“Sort of.”
She leaned forward, kissing him. “Now do you know where I am?”
“I have a very good idea.”
She laughed and slunk down into the bed.
“Come find me.”
David lifted the duvet enough to scoot himself under it and felt the warmth of Olivia’s body against him. Her eyes were shining in the dark, her black hair was spread out on the plump white pillow. Propped on one elbow, he bent his head to kiss her.
“Umm,” she said, “you taste like hot chocolate.”
“I thought that was you.” He kissed her again. “Yep, it’s you.” He reached around her slender waist, pulling her closer. Her own arms went up and around his neck.
“Maybe that day, when you wandered into the piazza?” she said.
“Yes?”
“Maybe that was fate.”
David, who would never have even considered such a thing a few weeks earlier, did not dismiss it. His world had been cracked wide open and suddenly allowed for a million possibilities.
If Olivia was his fate, he thought, as their bodies came together under the coverlet with a natural but urgent ease, he was all for it.
Chapter 33
Alone at last, the marquis threw another log into the fireplace and stared into the rising fire.
Was it possible? Could Caterina still be alive? Could she have been alive all these centuries?
He felt at once an agony in his heart, the agony of all those lost years, and a kindling of hope, a kindling like nothing else he had felt for ages. The expression on David Franco’s face had conveyed the truth more eloquently than any words could do.
While Sant’Angelo could see now that the public accounts of his own death and burial must have persuaded her that he had indeed left this world, how could he have been so misled himself?
What foolishness, what insanity, what melancholy dolor had allowed him to believe the accounts of her demise? He could see that the sources of the story had all had their own reasons to say what they had said, to swear to what they averred. And he lambasted himself for his gullibility, his blindness, his despair. Had he believed in her death because he could not bear the thought that he had condemned her to the destiny he had endured?
And now, she wanted the mirror back. She wanted La Medusa back, at all costs. But why? To work its magic on someone else? Or, to see if, in its destruction, she could undo the curse she had brought on herself that fateful night in his studio?
He drew a chair closer to the fire-it was at that time of night that his legs always gave him the most trouble-and sat down. He must think, he must make a plan. He must rouse himself to fight for a future. Tonight he had learned that there was more than a reason to exist-there was a reason to live.
He put his head back, his eyes closed, and felt the heat from the fire wash over him.
But first he would have to confront the greatest defeat of his life, the one from which he had never fully recovered. He would have to conquer a dread that even he, the immortal Cellini, felt in the very marrow of his broken bones. Only once in his life had he confronted a foe so powerful, and in command of such dark resources, that his own abilities had paled in comparison. For decades, he had been content to observe a stalemate with this evil adversary, a stalemate that his enemy appeared content to observe, too. Sant’Angelo imagined them like two prizefighters, mauled beyond recognition, but still respectful and wary of the other’s power. Each of them knew the gift that La Medusa bestowed, along with the mighty cost it exacted, but so long as the marquis remained aware of his enemy’s whereabouts, and sure of his limitations, he was willing to bide his time.
Now, that time was up. If by acting at last to reclaim the mirror, he could reclaim the greatest love of his life… if he could share his sentence with the only woman in the world who would understand it… then the stalemate had to be broken. It was fate that had sent him into the Colosseum that night with Dr. Strozzi, fate that had taught him how to create La Medusa, fate that had shuttled him like a spinning top from one country to another, for hundreds of years. Now, it was fate that had sent these two young adventurers to his door, each with his or her purpose. But the main purpose they would fulfill would be his own. They would have to go into the lion’s den itself, a place where his own broken legs could not take him and where his very essence could trigger the alarms. Once there, they would have to defeat a creature more bloodthirsty than any Gorgon that had ever haunted the underworld, a creature whose reputation was still so fearsome that it was the one thing he dared not reveal.
He pulled the black tie loose from his collar and let it drop to the floor, as, in his mind’s eye, he recalled the summer of 1940… and the caravan of armored cars that had snaked up the private road leading to the Chateau Perdu. He could still hear the rumble of their engines.
He had been out hunting with his gamekeeper, old Broyard, when they heard them wending their way along the long drive that led to the castle. Quickly, he’d climbed higher on the ridge, then, trading his rifle for the pair of binoculars Broyard was holding out, swung himself up into a tree. Brushing away the leaves with one hand, he caught a glimpse of a quartet of armored cars, followed by a long black Mercedes, racing through the woods. Nazi pennants rippled over the front fenders of the limousine.
“Germans?” Broyard asked nervously.
“Who else has petrol?”
So it had come, he thought. It was inevitable. The Nazis had invaded France in early May, taking only a few weeks to breach the Maginot Line and, by the fourteenth of June, their tanks had been roaring in triumph down the Champs-Elysees. It had only been a matter of time before the marquis received just some unwelcome deputation as this.
“How many?” the gamekeeper asked, as Sant’Angelo climbed down. He said it as if he were contemplating how many rounds he’d need to shoot them all.
“Too many,” the marquis replied, clapping a hand on the man’s aged shoulder. He shared his sentiment, but knew he had to be more cautious than that.
“Come on,” he said, slinging his rifle across his shoulder.
As swiftly as the old gamekeeper’s legs allowed, they scrambled along the top of the ridge, with the dense forest on one side and the river Loire far below on the other. As they came closer to the chateau, a vast field opened up on the hillside, a sloping meadow where sheep had once grazed, but from which, the marquis feared, they might be more easily spotted by the intruders still motoring up the drive. Keeping close to the ground, he ran toward a large and circular stone pit. Built by the Norman knight who had erected the chateau in the fourteenth century, the pit had once been used to bait animals-bears, wolves, boars. A set of stone steps descended several meters into the ground, where it was joined to a barred cage. Sant’Angelo grabbed the rusty handle and pulled hard, opening the cage. It still bore a telltale animal scent. Lowering his head, he crept inside, then groped along the moss-covered wall until he found an identical iron handle in the seemingly solid stone. Pulling with all his might, he was finally able to unseal the hidden door there, and, doubling over, duck inside.
“Keep a lookout from the ridge,” Sant’Angelo said, “and don’t do anything to set them off.” Broyard nodded, before closing the stone slab behind the marquis.
The darkness was absolute, but the marquis fumbled in his pocket and found a pack of matches. Apart from a tunnel that led down to the riverbank, there was only one way to go from there. Lighting one match after another, he inched along, hearing only the squelching of his boots and the occasional squeak of a rat. The tunnel- the knight’s secret escape route-went even deeper than the moat, and its rock walls still held the rusted chains where prisoners had once been kept.
But when the marquis felt his boot stub against an iron grate, he knew that the oubliette, into which the condemned had been hurled, lay just below him. The lucky ones died from the fall, the others died a slow death from starvation.
