The Crown that Lost its Head: A Historical Mystery Thriller (An Agency of the Ancient Lost & Found Mystery Thriller Book 2)

by Jane Thornley

  “Something like that. This has been going on for centuries with the Divinios waiting for their moment to achieve world dominion—a brotherhood of sorts.”

  “They are always brotherhoods. Sisterhoods have better things to do.”

  “And like most brotherhoods, this one is misogynistic, secretive, and fueled by fanaticism made even more dangerous now that they’ve found their anointed king’s skull. All they need is the lost crown,” I continued.

  “Holy shit.”

  “Aptly put.”

  “Christians?”

  “Hard to grasp but yes.”

  “If you had told me this a few years ago, I would have thought you had a screw loose.”

  “I do rattle sometimes."

  “My mama is a staunch Baptist and nothing gets her goat more than people using Christianity as an excuse for violence and murder. Actually, any religion, for that matter, and most of them have.”

  “And it’s been going on for thousands of years, as you know. This particular sect is similar to all the other fanatical groups who believe everything they do is justified in the name of their beliefs. My brain catches me thinking that surely all that’s in the past but then I see the news and realize it continues on and on.”

  “And men keep clawing their way to power. Reality keeps playing the same old tune.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, shit and damn.” She wiped her mouth with the napkin. “Let’s get the bastards. Wait, I’m vibrating.” She pulled out her phone. “Ev just texted to say that the guys are getting cleaned up, will quickly eat, and are then requested to meet Senhor Anonymous—”

  “Senhor Carvalho.”

  “Him—in a library somewhere.”

  “I know where that is. I’ll just change out of this gown into my own clothes before I rip something.”

  “And I need a shower and a change. I had to pack for you and just let me say that now I’m convinced more than ever that you need a makeover. Loved some of those rags that Nicolina gave you but the rest is just sad, Phoebe, sad.”

  “You just like sparkly things more than I do. Come by my room when you’re ready.”

  Peaches got to her feet. “Hmm,” she said, still studying her phone. “Doesn’t look like the sisterhood is officially invited. The message reads: Rupert, Markus, and I have been invited to take a glass of port with our host in his library.”

  I laughed. “Is this like one of those nineteenth-century gender divisions where the women retire to discuss pretty dresses while the gents retire to the boys’ club to smoke cigars?”

  “And chew away on meatier topics like politics and world order.”

  “Like they didn’t make a mess of that over the centuries,” I said. “I’m sure that’s not the intention here but let’s go bust a party.”

  “Right on.”

  With that, I went to my own room. It only took a few minutes to remove Leonor’s lovely gown—luckily without rips or stress tears—and climb into my own comfortable clean pair of corduroys with a deep green vine-printed long-sleeved shirt. For a moment, I eyed the velvet spread on the bed longingly. Swanning around in velvet had always been one of my childhood fantasies, but I discovered early on that I wasn’t right for the job—too many spillages. At the last minute, I added a pair of green-leaf dangle earrings and swept my unruly locks into a top knot to dial up my elegance factor.

  While Peaches showered, I slipped down the hall toward the men’s rooms. If I wasn’t mistaken, Rupert would have claimed the turret at the end of the corridor, meaning that Evan probably took the room next to his. That left three bedrooms in between. Since two of the unoccupied bedrooms had their doors flung open, it was easy to tell that Markus had been allocated the room next to Evan’s. From some quaint notion of propriety, the women were at one end of the hall, the men at the other. Otherwise, we were kept together on the same floor despite the building’s multiple wings.

  I knocked on the door, hoping that he wasn’t indisposed. It opened immediately on Markus holding his cell phone in one hand and his shirt half-buttoned. A suitcase lay open on the bed behind him and the largest table held the remains of his meal.

  A bread crumb had snagged in his beard like a shell nesting in a bed of seaweed. “Phoebe, hi. I was just about to take a shower.” His round glasses magnified those pale blue eyes under that mop of lank blond hair.

  “May I come in? This won’t take long.”

  He blinked but backed away. “Sure. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  I walked into his room, noting the open laptop on the table near the window. “How long did you know about Jose’s connection with Senhor Carvalho and the truth about the Divinios and when did you plan on telling us?”

  He looked like I’d just smacked him. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, come on, Markus. Nothing irks me more than having my intelligence underestimated. Don’t give me any more reason to distrust you than I already have. I figured out that you knew exactly what you were looking for when you and Jose began investigating that flooded crypt. The only thing you didn’t know in advance was the connection to Prince Carlos, right? That part and the fact that you were being spied on is the only aspect of your story that rings true.”

  He swore, and turned away. “You figured it out sooner than I’d hoped.”

  “Once Senhor Carvalho mentioned that his son was friends with Jose and that the two of them had been helping with the excavations here in Sintra, I got the picture. He also mentioned your name, by the way. Were you involved in that, too?”

  “No, Phoebe. This is my first visit to Sintra, believe me.”

  “And yet I have trouble believing anything you say now. I researched yesterday and discovered your name associated with Doctors Jose Balboa and Ricardo Carvalho a little over a year ago on another forensic investigation in Spain. You’ve been looking for the lost skull and crown for a while, haven’t you?”

  He turned to face me. “All right, yes, but what of it? We didn’t know that Prince Carlos was the Divinios’ supposed king until we found that coffin, but okay, so Jose, Ricardo, and I have been seeking the missing crown and skull for about a year. Now they are both dead. I presume you know that part, too.”

  “Yet you neglected to mention such critical details.”

  “I needed time to grasp the entire background before letting you in on the facts, didn’t I? Besides, what would you have thought if I’d told you that we were really on the trail of a fanatical sect who believed that a crown and a skull held magical powers?”

  “How about informed?”

  “Yes, well, I regret not telling you sooner, all right? I was only interested in locating that skeleton with Jose and Ricardo. Besides, I was sworn to secrecy. Everything that happened this week feels like a tsunami of catastrophes. Once I discovered that I was responsible for alerting the Divinios to the connection with Prince Carlos—that I may even be inadvertently responsible for Jose’s death—I panicked. Besides, I couldn’t risk you refusing to help, could I? Getting involved in this is like signing your own death warrant.”

  “Is that supposed to pacify me? How much does Connie know?”

  His hand chopped the air. “She just thinks I’m off on some kind of Indiana Jones caper. She hopes to do an episode on me when I return.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “And how well do you know Senhor Carvalho?”

  “I don’t. I know of him and he of me, that’s all. I knew the note shoved under my door was from him because references to Bosch became some kind of code between him and Jose. All this was going to come out tonight, anyway. I’ve considered hiding up here in my room in case Evan throttles me.”

  “Maybe I should save him the trouble.”

  He shot me a startled look. “Look, I’m sorry to have kept this from you. It won’t happen again. I was confused, frightened, and didn’t think straight. Let’s just put this behind us and move forward, shall we? God knows we’re going to need to work together if we’re going to find these
bastards before they try to vivisect us or whatever these nutcases do.”

  Charming thought. “Don’t give me any more reason to distrust you going forward.”

  “I assure you I won’t.”

  Turning on my heels, I left the room. From the very beginning, everything about Markus’s behavior had set my teeth on edge. Now more than ever I didn’t trust the man.

  I marched down the hall and knocked on Rupert’s turret door next. The sound of running water told me that he was in the shower, so without giving it a second thought I rapped on the next door over. It swung open immediately on a freshly steamed Evan wrapped in nothing but a towel. Bare muscular chest. Damp hair combed straight back from his forehead. A little scar on the right temple. I stared.

  “Phoebe. Are you all right?"

  I kept my gaze fixed on his eyes—green like sun on agate. I felt my face flush, no doubt wine-induced. “I’m fine,” I blurted. “I just need a minute of your time.”

  “Come in. You can have all the time you need.”

  Maybe it was telling that he said “need” instead of “want” but admittedly want was on my mind. While keeping my eyes averted from any part of the man below the neck, I filled him in on Markus’s duplicity. He swore softly and strolled away toward the bed, which was the only time I allowed myself a moment to appreciate those long muscular legs and the way the damp towel adhered to his body. Yes, I am that weak.

  I tore my gaze away. Books and papers sat stacked by his bed and a laptop was propped on the desk with the remains of his supper neatly piled on a tray by the door. He’d been deep into researching something while multitasking his way through a mental checklist was my guess.

  The scent of Portuguese lemon olive soap suffused the air above a faint layer of the man’s subtle spicy cologne. “I never trusted him from day one,” I said, leaning over to read the top of a stack of photocopies neatly fanned on the bed. “Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s because he seems so weaselly and sweats too much. Or then again, maybe I’ve just gone off archaeologists as a breed.”

  When I turned around, he was standing there wearing a little smile. And just that towel. “Perspiring—that’s as good an indicator of lying or withholding information as any but it could also be caused by fear. He did have killers chasing him at the time.” The man was ex-MI6, remember. “Still, the weaselly part is pure—”

  “Instinct?”

  “Instinct and astute observation. Nevertheless, you know I’ve always appreciated your instincts, Phoebe, as well as just about everything else about you. As for the archaeologist part, I presume you’re referring to Noel. I—”

  “Probably shouldn’t go there,” I finished for him. “Sorry I brought it up. What are all these?” I indicated the printouts on the bed in an effort to change the topic.

  “I had them emailed to me from a librarian friend in Barcelona and printed them up before we left Lisbon. They comprise a fascinating collection of research on Don Carlos. For instance, this one—” he leaned past me and picked up a folder “—describes the early years of the young crown prince.”

  “Written in Spanish?”

  “I can read Spanish, Phoebe,” he remarked, “though reading Portuguese still eludes me.”

  “Give it time.”

  “In any event, these letters and accounts were originally written in archaic Spanish with a smattering of Latin here and there but later translated into modern Spanish by scholars across the centuries.”

  “Do you mind summarizing?”

  “Certainly. This particular paper elaborates upon the young prince’s tendencies. Apparently, he was notoriously self-willed and obstinate, which led to outbursts of bad-tempered violence. For example, following his father’s extended absence in the 1550s, Carlos went into the stable and maimed twenty of the steeds to the point where they had to be put down. One of the letters from the household advisers at the time claimed that Carlos liked to roast small animals alive.”

  I held up my hand. “I get the picture: Don Carlos was a dangerous and sadistic little horror. What else does the research say?”

  Evan stood there with his glasses on the bridge of his nose reading from his sheaf of papers as he’d totally forgotten that he was practically nude. You’ve got to love a man that entranced by his interests and a woman who can appreciate it, aesthetically speaking. “Here’s something else illuminating: the reports indicate that the boy was only interested in food, wine, and women. Apparently, he developed a passion for one of the servants—‘passion’ in this context meaning that he chased the poor maid around the castle in order to force himself upon her—which resulted in him stumbling down a dark stairwell and suffering a massive head injury. That must be the skull contusion Markus referred to that we saw in the X-rays. In any case, the injury was so severe that his brain began to swell, causing him to lose his sight in both eyes.”

  “Any mention of his briefly betrothed Elizabeth of Valois or any other women in his life?”

  “Valois is mentioned only as being his fiancée before his father the king decided to marry her himself. There is some rumbling that the king feared his son was not suitable for marriage.”

  “Which he wasn’t, and seemed truly unable to form bonds with any person.”

  He looked up. “Shall I continue?”

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  He grinned and pushed his glasses farther up his nose. “Not in the least.” I was certainly warm enough.

  “Then carry on.”

  “Right.” He returned to translating the document while passing me a sketch of three men standing around a prone man who appeared to be having his head drilled. “This is the treatment for the prince’s head injury.”

  “Trepanning.”

  “Yes, you know of it. This is a medieval illustration of the procedure showing a surgeon boring a hole into the skull to relieve pressure on the cranium wall.”

  “It’s actually the forbearer of a similar procedure still in use today.” I remarked.

  “Yes, indeed. This account states that the royal surgeon attempted this on Don Carlos without success and by all accounts the court believed the prince was ultimately on death’s door. King Philip rushed home to the castle.” He paused to gaze at me over the top of his glasses. “Here’s where it gets interesting.”

  “It’s all interesting.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” He flashed me a grin and continued. “So, Carlos’s father, the king, spent his days and nights in prayer for his poor son while calling in all the healers across the land. Nothing worked. The king grew desperate and in a last attempt to save his son allowed the Franciscan fathers to bring in the remains of the holy Fray Diego, who had died a century before. His bones reportedly bore healing properties.”

  “A skeleton?” I asked.

  “A holy mummy that was placed in bed beside the prince, who was raging in delirium by then.”

  “If he wasn’t before, he soon would be after. Sleeping with a corpse would do it for me.”

  “The account reads that Don Carlos dreamed of the blessed Diego that very night and woke the next morning cured. Remember what I’ve said many times about the devout Catholic’s belief in the power of bones and the holy dead?”

  “I remember very well. And the mummy thing really happened?”

  “It’s all in these accounts mentioned multiple times by various courtiers and by the king himself. This is a faith that believes in miracles, Phoebe.”

  “All faithful believe in miracles. I know that you were raised Catholic but I really don’t get the holy bones concept.”

  “And yet you believe in faith in general?”

  “Of course—in deep spiritual conviction, just not on bones infused with magical properties.”

  “Magic and faith brew from a similar fount, Phoebe,” he said softly.

  I was leaning over his bicep, staring down at the printouts of cursive script and typed translation. That scent of lemon and soap was so heady my head spun.

 
“I’d better let you finish getting dressed,” I said, pulling away.

  “But there’s more.”

  “Another time.” I backed away toward the door.

  “In the meantime, I’ll pay a quick visit to Markus on my way to the library.”

  “And do what?” I asked.

  “I’ll put him through my own internal lie detector test,” he said with a smile.

  “Good.” I took a deep breath. “One more thing and speaking of holy bones: we are on the trail of a group called the Divinios. Have you heard of them?”

  A tremor of shock crossed those chiseled features. “The Divinios? Yes, of course I’ve heard of them. The brotherhood has worked to undermine the European governments for centuries.”

  “They reportedly began in the court of Emperor Charles and grew in strength during the years of his son, Philip.”

  “So that’s what’s behind all this.”

  It was growing increasingly warm in there. “I have never bought into any of those conspiracy theories but I may just have to change my mind. It makes sense that events like this holy cure of Prince Carlos by this dead saint’s bones further fueled the Divinios.”

  He was staring into space, deep in thought.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I’m sure we’ll have lots to talk about when we get together in Senhor Carvalho’s library later so I’ll leave you to finish getting dressed. Bye.” I practically launched myself through the door, my face flaming, my head crammed with images of holy bones, damaged princes, and a half-naked man.

  I returned to my quarters just minutes before Peaches swept in wearing one of her long purple wrinkle-proof stretch numbers with the matching spandex and sequined bolero jacket.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

  “Nothing, why?”

  “Your face is red.”

  “It’s the wine.”

  “Yeah, well, you’d better lay off that stuff. You know you’re a lightweight in the drinks department. Okay, so how’d you get a turret room?” she exclaimed, looking around.

  “I’m a princess obviously.” I shrugged.