The King's Gold (11 page)

He wrinkled his forehead at me. “Did you just say something about a...colonel?”

“Oh, did you just catch that?” Marco asked.

Erik threw up a hand. “Jesus, I still really don’t get what’s going on here. Are you people all
drunk
?”

“Not yet!” said Dr. Riccardi. “Though my girl could help us out on that account.”

“Erik, read it
—read it.”

“All right:
‘As I take the destiny of the Medici more seriously than your idiocy, however, I have decided to honor your request. Our family Name requires it. After all, there was much wisdom to that old saying of the poet Plautus:
Nomen atque Omen
—one’s name is one’s omen.’”

“A man’s name is his omen.” I sat very still, as the scraps of ideas blew around my mind. “A man’s name,” I repeated, slowly.

“His
name
—”

All at once, I remembered Señor Soto-Relada’s disturbing comment about the letter, from our phone conversation earlier in the evening:
And, if you are a de la Rosa, then...well, you’ll figure it out. The de la Rosas always do.

I looked up again at the map on the wall. It was brilliantly colored and as intricate as a mosaic. “That’s the Pontormo map, right?”

“Adriana!”

“Dr. Riccardi, is that the Pontormo that Antonio—the forger—writes about? The original?”

“What, the map? Yes. Adriana!”

I could feel Marco watching me as I took the letter from Erik’s grasp and studied it.

“I examined the map a year ago,” he said. “But I couldn’t find anything special about it.”

Adriana had just entered the room. “The next course will be here directly, Dr. Riccardi. My duck in wine sauce and sour cherries.”

“We need some more wine, and more of the
amuse,
dear.”

“You’ve had quite enough.”

“Stop being cheeky!” Dr. Riccardi made an expansive gesture.

“Bah—
you
stop being a nuisance.” Adriana flashed her hand above her head before leaving the room.

The doctor bent toward us confidentially: “She’s an immigrant. I have to be tough with her, you know...born in Algeria. But so intelligent. Six languages. A knack for theory. I’m paying for her education—not that she’s grateful! She’d
eat
me if I let her. Savage little beast,” she said wistfully.

I unfolded the letter to read out the passage that both Marco and Erik had quoted earlier:

“When did we last meet, before you Exiled my wife, Sofia the Dragon, and me? It was in the 1520s, I believe, just after I returned from America...’”

We feasted “at our family’s palazzo, in the dining hall with that gew-gaw I commissioned, namely Pontormo’s gorgeous map of Italy.”

“That’s what he says—and then there’s something else.” I began to flip through the pages, carefully, until I found the closing section:

Included in this letter are two Ciphers that reveal the hiding places of four Clues I have scattered through your rival city-states, and that will lead you to the Fortune. One of these Ciphers is a riddle, and the other, as you see, is a map (or at least, you shall see it should you be able to look up from your feasting and banqueting, and pay nominal attention to what I am telling you).

“Oh, God,” I said.

“This is just wildness—it’s these active imaginations your forgers are playing on,” Dr. Riccardi said.

“How long has this map been here, Doctor?” Erik asked.

“Since 1528, thereabouts. Reframed in, what, 1912.”

I said, “So it could have been here during the dinner parties he describes.”

Marco quickly moved over to the map, gesturing to Blasej and Domenico that they should remain in their seats.

“Could there be codes written in here?” He squinted up at the map, its frame, its protective glass. “Something I missed?”

Short of breath, I said, “Erik—the line mentioning Pontormo. It’s awkward, isn’t it? We feasted
‘in the dining hall and that gew-gaw I commissioned, namely Pontormo’s gorgeous map of Italy.’ Namely
. That’s what got me thinking, when we started talking about—”

“Yes, right, your name, his name.” Erik was parsing the letter over my shoulder.

“And then—look—toward the end: ‘
One clue is a riddle, and the other, as you see, is a map (or at least, you shall see it should you be able to look up from your feasting and banqueting, and pay
nominal
attention to what I am telling you).’
Pay
nominal
attention to what I am telling you.”

“
Namely, nominal
—from, yes, the Latin—
nomen
—”

“
Nomen—nomen atque omen
. The Latin maxim: A man’s name is his omen. Antonio writes that saying in the letter—he’s
focused
on names and naming.”

Marco reached his hand over his head, grazing the map’s gilt frame with his fingertips.

“No, no, no, no touching,” Dr. Riccardi ordered.

“I’ve gone over this a thousand times,” said Marco. “But what I’ve never been able to understand is
why
would a man’s name be his omen?”

“And which name?” Erik asked. “He calls himself the Wolf, and the slave’s called—”

“
His
name,” I said suddenly. “His
name
.”

From the table, I slowly lifted the last translucent page of the letter, with its strange, wide, curling signature: Antonio Beato Cagliostro Medici.

Erik’s eyebrows skittered up his forehead as he looked at the wall. “Okay, I’m still getting up to speed here, but—that’s
interesting.”

“Erik.”

“Do you think—”

“Maybe. Can you—”

“Yes—”

“
Lift
me—”

We both stood up and practically ran over to the wall. Erik hip-butted Marco out of the way before crouching like an intramural wrestler, pulling down his straining jacket and extending his arms so that I could clamber on.

“One, two, three,
huff
!” He hoisted me onto his shoulders.

“Oh, dear Jesus Christ and Mary in Heaven,” Dr. Riccardi flamed, “you’re going to break something, you frightful idiots.”

I reached up and placed the signature leaf onto the map. It fit the dimensions perfectly.

“It’s like a transparency,” I cried. “And the signature, it’s tracing something—a route or some kind of diagram.”

“Preposterous,” Dr. Riccardi thundered, then, looking at the map sideways, was less sure. “What do you mean, diagram?”

“I can’t—
see
what it marks through the glass.”

“Blasej, what does it look like out there?” Marco muttered.

“Just a couple old farts, picking up pensions. One or two nobodies in the library.”

“Good. Help me with this—also, give me a knife.”

A glitter in the lamplight, as the blade was thrown through the air. Blasej loped toward Erik and me.

“Help you with what?” Dr. Riccardi asked, as Erik lowered me to the ground. “Why would you need a knife?”

The two brutes yanked the map off the wall before flipping it over to reveal its canvas and paper backing. Marco brought down the knife to tear the frame open with a great, loud
rip
.

“Even if you were right, which is impossible! This would be a matter for
experts
—
conservationists
,” Dr. Riccardi squawked. “Good God, you cretin,
hands off—Adriana
!”

Marco pulled the map out of its frame, but with great care and delicacy. “Domenico, clear off a space on the table.”

Erik’s ruddy face twisted. “The lady said not to do that.”

Marco did not so much as look at him. I still clutched the letter’s signature page as a terrible, voluptuous anticipation began to tingle through me.

“Yes, Marco, stop it,” I managed to say.

He looked at me over his shoulder. “I see
you
. Don’t make me laugh.” He carried the map over to the dining table, placing it down gingerly. He briefly touched the vellum, the reddish gold leaf, as if admiring the workmanship. “And Dr. Riccardi, you can’t tell me you’re not curious.”

“This isn’t the way we do things here—thuggishly—you of all people should know that, Marco, you’re a man of taste, of finesse—”

“Qualities that I have been heroically suppressing in order to withstand the constant sound of your chatter, Doctor—”

Their voices faded in my ears, as my concentration narrowed with such an intensity that my vision seemed reflected in a convex mirror.

The map glimmered on the table, its irresistible, half-visible ciphers of gold, woad blue, and crimson waiting to be changed by me.

I walked over to it in a fever.

The onionskin page shone like a fragment of light in my hand. I pressed it to the map, fitting the opal text to its intended lineaments.

This is what we saw:

“It’s the four cities,” I shouted through the room. “The ones in the rhyme.”

“
A
in Antonio corresponds to Florence.” Erik glared down at the table over my shoulder. “The
B
in—”

“Beato!” Dr. Riccardi butted her face against the other side of my head.

“Marks Siena,” I said. “The
C
in Cagliostro is Rome, and...here, the
D
in Medici is for Venice. This gives us an itinerary. He’s telling us—or, rather, Cosimo—to search the cities in this order.”

“Oh, my, oh, no, you horrible children
—but
let me see that riddle again,” Dr. Riccardi breathed all over the pages. “I do have to say, the letter
does
make more sense with this information. What’s the second stanza—
In City One find a tomb
?
Where upon a Fool—
What was it?”

“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,”
Marco recited from memory.

“Yes. Don’t you see how we need to bring in my experts? This is of critical importance. I
must
get the letter authenticated. City One must be
A
—that is
here
—
in Florence
. There was that crypt I was speaking to you about, Cappella dei Principi at the Basilica di San Lorenzo, where Antonio interred his slave—the Fool.”

“I wish you could have told me Antonio called him that name
before,
Isabel,” said Marco. “This whole year I’ve been digging around the university’s medical school, trying to find any records of the burial sites of the imbeciles young Antonio used for his human experiments. It hasn’t been the easiest job.”

“Wrong fools,” she said.

“Why didn’t I know that? I thought I studied all the important records.”

The doctor flicked her eyes at me. “Perhaps you missed something.”

“You know what this could mean?” I asked, just as Adriana walked in through the door, saying, “I forgot to ask if our guests like their duck rare or—
my God!
”

A look of scholastic ecstasy passed over Erik’s face. “What could it mean? We could find Montezuma’s gold, the Aztec idols, the calendars, the lost druidical gold books.”

Dr. Riccardi had two bright spots on her cheeks. “Cellini, in his autobiography, wrote of rumors that Antonio brought back so much treasure it nearly sank his ship.”

“Mary Magdalene, I told you people to behave yourselves—what happened to the Pontormo?” cried Adriana.

Marco smiled as he reached down to the table, where I had placed Antonio’s signature page over the Pontormo map. With a twirl of his long pickpocket fingers, he spirited up the paper, and then slid the remainder of the leaves from the grasp of Dr. Riccardi, who blurted: “Hey, hold on. Give that back—”

“Marco, what’s going on?” Adriana asked.

“They’ve gone crazy,” Dr. Riccardi shouted, as most everyone began switching to manic Italian. “Signor, you must know that letter has to stay here!”

“Sorry,” Marco said. “It’s time that my friends and I took our leave.”

“I’m afraid—that’s not—possible.” Dr. Riccardi’s voice wavered into a banshee-like caterwaul as she snatched at the letter.

“You must let me study it—if you only knew how valuable this could possibly be—”

“No—no—let go.”

“You’re going to
rip
it—”

“Give the doctor what she wants,” Adriana ordered in a mortally serious voice.