The King's Gold (38 page)

“He’s Colonel Moreno’s son,” Yolanda bassooned.

My father, Manuel, has large, bulging eyes, pewter wisps of hair that float over his shining head, and a grasshopper’s thinness. “To get this perfectly straight, by Colonel Moreno, we do mean that ghastly, frothing—”

Yolanda nodded. “Yes.”

“Hello,” Marco interrupted, holding out his hand. “Señor Manuel Alvarez, the Guatemalan curator.
And
Professor Juana Sanchez, archaeologist and discoverer of the Queen Jade. Good to finally meet you.”

My mother, shaking the extended paw: “Um, hello. Dear boy, aren’t you awfully unctuous. But Yolanda—isn’t he
lethal
?”

“Yes,” Yolanda said. “Like I told you.”

“He’s on...sabbatical from that, I think,” I said.

“Sabbatical.”

“It seems as if I’m having a breakdown,” Marco surprisingly explained. “Right now, I’m just tagging along.”

My mother took a mug shot of him with her eyes. “Well, you look
terrible.
Not going to kill or maim anyone?”

“No.”

“That’s good to hear. Because, get this,” she began to yell.

“I’m one of those murderous mother bear types. Got it? Very, very dangerous. Capable of shooting or viciously stabbing people who threaten my brood.”

“Understood.”

“All right.”

“Calm down, Mom.”

“No, stay excited, Juana,” Yolanda said.

“I’ll be excited when it is appropriate to be excited, Yolanda. I’m old enough to know that one may have a civilized lunch with a person, even if they are a hideous enemy. How else could I have successfully orchestrated all my jungle digs
?
Become dean? Survived Tomas?” she screeched. “See, that’s the wisdom that you get from being a fantastic old bitch like me.”

“Good.” Marco laughed.

“So! Now that’s settled, I can say that you
all
look half-dead. Thank God I’m here.”

“Let’s just get one thing straight, Lola,” my sister said. “You really don’t know what this guy is.”

“
Who
this guy is,” I corrected.

She clucked at my distinction. “The problem is, I can’t worry about that right now. Because, Juana, get this: He says he knows where Tomas is buried.”

“It’s true. I do,” Marco said nonchalantly.

Mom knocked over her champagne glass. “Smashing. I see your self-flagellation party is still in high swing. Tomas is
dead,
sweetheart. It’s not like any of this will bring him back
—
”

My father took one of my hands, which I had just plastered anxiously to my eyes during this exchange. “It really is so good to see you again, darling.”

“Dad.”

He goggled gently at me, then opened up his spidery arms and wrapped me in a hug. “I was worried!” A tighter squeeze. “As soon as I heard your wonderfully bossy voice on the phone, I was all in a tizzy until we could get over here to
help—
”

“Thanks, Pop—”

“And also to drag you home in time for this incredibly expensive wedding, of course. It’s in seven days! And you missed your shower! Interesting word, that,
shower
, for what essentially was a
fiesta
for a dozen screaming drunk harpies in various states of undress—though I took a lot of pictures for you to see—”

“I’m sorry, and don’t worry. I’m going to get Erik there. We’ll make it.”

He gave me several dry, sharp little pecks on the cheek.

“Good, okay. So! Now that we
are
here—how did that business in Siena work out? When you were researching how Antonio died in the war between the Sienese and the Florentines? When you were going to that valley? That is, right after you apparently made international headlines by vandalizing a priceless mosaic in the Duomo? We read about it on a blog Yolanda showed us—the reports blame either unkempt mestizos or highly disturbed Sicilian separatists. We assumed it was
you.”

“Siena—uh—yes—
ugh
—”

“I’m listening.”

“Oh—well—actually! There was something. You know how in
God Loves the Mighty,
Albertini says that Antonio killed his own—”

“Men, yes. With some sort of bomb. A mistake, it was supposed to be? Because of the fog—”

“It couldn’t have happened that way—we went up there—to Marciano della Chiana. And it’s colder now than it was during the battle—”

“Which took place in early August.”

“Yes. But it was
absolutely clear
. No fog, no clouds. I think Antonio might have had a perfect view of what he was doing. That he was killing his own men.”

My father’s large hot eyes burned up at me.
“Intriguing
.”

“Now I just need you to help me figure out
why
.”

“First thing, you’re going to show us what you’ve found.” My mother twirled her fingers at me. “You talked enough about it on the phone—let’s see. Bring it here.”

Marco raised his eyebrows. He still had not heard of the other clues. Regardless of the other gaps in my knowledge about his character, I was certain that if he found the gold before us, he would steal it.

“Well, Lola?” he asked. “We’re waiting?”

“I’ll handle him,” Yolanda said, slitting her eyes at Marco.

“You know I can.”

“All right.”

Along with Sofia’s journal, I brought out the two medals from my rucksack. The latter items I placed in my mother’s mitts, as Yolanda rapidly described our discovery of the third talisman behind the locked cabinet of the treasury in St. Peter’s, though omitting the detail of Erik’s and my gassing and near extinction in the underworld of Ostia Antica.

“We think these are letters that are supposed to eventually spell out some sort of code word that we’ll need to find Antonio’s treasure.”

“Incredible,” Mom exclaimed. “Look at this metalwork, Manuel. So:
L, P, U
.”

“
L, P, U
? ” Marco repeated. “We’re missing one letter. That has to spell
Lupo
, doesn’t it? Antonio was ‘the Wolf.’”

“That’s the most obvious choice,” I admitted. “But that makes me worried, somehow.”

“Exactly—so hold on, hold on, let’s not
jump,”
my father said.

“What else could
L, P,
and
U
spell.
Pulce
? No, that’s not very good. It means ‘flea.’”

“Or
opulenza
?” my mother suggested. “Opulence—this is about treasure, after all. And then there’s—what else—”

“
Opusculum,
in Latin,” I said. “That’s a minor literary work. And we know Antonio’s well read. And,
Opulus,
that’s a maple tree—um—
opuncuolo
—a kind of bird—but all of these have too many letters—”

“Or maybe it’s an acronym,” said Marco.

“Some kind of acrostic,” my father said.

Yolanda nodded. “An anagram.”

“A pun,” my mother said.

“An abbreviation,” I said.

“A homonym,” offered Marco again.

My mother had been muttering over the shining gold disks when she looked up. “What’s...what’s missing here?”

“What do you mean?” Manuel asked.

“There’s something missing, right now,” she said. “Some particular
noise
—some—constant bothersome rattling on—”

“Rattling on?”

“Yes, usually, in these situations, isn’t there some kind of incessant, interrupting,
rambling
—”

“It’s Erik,” I said miserably.

My mother tucked her chin into her chest and peered at him. “You’re right. That’s it. Good God in Heaven, Erik’s not talking.”

The entire time we had been at the table, Erik had sat silently, studying his untouched crimson drink and half-listening to us with the abused air of a prison inmate.

“What’s wrong, man?” Manuel asked.

“What’s that?” Erik just now tuned in to the conversation.

My mother reached out, grabbed his face, and squeezed his cheeks. “What on earth have you done to him? What happened? He looks horrendous!! Is it a head injury?”

“Oh—” I struggled.
He shot someone yesterday.
“He’s tired—”

“He’s never tired. Even when he didn’t sleep for three weeks after proposing to you, he never stopped talking.”

“What happened was—well, have you heard anything about us?” I asked. “On the news?”

“Only about the Duomo—why, what happened?”

“It’s just that—”

“There was this—” said Yolanda.

“Terrible—”

“No,”
Erik said to me in a firm, clipped voice, shaking his head.
I don’t want them to know what I did.

“Agh...ay...”

“What?” my parents barked.

“There was this thing—”

“Accident—”

“Accident?”

“Wrong word—”

Yolanda and I froze; my parents gazed alarmedly at us.

Marco sighed, took a cigarette from his pocket, and lit it with matches from the table.

“Aw, Gomara and I had a fistfight,” he rumbled. “He just feels bad because he got a little too rough with me.”

“A fight over
what
?”

Marco squinted sideways at Erik, deciding something. The bruise on his cheek was still very bad; the stress lines around his eyes looked as they had been etched there by a knife.

“Lola,” he said, grinning nefariously at Erik through the cigarette’s haze.

“Lola?”

“Yes, do I have to go into the details? It’s embarrassing, after all.”

My mother asked, “Erik, you didn’t have some sort of romantic prenuptial shoving match with this—
man
?”

“Oh, Jesus.” Erik rasped at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“He did,” Marco said.

“Erik beat the hell out of him,” Yolanda said.

“He was an animal,” Marco said. “I lost.”

Manuel frowned. “Is this true?”

“Ask Erik, Dad,” I said.

Erik eased his gaze over to me and shrugged. “What can I say? I
was
an animal. But it was for love.”

“Lola, what’s wrong with your eyes—are you
crying
?” my mother demanded.

“No, no, no.”

Erik glared out at the lucent square beneath his black eyebrows for a long Munch-faced moment. He blinked, twisted his mouth, and then downed his drink as if it were made of opium instead of champagne. “Well. Juana, of
course
I’m broody. We’re in Venice! Thomas Mann, bad weather, pollution, decay...a mass murderer is trying to get my girl, and—I’m just about to step over the precipice and lose my freedom forever.”

“Is he talking about the wedding?” my father asked.

“Yes, I can hear the prison doors slamming in on me! Literally! It’s a shock that I haven’t drunk myself into an absolute cracking coma! Which I just might! In fact, it sounds like an excellent idea! But before that happens, we should get back on topic, don’t you think?”

“No, I think this is fascinating—” Mom tried to interrupt.

Erik forced himself to chatter at his customary full speed. “Because instead of wasting our time blathering about how much I am just
wigging out,
we should be trying to find the fourth medal. There are only about six thousand places where Antonio could have hidden the thing. Venice is famous for its secret crannies. Things
disappear
here—Casanova from the dungeons, victims of the Inquisition from their homes, even the streets are supposed to vanish and then remanifest in entirely different locations. It’s as easy to get lost in this city at high noon as it is to lose your way in the rain forest when you’ve lost your flashlight.”

“Well, at least he’s talking again,” said my mother.

“Speak for yourself about the rain forest,” cautioned Yolanda.

“Yolanda excepted. Lola, what’s the riddle’s last stanza?”

I squeezed his hands.
“Erik—”

He leaned over, kissing me. “Come on, honey.” Then he whispered: “Lola, please just give me a nice little problem to solve before I get completely bent.”

“Okay.”

“What’s the fourth stanza?”

And so I recited it:

“‘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’”

“Fine, getting down to business.” Manuel clapped his hands together. “We at least know who
the saint from the East
is.” He looked up at the Basilica di San Marco.

“San Marco—St. Mark,” Erik said.

“Yes. Mark’s body was brought here in the Middle Ages—or, rather, stolen, then imported here, to Venice. They brought it from Egypt in a box filled with pickled pork and hams, to disgust the Muslims and prevent them from searching the container. But—what does Antonio mean by ‘
Nero’s Beast’
?”

“That he was martyred?” my mother said. “Like Peter—and most of the saints.”

“No. Nero didn’t martyr Mark. We don’t know even if he was killed. There are all sorts of theories of how he died. And then, ‘
Hear his Word’
—from the riddle—that’s a funny puzzler.”

“‘
Hear my Word and meet your Fetch.’
What’s a fetch?” Yolanda asked.

“It’s a harbinger of death,” Marco said, still smoking—and, I noticed, slipping the medals from the table into his pockets while giving me a “just keeping them safe” wink. “A vision of your own ghost or that of a relative. It’s the sign of your doom.”

I felt another wave of dread as I confirmed his definition. “Yes, that’s it. And I know that only because Sofia met
her
fetch here, in Venice.” I opened up the journal on my lap, whose last entries I had read on the train.

“Sofia?” Erik asked. “What do you mean?”

“She died here.” I showed them the last pages in the journal. “And she says that she saw ghosts before she passed away.

She writes about the basilica, too, and other things I can’t quite understand. But I know that Antonio
must
have read this journal after she was gone, and used it to help him with these traps. In particular the one waiting for us here. It sounds like he might have been going mad...”

They all leaned in close to hear.

December 13, 1552

Venice

Tonight I indulged in the witch’s worst vice, being curiosity, and gave myself a reading. Yet I did not need to draw the Tarot’s Death card to know that I will soon be parted from my husband: The Spirit world has already sent my Harbinger, as one week ago I saw my own Death Doom.