There were shaky images of Nick and Phoebe clambering out onto the greenhouse roof, again making Nick look like James Bond’s father and showcasing a not very flattering view of Phoebe’s backside.
Then there was a gap in the chase that was obvious to Phoebe and Nick, but not to anyone who hadn’t seen it in person. The film jumped to footage of Phoebe and Nick leaping into the Rolls and racing away. This time Phoebe thought she came off looking pretty good. Seeing the people chasing them down the driveway in their glamorous antique motoring costumes made her feel terrible. Stealing the car had been sort of fun in the life and death emergency, but now she felt guilty.
Obviously the Archangel’s media guys were behind this. They’d somehow collected the snippets and edited them all together to display the whole narrative arc from its startling inception, initial panic, brave and determined flight, to the victorious and stylish escape. Phoebe was forced to congratulate herself for driving away in that antique Rolls Royce. It really put the most elegant possible cap on the entire escapade.
Jill changed the channel and they watched it all again, this time with some of the footage missing from the previous version. Phoebe saw the shadows she and Nick had cast onto startled tourists below as they raced around the glass roof of the Winter Garden before tearing through a series of grandly furnished rooms, leaping red velvet ropes. Then, when you thought it couldn’t get any better, they slid three or four stories down a drainpipe, and raced away in the coolest car ever.
What helped make the film so riveting was that the heroes were obviously not actors or athletes, but instead, a real-life middle-aged man and woman who were clearly running for their lives in a unchoreographed panic. Phoebe had to admit they’d put on quite a show. It was fabulous—even inspiring.
Then an impressive-looking book cover flashed on the screen. The title was The Last War and the author was Nick Phélypeaux. “Is that your last name?” Phoebe blurted.
Nick nodded.
“How do you even say that?”
A ticker tape ran across the lower part of the screen with the name Frederic Nicolas Fulk Phélypeaux-Blaxland de Lalande, Prince de Mars, Duc de Mercœur.
“Uh oh,” Nick murmured.
Phoebe looked at the long row of names and the funny mark over the e and the hyphen, but she couldn’t take it in. The best she could come up with was something like Freddie Mercury. She said, “Your name’s got two letters that’re stuck together.”
He sat stone-faced, staring at the screen.
“How do you say letters when they’re stuck together?” Phoebe struggled to make sense of this new development. “Fulk sure sounds like one terrifying kicker of asses.”
“He was.”
She looked at him, baffled, “Are you really a Prince?”
He didn’t respond.
“Of Mars?”
Nothing.
“Is that the planet Mars or somewhere else?”
Nick covered his face with his hands.
“And a Duke?” she said, pronouncing it dooook in the local dialect with the vowel sound drawn out. The more agitated Phoebe got, the deeper her natural speech went into the archaic dialect. “Whut’s zat mean?”
“It indicates that a thousand years ago I had a male ancestor who was remarkably ill-tempered and extremely well-armed.”
Phoebe burst out laughing. “Got any castles … on Mars?
Nick still couldn’t pull his eyes away from the televised feed, but he said, “Mars is the Roman god of war. His essential characteristics are virility and virtue.”
“Virility and virtue, that sounds like a painful combination,” Phoebe said.
He pretended not to hear her. “We have half a dozen crumbling piles of stone back in the old country. That would be France, not the planet Mars. They’re called chateaux as you would know if you’d bothered to read your brochure during our tour of St. Cloud.”
Chapter 34
“Is that how Le Seigneur knew who you were?”
He nodded.
Now she wondered what else was concealed behind her patient’s vague honorific title. Steve, indeed.
“And that’s why you’re interested in war, because of the French Revolution?”
He shook his head. “My family’s problems started long before that. I come from a family of heretics. We’re Protestants—Huguenots.
“Our religious eccentricities were tolerated for a while, but the Catholic hard liners would periodically round up anyone who objected to the corruption of the state religion and punish them. Protestants were tortured and burned alive, or hung in the windows of the royal palaces for decoration.
“My line survived because my ancestor happened to be away when the soldiers battered down the door of the family’s main residence. After that he made an emergency decision to relocate to another continent.”
“Are you rich?”
“Nope. My ancestor was out hunting when all hell broke loose. He came to this country in the late 1600’s with the clothes on his back. We’ve been broke since then.”
The news anchor was talking about the leak of a confidential manuscript that had set the publishing world on its ear. Phoebe looked at Nick and he shook his head, mumbling, “Never seen it before.”
They sat for an hour and watched endless replays of themselves in fascination.
The Fox news anchor said the book would be available tomorrow. Massive advance orders had driven it to #1 on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller lists. An unprecedented printing of 500,000 hardback copies was anticipated in light of the substantial public interest.
Nick and Phoebe were a sensation on social media, too. The video of the wild chase and escape was being watched by millions on YouTube. Twitter was flooded with #Roofies, #RocktheChateau and #Democrazy.
The thesis of Nick’s book, the actual cause of wars being tariffs that enriched a handful of industrialists, was apparently being summarized succinctly by news commentators in many different languages around the world.
Although very few people, if any, would ever have been able to come up with this economic insight on their own, it wasn’t hard to understand Nick’s findings or believe his conclusion once you’d heard a couple of concrete examples. People were getting wise to their government being coopted by the filthy rich and ruthless business entities.
Not that this was anything new. But modern life had gotten so cluttered with information. Everything was getting so abstract, it was hard to follow a train of thought anymore. Phoebe hoped that now, when people could participate online in an instant virtual riot, maybe things would change.
#Democrazy would have a chance to become Democracy again.
“Unbelievable,” Nick said, his voice hardly above a whisper.
His work was safe now. The whole world was safer now. Phoebe beamed and gave him a side hug.
What wasn’t clear from any of the versions of the chase footage was exactly who the bad guys were or what had happened to them.
As usual Fox suggested it was liberal conspiracy, and the other networks speculated it was right-wingers who were under investigation by the FBI or NSA, but clearly no one knew for sure.
Phoebe decided it might be better not to know.
Leon, Ivy, and Phoebe speculated about whether or not the first couple of fellows they’d encountered had managed to find their way out of Sanderson’s Hell. They suspected not. Phoebe imagined them in shredded jumpsuits, still crawling around in the dense briars, scratched and bleeding, swearing at each other.
When the excitement subsided, Doc cleaned and dressed Phoebe’s and Fred’s scratches and scrapes and closed a little cut on Nick’s forehead with a butterfly band-aid. “You won’t get any disfigurement from that,” Doc said, “not at your age. It’s one of the adv
antages of being older. Scars don’t show.”
Nick shot him a rueful look.
Phoebe’s dear friend Waneeta arrived. Waneeta was real handful, a force of nature. She told Nick she was an arthur, too. After Appalachian Rural Healthcare had collapsed in the wake of healthcare reform she’d started writing to support herself. “I got way more books out there than you do, buddy.”
Waneeta had gone straight to indie publishing, starting with e-book wedding guides. She was an expert at planning weddings. She’d been married four times, so far. Fortunately for her, the fourth husband was turning out to be a great guy.
She told Nick she’d been making a decent living from selling wedding guides, but now the big money was coming from what she referred to as her lady porn.
“She means them smut books,” Jill said, laughing.
Phoebe disapproved of the explicit extremes of the romance genre, but knew it was lucrative and Waneeta needed the money. Her friend had an irrepressible spirit and Phoebe loved her no matter what.
Nick was grateful for the opportunity to encounter Leon and Ivy in less strained circumstances. They chatted and Nick thanked them sincerely for all their help. He explained where Leon’s truck was, and Ivy said she’d drive Leon over to the chateau the next morning so he could retrieve his beloved vehicle.
The Gryphon stood gazing out onto Central Park from his eyrie. Billions of dollars and thousands of employees at his disposal and yet a handful of rednecks had thwarted him. Their stunning victory was being thrown in his face twenty-four hours a day via the news channels.
They had to have had help. The media storm was incredible.
That he’d been beaten on this scale by a people with no discernable resources was unimaginable. Unbelievable. Unbearable.
His world was collapsing. Social media was allowing all the little people to band together in great swarms, like gnats. Grassroots coups were taking place right and left. People around the world were actually threatening to take charge of their governments.
He kicked the heavy glass of the wall as hard as he could.
All he achieved was a scuffed shoe and sore foot.
He hoped it wasn’t a metaphor for the rest of his life.
Even one of the rangers fighting wildfires in California became aware of Nick and Phoebe’s adventure. Someone got in touch with Henry and gave him a heads up about Phoebe’s shenanigans, probably Waneeta. He called the café and asked for Phoebe. Phoebe turned her back on the room to try to speak with at least a modicum of privacy.
“Girl, what’s this I hear about you climbin curtains and stealin cars?” he said when Phoebe answered. “Can’t leave you alone for a minute without you goin rogue.”
She laughed and said, “Maybe you’re not the only person in the world with fires to put out.”
“That’s true,” he agreed. Then he asked how she was doing and they chitchatted amiably until she could hear men calling him in the background.
“You better go,” she said. “Be careful. Come back safe.”
“You, too,” he said with emphasis, and hung up.
Men, thought Phoebe, for the millionth time. They were the only ones who were ever supposed to do anything interesting.
Chapter 35
It was now Tuesday morning and Phoebe showed up bright and early for her second day on the job. She brought Nick with her again, because he wanted to thank Le Seigneur.
They’d eaten at the café, watched some more of the apparently endless news footage of themselves, then gone to Leon’s to retrieve Phoebe’s Jeep. They’d spent the night at her modest farmhouse, both so exhausted they’d collapsed into separate rooms and been aware of nothing until Phoebe’s alarm went off the next morning.
Now they were navigating the halls of the monastery, exchanging nods with various religious affiliates as they passed. “I know it sounds crazy,” Nick whispered, “but these people all seem sort of … familiar. It’s like I know them, but I’m certain I’ve never met any of them before.”
“Same here,” Phoebe agreed, “It’s weird.”
While Le Seigneur and Nick talked, Phoebe reviewed her patient’s orders and the doctor’s notes and instructions about his care. She heard Nick make several mentions of the Chinese and there was a lot of complicated discussion of world trade policies as she inventoried and organized her boss’s medicines and prepared his upcoming regime.
When they were finished, she checked Le Seigneur’s vital signs, helped him take his pills, and measured out the doses of several plant tinctures that had been prescribed, such as Angelica archangelica and Prunus spinosa.
He seemed tired already, although it was only 10 o’clock in the morning. Phoebe wondered if he’d stayed up late or perhaps hadn’t slept at all. She wanted to ask about the nature of his ailment, because it wasn’t spelled out anywhere on any of the paperwork she’d seen, but before she could broach the topic, he spoke.
“You did a good thing, you know,” he said, gifting her with his angelic smile. “You have several remarkable talents, in addition to your nursing skills. You could be quite useful around here, if you are interested in helping out.”
“I’d be glad to help you any way I can,” said Phoebe.
“You kept Nicolas safe. He was a total stranger, but circumstances thrust him into your care and you did an impressive job as his protector.”
“We protected each other,” Phoebe said.
“Even better. Then perhaps you will not mind escorting him to our friends in New York. He has achieved the sort of media saturation that I believe is termed a mile wide and an inch deep. At this point it is imperative for him to add substantive depth to his acrobatic acclaim.”
Nick and Phoebe exchanged smiles.
“I need you to take him to the Frick mansion if you would. There is a relationship of longstanding between the St. Cloud and Frick families. The significance of the connection is not widely known, but you might find it interesting that the Fricks rented the St. Cloud’s New York home in the early 1900s while their house was being built.
“You will be given assistance there. It is a … safehouse. While you are there I suggest you take the opportunity to enjoy the architecture as well as the paintings. The building and the furnishing are quite wonderful. It’s the finest collection of paintings in the world and a wonderfully pleasant home.”
“Sure,” Phoebe agreed, “It sounds fun.”
Le Seigneur searched her face, then said, “As you may have surmised, a regular part of our work involves delivering certain people, and sometimes objets, here and there.”
Phoebe nodded, although she had no earthly idea what kind of business he was in. She trusted her gut, though, and the goodness, even saintliness, that radiated from the man. And she needed a job, so she’d continue to play along, at least until she got a whiff of anything unseemly.
“I need a resourceful, trustworthy courier as urgently as I need a competent nurse. Getting both in one person is a blessing indeed,” he said.
“After you deliver Nicolas, if you could courier an objet d’art for our friends at the Frick Collection, I would greatly appreciate it. We’ll handle the travel arrangements, of course, from New York, after Nicolas is settled. It should be an interesting trip.”
Phoebe looked at her patient with her eyebrows raised. She wasn’t sure she was prepared for any further interesting experiences.
“This time, because you have become rather well known, we will provide special assistance with your security. We’ll be sending Christophe St. James with you.”
“Ah, here he is.”
A tall unbelievably handsome man stepped into the doorway and gave Phoebe a formal half bow as a greeting. He was wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt. He had gray eyes and a head of sun-streaked light blond hair that he wore loos
e. It fell to his waist in a thick, straight, totally gorgeous mass. Phoebe had never seen anything like it except on the covers of Viking romance novels. She got the odd feeling again—that she’d met the fellow somewhere before, but this time she was positive that she hadn’t. He wasn’t someone you could ever forget seeing.
After that brief introduction during which Christophe spoke not a single word, he left. Apparently none of the people who worked at the School for Mysteries engaged in small talk. Phoebe plumped up her boss’s pillows and helped him recline comfortably. Then she tidied the bed and the table next to it.
She had the chance to look closely at the single piece of decoration in the room—the wonderful little painting of St. Michael and the Dragon that sat on the bedside table. What she saw on closer inspection made her gasp. The knight in the painting looked exactly like Christophe.
After work Phoebe let Nick drive her Jeep to the rendezvous point. Their transportation to New York was nothing like anything either of them had expected. It was a bus—a very large, very fancy tour bus with darkened windows and no identifying markings except for a Tennessee license plate. When they approached it, each carrying a bag containing the clothing and toiletries provided by Arabella, the doors opened and they were invited in by a slender man in worn blue jeans and a ragged t-shirt.
“Hi. I’m Billy,” he said in a local East Tennessee accent. “Glad ye could join us.”
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