by Cindy Dees
Urns of—Elise’s tapestry in her front hall! That was a Black Madonna image like this card described. I recalled wondering about that urn.
We moved on to a tall, narrow statue. It looked very similar to the one Catrina Dauvergne had displayed from her personal collection at the Cluny last month, but this one looked older, less detailed in its execution.
I was relieved to let the art suck me in and distract me from the man plastered against my side. Otherwise, I surely would have embarrassed myself and him in public by throwing him down and ravaging him right there on the spot.
Caleb Adriano was similarly plastered to Scarlet and strolled around with us, adding the occasional comment beyond what the placards said. He seemed to know a fair bit about the history of the medieval Madonna cult and told us it was thought to have been centered in southern France.
I did notice that Scarlet went very quiet and still when he brought up the subject. But then, maybe Caleb’s hand roaming up and down her mostly naked spine was distracting her.
After a few minutes, a petite, striking brunette walked up to us, limping slightly. She had shoulder length dark hair, and was maybe in her early thirties. Hard to tell in this light, though. What really captured my attention was her long velvet gown, laced in the medieval style across her midriff to show off a trim figure. She wore this room almost as if it had been built for her. Then I spied the tall glass of bright red liquid in her hand. Good grief! In the torchlight, it looked just like blood. I was relieved when she smiled politely at our host and no vampiric fangs protruded.
“Pardon me, but you wanted to know when the Cardinal del Vecchio arrived, Caleb.”
Our host dropped Scarlet like a hot potato and hurried off in the direction the woman pointed. She stared after him, dismayed.
The brunette said under her breath, her lips barely moving, “I’m telling you, Scarlet. Stay away from him. He is not what he seems.”
The redhead rounded on the slightly older woman. “You keep telling me that, but you won’t give a single, specific example of what you’re talking about! He’s polite, smart, funny, handsome, sexy, single and rich. What else matters?”
The brunette shook her head. “Just be careful around him.”
Scarlet rolled her eyes as the brunette huffed in exasperation.
Robert went rigid against my side. Shocked stiff. “Ginny?” he asked incredulously. His arm fell away from my waist.
The woman turned sharply and stared at him. For just an instant, similar shock showed in her gaze. “Robert! It has been a long time. How are you?” And then she stood on tiptoe and kissed him. On the mouth.
My stomach plummeted past my feet and right down into the solid stone floor. Oh, crap.
Chapter 15
T he brunette had to be a former lover. Or, given that kiss, maybe not so former. I thought I was going to throw up.
And then Robert did something that made me fall a little bit in love with him right there on the spot, although in retrospect, perhaps I was already head over heels for the guy. He stepped back from the beautiful brunette, wrapped his arm around my waist and said, “Ana, this is Ginny. A former colleague of mine from a long time ago. Ginny, remember how you used to say you’d love to meet the kind of woman who could capture my heart? Well, here she is. This is Ana. She works for Interpol.”
My jaw dropped. Could capture his heart? My own heart skipped and jumped like a carefree foal frolicking in my chest. And then the rest of the introduction sunk in. He’d called her a colleague. Not a lover, not even a friend. From a long time ago? Like when he used to steal stuff for a living? Was she a thief, too? I eyed the woman speculatively. Lithe and petite, she exactly fit my conception of what a cat burglar must look like.
Scarlet said, “Caleb’s waving for us to join him over there.”
The four of us strolled around an illustrated manuscript resting on a tall lectern, its pages open to display a magnificent illumination of a Black Madonna, and we joined Caleb Adriano and his newest guest. The man was mostly bald, and what hair he had was cropped into a silver fuzz near his scalp. He wore a dark suit, but with a clerical collar in place of a tie. A priest, then.
A faint movement caught my eye. Ginny had glided around to our right, placing Robert and me between her and Caleb. No love lost there, apparently.
Caleb looked…sulky. Not in the least thrilled to find himself babysitting this ecclesiastical gentleman. Then he did something odd. He draped his arm around Scarlet in an even more blatant display of affection than I’d seen from him so far. Frankly, it looked forced. And, based on the knock-me-over-with-a-feather look on Scarlet’s face, was a whole new level of public familiarity between them. It was almost as if Caleb was trying to insult the priest.
Then he drawled, “Cardinal del Vecchio, this luscious specimen is Scarlet. These are her friends Ana and Robert from France and England.” Apparently the priest already knew Ginny, for they nodded at one another and Caleb didn’t introduce her.
We made uncomfortable small talk for a few moments, chatting mostly of the power outage and the mess it had caused. And then I happened to ask, “Where do you work, cardinal?”
“I am curator of the Vatican Museum.”
I about swallowed my tongue as Caleb remarked almost, but not quite, snidely, “I hear you had a theft over there today. I thought your security was better than that. What did they get?”
The cardinal replied gravely, “A map. Torn right out of a fourteenth-century codex. Shocking bit of vandalism.”
Ginny frowned and her gaze flickered over toward Robert. Oh, yeah. She knew Robert had been a thief. Was she one, too? Or maybe a fence for stolen art? Or someone with inside knowledge she sold to thieves? A colleague, indeed.
Her dark gaze fixed on Robert, Ginny asked the Church official, “Why would anyone steal a single map like that?”
I glanced up at Robert with as much innocent interest as I could muster. For his part, he didn’t betray with even the slightest hint in his expression that he knew a thing about what they were talking about. Note to self: never play poker against this man.
The cardinal answered Ginny. “That’s the odd thing. It was an ancient map of ley lines in Western Europe. At the time it was made, architects used it to choose building sites for important religious structures. I can’t fathom what a thief would want with it now.”
This time it was Caleb, who’d been starting to look a little bored, who about spewed his drink all over the rest of us. He, too, had been sipping the bloodred stuff Ginny had been drinking earlier.
Frantic to divert the conversation into less dangerous waters, I asked him, “By the way, what’s that you’re drinking? I hesitate to tell you what it looks like in this dim light.”
Caleb laughed and slid a sly gaze in Ginny’s direction. “Pomegranate juice. She swears by it. Makes us all drink it.”
Ginny rolled her eyes back at him, scowling. “And you’re in glowing health, aren’t you?” she snapped.
The persistent, and I might add pesky, cardinal piped up with, “Did I tell you we got descriptions of the thieves?”
Caleb turned back to del Vecchio, and I felt myself edging toward the nearest door. Robert’s arm tightened around my waist, holding me firmly in place.
“Do tell,” Caleb responded.
“It was an American woman and an Scotsman. She had fake police credentials and said she was there to research a police matter,”
Scarlet glanced over at me, startled, while Ginny shot Robert a very nearly suspicious look. But I just looked back at my friend blandly, and Robert did the same to Ginny. Fake credentials? My badge was as real as they came! How come I hadn’t shown up in the Interpol personnel database as a legitimate employee of the agency? That was odd.
Still curious over Caleb’s violent reaction to the mention of ley lines, I asked into the settling silence, “Your Eminence, what is the Church’s interest in ley lines, anyway? A map of them seems a strange item to house in your museum.”<
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“Oh, the map wasn’t in the museum. It was in the archives. No, no. Our security is far too good for even the most minor theft to succeed.” This was delivered with an arch look in Caleb’s direction. No great love lost between those two.
“So you consider this a minor theft?” Scarlet piped up, wiggling just enough against Caleb to hold his full attention.
The cardinal turned to my photographer friend, whom I could hug for diving in to the conversation. “No theft is a minor thing, not in the eyes of the Vatican or of God.”
“I gather then that God takes an interest in ley lines, since you collect maps of them?” I replied dryly. I can’t help it. People who get on their moral high horses have always bugged me. The way I was taught, no one’s perfect. We all have flaws and mistakes aplenty—enough to keep us all humble.
The cardinal paused just a fraction of a second, obviously trying to decide whether or not to be amused or offended. He chose to laugh. “No, young lady, we do not concern ourselves with such things. The Church emphatically denies the existence of ley lines or any such fertility-goddess, earth-magic mumbo jumbo.”
Hmm. Then how did he know they were traditionally linked with fertility goddesses and earth magic? Was this one of those cases of a Catholic hard-liner trying to suppress factual knowledge he felt was dangerous? Or perhaps this guy still thought the Earth was flat, too. There was something…off…about this cardinal. I couldn’t lay my finger on it exactly, but he gave off a dodgy vibe.
A week ago, I’d have scoffed at the idea of ley lines causing power outages all over France, and apparently Italy, too. But now—now I wasn’t so sure. If I could have visions and see ghosts, why not ley lines?
Robert commented lightly, “Too bad the power’s been out all day. That must have really hampered the police response to the theft.”
The cardinal nodded. “The Swiss Guard is having to do things the old-fashioned way. They’re going to every police precinct in Rome on foot to give a description to the Italian police.”
“Good for them,” Robert replied bracingly. “So. What brings you to this exhibition tonight, Your Eminence?”
“The Church has a long and close relationship to the Adriano family. They are great friends of the Faith and great friends of mine. During this change of the ages, it is important to stand by one’s oldest and closest friends, is it not?”
Strangely, he seemed to be aiming that question as much at Caleb as at us.
Color me a little slow, but I was confused. According to what I’d read on the placards all around me in this room, the Virgin Mary cult—of which this Black Madonna cult was a possible offshoot—had all but eclipsed worship of Jesus Christ at one point in the Middle Ages, particularly in southern France. Not to mention historians theorized that perhaps its roots lay in ancient goddess worship. Hence, its brutal and complete suppression by the Catholic Church by the end of the fifteenth century. Yet, here was a cardinal, choosing to attend a display of possibly pagan-rooted images of women to show his support of the Adriano clan—a gesture which Caleb Adriano seemed ambivalent about at best. It made no sense. Unless the Church and rest of the Adrianos were very good friends, indeed.
And what was up with that change of ages comment? My understanding, admittedly limited on the subject, was that astrological “ages” changed approximately every two thousand years, and were doing so now. We were passing from the Age of Pisces, which began right at the time of Christ, into the Age of Aquarius. Since when did the Catholic Church embrace astrology, too? This guy was just a barrel of surprises.
I addressed Caleb. “How long has the Adriano family been associated so closely with the Church?”
He shrugged. “You would have to ask my father. He pays more attention to that sort of thing. Speaking of Il Duce, here he comes now.”
As the senior Adriano moved toward us with alacrity, I got the distinct impression he was alarmed at the prospect of Caleb being alone with the cardinal for any period of time. The familial resemblance could not be denied, from the aquiline nose to the intensely intelligent hazel eyes. Simon’s brown hair was slightly darker than his son’s, and his shoulders weren’t as broad, but this man wore an air of command that equaled or even surpassed that of the cardinal.
“Simon, my son!” del Vecchio exclaimed warmly.
The Adriano patriarch paused to kiss the cardinal’s ring, then embraced the priest in a traditional Italian hug. Old friends, then…or putting on a good show of it, if they were not. I also noted that we pointedly did not get an introduction to Simon from Caleb. Ah, the nuances of life among the upper crust. All of a sudden, I felt like a terrible interloper at this party.
Even Scarlet, who to all appearances was about to be sleeping with his son, barely merited a condescending glance from Simon Adriano. No wonder I’d glimpsed a touch of conceit in young Caleb now and again, if he’d been raised by this guy.
As an awkward silence fell among the mismatched group of us, Caleb dived in. “Father, these people were just asking how long the Adriano family has been associated with the Catholic Church.”
Simon, a tall man already, drew himself up even taller. “As long as there has been a pope, there has been an Adriano by his side.”
“Literally?” I blurted. There had been popes since shortly after Christ’s death.
Simon rolled an offended look down his nose at me, but Cardinal del Vecchio chuckled. “Ever faithful, the Clan Adriano. For nearly two thousand years they’ve given us their sons in service. One of these days, we may yet see an Adriano on the throne of St. Peter.”
That threw a look of real alarm into Simon’s eyes. “I should hope not! We prefer to move quietly behind the scenes. It has been our role to assist the Holy Father in whatever ways we can, not to bask in the limelight ourselves.”
So why did I detect an edge of disapproval in the cardinal’s eyes? Definitely deep currents flowing between these Adrianos and their Church. I was struck by the incongruity of Simon’s statement about preferring to work quietly. He and his son both struck me as more than a little arrogant. Why would they choose to serve in humble anonymity behind the popes? Although come to think of it, that’s where all the power was.
Caleb turned to his father. “The cardinal was just telling me about the theft at the Vatican today. You’ll never believe what they lost—”
The cardinal cleared his throat uncomfortably, and Simon interrupted, “I’ve already heard. We beefed up security tonight because of it. He glanced around the room. I’ve got enough muscle in here to take on a small army. What did you say the thieves looked like, Your Eminence?”
Bile rose into my throat. It tasted like spoiled seafood. The cardinal was going to describe both of us and someone would put two and two together. We weren’t French and English at all, but an American and a Scot, standing right there in front of them!
I was relieved almost to the point of nausea when Robert chose that moment to nod a farewell and excuse us to the younger and older Adrianos and lead me away into the shadows. In another minute or two, the army of security guards discreetly ringing the room was going to close in on us, and the jig would be up. Legitimate Interpol badge or no, we would be so hosed then.
We stopped in front of a crude painting, maybe twelfth century, done in some sort of tempura-like medium. I stared at it, trying my best not to look all around me in panic and give away my guilt before I absolutely had to.
“We’ve got to get out of here. Any suggestions?” Robert muttered under his breath.
“The back door?” I muttered back.
“Smile. Look like you’re enjoying yourself. I have a really bad feeling about this Simon guy. He’s too smart for our own good. He’ll match us with our descriptions from the cardinal in a second.”
If I was allowed to see ghosts, he was entitled to his gut feelings.
“This way,” he murmured.
I pretended to be pleased that he’d directed my attention to the painting on the wall beside us and
absently studied the rather mediocre piece, whose only real merit was being very old, while he scoped out the room. He took off walking—more like gliding actually—and led me through the crowd. We moved, then paused, moved some more. Made a moment’s conversation with some stranger standing beside us. Moved again. I was amazed at how quickly we traversed the cavernous hall without ever appearing to be in any sort of a hurry.
The shadows were darker at this end of the great hall, the pervading gloom heavier. I got the feeling we were being watched, but then that was probably just my guilt and paranoia working on me. Except didn’t I hear someone say once that it’s not paranoia if someone really is following you?
Robert startled me by walking right up to a guard by a closed doorway. “Toletta?” he asked in terrible Italian unlike his usual fluent ease with the language. Bathrooms?
The guard nodded and pointed at a door not far from us. Robert nodded and we headed for it. I took one last glance around the hall. No one seemed to be looking for us. Yet.
We slipped into a hallway nearly as dark as any tunnel in the catacombs. I swear, in the past few days, I’d spent more time wandering around in the dark than I had in my whole life! Robert moved past the bathrooms confidently as if he knew where he was going. But then, maybe he did. These medieval places tended to be laid out fairly logically. Seen one, you’d seen ’em all.
We took a sharp right-hand turn, passed through a vaulted wood door with iron-banded hinges, and found ourselves in a modern kitchen that gleamed in the faint torchlight seeping through its windows. Not a soul was in there. “Where are the caterers?” I whispered.