City of Lost Dreams

SEVENTEEN

“There you are!”

Max looked up from his desk and smiled. Harriet was glowing and looked happy, which was nice because lately she had seemed kind of off . . . tense and nervous. So it was good to see her looking like her usual self, which was sort of a funny thought since Harriet was dressed as Polyxena Pernstein, 1st Princess Lobkowicz: long dress in some stiff white fabric with red sleeves and gold florets and a high white ruff. She had been filming in the palace this morning, before the museum opened. A program on the Lobkowicz family for the BBC, which Max hoped would spark some more tourist interest.

“That suits you,” Max said, nodding at the costume and sliding the little book on Philippine Welser he was reading into his pocket.

“Thank you, darling! My figure fits into period dresses quite well. Most women these days are too tall. I hardly ever have to have things specially made. And I actually don’t mind wearing a corset. I rather like it, actually.”

Max rather liked it, too, though he wasn’t crazy about the ruff, which looked like one of those cones you put on dogs to keep them from licking wounds.

He had been glad that Oksana’s digging around in Harriet’s closet had not produced any skeletons.

“Everything go well?” he asked.

“Very. Come and look at the footage? I think you’ll be pleased.”

“Can I look tonight? I’ve got to go to Kutná Hora today.”

“Kutná Hora?”

“You know it?”

“Of course.” Harriet leaned against his desk. “I considered doing an episode of Histories & Mysteries at Sedlec Ossuary, several years ago. But they wanted heaven and earth for filming rights. The Beeb isn’t Hollywood, and I’m afraid Hollywood has spoiled the Czech Republic. Thankfully, you are not so greedy. What takes you to Kutná Hora?”

“Oh . . . potential board member lives there. So . . . just boring museum stuff. Sorry.”

Harriet smiled. “Not to worry. I have plenty of work to do.”

“How’s your book on Elizabeth Weston coming?”

“Writes itself,” trilled Harriet. She came over to give Max a kiss. Then a deeper one. Then she pulled him up and began stroking the front of his pants. Harriet really did get turned on by history. She liked reenacting scenes. They’d done Cleopatra and Mark Antony, and Napoléon and Josephine, but they hadn’t done any from this particular era and Max wasn’t sure how he was supposed to deal with the ruff.

“I guess women in the sixteenth century couldn’t have a lot of spontaneous sex,” he mumbled as he tried to undo the heavy buttons of her bodice. “Too much clothing to take off.”

“Women,” Harriet said, turning around, hoisting her heavy skirts up, and presenting her creamy naked pale ass in all its glory, “have always known how to manage these things.”

An hour later, Max was zooming past orderly rows of pine trees and plowed-under fields in his red Alfa Romeo convertible. The Czech Republic boasted the highest highway mortality rate in Europe. People here hadn’t been driving that long and the cars were mostly old. But you had to drive fast, because everyone else did. Unfortunately, it was too cold to have the top down, though the sun was unexpectedly bright today. Max reached forward to the glove compartment to get his sunglasses.

“Looking for these?” asked Nico from the passenger seat. The little man—who was wearing Max’s Dolce and Gabbana shades—handed Max a pair of oversize pink ladies’ sunglasses.

“Cool, thanks.” Max put them on, pretending to look undisturbed. It was a game they played, and like all the games one played with Nico it had no real beginning or end, just an endless circle of parries and thrusts, moves and countermoves.

Max could not remember his mother’s funeral, but he knew that was when Nicolas had first shown up in his life, telling Max’s father that he had been a friend of the departed woman, and thereafter making occasional appearances. For many years their relationship (as well as Nico’s lack of visible aging) had largely gone, by Max at least, unexamined. Nico was a fact, not necessarily good or bad, though some kind of loyalty bond did exist between them. When Max’s father had died, Nico had been the first person Max had called. Nico had come. And when, later, Max had taken Westonia and had seen the little man, four hundred years earlier, on a street in Prague, it had not seemed so very surprising. Suddenly everything about Nico and his presence in his life, and his lack of visible aging, had made complete sense.

Harriet, Max knew, did not like Nico very much. It was a problem. Sometimes Max wanted to strangle the little man, but he couldn’t stand anyone saying a word against him. The only time Max had ever punched someone was when his roommate at Yale had referred to Nicolas as “your crazy midget buddy.” Admittedly, during his visits, Nico had overly enjoyed college life and eventually been banned from New Haven after an incident involving a stolen ibis. Anyway, Max hadn’t told Harriet the truth about the real reason for coming to Kutná Hora, or about going with Nico, and this was a problem, too. If Harriet was going to be a part of his life, he would eventually have to tell her about . . . everything.

Of course, the main problem with Harriet was that she wasn’t Sarah. Not cool to make comparisons, but he couldn’t help it. You couldn’t help who you loved.

“Kutná Hora was a ringleader in the Bohemian Uprising against Philippine’s father-in-law,” said Max. “I want to check if there’s anything about her or Ferdinand that’s been overlooked in the archives there at the Gothic Stone House. And the Alchemy Museum has what exactly?”

“A drinking horn made with the talons of a griffin. The story is that the beast gave his talons to Saint Cornelius and that the drinking horn will neutralize any poison.”

“And it . . . does?”

“No.” Nicolas fiddled with the radio station. “I just want to impress all my buddies at the next Dungeons and Dragons convention.”

“Okay.”

“It belonged to Edward Kelley,” Nico said, relenting. “I don’t need it myself; I just wanted to see if it’s still there. I’m testing a theory.”

“You really think Kelley is your Moriarty? You’ve always said what an ass he was. You said Tycho Brahe thought he was an idiot.”

“Do you know what Tycho recommended for the cure of epilepsy?” Nico switched off the radio. “The head of a person who has been hanged. Decapitated by other means is okay, but only if it was execution and not accident. Crush the head with peony seeds until you get a nice powder. Don’t take it at the full moon.”

“So, they were all idiots in some ways. Kelley, John Dee, Brahe, all the alchemists.”

“They were relentless. They always had to know more. It made them cruel. Ah, we’re almost there. Kutná Hora. It hasn’t changed much.”

“When was the last time you were here?”

“Not in this century,” Nico said, briefly; and then, after a pause, “Nor the last.”

Nico stared at the road unspooling in front of them. The thought that he might have a real opponent out there had invigorated him, but, he realized, it had also brought back memories he had long pushed aside. Things he had never talked to Max or anyone else about. Tycho Brahe had changed his life—Tycho was Nico’s Dr. Frankenstein—but it wasn’t Tycho that he was thinking of now.

After Brahe died, Nico’s life in Prague had become very difficult. He had tried to make his way back to Denmark, to Sophie, the Master’s sister. Sophie Brahe had been Nico’s first and greatest love. The most gifted alchemist he had ever known, and the first person who had ever treated him with kindness. But he had been robbed on the journey, and beaten, and thrown into prison. The notebooks in his traveling bag had been enough for a conviction of heresy. It was worth wondering what would have happened if he had not escaped before his execution date. Would the fires have raged about his person and then blown out? Would he have had to spend the last four hundred years with third-degree burn marks covering his body? When he had at last arrived in Elsinore, Sophie was nearly insane. He had cared for her, he and Livia, Sophie’s maid. And when Sophie died in 1643 he had tried to slit his wrists. No matter how deep he made the cuts, the blood had refused to gush, though they had remained open wounds for about a hundred years. Livia was a fair alchemist herself, and she had done her part to help him, even experimenting on herself with various combinations of drugs. They hadn’t really come close. Livia had only managed to extend her life to age 143.

Nico was still here.

He had almost given up on dying, and it had nearly driven him mad. And now there was a glimmer of hope. If the Fleece had been found, or if there was a serious alchemist in the game, then the end might actually, finally, be nigh. It gave him such purpose, to think he might die soon. He would like to make a lovely death. Oksana would miss him, but Oksana was tough. He would like to help Pollina if he could, before he went. He would like to help Sarah, if she would let him. And he would like to know that Max was okay. You couldn’t help who you loved.

“‘Removed for curatorial purposes,’” said Max, reading the card. They had found nothing about Philippine or Ferdinand in the archives at the Stone House, either. “Okay, let’s talk to the curator. This isn’t the British Museum; it’s three rooms. There will be records, something.”

“There will be no records.” Nicolas smiled. “There aren’t many records of where I’ve been, either, my dear, or what I’ve done. One learns how to cover one’s tracks. I’ve spent a couple centuries walking backward in my own footprints, dragging sleds behind me, erasing, deleting, obscuring. Don’t worry about it. I have an idea.”