The King's Gold (15 page)

For one moment I was pained, first with a vision of the dead old men outside, who then quickly metamorphosed into a murky image of Tomas de la Rosa lying in a similar box somewhere in this country, with his eyes closed, his hands crossed over his chest.
He died like a dog,
Marco had said.
Like a filthy beggar.
But I had never met the man, or even seen a clear photo of him, and so could not hold the picture—and then everything faded away when a shadow passed over the vivid remnants at my feet. It quavered over the skeleton, which appeared to jump and twitch like an animated puppet or a bedeviled effigy.

“What?”

We wheeled around. But we saw only the jet-wreathed walls, the shimmering colors of the stone mosaics.

“It’s nothing—it’s nothing,” I said.

Erik stared back for a long time, pale and menacing. But then he relaxed. “No. It’s not them. They’re gone. It’s no one.”

At our feet, the skeleton remained unmoved in its bier, its bones tweaked and dented from Blasej’s rummagings. The slave’s gold torture mask gleamed beneath a lace of spiderwebs, and would have resembled the helmets of the Homeric Greeks but for the bars across the mouth. The ribs of the body had crumbled into splinters. The hand that had clutched the emerald had disintegrated into powder.

“There’s a piece of metal in the skeleton’s other hand,” I said.

“It’s some sort of— What’s this?” He hunched down. “It’s some sort of
coin
. What was the riddle—

IN CITY ONE FIND A TOMB

WHERE UPON A FOOL WORMS FEED

ONE HAND HOLDS THE TOY OF DOOM

THE OTHER GRIPS YOUR FIRST LEAD.

I followed these grim directions, leaning down, beginning to pry apart the slave’s fragile fingers using my dress hem as a skin guard. The complex knots of the knucklebones softened into ash at my touch.

“Hold on. I’ve got it—some of the bones are still—stiff.”

“Be careful, Lola!”

“Here!”

I pulled the brilliant gold disk loose. It spanned my palm; its carved surface shedding sparks of red-amber light. I’d seen a similar color of metal only in one sacrificial gold bowl installed in a Mexican archaeological museum. It was pure, soft, touched with pink. And it had hallmarks engraved within it.

“It’s a medal,” I said, stunned.

Erik gripped his head with both hands. “A
talisman
.”

Marks that resembled an abstract flower swirled in the center of the massive coin. I had been expecting an Aztec or Mayan symbol, and so had trouble interpreting the medal’s elaborate and curving lines. Finally I realized with a throbbing detective joy that I was looking at a European character written in densely foliated high-Gothic calligraphy.

In that death house, Erik and I pressed close together to read Antonio Medici’s first clue.

“An
L
!” Dr. Riccardi hissed excitedly two hours later in the police-packed sitting room of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. She perched on the edge of a black leather sofa between Erik and me, surreptitiously examining the gold medal she held in her hands. Adriana sat across from her with an exhausted if satisfied look on her reddened face. “That’s delicious—it’s going to spell some sort of password, yes? What
could
it be, do you think? There are only a thousand words that start with
L
in Italian:
lazo, loto, leva, luce, lido
...”

I shook my head. “It’s probably not going to start with
L
. Antonio said the ciphers were out of order. Remember, they have to be recombined after they’re all recovered.”

“So delightfully
tricky.
”

Adriana leaned forward to squint at the traceries of vines and blooming roses obscuring the medal’s legibility. “Here, let me see it. How can you even tell what it is?”

“When I first looked at it, I thought I was having that special amnesia that strikes you after traumatic episodes,” a blasted-looking Erik answered. “You know, aphasia. When you can’t read anymore? But then I realized it was just that the letter was so ornately carved.”

Erik and I had returned to the palazzo from the crypt three hours before, but our trauma remained evident in our faces’ burst blood vessels, as well as the confusedly multilingual manner in which we had answered police interrogations about Marco Moreno, dead bodies, guns, and poisonous gems. Now surrounded by six officers, all standing sentinel in response to Dr. Riccardi’s earlier shrieking emergency call, we had not had a chance to talk since our reappearance. We’d been peppered not only with official queries but also the doctor’s extremely enthusiastic response to our recovery of Antonio’s first clue, a “fabulous find,” which she encouraged us not to share, just yet, with our protectors.

“Yes, it’s beautiful work.” She covered the medal with her other hand and looked up at a police officer standing by a lamp several feet away. He blinked his eyes so slowly that he seemed to fall momentarily asleep whenever they closed.

“Doctor.” Adriana huffed at the concealment of the artifact. “What are you doing?”

“Well, I do think it’s best if we keep this discovery among ourselves. What if that detective scurrying around here thinks it’s evidence? My God! We won’t see it again for sixteen years! They’re keeping us up half the night with these interviews as it is—it’s already midnight.”

“It’s lasting this long because of how much you talk,” the younger woman said happily.

Dr. Riccardi touched a red raised spot on her protégé’s cheek, the welt marking where Blasej had struck her. “Did I tell you how clever Adriana was? Saving me like that. Rushing me over to the frieze, then pressing the secret button!”

“It was incredible,” I agreed, as we all looked over to the gilt striping the walls.

“Actually, I was kind of wondering why you didn’t take
us
with you, to the secret special hiding place,” Erik asked.

“All I can say is
thank God
the Medici were such filthy paranoiacs,” said Adriana.

“She just
hurled
me through the secret passageway—it winds all through the house—”

“They never could have found us, even if they’d tried.”

“Even if they’d tried! And we just ran away, laughing, really, at their stupidity.”

“To try and mess with us.”

“And now if they try to get back into the palazzo, my friends here will kill them.” Dr. Riccardi fluttered a hand at the police officers before looking back down at the medal. “Though that Blasej person is already dead, isn’t he?”

“Dead as a stuffed moose,” Erik said.

“As you could have been too—look at your head.” Dr. Riccardi pointed at the gauze that not only covered up the wound in my hairline but also clashed with the chic black slacks, flats, and ballet-necked sweater Adriana had lent me. “And all for this medal—though it
is
a charming bauble. I wish that we could go galloping around the country with you, researching this mystery.”

Erik widened his eyes, touching the bandage a medic had stuck on his neck. “Yes, I suppose that’s what we’re going to do now, isn’t it? I hadn’t thought that far ahead. We’re going to go limping all over Italy to find booby traps designed to really painfully kill Cosimo—”

Dr. Riccardi hallooed: “Of course you’re pressing onward—Lord, if you don’t go, then who’s going to go scrambling after that fiendish imposter? Marco. I thought he was my friend. Oh, no, you’re
going
. Let him get away with this? Police will take ages to catch him—and you have to get the letter back from him, after all. It’s imperative! I can’t, you see! There’s so much work to do here. The Pontormo, after all—what a disaster!”

“It didn’t seem that badly damaged,” Adriana said.

“It’s practically ruined! And then Adriana here is going to have to do a complete inventory. Who knows what that Marco creature has been stealing while my back was turned?”

Adriana’s face readjusted completely to its former expression of pestered acquiescence.

“Still, this is too exciting.” Dr. Riccardi gave me back the medal. “You’re going to have to go do Siena, my dears. Immediately. Don’t let anyone intimidate you—there’s no other choice. Listen: I still do think that the letter’s a forgery. But now, obviously, I don’t have the document to send to Rome, and there’s no time with those maniacs at large to send this medal out for study, either. So you two
have
to pursue it, the sooner the better.”

“Marco doesn’t seem like the type to waste time,” I acknowledged.

“And you’ll have to
tell me everything you find
. Let’s see. Lola, tell me that you memorized the riddle. I can’t seem to recall any of it—I’ve been through such a shock.”

“Not
all
of it—”

“But some, yes? Yes, good. At least that’s a start.
And
we know where you’ll have to go look. What was the order again? A, B, C, and D: Florence, you’ve done. Siena, next. After that, Rome and Venice. And as to Siena, there was that mention—in the letter—of the She-Wolf and Dragons. Remember? You’ll have to read Sofia’s diary to understand, the entry from their last day in the city—you saw the book in the library. I think Antonio might have been influenced by it, and Marco never bothered to look at the thing.”

“Sofia’s diaries, last day in Siena,” I stammered.

Dr. Riccardi looked up, just as one of the uniformed police officers gestured at her from the doorway. “Oh my, am I needed again?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the officer said. “Another interview.”

The room was much quieter after she and Adriana bundled out. I propped my head in my hands, trying to fend off the voices in my ear—

He went out like a filthy beggar

I want my family back

—and the visions of the guards’ gray, slack faces.

“This is a mess, Erik,” I finally said.

He nodded. “Those poor old boys.”

“How are you doing about Blasej?”

Opening his mouth, he wagged his jaw. He was very, very pale. “I don’t know. I might be in shock. Maybe I’m in denial. Maybe I need a huge amount of alcohol. I don’t really feel much of anything. I mean...I
do,
but when I think about it I want to pass out. Or scream, a very high-pitched scream. So then I think that maybe it’s better if I don’t focus on it too much.” He closed his eyes, then opened them back up. “Did I
bite
Marco?”

“Yes, you did.”

“That was weird.
Lord.
Who knew I was so flamingly dangerous?”

“Not me, honestly.”

“I know!” He made a sour mouth, as a tear suddenly welled up in his left eye and ran down his cheek. “Except that he was a bastard and I’m also glad that Blasej is dead.”

“Erik, are you crying?”

“Hmmm?” He wiped off his face and looked at the tears on his fingers. “Oh! I guess a little. Ach. Maybe we should...just stay here and cooperate with the police and then bolt home as soon as possible.”

I clutched the medal tight. “Maybe.”

“Except—
what
exactly is the law on self-defense in Italy? I mean, are they going to fling me into jail with a gaggle of mafiosos?”

“No. They’d better not!” I opened my hand, moving the medal back and forth beneath the lamp glow. The coin glistened gold and rose, its hues shot through with crimson shades. “We should probably give them this, and just get out of here. We could just forget about—”

“Right, going to Siena, Rome, spectacular Venice.” Erik glared down at the medal. “But...Here—make sure they don’t see it, Lola. And look at the
color
of the gold. Did you notice it?”

“I did. It’s a kind of red gold. Strawberry gold, some call it.

Viking gold was that color. And also...” I looked up at him, unable to stop a smile. “Aztec gold.”

“Isn’t that a coincidence?”

“I’ve read about it. In the histories. Aztec gold was supposed to have this reddish cast.”

“Hmmmm. Okay. Stop it. You’re just trying to get me all excited.”

“No I’m not! I’m not saying. I mean, Marco got away—and he knows where we’d be going. It’s obvious that we shouldn’t look any more into this—”

“Obviously.”

But it was precisely because we were seriously considering the mad prospect that we both began convulsively and silently laughing, hunching over and spasming the way people do after getting their hands slammed into a door or surviving a plane crash.

“And there’s the matter, too, of Tomas?” Erik gasped, his eyes still wet. “I heard your monstrous pal Marco gurgle something about the way that Tomas died.”

“Yes, actually, he
did
.”

“And his grave is supposed to be here, isn’t it? Not that you’re really
interested
in scally-wagging around Italy in search of mythic gold and your long-lost pops—”

“Not at all.”

“Not that you aren’t
completely
bats and are so curious it probably amounts to a medical compulsion—”

“So. It’s decided. We’ll just stay in Florence for questioning, and forget all about treasure-hunting.”

“Yes, and when they give me life for murder, you can bring me biscotti in jail.”

We both glanced up, and I tucked the medal into Erik’s pants pocket. A nearby standing clump of police officers had just begun to undulate and part a path for one of their superiors, who’d been roaming the palazzo’s halls.