Lorna Tedder Read online

  “I knew I could trust you, Aubrey.”

  I met his gaze. I could tell by the twitch at his lips that he was teasing me. “I’ve never purposely disappointed you,” I reminded him.

  Simon ran his fingers over the design on the casing. “Purposely or not, no one ever disappoints me more than once.”

  I swallowed hard and refused to be put on the defensive. “So how do we get into the package? UV light? Heat? Run over it with a forklift?”

  “No need to be dramatic, Aubrey. Or do you prefer Lauren?” He paused. “Finding the best things in life is only a matter of knowing where to look.” Simon brushed his fingertips along a series of triangles and pressed down hard on the third triangle at the center of the package. The case gave way and popped open with the sound of a pull tab on a soda can.

  Amazing. The case material had been formed in two partitions and snapped together yet appeared seamless until the correct pressure was applied to the heart. A bit like me, I supposed. I tamped down my excitement and proceeded to lift out the artifact and peel away the interior wrapping.

  I was vaguely aware of Simon watching my face as I folded back the final layer of wrapping. My jaw dropped. He was right—I had the expertise.

  Before I even saw the full-page woodcut of a mother with a sword in one hand, a jug at her feet and a baby in her free arm or before I mentally transcribed the first words from centuries past, I knew the book was rare. Books printed before 1501, before the advent of the printing press, are known as incunabula, and they’re exceptionally rare. Of the known ones printed on vellum and sheep’s gut, perhaps as many as thirty-five percent still exist, most in private collections or hidden in the bowels of dusty museums. This book was no exception.

  It was the reason I’d made the worst mistake of my life—the reason I’d been lured into a trap and had lost my daughter. And if the relic proved to be genuine, then it was indeed “the artifact of the second millennium.”

  “This belongs to your family?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  Legally? Perhaps they’d purchased it from a dealer or maybe even a monk or priest centuries ago, but this artifact was more mine than theirs. My grandmother had spoken of it many times with me cuddled against her, but my mother had sworn it was a figment of an overactive imagination since no one in my maternal line remembered seeing the book. I stared at Simon and tried to give a measured response so he wouldn’t know how much this artifact meant to me personally. Or maybe he already knew. Maybe that’s what made me his preferred choice to authenticate it.

  “It’s…beautiful,” I whispered in reverence.

  If the book was legally an Adriano possession, I expected familial pride from Simon but found none. “It’s bullshit, accusations, lies,” he said instead. His lips curled as if he’d tasted acid. “But that’s why I had to have it. The Church itself deemed this manuscript to be heresy. It was a charge written against my family in the 1400s in an attempt to destroy us, but thankfully Pope Martin the Fifth presented it to my family as a token of his appreciation for our services.”

  “Services?”

  “Yes. My family did everything in its power to protect the Church. The Church was very grateful.”

  Extortion? I wondered. I was very familiar with medieval history—much of the knowledge coming from the literature I had studied and taught—and the fifteenth century had seen the Church torn apart by regional infighting and indecision over which of three popes was the true leader of the Church.

  “The genuine artifact,” Simon continued, “has been stolen from us and recovered more than once over the centuries. If this…accounting of lies were made public, it would send historians into an uproar. Do you understand?” He lowered his voice. “I have to know if it’s authentic or if it’s a modern hoax to discredit us.”

  Simon’s family had been as powerful as the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, just more quietly so, and more powerful than most governments of the era. Some said they’d controlled more than their share of kings and popes. No doubt the pope’s little token of appreciation had been for some type of political assistance rather than building a new cathedral or clothing a few nuns. Had the Church declared the manuscript heresy or had the reigning Adriano of the times?

  “And if it is authentic?”

  Simon laughed. “Then we’ll have a bonfire in two days when Joshua returns from business in Alexandria.”

  I almost choked. Burn a book? Especially an incunable of this age and significance? A book with a personal tie to my own ancestry?

  As a professor of literature, I couldn’t even fathom burning a self-published chapbook of bad poetry, let alone destroying an artifact that might “send historians into an uproar.” But as someone with a vested interest in the manuscript, I knew I had to save this book. My hands itched to get started, and I intentionally let my excitement show. Simon needed to see that I could be a team player. Doing so might keep me alive another day.

  “I’ll need time to authenticate it, Simon. Several hours, at least. Maybe more. I don’t really have everything I need here to do a complete job.”

  He shook his head. “I need to know only if it’s real, not who wrote it or why.”

  I frowned down at the folio pages and immediately started to drone as if I were lecturing to a hall of graduate students. “It’s faded in places, stained in others. Very delicate, of course. Some annotations in brown ink. Hmm, looks like family crests or names in the narrow margins. How curious. Bound in what appears to be contemporary blind-tooled pigskin over wooden boards with original brass clasps. A few wormholes in the pastedowns, but overall a handsome artifact. Two columns of text in a compact Gothic script used to economize on space. Hmm, Latin, which I can read relatively well.”

  I hesitated, wondering whether to continue, but Simon was already sure enough of what I was about to tell him. Lying was not an option.

  “I’d put it somewhere in the fifteenth century, but I’ll need time to translate it to be certain.” Unfortunately I’d be alone in a closed room with no way out but the vault door. “I can’t get my work done for you if I’m interrupted. Will I be safe to work here alone?”

  Simon nodded. “Take all the time you need. I’ll have guards at the door.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know very well what you meant.” Simon walked away. “I’ll inform Caleb that he is to leave you alone…tonight…while you work.” He reached the door and looked over his shoulder at me. “I’ll be back for an update in—” he checked his expensive watch “—two hours.”

  The vault door clicked shut behind him, but I barely noticed. Even the air around me seemed old and leaden in my lungs. I already knew that the incunable was authentic. I knew because I’d sacrificed years and a life with my daughter and everything I held dear to find it. For six weeks I’d carried it in my arms. And now it was in my hands.

  The printed manuscript from the hand of Joan of Arc. The heresy against the Adrianos.

  My pulse pounded in my ears. I couldn’t let the Adrianos burn it. This was more than an artifact; it was history. My history. And it was the only thing other than Matthew and Lilah that had meant anything to me in my whole life.

  On a cold day in March the year my Lilah turned ten, I’d kissed my little angel goodbye and told her to be a good girl for her aunt and cousins in Pennsylvania while I was gone to Europe. I had been selected as one of only a handful of professors of medieval literature to attend a six-week workshop in Paris, studying old and forgotten manuscripts on an archaeological grant and chasing the rumor of a Joan of Arc manuscript. I’d written letters to Lilah every day, telling her how much I loved and missed her, and I’d sent her postcards of the French countryside. I spent weeks studying references to a memoir allegedly written by Joan of Arc and detailing a far greater mission than the ones given to her historical credit.

  “This is it.” I touched the pages with trembling fingers. The fragmented memories I’d tried to forget came fl
ooding back.

  I’d been told that my selection was a very prestigious honor funded by the Adriano philanthropic trust and that as many as a hundred scholars might be chosen to attend. It was odd that there had been only six women selected for the honor of attending the workshop, and all of us within a few years’ age of each other and all of us profoundly interested in Joan of Arc lore. At the end of the fifth week, I’d become ill. On the last day of the sixth week, the day before I was to go home to Lilah, I thought I saw Matthew standing in the darkened door of a small French church. Maybe I just wanted to see him there or maybe it was the virus I’d picked up, but I followed the man I saw. Two hours later I’d become the most wanted thief in France and a woman on the run.

  I rubbed my eyes. My breath came quick and shallow, and I could barely think. I’d never been able to figure out exactly what had happened or why. My life had changed in the blink of an eye, and I now held the clues in my hands.

  “Later,” I told myself. “I’ll think about it later. Focus on the moment—and then get out of here.” I squinted at the distant Latin words of the incunable and began to translate as I strained to read….

  I was born first, as the sun was setting on the Feast Day of Corpus Christi, and she was born second, when the last of the light had faded. We were two girl children born to a land that saw no worth in daughters. We were unwanted and doomed to be abandoned to starve or die of the cold, save for the Grace of God. I was named Isabelle after our mother, and she, Jeanne. We lived for a reason that became clear with the years—to continue the tradition of our women, of warriors fighting in the name of the Holy Mother.

  Perspiration prickled at my brow. Joan of Arc had siblings, yes. A sister even. But a twin? My mother’s mother and her mother’s mother before her had often said we were descended from Joan of Arc’s womb. I’d had my doubts about the claim. Joan had died at eighteen, only months older than I’d been when Matthew had rescued me. She’d been far braver than I. She’d died childless, though not a virgin. Her jailers had seen to that with their horrific tortures long before they burned her at the stake.

  But a twin? A twin who had shared the womb with Joan? A twin no one had ever heard of…until now? The times the young warrior had been wounded and still managed to rally her troops as if she’d never been hurt…? The girl had seemed invincible. Could it be that she’d had a partner in her revolution?

  Hands shaking, I rewrapped the incunable and tucked it back inside the stereolithographic casing, then snapped the encasement shut. With a quick glance at the vault door, I slid the artifact back into the briefcase and fastened the straps. I had to get out of the Adriano compound and I had to do it with the book in tow and the hopes that I’d live to translate it when Simon wasn’t around.

  Glancing around to make sure there were no cameras watching me, I clicked across the floor, searching for a second way out of the vault. The ceiling disguised the upper reaches of a fireproof room but no escape. But the floor…

  I followed the lines of the floor to a barely noticeable crack in the shape of a square. A trapdoor. A way out. Maybe.

  Lying flat on the floor with the briefcase beside me, I was finally able to lift one side and slide the square cover away from a hole big enough for a man the size of Caleb to crawl through. The sudden smell of sweat and excrement stung my nostrils, and I nearly gagged. I forced myself not to cough and instead breathed through my mouth. I couldn’t afford to make any noises that might bring Simon back. Or worse. My ears rang. I felt ill.

  The trapdoor led to some sort of room below, which had light and ventilation, but I couldn’t see any more than that. The door gaped down a long tube without steps. Since the vault was on the bottom floor of the palazzo’s main house, where the modern building met with the old castle, maybe the room below led to an escape along the seashore. It had to lead somewhere.

  Normally I might have descended the tunnel using my back and my knees, but I knew intuitively that my bad knee would fail me tonight. I glanced around the vault for a ladder or rope and settled on the fire hose near the vault door. Although the vault seemed fireproof enough, I guessed that the Adrianos would take no chances with their personal art collection.

  Leaving the briefcase on the floor beside the trapdoor, I lowered myself down the tube with hose to spare. My feet had barely cleared the tunnel when I felt a man’s hands on my thighs and halfway up my dress!

  Oh, God! Caleb?

  I kicked hard, and the hands released my legs at the same time I heard an “Oof!” and a thud. I dropped to the floor, hammering my right knee hard as I did but fists outstretched and ready to fight.

  All at once, I felt relieved and terrible. An old man lay on the floor, one feeble arm raised in self-defense. He blinked at me through straggly white hair as if looking at sunshine for the first time in weeks.

  “You didn’t have to kick me,” he groused. “I was trying to help you down.”

  I peered up at the way I’d come. It was nothing more than an opening into a room that otherwise was without a door. An oubliette. A trap. Without the fire hose to climb out, I would have been just as trapped as the old man.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, quickly taking stock of the room. No exit. No windows. Numerous artifacts on the floor, including several nineteenth-century tapestries. Prettily colored tiles of some sort. Several small air vents—which were greatly needed, considering the stench coming from the far corner of the room. I guessed that the old man had been in the oubliette for quite some time, and he’d been decently fed if not bathed.

  “I knew one of you would come. But I’d hoped it wouldn’t be you.” The old man shakily rose to his feet and dusted himself off. It seemed an odd thing for him to do. His clothes were torn in places and hung loosely on him as if he’d lost several shirt sizes rather quickly. His eyes were wild, his beard unkempt and his hair drooped long on his shoulders. He looked for all the world like Gandalf the Wizard with an attitude.

  I ignored his vote of confidence in me. “Who are you?”

  “Just an old man who crossed the son of Max Adriano and lost.”

  “How long have you been down here?” He seemed in remarkably good health, especially for a man who was certainly well into his eighties, maybe more. But the air and walls around us seemed to pulsate with energy. My ears rang.

  “You feel it, too, don’t you? It’s the ley lines. They can keep you healthy or they can kill you as quickly as any volcano or earthquake. Just as easy to feel as the earth’s magnetic fields. As easy to feel as gravity. The whole Adriano homestead is built atop one of the most powerful geopathic stress fields on the planet.”

  “Why are you here?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if he was crazy. The odds were in favor of it.

  “They put me down here to punish me.” He waved an arm at the colored pieces outlined on the floor. “For helping the daughters of their enemies. For helping you.”

  Had I heard him correctly? “I…I don’t know you. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

  “Oh, but I’ve seen you.” His aged eyes seemed to come to life. “You have the manuscript, don’t you?”

  I nodded. How could he have known?

  “We should destroy it.”

  What was with all the bibliophobes bent on destroying valuable old books? He sounded like Simon.

  “I’m not destroying anything.”

  He sighed. “Might be for the best if you did. Simon will use it as a key to solve his problem, he will. Yes, burn it. Burn it before he reads it. You could save countless lives.” He nodded emphatically. “You weren’t supposed to be here, but I’m glad now that you came for us.”

  “Us who? I don’t see anyone else here but you and me. And I didn’t know until a few seconds ago that you were here.”

  He waved a hand in disgust. “Doesn’t matter if you came for me or not. As long as you came for them.”

  “Them who?” Yes, definitely crazy as a loon.

  “Them!” He flung his arm wildly toward the
tiles on the floor.

  Poor guy. All this time trapped inside the vault, half starving and completely mad. How could Simon and Caleb do this to an old man?

  I strode back to the fire hose and tugged it to test its strength. “Look, I’ll get you out of this hole, but that’s about all I can do. I don’t know if I can get you out of the room above, let alone out of the Adriano compound.”

  “Oh, I can get us out of the vault. And out of the compound. I can take us all the way out to the parking lot at the security gate if you want. You drove, didn’t you? You always drive.” Before I could ask how he knew, he plowed ahead. “There’s a hidden exit or two that I know about.” He sniffed indignantly at the trapdoor above us. “I could get out of this hellhole by myself, too, but I can’t jump quite as high as I used to.”

  I almost smiled at him. He didn’t seem to realize that somewhere along life’s journey his body had betrayed him with the growing inability to do less than the day before. I suddenly felt a kinship with him that I didn’t want to think about. One day, in at least another four decades, I’d be his age and just as unwilling to admit that I wasn’t as strong as I once was. If I lived that long.

  “You can get us out to the parking lot? Seriously?” I tried to study his eyes for signs of truth, but he wouldn’t stand still. “Okay, if you’ll put your arms around my neck and hold on, I think I can pull us both out of here.”

  “You can’t leave without them.”

  I pretended not to hear. We had to hurry. “Or I could tie the hose around your waist and pull you up, but I think it would be easier to—”

  “Aubrey!” he shouted in a stage whisper.

  I let the fire hose drop from my grasp. “What did you call me?” What the hell was happening that, out of the blue, everyone knew my name after I’d kept it a secret for decades?