Death Mask

by Alex Archer

  “So his ingenuity bought him no favors with the men in power.”

  “None.”

  It was no different from Joan of Arc’s France, Roux knew. There, the executioner might have had mercy on the “witch” and snapped her neck before she burned. It was barbaric and brutal, and the horrors he’d seen over the centuries still lived on inside his head.

  They moved through the room, toward a display that showed a reproduction of a painting by Goya along with sketches of suspects wearing pointed hats and tabards bearing a cross that marked them as being under investigation by the Inquisition. Roux had seen the original many times, and not only on the walls of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, where it hung. He had spent almost a year in the artist’s company after he fled to Paris. The last time they talked had been only days before Goya suffered his fatal stroke. It brought back so many memories, some of which he would much rather forget.

  “You think it was really like that?” Mateo asked.

  “Not at the beginning,” Roux said. “But by the end, certainly.” He spoke with more certainty than the driver could have expected. But then, the man could never have guessed the old man he was talking to had witnessed many of the Inquisition’s horrors firsthand.

  “There are some more of his drawings here in Seville,” Mateo said. “Some of them are studies that may have led to this painting.”

  “Are there?” Roux had thought the artist had destroyed everything related to his dark pieces. This was news to him. But did it matter? Was this the important thing he’d been hoping to find? A few sketches by a lost friend?

  “They are in the Museum of Fine Arts. Fifteen minutes’ walk from here, not even half that in the car.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  “They aren’t on display—they’re only brought out for special exhibitions.”

  “There are always ways and means,” Roux said.

  He suddenly had a hunch and was curious to see what of his old friend’s art had survived. He remembered Goya’s fascination with the darkest days of his country. The man was a scholar with a passion for learning and a habit of hiding those things he had discovered in his art—especially in the sketches that formed the foundations of the finished paintings. There was no telling what he might have hidden on those charcoals. Roux hadn’t planned on this detour, but the few minutes it would add to the search could prove invaluable in the long run.

  Roux didn’t waste his time calling some petty bureaucrat in the museum. He cut to the chase, speed-dialing one of the movers and shakers in the country. The woman was on the board of a number of museums and art galleries and could pull strings quickly. She was also an ex-lover, which made the first sixty seconds or so of the conversation a little awkward. It had been more than thirty years since they’d spoken, and although she sounded much the same, she couldn’t be the young woman she had been, even if he was exactly the same man he was that last time he’d lain down beside her. The phone line was like the dark, though. It hid the truth of the years between them.

  She promised the pictures would be waiting for him when he arrived. He promised to come visit her soon. One of them was lying and they both knew it.

  The traffic made the journey slower than Mateo had suggested, but only by a few minutes, and it gave the curator time to set up a private room with the sketches displayed for Roux’s viewing. The curator, a short, balding man, met them at the door as they arrived, a hand held out in welcome as if they were old friends.

  “Welcome,” he said, ushering Roux inside. “I was given to understand you only have a limited amount of time, and with the very short notice, well, the space we’ve been able to make available for viewing...isn’t optimal. The lighting, et cetera... I hope you understand.”

  “Of course,” Roux said, waving away the apologies. “I’m sorry it was such short notice and appreciate your efforts to accommodate a demanding old man.” He smiled wryly.

  “Please, please,” the little man said, “let’s just forgive each other, then. This way, gentlemen.” He offered a mildly disapproving glance in Mateo’s direction as the driver climbed out of the car to follow them.

  “It might be better if you wait with the car, Mateo,” Roux said, deciding he’d rather not have a witness. There was a chance money might well need to change hands, if the curator was holding out on anything, and a man was always more susceptible to a bribe if he wasn’t being watched.

  Once they were inside the room it was clear why the curator had been reluctant to have the extra body inside. The private viewing room was barely larger than a broom cupboard—a particularly small one, at that—and was obviously set up for restoration work rather than viewing. A woman Goya would have dearly loved to have painted waited for them inside the room.

  “Our collection of Goya drawings is really quite remarkable, the pride of our humble little museum,” the woman said. “We were incredibly fortunate to have these willed to us in a patron’s estate many years ago. They are by far the most precious treasure we have in our care.” She waved an open hand toward a folio on a workbench that had been cleared. “Please.” She slipped on a pair of cotton gloves before she opened it. “Just let me know when you are ready, and I’ll turn them over.”

  Roux was momentarily disappointed he wasn’t going to be able to touch the drawings himself, but then they were the property of the nation, and she had no idea Roux’s own face could be hidden away inside one of them, just another one of the artist’s little jokes.

  She opened the folder to reveal the first of the pictures.

  It was a study of a man’s face beneath a pointed hat.

  The second was the face of a monk.

  The third was of a row of officials sitting in judgment.

  None of them were significantly different from the final pictures he’d seen in Milan.

  But as the woman revealed the fourth picture, Roux’s breath caught.

  The sketch was of a mask, or rather, a face wearing a mask.

  This was what he’d been hoping against hope to find. He’d half expected it not to be here. His friend had been obsessed with the Inquisition, and it was no surprise that Tomás de Torquemada figured into this. Still, he hadn’t dared to hope Goya had known anything about a mask because there was no way for him to reach across the years and ask him. Francisco Goya, though, had reached across the years to talk to Roux the only way he knew how—through his art.

  “What can you tell me about this?” Roux asked, trying not to make the inquiry sound as urgent as it felt. He wanted to hear it from their lips, but it was hard not to jump to conclusions. It had to be the Mask of Torquemada.

  “Ah, this one. Quite...haunting, isn’t it? Certainly one of his darker studies. There is, of course, the possibility this study has nothing to do with his Inquisition sketches,” the curator began, but the woman cut him off.

  “There were stories, none of them written down at the time, sadly—at least none that have been recovered—and many of them conflict, but it is believed that the Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada himself, wore a mask when he witnessed interrogations.” The woman pursed her lips, clearly not comfortable bringing anything as sordid as torture into the conversation. The art was all that mattered to her. “There is one school of thought that believes he wore it chiefly to terrify, but there is another that believes it was to hide his own fear.”

  “From what I know of the man, that doesn’t seem likely,” Roux said. The many religious zealots he’d encountered in his life had all relished their work. It was the one thing they all had in common.

  “As I was saying,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “There is an alternative theory, that the mask was actually a torture device itself.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Indeed. It may even have been the inspiration for Alexander Dumas’s T
he Man in the Iron Mask.”

  “Or Dumas’s mask might have helped create some of the myth around Torquemada himself,” the curator suggested.

  It was possible, of course. And from what Roux remembered about Goya in his final years, it was likely the artist would have made that kind of connection, too. In 1847, Dumas had popularized the story of Eustache Dauger, held in jail in 1669. Roux had never particularly liked the man. Dauger was a poseur, but then, by the time they had rubbed shoulders in the royal court of Versailles, Roux was long past the part of his life where he’d craved any sort of notoriety. He was a creature of shadows by then, moving silently, obsessed with the search for the lost fragments of Joan of Arc’s shattered blade.

  “When do you think these were drawn?” he asked.

  “Goya started work on The Inquisition Tribunal in 1812, so these sketches must date from earlier than that.”

  More than a decade before he’d first met the man. “The mask did not make it into that painting,” Roux noted.

  “Which is not particularly unusual for an artist like Goya. He made hundreds of preliminary sketches, working on countless details that didn’t make it into the final works for whatever reason.”

  What she said was quite true, but there was something about the drawing that made Roux think the artist had other reasons for not including it in the final painting. Certainly this wasn’t something conjured from his imagination. Goya was quite grounded in his studies of the Inquisition pieces. He wasn’t given to flights of fancy. No, the old man couldn’t shake off the feeling that Goya had drawn this from life, right down to the ribbon that tied the mask in place.

  “Is there any way I could have a copy of this?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s quite out of the question,” the woman said, but this time it was the curator’s turn to step in, not wanting their unhelpfulness to get back to the board member who’d facilitated Roux’s visit. She was that powerful in this world.

  “I’m sure there’s some way we can accommodate you, sir.”

  The woman gritted her teeth, determined to put herself in between the man and her treasure. “These cannot just be placed in the photocopier, you know.”

  Roux had no idea if that was what the curator had in mind, but he had a simple enough solution and one that would be far more efficient, while leaving the drawings untouched. He fished his phone out of his pocket and held it up like a flag of truce. They both looked at him as if they couldn’t quite comprehend what he was thinking. He spelled it out for them.

  “If I could just take a photograph? That would be quite incredible. I would be forever in your debt.”

  “Of course,” the curator said, fussing around to make sure that Roux had enough room.

  Roux glanced at the woman. While she didn’t seem enamored by his request, she didn’t object.

  He captured a single image of the sketch. There was nothing else he was likely to learn here, so he gave his thanks and made his farewells, promising to put in a good word with his friend when he saw her next.

  The curator couldn’t hide his pride. “Our pleasure.”

  The woman forced a smile. She clutched the portfolio close to her breast. It would be hidden away again, lost to the world until the next exhibition. There was something sad about that, but it was equally wonderful that new generations would discover these treasures and keep on discovering them as long as there was someone like her to cherish them. He smiled his thanks and followed the curator back out through the warren of corridors to the main glass doors.

  Stepping outside, Roux had to look up and down the street several times before he spotted the car, and Mateo standing beside it. The driver waved and slid back behind the wheel, driving up to him. As he got in and closed the door, Roux heard the sound of an engine starting up close by.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I think perhaps I did,” Roux said, studying the picture on the phone’s screen.

  He forwarded the photograph to Annja, then tried to call her, but it went straight to voice mail again. He hung up without leaving a message. Roux put the phone back into his pocket. He glanced through the rear window, taking one last look at the museum. All this time, it had held a secret without even knowing it. Annja would appreciate that.

  Roux was still looking out the rear window as the car took a slow right turn. The driver in the car behind them was staring back at him far too intensely for comfort.

  This wasn’t the old man’s first time at the rodeo.

  He was being followed.

  7

  20:00—Valladolid

  Annja had expected bones. Bones or dust. Or fragments of one and a gathering of the other. A few rags, perhaps, untouched for generations.

  Deep down, there’d been a tiny part of her that had hoped it’d be easy, that she’d push back the lid and see a silver mask lying on some moldering cushion, just waiting to be found. That would have been all of her lottery-ticket, late-running-for-a-train and traffic-lights-in-her-favor luck for the rest of her life all rolled into one.

  But it wasn’t to be.

  She wasn’t that lucky.

  Which was bad news for Garin.

  The flashlight beam played across the only thing the stone casket contained: a key. A small brass key with worn teeth.

  Annja reached inside for it.

  She assumed the metal would feel rough, pitted with corrosion given its obvious age, but it was surprisingly smooth. There was the obvious coarseness associated with something made so long ago, but it had weathered the passage of time relatively unharmed, no doubt because of the near-vacuum seal the sarcophagus lid provided. It had been hidden for a reason. More than that, it had been hidden here for a reason. Why, though, had it been placed in an empty coffin marked for a Moor and surrounded by tombs of the Inquisition’s most faithful? That only opened a nest of questions, the most immediate being: What did it unlock?

  She heard a sound originating from the direction she’d come. The unexpectedness of it caused her heart to skip a beat.

  Someone was heading her way.

  Had she been followed down here?

  She could make herself known, avoiding an unpleasant confrontation—but that would mean having to explain herself, and it wasn’t as though she had a right to be down here. It would eat up valuable time she couldn’t spare. Or, to be blunt, time Garin couldn’t spare.

  She turned off the flashlight and did her best to slide the lid of the sarcophagus back into place without making enough noise to wake the rest of the dead down here. Even so, the grating of stone-on-stone echoed through the chamber.

  A voice cried out.

  She didn’t like the sound of it.

  Annja crept deeper into the catacombs, not wanting to be discovered by whoever was down there with her. She could only hope she’d be able to find another way out of this charnel house, but the odds weren’t in her favor.

  She edged forward in the dark, trying not to make a sound.

  She was lucky the avenue was straight and that the person moving toward her was carrying a hooded lantern, which spread its glow across the floor without lighting the entire tunnel. She was going to have to get out of there, though. There was no way her luck was going to hold. Annja crept along the passageway, trying to time her footsteps to those of the newcomer. It wasn’t easy, but thankfully, the other person wasn’t trying to be quiet.

  Annja almost missed the narrow flight of stairs—old stone steps with well-worn edges leading upward.

  She held her breath as the lantern swung in the darkness.

  A muffled voice called out, too indistinct for her to make out any words.

  She stopped moving.

  She could wait and hope the newcomer missed her, or trust to whatever god looked after reckless explorers in ancient crypts,
and take the stairs, praying they’d lead her out of there and not into trouble. Fortune favors the brave, she thought. She took the first few stairs as fast as she could, making sure that she got her body out of the line of sight in case the hooded lantern’s light got too close too quickly. When she was high enough up the staircase, Annja turned on the flashlight. The time for stealth was over. She broke into a run, her boots clattering on the stone.

  “¿Quién es?” the newcomer shouted from below. Annja took no notice. She needed to get out, fast, and hang on to the key. That was the most important thing right now. That key opened something, somewhere. A Moorish tomb in a Christian burial ground—that had to mean something. She wasn’t far enough down the path to know what, yet, but she would. Did it have anything to do with the mask she was looking for? Impossible to say. She couldn’t worry about that now. All she could do was run. And she did, clutching the flashlight in one hand, the key in the other. She wasn’t about to risk it falling out of her pocket.

  An icy thrill of fear coursed through Annja when she saw the heavy wooden door blocking her way at the top of the stairs. She hit it hard, expecting it to bounce her back, but it swung open easily. Without hesitating, she stepped through and slammed it closed behind her. There was a key in the lock. She turned it, locking it on the person in the crypt.

  It took a moment for Annja to realize where she was. She hadn’t emerged in the Zorrilla Theater, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, in a church.

  Her phone rang almost as soon as she took her first steps down the aisle toward the door that would take her outside. The only worshipper, a woman kneeling at the altar, turned and offered her a withering glance. Annja was getting a lot of those these days. She hurried down the aisle and out into the fresh air before she checked her phone.

  Number withheld.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Well, well, well... Am I to take it you have found religion?” the voice in her ear mocked.