I was still reading the first few entries when the bus abruptly got dark. We had entered a tunnel, and I could no longer see what I was reading. It would take only a few seconds to exit, but the wait still bothered me. Then, out of the corner of my eye, there was a slight glimmer. I looked down. A faint glow was coming from the top of the box. The gold paint on the pinwheel was radiating, creating a cross from four of the wedges. Inside the right wedge, a string of numbers faintly appeared. It was like looking at the stars, where you could see more by not staring directly at them.
“Simone,” I whispered, not taking my eyes off the box. “Simone.”
“Give me a sec.” She was reading something on her phone.
I could make out the number forty-one. “SIMONE!”
“What?” she asked. She looked over just as the bus popped out of the tunnel and back into the sunlight. In the daylight, the box returned to normal.
“The box. It was glowing and there were numbers written over here.” I touched the now plain-looking wedge of the pinwheel.
“I saw it, too!” Asher said. “And the gold along these red triangles”—he reached over and traced four of the wedges—“they form the Maltese Cross. I don’t know how I didn’t notice before.”
“The Maltese Cross?” Simone slowly repeated Asher’s words.
“Yes! It’s the symbol for the Knights of Malta,” Asher explained. “That’s a really big clue.”
Hope and excitement filled my chest. “It’s what Signora Pescatori meant by not opening it until we couldn’t see. There’s stuff written in some type of invisible, glow-in-the-dark paint. I bet there’s more inside the box.”
“Okay.” Simone slowly nodded. “I get it. It has to be dark for the clues to appear.”
“Right.” I looked around, but there was no place to go inside the bus. “When we get to Orvieto, we need to find someplace dark to look at the box again.” I reached over and clutched Simone’s hand. “We’re going to find this spear and make everything right. I just know it.”
Simone gave me a halfhearted smile. She wasn’t so convinced.
As soon as the bus stopped, the three of us jumped out of our seats. We had arrived in Orvieto, but I didn’t care about the city. From the bus’s window I had already spotted a door for a storage closet near the corner of the bus station building.
“Let’s go!” I said, pushing aside a few of the passengers.
Once outside, I raced over to the closet and tried opening it, but it was locked.
“Let’s look for somewhere inside the station,” Asher suggested, the backpack under his arm.
“Don’t bother.” Simone was a few feet away, holding open a nearby door. “I found a place.”
We hurried over, but Asher abruptly stopped. “The women’s restroom? Are you serious? You want me to go in there?”
“It’s dark and empty.” Simone put a hand on her hip. “You have a problem with it?”
Asher paused, then went inside. Simone gave me a mischievous smile.
“You are so bad sometimes,” I whispered as I passed Simone.
Simone cocked her head to the side and gave me a wink. “I try to be.”
A motion-sensor turned on the overhead light as we entered, but I could see that there were no windows—it would go dark if we stood still.
“Man, this place really smells.” Simone pinched her nose. The smell of old urine was overwhelming. “Even for a bus station, this is pretty bad.”
“Figures, since you found it,” Asher answered.
“And what is that supposed to mean?” Simone took a step closer to Asher.
Asher threw his hands up in mock surrender. “Ooh, I’m scared.”
“Guys!” I shouted. “Please stop moving or the light will never shut off.”
For the next couple of minutes none of us spoke or moved.
Click.
The lights turned off. The room was plunged into complete darkness except for a crack of light that came from underneath the door.
Immediately, the outline of the Maltese Cross glowed on the wooden box, and the numbers appeared much clearer than when we were on the bus.
41.88346, 12.47837
“They could be coordinates,” Simone whispered.
I ran my fingers over the numbers. “Write them down.”
“I am,” Simone answered, entering them into the phone. “Go ahead and open the box.”
“Okay, here goes.” I held my breath and lifted the lid. Inside, on the bottom of the box, where nothing had appeared in the daylight, was a poem written in elegant and ornate script.
In the garden of my heart
A dagger found its mark
Slicing through the cross’s core
Casting me to the dark
There was no doubt in my mind. These words were telling us where the spear was hidden. I flipped the box over and searched for other secret messages, but nothing else was there.
My thoughts wandered to all the medieval art I’d seen with my dad. “The poem might be referring to someone, maybe in a painting or a statue, whose heart is being pierced.”
Asher spoke. “Like the pierced hearts of Jesus or Mary that you see in some of the churches.”
“The dagger could be the spear. Maybe the spear is hidden wherever this painting or statue is. We just have to locate the right one.” I was getting excited at the idea of being so close.
“Only one way of finding out.” Simone walked toward the door, and the light clicked back on.
“What are you doing?” I asked. I stuffed the box into the backpack and followed her outside.
“No reason to stay in there any longer than necessary. Plus, look.” She showed me her phone. “If the numbers are coordinates, they line up with a place called the Priorato di Malta in Rome.”
“Malta …” I traced the gold on the lid. “Like the Maltese Cross.”
“Oh, no.” A look of dread covered Asher’s face, when he should have been happy at the discovery.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s the Knights of Malta compound,” he explained. “Getting in there is … complicated.”
“Why?” Simone asked. “By the looks of it”—she touched the screen, making the image larger—“it’s right in the middle of Rome. Even close to a metro station.”
“It is, but it’s more of a country within a country. The compound is even recognized by the United Nations.”
“Like the Vatican?” I asked.
“Not quite, but similar.” Asher ran his fingers through his hair. It reminded me of what my father would do. “They have their own coins, passports … all the things a sovereign country has.”
“So? Are these Knights going to challenge us to a joust or something?” Simone said sarcastically. “What’s the big deal? Can’t we go visit like average tourists?”
“You don’t get it. Most Knights know nothing about the spear and its secrets, but a few that live in the compound do. And they definitely don’t like the Hastati.”
“Well, that could be good for us, then,” Simone stated. “We’re not big fans of the Hastati, either.”
Asher shook his head. “It’s not good if you are Hastati …” He lifted his hand, showing off his ring while pointing to my finger. “Or if like Cassie and me, you happen to be wearing a ring they gave you.”
I didn’t care what the Knights thought about the Hastati or about the fact that I wore some ring. The answer, and possibly the spear, was somewhere in that compound, and no one would stop me from going there. The first train back to Rome left at three fifteen, which gave us about twenty minutes to buy our tickets and grab some sandwiches to take with us.
“I’ll be right back,” Simone announced as we stepped into a small café next to the train station. “I need to visit a cleaner restroom than the one we were in.”
I scanned the café to make sure nothing seemed out of place or suspicious. There were a couple of people at a table near the door, and one man, wearing shabby clothe
s, was slumped over a small round table in the very back. He was either napping or sleeping off a drunken stupor. It looked relatively safe, but, just in case, I wanted to get moving.
“Simone, what do you want?” I called out.
“Anything.” She pulled open the door to the ladies’ room in the back and disappeared.
The prepared sandwiches were lined up in the refrigerated glass case. Although my stomach grumbled at the sight of the food, I didn’t feel like eating anything.
I stole a quick glance at the front door, almost expecting one of our pursuers to show up. We needed to hurry.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Asher staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just thinking about stuff.” Asher shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. “Something my uncle said.”
“What?”
He looked back at the food. “It’s complicated.” He pointed to the sandwiches. “Prosciutto okay?”
“Sure.” I wanted to know what Brother Gregorio had said, but I needed to play it smart. He wasn’t going to just tell me.
I twisted the Hastati ring once, twice, three times around my finger. You would think that if it had slipped over my knuckle when I put it on, it would be able to come off the same way. There was no reason why it should be this stuck.
Asher grabbed my hand. “Do you want to die? Leave it alone.”
“Yeah, right, it’s going to kill me.” I picked up the sandwiches. “C’mon, tell the truth. Why does Brother Gregorio want the two of us wearing them? Are they tracking devices? Is that why he wanted to get one for Simone, too?”
“No.” He stared at his own ring before taking out his wallet.
“But they both do the same thing?” It felt like I was pulling teeth in order to get any answers.
“Yeah.”
There was a heaviness in his one-word answers. I’d thought he was exaggerating when he said the ring could kill me, but now I wasn’t so sure. I leaned in closer. “Don’t make me ask a thousand questions, Asher. Just tell me why we can’t take them off.”
“Because.” He looked away. “It’s complicated.”
“Again with the complicated! I’m really starting to hate that word.” This whole conversation was getting me angry. “Nothing is complicated if you explain it.”
“Cassie, there are some things that are best unknown.”
“I trusted you with my dad’s journal; you need to trust me with whatever you know. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
Asher stared at me, then rubbed the back of his neck. I could see he was having an internal debate about something. He took three sodas from the counter, paid, and motioned for me to follow him over to a far corner. “I pretty much already told you,” he said in a low voice, though there was no one around to hear us.
“No, all you said was that if I took off the ring I’d die.”
“Yeah, because that’s what the rings are for.”
“Huh?” I was confused. “You want me to believe that your uncle gave us these rings so he could kill us?”
Asher sighed. “He doesn’t want to, but he’ll do it if he has to.”
My face must have said it all, because I couldn’t speak.
“Don’t look at me like that. He isn’t a bad guy.”
“Oh, really? Asher, you just said that the person my dad and I were trusting … the person who’s supposed to keep me safe from Hastati assassins … is willing to kill me. And willing to kill you, his own nephew. What kind of face am I supposed to have?”
He shook his head. “This is why it’s complicated. He would only do it in a worst-case situation. If we had the spear and got caught or something, so that we wouldn’t be forced to use it to choose the wrong destiny. To prevent us from being turned into weapons.”
“Fine. Even if he’d do this to me …” I paused. “Why you? You’re family. There’s no reason to get you involved in all of this.”
“That’s what you don’t get. I have no choice. My uncle has no choice. It’s our duty. Our heritage. It’s why he’s had me training ever since I moved to Rome. When he told me about the spear and the Hastati, he had to make sure I wouldn’t tell anyone. That’s when—”
“When you got the ring.” I finished his sentence.
He bit his lip and nodded.
I inched closer to him, still keeping an eye out for anyone who might come into the café. “But can’t we just cut it off?”
“It has a poison inside. If you cut the ring or take it off in the wrong way, a tiny needle pricks you. You’ll be dead, or in a coma, within seconds. I don’t know all the details because I’m still a novice. I’m supposed to find out everything by the time I’m eighteen, but you came along a little earlier.” He took a deep breath. “I probably shouldn’t even be telling you all this.”
“So how—”
Asher shook his head, and I noticed his attention was on something behind me. I turned to see Simone walking over.
She had a strange look on her face. “What are you two talking about?” She took one of the sodas from Asher’s hands.
“Um, nothing really,” I said. “We were just going over the stuff we already know.” I hated lying to her, but it felt important that Asher trust me.
“Hm, from over there it seemed like it was a little more intense than that, but whatever.” She looked down at the can and made a face. “They didn’t have anything diet?”
“You didn’t ask for that,” Asher said.
“Cassie knows I only drink diet.” She turned to me. “Did you forget?”
“I didn’t order.” There were bigger things to worry about than drinking a few extra calories. “We should get going. The train will be here soon.”
“Uh-huh. So, these Knights of Malta … are they real knights?” Simone asked as we headed out.
“What do you mean?” Asher held the door open for us. “Are you asking whether they wear chain-mail armor and cover their heads with a big metal helmet?” He paused. “The answer to that would be no.”
“Ha-ha. Very funny.” Simone walked out. “I mean I’ve heard of the Knights Templar, but never the Knights of Malta.”
“Yeah, movies like to focus a lot on the Templars,” Asher said. “The Knights of Malta fought battles at one time, too, but now they pretty much run hospitals and clinics. Do charity work.”
“So why do they hate the Hastati?” I asked.
“It’s a long story.”
“We have a few minutes before the train gets here,” Simone said. “Tell us.”
“It goes back a long time. The Knights and Hastati never got along. They each thought it was their responsibility to guard the spear. Neither trusted the other, so the spear kept being traded between the two groups. Eventually, it was agreed that the Hastati would keep the spear, but the Knights would decide who could use it. Then, about twelve years ago, after the spear went missing and the Hastati decided to eliminate anyone with the birthmark—”
“You mean kill anyone with a birthmark,” Simone said. “Don’t sugarcoat it, Asher. Don’t pretend that the Hastati aren’t ruthless killers.”
“Yeah, well, one of the marked descendants the Hastati ended up killing was a high-ranking Knight. The Knights were already opposed to what the Hastati were doing, but that really got them angry. Now the two groups won’t even speak to each other anymore.”
“So if the Knights don’t like the Hastati, maybe we can convince them to help us,” I said.
“What if they’re the ones who stole the spear in the first place?” Simone pointed out. “Then they wouldn’t want us to find it.”
Asher shot down Simone’s theory. “I don’t think they have it—why would they have let one of their own be killed if they already had the spear?”
“People have done stranger things,” Simone mused.
“Well, we’ll find out soon enough.” I pointed to a train approaching the station. “Let’s go pay them a visit.”
* * *<
br />
The train rumbled as it passed through the Italian landscape on its way to Rome. Simone had given me the throwaway phone to look up as much information as I could on the Knights and the clues we’d found. As I read about the history of the Knights, Simone simply stared out the window.
“Hey, you okay?” I tapped her on the shoulder. “You’ve been acting weird since lunch.”
“I’m fine.” She took a deep breath, but didn’t look at me. “My stomach is acting up, that’s all.”
“Want me to get you something? I can see if there’s dining service in one of the other train cars.”
“No, I can take care of myself.” She said this with a sharpness that she usually reserved for others. A second later she turned to look at me. “Sorry. I don’t make a very good sick person. Why don’t you tell me what you found? It’ll get my mind off my stomach.”
“Nothing about getting into the compound. Seems like they only allow visitors in by advance request, although tourists line up to visit the outside and look through a keyhole in the gate. Supposedly, the dome of the Vatican lines up perfectly through the keyhole. It’s considered one of Rome’s ‘secrets,’ though I can’t imagine it being cool enough to make it into most tour books.”
“Well, I’d never heard of it, and I’ve been living in Rome for a few years now.”
I was starting to come up with an idea. “Maybe if we pretend to be tourists or students doing a project we can get inside the compound. Look around and find another clue.”
“Maybe,” Simone repeated, turning to look out the window again.
Asher popped his head over the seat in front of us. “We’ll be in Rome in a few minutes. It might be best to go to the Knights’ compound without telling my uncle anything about it. He may say we can’t go.”
“It’s better that way.” I twisted the ring around my finger before remembering that there was poison inside. I had to stop touching it. “The less other people know what we’re doing, the safer we are. We just need to make sure that whatever we find out stays between the three of us.”
“Agreed,” Asher said.
Simone said nothing, continuing to stare out the window.
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