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

by Jane Thornley

  “But surely he would have preserved some of this original beauty?”

  “Yes, so I think. Charles appreciated the art of the Islamic conquerors if not their religion. He did not deface the inscriptions. There was respect.”

  I stood directly in front of her, fixing her dark eyes in mine. “Think, Sofia. It’s 1526. The royal honeymooners are staying here. They stroll the gardens together, and Charles is eager to show his bride the most beautiful places. What would have impressed her most?”

  She snapped her fingers. “Follow me.”

  We crossed the pavement, traversed a short hall, went down many stairs, and entered a porticoed courtyard carved of creamy filigreed stone so intricate it could have been lace. “Oh,” I marveled.

  “The Patio of the Lions, built during the rule of Muhammed V, 1362 to 1391,” Sofia said, spreading her arms. “Emperor Charles thought this very beautiful. He would have brought his queen here.”

  I gazed around. But everything in this stunningly gorgeous place was tiled or of carved marble, including the round basin featuring the marble lions that gave the patio its name. All of it looked original. “But would there have been plants here?”

  “Probably once but they are lost now. Come, we go to the Generalife where the rulers of Granada once took a rest from work in their gardens.”

  We dashed under deeply embossed ceilings with Arabic script carved into the stone and stepped through an arch into a long garden with a central water feature running its length and plumes of water tinkling into the channel every few feet.

  Ilda exclaimed: “So beautiful!”

  “Yes, the Patio of the Irrigation Ditch—not a very romantic name, I know. These fountains were in the Jardines Altos del Generalife here even in the fifteenth century. It is the brilliant engineering of the Arabs to feed water down from the hill to work the fountains and gardens at Alhambra. Once there would have been flowers and fruit trees but today our gardeners have planted mostly myrtle hedges to line the water.”

  I nodded and stepped forward, turning around until I caught sight of the hexagonal watchtower far in the distance. I positioned myself in the same manner as Isabella had stood and checked over my shoulder to see if it matched. It didn’t—too far away.

  Across the tiles, Evan stood near the myrtle hedge doing the same. “We can barely see the tower,” he remarked.

  “And no mountains,” Ilda added.

  “These buildings are eighteenth century in origin,” Sofia said, indicating the comparatively plain white stucco buildings running on either side. “Only the arches at both ends are original.”

  Maybe I caught a flicker of movement in one of porticoed balconies at one of those ends but couldn’t be certain. Every shadow moved in this place, a factor of the breeze and the spotlights casting patterns on the stone.

  “Even if they weren’t there, the angle still wouldn’t have been right,” Evan was saying. “The tower is shown behind her right shoulder.”

  “Come,” Sofia beckoned, “we try another.” We dashed back through the portico, up more stairs, along a walkway under trees with glimpses of the city far below, and through an arched door into another courtyard.

  “Here we come to the Court of the Sultana’s Cypress Tree, Patio del Ciphers de la Sultana. In Isabella’s time there would be this central pond and inside that pond another. Charles marveled again at the engineering and there you see the Water Stairway at the end, the oldest stairway in these gardens. It existed in the Muslim period.”

  I stepped forward and stared. As enchanted as Isabella must have been to see those three flights of stone stairs rising up amid a tunnel of trees with water flowing down either side or the square pools with their treed islands, the tower was not visible in this section, either. I closed my eyes to hear the fountains tinkling, the nightingales calling.

  “No,” I whispered. “She is standing high up but not outside. On a balcony beneath an arch with the mountains and watchtower behind her.” Spinning to face Sofia, I added: “She was pointing down to the garden with her right hand, not standing in the garden.” I brought up my photo of the painting and showed it to her while looking back to the main courtyard where water ran in a rectangular pattern around two islands of trees and flowers.

  Ilda, standing behind her, reached over and took my phone and posed exactly like Isabella. “Alli arriba,” she said, pointing behind her.

  We all turned to gaze up at the covered porticoed walkways open on both sides, one of which overlooked the garden.

  “Would that have been there in Isabella’s time?” Evan asked.

  “Yes, but not like that. It has been much restored,” Sofia told us. “Follow me.”

  In minutes, we had climbed a stone staircase and stood in the open corridor scanning both sides. Opposite the garden, the illuminated guard post could be seen in the distance with the darkened mountains beyond.

  Ilda, still holding my phone, posed again, her right hand pointing down toward the garden. “¡Hir!” she whispered.

  Evan followed the direction her index finger pointed, using his phone to beam a red laser line down into the garden. It landed into a square planting of jasmine beside two cypress trees on an island surrounded by the running water. “There!” he whispered. “Perhaps once that part was filled with carnations.”

  Soon we were back down in the garden, kicking off our shoes to wade across the ankle-deep water to the square island. Evan waved us to stand on the marble edging while he scanned his detector app across the earth planted with trees and jasmine.

  “It must be deep down,” I whispered. “If it’s here at all.”

  “This garden would be dug and dug many times,” Sofia agreed.

  “Still, if they wanted to preserve the original layout, they would only go deep enough to change the soil, maybe remove the roots of a dead tree,” Evan pointed out. “The piping for the fountains is several feet to the left according to this, and yet…” He paused, staring at his screen.

  “And yet?” Sofia prompted.

  “And yet there is indication that something metal may sit much farther down…six feet down.”

  “But we have detected this earth many times,” Sofia said.

  “How long ago?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “The last garden renovation was many years ago. We lined the flower beds with myrtle hedges.”

  “They would have run a surface detector looking for pipes and the ancient plumbing works. Look.” He held up his phone, which marked out the grid in a blue light, something pale and pulsing from red to purple in the middle of the rectangle.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, leaning forward.

  “The blue lines are ferrous and trace the water pipes, which range between two to three feet below the surface, and the red to purple pulsing light indicates something lies much deeper between the two trees—maybe six feet down,” he said. “Nonferrous,” he added.

  I caught his eye. “Nonferrous?” I asked.

  “Not iron-based. Maybe gold or silver. The blue means something gold is encased in something ferrous—red and blue making purple,” he said.

  A momentary hush descended. I turned to Sofia. “Can you call the guys to help us dig?”

  “Let’s not risk it,” Evan said as he pulled his periscopic shovel from his duffel and hung his jacket on a tree branch. “We don’t know who to trust.”

  Sofia pulled out her phone. “But I must call my employer. Our backup should be here by now.”

  Sofia was talking rapidly into her phone while Evan climbed over the myrtle hedge into the center of the planting. He struck his spade into the earth and in seconds only the sound of digging broke the night.

  “Evan, pass me your gun,” I whispered.

  He stopped long enough to pull it from his pocket. I leaned over the hedge and took it.

  Sofia had put away her phone. “My contact does not answer. I left another message.”

  “Another?” I asked. “Do you mean that we don’t
know if help is coming?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can you fire a gun?” I asked.

  “No!” she said. “That has never been my job. My job is research only.”

  Ilda stepped forward with her hand outstretched. “Soy la hija de un granger,” she said.

  “She can shoot,” Sofia translated. “Farm girl.”

  I gave Ilda Evan’s gun and cocked my own and together we patrolled the edge of the courtyard, her going one direction, me the other, watching the parameters. Once Ilda thought she caught a shadow moving across the portico above but shook her head. False alarm. This continued for maybe twenty minutes while I kept thinking that I heard sounds over the walls, strange noises, cries. Were we surrounded?

  Sofia paced the tiles, repeatedly leaving messages and calling her employer’s agents. “Nothing!” she told me when I caught her eye. “I called Saratoza and the two boys but no answer!”

  To say I didn’t like the sound of that was an understatement.

  Meanwhile Evan kept digging and digging. I was at the water stairs end of the courtyard the moment I heard metal hit metal. I quickly turned and splashed through the water to the island. Evan was lifting something from the earth.

  We watched in rapt wonder as a rusted metal container roughly the size of an old breadbox with a peaked lid was lifted from the earth and deposited on the marble edging. I stared at it and swallowed. “It seems too big to be a crown.”

  “A casket,” Sofia whispered, “a reliquary casket. The sisters may have placed it inside such a container or the monks transported it in one. We must open it.”

  “Not now,” I said. “We have to get out of here.”

  Evan splashed into the water beside me and lifted the box. “Get my duffel.”

  Grabbing his bag, he laid the filthy box down on top of his clothes, shoving his spade in last as we pulled on our shoes.

  “We’re not going to get to just walk out of here,” I said.

  “I know. When they come for us, hope to God that Señor Anonymous brings the troops,” Evan said.

  I was about to respond when a deep voice called over a loudspeaker: “Gracias. Now set down the bag and step away.”

  23

  But we ran.

  We plunged into the fountain’s rectangular canal system and waded toward the water stairs. Nobody spoke. Evan was up front, Sofia in the middle, Ilda and I bringing up the rear. We were shielded by the trees and hedges. Men were shouting from somewhere behind us. Over the wall to our left, more shouting and flashing lights.

  “Do not be foolish!” bellowed the deep voice. “You are surrounded. Do not make us shoot!” He repeated everything in Spanish in case we missed anything.

  We bolted up the stone steps, the trees bowing down over our heads, rivulets flowing down either side. If we just reached the top of the stairs, maybe we could head for the city below, Sofia had whispered. But the moment we reached the top, they were waiting. As we expected.

  We were powerless to move.

  At least twenty men stood facing us, all dressed in black, none of them wearing masks, all with guns pointed at our chests. Slowly they began to circle us like a pack of stalking lions.

  “Drop your pistols and kick them toward us,” the head honcho ordered. He was short, wiry, and appeared to wear a priest’s collar under his shirt, though the epaulets were strangely out of sync.

  We dropped the pistols, raising our hands while the men collected the weapons, every pair of eyes fixed on us. One man dragged Sofia from our group, holding a gun to her head, while another told Evan to lower his duffel and pass it over. Sofia, undaunted, spat rapid Spanish at Head Honcho until he slapped her across the face.

  “If you move falsely, we shoot,” Head Honcho said. “You follow now.” He jerked his head toward his troops, three of whom rushed forward to bind our hands. We were told to walk so we walked, back down the water steps, across the sultan’s courtyard, and along corridors we had yet to see.

  The complex was huge, building after building passing while we kept our eyes peeled for help. Where the hell was the cavalry? Where was Saratoza and our two guys? Once, I glimpsed bodies sprawled on the floor while passing a doorway but couldn’t identify anyone.

  Soon we were back on the street, still in the Alhambra complex, heading toward a stone church. Don’t ask me why it shocked me to see a church, but of course there would be at least a chapel in a complex this size. But this was no chapel and it looked to be more recent than most of the buildings, at least seventeenth century. We were marched up the steps of a plain exterior and shoved down the aisle of a stunning baroque basilica.

  “The Church of Santa Mariá de la Alhambra,” Sofia whispered. “Built over the site of the sultan’s great mosque.”

  Once herded into the front pews and each assigned a guard to stand pointing rifles at us, we could do nothing but sit looking desperately for the escape we knew didn’t exist. I wondered why they didn’t demand our phones but figured they must have been afraid to touch them or thought we could set an explosive with the sound of our voices. Definitely they realized that as long as they remained in our pockets and with our hands bound, our devices were harmless, and they were right.

  Six priests stepped into the nave from a side door, one of whom was Don Santos with a bandaged head. Nobody wore masks here, either. He caught sight of Ilda and frowned. How she must have disappointed him.

  We watched in silence as the others cast us dismissive glances, if they looked in our direction at all. Their interest was fixed on the rusted iron box now sitting on the altar, which they gathered around while intoning Latin.

  One of the brethren, the tallest with a head of thick silver hair and a beautifully embroidered mantle covered in a mix of pagan and Christian symbology, seemed to be the holy head honcho who could make his minions jump with a wave of his hand. He signaled for the army-type guard to lift the object from its crumbling iron case.

  It was surprisingly easy since the metal practically disintegrated under his gloved hands. In moments, a glowing reliquary box was lifted from the rusted shards and laid on a red velvet cushion.

  We gasped like spectators at a magic show. An intricate enameled and gold-peaked casket now reflected the candlelight on the altar, two embossed saints pointing toward the narrow crystal window through which we could just make out the contents. A hush descended over captors and captives alike. Holy Honcho prayed over the casket, his voice deep and resonant as he lifted his gaze upward amid his praying brethren. A gilded Jesus on the crucifix gazed on with an expression of profound pathos.

  I felt sick. The piece was exquisitely beautiful and represented the faith of those who had hidden it. Still, I didn’t want to see what lay inside, yet I couldn’t tear my gaze away. My companions seemed equally rapt. Ilda was crying.

  Now Holy Honcho had donned a pair of white gloves and awaited with a beatific expression as a second priest raised the casket lid. Holy Honcho lifted the contents, releasing the fastenings to raise the priceless object into the air.

  Another collective gasp. A solid gold crown imbedded with twelve peaks each set with a ruby, diamond, emerald, or sapphire glittered in his hands. He rotated the coronet to reveal the central peak, which appeared to capture a shard of something in its rock crystal frame. His satisfied smile never waned.

  Ilda was wailing, Sofia was praying, the priests were chanting, and all I could do was stare at this priceless wonder with loathing. It had been pounded into the head of a human being! Maybe all signs of that monstrous moment had worn away but the holes around the bottom filigreed edge were still visible.

  For a sick instant I was afraid that one of the priests would manifest the skull right there but no skull arrived. A burst of hope hit: the skull wasn’t here! It must be in Portugal awaiting the crown’s delivery. There was still time.

  At last the holy honcho lowered the crown back into its reliquary and snapped an order at a guard who stepped up to wrap the casket in velvet.


  “What are you going to do with us?” I cried.

  Holy Honcho turned as if he had forgotten we were there. In seconds, he was towering over me, his hair backlit in a silver halo. “You?” he spoke in his deep voice. "To you, Señorita McCabe, we owe a great debt.” He brought his palms together and bowed his head. “You have found what centuries of our order could not. For you we reserve a great honor.”

  “I just bet,” I whispered.

  “You will accompany us to Portugal and to the altar where we will place the crown on our holy king on earth, King Carlos. To you we will accord the highest honor to witness this sacred moment before you join our king in heaven.” The other priests began chanting.

  Evan began speaking in Latin. The man turned and stared. Evan said something further and Holy Honcho answered tersely and soon the two men began conversing in that ancient language.

  “What are they saying?” I asked Sofia.

  “Evan asks if the order uses human sacrifices and the priest says yes, but only for special occasions and only for special sacrifices. He says you are very special and have been brought to them by God. Evan accuses the order of being more pagan than Christian and is quoting verses from the Scriptures. They are debating theology.”

  “Seriously?” I knew Evan was raised Catholic but his timing seemed a bit off.

  Suddenly the army-type head honcho interrupted, pointing to his watch. The holy honcho nodded and folded his hands.

  “They are taking us to the airport for a plane to Portugal,” Evan whispered.

  “That’s not what he said. They are taking Phoebe to Portugal. Us they will kill,” Sofia said.

  We were ordered to our feet and separated, me dragged away into the circle of priests, the others marched down the aisle. I wanted to scream, to kick, to wail, but I forced myself into total stillness. Think, I needed to think.

  I wondered if I could wait until on the plane and in the air and then order my phone to explode. Maybe it could do that. Maybe it would even be enough to down the plane and destroy the crown with it. But if it was a passenger plane, that would kill innocent people, too… However, they would all die, anyway, if this band of loonies had their way. Still, I couldn’t be the one to kill the innocent.