The King's Gold (3 page)

I find it impressive that after this ill treatment, you still have the liver to beg a war chest from me.

As I take the destiny of the Medici more seriously than your idiocy, however, I have decided to honor your request. Our family Name requires it. After all, there was much wisdom to that old saying of the poet Plautus:
Nomen atque Omen—
one’s name is one’s omen.

I thus send along with this letter six coffers of silver, three hundred soldiers,
and the pledge of my own sword.

Yes, Cosimo, I myself shall be on the field of Siena in a fortnight’s time; I do not intend to pay over my lucre without watching with my own eye how it is spent.

And, along with my silver, I give you also two more gifts:

My first favor is a prophecy: I expect to die in this war. Now that my lady Sofia has been taken from me by brain fever, I lack the will to survive a battle—though I do intend to take many enemy lives before I depart from this world.

As for my second Sacrifice, I vest to you all my Fortune. You certainly recall my venture with Hernán Cortés, when I was a stripling and ran off to the Spaniards’ Americas in search of their King’s Gold. When I returned to Italy—with the corpse of that tiresome slave I starved to death—you had already heard all the Rumors about me: That I was filthy with Montezuma’s filched treasure; that I was Different from before. But all of this was a preamble to your idiotically mispronouncing my Secret name, and then casting Sofia and me from the City.

“Some call you il Lupo, but I see you for what you really are. Darken not my door again, Versipellis,” I recall you jabbering.

“I am no Versipellis, my Lord!”

“Do not lie to me!”

“Nay, nay, but these plaguey stories are mere slanders. I am no monster! I have no gold! I am only your same poor, penniless Uncle, dependent upon the Goodwill of the House of my fathers, the Medici,” I wailed, weeping, as your Guards dragged me away.

Well, Cosimo, you will now be happy to learn that I lied.

I do own a vast, bloodstained, and secret treasure, which I bartered for my soul in Tenochtitlán, and have kept hidden from the world all these years. I leave it to you. I bequeath my Yellow Mettle with a condition, however. You must first solve my Puzzle:

Included in this letter are Two Ciphers that reveal the hiding places of four Clues I have scattered through your rival city-states, and that will lead you to the Fortune. One of these Ciphers is a riddle, and the other, as you see, is a map (or at least, you shall see it should you be able to look up from your feasting and banqueting, and pay nominal attention to what I am telling you).

Does that sound easy enough? Two more things:

Should your brains prove less thick than I expect, and you do find the clues, know that they are not in sequence, and must be recombined by you to spell a secret countersign that will win you your Treasure. Moreover, I have, of course, fitted each of the Clues’ Secret hiding places with the most extraordinarily Deadly Traps that will surely kill you in manners that are as clever as they are supremely painful.

I do all this in the greatest hope that your greed will give me ample opportunity to wreak my vengeance from the grave.

Here is The Riddle:

TO FIND MY YELLOW METTLE

IN CITIES FOUR SHALL YOU STRIVE.

OF YOUR TRUE WORTH THE TESTS WILL TELL:

DIE POOR, OR SURVIVE YOUR PRIZE.

IN CITY ONE FIND A TOMB

WHERE UPON A FOOL WORMS FEED

ONE HAND HOLDS THE TOY OF DOOM

THE OTHER GRIPS YOUR FIRST LEAD.

IN A SHRINE AT CITY TWO

A SHE-WOLF TELLS MORE THAN I

FOUR DRAGONS GUARD THE NEXT CUE

READ THE FIFTH MATTHEW OR DIE.

CITY THREE’S INVISIBLE

WITHIN THIS ROCK, FIND A BATH

BURN LOVE’S APPLE, SEE THE CLEW

THEN TRY TO FLY FROM MY WRATH.

FOUR HOLDS A SAINT FROM THE EAST,

A NEIGHING, SHAPE-SHIFTING WRETCH.

ONCE HE WAS CALLED NERO’S BEAST—

HEAR HIS WORD AND MEET YOUR FETCH.

I have said I am sending you two Ciphers in this letter. The second is a Map, which I also enclose. I certainly do hope that you can discern it, and understand my joke.

Good-bye for now, nephew
I’ll see you soon in Siena.

Antonio Beato Cagliostro MeDici

The redhead and the blond stayed silent by the door as Marco observed my puzzling over this astonishing letter’s dates, its wordplay, and its strange, last page with the signature.

“This is fantastic—if it’s real,” I gasped. “I’ll need a verified sample of Antonio’s handwriting to compare the slant, the letter height, rhetorical style…”

Marco bent over my shoulder, his cheek briefly touching mine, though I was too caught up to yet worry about personal niceties. “But what about the riddle? All that business about She-Wolves and Fools and Invisible Cities?”

“I don’t know yet. I’d have to do research, but, oh. I could start
tonight—
”

“So you have no idea at all, really.”

“No, no—I have
tons
of ideas. Like, look at this.” I ran my thumb against the gorgeous calligraphy. “‘
Darken not my door again,
Versipellis.’
Versipellis.
That’s what Cosimo, the Duke of Florence, said to Antonio. This is the first written confirmation I’ve ever seen that the Medici did in fact believe that Antonio was a supernatural creature.
Versipellis
was the Italian word for werewolf. It’s Latin for ‘skin-changer.’”

Marco nodded. “So I’ve learned.”

Beep beep.

Both of us started at this sound. It was my phone, ringing from my purse. I looked up. “Oh—gosh—I forgot.” I suddenly frowned, touching my hand to my forehead.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, dear. Before I get too deep into this, I’ve just got to rearrange some plans.”

I gave him the letter and ran over to the sales counter to grab my bag. Once I had my little red Nokia in hand, I saw this message from my sweetheart, Erik. Apparently he was getting peckish for the fancy French dinner that we’d agreed to eat out that night:

baby i want u n love you n am also really really hungry

I rapidly typed out:

want u too but cant do dinner new client wants me to resrch medici papers n aztec gold

I sent that message, and then, as an afterthought, also quickly sent a second:

he also says tomas dlr wuz buried in italy not guat u ever heard that be4

Marco visibly stiffened as I worked the keypad. I thought I saw him shoot a glance at the redhead and blond who remained standing like sentries by the door. “Who are you calling?”

“My fiancé. We’re getting married in two weeks, June 16—and we’ll be making some last minute plans at dinner tonight—”

“Oh, two weeks, that’s awfully soon.”

I nodded. “Tell me about it, we still haven’t agreed on the music.” I raised the phone so that he could get a good look at it. Recall that this was 2001, and I’d only had the technology for about a month. “But look at this. Text messages. They’re amazing! I just got the service—you can type messages on your cell!”

Rolling his eyes, Marco muttered: “We’ve had those in Europe already for two years. God, get me out of this backwater. And—look—I don’t have that much time, Lola. Let me be clear: What I’m conducting right now is an
interview
. Mr. Soto-Relada told me that you would be very helpful in cracking this thing, and if you are, then I’m ready to bring you onto the project. I want to take you to Florence, so that you can authenticate the letter. We’ll be going to the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. You were saying you needed Antonio’s writing samples? They have archives that will be very useful—old examples of his writing style. And then we’ll also have the advantage of working with Dr. Isabel Riccardi, the Antonio Medici scholar.”

“Oh my God!” I gave a little leap. “Dr. Riccardi! I’ve read her book—
Antonio Medici: Decorator and Destroyer.
And I
love
Florence, I think. I love reading about it, I mean.”

“But if you’d rather just e-blabber on your little phone, then perhaps I should take my leave—or, dare I say it, maybe you’re not quite the expert that Soto-Relada says you are.”

“No, no, no. Here, hold on. I do know about him…let me just think. Okay. Okay: Antonio Medici.” I shoved my phone in my pocket and squeezed my eyes shut, remembering. “One of the lesser lights of the Medici family. Born in, what, 1478. He…had an earlier career as a kind of scientist—he performedexperiments on people, I think, living people, in Florence. Not like da Vinci and his corpses. He was a monster, really, a vivisectionist. This is where the werewolf rumors got started. After that, he became bored with domestic victims and went abroad. To Africa, was it? Algiers? He became a kind of conquistatore, but with a scientific bent. Let’s see…around 1510, he’s in Timbuktu, slaughtering Muslims. He did a lot of alchemical research, plundering their alchemical labs. He also kidnapped at least one African man, and made him into a slave. I don’t know the slave’s name. After that, maybe not surprisingly, Antonio signed on with Cortés. He sailed to the Americas, assassinating hundreds of Aztecs in Tenochtitlán—and I
have
heard stories that he stole Montezuma’s gold. But, after he returned to Florence from Mexico, the only thing I know is that he killed that slave of his—there’s an awful tale about Antonio starving the man with some sort of gold mask that blocked or muzzled his mouth. A torture killing. Like something out of
The Man in the Iron Mask.
”

“Yes.”

“But that was his last murder for a long time. After Mexico he—”

“Changed.”

“That’s it. He underwent a conversion, after he married. A woman called…the Dragon? That was his nickname for her, Sofia Medici. She encouraged him to become an arts patron and, as you were saying, an alchemist. Though he did have troubles: Cosimo exiled Antonio and his wife for unknown reasons—alluded to in this letter—and they spent the rest of their lives traveling through Siena, Venice, other parts of Italy. Antonio led an uneventful life, at least compared to his earlier slasher days—that is, until this war, the one he’s writing about in this letter. He died in it, the Florentines’ 1554 battle against the Sienese. He became confused during the battle, didn’t he? Because of the smoke? He killed hundreds of his own men, with some kind of alchemists’ weapon, some sort of explosive—a huge bomb.”

Marco blinked at me for several seconds in astonishment, then said: “Well, I have to hand it to him. Mr. Soto-Relada did say you were a brainy one.”

I wrinkled my brow, smiling. “Sorry, how does this Soto-Relada person know me? And did you say he was a
fence
?”

“That old schemer? Yes, Soto-Relada makes it his business to get his hands on all kinds of naughty commodities, including your address. As I said, he worked with your father, and had scads of information about Tomas and his family. He assured me that you would be worth the trouble.”

“Worth the trouble.” I laughed, unsure as to his meaning.

“Yes. I’m just saying that I’m glad I took his advice and took the time to chat with you. Before I…did anything else. How did you know all that just off the top of your head?”

I cast my hand around the store. “Reading—reading—you know.”

“Yes, actually, I do. But in my research,
I
haven’t had any luck finding the map Antonio describes in the letter. No chart or atlas that fits Antonio’s description has ever been recovered. Mr. Soto-Relada says it’s been lost. But, it’s settled. You’re hired! I have flights booked for all of us to Italy tonight. On British Airways. Flight 177—first class, of course.”

“Tonight?”
I began walking around the bookstore, trying to organize my thoughts. “That sounds sort of sudden.”

“We actually should get along. Assuming you have your passport…?”

“I do—it’s in my back room, in my files—” I guffawed abruptly at his lunatic suggestion. “But I can’t. I’m getting married in fourteen days.”

“Oh, we’ll just be in and out in a day, two days. You can still come back in time for the ceremony. Unless you’re not interested.”

Marco held up the letter’s translucent onionskin pages. They glittered in the lamplight, and I caught again the strange, elaborate signature page. I attempted to think logically despite my overwhelming desire to snatch those papers and parse Antonio’s puzzle until either my head fell off or I solved it.

“Oh,” I breathed. “Maybe I
could
go, for a little while. God, what am I even
saying
?”

My Nokia suddenly beeped again. I plucked the phone from my pocket and saw these two messages from Erik:

wat r u tlking about crzy grl aztec gold is long gone

i just asked ur sis about tdlr being buried n itly she freaked

Wildly, but also half as a joke, I typed out:

sory gng to florence tonite with client flt 177 british air 2 go find mntzumas gold staying at palazzo medici riccardi he’s a handsum guy mayb u shd come too n make sure i behave self

no u r not

am so u shd come unless you dont mind me eating pasta w mr tall dark n handsum

grrrrr u r making me jelus need to make love to u right away