City of Swords (4 page)

Chapter 7

The largest oil painting on the wall—lit museum-style in an ornate gold frame above the wainscoting—was a portrait of a well-dressed man with an abundance of black curls that fell past his shoulders. His face was all angles and planes, his eyes hooded and intense. There were other paintings, too, and all of them looked as if they’d been rendered by the Old Masters.

The room they were displayed in was opulent, the furnishings new, but not modern. Brocade cushions on white high-backed chairs. Settees, low tables, candelabras, a thick rug on the floor shot through with metallic threads. It all looked to be a carefully arranged tourist exhibit. There was even a velvet rope stretched across one section of wall to keep people from getting too close to the paintings. But this wasn’t a public exhibition. It was simply a favorite spot in Dr. Lawton’s warehouse in Paris.

He nudged back a heavy drape and peered out the window, looking down on the loading dock and at another warehouse across the street. The neighboring structures were busier—one supplied grocers, another automotive dealers. In reality the automotive supplier was a front for stolen cars coming into Europe from the United States. Dr. Lawton found the operation distasteful and intended to turn them in when he wrapped up his own business in this area.

His antiques storage warehouse was a front, as well. He cluttered the lower level with all manner of objects he purchased legally. Some of them were even rare finds. Although one object that had arrived a short time ago couldn’t fit into that category….

He heard a sound behind him.

“Dr. Lawton,” Sarah said, “we’re back.”

“I know. I saw the car and the van arrive.”

“It took longer than I thought it would, going to that dink-burg of a town, and—”

“And?” He didn’t bother to turn around.

“It’s downstairs. Archard has it. Do you want to—”

“Of course.”

“Should I have him bring—”

“No. I’ll come down.”

He stepped away from the window and let the drape fall back, paused and then turned to see the girl. Woman, he corrected himself. But just barely. She was young. Beautiful, though he had to really look to see it. She unwittingly dimmed her loveliness by wearing baggy shirts spouting slogans and pictures of whatever rock band she was into. This evening she sported a white skull and crossbones with bat wings and A7X in big block letters. Her makeup did nothing to improve her appearance. She wore thick eyeliner and layered on the mascara. Smudges of shimmering green and blue paste covered her lids and tapered to points. Her lipstick was dark. Unnatural. Never red.

“We got into Paris a few hours ago,” she said. “But I needed to clean up and change. My clothes got pretty well shredded.”

He raised an eyebrow, inviting her to explain.

“It was worse than those rock-climbing walls at the gym,” she began. “Not the big part of the sword. It was just hanging out there in the open…right where your research said it would be. But the tip of it…” She held out her hands so he could see all the cuts and broken fingernails. “It was exactly like the legend you taught in class. Roland had tried to throw the sword away, off the cliff, so the enemy wouldn’t get it. But the blade hit the stone, and a piece of it broke off and stayed there.”

“And the monks displayed the point that fell.”

“Yeah.” She paused. “They never bothered to go get the other piece. I had a hell of a time in the dark, finding the spot where that little shard was in the cliff. Then I had a hell of a time getting it—”

“God guided your hands,” Dr. Lawton said. “And brought the pieces together so that they could be reforged.”

“Uh, yeah.” She waited, fidgeting in the ensuing silence.

He watched her for several moments, knowing she couldn’t keep her tongue from wagging.

“So…who’s going to get this one? Archard? I figured it would be Archard because of Roland’s significance. He thinks it’s going to be his sword. He’s down there drooling over it. Are you—”

“Yes, Durendal is to be Archard’s sword.” A longer silence settled over them.

Finally she broke it, stuttering, “Am I going to… Are you going to—”

“If there are enough, Sarah. I do not intend to leave you out.”

He turned his back to her and faced the large portrait. “He died on the twenty-eighth of January. It was the seventh day since he’d taken to his bed and after his final Holy Communion. Did you know that?”

Sarah shook her mass of short blond curls. “I’m not much of an historical scholar,” she admitted. “I tried to be. Loved your courses. Maybe I shouldn’t have quit like I did, but—”

He gruffly cleared his throat. “He was seventy-two years old, forty-seven years into his reign. Twice my age when the pleurisy killed him.” Lawton slowly paced in front of the painting. “Buried the same day, in Aachen Cathedral. The rush wasn’t necessary—it had been so cold and the disease hadn’t touched his outward appearance. A count in Aachen claimed to have found and opened the tomb, finding the corpse inside sitting on a throne, decked out with a crown and scepter, the tight flesh over the bones incorrupt. God-touched.”

Sarah appeared to be in awe, but the professor suspected it was for his benefit.

“He died depressed. He hadn’t been afraid of death coming—that comes to all men. But he was afraid of being incomplete.”

She tipped her head in question.

“There were things left undone,” Lawton explained.

“But you will finish those things,” she said, squaring her shoulders.

“Together, we will finish those things.” He paused and turned to regard her again. “If your belief grows stronger. If I can sense in you an honest interest and desire. If you shed your youthful curiosity. If you follow me honestly.”

“I do. I—I will.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders. “If you are to be one of my twelve, you must convince me, Sarah.”

“Anything,” she said. “I’ll do anything.”

“Then prepare for another foray. Now, shall we…” He glided past her toward the stairs, inviting her to follow. “Shall we see Roland’s Durendal?”

The big staircase was a wrought-iron, circular one he’d imported from an ironworks in Scotland. It ended in the center of a massive room filled with crates and forklifts—the trappings of a warehouse. An illusion he found satisfactory.

Dr. Lawton approached Archard, who was kneeling in front of one of the smaller crates, now draped with a length of velvet. It was as close to an altar as could be arranged here. The lighting was poor, which helped hide the true nature of the building, but the makeshift altar was directly beneath one of the fixtures.

“Dr. Lawton,” Archard stated solemnly.

“Durendal,” Lawton said. “Our mission has begun in earnest.”

Chapter 8

“I thought it was a wrap, that we were done. You sent the rest of the crew home.” Rembert Hayes was Annja’s photographer for the dog-men segment in Avignon. He’d worked diligently with her on the project for the past three and a half days, and now he nudged his wheeled suitcase with his foot, jiggling it just enough to make a soft clacking sound against the marble floor of the Hotel Danieli lobby. He’d been her cameraman in the catacombs under Paris before that, never complaining, happy to get the work, in fact, as he was a hungry freelancer. But he’d just gotten a text from his daughter, who was on her way to the hospital to give birth. He was obviously going to miss the event, but he wanted to get back home to New York as soon as possible, and Annja sympathized. His daughter would be a first-time mom with single-parent responsibilities.

“I thought it was a wrap, too.”

“May I call a car to take you—” the bellman began, but Annja’s scowl cut him off.

“Rem, I’m very sorry, but—”

“Plenty of footage, Annja. We have some great color work.” He drummed his fingers on the concierge counter and jiggled the suitcase again. “I called. We can catch a flight in two hours at the Caumont Airport, just outside town. It’ll take us to Manchester, and we can connect to New York and—”

“Be home sometime tomorrow,” Annja finished. She studied him and offered a sad smile. “I thought your daughter wasn’t due for another two weeks.”

“The baby had other ideas, I guess.”

“Look, your wife’s with her, right?”

He nodded.

“Then she’ll get your daughter through this. We’ve got one more interview.” She waved a sheet of paper at him. She’d had the concierge print out an email off her phone. “Some tipster named Gaston claims to be one of the dog-men.”

“That’s…what Doug Morrell’s call was about?” Rembert sputtered. “One more interview? We don’t need it.”

“I might not have liked this whole assignment, Rem. But I’m not going to do a half-assed job when this could add something to an otherwise mediocre piece. And that’s what our dog-men story is right now…nothing special.”

“Damn, Annja.”

“I’m not going to argue with Doug about it. We’re doing this.”

“Doug doesn’t have a pregnant single daughter.”

“Doug’s twenty-two.”

“My point.” Rembert made a face. “All your beloved producer cares about are ratings.”

“Let’s go see this guy and get it over with. Then we’ll take the train back to Paris and get a direct flight. We might still make it home sometime tomorrow.” She told the bellman to store their suitcases.

“Damn, Annja.” He held the door for her. “A dog-man, eh?”

“A cynocephalus.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I know what he’s called. I just hope he’s had his rabies shot.”

Annja shot him a look. “We’ll walk. It’s not far from the hotel. The Centre Historique.”

“Our old hotel was closer.”

“You’re going to complain about everything today, aren’t you, Rem?”

He said yes one block later, when the gray afternoon sky opened up and drenched them.

Their previous lodgings, the Avignon Grand Hotel, had been much closer, practically across the street from their meet at the Palais des Papes. But their stay there hadn’t sat well with Annja, after the beating she’d taken in the stairwell and the theft of her laptop from her room. She’d told Rembert about the theft, but didn’t mention the beating. After she’d come to at the bottom of the stairs, picked herself up and staggered back to her room, she’d discovered that all her things were just where she’d left them, but there were tiny differences that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. And there was the missing computer. So she’d relocated the crew to the Danieli and reported the theft to the police. Again, she didn’t report the beating. Annja healed quickly—a strange phenomenon somehow linked to the sword—and she didn’t want to explain that particular quirk to her photographer or the police.

They were soaked by the time they reached the cluster of centuries-old buildings at the edge of the Rhône. It looked as if the walls of the medieval structures might tumble down the bank and spill into the river. The grandest, the Palais des Papes, was considered one of the most important Gothic buildings in Europe. Annja had been through it twice in the past.

They shook themselves off just inside the entrance.

“The palace of popes, eh?” Rembert mused. “And the place of dog-men. Hope our fellow has been nice and dry in here.”

Annja cocked her head.

“You never had a dog, did you?” he pressed.

Annja had been raised in an orphanage in New Orleans. There was a resident cat, but she’d never caught more than a glimpse of it—the thing always fled from the children. Her life had been too crowded for pets, and now she traveled so much. She envied people who had such companionship. “No. No dogs.”

“Well, they stink to high heaven when they get wet.”

“I like you better when you smile.”

“That doesn’t mean I think this interview is a good idea.” Rembert brushed the water drops off his camera, then dug a dry handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe it. “So, what’s with this place? Enlighten me a little. Only got an outside shot of it two days ago for color on the city.”

“Gascon Bertrand de Goth—Pope Clement V—moved the papacy here after his election in 1305. This building went up after his death. Terribly expensive…”

“You’d think religious people would spend the money on the poor. It’d be the religious thing to do, wouldn’t it?” Rembert panned the camera around the interior and then got a shot of Annja with her wet hair plastered against the sides of her face.

“This was fortified to withstand attacks, expanded over the years, the wings flanked with high towers. Adjoining buildings were added to enclose the courtyard.”

“Beautiful, but excessive,” Rembert said.

Despite the archaeological significance of the place, Annja agreed with him. A dozen tourists wandered in the cloister, and they looked so tiny under the high, arched ceiling. Like ants. No doubt the rain was keeping the bulk of the tourists away. She tried to imagine what the place had looked like when the popes walked these chambers, before it had been seized and sacked. Before it became the setting for a massacre of revolutionaries in the late 1700s and was turned into a barracks and prison. Frescoes had been obliterated, the interior woodwork used to build stables. But in the early 1900s, when it became a museum, restoration began, and the renovation work still continued all these years later.

The place carried the smell of old stone and cleaning products, and through the open front door came the smell of the wet city and the Rhône. Rembert focused his camera on the tourists.

“So what’s our dog-man look like? A Great Dane? Boxer? A bitzer?”

“Bitzer?”

“Ah, that’s right, no dogs. A bitzer…bits of this and bits of that. A mutt.”

Annja studied the tourists. “No idea. Doug’s note said Gaston would find us. We just have to be visible and wait for him.”

“Wait. That’s great.” Rembert edged farther in, dribbling water on the stone. Annja followed him, looking down corridors that led to other wings. “So we wait. How long? Let’s give him an hour, tops. Would maybe still give us time to catch that plane, and—”

“Mrs. Creed?”

Annja and Rembert whirled around to face a wiry youth standing just past the entrance, squinting against the rain. His oversize pants and jacket made him look small.

“Miss. Miss Creed.” Annja stepped closer. Rembert began filming. “Are you Gaston?” For some reason she had expected someone older.

“Gaston? No. Not me.” The rest of his words were in French. “My brother’s name is Gaston.” He twisted the ball of his foot against the stone. “I am to bring you to him.”

“This isn’t the guy,” Annja whispered to Rembert. “This is his brother.”

The air hissed out between her cameraman’s teeth. He looked at his watch.

“We don’t have time for a scavenger hunt. Gaston was supposed to meet us here. That was the message, right, Annja? That was the deal. We—”

“He doesn’t like to be seen in public, Miss Creed,” the kid interrupted, still speaking French. “He’s only doing this because of the money. You promised money for the interview.”

Rembert recognized the word for
money.

“We’re paying for an interview, Annja?”

It happened sometimes. She nodded and said in English, “According to Doug, we’re paying this guy.”

“This just gets better and better.”

Annja almost called it quits, between Rembert’s attitude and the fact that Gaston wasn’t here. But her gut told her to pursue it. “Is he close, your brother? Nearby?” She repeated the questions in French.

The kid nodded. “Under the bridge. Away from the rain and people. He hides there and…you will pay him to talk to you, right? He said he would only talk for money.”

“He talks, and then I make arrangements to pay him. I didn’t bring the money with me.” Annja had not wanted to set herself up for a mugging. “I’m not carrying cash.” She pulled her pants pockets inside out to show him they were empty. “The money is at the hotel. He talks to me, you come back with me to the hotel and get it. I promise to pay.”

The nod became vigorous. “All right. That is all right, I guess. You come now, and then you give me money.”

He turned and tromped out into the rain, Annja and a reluctant Rembert following.

“Wait!” Annja called. “What’s your name?”

Without stopping, the boy replied “Jacques” over his shoulder.

“It’ll be a bitzer, that’s for sure,” Rembert grumbled.

The bank was slick, but Annja navigated it. Her cameraman was not as sure-footed and slid halfway down on the seat of his pants, cradling his camera to his chest and cursing when he bumped across rocks. The city above was clean, but the riverbank was another matter. Plastic foam cups, crushed cigarette packs and other assorted garbage pooled in low spots. The stink of refuse and sodden earth was strong.

“Let’s wrap this up,” Annja said, extending a hand to Rembert.

“I second and third that.” He checked over his camera and wiped at the water again, a futile gesture, as it was raining harder. “Doug’s bad idea is getting worse and worse and worse.”

“Miss Creed.” Jacques slogged forward, pointing to a recess under the bridge. “My brother waits there.”

“Now
I
have a bad feeling about this,” Annja whispered. The whole thing hadn’t felt quite right, not since she’d read the note from Doug about this interview. Actually, not since she’d set foot in Avignon… But she needed to pursue this. Something niggled at the back of her mind. “Gaston?” She raised her voice to be heard over the running river, the drumming of the rain and the slapping of Jacques’s footsteps ahead of them.

A figure emerged from the shadows. He had a build similar to Jacques’s, but she couldn’t make out any details other than that he looked bedraggled and rumpled.

“I am Gaston.” He spoke English, but his accent was thick.

Annja paused, but Rembert, camera to his face, crunched forward over broken glass and gravel. His backside looked like a mud slick.

“She said she would pay us,” Jacques announced. “Miss Creed has money and—”

“So you’re a cynocephalus?” Rembert asked. He paused and stood directly in front of the man, blocking Annja’s view of him. “One of the dog-men of France? You look pretty human to me. In fact…hey, what are you—”

It happened fast. The two grabbed Rembert and spun him around, the taller putting a knife to his throat, the other producing a blade and holding it to his stomach. Rembert dropped the camera, his arms flailing, but stopped moving when the one named Gaston drew blood.

“Stay still,” Gaston said. “If you want to live.”

Annja had been reaching for the sword with her mind, had felt the sensation of the pommel forming against her palm, but didn’t take it. The blade hung in the otherwhere, waiting.

“I told Jacques the money’s at the hotel.” She peered through the driving rain, eyes locking onto Rembert’s panicked stare. “I’ve only got a few euros with me. You can have them, but—”

“We don’t want your money, Annja Creed. We want your sword.”

The accent. It wasn’t French. Close, but there was a difference.

Gaston nudged Rembert farther out from under the bridge.

“You.” Annja recognized Gaston. He was one of the gang she’d fought in Paris, outside the train station. He was one of the Romanies who’d fled before the police arrived.

What was he doing here?

Had Gaston overheard her talking to Roux, telling him she was coming to this city for another episode of
Chasing History’s Monsters?

“The sword! If you hand over the sword, Annja Creed, we’ll let your friend live.”