Coronets and Steel (27 page)

We had three or four cheeses for the bread, and two kinds of pastry with spiced meat filling, and several kinds of fruit. Then slices of a fragrant, moist lemon cake for dessert.

Tony asked me about Paris as we ate, and I easily described what pictures had been playing, what plays I had seen written up in the papers; after his encouragement I admitted how plodding and dreary I’d found a critically acclaimed postmodern play currently running in Paris, though I didn’t tell him I’d seen it put on by students at UCLA. “Not that it was bad. Just the opposite. But so smug! How do you get moral superiority out of saying there is no point to anything?”

“Don’t tell Ruli.” He laughed, then finished his wine with a flourish. “Those plays never fail to send me to sleep when she or Cerisette bully me into going along.”

I leaned back on my stone bench to stare upward through the interlaced green leaves and the mild blue sky beyond, while he started to pack up the remains. High above me an unseen bird warbled its song; bees hovered about nodding blossoms, their sound a krummhorn below the bird’s soprano recorder.

It was time for a test or two of my own. “I’m sorry your sister’s missing. I hope she’s okay.”

“Mmm.” He smiled absently as he folded the picnic cloth.

“Must be hard on your mother. Especially with this wedding stuff coming up. She mentioned it the other day. Weird, to be planning a wedding without a bride around.”

“Most of the planning she’s doing would serve as well for a state funeral.” His brows quirked. “They pegged you as a wild bohemian, the family wolves. So you’ve never met my sister?”

“No.”

“Where’d you meet Alec?”

I
BLINKED AT HIM. “How’d you know we met?”

“Give me credit for some observation.” Tony lounged back on his bench, eyes half shut. “They said everyone else jumped like a row of electrified crows on a wire when first they saw you. As did I. Alec not only did not react, but there was no uncertainty as to your identity. It’s never easy to sort out what he’s thinking, but that much was obvious. He knew you right off, and could have been forgiven for some doubt. Unlike me, he’s largely been spared Ruli’s company in recent years. Also,” he smiled as if telling a rare joke, “you knew him. And weren’t exactly chuffed to find him there.”

“All true,” I said, still wary, though there was nothing threatening about Tony. So far.

“So, you met where?”

“In Vienna.”

“Vienna,” Tony repeated. “You were enjoying the sights? And . . . met up? By chance?”

“Yep. He thought I was your sister.”

“Of course. He’s been dashing around Europe on her trail for weeks. So you went to Split with him?”

I sat up. “You knew about that?”

“Wasn’t that the purpose?” he countered, lifting a shoulder in a slight shrug, as if the whole subject was not to be taken seriously.

“Yes,” I said slowly, wondering how he’d found out if he’d been in England attending horse races, or traveling around Bordeaux looking for wine. Oh yes, he was notorious for losing cell phones . . . but he certainly didn’t sound out of the loop. And for that matter, why hadn’t he asked me before? The questions, so sensible, seemed odd coming now. “Alec thought if she was hiding and sulking, if she heard about me pretending to be her, she’d come out of hiding. Or whatever. I did it because it was fun and a free trip, and it didn’t seem as if it would do any harm.”

“It didn’t strike you as peculiar, the whole business?”

“Yep. Very.” I stood up to shake out my skirt, which had gotten crumpled and covered with bread crumbs. “But he said the reasons were political, which meant ridiculous.”

He flashed a quick smile. “So you didn’t ask for any of these ridiculous political reasons?”

“Nope. None of my business.”

“Then you parted on bad terms?”

“Why are you so interested?” I crossed my arms.

“Wouldn’t you be?” He looked surprised. “Sister gone, intended inlaw—incidentally the, ah, current guiding hand, politically speaking—looking for her, at the moment a mysterious cousin pops up. So Alec didn’t find you, you were sprung on him by capricious fate.”

“That’s it, though I’d reverse the pronouns.”

“And you exchanged family histories . . . ?”

“More or less.”

“And secrets?”

“Like what?” I asked militantly, daring him to throw Gran’s questioned marriage in my face.

“Well, for one, the Dsaret treasure, which you might legally lay claim to. You, no doubt, have been asking him where he’s keeping it?” Tony’s elbow leaned on the stone armrest, his cheek on his hand.

“A treasure? Never heard of it.”

“Oh, naughty Alec.” He chuckled as a gentle breeze stirred through his hair.

“You did say
treasure?
Tell me more.”

“When it became clear the Germans were going to overrun us, a number of our former leaders put some effort into a secret project that I guess had been going on for some time: consolidating some holdings, liquidating others, usually those in distant, troubled areas of Europe.” He lifted a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “All our families were doing it, to some extent. Alec’s father was particularly long-sighted—or his advisers were—in the matter of what to do with the cash when he got it. He invested everything. My family was not so keen in business. The king, before he transferred the reins of government to Milo, apparently converted his family’s wealth as well as the major portion of the treasury to some liquid form, and it was hidden. Only old Milo—young Milo then—was told its whereabouts.”

“It still exists?”

“Apparently. The Germans never found it, nor did the Russkis. It’s possible they never knew about it. At any rate when my mother married, she was given her portion. Or, so she was told.”

“There weren’t papers, executors, that sort of thing?”

“We are sometimes medieval in these parts.” He grinned, the long dimple flashing. “The lawyers don’t yet control everything. So you might well have a claim. I’ve no idea what the laws say about descendents of natural children and inheritance. The point is moot since, at present, Alec
is
the government.”

“My parents are married,” I said slowly.

I trusted Alec to a degree. I liked Tony, but that didn’t mean I trusted him, certainly not more than Alec . . . yet that stuff about the treasure was disturbing. If Tony was telling the truth, and there was a Dsaret treasure, and Alec knew Gran was the missing Dsaret . . . then why hadn’t he told me?

What would Tony get out of a lie?

Maybe it was time to give him some info. A fair trade.

I said, “My grandmother was also married.”

“What?” He paused, then continued to put the last of the items in the basket. “She married someone in Paris?”

“No. That’s why I’m here—besides the look around. Gran never would have left this country with that man. Your—
our
grandfather. I’m the evidence she was with him, right? I know her. Have all my life. She would not have gone off with him unless they’d been married. So I’m here to find the record.”

“There was no record,” he said as he fit the cork into the wine bottle.

I shook my head. “Are you sure? Anything could have happened to it, what with the traveling and the war. They might even have married in Vienna, but I don’t think she would have gone with him then. Not Gran. Anyway, she wears a wedding band to this day.”

I glanced away from my hands to meet his slack-lidded, indolent gaze narrowed to intent. His voice was still casual. “I take it you’re looking for proof?”

“Yep. But I’m on the trail. Several trails. I was hoping you might get me past the gatekeepers to look at official records, for one of my trails. Are we going?” I added as he packed the wine bottle in the hamper.

“Yes, but first, why don’t we give these to Nonni? She loves Pedro’s French tidbits, and her grandsons do also—” He stopped.

A fall of sweet sound, silvery laughing music, echoed up the hill through the thick fir trees as if from another world.

At first I thought it was from some fantastic bird. I ran to the low stone wall, ignoring the moss, and peered into the tangle of standing birch and wild climbing roses left for a century to ramble, twining up and over an ancient, freestanding stone portal. Golden light poured through in slanting rays between young trees, among which faces peered back at me. Not birds, but strange faces blended of green and brown, with tangled curls of bark for hair, and feral catlike eyes.

The giddiness gripped me so hard every cell in my body seemed to shift, as if I rode through a silent earthquake. Then footsteps broke the weird spell, slamming me back a step or two. Sight: an old ruined door with medieval carving on it, blurred by moss and time, standing a way down a slope; sounds: the complicated arrangement of a violin concerto of Ernst Bloch’s, played on a wind instrument, and Tony’s leisurely step crunching grass and gravel as he joined me at the wall.

“Sounds like Nonni’s grandson is home.” Tony smiled.

“He’s—he’s good,” I said numbly, peering at the ancient door. No faces, only the dappled sunlight on leaves tossing in a gentle breeze.
Fanciful.

“He studies music at the temple school. Practices up here, usually when his father’s not around to complain about how little he works and how much he plays.”

“That’s not play, that’s art.”

“As you say, he’s good.” Tony cocked his head in the direction of Riev. “But we have a remarkable number of good musicians in our corner of the world, and his father feels that a steady paycheck as a carpenter is a better future. What were you looking at so intently? There are a lot of folktales about that old door.”

“Like?”

“Nonni told us stories about its being a magical portal. Ruli and I used to run back and forth through it when we were small. Trying to get to the Nasdrafus.”

“You mean to Fyadar and his friends?”

He laughed. “So you heard those old stories, too? Of course—your grandmother must have told you.”

“What did you find?” I asked.

“Nuts, insects, and leaves, exactly what you see now. Ruli got bored pretty fast, but I didn’t give it up as a bad job until Alec joined us the next summer, bringing Milo’s sensible rationalism to answer such questions as, if magic worked, why couldn’t it do something useful like save Nonni from the Gestapo?”

As the unseen musician began again on the transcendently soaring piece, Tony remained by my side as we stared at the tangled wood; I was intensely aware of the slow rise and fall of his breathing below the white shirt, the fine scars, like knife cuts, on his long hands. His still profile as he gazed down at that stone doorway—no portal, only an old abandoned arch, its walls long rotted or tumbled down. This time I didn’t imagine any bizarro faces, but enjoyed the brilliantly played music accompanied by the sough of wind in fir branches, and by the far-off cry of birds.

At the end he said, “Shall we go on your errand?”

As we trod around the hunting lodge to the front where the car was parked, I sensed his gaze from time to time, though he kept an arm’s length away, out of my personal zone.

Except my personal zone had widened, and I was aware of all the clues that add up to covert interest: he was watching me, and not idly.

I shifted my focus to the wooded mountains all around, so thickly wooded they were blue. I glanced skyward, appreciating the clear air, the complicated woods scents, and the crunch of our feet in the gravel.

Tony said casually, “What was it, ballet?”

“What?” I felt that zap of nerves I get when I think someone is looking at me and it proves to be true.

He lifted his hand in an arc. “The way you move. You studied ballet?”

“Yes.” Without shifting one inch closer to me, he’d crossed from personal space to intimate space.

I was
so
not going to go there with him.

So I said the obvious, “There’s the car.” And the subject dropped as he politely held my door open for me.

He vaulted over into his seat, fingers tapping lightly on the dangling key chain as I tied on my hat. Then he said, “Who’ve you discussed your search with?”

“Mmm? No one. You’re the first.”

“I’m honored, and I promise I shall give you whatever aid you desire.” He flicked my knee with his fingers—casual, even impersonal. The way he would to a kid, or an old friend. “How’s that?”

“Great.” I sighed. “Thank you.” And, as we started back down the avenue of trees, I remembered Mina and her village. Maybe I could get Tony to take me, instead of finding my own ride. But how far away was it, and was it too late to descend on her unannounced?

Tony rolled onto the road and began to accelerate.

“It’s time to head back,” I said, as the afternoon rays began flash in slanting beams between the branches sheltering the road. “I do have my errand.”