you told your story the first time, then maybe it was Father Marrone who found this golden tablet that you lost.”

“Of course,” said John. “That kind of thing would be a cinch for any man who could hold his breath for four minutes.”

“Did you tell him whereabouts in the canal you dropped it?” asked Finlay.

“Ma certo,”
said Marco. “Of course. He was a priest, after all. There are no secrets from a priest.”

“Could the father’s possession of the golden tablet of command explain his rapid advancement in the church?” asked Nimrod.

“It would,” said Marco Polo. “There’s no limit to the influence that the golden tablet might give a man. I myself could have been the Doge of Venice if I had wanted. I think that the five golden tablets are maybe one of the reasons the great Kublai Khan was the great Kublai Khan. His power always seemed a little unworldly.”

“The question is,” said Nimrod, “if he did have it, what did Father Marrone do with the golden tablet?”

“The answer to that question may be here,” said Sister Cristina.

She led them to the next painting, which depicted the palace of the dukes of Venice. In front of the palace, which was the color of gold in the Venetian sunlight, were four peasants who appeared to be examining one of the foundation stones on which appeared an apparently nonsensical mathematical equation:

XI + I = X

“The painting is by Riccardo Furbogigione,” said Sister Cristina. “And it’s supposed to be the Doge’s Palace here in Venice. The palace of gold, as it is called. It’s said that it’s not a particularly good painting. Some people have even called it boring. However, the picture was commissioned by Cardinal Marrone. And here in Venice it has always been
said that it contains a great secret. Cardinal Marrone’s secret. Certainly it’s not very accurate. The artist has used the sunlight reflecting off the canal to make the palace seem to be a lot more gold than it actually is in real life. Also, the palace has no cornerstone like the one in the picture. Or anything like that inscription anywhere on the building.”

“If those are supposed to be Roman numerals, then the equation doesn’t make sense, either,” observed Philippa. “Eleven plus one equals twelve, not ten.”

“Precisely so,” murmured Nimrod. “Fascinating.”

“Clever clogs,” whispered Finlay.

“The golden hue of the palace,” said Nimrod, “would also seem to be telling us something.”

“Gold,” said Philippa. “Perhaps the golden tablet is hidden somewhere in there.”

“There’s also a series of almost illegible numbers that run along the bottom of the picture,” said Sister Cristina. “But no one knows what they mean, either.”

“Could it be a code?” said John.

“Most certainly that is what it is,” said Sister Cristina. “Many scholars have tried to solve it. But none have succeeded. It would seem that Cardinal Marrone’s secret died with him.”