The King's Gold (28 page)

The two men and woman are of Indian extraction, say authorities, perhaps of Guatemalan or Mexican heritage. The only description the police have disclosed is that the fugitives are “dark-skinned” and “plump,” and are believed to be hiding in Florence or Siena.

In possibly related news, two or three South Americans reportedly broke into the Sienese Duomo yesterday evening and destroyed the famous “she-wolf” mosaic. In a daring move, they darted into a hidden trap door in the Duomo floor and disappeared. Experts in medieval architecture restoration have been called onto the scene...

Erik stood up and began to swiftly sweep all of our papers and books into my bag, saying in a falsely calm singsong: “Oh, dear, tra la la, let’s not draw attention to ourselves, but something tells me that we’re the swarthy fatties the little newscaster lady is blabbering about—”

“At least they think we’re in Tuscany,” I whispered, darting my eyes around to the drinkers who were fixated on the television screen, where the soccer match had replaced the news anchor. “No one here is even looking at us funny. Their descriptions couldn’t be vaguer—or more wrong. I’m not plump. Marco’s not plump. And you’re
robust—
you’re...manly—”

“I
know,”
he said, without missing a beat. “Damned racial profiling—they forgot to mention my ethereal sensuality. But just in case, I’d rather not stay around right after they’ve announced our APB.”

“Just one second—I have to leave a note for my sister. I just hope she sees it here. I don’t want to give it to the manager—just in case he does get suspicious.”

I scribbled a message for Yolanda on the other side of the paper she’d left for me and left it on the table:

4:00 Y— Gone to Ostia Antica —L

Erik hustled me out the door, bundled us into our car, and then we sped away down the skinny Vespa-crazed streets of Rome.

“Where did you tell her we were going?”

“Okay, in the interests of full disclosure, I just have to say that when I met you, the idea that I would be running from Italian police was really
very
much not in my career plan,” Erik told me as he hunched over the wheel of our (Sienese landlord’s now basically stolen) silver Fiat and rocketed past an endless tidal wave of tourists, Peruvian street musicians, and locals cramming the art-stuffed streets. He was lavishly perspiring. “I know I came off as a big old macho buccaneer back then, but really, I
wasn’t
. It was all an act. I was a poindexter. And if I’m now galloping around like Sancho Panza it’s because you, woman, have corrupted me.
But
, that being said—”

“When I met you, you were having affairs with something like ten women at UCLA alone—”

“Yes,
sexually
I was very impressive but otherwise, in terms of dashing around and having adventures and searching for treasure and getting into horrid kung fu matches and poisoning Bosnian or whatever assassins with long-buried booby-trapped emeralds, and feeling my eyebrows go all crispy in towering infernos—no.”

“Go left, go left again. Go right here.”

In one hand, I had Marco’s copy of the
Rough Guide to Rome
, and in the other, Sofia’s diary, both of which I had pulled out of my bag. The car swerved and spun on the route I traced out on the guidebook map while trying not to head-bang into the dashboard.

“Erik, I know it’s been awful, I’m so sorry I dragged you here!”

He blew out a big blat of air. “I think you’re forgetting that I would have packed myself into a FedEx box to get the next flight to Rome. Of
course
I came to Italy! You’re here! Where you are, I am.
That’s
not even a debate. And let me finish—that’s not what I’m saying.”

“This morning, when you couldn’t sleep, in the pension, in Siena—I could see that you’re really struggling with—what happened.”

“Look. I’ll admit, ever since the whole Blasej...thing I’ve been feeling strange, or something.”

“Tell me about
strange or something.”

“Uh, I’m not quite sure. Sort of terrible. Sort of like maybe I’m actually not that great of a person after all? Either that, or I’m maybe
becoming
somebody mean and violent and horrible, and maybe there’s no difference between me and the Morenos, and somebody
should
probably just lock me up away somewhere—”

“
That’s
not true!”

“Right. Right. I know that’s right. It was self-defense? Right? I think. What I do know is that it’s probably
really
better if I don’t talk about that part too much, and just race along here...wherever we’re going. Because what I’m trying to say is, I’m glad I’m here with you.”

“You are?”

“Yes. I just want to tell you that before we get nabbed by Smokey. And if I work on my selective amnesia, even I can still see that this is all very weirdly amazing. With the crypts and medals and scary hidden combustible alchemy labs, and everything. It’s an archaeologist’s dream! Except for the depressing death part! So yes, I’m glad I’m here. Almost as glad as
you
are.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean. I mean that I know that you’ve been having an absolute blast ever since you got here, Lola—I can see it. You’re having the party of your life.”

I watched the manic streets whiz by. Was he onto something? Had I been having a high old time of it ever since I was abducted in the Red Lion by mercenaries?

“Oh, God, you’re right,” I wailed. “Except when the guards got killed.”

We looked at each other with our sweaty faces and bulging eyes, and Erik started cackling.

“See what I mean? Freak!”

“Oh, my, oh, my, oh no, agh...,” I moaned. “It’s true—I’m like the happiest I’ve ever been, and we’re runaways, hoodlums, on the lam, delinquents, going to the dogs, up the creek, and
my father is going to wig out when he finds out about Tomas—
”

“All right, all right. Don’t pitch a fit.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, rubbing my forehead. I tried to work out the reasons that I was so hell-bent on solving Antonio’s riddle when I could simply go home, get married, and forget all about Aztec treasure and reanimated dads. As the Fiat continued to skid down Roman roads, a familiar but still very disturbing idea that perhaps I am not normal flitted through my mind: I was thirty-three and had whiled away my best childbearing years between the pages of books, and had recently merrily skedaddled through flames to recover a letter written by a dyspeptic Medici.

We already had three dead bodies in our wake and were wanted by the police. Whereas I should have been busy sneaking Erik to safety over the French border, then dashing home to live a balanced nuptial life, I instead remained fixated on...yes, discovering the possible site of Antonio’s next clue. The medal. The third hidden sign. The
invisible city.
From my recent research, I thought it might be found in an ancient and totally fabulous Roman ruin where il Lupo and his witch-wife, Sofia, had conducted secret, magical rites: Ostia Antica.

“Lola, Lola,” Erik was saying.

“Huh?”

“You’re thinking about the riddle again, aren’t you?”

“Ah...
no.
No! I think we should talk more about what you’re going through.”

“I already said I don’t want to; it’s no good. Seriously, tell me what you’re thinking; it’s better that way. Just tell me what’s next.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Yes, whatever! I’m
sure.”

We quarreled about this for another one or two minutes before I suddenly blurted: “Okay...
turn left here.
” The car careened onto a highway that led out of the center of Rome. “First thing, you’ve got to call out if you see anybody selling those purple flowers we were talking about. Or if you see them growing on the side of the road.”

“
Where
are we going?”

I rustled the books in my hands. “Well, you see, I
was
reading—”

“Ye-es.”

“Sofia’s diary. And I think I figured out where the invisible city is. Let me read you the passage...I was looking at in the bar before—”

“We showed up on
Italy’s Most Wanted.”

“Yes.”

I paged through the journal, until I found the cunning entry I had in mind. This described a scandalous witchcraft ceremony in the deep lair of a ruined Roman village called Ostia Antica. The account contained, as well, a treasure hoard of codes, cues, and signs that I had just now interpreted in a hot—and perhaps too hasty—passion.

“Just listen to
this:

Rome, April 1540

Tonight, I held the Holy Rite of Naming, wherein witch-acolytes receive their Secret magical names in what is supposed to be a very beautiful sacrament, complete with dancing, conjuring, and the ecstasies of the Strega’s Flying Charm.

I orchestrated the ritual in one of the most powerful pagan sites I have ever set foot upon. It is at Ostia Antica, the old miller’s town on the outskirts of Rome. In the months that Antonio and I have lived here, I have assembled a Sacred Circle of Baronesses, Judges, Infantas, Midas-wealthy merchants—and even one Cardinal Pietro Borodoni, who has permitted us to indulge in the Old Religion only after paying over Six Chests full of Antonio’s Gold, with which the Church is to gild the Colossus that Michelangelo will soon work upon, the tomb of St. Peter.

Five of us crept beneath Ostia Antica’s surface, to the underground bathhouse of Mithras, the Sun God who the Persians claim created the world by killing a sacred Bull. Antonio was in a rare jolly mood, dressing for the occasion in his green, gold-embroidered coat; I had him take this expensive article off when he kindled for us a small fire, upon which I threw the sorcerous blooms that give witches the Power of Flight.

Around the sparks the coven danced, laughing.

“Before we begin, we must thank our good Cardinal Pietro,” said I, gesturing toward the priest. “For it is only by the virtue of his Grace that the Old Ways may still be observed in Rome.”

“Am I the Rock upon which you build your church, my dear?” the Cardinal asked.

“Is that not blasphemy?” inquired cheery Signora Canova, a wealthy merchant’s wife.

“It is merely a double pun upon the Cardinal’s name, Pietro,” Antonio offered. “And of puns, I always approve.”

“No, you ninny—I’m talking about the Bible,” Signora Canova chattered.

“I learned it when I was a tot! About the Saint! Diddle, daddle, what was it? Something about Christ saying Peter was like a rock, or that a rock was like Peter, or anyhow that they had a great deal in common, I can’t remember—”

“That’s Matthew 16,” the Cardinal began twattling. “‘And I say also to thee, That thoust art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’”

“Do shut up,” said the Baron Modigliani, who was anxious for Fornication state of the Ritual to begin, so that he might sink his own Word into that of Signora Canova. “Signora Medici, please begin.”

I stood before the flames and unfurled a parchment. This paper looked quite empty—but, upon my incantation, it would reveal Signs most Secret and Dangerous.

“Arise, arise!” cried I. “My Witches Fair! Your true names are written upon the fires. Take your New Title and ascend the Air!”

The parchment glowed before the flame; my patrons stood before it, mesmerized.

Then one by one the mysterious Ciphers appeared on the page.

“Black-eyed Hecate,” I shrieked, reading out the witch-name of Signora Cavona, who was swooning from rapture.

“Actaeon of the Hounds,” I shouted, branding our troublesome Cardinal, as a way of Warning what he might expect should his greed wax too great.

“Lusty Pan,” I sang, finding a singularly accurate moniker for a promiscuous Baron.

“Most excellent,” he replied.

The drugs worked: Within minutes, our feet had lifted from the ground.

We danced as pixies in the aerosphere, whilst the firelight danced upon the Bath’s red and blue water.

“How utterly amusing, my darling,” Antonio chortled, flapping his arms, as merry as I’d ever seen him.

But then my magick turned against me.

I should have foreseen it. A Sudden understanding of Reality is one of the gifts of the Flying Charm, and whilst my witches gazed upon my chuckling husband, their senses cleared to the degree of Revelation: in that instant they knew Antonio the Wolf’s most secret, most lethal Name, which I never would have dared to write upon that parchment.

“You beast!” they cried. “You _________ !”

They screamed foul profanities at him. The words entered my husband’s ears like poisoned darts, infecting him with perilous melancholy.

His metal began to transform.

His claws extended; his face shadowed; his fangs bared; he wept & roared like a Creature from the underworld. We came tumbling to the ground.

When we rose to our feet, my witches would not meet my eyes.

“It matters not at all,” they stuttered, while he shivered before them. “I had heard, anyway, that Antonio was somewhat odd.” “We’ll remain friends, of course! We will not think any less of him, certainly.” “This is a mere inconvenience; it changes nothing, my dear Sofia.”

I did not show them my own terror, and laughed along.

Tonight, I have already begun to gather together what precious belongings we can easily carry should we need to travel, to Spain, perhaps, or Venice: These are our most costly clothes, books, the Cartoons & paintings & idols, along with the Treasure. The rest will be picked over by vultures & scattered.

My Witches now know Antonio’s Secret and over us it will give them an extraordinary power.

Yes, with such knowledge, they could as good as kill us...

Erik and I exited our Fiat, wandering into the tumble-down ruin of the southwest Roman town described by Sofia in her diary, which was sited off the green mouth of the Tiber. Millers and craftsmen raised Ostia Antica in the fifth century B.C. Today its pink brick buildings had eroded into the softness of old bones, surrounded by sun-struck grasses, marigolds, and poppies.

“The book says it was a popular site in the sixteenth century.” Erik paged through our copy of
Rick Steves’ Italy
. “Fortune hunters dug around here. Aristocrats held séances and debauches in the mineral baths.”