City of Dark Magic (31 page)

“Step two, you need to keep Elisa close but not too close,” said Sarah, practically choking on the name. “She needs to think you heard some wild accusations from me that you didn’t believe. That it’s driven us apart. Don’t turn down her marriage idea. Tell her you’re exploring it. It will help keep both of us alive.”

Max looked at her admiringly. “Yes. And step three is to gather something we can take to the police to stop her.”

“I’m worried about the opening,” said Sarah. “Both the marchesa and Charlotte Yates will be there.”

“Along with ninety-seven different kinds of security and hundreds of other dignitaries. If Charlotte wants to keep her past hidden, the last thing she’s going to do is make a scene here, of all places.”

Sarah nodded but still felt uneasy. “Max, there’s something else, isn’t there? I know you’ve been keeping something from me.”

Max looked at her.

She had trusted him. But to work it had to be mutual.

“I know what Sherbatsky was looking for when he took the drug,” said Sarah. “But what were you? I know it can’t have just been your mom. Why did you and Nico act so squirrelly when I mentioned hell portals? Why were you so interested in the cape I found in the library? What did you really hide in a safe in Venice? Why did you keep taking the drug even when you knew it was dangerous to do it by yourself?”

Max sighed. “It will sound kind of stupid,” he said.

“Try me.”

“Okay.” Max looked her dead in the eye. “I’m looking for the Golden Fleece.”

FORTY-FIVE

S
arah tried not to laugh, although she felt pretty close to it.

“What are we talking about here?” she said. “The Golden Fleece like: Jason and the Argonauts?” She thought about a Japanese cartoon she saw as a kid that followed Jason’s many adventures aboard the
Argo
as he traveled the Aegean looking for the Golden Fleece. There were sea monsters, and skeleton soldiers that sprang up from the ground. She remembered equally well or better the Cap’n Crunch and Count Chocula commercials that punctuated the cartoon. Wait, there had been a theme song.

“Go, go Jason, now don’t be scared! You gotta keep looking for that ram of gold!”
Sarah started to sing.

“Sarah, I’m being serious.”

“This is real?” Sarah felt like she had swallowed a lot of tales since coming to Prague, but this seemed excessive.

“To be honest, I don’t know what it is,” Max said. “Who knows if there ever was a Golden Fleece, or an Ark of the Covenant, or a Holy Grail? I only know that the Secret Order of the Golden Fleece was set up in Rudolf II’s time to protect something very specific. And I’m supposed to be the head of the Secret Order now, and I have no idea what I’m guarding, or where it is.”

“Well, if there’s an Order, then there must be other members?” asked Sarah. Although she could see how it might be embarrassing for Max at the meetings, especially if he was supposed to be the head guy. “Hey, so, like, our Order? Like, what’s our secret again?”

“There is an Order of the Golden Fleece, but it’s just an honorary title,” Max explained. “There’s a Spanish branch and an Austrian one. There aren’t any meetings or anything. And some people think the Spanish branch was discredited because Juan Carlos made King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia a member and the origins of the whole deal are all about saving Christendom from the Muslims. I think it’s a totally bogus operation, although they give you a nice necklace when you’re in it. I’m supposed to be officially inducted next month. I’m not talking about
that
. I’m talking about the
Secret
Order of the Golden Fleece.”

Sarah waited.

“This.” Max pulled out his cigarette case and handed it to her. She ran her fingers over the symbol inscribed on the front.

“It’s the symbol Nico—at least I think it was Nico—left on my ceiling in Cambridge,” said Sarah.

“It’s an alchemical symbol,” Max said. “Made by John Dee when he was court alchemist to Rudolf II. It’s meant to stand for the unity of everything . . . knowledge, all material things, you name it. The circle with the dot is the sun and the earth, and that’s the crescent moon crowning it. Then coming down from the sun: the cross, which rests upon the zodiacal sign of Aries. Aries, the ram. The golden ram is a symbol of the sun, of the way the sun illuminates all, which is knowledge.”

“Max.” Sarah’s mind was whirling. “What did Professor Sherbatsky know about this? He sent me a letter, before he died, with just the symbol on it.”

“Sherbatsky was taking the drug to look for Beethoven,” Max said. “At that point all either of us knew was that the drug was some chemical that Ludwig had taken. Something that the 7th had given him. I was looking for my ancestors, trying to tie together all these clues that kept popping up. References in letters to something secret, something that had been lost and must be found, something that must be found before others found it. The Golden Fleece. Puzzles, codes, and over and over again, this symbol. One night I was stumbling around in Golden Lane—you know that row of little houses in the castle built in the sixteenth century—when I saw something really strange.” Max bit his lip.

“I saw . . . Nico.”

“Nico.”

“I wasn’t entirely sure about the date,” Max said. “Because I was never good at controlling the drug and I skipped around in time a lot, but it was definitely Nico and it seemed to be early seventeenth century. He was with a man. The man had a piece of copper across the bridge of his nose.”

“Tycho Brahe,” Sarah said. “Nico called him
Master
. And he said that Tycho had given him something, a potion of some kind . . .” Sarah realized what Nico had told her was true. He hadn’t just been relating historical anecdotes.

Nico was Jepp.

“On the night that I saw them,” Max said, “Tycho was telling Nico, whom he called Jepp, that he was supposed to steal something from Rudolf II. ‘You will know it when you see it,’ he kept saying. And Jepp was scared out of his mind, that’s the emotion I was following, I think. Nico’s fear. He kept saying, ‘No, Master, I cannot touch the Fleece. I am unworthy.’ But in the end he promised to try.”

“And you think he succeeded?” Sarah said. “That Jepp—Nico—stole it?”

“He bribed Rudolf’s lover and says he was too frightened to even look in the bag he got from him. Just handed the thing over to his master—Brahe. Nico says he doesn’t know if what he got was the Golden Fleece, or what the Golden Fleece really was. They had it—whatever it was—for one night, then gave it back. Rudolf never knew. But according to Nico, Rudolf was obsessed with keeping the object secret, not letting it fall into the wrong hands. His brother’s hands in particular.”

What did Rudolf bring the alchemists to court for? Gold. Immortality. Knowledge. Sarah blinked. History had said they failed. But history was wrong. Whatever the Fleece was—ng a book, a crystal ball, a philosopher’s stone, a golden ram’s hide?—one night with it had led Tycho to some breathtaking pharmaceutical discoveries . . .

“And you think your family . . .”

“I think my family has been looking for whatever the Fleece is for all these years. That’s what the Secret Order is all about. But I’m just guessing. I don’t really know. Tycho made the drug from it, or because of it, and the formula he wrote down has been in my family. But there’s more than one version. Sounds like that cloak you found in the library is one of his mistakes. The original thing . 
. . it would be hugely powerful. Maybe a way to move not just backward in time but forward as well. To see everything, understand everything. The unity of all things. All the clues I’ve found so far seem to point to the Fleece being hidden somewhere on the castle grounds. Nico thinks so, too, but I can’t tell if he’s trying to help me or not. He said that some things were better left hidden. And if he is Jepp . . .”

Sarah and Max stared at each other.

Sarah thought about Nico frantically riffling through Tycho Brahe’s book of formulas. Crawling under the table.

“Only one who knows longing knows what I suffer,”
she quoted.

“Wait, you said that’s from a poem by Goethe?” Max asked, his tone sharpening. “The same Goethe that wrote
Faust,
right? Not some other musical poet Goethe that I’ve never heard of?”

“No, the
Faust
Goethe. Why?”

“Maybe Nico
was
leaving us a clue,” Max said. “There’s a Faust House here in Prague. Faustuv dum. It’s under construction right now. Might be a good place to hide the contents of a secret library.”

“Faust,” said Sarah. “The original Man Who Knew Too Much.”

FORTY-SIX

C
harles Square was too far to walk. They jumped in a taxi, which promptly got stuck in traffic.

“Traffic at two a.m.?” asked Max in annoyance.

The driver was talking on his cell phone in rapid Czech.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Sarah. “I shouldn’t have gone to look for the library without you.”

Max took her hand.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s my responsibility and I’m going to take care of it.”

“Nice,” said Sarah. “That’s the kind of Sworn Protector of the Realm talk we like to hear.”

The driver got off the cell phone. “Where you go again?” he asked.

“We’re meeting some friends near Faust House,” Sarah said. “You know where that is?”

“You American tourists? Charles Square not safe at night,” he said.

“We’ll be okay,” sa" fid Sarah.

“Faust House closed till December. No tourists now.”

“We’ll definitely visit it next trip,” Sarah assured him.

“In 1300s house owned by Vaclav of Opava. Alchemist. You know alchemist?”

“Yes, alchemist,” said Sarah, feeling ridiculous. Max spoke perfect Czech but he seemed content to let Sarah do the pidgin English thing.

“Yah. Then Rudolf II, you know Rudolf II?”

“Yes,” said Sarah. “Uh-huh. Rudolf II.”

“His astrologer Jakub Krucinek live there. Younger son kill older son for treasure. Very famous Prague murder.”

“Treasure?” Sarah almost shouted. Max grabbed her hand.

“Yah. Never find treasure. Then Edward Kelley live there. Also alchemist. He kill a man. Also famous Prague murder.”

Kelley. Those alchemists were truly ubiquitous. And deadly.

“Then the wizard Mladota. He blow big hole in roof. His son make crazy mechanicals, like flying staircase and electric doorknobs. Then later student find alchemy book. They say devil take him up through hole in ceiling. Why through ceiling I don’t know, because everyone know there is hell portal in the basement. Much easier for devil to use, no? Then Karl Jaenig, crazy guy who paint walls with requiems, sleep in coffin.”

“Is there a faster way to get there?” asked Max.

“You know a lot about Faustuv dum,” said Sarah to the driver.

“I am tour guide, too. Famous Prague murders. Now there’s new one. You hear? Lobkowicz Palace? Lady kill herself in cage. Very bloody.”

He handed Sarah a business card. “Night tours of Prague’s most famous murder scenes.”

They jumped out in front of the baroque salmon-and-white façade of Faust House, and Sarah paid the driver, who sped off, and turned to Max. “The place has quite a history,” she said. “Mladota the wizard? And its own hell portal.”

“I guess it’s a pharmacy now,” said Max, waving at the green cross near the door.

The building, it turned out, was currently owned by the medical school of Charles University. Everything was shut and locked up for the night.

“Hey, Jepp!” Max called up at the dark building. “Open up, you crazy dwarf bastard!”

“Shhh . . .” Sarah clamped a hand over his mouth.

Max looked up at the building in front of them.

“Something is here,” Max said, more soberly now. “I can feel it, can’t you?”

Sarah was about to argue when she realized she could feel . . . something.

“We need to find Nico,” she said. “He has Tycho’s diary, and I think the formula for the drug is in there. If he can make some . . .”

“What do you want to see?” Max asked her.

Everything
, she thought. She wanted to see history unfold around her. Beethoven. She could watch him compose every day. She looked at Max. “What do you want to see?”

“Where the Fleece is hidden. What the hell it is. What’s in Tycho’s book would be a purer form of the drug than LVB’s toenails. It might be the ride of our lives. If Nico can make it.”

“Do you trust Nico?” Sarah asked. “I mean, what does he really want? Wealth? Art? Women?”

“Oh, Nico?” Max said. “He just wants to find a way to die.”