The Sanctuary

Chapter 65

Sebastian rode away from the docks with a feeling of profound contentment. On clear, golden evenings like this, Lisbon was truly a magnificent city, and he was glad to be back.

It had been far too long.

He’d fretted about moving back to the country, let alone the city, of his birth, but the choice had proven fortuitous. Like the city, he was experiencing a rebirth, a reinvention that was — for both — a marked improvement over their previous incarnations.

The city had been devastated by a massive earthquake on the morning of November 1, 1755, on All Saints’ Day. The churches were crowded with worshippers honoring the dead when the first shock struck. A second jolt followed forty minutes later. The waters of the Tagus River rose and thundered through the city, wiping out most of it. Fires took care of the rest. By the end of that day, the city was a smoldering wasteland. Over thirty thousand of its citizens were dead, most of the rest homeless.

The Marques de Pombal, the effective ruler of Portugal, handled the disaster with exemplary care and efficiency. Shelters and hospitals were hastily improvised, and troops were summoned to deliver supplies to the needy. He also drafted visionary architects, who quickly refashioned the old, medieval city into a stunning European capital.

The city’s rebirth wasn’t just physical. Pombal’s enhanced prestige, due to his handling of the disaster, allowed him to rid the country of influences he had long fought against. Of particular relevance to Sebastian was that Pombal had dissolved the Jesuit order, expelled its members, and turned its headquarters into a hospital. The Palace of the Inquisition, flattened by the earthquake, was never rebuilt.

Sebastian and Thérésia had arrived in Lisbon in the midst of the reconstruction. The lack of records and the infectious optimism he found there both suited him well. Anyone who knew him from his days as an inquisitor was long since dead. And with the expulsion of the Jesuits, any lingering ghosts from his darkest days were finally swept away.

And so the Comte de St. Germain had retaken the first name his parents had bestowed on him, Sebastian. As a precaution, he’d given up his original surname, electing to use his mother’s surname instead, Botelho. He’d invested in a small sugar refinery in the Alfama district, converting the raw cane from the colonies in Brazil into the kitchen staple that he exported across Europe. Sebastian’s business was flourishing, as was his home. He’d married Thérésia in a small ceremony that was held in a church in Tomar, and their son, Miguel, was born two years later.

He’d also banished another lingering ghost from his past the day he and Thérésia had left Paris together.

Her radiant face drifted into his mind as he rode past the arcaded buildings of Commerce Square and headed home. The day’s business had been successful, the contract satisfactorily concluded. He nudged his horse into a full gallop, relishing the brisk, salty air as he skirted the burnished waters of the Mar de Palha — the inland “sea of straw”—before heading north into the low, rolling hills that hugged the city.

An intangible sense of dread ambushed him the minute he was told that Miguel was still out riding with Thérésia. He’d recently bought him his first pony, and Thérésia enjoyed putting their son astride its small saddle and walking him around the estate’s lake. Sebastian knew they never stayed out this late, not at this time of year, not when the sun was already melting into the surrounding hills and surrendering to the rapidly encroaching chill of night.

He didn’t bother with his horse and headed down the sloping meadow, his strides gathering pace until he was tearing through the olive and lemon groves. His heart froze as he burst out from the trees and spotted the pony, grazing innocuously and very much alone. He hurried over to it, scanning the edge of the lake with panicked eyes, and spotted Thérésia, lying prone on the ground, a hundred yards farther down the shore. Miguel was nearby on a rocky outcropping, sitting next to a man whose brooding deportment Sebastian recognized even from that distance.

The man pushed himself to his feet, his fingers firmly clasped around the boy’s little hand, as Sebastian rushed to Thérésia’s aide. Mercifully, she was still breathing. He couldn’t see any blood, any cuts or wounds. She was just dazed. Sebastian guessed di Sangro must have struck her and knocked her down before wresting control of their son.

“Miguel,” she muttered worriedly as she stirred at Sebastian’s touch.

He nodded to her as he flung off his overcoat and tucked it under her head before standing up to face his tormentor.

Di Sangro’s face and posture bore witness to the decade of grief and frustration that he’d lived through since their last encounter in Paris. His shoulders were drooped, his hair now a shock of gray, his skin shriveled and pallid. The tall, lithe, ravenous principe of Naples was gone. In his place stood his decaying shell, frittered away by time and by his own obsession. Only the seething hunger in his eyes hadn’t dimmed.

“Let go of the boy,” Sebastian raged.

Di Sangro held firm. “You owe me, marquese. Occhio per occhio, dente per dente.” An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. He pulled out a dagger from under his belt and held it close to the boy’s cheek.

Sebastian understood. Di Sangro’s son hadn’t survived the wound he’d inflicted on him that night on the Île de la Cité.

“You came after me,” Sebastian said fiercely as he stabbed a finger at the prince, trying to keep his anger in check and failing. “You put him in danger.”

“Just as you put your own son in danger by refusing me,” di Sangro shot back.

Sebastian took a step forward, but di Sangro quickly tightened his grip on the boy and nudged the blade against his neck.

“Tranquillo, marquese,” he warned him. “That’s far enough.”

Sebastian stopped and raised his open hands in a calming gesture. “I’m sorry about your son,” he said with genuine regret, keeping his eyes fixed on di Sangro. “Let him go. It’s me you want.”

“I have no use for you,” di Sangro rasped angrily. “I only want what you know. Tell me the truth now and perhaps I just might consider it soldi di sangue.” Blood money. “Perhaps that way,” he added ruefully, “my son won’t have died in vain.”

“You still believe I have what you seek,” Sebastian said calmingly, keeping his hands out in front of him, taking careful, measured steps towards the prince.

“I know you do—” di Sangro started, then his voice suddenly wavered. Sebastian was now five yards or so from him, and with each step, something changed in the prince’s expression. Confusion flickered across his weary eyes as he scrutinized Sebastian’s face.

His mouth dropped slightly. “You’ve…you’ve aged?” he asked, loosening his grip on the boy slightly, his gaze still fixated on Sebastian.

Di Sangro’s eyes weren’t deceiving him.

The day Sebastian and Thérésia had slipped away from Paris together, he’d stopped using the elixir. There would be no looking back.

The reborn Sebastian Botelho of Lisbon would wither away and die like an ordinary man.

He’d never truly regretted that momentous decision, and in his rare moments of uncertainty and remorse, he only had to look into the mischievous grin of his six-year-old son to know that he hadn’t made a mistake. There would be no more secrets, no need to escape into new identities, and, best of all, no solitude. He would share the rest of his numbered days with a woman he loved, grateful for every sunrise by her side.

Until that fateful evening.

Di Sangro stared at his nemesis. He had markedly changed since Naples and Paris. His face was lined. His hair, now streaked with gray, was receding around his temples.

Sebastian just stood there, allowing the bewilderment to seep through di Sangro’s resolve. He noticed the prince’s hold on his son loosen even more as, almost in a trance, he edged closer to get a better look at him.

“But…I thought…?”

Sebastian leapt at him, one hand keeping the dagger at bay while the other struck di Sangro flat in the chest, knocking him off-balance and sending him to the ground.

“Go to your mother,” Sebastian yelled to Miguel, who hurried to Thérésia’s side as Sebastian pinned his nemesis. He picked up the fallen dagger and brought it to di Sangro’s neck.

“Why can’t you leave me alone?” he hissed.

Di Sangro dropped his eyes, their fiery light snuffed out. “What would you have done, in my place?”

Sebastian pulled his blade back. “I too have wasted my life searching for something that doesn’t exist. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

The prince nodded ruefully. “So you really don’t have it?”

Sebastian shook his head. “No.”

A look of heartfelt dismay flooded the principe’s face as the finality of the reply sank in. He reached inside his shirt and pulled out the chain he wore around his neck. He fingered the medallion with shivering fingers. “So this?” he said, holding it up to Sebastian.

“Nothing but a trick, a mirage,” Sebastian said in a hollow voice. “A siren that lures men and wrecks their lives against the rocks of its false promise.”

He looked at di Sangro and released his hold. He pushed himself up to his feet and extended a hand to di Sangro. The prince took it, got up, and looked away at the glassy water of the lake, the dejection seeping into every corner of his tired body.

“Such a shame. A tragedy. For us all.” He turned to Sebastian. “Imagine if it were true. Imagine how it would change the world. What a gift it would be. To have more time to spend with those we cherish. To have more time to learn, to travel, to discover…to truly live.”

Sebastian nodded glumly. “Go home. Go back to your family. Enjoy the time you have left. And leave me in peace to enjoy mine.”

Di Sangro took one last look at him and nodded.

The boisterous voices and laughter roared all around him, but di Sangro couldn’t hear any of it. He just sat at his corner table in the small tavern, a broken man, nursing yet another jug of ale, staring at the dancing flame of the candle before him, lost in the abyss of his mind.

All this, for nothing, he lamented. Years wasted. Time, money. His son’s life. And for what? To end up like this, old and withered, drowning in bitter ale, hundreds of miles from home.

Despite the glaze obscuring his thoughts, he scoured his memory for every piece of background he’d gathered, every word he’d heard, every nuance he’d picked up on during his dogged pursuit of the man who now called himself Sebastian Botelho. Every now and then, the disparate thoughts would emerge from the crevasses of his mind and threaten to coalesce into an affirmation he was yearning for, but each time, the doubt would set in and send them scattering into the shadows. Images and voices competed for attention inside him — the Contessa di Czergy and her recollections of Venice, Madame de Fontenay in Paris, among others — but each time, the shuttered face of Sebastian Botelho would appear, godlike, and overwhelm them into submission.

For hour upon hour, he replayed his encounters with the man, the words they’d exchanged, the revelations he’d seen — or thought he’d seen — in his eyes. And in that jungle of confusion, a few words kept clawing at him. You don’t want to know, principe . Trust me. It is not a gift, not for any man. It is a curse, pure and simple. A curse from which there is no respite.

Respite.

He concentrated on that word and on the haunted look in the eyes of Botelho — the Marquis de Montferrat, at the time — when he’d uttered them all those years ago.

What if respite was what Botelho had finally found? What if he’d had the elixir, but had — for some demented reason di Sangro couldn’t begin to fathom — decided to stop using it.

He threw the mug to the floor and rubbed his eyes harshly, trying to wipe away the fog that was clouding his thoughts. His heart thundered in his ears as the angry realization materialized before him.

He’d been tricked.

The marquese had done it again. He’d played him like a fool. Yes, Botelho was older. But that didn’t mean he never had it. It meant he was no longer using it. And, like the old fool that he now believed he’d become, di Sangro had allowed the marquese to hoodwink him into believing him and abandoning his quest.

“Bastardo,” he bellowed as he hurled himself to his feet and staggered out of the crowded inn, fueled by the raging fire in his veins.

Sebastian watched the faint shadows from the moonlight inch their way across the walls of the bedchamber.

He couldn’t sleep. The idea of losing Thérésia or Miguel to di Sangro still seethed inside him. He wondered whether he ought to have killed him, there and then, but it was too late for that now. Besides, he didn’t know whom the principe had brought with him, whom he’d told about what he suspected. Killing him was no guarantee of peace.

His sanctuary had been compromised. The intruder, more than the man himself, was the words he’d spoken, which still rang in Sebastian’s ears.

Imagine if it were true. Imagine how it would change the world. What a gift it would be. To have more time to spend with those we cherish. To have more time to learn, to travel, to discover…to truly live.

He’d imagined it many a time, as had Isaac Montalto, as had Sebastian’s own father before him. A gift they all dreamt of giving mankind. A burden that had rested on his shoulders alone. A promise on which he’d reneged.

Di Sangro was right. It was a tragedy.

He couldn’t ignore it any longer.

Thérésia stirred beside him, her smooth skin silhouetted against the pale sheets. From the concern in her eyes, he knew that, as on so many previous occasions, she could read the thoughts written across his troubled face.

“We have to leave, don’t we?” she asked.

Sebastian simply nodded and embraced her.

Di Sangro burst into the stately mansion at first light like a demon, brandishing a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, screaming for Sebastian to appear before him, but his shouts went unanswered. He pushed and kicked at the servants who appeared and tried to reason with him and bounded up the central staircase to the upper floor, where the bedchambers lay. He kicked in the carved double doors to Sebastian and Thérésia’s bedchamber, only to find it empty.

They were long gone, and in his heart of hearts, he knew he’d never see either of them again.

He dropped to his knees, the weapons tumbling noisily onto the tiled floor beneath him, and wept.

Sebastian watched as the porters carried Thérésia’s chest and dressing case onto the ship. The harbor was teeming with vessels of all sizes, from the small, Phoenician, crescent-shaped fragatas that performed lighter-age duties around the port to the three-masted tall ships that plied the Atlantic and linked the old port city to the New World.

His heart contracted at the thought of the crossing his wife and son would soon be undertaking. The decision had haunted his every waking moment since they’d all abandoned their house on that night, barely days ago.

They would never find peace. Not from di Sangro, not from others who would inevitably hear about it. Not as long as they were together.

And he had work to do.

A promise to keep.

A destiny to fulfill.

“Why won’t you change your mind and let us come with you?” Thérésia asked him. Miguel stood beside her, holding her hand, watching in wonderment as the last crates were loaded onto the towering vessel.

“It’s not safe,” Sebastian answered, the words barely escaping through his lips.

He knew what he was talking about. He’d been there before — and he was about to journey there again. He’d return to Constantinople. Assume the persona of a sheikh, just as he’d done half a century earlier. And travel into the Levant, to the bustling cities of Beirut, Jerusalem, Damascus, and Baghdad, and across the mountains and deserts in between, in the hope that this time his search would be more fruitful.

The ship’s first mate called for the gangway to be withdrawn and the lines released.

Thérésia’s hand gripped Sebastian’s tightly. “Come back to me,” she whispered in his ear.

He took her in his arms and kissed her, then knelt down and kissed his son.

“I’ll do my best” was all he could promise.

And with a tremulous heart, he watched as the ship’s sails unfurled and took away the only true happiness he’d ever known.