Madonna Key 03 - Dark Revelations

by Lorna Tedder

  I’d heard something once about the extent to which they trusted their security employees.

  A camera in every corner. I smirked to myself. And especially in Caleb’s bedroom.

  The walls around me changed to an older stone as we Lorna Tedder

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  made our way into a tunnel carved into what must have once been the Adriano castle, which the modern compound had been built over and around. Simon cranked open the vault door and motioned for me to enter.

  I had never seen a museum equipped as finely as the Adriano vault. The glass cases, the lighting, the brass placards beside each artifact. I don’t impress easily, but I nearly whistled at the treasures inside. An odd collection of medieval keys. The Black Madonna statue similar to the one I’d botched my knee chasing. A da Vinci Mother and Child painting stolen from a castle near London. A tantric Hindu manuscript last seen in a Kath-mandu museum. From Bucharest, a statue of a monk.

  An alabaster jar of medium size that could easily have been thousands of years old. Several stolen Afghan and Iraqi religious artifacts. A Picasso from a private collection. Two pieces lifted from an antiquities fair at The Hague. Various relics pilfered from castles, churches and museums.

  Supposedly all of them had at some point belonged to the Adriano family, whether the family had commissioned them or purchased them. The family lineage was as old as the Catholic Church, so I’d told myself it was true. I guess I’d told myself a lot of things were true because it was easier to live with the fiction I’d created for myself. In my heart I knew I was a thief, that I’d sunk that low, but I didn’t care to admit it to myself or anyone else on a regular basis.

  To do so would make it real, make it permanent. Lying to myself gave me a sense of control over my life. I’d learned that from a few hours with the runaway in San Francisco.

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  Some of the acquisitions I recognized as my own handiwork. Several I’d tracked down and confiscated discreetly based on Simon’s “wish list,” while most were specific assignments with specific instructions for how to acquire the piece. More often than not, at least one item on Interpol’s periodic Poster of Most Wanted Art was one I had personally handled, though my all-time record was five of the six works of art on the poster.

  I wondered if my most recent acquisition would put me over the top or bury me.

  “Come, cara mia. ” Simon clucked at me. “Stop preening over your résumé and tell me what you know of my latest addition.” He stopped at a clean worktable with a green halogen pendant lamp dangling from the ceiling. He set the briefcase on top and turned over his palm in a grand gesture toward the package, indicating that I was to open it.

  Heart pounding, I unlatched the straps over the top of the case and slid out the plastic-encased package. At least I thought it was plastic. It looked more like thick plate glass but wasn’t heavy. This was the first close look I’d had at my constant companion of the past six weeks.

  Whatever was inside had been sealed in a waterproof cloth or paper, but the encasement was like nothing I’d encountered in the art world. I had seen it, though.

  Once, on a science exchange program at a military facility in Virginia, I’d talked to a scientist about robotics and watched a laser beam play across the surface of a liquid polymer until the liquid solidified under the laser’s sting, leaving a quite solid and exquisitely rendered Lorna Tedder

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  spider in place of liquid goo. Instead of shrink-wrapping a plastic sleeve over an artifact to protect it from the elements or even to keep it from falling apart, someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to use stereolithogra-phy to surround the item in a polymer or resin of some sort, the kind now used in medical replacement proce-dures and automobile assemblies and poised for mass production of machine parts once a few wrinkles could be ironed out. The encasement and the design of circles and triangles could not be duplicated without the correct computer drawing files and the proper equipment and supplies, so if I had been curious enough to open the wrapper, Simon would have known it.

  “I knew I could trust you, Aubrey.”

  I met his gaze. I could tell by the twitch at his lips that he was teasing me. “I’ve never purposely disappointed you,” I reminded him.

  Simon ran his fingers over the design on the casing.

  “Purposely or not, no one ever disappoints me more than once.”

  I swallowed hard and refused to be put on the defensive. “So how do we get into the package? UV light?

  Heat? Run over it with a forklift?”

  “No need to be dramatic, Aubrey. Or do you prefer Lauren?” He paused. “Finding the best things in life is only a matter of knowing where to look.” Simon brushed his fingertips along a series of triangles and pressed down hard on the third triangle at the center of the package. The case gave way and popped open with the sound of a pull tab on a soda can.

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  Amazing. The case material had been formed in two partitions and snapped together yet appeared seamless until the correct pressure was applied to the heart. A bit like me, I supposed. I tamped down my excitement and proceeded to lift out the artifact and peel away the interior wrapping.

  I was vaguely aware of Simon watching my face as I folded back the final layer of wrapping. My jaw dropped. He was right—I had the expertise.

  Before I even saw the full-page woodcut of a mother with a sword in one hand, a jug at her feet and a baby in her free arm or before I mentally transcribed the first words from centuries past, I knew the book was rare.

  Books printed before 1501, before the advent of the printing press, are known as incunabula, and they’re exceptionally rare. Of the known ones printed on vellum and sheep’s gut, perhaps as many as thirty-five percent still exist, most in private collections or hidden in the bowels of dusty museums. This book was no exception.

  It was the reason I’d made the worst mistake of my life—the reason I’d been lured into a trap and had lost my daughter. And if the relic proved to be genuine, then it was indeed “the artifact of the second millennium.”

  “This belongs to your family?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  Legally? Perhaps they’d purchased it from a dealer or maybe even a monk or priest centuries ago, but this artifact was more mine than theirs. My grandmother had spoken of it many times with me cuddled against her, but my mother had sworn it was a figment of an over-Lorna Tedder

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  active imagination since no one in my maternal line remembered seeing the book. I stared at Simon and tried to give a measured response so he wouldn’t know how much this artifact meant to me personally. Or maybe he already knew. Maybe that’s what made me his preferred choice to authenticate it.

  “It’s…beautiful,” I whispered in reverence.

  If the book was legally an Adriano possession, I expected familial pride from Simon but found none.

  “It’s bullshit, accusations, lies,” he said instead. His lips curled as if he’d tasted acid. “But that’s why I had to have it. The Church itself deemed this manuscript to be heresy. It was a charge written against my family in the 1400s in an attempt to destroy us, but thankfully Pope Martin the Fifth presented it to my family as a token of his appreciation for our services.”

  “Services?”

  “Yes. My family did everything in its power to protect the Church. The Church was very grateful.”

  Extortion? I wondered. I was very familiar with medieval history—much of the knowledge coming from the literature I had studied and taught—and the fifteenth century had seen the Church torn apart by regional in-fighting and indecision over which of three popes was the true leader of the Church.

  “The genuine artifact,” Simon continued, “has been stolen from us and recovered more than once over the centuries. If this…accounting of lies were made public, it would send historians into an uproar.

  Do you understand?” He lowered h
is voice. “I have 88

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  to know if it’s authentic or if it’s a modern hoax to discredit us.”

  Simon’s family had been as powerful as the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, just more quietly so, and more powerful than most governments of the era. Some said they’d controlled more than their share of kings and popes. No doubt the pope’s little token of appreciation had been for some type of political assistance rather than building a new cathedral or clothing a few nuns. Had the Church declared the manuscript heresy or had the reigning Adriano of the times?

  “And if it is authentic?”

  Simon laughed. “Then we’ll have a bonfire in two days when Joshua returns from business in Alexandria.”

  I almost choked. Burn a book? Especially an incunable of this age and significance? A book with a personal tie to my own ancestry?

  As a professor of literature, I couldn’t even fathom burning a self-published chapbook of bad poetry, let alone destroying an artifact that might “send historians into an uproar.” But as someone with a vested interest in the manuscript, I knew I had to save this book. My hands itched to get started, and I intentionally let my excitement show. Simon needed to see that I could be a team player. Doing so might keep me alive another day.

  “I’ll need time to authenticate it, Simon. Several hours, at least. Maybe more. I don’t really have everything I need here to do a complete job.”

  He shook his head. “I need to know only if it’s real, not who wrote it or why.”

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  I frowned down at the folio pages and immediately started to drone as if I were lecturing to a hall of graduate students. “It’s faded in places, stained in others. Very delicate, of course. Some annotations in brown ink. Hmm, looks like family crests or names in the narrow margins. How curious. Bound in what appears to be contemporary blind-tooled pigskin over wooden boards with original brass clasps. A few worm-holes in the pastedowns, but overall a handsome artifact.

  Two columns of text in a compact Gothic script used to economize on space. Hmm, Latin, which I can read relatively well.”

  I hesitated, wondering whether to continue, but Simon was already sure enough of what I was about to tell him. Lying was not an option.

  “I’d put it somewhere in the fifteenth century, but I’ll need time to translate it to be certain.” Unfortunately I’d be alone in a closed room with no way out but the vault door. “I can’t get my work done for you if I’m interrupted. Will I be safe to work here alone?”

  Simon nodded. “Take all the time you need. I’ll have guards at the door.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know very well what you meant.” Simon walked away. “I’ll inform Caleb that he is to leave you alone…

  tonight…while you work.” He reached the door and looked over his shoulder at me. “I’ll be back for an update in—” he checked his expensive watch “—two hours.”

  The vault door clicked shut behind him, but I barely 90

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  noticed. Even the air around me seemed old and leaden in my lungs. I already knew that the incunable was authentic. I knew because I’d sacrificed years and a life with my daughter and everything I held dear to find it.

  For six weeks I’d carried it in my arms. And now it was in my hands.

  The printed manuscript from the hand of Joan of Arc. The heresy against the Adrianos.

  My pulse pounded in my ears. I couldn’t let the Adrianos burn it. This was more than an artifact; it was history. My history. And it was the only thing other than Matthew and Lilah that had meant anything to me in my whole life.

  On a cold day in March the year my Lilah turned ten, I’d kissed my little angel goodbye and told her to be a good girl for her aunt and cousins in Pennsylvania while I was gone to Europe. I had been selected as one of only a handful of professors of medieval literature to attend a six-week workshop in Paris, studying old and forgotten manuscripts on an archaeological grant and chasing the rumor of a Joan of Arc manuscript. I’d written letters to Lilah every day, telling her how much I loved and missed her, and I’d sent her postcards of the French countryside. I spent weeks studying references to a memoir allegedly written by Joan of Arc and detailing a far greater mission than the ones given to her historical credit.

  “This is it.” I touched the pages with trembling fingers. The fragmented memories I’d tried to forget came flooding back.

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  I’d been told that my selection was a very prestigious honor funded by the Adriano philanthropic trust and that as many as a hundred scholars might be chosen to attend. It was odd that there had been only six women selected for the honor of attending the workshop, and all of us within a few years’ age of each other and all of us profoundly interested in Joan of Arc lore. At the end of the fifth week, I’d become ill. On the last day of the sixth week, the day before I was to go home to Lilah, I thought I saw Matthew standing in the darkened door of a small French church. Maybe I just wanted to see him there or maybe it was the virus I’d picked up, but I followed the man I saw. Two hours later I’d become the most wanted thief in France and a woman on the run.

  I rubbed my eyes. My breath came quick and shallow, and I could barely think. I’d never been able to figure out exactly what had happened or why. My life had changed in the blink of an eye, and I now held the clues in my hands.

  “Later,” I told myself. “I’ll think about it later. Focus on the moment—and then get out of here.” I squinted at the distant Latin words of the incunable and began to translate as I strained to read….

  I was born first, as the sun was setting on the Feast Day of Corpus Christi, and she was born second, when the last of the light had faded. We were two girl children born to a land that saw no worth in daughters. We were unwanted and doomed to be abandoned to starve or die of the cold, save for the 92

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  Grace of God. I was named Isabelle after our mother, and she, Jeanne. We lived for a reason that became clear with the years—to continue the tradition of our women, of warriors fighting in the name of the Holy Mother.

  Perspiration prickled at my brow. Joan of Arc had siblings, yes. A sister even. But a twin? My mother’s mother and her mother’s mother before her had often said we were descended from Joan of Arc’s womb. I’d had my doubts about the claim. Joan had died at eighteen, only months older than I’d been when Matthew had rescued me. She’d been far braver than I.

  She’d died childless, though not a virgin. Her jailers had seen to that with their horrific tortures long before they burned her at the stake.

  But a twin? A twin who had shared the womb with Joan? A twin no one had ever heard of…until now? The times the young warrior had been wounded and still managed to rally her troops as if she’d never been hurt…? The girl had seemed invincible. Could it be that she’d had a partner in her revolution?

  Hands shaking, I rewrapped the incunable and tucked it back inside the stereolithographic casing, then snapped the encasement shut. With a quick glance at the vault door, I slid the artifact back into the briefcase and fastened the straps. I had to get out of the Adriano compound and I had to do it with the book in tow and the hopes that I’d live to translate it when Simon wasn’t around.

  Glancing around to make sure there were no Lorna Tedder

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  cameras watching me, I clicked across the floor, searching for a second way out of the vault. The ceiling disguised the upper reaches of a fireproof room but no escape. But the floor…

  I followed the lines of the floor to a barely noticeable crack in the shape of a square. A trapdoor. A way out. Maybe.

  Lying flat on the floor with the briefcase beside me, I was finally able to lift one side and slide the square cover away from a hole big enough for a man the size of Caleb to crawl through. The sudden smell of sweat and excrement stung my nostrils, and I nearly gagged.
/>
  I forced myself not to cough and instead breathed through my mouth. I couldn’t afford to make any noises that might bring Simon back. Or worse. My ears rang.

  I felt ill.

  The trapdoor led to some sort of room below, which had light and ventilation, but I couldn’t see any more than that. The door gaped down a long tube without steps. Since the vault was on the bottom floor of the palazzo’s main house, where the modern building met with the old castle, maybe the room below led to an escape along the seashore. It had to lead somewhere.

  Normally I might have descended the tunnel using my back and my knees, but I knew intuitively that my bad knee would fail me tonight. I glanced around the vault for a ladder or rope and settled on the fire hose near the vault door. Although the vault seemed fireproof enough, I guessed that the Adrianos would take no chances with their personal art collection.

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  Leaving the briefcase on the floor beside the trapdoor, I lowered myself down the tube with hose to spare. My feet had barely cleared the tunnel when I felt a man’s hands on my thighs and halfway up my dress!

  Oh, God! Caleb?

  I kicked hard, and the hands released my legs at the same time I heard an “Oof!” and a thud. I dropped to the floor, hammering my right knee hard as I did but fists outstretched and ready to fight.

  All at once, I felt relieved and terrible. An old man lay on the floor, one feeble arm raised in self-defense.

  He blinked at me through straggly white hair as if looking at sunshine for the first time in weeks.

  “You didn’t have to kick me,” he groused. “I was trying to help you down.”

  I peered up at the way I’d come. It was nothing more than an opening into a room that otherwise was without a door. An oubliette. A trap. Without the fire hose to climb out, I would have been just as trapped as the old man.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, quickly taking stock of the room. No exit. No windows. Numerous artifacts on the floor, including several nineteenth-century tapestries.

  Prettily colored tiles of some sort. Several small air vents—which were greatly needed, considering the stench coming from the far corner of the room. I guessed that the old man had been in the oubliette for quite some time, and he’d been decently fed if not bathed.