by Mari Carr
Tristan sighed. “I still don’t understand.” He wished that once, just once, he could go for a whole day without being reminded just how outclassed he was. Members of the Masters’ Admiralty were chosen because of both who they were and what they could become. Except in his case. Who Tristan was when he’d joined wasn’t anything to brag about. But he’d changed since then. He strived to live up to the ideals of a knight, to be Tristan Knight.
But that couldn’t hide the fact that he hadn’t had a fancy classical education, or that he didn’t come from a long line of scholars, artists, or businessmen.
All that meant was he had no idea why James and Sophia, both legacies, were grinning at each other as if they’d just decoded the map to El Dorado.
“Obols were coins used in ancient Greece, and again in Rome, though not as widely. Think of obols the way you would, say, a penny.”
“An American penny?”
James pointed at Tristan with a breadstick. “That’s just it. The word ‘penny’ is used in many different countries. What you did was right. You were specific—an ‘American Penny.’”
Sophia took over. “The, the…what is the word? The criminal made sure we would know that the ancient coins were obols by including the modern coin.”
She raised her glass in a toast. “Intelligente, Mr. Rathmann. I would not have seen that.”
“Mask, then obol,” Tristan said. “What’s the last set?”
James’s smile vanished. “This one is both more obvious and more obscure.”
Tristan gave up. He knew it was bad manners, but he planted his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. “Someday. Someday someone will give me a straight answer.”
James clapped him on the shoulder. “Not today.”
“Of course not.” Tristan sat up, reminded himself he was a knight, and looked at James. “What’s the deal with coins seven, eight, and nine?”
“They were all issued by the Vatican.”
James had mentioned that in the cave, but the implications of that started to sink in. Tense silence fell over the table. A log in the fireplace snapped, the sound like a crack of gunfire. Sophia and James both jumped, and Tristan’s fingers hurt, he was gripping the hilt of his sword so hard.
“The Vatican,” Sophia breathed. She crossed herself.
“And you’re Catholic.” Tristan remembered her comment from the car.
Sophia shrugged. “I’m Italian.”
James raised his eyebrows. “I’m Catholic.”
“If the church had something to do with this…” Tristan let the statement hang, unfinished.
The Masters’ Admiralty had been founded after the Black Plague, and one of the most important roles of the organization after its inception was to balance the influence of the church. Without the Masters’ Admiralty, the rulers of Europe would have ended up ceding their power to the church, and what was now dozens of different nations would have merged into an all-powerful Holy Roman Empire.
It had taken nearly a hundred years for the church to figure out who the Masters’ Admiralty were, though at the time they’d had another name—the Illuminati. The way Tristan had heard it, many of the founding members had been among the last handful of the remaining Illuminati.
The relationship between the church—first only the Catholic Church, and later many of the Orthodox churches—and the Masters’ Admiralty had existed in a state of tense detente.
“If the church has something to do with this,” Sophia said, “the time of peace is over.”
Tristan stiffened. “You think it would come to that?”
“Yes. Not war as we know it now—not tanks and planes—but assassinations, sabotage.” She shook her head. “My brother would…it would be a hard time for the security officers and for the knights of Rome…and the other territories.” She looked at Tristan. “I will pray that we are wrong.”
James shook his head. “I wish it were different. I will look at the coins again. We know what they are, but we still do not know their meaning.”
“What do you need?” Sophia rose as she spoke. “Cotton gloves?”
“Yes, and a piece of felt if you have it. I have a small piece in my bag. White lights.”
“I’ll get your bag from the car.” Tristan rose.
“Tristan,” James said. “I hope I’m wrong.”
“Are you?”
“About where the coins came from? No.”
“If I am needed to fight, then I will fight.” Tristan nodded once and walked out of the sitting room.
He kept his head high and did his best to ignore the dread knotting his stomach.
Chapter Five
James paused to stretch his back. Sitting hunched over the table was making every muscle in his lower back ache. His leg felt stiff, which wasn’t exactly news, but he should probably get up and walk around.
It was full night now. They’d left the curtains open so they could see the stars and the rolling Italian countryside. Sophia had spoken with her brother an hour ago, letting him know that the coins indicated a tie to the Vatican. If anyone had the ability to find out information from the Masters’ Admiralty’s oldest adversary, it would be the security officers and knights of Rome.
James ignored the way his fingers trembled with adrenaline. The need to keep going, to learn every detail of every coin, was riding him. He had a sickening feeling that if he missed something, people might die. Intellectually, he knew that was absurd, but emotionally, he was convinced that if he screwed up, people he cared about, people he knew, would die.
People like Tristan Knight.
It was times like these when he missed rugby—there was nothing like a good scrum. Pitting his body mass and force of will against that of his opponents, while his teammates dug in beside and around him, was the ultimate in aggression and stress relief. When he’d been younger, he’d needed that outlet.
He’d had a chip on his shoulder since he’d first realized how different he was from the other boys at the private school he’d attended in London. Most of them were, like him, the children of rich and powerful families. But they’d almost all been pale and slim. In comparison, he’d been a hulking, dark-haired and dark-skinned fish out of water. It didn’t matter that his grandfather had been a Samoan king, his grandmother the daughter of an English peer who went to live in the South Pacific at a doctor’s suggestion due to James’s grandmother’s bad lungs. It didn’t matter that James’s father, the youngest of three sons, had decided to move to England, and in doing so, accepted his legacy membership to the Masters’ Admiralty.
All that had mattered was that he was too big, too dark. There’d been a few years where he’d dreaded going to school, though he was a good student. But in time he’d found a way to be comfortable in his own skin, and sports had helped him figure out who he was. He’d floundered for a bit after his early retirement thanks to his busted knee. While convalescing, he’d gone back to a hobby from his youth—collecting coins. It had started when he’d found an old box containing a handful of Roman coins that had been discovered during an excavation on one of his family’s estates.
That had led to an interest in archaeology, one encouraged by both his medical team and his family. An archaeology team from Bristol had an outstanding request to excavate a site on property owned by his uncle. His uncle had agreed to let them excavate, if James could be part of the team. James hadn’t wanted to go, sure that the “real” archaeologists would resent having him forced upon them. He’d earned his fortune and made a name for himself in rugby—and that success was all his own, not a byproduct of his family’s wealth and connections.
Boredom made him swallow his pride. There was only so much TV he could stand to watch.
He’d been welcomed into the dig team with open arms. He hadn’t realized that most archaeology digs were staffed by students and volunteers, with only the leader of the dig team an actual PhD archaeologist. The digging itself had been a bit hard on his still-recovering knee, but h
e’d loved sitting on the ground, bad leg stuck out to one side, carefully scraping away thin layers of dirt and cataloguing what was found.
They’d discovered bits of decayed metal and three coins. Not much for a whole summer’s worth of work, but he’d loved it.
After that, he’d applied to any dig, accepting offers from the famous digs in Greece that had waiting lists several years long, to smaller digs in Turkey and Morocco. He’d done eight digs over the course of several years, taking university classes along the way to learn more about the background and theory of archaeology.
He’d unearthed things that hadn’t been in human hands for millennia, met people, made friends, and discovered what it was he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
He’d gotten a master’s, considered going for a PhD, but stopped when he realized that his favorite things were coins. No matter what they found at dig sites—including a baby skeleton in a jar, which had been seriously interesting—the coins were what fascinated him. He’d stepped back from a career as an archaeologist and focused on coinage.
From there, his interest had expanded into more than just coins, including the idea of money and payment. Numismatics wasn’t exactly a huge field, so after attending lectures and reading everything he could get his hands on, he’d gone looking for more—more to learn, more to know. Within six years of his retirement from rugby, he’d had a paid part-time assistant curator position at a small museum focused on Roman Britain—the same museum where the three precious coins they’d found on his first dig were displayed.
His book, a small volume on the few Roman coins produced in England, had been a bestseller. He had no illusions about why that was—the novelty factor of a former world-famous rugby star writing a stuffy academic book had captured the public’s imagination.
A year later, he’d gotten a call from the British Museum, offering him a position. He’d figured it was a publicity stunt on their part, but his pride wasn’t greater than his desire to dig around in the museum’s massive collection of coins. Much to his surprise, it hadn’t been a stunt, and the director of the museum hadn’t even known he’d played rugby.
All of that had led him here—to a beautiful villa outside of Rome, a table full of coins…and a stomach-churning anxiety that he wasn’t good enough, didn’t know enough, to help catch the killer who had tortured those poor people in the cave.
He walked over to the buffet, where dessert and coffee were laid out. This time they’d seen the people who came to clear away the food, so he’d had to abandon the idea that the castle was run by sentient pieces of furniture and objets d’art.
He took one of the demitasse cups of espresso. It was lukewarm, but still delicious. The anxiety faded, and his shoulders relaxed. In place of anxiety, he felt rather fatalistic. Life’s turning points were usually identified in hindsight—that was when it was easy to see that failures had actually been the start of new opportunities, to realize that success wasn’t necessarily an identifiable milestone, but a feeling. He’d felt this before, during a match when he’d known a recruiter from the All Blacks was there, and though he’d said that was a “good opportunity,” he’d known it would be the start of something for him.
His life had taken strange twists and turns, and he couldn’t help but feel like all those changes in direction and unexpected corners had led him to this moment. That if he didn’t use everything he knew, everything he’d learned, to not only help catch a killer, but prevent a war, it would all have been wasted.
Time to get back to it. James set down the espresso cup and rolled his shoulders. Placing one hand on the wall, he lifted his right leg off the floor and squatted, using only his bad leg. Muscles and tendons screamed, and he gritted his teeth. The pain did more to wake him up than the espresso did.
He forced himself to squat three more times, trying to loosen the joint so that he could resume his seated position.
He turned to see Tristan watching him. The knight’s hands were braced on the arms of the chair he’d taken beside the fire, as if he were poised to stand. Concern marked his face, his golden eyebrows drawn together. Tristan really was handsome. If children were asked to draw a knight, Tristan was who they would draw.
Interesting then, the moments of insecurity James had sensed in him.
Sophia sat at a second table the quiet, scarily efficient servants had brought in. On it lay two paintings and several artifacts, including a jeweled box. Both their tables were draped in clean white fabric, though James had added a square of black felt over the white tablecloth. A lamp with a bright “daylight” bulb sat on his table, and the coins gleamed with the muted glow of old metal.
“James?” Tristan’s voice was pitched low, so as not to disturb Sophia, who was carefully examining the treasure box.
“I’m fine.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“No. I need to get back to work.”
“It’s late. Perhaps you want to get some sleep? I can call a car to take us back to Rome.”
Sophia looked up. “No, no, no. You will stay here. You should get some sleep.”
“I want to keep working.” James resumed his seat, making sure he didn’t wince as he did so.
Sophia looked between him and Tristan. “You have done so much already. Alerted us to the possibility of the church’s involvement.”
“There’s more here. Some of these coins are rare, and all of them are valuable. There is more to the message than just the church.” James inhaled through his nose. “I should have waited until I knew more. Shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You did what was right.” Tristan rose and joined James at his table. “We needed whatever information you might have, as soon as possible.”
James looked down at the twenty-seven coins he’d lined up. Three sets of three for each of the stacks, the message repeating in each.
“Talk me through it,” Tristan said.
James grunted and passed him some cotton gloves. “Put these on.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Not professor. Not yet. I haven’t finished my PhD. Can’t teach yet.”
“You’re getting your PhD in, uh, old money?”
James caught the dubious look Tristan was giving the coins and laughed. The laughter helped ease some of the tension from his shoulders and back.
“The first three coins in each stack are masks.” One by one, James picked up the coins and handed them to Tristan.
“It’s obvious enough on the modern ones, but,” Tristan held up a coin that was, conservatively, 2400 years old, “how do you know this is a mask?”
“Years of study, the scholarship of generations of numismatists who came before me.”
“Ah. Well.” Tristan set the coin down. “First clue, masks.”
“Next, we have obols. In each stack, there was one modern obol.”
“And what does that mean, that they’re obols?”
“Death,” James and Sophia said at the same time.
Tristan’s eyebrows rose. “And you both knew this and didn’t tell me.”
James winced. “Sorry, I…” I thought you’d know. He stopped the words in time, remembering the way Tristan’s accent had slipped. James wasn’t such a pompous ass that he assumed Tristan’s accent meant he was uneducated, but the accent, with a few other things, were possibly an indicator of a vast difference between James’s and Tristan’s upbringings. “You mean normal people don’t automatically know what an obol is and therefore what it’s meant to symbolize?” He put enough fake incredulity into his voice to make it obvious it was a joke.
“I’m normal,” Sophia protested without looking up.
“Of course, Principessa,” Tristan murmured.
James snorted out a laugh. “How’s your Greek mythology?”
Tristan sighed. “Pretend I know nothing.”
“In Greek mythology, when a person died, their soul had to cross the river Styx before reaching the underworld.”
Tristan
frowned. “There was a boat or something?”
James grinned. “The price of a ride across the river was two obols, paid to Charon, the ferryman.”
“Obols were dead man’s money?”
“Yes, though they were a widely used monetary denomination. Actually, originally, obols weren’t coins, but a bundle of—”
Tristan held his hand up. “No. Focus.”
James humphed. Obols were fascinating. Conceding that Tristan probably had a point, he contented himself with planning a nice obol lecture for their plane ride back to London.
“Masks and death. That’s what we have so far,” Tristan summed up.
“And finally, the last three coins in each set. All issued by the Vatican.”
“Besides that, is there anything similar?”
“They all bear a Christogram, which is hardly unexpected.” James started sliding the coins around gently, grouping them together. “Of the nine Vatican coins, six of them have the Christogram of the Society of Jesus—the Jesuits. Two of them are modern coins with the profiles of modern Popes on them, though both of the modern coins are blackened.”
James stopped speaking, staring at the coins. There was something there.
Tristan picked up the coin bearing Pope John Paul II’s image. “It looks like this was intentionally damaged.”
James picked up the final Vatican coin. This one was black and green with age and oxidization. One side bore the Greek letters IHS, but none of the other markings of the Jesuit Christogram. The opposite side was the silhouetted image of a man.
No. Wait.
James lifted his magnifying glass. Not just a man. A monk. The tonsure was there, if hidden under layers of grime.
James set down the coin and grabbed his laptop off the seat of the third chair.
“Jay-sus bloody Christ,” Tristan breathed. “Does this mean they’re going to kill the Pope?”
Sophia gasped then raced over, dropping into the chair the laptop had been occupying a moment before. “What did you just say?”