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

by Jane Thornley

  The things she had seen behind the congregation’s back, the many injustices Don Santos permitted in the name of his worldview, had hardened her. Now Sofia would be keeping her under her wing. Once things calmed down, Ilda would inform her grandparents that she would be moving to Madrid.

  “What will we call our anti-Divinios?” I mused. “Does your employer’s organization have a name?”

  “No,” Sofia said, “and we are not an organization but an—how do you say it?—a network. Yes, we are a network.

  “What if we called them de Nuestras Damas or the Damas for short?” Ilda offered.

  “‘Our ladies’? I like it,” I said, since all of the women we had now encountered in history were ladies of the noblest sort. We all agreed but that brought us no closer to the crown.

  “The Damas must have had help,” Sofia said while pondering a sixteenth-century court document she produced on her screen. “Three women: a queen, an artist, and a princess from one of Spain’s ruling houses could not have stolen the crowned head from this poor prince after burial and hidden it somewhere by themselves.”

  “It is not a typically feminine act, for sure. Beheading is a guy thing,” I said, half-jokingly.

  Evan lifted his own battered head. Though the swellings had subsided, he now sported two black eyes along with those pulpy lips. It didn’t make him less attractive. “What if Pérez and his men took the skull and the crown immediately following burial? The king was supposedly so grief-stricken—or guilt-stricken—that he retreated to his El Escorial monastery shortly after the funeral. That left a man with Pérez’s power ample time to perform the distasteful deed.”

  “So you’re thinking that Pérez stole away the head and the crown, maybe to Portugal?” I asked. “He would have had opportunity, especially if the priests of the Royal Monastery of El Escorial where the prince was buried were in league with the Divinios.”

  “Which they probably were.” Evan sat back and tried to cross his arms, found the pressure on his chest too uncomfortable, and returned his hands to his lap. I had managed to convince him to take a couple of my painkillers but otherwise he soldiered on. “But I’m guessing that something happened en route. Perhaps Portugal was his ultimate destination and that Pérez planned to enact some kind of ritual at our altar in Sintra.”

  “But someone interceded, someone working for our Damas?” I asked.

  “Exactly. They must have ambushed his party and stolen the crown somehow, possibly the skull, too. How else can we explain how the crown and the skull became separated?”

  “But who would have the strength to ambush a troop of the king’s guards under Pérez? Not Ana de Mendoza, not even the queen,” Sofia countered. “That would have soon been communicated to the king with untold repercussions.”

  “Wait!” I had been skimming another biography of the Princess of Eboli. “After her husband’s death, Ana retreated to the convent of the Pastrana monastery and stayed there for years before leaving and igniting the supposed affair with Pérez. Did she actually become a nun?”

  “Of sorts, yes,” Sofia said. “It was common for wealthy widows of the day to retire to a convent following a husband’s death, especially to avoid another marriage and to grieve in peace. Ana’s marriage to de Silva, her husband, was reportedly a happy one, or happy enough, and he was King Philip’s chief councillor.”

  “So she may have formed a strong bond with the convent sisters?”

  “Definitely. Both she and her husband had generously provided to the Pastrana convent and monastery.”

  My eyes fixed on hers. “What if the sisters of this convent were Damas’ allies? What if Ana convinced them to help her retrieve this crown and skull?”

  Ilda was on her feet. “The Carmen de Pastrana, founded by Saint Teresa of Jesus!” She was speaking so quickly that the translator app couldn’t keep up. In fact, it garbled the last part.

  “Yes, Ana de Mendoza and her husband were the duke and duchess of Pastrana in Guadalajara where Ana was born as well as great benefactors of the area,” Sofia said, catching Ilda’s excitement. “In 1569, the Princess of Eboli called upon Saint Teresa to found a Barefoot Carmelite convent, and Prince Carlos died in 1568—the timing is very close!”

  “Saint Teresa?” I asked. Sometimes I felt like such a heathen.

  “Saint Teresa!” Ilda said, quickly genuflecting. “Saint Teresa of Jesus!”

  “She was a charismatic religious figure in Spain at the time and still revered today. She held that the Mother Mary must be worshipped as the Mother of God and not just as some holy receptacle,” Sofia said.

  “The sacred feminine again,” Evan commented. “Men have long overlooked, underestimated, and undervalued the power of women.”

  I caught his eye and smiled. “Amen.” Turning back to my comrades I said: “So are we now thinking that our Damas may have included an order of nuns?”

  “Yes, it is possible! It makes sense!” Sofia was now pacing the room, her high heels abandoned for bare feet. “Saint Teresa was a powerful person in the church at the time, respected by many, including brethren, and eventual canonized. If she put her force behind the Damas to stop the Divinios, it would make a powerful obstacle.”

  “And nuns would have had sanctity to travel across the country dispensing assistance to the poor and needy. Travel for them would have been relatively safe in Catholic Spain and Portugal,” Evan added. "They, too, would have had soldiers to guard them and reason to enter a chapel in Portugal to secretly deposit a skull, for instance. No one would question them.”

  “But what about the crown?” I asked. “If the sisters also took back the crown, where would they have hidden it—in Pastrana?” I scrolled through the photos on my tablet to land on the background behind Isabella’s head. “That watchtower must be significant. Do they have them in Pastrana, too?”

  Sofia threw up her hands. “They are everywhere. In Pastrana, yes, here, yes, everywhere, yes!”

  “But with mountains behind?”

  “Yes,” she said, “mountains everywhere.”

  Sometimes history feeds you wisps of information enlivened by the shadows of those who lived long ago. At that moment, we all wanted to grab the past by the throat and demand that it give up its dead, tell us the full story, fill in all those missing pieces. But history, like time itself, speaks in code, leaving us to piece together the best picture we can with what little it offers. We had our Divinio counteroperatives and they had sent us clues but we still could not piece it together. Something was still missing.

  “The hexagonal watchtower,” Sofia mused, “the mountains behind. It is strange to see those arched windows below the roof.”

  I looked up. “Strange, how?”

  She shook her head as if to clear it. “The Moorish influence is everywhere in Spain, either by the original Arabic builders or through their influence on our design, but when I first saw this, I thought maybe it was Guadalest. Still, it is too finished to be Guadalest. The Guadalest castle would have been in ruins even in the fifteenth century.”

  Evan summarized from his computer screen. “El Castell de Guadalest in Valencia province. It existed during the Muslim occupation until the Christian conquest of the thirteenth century when it passed through many hands until destroyed by multiple earthquakes. I see no direct link between that castle and our power women.”

  I gazed down at my own screen, flipping from the painting of Princess Elba by Sofonisba Anguissola to my picture of the hidden carnation. “We’re allowing ourselves to be led down the wrong track,” I said slowly, almost in a trance of concentration. “We’re thinking like men, not women.”

  “How so?” Evan asked.

  “Buildings, dates, rational, linear thought…that is traditionally male thinking. The princess is painted with flowers revealing her femininity at the hands of a female artist. Here she’s vulnerable, unlike all the other formal black-clothed portraits of the princess encased in the armor of court fashion. Sofonisba painted a carn
ation on the Titian, a flower of great importance to Queen Isabella, who must have seemed like the ideal queen in their eyes—unblemished, a regent of the most powerful man of the then world who appeared to have loved her absolutely, the mother of the current king…”

  “The carnation,” Sofia mused, caught in the net of my thinking, “is a symbol of love, of Spain, the flower of God.”

  “And legend says that carnations grew at the Virgin Mary’s feet when she cried at Jesus’s death. And yet it is painted wilting,” Ilda said, “as if it is dying, too.”

  I looked up. “Where would King Charles have planted carnations for his queen after her death—at their castle in Madrid?”

  “The El Escorial palace complex was built by Philip, not Charles,” Evan said. “I believe that a man who loved his queen and wanted to plant something meaningful in her memory would do so at a place special to them both. Charles and Isabella honeymooned in Granada, a honeymoon that lasted much longer than expected since the two were deeply attracted to one another.”

  “Alhambra,” Sofia whispered, her face alight. “In Granada, where Charles initially buried her.”

  “Though Philip eventually had her body transferred to the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in 1574 to rest beside her husband after his monastery and palace compound was finished.”

  “The same place where Prince Carlos was buried,” Evan said.

  “They buried the crown at Alhambra,” I whispered, turning to Evan.

  Evan caught my eye. “When it comes to how a man loves a woman, it helps to think like a man.”

  21

  It was settled: the next day we would travel to Granada, a two-hour drive. We decided it was best that we travel disguised and arrive after nightfall but that meant that Sofia had to find us wigs and a change of clothes by the next morning. She sent Salvi, one of our two guards, to start searching.

  “Are you not staying here for the night?” I asked.

  Señor Barco, who appeared to be in charge of security and had popped in and out throughout the evening, arrived to deliver bottles of water and a box of rolls and cheese that would serve as breakfast. The other guard, Luis, stood posted outside our building.

  “I stay at a hotel nearby. We do not believe the Divinios yet know we are here, but just in case, I will follow my usual pattern. I frequently travel the country to visit our museum and national staff—or did before the pandemic. My presence here would not be unusual but my staying overnight would. Before I part, we must exchange mobile numbers.” Holding her phone, she brought up her contacts. “This is my secure number. Few people have access. Why can I not do an electronic contact transfer?”

  “It’s Evan’s blocking device. Here, let’s exchange the old-fashioned way.” We input our details before she gathered up her purse, stepped into her shoes, and smiled. “I hope you sleep well in Alcázar tonight. There are other guards posted around the complex and the necessary technology to assure your safety. It is best that you do not wander about the property without alerting Señor Barco. He remains on-site.”

  It was only a little after 9:00 p.m., too early to turn in even after the day we’d had. Besides, we were at a castle in Spain. Could I really be expected to ignore that? But my brain was filled with princesses and sisters and a knot of men intent to shore up their power using the bones of a poor, deranged prince.

  Evan had already retreated to his room and I wanted to check on him. After biding good night to Sofia, I dashed down the hall to find him spread out across the bed.

  “Evan,” I whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Let me see your chest.”

  “How I’ve longed to hear those words,” he whispered with a quirk on his bruised lips, “but perhaps my manly abdomen is not currently…at its best.”

  “Oh, stop.” I unbuttoned his shirt, spreading it open to see the manly chest in question, wincing at the sight of the livid bruising spreading down his torso and beneath his trousers. There were scars, too, signs of bullet wounds, maybe even a long-ago knife injury. It looked ghastly but I guessed his impressive musculature had protected his internal organs in the end. “Do you sense any internal bleeding?” I asked. It was all I could do to stifle my shock. “Any injuries I can’t see?”

  He gave me another lopsided smile. “All my parts are still working, I assure you.”

  “I meant internal parts. Did they kick you in the kidneys, for example?”

  “They kicked me…everywhere, but I’ll be fine. You’ve found our Damas, Phoebe.”

  “We found them. Let me ice that bruising at least. I see that Señor Barco has delivered a cooler.” I left his side long enough to fill a zip bag with cubes, wrap it in a cloth, and apply it gently to his chest.

  His hand caught mine as I rested the pack on the worst of the visible swelling. “I’ll be fine. Bruises heal in time. When will yours?”

  It took me a moment to grasp his meaning. I chose my words carefully. “Sometimes a wounded heart takes longer. Noel kicked me in the heart, Evan. I really thought he loved me and I him, but he betrayed me again and again.”

  “Maybe he loved you but didn’t have the fortitude to make you more important…than his cravings and greed,” he whispered. “You need a man who will make you his queen, who will love you absolutely. Halloran was the wrong man, Phoebe. Can you recognize the right one even when he’s been beaten…to a pulp?”

  Oh, God. One hand flew to my mouth like a startled heroine, the other held fast in Evan’s grip. I tugged my fingers away slowly. “It takes time, Evan. It’s too soon for me to fall again.” I couldn’t yet admit the truth: that I had already fallen for him and had been fighting against it for a long time. I just was too cowardly to lower my defenses long enough to risk another shot. “I’m just not ready.”

  “When you are ready…to fall again, let me be the one to catch you,” he whispered.

  I left him to dash down the corridor, stopping halfway to sob into my hands. Suddenly my emotions were welling to the surface, carrying all my anguish and heartbreak with it. My feelings for Evan were in there somewhere stirring things up, tugging at me in powerful ways that I didn’t have the courage to handle right then.

  “¿Que pasa?”

  I looked up to find Ilda gazing at me while the phone in my pocket said, “What’s wrong?” in Evan’s robot voice.

  “Nothing and everything,” I said, the phone translating as I pulled it out. “I’m worried about Evan, that’s all, though I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  “You love him. I understand. He is a strong man who loves you also,” she said with a little smile.

  I was about to deny it but gave up. “It is more complicated than that. I am getting over my last boyfriend who was…a murderous, thieving bastard.”

  “I understand!” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “My boyfriend also. I told him about Dos Santos but he didn’t believe! When the church was closed, the men would gather and then—” she shook her head “—he joined them.”

  “Your boyfriend joined the Divinios?” I couldn’t believe that the translator app had got that right.

  “Don Santos’s guards, yes. Little men, big power.”

  “Was he one of the men I saw today?”

  “Yes.” She held my gaze, fierce and unwavering. “Juan hit me. I had broke up with him but still he hits me.”

  “And your parents and the church permit this?”

  Her gaze lowered. “Both dead. I live with my grandparents. They are good people but believe the church can do no wrong. They knew that Juan hits. They complained and Don Santos visited and quoted them the Bible.”

  “The parts that imply that women must serve men?”

  “Yes! Don Carlos said I was misbehaved. He urged me to marry Juan to be tamed. Marry the man who beats me? Never! I prayed to the Virgin Mary and she has brought me you and Señora Morales.” And with that she genuflected and embraced me. I was so ready for a little personal contact that I hugged her back.

  When w
e pulled away moments later, both our faces were wet. “I’m sorry you have suffered under men,” I began.

  “Many women suffer under men. Not all. Many friends are happy with good men but not me. I will join the sisters and serve God.”

  A statement both rebellious and traditional. I nodded and linked my arm in hers. “Let’s take a walk.”

  We found Señor Barco working at one of the terminals back in our work room. He jumped up to accompany us on our stroll while speaking into his cell phone.

  “Come, I show you the gardens,” he said. “Much of the original destroyed but this they left.”

  He led us under arches and beside huge walls to a large square pool lined with marigolds and orange trees. Somewhere night jasmine bloomed and water tinkled from fountains running down the center of the pool.

  “Very beautiful, yes?” Señor Barco asked.

  “Gorgeous,” I agreed, inhaling the scent of flowers under a balmy starred sky. Gazing around, I could see the deep crenellations and towers spotlit around the property. I thought I heard the faint sound of a flamenco guitar playing on a distant street beyond the walls. And this lovely place had once been the Court of the Holy Offices, the seat of the dreaded Inquisition?

  Señor Barco strolled away to check his phone while Ilda and I stood arm in arm enjoying the warm night. “And here we are in the twenty-first century with a group of holy terrorists scheming to thrive again,” I whispered.

  “My church bears much shame, yes,” Ilda said, “but it is the crime of men, not of God. God holds His hand out for the faithful to carry His word. I will work for the power of good, not evil.”

  “I know you will,” I said.

  “Why is that man on the wall?”

  I followed her gaze to a figure in black dashing across the parapets. Scanning around I said: “Shit! Where is Señor Barco?”