Gerald’s ears turned a bright crimson. Sam opened his mouth, but before he could make a sound Gerald prodded a finger into his chest. ‘Don’t. Say. A. Word. All right?’
Sam grinned. ‘Not a word. My little soldier.’
The vision on the television cut to two photographs, clearly taken from passport files.
Ox and Alisha.
The announcer continued in Czech.
‘What do you think she’s saying?’ Felicity looked up at the two young faces staring out of the screen, like photos on a wanted poster.
‘The police are still searching for the children.’ A man in an overcoat, who had been watching the news program, leaned over them and spoke in an accent. He chucked his chin at the screen. ‘The adults were released in Miami in the United States. But there is no sign of the two children.’
Gerald looked at Ruby. ‘Mum said that everyone she was with was all right,’ he said. ‘Ox and Alisha can’t have been with them.’
‘So Brahe wasn’t lying,’ Ruby said. ‘He only took Ox and Alisha.’
Gerald nodded, then turned to leave.
‘What are you doing?’ Ruby said.
‘Getting bus tickets to Hadanka.’
‘You’re still going?’
‘Of course,’ Gerald said. ‘Brahe has Ox and Alisha. I can’t abandon them just because the local police don’t believe me.’
‘But what about our parents?’
‘My mum and dad looked fine on the TV. I know you’ll want to see your parents, so you should head back to the hotel and get Mr Pimbury to arrange a flight to London. But I’m going to find Ox and Alisha.’
Ruby glanced back at the television, to a grainy image of her parents among the crowd of released hostages. Then she looked back to Gerald.
‘Why do you always do this to me?’ she said.
‘Do what?’
‘Put me in these impossible situations.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘I can’t do it, Gerald. I have to see Mum and Dad.’
Gerald nodded again. Felicity took him by the hand. ‘I’ll come,’ she said. ‘It’s not like I’ve got anyone to go home to at the moment.’
Gerald squeezed her hand. He said an awkward goodbye to Sam and Ruby, then went to join the ticket queue.
He and Felicity had just climbed inside the bus, with the doors hissing shut, when Ruby thrust a shoulder into the gap and pushed herself onboard. She held the doors open long enough for Sam to squeeze through too.
Gerald couldn’t hide his smile. ‘I thought you were going home,’ he said.
Ruby brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear as they shuffled down the aisle. ‘Lucky for you that I enjoy your company then, isn’t it?’
Since inheriting his enormous fortune, Gerald had crisscrossed the globe in a private jet, skimmed the English Channel in a helicopter and skied down his own private mountain. He could now add to the list: crossing more of the Czech Republic than he would care to in the back of a donkey cart.
Gerald, Sam, Ruby and Felicity had tumbled off the bus from Prague in a small village in the grey light of early afternoon. The bus stop consisted of a pole in the ground and a park bench half-buried under a mound of snow. It was the closest they could get to Hadanka using public transport. From there they would have to make their own way. It was Felicity’s polite inquiry of a passing farmer that had hitched them the lift in the back of the donkey cart.
Gerald shifted uncomfortably on his cushion of hessian sacks. He reached under his backside and, with a grunt of effort, extracted a gnarled turnip. ‘Oh, that’s better,’ he said, tossing the vegetable into the back of the cart. ‘That was right in the wrong spot.’
He pulled a horse blanket up to his chin and snuggled in closer to Felicity. The four of them were packed in tight, like pink-cheeked urchins off to market.
‘How much further is it, do you think?’ Sam asked. The cart lurched over a pothole in the road, jostling them about.
‘He doesn’t speak much English,’ Felicity said, indicating the farmer with a nod. The man sat on an old crate at the front of the cart, reins held slack in one hand, giving the occasional word of encouragement to the donkey. ‘But I gather it’s a fair way.’
Gerald shifted on his bottom again. ‘Any distance on this thing would be a fair way. My bum feels like it’s about to drop off.’ He glanced across to Ruby. She was staring out at the snow-draped countryside. She hadn’t spoken since getting off the bus.
‘I’m curious,’ she said.
‘That you are,’ Sam said.
Ruby gave him an annoyed glare. ‘If Brahe didn’t kidnap the adults, then who did? And how did they end up in Miami?’
Gerald tugged at the blanket, trying to keep warm. ‘I get the feeling that Mason Green might have something to do with it,’ he said. He wrestled another turnip out from underneath his bottom. ‘I’m sure we’ll hear all about it from my mother. Many times.’
The donkey cart rolled onwards, bumping its way along rough country roads. All around were snow-covered fields separated by windbreaks of fir trees.
‘Have you noticed something?’ Felicity asked, swaying in time to the rhythm of the cart.
‘What’s that?’ Sam asked.
‘There’s no one around.’
Sam shrugged. ‘We’re in the country. What were you expecting? Mardi Gras?’
Felicity shook her head. ‘There were people around when we got off the bus. But for the last few hours we haven’t seen another living soul. Not even any birds. Don’t you find that kind of creepy?’
Sam let out a sharp laugh. ‘Nah.’ But he did pull the rug up tight under his chin, and shifted in closer to the others.
The cart arrived in Hadanka just as the sun dipped behind the white-crested hills that surrounded the village. The temperature plummeted.
The farmer declined Gerald’s offer to pay for the ride. He glanced at the setting sun and urged the donkey onwards. The cart set off at a clip and disappeared around a bend.
‘What a kind man,’ Felicity said, waving after him. ‘It’s nice when people take the time to help.’
‘He was certainly in a hurry to get on,’ Ruby said. ‘But it was good of him to give us a lift.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Sam said, clapping his arms across his chest to ward off the cold. ‘Renews your faith in the world. So, where to now?’
Gerald looked around them. They were in a small village square. A fountain stood in the centre—its metal centrepiece wrapped in canvas. Lights shone from shopfronts that had stared across the square at each other for centuries. Shutters on upper floors were closed. Window boxes were barren, longing for spring. The square was deserted.
One shopfront in particular caught Gerald’s eye. ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing. ‘That could be a hotel.’
‘Hopefully with a kitchen,’ Sam said. ‘I’m starving.’
Gerald climbed the three steps to the front door and pushed his way in. He was greeted by a wave of warm air. A fire blazed in a grate in a cosy lounge area on the left, with comfy armchairs arranged on a rug before it. On the right a bearded man sat at a table, lit by a desk lamp. He held a tiny screwdriver in an enormous hand. His head was bent low as he tended to a model of a sailing ship. Metal springs and cogs littered the tabletop. It looked as if someone had gutted an alarm clock.
The man did not look up. He said something in Czech.
Gerald glanced at the others. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Is this a hotel?’
The man stopped his work and raised his head. A jeweller’s glass was wedged into one eye socket and a smouldering pipe jutted from his bearded mouth. Fingers of smoke crawled out of the bowl, filling the room with a pungent mixture of burning hay and rum.
The man looked at Gerald with surprise. ‘You are English?’ he s
aid in a voice leathered by age and smoke.
‘I’m Australian,’ Gerald said. ‘But these guys are English.’
The man removed the jeweller’s glass from his eye and studied the four travellers. The burning tobacco glowed and crackled and popped as he drew on his pipe. He expelled a ball of smoke from a cheek as tanned as a saddlebag.
‘Well, Australian and English, welcome to my hotel.’ The man set down his screwdriver and pushed himself up from the table.
Ruby muttered a cautious thanks as the man hobbled towards them.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Take a seat. I don’t get to practise my English very often.’
Gerald, Felicity, Sam and Ruby settled into armchairs. Gerald propped his feet near the fire and savoured being warm for the first time that day.
‘Thank you,’ Gerald said. ‘We’ve been on the go for ages. Do you have any rooms available?’
The man prodded at the fire with a blackened poker. He dropped another log on top, sending a fountain of sparks up the chimney. ‘At this time of year, you can take your choice of room. And tonight—’ he paused to prod the embers again, ‘—well, tonight you will be the only travellers for miles around.’
Felicity rubbed her hands by the flames. ‘Oh really?’ she said. ‘Don’t you get many tourists here?’
The man slowly turned his head towards Felicity and was about to reply when the front door banged open. A woman wrapped in a shawl and dusted with snow bowled into the room, muttering and grizzling. She carried a large wicker basket laden with vegetables. She dumped the basket on the floor and, from among the potatoes and the onions, she pulled out a long string of white bulbs, each the size of a baby’s fist. With a practised kick, she hooked a wooden stool with her foot and climbed up to latch the door, straining to push the heavy iron bolt. Once the lock was in place, she strung the white vegetables from a notch on the back of the door. She stepped down and turned to face the man. The moment she saw the strangers in the room, she froze.
Her eyes darted from one face to the next.
The man took a step towards her. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘They are in for the night.’ He gave her a reassuring nod.
The woman ran her tongue across her teeth and gave Gerald and his friends another wary look. ‘I will make dinner,’ she said. She picked up the basket and disappeared through a curtain behind the table.
‘Is everything all right?’ Ruby asked.
The man tapped out his pipe on the hearthstone and pulled a beaten leather pouch from his pocket. ‘Do not worry. Everything is fine,’ he said. He tamped a plug of tobacco into the bowl of the pipe and worked it with his thumb. Then he shot a glance towards the bolted front door. ‘Just fine.’
Gerald followed the man’s gaze. Through the front windows he could see the square was dark. The night had closed in.
‘That’s garlic, isn’t it?’ Felicity said, nodding to the string of bulbs hanging from the door.
The man struck a match and put it to his pipe. His cheeks worked like a pair of bellows. ‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes never leaving the flame as it bucked and dived with each puff. ‘It gives the room a lovely smell.’
Felicity started to respond when the man lurched back to the table. ‘But now I must check you in.’ He cleared a space on the table, sweeping aside a scattering of screws, springs and widgets, and pulled a battered book from a drawer.
‘Well, Mr Gerald Wilkins and friends,’ the man said, peering over Gerald’s shoulder as he wrote his name in the register, ‘it is good to meet you. My name is Novak, my wife is Stephanie. I will call you down when dinner is ready.’
‘That’s quite a boat you have there,’ Sam said, studying the model ship on the end of the table. ‘Did you make it?’
The man turned his gaze to the galleon and smiled at it as if it was a favourite child. It was just over half a metre long and the main mast stood about the same again high. ‘I wish I had the skill to create such a beautiful thing,’ the man said. ‘I am merely trying to repair it.’
Sam poked his nose in close to the metal cladding around the hull. ‘There’s so much detail,’ he said. ‘Is this real gold?’
Novak grinned behind his beard. ‘That is what they tell me. Watch.’
He turned the ship around. From his pocket he pulled a golden key. Sam watched entranced as the man inserted the key into a hole in the stern and wound it three times.
From deep inside the bilges came a whirring. Then, to Sam’s delight, the ship lurched forward. It set off along the table on unseen wheels, swaying to and fro as if buffeted by the roaring forties. A sailor in the crow’s nest raised and lowered a spyglass, searching for new lands. Four tiny portholes opened on each side, and out of each one popped a tiny cannon. Sam’s eyes flew wide as the cannons shot out puffs of smoke. A jaunty nautical tune played from the hull as the ship ran down. Novak took hold of the galleon in loving hands as it reached the end of the table.
Sam looked at him, gobsmacked. ‘That is awesome!’
Novak returned the smile. ‘See here?’ he said to Sam, chuffed at finding another enthusiast. ‘The little people in the wheel house? This one is King Rudolph II, emperor of Bohemia.’
Sam peered in close to four tiny figurines standing on the high deck. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘The one with the crown. We’ve heard all about Rudolph.’
Novak placed the galleon gingerly into a cradle and made a slight adjustment with the screwdriver. ‘This was once part of his collection,’ he said. ‘He loved the wind-up toys. The more elaborate, the better.’
‘How did you get it?’ Sam asked. ‘If that’s not a rude question.’
Novak placed a giant hand on Sam’s shoulder, and spared a glance to the curtain through which his wife had disappeared.
‘We should have time before dinner is ready,’ he said. He guided Sam back towards the lounge. ‘Come. I have a story to tell you.’
Chapter 26
The fire cast shapes across the hearthrug in a puppet show of dancing shadows. Two lamps did little to fill the darkness that had descended with the night.
Novak stood by the grate, an elbow on the mantle and his pipe belching as much smoke as the chimney. ‘Rudolph was not a good leader,’ he said, his voice low and deliberate. ‘He never wanted to be king. But when his father died, he had no choice. Overnight he became the most powerful man in the western world. His kingdom was large and he was the head of the Catholic church. He had the say of life and death over millions of people.’ Novak blew a stream of smoke into the air. Apart from the crackle of the firewood in the grate, there was no other sound.
‘He had castles. He had armies. But he did not have the passion to be a leader, to be a conqueror of lands.’
‘What did he do all day?’ Sam asked.
‘He collected,’ Novak said. ‘He collected everything.’
He drew heavily on his pipe, infusing the room with its pungent odour. ‘Rudolph turned the castle in Prague into his personal ark. Every kind of animal he could find would go into the private zoo. There were elephants, lions, giraffes. It was said that he even had a dodo.
‘His passion was acquiring objects and he had the money to do it. It went beyond animals. He had three thousand oil paintings, display cases of minerals from around the world. There were birds and butterflies. He had two special collections: his Cabinet of Curiosities and his Cabinet of Wonders. Rudolph would show them off to visiting ambassadors, like a proud parent.’
‘What was in them?’ Ruby asked.
‘Everything you could imagine,’ Novak said. ‘A unicorn horn, phoenix feathers, nails from Noah’s ark. There were magic books and manuscripts—volumes that promised the secrets of the natural world, and the unnatural world for that matter.’
‘Unicorn horns and phoenix feathers?’ Ruby said with a snort. ‘Sounds like he had every c
on man in Europe coming to visit.’
‘Like the men who sold him the Voynich Manuscript,’ Gerald said.
Novak pulled the pipe from his mouth and stared at Gerald. ‘You know of the manuscript?’
Gerald mumbled a ‘yes’. The sudden change in the man’s expression threw him.
Novak narrowed his eyes. ‘There are some who believe the manuscript was not a hoax,’ he said. ‘That it contains real secrets to limitless wealth. And more. Rudolph’s collection of animals and artefacts was impressive, but what really stood out was his collection of people.’
‘People?’ Sam said. ‘How do you collect people?’
‘The same way you collect dodos,’ Novak said. ‘With money. Rudolph surrounded himself with the best minds of the day. He had two hundred alchemists and their assistants working in his laboratories in the castle in Prague, all of them trying to locate the secret that would turn base metals into gold.’
‘What about the universal remedy?’ Ruby said. ‘Were they trying to find that as well?’
Again, Novak narrowed his eyes. ‘You know much on this topic.’
Ruby’s cheeks flushed. ‘I read travel guides,’ she said.
Novak grunted. Gerald could see that Ruby had touched a sore point and he tried to change the subject. ‘And your ship?’ he said. ‘How did it end up here?’
Novak cast a glance towards the golden galleon on the table. ‘Rudolph was fond of anything mechanical. He was obsessed with controlling nature. Part of his collection of people was a man named Cornelius Drebbel. It is said that he invented a perpetual motion machine.’
‘What’s that?’ Felicity asked.
‘A machine that once started would run forever. Rudolph had hundreds of clocks and automata—wind-up models and figurines. My galleon once graced the king’s dining table. Rudolph would let it set sail to entertain his guests. Those must have been amazing gatherings in the castle. But nothing lasts forever. At the end of Rudolph’s life there was a war with Sweden. His collection was looted by the invading troops. This hotel fed and housed some Swedish officers on their homeward journey. They paid their bill with the boat. My father found it packed in the attic years ago. After he passed on, I took over the job of restoring it.’
The Crystal Code Page 19