by Alex Archer
Louis marched to the door, but swung back to admonish them with a pointing finger. “I will discover the truth of this matter, messieurs. With or without your assistance.”
The king did not close the door. For long minutes his heels echoed out jaunty clicks as he strode the marble hallway toward the west wing.
Finally, Mazarin heaved out a sigh. He rapped Nicolas’s desk with his beringed knuckles. “Quite the intrigue, eh?”
Nicolas could not be sure if the cardinal could know the complete details behind the missing jewels—that the queen had hidden them, and had plans to then give them away.
To hide her indiscretions.
And so he but nodded, and watched as the cardinal sauntered out of his office.
It was interesting to Nicolas, now that he considered the recipient of the treasure cache of jewels. A musketeer. And what was that silly little phrase the musketeers spoke as a literal statement of faith?
All for the king.
Yes. Interesting, then, that a very particular musketeer should be taking from the mouth of the very man he had pledged to serve faithfully.
Actually, it was rather amusing.
5
It neared midnight, and exhilaration overwhelmed Annja’s exhaustion. The tent lay flattened, its perimeter burned and the canvas smoking. The center remained intact thanks to Jay’s fast actions to snuff the flames.
A flashlight had been retrieved from the Jeep’s glove box, and Annja could now make out faces. The teenager’s face was blackened with ash, and his short blond hair stuck out in tufts. His slouchy jeans and fancy sneakers led Annja to believe he was a charmer. Or maybe it was the wink he tossed her way.
“Now what?” Jay asked Ascher, but he danced his look up and down Annja.
Boys and their blatant hormones. Annja looked away to conceal her smile.
“Formal introductions,” Ascher said as he slung an arm across Annja’s shoulder. “Jay and Peyton Nash, I introduce you to the one and only Annja Creed.”
“Chasing History’s Monsters,” Jay said in weird fan-boy wonder. “I never miss an episode. Your stories are fascinating, Miss Creed.”
“Thank you, Jay. Glad to know you appreciate the history and research.”
“Oh, yeah, the research,” he muttered, but it wasn’t very convincing.
“A pleasure.” Peyton Nash leaned forward and offered a hand, which Annja took as opportunity to slip from Ascher’s too comfortable embrace. She returned the proffered shake. Good, firm clasp. And a keen sense of decorum. She liked the man. “Jay’s my little brother. We’ve had the ill luck of digging out holes with Vallois on more than a few occasions. I suppose that is our fault. He calls, we come running.”
“I guess that makes you a winner,” Jay said to Ascher.
Ascher shook his head subtly, but from the corner of her eye Annja caught the move. “A winner? What does that mean?” she asked.
“I do not know what he is talking about,” Ascher pleaded with a shrug.
Peyton, the elder brother, shook his head, but could not hide a grin in the glare of the flashlight.
“Did you make a bet that you could get me here?” she tried. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine after his attempts at online flirtation. “Was that the only reason you invited me to the dig?”
Jay answered, “Yes.”
Ascher spit out a resounding “No.”
“I may have put forth a friendly wager,” Ascher then offered quickly, “but only after inviting you here.”
“Because you were guaranteed you would win,” she said.
“No, because I wanted you to see the sword.”
“You didn’t have the sword when you called me last night. Or that’s what you said. You had some sword. The one the thugs got away with looked sixteenth century from what I saw,” she said.
“Found it after but three dips of the shovel into the ground,” Peyton explained. “Nice find, but quite damaged by the elements.”
No surprise. France was covered with lost weapons and armor and spoils of war. Most of it was found by farmers, who took the rusted artifacts home and hung them over their fireplaces or tossed them in the truck beds filled with an assortment of odd finds including stripped tires, chipped pots and the occasional silver coin.
“Do you even have the real one?” Annja prompted. “If this was a ruse to get me here—”
“Annja, settle. You saw the coat of arms on the piece I showed you in Chalon. Do you doubt your own knowledge?” Ascher asked.
She’d left the wood piece in the rental car. It had been the Batz-Castelmore coat of arms. Of course, anyone could have easily forged it. Especially someone with ulterior motives to trick her here.
“Who were those thugs?” she asked Ascher. “You weren’t surprised we were followed.”
Peyton took this moment to conveniently slip back and stroll around to join his brother at the edge of the dig site, leaving Annja facing Ascher in a tense stare-down.
It may be three men to one woman, but Annja’s testosterone raged enough for all of them.
“I can honestly say I have never seen them before,” Ascher said.
“They acted as though you had intended to give them the sword all along,” she said.
Ascher shrugged. “You know how the cyber community can be. If you are an expert hacker, you can find out any number of things.”
“Your lack of concern disturbs me.”
Annja tugged out the pistol still tucked at the back of her waistband. With no intention to use it for anything more than a sly threat, she didn’t thread her finger through the trigger, but did snap up her arm against her shoulder—barrel pointing to the sky—and made it clear she wasn’t about to back down.
“Trust me, Annja.” Ascher splayed his hands before him. “I have no intent to deceive you, now or when I called you this morning. I want to share this discovery of d’Artagnan’s sword with you. It is as much yours as it is mine.”
“If it does exist, it belongs to neither of us,” she stated.
“I understand that. All historical artifacts belong to France. But I mean the find, the joy of discovery. It is ours to share.”
“I don’t like the sound of sharing any joy with you.” She dropped the gun to point downward. The man wasn’t a threat. She wasn’t sure if he was an opportunist or just arrogant. Probably both.
“You’ve got two minutes to prove to me I haven’t wasted my time today, Vallois. I don’t have an expense account, and the flight to Paris was not cheap.”
“The proof awaits!” Ascher gestured that the Nash brothers join his side. Each of the three men nodded, knowing. The air hummed with an unspoken excitement.
“What?” Annja eagerly followed as Ascher urged her toward the dig site. “Have you found another sword? The sword?”
“It’s still half-buried,” Jay said excitedly.
“But we’ll have it out in a jiff,” Peyton agreed. “We’ve been waiting for Ascher to bring you here before digging it out completely. He made us promise we would not peek. Well, I was waiting, Jay was—”
“Just resting my eyes. I was not sleeping. You’ve got a gun,” he said to Annja.
Annja dropped the Glock to her side. “Spoils of war. So show me the prize.”
Both men jumped down into the pit, about three feet deep and seven or eight feet wide. Ascher started tossing them tools, trowels and the small shovel. Grinning at Annja, he then jumped into the pit and began to direct them.
So he hadn’t lied about promising to make them wait. But Annja sensed he still lied about something.
“Light, please, Miss Creed,” Peyton said.
Annja flashed the light over the pit. She saw that indeed something was embedded in the dirt. It looked like a corner of a box. An old wooden box that had once held—and maybe still did hold—a valued sword?
“It’s a sword box,” Ascher explained as he carefully brushed away dirt. “Jay opened the end. That is when I contacted you. And you did ask me to w
ait.”
Trowels clicked against wood and the men worked furiously to uncover the entire box.
Annja didn’t even mind the chill that had settled with nightfall. Brushing her fingers over her bare shoulder, she felt an abrasion. The thug’s bullet had barely damaged the skin. No blood. Though her flesh did feel warm. Excitement fueled her temperature up a few notches, she felt sure.
“There is a sword inside!” Jay announced grandly. He had a hand poked in the exposed end of the box where the coat of arms had been removed. “I can feel the curve of the pommel through the cloth. It must be wrapped in a sword bag. And it will be d’Artagnan’s sword!”
Annja smirked. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
AN HOUR LATER, Annja believed.
The box was open, she squatted next to it, holding the sword that Ascher had carefully laid upon her palms. Jay held the camp light above their heads as they all preened over the weapon.
It was a rapier, apparent by its short and narrow blade. The hilt was ornamental. Not a fighting sword, but one worn by a gentleman as an enhancement to his wardrobe, a decorative accessory.
Surprising. Yet Annja assumed if the queen had commissioned it, she may not have thought to gift her favorite with a fighting weapon.
The light Jay held flickered. “We’re losing juice,” he said.
“We’ll take it to my home for a better look.” Ascher reached for the sword, but paused. “You hold it, Annja. Let’s pull out the box and then leave.”
CLUTCHING THE SWORD BAG to her left shoulder, the base of it stretched onto the small floor space in the rental, Annja nodded off as Ascher drove. She didn’t feel the need to chat, so long as she held the sword.
She’d left the pilfered Glock with the Nash brothers, with an encouragement to decamp and leave quickly. There was no telling how quickly the thugs would discover the sword dupe and return for the real thing.
Two hours later they arrived at Ascher’s home just south of Sens. The town was once the capital of the Gallo-Roman province. Abelard’s doctrines were condemned here, and Annja recalled, Thomas Becket once lived in Sens during exile from England. Perhaps she’d find a few hours later to explore the city, after the sword had been examined.
The sun had yet to rise. Annja guessed it was 3:00 a.m. but she couldn’t get a view of the digital clock on the driver’s side of the dashboard.
Ascher lived in an estate that resembled a castle with tiled pepper-pot turrets to each of the four corners. It was probably officially considered a château, she thought. It even had a dry moat. The brickwork was streaked with black, and more than a few tiles were missing from the roof and turrets. It needed a bit of tender loving care, Annja figured. As the car’s headlights flashed over the exterior, she saw climbing vines painted the limestone block and seamlessly blended the house’s corners into the large rectangular yew shrubs that hugged it.
A house in the country replete with a sexy Frenchman?
Hell, she really did need to sleep. After the encounter with the thugs, she felt quite certain she could spit farther than her trust extended toward Ascher Vallois.
He offered to carry the sword inside. Determined not to let it out of her sight, Annja walked past him. For some reason she felt an attachment to the thing, though it hadn’t even been her dig.
Because you’ve wondered and obsessed over it for years—that is why, she told herself.
And what would she do if it was authentic? It wasn’t her find. Nor Ascher’s. According to French find laws, all artifacts belonged either to the living relatives—if the artifact could be verified as to owner—or then to the city of provenance, and finally to France itself.
Standing in the dark foyer, Annja clung to the weapon as she looked about. A low ceiling lamp switched on, illuminating the immediate area, but fading out into a dark hallway. Dark stained oak coated the foyer from floor to ceiling and gave off a musty odor Annja associated with the stacks of old libraries.
There were a few swords displayed point down from ornate hangers on the wall opposite the door. Nothing Annja immediately recognized to century or country of origin.
What caught her eye were the acoustic guitars of every design hung high on the walls. Art deco glass lamps focused spotlights on an ivory-inlaid fret board or the shiny gold tuning pegs on a small instrument that resembled a ukulele more than guitar.
“Do you play?” she asked.
“No, but I appreciate.” Ascher strummed his thumb across the strings of one specimen. “Mid-nineteenth century. A real Spanish guitar once played by Paco de Lucena, famed flamenco artist from Granada, and not to be confused with the contemporary Paco de Lucia. You like music, Annja?”
“Of course. I never travel without my iPod.” She dangled her backpack from three fingers. “Usually use it as background when I’m researching. I’ve some Sabicas on my playlists.”
“Ah, an aficionado. Sabicas is real flamenco puro.”
“I’m not even close to being an expert. I just like guitar music,” she said.
Her eyes trailed lazily away from the guitars and across the tiled floor, which resembled the rusted color of dried clay from Spain. In her backpack were her laptop, iPod, digital camera, her ever present notebook and a clean pair of shorts and T-shirt, not to mention bra and underwear. A change of clothing felt necessary, but trying. She found it impossible to stop a yawn.
“You can stay the night,” Ascher offered as he led her left into a small room. “Or what remains of it.”
A fieldstone hearth and shelves of books lined the walls of the small yet cozy den. Brown leather furniture sat as if it had been built with the house, so regal, yet aged and in need of repair. A ragged-edged map hung over the hearth. France, post-Revolution, for the names of the monuments were all changed, such as the Temple of Reason instead of Notre-Dame.
All the room needed was a lazy mastiff lounging on the bearskin rug before a crackling fire to complete the look.
“I’m tired,” she said. “But I don’t feel like sleep.”
“You stole a nap in the car.”
So he’d noticed.
“Much needed, I’m sure, after your certain brilliant actions against those men with guns,” Ascher said.
“Certain brilliant actions?”
He shrugged. “Treville told d’Artagnan such actions were a requirement—”
“To become a musketeer.”
And despite her exhaustion, Annja smiled. Now she remembered what had attracted her to Ascher in the first place, and why she had enjoyed his cyber company so much. They shared common interests, such as sporting and adventure, and archaeology. And a love for Dumas’s famous story.
Resisting full collapse, Annja sat on the edge of a comfy leather ottoman. Carefully laying the sword across her lap, she then burrowed into her backpack for the cool rectangle of her digital camera. “Let’s take a closer look at the sword, okay?”
Pushing aside some books and magazines, Ascher cleared a marble table against the wall opposite the hearth. “I will lay out some clean paper and find us some gloves.”
He produced a large sheet of butcher’s paper from a drawer under the table, which he laid over the white marble. A box of disposable latex gloves was produced from a cabinet on the connecting wall. Annja realized that an archaeologist, even if only part-time, would have all the essentials.
“So why only part-time?” she asked, still clinging to the ancient, dirty velvet bag as Ascher smoothed out the crisp paper.
“What? You mean the digging? It is no more than a hobby.”
“Treasure hunter,” she teased.
“Call me what you will. But you knew before coming here my experience and education.”
“Yes, too bad you left out the part about consorting with thugs.”
“Annja.” He dug out a few surgical gloves and leaned against the table. “My real passion is teaching.”
“Fencing.” He had a little shop in Sens, but lately, struggled to make the rent. How t
hen, could he afford this mansion? Perhaps more than the exterior was crumbling, she thought.
“Fencing is a romantic sport, oui?”
“Yes, but it also emulates armed manslaughter.”
“Touché! Ah, but the children. They are so agile and quick to learn. It is a delight to watch them develop their skills.”
She was surprised to hear the enthusiasm in the man’s voice. It was something he’d never mentioned during their online chats. “You teach full-time?”
“I’m down to three days a week. The rent—ah, it is of no import. I have to be free, you know?” He gestured with excited fingers as he smoothed out the paper, yet took moments to punctuate his speech like an air typist. With a wince, he clutched his side, but recovered as quickly. “I live to experience adventure. Jump off of buildings. Trek across mountains. Swim in the Amazon.”
Annja lifted a brow. “I’ve had a few adventures myself.”
“I like that about you, Annja. That time on Chasing History’s Monsters that you pursued the blue flash down the hillside?”
“Not planned, I assure you.” She recalled an episode on the blue flames, which, according to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, were places where buried treasure could be found, but only on Saint George’s Eve. Legend called them flames from all the dragons Saint George sent to Hell. Annja had decided it was the oxidation of hydrogen phosphide and methane gas, though she hadn’t ventured anywhere near a swamp where that should normally occur. “But it did make for good viewing. My producer held the clip for ratings week.”
“You were on Letterman that week, as well. You should flirt more with the man.”
Annja bowed her head and tried to force up another yawn. Why couldn’t she summon one when it was needed?
“You are a very sexy woman, Annja,” Ascher said.
“Yes, well.” The compliment felt great. She didn’t hear things like that often enough. “Right now I’m feeling far from it. Tired, dirty and close to falling asleep on my feet.”