The King's Gold (13 page)

I listened to his rough breathing.

And then, without speaking again, he began to climb once more.

Marco and I followed. We dragged ourselves up the scaffolding’s next level, toward the top, unbarred window, which we could see had already been smashed open.

Erik eased one leg into the window, then another. He held out his hand, hauling me into the open circle framed by glass teeth, which gave me an instant image of passing through the mouth of a fierce supernatural beast as I landed on the top floor of the Medici chapel.

We crumpled to the cold floor, gasping and pressing our hands to our hearts.

“Um, okay! Guess what. We are
never
going do that again,” Erik said after a minute.

I hugged him. “Are you all right?”

“My neck’s not broken.” He kissed my mouth.

I kissed back, but then put my hand up at the sound of thumping, a voice. “Ssssshhh—do you hear something?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know!” He leaned his head back on the wall.

“Do you hear something?”

“Yes.” Marco came sliding up toward us through the cool halls.

From around the corner were the concussions and echoes of a struggle between men, as Marco padded past us on silent feet.

This left Erik and me suddenly, briefly, on our own—we looked at each other by the light of the window-framed moon.

“Come on,” I whispered. “We’ll climb back down.”

“Move your butt!”

But just here, in the dark distance of the crypt, we heard a man begging for mercy in a thin, hooting voice.

“Please, please, I didn’t see anything. I have two kids, mister, I have two kids, I have a wife, I have, just don’t—don’t—”

Over this, like a percussion, another person was making a gargling, gagging noise.

I stopped. “Oh, no. They’ve got someone—”

“Damn.”
Erik’s face contorted, even as he ran toward the sound.

On the landing of the chapel’s moon-frosted staircase, I saw that Domenico and Blasej had cornered two guards. Blasej held on to an elderly man in a gray suit. This victim’s face was loose and slick and shaking as the Czech unbelievably sawed back and forth on his throat with a long knife. Another man, sandy-haired, his age obscured by the frenzied twisting of his features, crouched by the balustrade as he shrilled his pleas to Domenico, who hovered over him, grim and all business. Marco observed the murder with his back turned toward me; I couldn’t see his expression while he silently watched Blasej perform his gruesome work.

As Blasej’s arm joggled up and down to cut the throat, the dead man’s arms dangled at his sides. His mouth hung open in a melancholic gape, the eyes thrust blindly from their sockets.

Black blood streamed down the quivering, white-shirted chest to the ground as the body was hacked and hacked.

“Sssssssh!” Blasej hissed, darting back, holding up one hand.

Domenico leaned forward, croaking, “What?”

“Nothing. Cut myself on the knife.”

“You’re in such a hurry you don’t ask me first?” Marco’s voice was low and clipped.

“This kid got antsy.”

“Idiot. Ass!
God
—get rid of it!”

Blasej pushed the corpse over the balcony. It hurtled to the lower ground with a dreadful liquid crunch.

“Now what?” Blasej turned and his face was mother-of-pearl;

his thin eyes fixed with great attention on Marco, as the remaining guard continued to cry, nearly singing: “Jesus, God, Mary, Jesus God, Mary, Jesus God—”

“Marco,” Blasej said. “We’re here now. This is it, you’ve got the gun. If this goes wrong, I don’t want Dom and me to be the only boys with a problem—”

“Let me assure you,” Marco replied in a voice so hoarse he was nearly mute. “No one will cut me a break.”

“Just to
make
sure—”

Marco removed the gun from his pocket and fiddled with it for a second, but then shook his head.
“I told you to wait for me before you did anything—”

Blasej grabbed the pistol. “Agh—fine. I’ll do it. But this is
it
—”

“No, no, no, no,” Erik and I both screamed.

Blasej quickly aimed the gun at the crying man, and a soft, silenced
pop
issued forth.

The man’s gray jacket seemed to open out, as if lifted by spirit fingers. His chest moved, jumped. That was all, just that little tremble, that little shiver. His head rolled over, the mouth kissing the air. There were two more pops, two more quiverings.

Still the man lay on the ground, breathing, or hiccupping, his severed lungs unable to give air to his screams.

Marco wavered slightly, before Blasej accurately shot the man’s head, which opened up into a living monstrosity made of black and red flesh and white bone.

“You have such a light touch, Blasej,” Marco said hysterically.

“You have
such
finesse. You gorilla. You fool!”

Blasej tucked the gun into his belt. “Well. Now there’re two less problems.”

Erik and I were dead quiet. I was on the floor, twisting in horror. Domenico pushed this second guard’s body over the balcony, tipping it legs overhead. When I scrabbled toward the balustrade, I could see the crypt’s carved marble flooring. Dead men’s names had been delicately chiseled into the stone, the dates of their short lives incised in Roman numerals, their piety marked by the engraving of the Latin cross.

But now these markings were obscured by encroaching blood. Below us, the two dead men were suspended within this gruesome velvety-liquid frame. The moon flooded down on the corpses, turning their red blood charcoal and their stunned faces paper white.

Erik was shaking violently again, but he said to me, steadily, “Are you hurt?”

“Oh no, oh, no, oh, no—”

“Lola. Calm down—right now!”

“Get them up.” Marco’s words came out in a shocked jumble as he wiped his clean hands off on his pants, his arms, nearly clawing himself. “Okay. Fine. We have to do this. Oh—people will be here soon.”

“You just
killed him
.” I nearly passed out in gross physical fear as Blasej shoved me away from the balcony into the recesses of the chapel. We all stumbled past the sight of the bodies, the stairs, more unlit chambers, and turned twice, right.

“Lola, be quiet,” Erik said. “Seriously, shut your mouth.”

I did. I was panting, but I clamped down, watching him. Erik walked more swiftly now, and I had trouble reading his almost weirdly fierce expression. I didn’t understand what he was thinking or planning.

Erik held up his hand as the men turned around a corner.

“No, that’s not the way.” He said this to Marco in that hard-edged stranger’s voice.

Marco stopped. “What—what do you mean?”

Erik showed his teeth. “Do you even know where you’re going?”

“I thought the crypt was here—”

“No, let’s get this over with. And tell your friends to get out their flashlights.”

Within the space of a few seconds, Erik had taken over the lead. He assuredly brought us into a raven-black hall swept with the stars of Blasej’s and Domenico’s Maglites. The air grew cold and moist as we felt our way to the threshold of a stone room.

The Cappella dei Principi was high-ceilinged and night-veiled. Glorious mosaics glistened over the walls of the sepulcher. Made of richly colored Italian hard stone, the panels had been cut into the forms of lions, fleurs-de-lis, coats of arms, griffins, crosses, and urns.

Erik moved in first, pointing where Domenico’s and Blasej’s flashlights should lead, so that for a moment he looked like a magician, directing diamond-colored ghosts who flitted back and forth above their graves.

He crouched down.

“Oh, God help me, did you find it?” Marco called out.

“Here. This is it. This must be it. Lola, tell me the riddle again.”

“I can’t,” I wailed. I kept on seeing the man’s throat being sawed by the knife. “I can’t remember. I can’t remember.”

Marco took the letter from his jacket pocket and fumbled with the pages, blinking at them. “I can’t—
read
this.” He pressed his hand to his eyes. “I can’t think—”

“Give it to me.”

Erik gently took the papers, and read out:

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 recaptured the letter from Erik, who, from his hunkering position, brought up his hand to touch one of the colored mosaic panels. Domenico’s flashlight concentrated immediately on this object in a white, clear rush.

Crafted into the shape of a lozenge, the panel was alabaster white. In its center glimmered a black sickle moon.

Erik swung his head over and with large, watchful eyes homed in on Marco as if he were looking for a target hidden on the man’s body.

“The Fool you’re looking for is buried here.”

Erik was
tempting
him. I could hear it. I knew this soft voice of his, which was a ghost’s version of the irresistible one he used with me when he glamoured me with stories or lured me during sex.

Marco stared at my lover. Slowly, his features sharpened.

He couldn’t help but take the bait.

The walls of the crypt were covered with hundreds of mosaics. A square panel displayed a porphyry griffin nestled next to an obsidian eagle, then a turquoise snake. At the bottom of the wall shone this black-and-white moon sign.

Marco bent into Domenico’s and Blasej’s flashlight beams, revealing his tear-shining, greedy face.

“Remember what Dr. Riccardi said.” Erik tapped the icon.

“The slave—the
Fool—
is buried behind the sign of the moon.”

The symbol swam into my view and I fixed my madness on it. “The sign of the Moor.”

“Perhaps,” Marco grunted, having managed to regain some control. “All right then. Let’s do this. Boys, break it open.”

Blasej extracted from the backpacks long ropes, pulleys, and two small axes, which the men heaved powerfully and hideously at the mosaics, crushing and destroying them.

Then, there it was: Behind the shattered stones, interred within the wall, rested a plain black coffin.

“You were right,” Marco breathed.

Blasej and Domenico worked quickly to haul it out by the ropes and pulleys. They grunted; they strained. They pulled the coffin from the wall with so much force that the rope peeled back skin from their palms, until it crashed to the floor.

It was huge, made of tremendous slabs of onyx marble, now cracked and covered with dust.

“Open it.”

They couldn’t at first. Blasej and Domenico leaned over the casket, kicking at its immense stone lid, which had slid several inches but not completely off. They gripped it with their fingers and pressed with the heels of their hands.

“Hurry it
up
,” Marco demanded in a shaking and acid Italian.

“It’s heavier than it looks,” said Domenico.

“Cool out, Marco, it won’t be a problem.” Blasej sucked on his hand. “Come on, Domenico. Let’s do this.”

Domenico bent back down and lugged. “Okay, okay. It’s heavy as a—”

Blasej remained standing. “Remember what I taught you—use your legs.”

“I’m trying—”

“Try harder.”

“
Help
me.”

“I’m busy thinking—”

“Don’t start with that.”

“What, I’m planning this job—”

“You
always
say that.”

“I’m always the one who looks after you, Domenico—and besides, I cut my fingers, that guy put up a fight.” Blasej lifted his right, blood-gloved hand. This was the injury he’d received when he’d assassinated the first old guard.

Marco slapped the hand away. “Everybody,
push
! I need to see what’s in there!”

As did I. I am not proud to admit it. I was still sick from the violence I had just witnessed. But I was so damnably curious that it didn’t stop me from walking right up to the coffin and pressing against that slab of marble hard enough that the veins flared out of my arms and my eyes rolled back in my head.

“We’ve got it.” Blasej skidded away as the tumbling cover sent up a white cloud of dust.

Erik bent down to me, hissing, “Be careful. If the stories I’ve read about this thing are true—”

“What could happen?”

“I don’t know yet. Some kind of—”

“Excellent!” Marco blurted. “Look—
look.”

The dust billowed, lightened, cleared. We all inched forward to stare into the coffin.

This dead man had been tortured and starved, it was true.

The brittle, twisted skeleton, some of which remained preserved in the coolness of its tomb, had its skull trapped by a large, glittering, red-gold helmet. From beneath its caul of dust and webs, this hideous egg-shaped cage covered the entire face, leaving only slits for the eyes and the nose. A wide gold band completely covered the mouth. This was the Tantalus mask of Dr. Riccardi’s dinnertime story: The helmet obscured the victim’s entire face, leaving only eye and nose slits so that he could have seen and smelled the fragrant dishes paraded before him in his Venetian cell while he shriveled to death.

“Oh! The Virgin!” Domenico blurted, taking several steps back and crossing himself.

“That gold thing must be worth a lot,” Blasej said. “How do you get it off?”

Marco said, “Just take off the head—but not yet. There’s something else in here that we need.” He looked at me: “What should I be looking for?”

As Erik gripped the sides of the coffin, his eyes searching and scavenging the body for clues, I turned to Marco, spitting, “You’re doing all this because you want to fund another war?

They were just two old men, Marco. The guards—what the
hell
is wrong with you?
Warrior-aristocrats,
I heard you at dinner. You’re as crazy as your father!”

“Watch it, Lola.”

“And all it got him was
dead
!”

Marco’s cheeks trembled. “Yes, you would know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

“He died like a fool—”

“It’s true”—he took a step toward me, then another—“Daddy’s wasn’t quite the hero’s exit.”

“Stay away from her, Moreno,” Erik said in a low voice.