Ottavia pulled out and past the Mobil station, the culvert. Tibor looked forward through the windscreen as a late-model BMW did a U-turn and headed south on 9D. A roar of noise—music maybe—came out of the back seat or the exhaust pipe of the car. Behind the BMW, another College Girl followed on a red Vespa, a guitar strapped across her back. And then another, in a vinyl minidress on a lime-green Vespa, and then a third, a fourth—the entire band from the Seven Veils. The music was coming from the band, not the BMW. But when Tibor swiveled to follow their progress, they had disappeared, and the music was gone.
He swiveled back and looked down at the little girl, Ottavia, behind the wheel. Ottavia felt his look and turned to him. She smiled, she couldn’t help it, and looked back at the road. Tibor looked down at the seat—the paper bag of corn and apples, the plastic bag of clams. And another plastic bag. Ottavia must have taken the man from Jeddah’s plastic bag. Tibor raised his chin to look down beneath his glasses inside the bag. Squeezing the top of the bag closed, he placed it slowly into his jacket pocket. And for the first time in more than a week, in perhaps a month, he smiled.
WHEN MALORY SHOWED INTEREST IN CRISTINA’S INVITATION, SETTIMIO—ancient though he was—took on a tone that reminded Malory of their first meeting, twenty-three years earlier, in the corridors of the Ospedale Fatebenefratelli.
“There has been chatter, mio Principe.”
“Chatter?”
“Conversation, both vocal and electronic, across the Internet.” Over the phone lines, in cafés and airports and docks and markets and ice cream parlors around the world. It was chatter that grew louder over the summer, chatter reported by Settimio’s channels of contacts who owed allegiance to Septimania in ways that Malory happily kept beyond his learning. “They say that the United States is a prime target for attack. No one knows precisely where, no one knows who or how or why. But might I advise,” Settimio said to Malory on the afternoon of Ottavia’s visit, “that the Principe avoid public celebrations and pass the autumn here in Rome?”
Malory had to acknowledge Settimio’s clarity. And his own reluctance.
“You might recall what His Holiness told you, early in your reign. Anonymity is a blessing.” Both men were right. No one recognized Malory, no one knew who he was. No one came at him with a baby to kiss, a car to bless, or a gun to discharge. Leaving Rome, leaving the Villa Septimania was putting that anonymity at risk.
Settimio insisted—and Malory didn’t object too strenuously—that the Driver accompany Malory to the United States. The three of them rode together in a simple Lancia, driven by the Driver’s twenty-three-year-old son, to Ciampino, where Settimio had arranged for a private jet. Although a Saharan wind was blowing into Rome from the south, Settimio was wearing a winter overcoat of midnight blue. It had been twenty-three years since he had first accosted Malory in the corridors of Fatebenefratelli. Malory then thought he had been old, but now age was showing its conquest.
“Will you be all right, Settimio?”
“Excuse me, mio Principe?”
“While we are away?”
“No one is searching for me,” Settimio said. “No one is searching for Septimania.”
“No chatter?” Malory smiled.
“No one sees Septimania for what it is,” Settimio smiled back at him. “It is a trick of the light.” The Driver’s son pulled the Lancia up to the curb and left the engine running. The Driver jumped out and retrieved Malory’s bag and his own and held the door for Malory.
“Hercule!” Settimio rolled down his window, and Malory walked around the car. It was the first time Settimio had called him by name.
“Be careful, Hercule,” Settimio said. “Discretion.”
“Thank you,” Malory said. And then Settimio reached up, the way Suor Miriam had reached up to him all those years before. Settimio reached up with his gloved hands to Malory’s shoulders, and Malory bent so Settimio could kiss him, on one cheek and then the other.
IT WAS PLEASANT TO LAND IN A PRIVATE AIRPORT IN THE NEW YORK countryside. The view from the chartered jet as they bisected New York Harbor between the Twin Towers and the Statue of Liberty and headed up the Hudson—Malory had flown only two or three times in his life and then only to France so had little to compare—was extraordinary. The walk directly from the airplane into a comfortable and discreet vehicle with the friendly face of the Driver at the wheel felt as comfortable as crossing the Ponte Palatino. They crossed a bridge, they crossed a river, the Hudson he believed, although he wasn’t certain whether they were crossing from New Jersey to New York, New York to New Jersey, or none of the above. Both banks of the river were dripping the bacchic green of late summer into the water. There were boats, a sun. Malory had seen the sun, every day for the past twenty-three years, from the garden of the Villa Septimania. But with all the time he’d spent down in the Sanctum Sanctorum, all the time he’d spent reading and then thinking and then reading and thinking some more, he’d forgotten almost completely about the horizon, about the curvature of the Earth, about nature.
The Driver made a left turn onto River Road. At the crossroads, a bar, a few shops. On the other side, a round barn was set back from the road down a dirt drive. In front, a host of young girls in overalls were selling corn and pumpkins and apples and pies and ragdolls. Past the market, low fieldstone walls in brown and off-brown flanked the road. To the left, a man jumped a horse over a pair of crossed timbers. There was nothing Italian about it. Nor English, nor Rumanian.
“Mio Principe.” The Driver turned left onto a dirt road, marked by yet another pair of fieldstone fences, then downhill to a creek, and stopped the car by a gate. “Eccoci qua.” A woman approached the car, raised her sunglasses.
“Buona sera,” Malory heard her give a few instructions to the Driver. She opened the rear door and climbed in next to Malory. “Hello, Malory,” she said, with a kiss on either cheek. And then, for reasons more complex than Malory could follow, she grabbed Malory tight away from his seatbelt and held onto him. “Thank you,” Ottavia said. “I’m so glad you are here. You have no idea.”
“Thanks,” Malory said, thinking it had been an extraordinary day to have his cheeks kissed twice.
“Shall we walk?” Ottavia asked, and exchanged a few more words in Italian with the Driver.
Malory stepped out of the car and blinked three times.
“Come with me,” Ottavia said. She opened the gate for the Driver, and then, linking her arm in Malory’s, she led him down the road. Malory looked back. The Driver smiled and waved as he straightened the car and followed. How wonderful, Malory thought, that there is someone in the world who has to stand on tiptoe to reach me. Arm in arm, Ottavia led Malory onto the bridge across the creek and then off the road and onto a track across a pasture, rutted with the marks of tractors and horses and rimmed with the late summer weeds that Malory knew only from the Cambridge Arts Cinema.
“I’ve been thinking about Rome,” Ottavia said, slowing down her footsteps to extend the moment. “A lot.”
Malory said nothing, but squeezed her arm tighter with what biceps he had and looked at the small rocks in the tractor path in the hope they might dilute his embarrassment but not his pleasure.
“Do you know what my favorite moment was?”
Malory thought about the dinner Settimio had served, their stroll out in the garden to peek down on nighttime Rome—the first time Malory had strolled in the garden or much of anywhere with anyone. And the apple, of course.
“That night,” Ottavia said, quick and bright, knowing that Malory was too confused to reply, “when you tucked me into bed and read me a story. No one has ever done that.”
Nor to me either, thought Malory. Not in a long while.
“I slept so well,” Ottavia said. “I felt safe. Not managing, not coping, not worrying about Tibor or Cristina or my own sorry life, but safe.”
“I’m glad,” Malory said. “The villa is really quite extraordinary.”
“It was you, Malo
ry.” Ottavia stopped and cupped a small Malory elbow in each of her smaller hands.
“I only read you something that was written a long, long time ago.”
“But there was something in the way you read. The tone of your voice.”
Once upon a time, Malory had thought about the tone of his own voice. Once upon a time, Malory had tuned organs.
“I don’t know anything about music,” Ottavia continued, “except the chants and hymns I had to sing from Santa Sabina to Trinity. But I know there have been times, very rare times, when I’ve been sitting in a particular niche of a chapel or above a Scottish loch at sunset and the sound of a distant boat comes to me. And all feels …”
“In harmony?” Malory asked.
“If that’s the word,” Ottavia said. “It’s like the moment before I find the solution to a particularly thorny mathematical problem. Even though I can’t yet see the answer, I can hear the sound of its perfection coming from a distance. That’s the sound I heard as I closed my eyes that night in the Villa Septimania.”
“And the answer?” Malory asked. “Did that come to you later?”
“Malory,” Ottavia said, “do you remember the story you were reading to me that night? About the first meeting between Haroun al Rashid and the daughter of Charlemagne?”
“Aldana?” Malory asked.
“Do you remember how Aldana was flirting with Haroun?”
“Would you really call it flirting?” Malory asked, suddenly aware of Ottavia’s hands still on his elbows. “She was a young girl. He was, well, he must have been close to fifty.”
“Do you remember how, at the end, when Aldana was called upstairs to join her father and the others, Haroun promised to come back?”
“Yes, why?”
“Did he?” Ottavia’s hands moved up to Malory’s shoulders. “I’ve been wondering since that night in Rome. Did he come back? Is there more?”
“Just a polite visit eleven years later,” Malory said. “When Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800, Haroun returned.”
“Disguised as his envoy?”
“It’s not clear. I remember there was a note about the visit in the Complete History, but it was written by a ten-year-old boy.”
“Aldana’s son?”
“And Aimery’s. The boy was the son of Charlemagne’s daughter and the King of the Jews. He was the eldest grandson of Charlemagne and heir to the throne of Septimania. He wrote about standing on the circle of porphyry in St. Peter’s after the coronation. Next to him was his grandfather, Charlemagne, and his parents. And there was another man, a friend of his father’s, who had traveled all the way from Baghdad.”
“So Haroun kept his promise and came back!” Ottavia walked a few steps down the track and then turned back to Malory full of light. “And why do you think he did that?”
“For Aimery, his old friend Gan, of course,” Malory said.
“But couldn’t it be that he came back for Aldana?” Ottavia asked. “That he kept his promise to Aldana and came back to see the boy. Isn’t that possible? Isn’t that the answer?”
“To what question?” Malory had an uncomfortable feeling, a residual pain like a rope burn on the back of his skull.
“Haroun didn’t come back for Aimery. He came back for Aldana.”
“Why? Because he promised?”
“To see his son!” Ottavia’s exasperation with Malory was real, but charming, Malory thought, which relieved his discomfort a touch.
“You’re saying …” Malory corrected himself. “You’re suggesting that perhaps it wasn’t Aimery who was the father of the boy, but Haroun?”
“Oh, Malory!”
“And that the line of the kings of Septimania, and queens for that matter, descended not from the line of King David, but from the Caliph of Islam?”
“Why …?”
“And that therefore I, Malory, am not King of the Jews after all?” Malory knew he was lecturing, but the rope burn drove him on. “But as a consolation, I am the Messiah of the Muslims?”
“Stop, Malory!” Ottavia said. “I didn’t mean to get you so upset. But can’t you see that sometimes people celebrate uncertainty?”
“What uncertainty?”
“The boy,” Ottavia said. “Aldana knew that his father was either Aimery or Haroun …”
“But didn’t know which?” Malory asked.
“Aimery was born in the same fertile crescent as Haroun,” Ottavia smiled. “Olive skin, curly hair—Aldana probably didn’t have much to go on to identify the boy as the son of one or the other. And in those days, millennia before DNA testing …”
“Nobody knew how to open the box, or even which box to search,” Malory said. He didn’t expect Ottavia to understand, but she smiled. “Here, Ottavia.” Malory reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small flash drive. “I had Settimio scan the Complete History of Septimania onto this for you. You can open the box yourself if you want and search for an answer. Or at the very least, it’s a lifetime supply of bedtime stories. I suppose you have a computer of some sort?”
“Malory,” Ottavia said, “I don’t care whether you are Holy Roman Emperor, King of the Jews, Caliph of the Muslims, or all three rolled into one. I’m glad you’re here. With Tibor. With me.”
The force of Ottavia’s hug, her arms around Malory, her cheek next to his, stopped him from nattering away. When she was through she said nothing, just took Malory’s arm and led him to a building at the edge of the field.
“This is the Blue House,” she said. “There is a room upstairs for you and a room downstairs for the Driver, as well as a garage for your car, although the space is tight next to the firewood. Cristina and Tibor are up the hill in the White House. The Nurses and the Bomb Squad are usually in the Red Barn. But it’s only the four of us today.”
“The Nurses and the Bomb Squad?” Malory repeated, suddenly struck with a terrible thought. “You aren’t one of? You haven’t become?”
“A Nurse-in-Training?” Ottavia laughed again, but the laugh wasn’t quite as melodic as before, and Malory immediately wished he could undo the question and tune away the pain he detected behind the dissonance. “Never. No,” she said, leading Malory up the blue staircase at the side of the house.
And before she left him, another hug. No matter what, Malory thought, I am glad.
Malory’s room was simple. An iron bed stood at the far end, a mosquito net draped from a serrated crown above its center. Malory wasn’t certain whether there were curtains for the windows. But there was a Shaker hook rug on the painted blue floor, and a bathroom whose fixtures were so intricately designed that Malory, while ignorant of their function, understood that they were of the same high quality as the hair creams and skin emulsifiers and loofahs and face cloths and bathrobes and even the tarantula-shaped juicer that shared the bathroom with him.
“I’m giving you fifteen minutes to wash your face,” Ottavia said, as the Driver set Malory’s suitcase on the wicker bed stand, “then I’m coming to get you. Cristina’s so excited she’ll kill both of us if it’s any longer.”
“Ottavia …” Malory called to her.
“Yes?”
“Promise me you’ll come back? To Septimania?”
“Only if you promise to read me another bedtime story and tuck me in.” A final peck on Malory’s cheek and she was gone.
The air was appreciably cooler when Malory opened his eyes and realized that the peck had carried a charm. Somehow, he had showered and climbed into a bathrobe before navigating the mosquito netting into an hour of dreamless sleep.
“Feel better?” the girl asked. She was nestled into the cracked leather of a Morris chair in a still-sunny corner of the room, legs folded beneath her. She smiled, and the mole at the top of her left cheekbone reached towards heaven. Malory blinked. “Coffee?”
“Actually,” Malory said, “just some water would be lovely.” Were there two heads he saw through the curtain? He hadn’t remembered the mole on
the girl’s cheek.
“I found him.” The two heads separated.
“Cristina?” Malory pulled himself up on the bed and adjusted his robe.
“You did. You found him.” Cristina leaned down and brushed Ottavia’s forehead with her lips. “Why don’t you get the Driver a cupcake and a Cosmo and let me have Malory to myself for just one minute?” Ottavia smiled and hopscotched out the door. “I love that girl,” Cristina said to Malory. “She makes me happy.”
Truth be told, very little made Cristina happy any more. She would be happy, more than happy if all the Nurses went away. And the Bomb Squad. And the celebrities and the interviews with presidents and ministers and actresses and dictators and flying to Libya and flying to Chile and flying to Ascot on the private helicopter of someone who wanted to be richer and more famous than he was and thought that Cristina’s presence in a hat—no matter how gorgeous it was—in his private box, within four feet of the Queen would further that ambition. What she wanted was an old story, but one that still made her cry when she stayed up alone late at night wrapped in her shawl, drinking still water from a blue bottle and watching any one of a number of movies that celebrated the days of innocence when apples were still black-and-white.
She wanted Tibor back. Back to before, before the flight to Rome, before the flight to Fatebenefratelli, the flight to America. There were things Tibor knew. He knew her blind father, her Jewish grandmother, the way her parents’ apartment smelled when Tibor bartered a few smuggled strands of copper wire for two kilos of bacon and a dozen eggs, the school where she was the top student from age eight to seventeen, and the way she looked in a bikini the summer after she graduated. He knew about the abortion and he knew about the birth. And although they slept in separate rooms more often than they slept in separate countries; and sometimes in his separate room there were separate girls and separate sounds and separate activities that he sometimes insisted, awash in a haze of vodka and creation, that she enter and join; he was the only one who knew how to stop her from shaking when she saw things in the dark that threatened to separate her from sanity. In spite of everything, more times than not, she wanted Tibor back. And the curious man in the bathrobe on the bed, the curious man she hadn’t seen in twenty years, who had been avoiding her and Tibor for who knew what imagined or unimagined slight—and there were slights that Tibor had inflicted on Cristina that were worse than unimaginable—might make that happen. Malory had brought Tibor to her in Rome. Malory might be the only one now who could bring Tibor back.
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