The King's Gold (39 page)

Seven days past, I lay here in my sickbed, when there appeared to me a dark, gleaming horse, riderless. By her stood a pale mare, upon which sat my long-dead Mother, transmuted into an angel, with her feet backward in the stirrups. These, her reversed feet, were the surest signs that she was a spirit who would lead me to Tartarus upon my black and long-maned Fetch.

Antonio refused to believe this Omen. He said that I am a silly girl, and that I will not die. Though I knew he lied because of his frantic laborings to concoct his Cure, this evening I had a Terrible hope that it was all a delusion.

Thus, before he brought me this evening’s vial of Aqua Vita, I teased one card from my pack. I placed it on the counterpane covering my legs.

But no: It was card 13.

Just then Antonio burst into the room. “This will heal you, my darling,” he said, holding a philter made of gold & amber. He paled in horror when he saw the card, and threw himself to his knees, kissing my hands. “Ah! Thirteen is a blessed number for witches, sweet.”

“There is no more time for lies,” I replied. “You know as well as I that is the number of Doom. So embrace me. Whisper love-thoughts to me. While we still can.”

He would not, however, but rather fled back to his alchemy lab to recommence his fruitless, waning work.

There is little of our treasure left, after so many experiments, and after paying so much ransom. Years back, after his return from the Americas, Antonio rewarded a tremendous portion to the Doge as payment for the use of his Dungeons; that is where the vampiric Slave was rendered harmless by a Gold masquerade, which some have called a Moon-shield and others a Torture mask.

Today, we still pay for the Doge’s protection. This has cost us sixteen additional chests of gold, which is used to restore the Basilica and the Torcello cathedral to their former twelfth-century glories. Even without our lucre, what a marvel is this Venetian church: Not only does it possess the stolen body of St. Mark but also the four bronze Horses, which were once displayed in Nero’s Domus Aurea, as a marker of his evil Power; now they represent Christ’s Four for the pleasure of the Venetians.

Antonio marvels at these much-translated Horses. He says that these uses of Art & Men are their own, terrible form of Alchemy.

In years past, he never would have compared such robberies to his own Great Art. I think he is losing faith in his craft.

[illegible scrawl]

And it is just as well, I see, suddenly.

Yes, it is time for him to abandon his labors.

Neither he nor his Alchemy can help me any longer. For my Fetch has just appeared to me again, here in this room:

My mother’s ghost-face is monstrously livid as she waits upon her mare.

Her feet are reversed in her stirrups. My large black horse waits for me; it will ride me to another world.

“Darling, darling, darling,” I just cried out, with my last strength.

Antonio emerges from his laboratory. His hands are covered in gold; his face is streaked and shining with gold. To me he is very beautiful. The moonlight eases through the window, turning these marks into platinum stripes upon his cheek, like the stripes of a supernatural beast.

He does not see the ghosts who wait. Nor does he need to. He collapses into a chair when he reads the final truth in my face. The moon & melancholy grip him.

He is beginning to change.

“I have failed,” he says, or I think he says, for he cannot speak in human tongues any more. His beautiful face is o’ertaken. He humps and scrapes and he bays to the sky.

I will put down my pen. He will curl onto the bed, here, so that we lay side by side.

One more night is all I ask of the Goddess, so that I might hear his breathing just a little longer. If I could only take some warm atom from him, and hide it in my breast, for comfort in this cold season that awaits me.

Here: I will press my heart to his heart. I will try to take some memory of him. I will try to print his love upon me.

The backward walking spirit watches me.

One more night.

And then I think that will be all.

Manuel sat up straight and pressed his palms together when I had finished the entry.

We were all gaunt at the sadness of the writing. But he smiled like a fox and stood up.

“That explains a great deal,” he said.

“What? What does it explain?”

He tossed some coins on the table and picked up the handle of his luggage.

“
Very
informative. Okay, off we go. It’s only—what—five o’clock. The basilica should be open for at least another half hour.”

“What is it?”

“See if you can keep up, my lovelies.”

Manuel sprinted off, his roller bag flying behind him. A thick bulb of pigeons burst in the air as if exploding. All of us dabbed our eyes and blinked confusedly before snatching our rucksacks together, and then ran after him as he plunged into the deepening shadows of the square, making straight for the mysteries of the stolen saint’s basilica.

We ran into a cave filled with red-gold light.

That is what I first saw of the Basilica di San Marco, when we at last detached ourselves from the long line creeping to its door, and made our way beneath the four triumphal gilt-bronze horses steeple-chasing above the high portal: Inside, it was all red-gold luminescence blazing up to the sky like a biblical fire.

Built in 828, repository of Mark’s bones since at least 1094, the high interior of the basilica is covered with vast, nectarine-gold mosaics of Christ and the apostles. Tourists wandered below this miraculous sky, and I saw that some religious women were actually
raising their hands
to the shine of the gold, the way evangelical Christians pray with their eyes closed and their palms upraised.

Standing within that sphere of color, I was also staggered nearly beyond my rational wits as I fended off a panoply of images: Of Red Riding Hood in the glittering red belly of the wolf; of the silver and ivory Heaven of John’s Revelations; of the Ninth Hell of the Aztecs, where the Mexicans believed they would be able to travel with their worldly treasure strapped to their spirit backs if they survived the journey—that is, until that treasure was used to pave this European church instead, as Sofia herself had noted:

In exchange for his protection, we have given sixteen additional chests of gold to the Doge, which is used to restore the Basilica and the Torcello cathedral to their former twelfth-century glories.

I was jolted out of this revelation by the sound of my father’s voice, as he rattled his roller bag behind him (again, we were three months from the day of the Twin Towers and its weapons-checking terrors). He hurried through the solar-colored nave, toward the transept and its altar room, searching for one particular item as he speedily talked: “As I already mentioned, St. Mark was literally
translated
here from Alexandria to this church in the late eleventh century. The Venetians responded to their possession of Mark with a euphoria that expressed itself mostly in the form of interior design, as they began to over-decorate the basilica with as many apostolic symbols as they could buy—or
steal,
often in the form of pagan sculpture or painting that had some sort of quadrumvirate formation, a group of four, you know, which was the Gnostics’ symbol of the sacred elements and the seasons, though here Christianized. So that—right here—there’s Christ sitting up on a very pretty rainbow being held up by four angels, which are only reconstituted Sirens, and who represent the four apostles—and
outside
the church there is a porphyry sculpture of four Byzantine Moors, which are stand-ins also for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And
all
of this is designed to communicate to the old hoi polloi that
yes, dears,
we
really do have him,
one of the Four, he’s right here, sleeping quite soundly until the trumpet sounds—the very
Saint from the East
whom Antonio claims is capable of showing us the final clue, providing that we aren’t somehow mashed to screaming pieces in the process, if I understand his threat correctly.”

Manuel had led us through the iconostasis (a stone screen made up of saint figures) and up through the densely populated altar room. After Yolanda and my mother had somehow intimidated the surrounding exhausted-faced tourists to give us space, he pointed down to a massive emerald-marble carved box that bore a titanic lock and sat below the solid gold altar.

“There was the original article.”

“That’s an urn,” my mother said excitedly. “A sarcophagus.”

“Precisely.” Manuel began to gaze around, preoccupied again.

“It’s Mark’s reliquarium. His bone house.”

“Is this where the clue is?” Marco rapped out.

“Do we have to break into this grave?” I asked.

“It’s completely guarded,” said Erik, motioning at the sleepyeyed sentries sprinkled all around. “The lock’s as big as my thigh. We’ll have to pick it while there’s a distraction.”

Yolanda yanked down her Stetson’s brim. “I can do it. Somebody get me a screwdriver.”

My mother nodded. “And, Lola, pretend to have a fit.”

“What kind, psychological or epileptic?”

“Psychological.”

“Oh, then I’m the man for the job,” Marco said. “I’m so out of my mind right now that I can start foaming without even going into character—”

“No, no, no, no,
no,
people,” Manuel said. “The clue isn’t in
here
—at least I hope not! Reportedly Mark was whisked back to Egypt in sixty-eight amid pomp and apologies—if Antonio hid anything in the urn, it would have been discovered, and probably removed then.”

“So where is it?” we all gasped.

“That’s what I’m getting to—I’m still looking for it; it’s somewhere around here, just can’t quite recall...oh! All right, follow me out.” Manuel retraced his steps back down the nave. “I had my idea when Lola read to us from that diary, and I connected the entry to the riddle.”

He padded up toward the basilica’s entrance hall, making his way to a separate miniature access on an upward staircase; this had a separate toll-gate staffed by a Venetian with a thousand-yard stare.

Manuel asked to see Sofia’s journal after we had received our change.

“I think that Lola’s right, and that Antonio
was
inspired by the writings of his wife. First, see how Sofia describes her fetch to the Underworld, as ‘
a dark, gleaming horse.’
Then—look here—she mentions ‘
the four bronze horses’—
and goes on to say that they were ‘
once displayed in Nero’s Domus Aurea...now they represent Christ’s Four for the pleasure of the Venetians.’
The Domus Aurea, remember, was Nero’s private palace.”

We had made our way to the top of the stairs, which led to a second story. This level extended to a balcony hosting the four dramatic gilt-bronze horses we had seen from the square, and, on the interior, a small museum displaying various artifacts and sculptures.

“The last thing to consider,” Manuel went on, as he entered the museum area and began to pace past a rood screen and showcased musical manuscripts, “is the riddle itself”:

[CITY] FOUR HOLDS A SAINT FROM THE EAST

A NEIGHING, SHAPE-SHIFTING WRETCH.

ONCE HE WAS CALLED NERO’S BEAST—

HEAR HIS WORD AND MEET YOUR FETCH.

He stopped before an exhibit of four colossal, gilt-bronze horses identical to the ones on the exterior balcony. Placed on brick and marble supports against the museum’s farthest wall, they stood over seven feet tall, and were caught in rippling midstride with snorting nostrils and flaming manes. A nearby placard said they were the original
Horses of San Marco
that were carried off from Byzantium during the Fourth Crusade, whereas the ones gracing the balcony façade are modern copies.

“So, do you see what I mean?” Manuel exulted, raising his arms to the statuary. “It’s all perfectly clear.”

“No, we don’t see at
all
.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha,” my mother cackled, her hair flying like an electrical storm as she suddenly waltzed me back and forth.

“The only thing
I
was thinking about these big old stallions is that during the Enlightenment people swore they were
cursed
. But
you
hit it, Manuel. I knew there must be a reason I keep letting you seduce me.”

“There are several, darling.” He smiled. “Anyway—as Sofia recalls, the horses were once ‘
Nero’s Beasts.’
But they were taken to Venice during the Crusades, as Christian symbols, which is why Antonio calls them ‘
neighing shape-shifters
.’ Remember how the churches recycled pagan symbols and emphasized the sacred number four—these are original sculptures, which represented Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They were brought in from the balcony only a decade ago, to be replaced with copies. One of
these
horses, then, represented Mark to the Renaissance eye. He
was,
for symbological purposes,
the saint from the East
.”

At this point, my father’s rapturous face began to take a quizzical cast as he stared up at the bronze animals.

“So the clue that you’re looking for, I think, will be here. Once you read it in this light, the riddle is astonishingly lucid. The fourth medal will probably be hidden inside one of these horses, though apparently it has been fitted with some sort of booby trap that is designed to stab or shoot or bomb or flay or otherwise unpleasantly dispatch us all to our miserable deaths.”

With that, Manuel had given his pronouncement. He let it sink in. His anxiously dancing hands now descended protectively upon his breast, which shuddered as he took a long breath.

Standing in a pool of people, we stared up at the tall gilt-bronze horses. They have long broad necks and tiny flat ears, and are rendered in such fine detail that wrinkles pucker softly around their nervous open lips and horse teeth.

Manuel sufficiently collected himself to tap dance past a last layer of tourists barricading us from the horses. He pointed at one of the bronze beasts.