A few kilometers on, they came to a cobblestoned town square, with a white stone cross in its center, a few shops, and an inn-L’Auberge Sur le Carre-bearing the green and white Logis de France imprimatur. Ascanio parked the car right outside, close to a lone gas pump.
“We can get something to eat here,” he said. “They do a good rabbit-and-mushroom stew.”
But David didn’t want to wait, much less for rabbit stew. “Why don’t we just keep going?” he said. “It can’t be much farther to the chateau.” He still had every intention of getting on a plane to the States that same night.
Ascanio opened his door and got out. Poking his head back in, he said, “We have to wait till it gets dark, anyway. And I like stew.”
Slamming the door shut and heading into the inn, he left them, still in their seat belts, in the car. David turned around and Olivia, un-snapping her belt, said, “He’s right. We have to eat. Come on.”
They found Ascanio in a wooden booth in back. Only one other table was occupied, by a couple of farmers in overalls. The owner, a cheerful, chubby woman wearing a soup-stained apron, brought them a bottle of the local wine and took their orders-three rabbit stews.
By the time she returned with the food, Ascanio had already taken out some papers, a map among them, and was explaining the rest of the plan first laid out by the marquis. Glancing down as she made room for the plates, the woman said, “Do you need directions?” But Ascanio, laying his hand across a rough diagram, said, “ Non, merci. We have a GPS in the car.”
She flicked a hand at the notion. “My husband has one of those, too, and it never works right.” She looked to make sure they had everything they needed, then said, “ Bon appetit,” and went to get the farmers another round.
David ate, with no more relish than a machine taking on fuel, and listened as Ascanio further elaborated on the deeds that lay before them. For David-a man who was given to rumination, a man who spent most of his working hours in the company of old books, a man whose biggest challenge was usually determining the arcane meaning of an obscure quotation-this had all been a rude and rough awakening. He felt like a spy might feel on assuming a new identity.
But there was also something-how could he put it?- invigorating in it. Something that stirred his blood and energized his will. In the modern world, action-physical action-was so seldom taken. Disputes were resolved in courtrooms and arguments in therapy sessions. The focus was always on emotions and interrelationships and reaching consensus.
But with Ascanio and Sant’Angelo, David felt none of that. He was dealing with the certainties of another age. In Cellini’s day, a difference of opinion led straight to a brawl. An insult could result in a sword fight to the death. According to his own autobiography, Cellini had killed three men in duels, and countless others in battle. Had it not been for his present infirmity, David was sure he would have been participating in the assault that lay ahead.
When Ascanio had shown them the diagram of the chateau, expertly done in the marquis’s own hand, and outlined the course of action he was proposing, it was like listening to a fantastic tale out of the Arabian Nights. But this was a tale in which David and Olivia were to play a vital part! It was only when Ascanio told Olivia, while mopping up the last of his stew, that she would have to stay back with the car while he and David went to reclaim the Medusa that she objected.
“Without my help, you would not even be here! Who was it who knew enough to follow the trail of Cagliostro? This is just the same old paternalistic bullshit. Who has more of a right than I do to join this fight?”
But an angry look crossed Ascanio’s face. He rolled up the map and papers, threw a wad of bills on the table, and said, “Come with me.”
He strode out into the square and stopped in front of the white marble cross. David and Olivia quickly caught up, and even though it was getting late in the day and the light was starting to fade, David was able to read the plaque that said the monument had been erected to commemorate the villagers executed, on this very spot, by the Nazis on June 20, 1940.
“The marquis himself donated this monument.”
There were perhaps a dozen names inscribed on its column.
“They were the household staff of the chateau. They were killed in retribution for the marquis’s escape.” His finger ran along the letters of one name-Mademoiselle Celeste Guyot.
“I never had the heart to tell him,” Ascanio said, “but it should have said Madame.”
“She was married?” David asked.
“The night before,” Ascanio replied, and from the expression on his face-great sorrow and implacable rage-David did not have to ask who her husband had been. Nor did Olivia contest his instructions again.
Ascanio went to the gas pump, slipped in a credit card, and refueled the car. Then he filled a couple of gallon jugs, and put them in the boot, too. David didn’t ask why. He drove the Maserati out of the square, where amber-colored lights were just coming on in some of the storefronts, then out onto the road leading to the Chateau Perdu.
The road was so narrow it essentially became a single, unlighted country lane. Posts with red reflectors atop them were positioned every fifty yards or so, but often they were obscured by the overgrown shrubbery and trees. For the first time, David began to see how aptly the chateau had been named-this was a lost region, a place that showed no other signs of human habitation. For the next few kilometers, nothing but dark woods lined both sides of the road. The moon hung low in the sky, peeking out from behind a scrim of fast-moving clouds.
“The gatehouse,” Ascanio finally said, dimming the headlights, and David, peering through the side window, detected a stone house, covered with vines, squatting like a toadstool among the overhanging trees. No lights were on inside, and it looked as if it had been untenanted for years. Ascanio drove past slowly, long enough for David and Olivia to take in the high iron gates, and a driveway on the other side that disappeared into the blackness.
“So where’s the chateau?” Olivia said, and Ascanio replied, “Right where it’s been for eight hundred years. On the cliffs.”
Only when they were well past the gates did Ascanio turn the headlights back on. A rubblestone wall, five or six feet high, ran for a long distance along one side of the road, and even when it ended, massive old oaks formed an impenetrable barrier.
“How do we get back there?” David said, and Ascanio pointed to a break in the trees, where a rusty chain had been looped around two trunks, along with a sign that read PRIVATE PROPERTY-NO TRESPASSING. To David’s surprise, he nosed the grill of the Maserati up to the chain and pressed on the gas. There was a screeching sound of metal on metal, a crack and a pop and a flash of white light as one of the headlights blew out, and the chain snapped in two.
With only one light remaining, he maneuvered the car along a bumpy, overgrown track that wound through the trees before eventually opening up to a view of the river. There was an old, cracked, concrete loading dock, and a long wharf beyond that extending into the rolling waters of the Loire. To David, it looked as if this place, too, had been unused for many years.
The moment Ascanio stopped the car and turned off the engine, they were swallowed up by the night. The boot of the car popped open, and Ascanio got out without a word and began to hand David his supplies-a backpack loaded with gear, a flashlight, and one of the plastic jugs of gasoline. He pulled a matching pack over his own shoulders and, like some pirate, he took the harpe -the short sword with its fearsome notched end-and slung it, still in its scabbard, onto his belt. Grabbing the other gasoline jug, he said to Olivia, “Turn the car around, then just wait for us. If we’re not back in a few hours, drive back to Paris.”
“I’m not leaving you here!”
“You won’t be,” he said. “We’ll be dead.”
David’s blood froze in his veins at the casual manner in which Ascanio said it, but he felt as if it were a test, too. Ascanio looked at him, waiting to see him quail, but David would not. He hadn’t come this far to give up now.
Not when Sarah’s life hung in the balance.
Ascanio said, “Come on then,” and took off into the trees. Olivia plucked at David’s sleeve, kissed him hard on the lips, and said, “I will be here.”
