Текст книги "The Golden City"
Автор книги: Kathleen Cheney
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 24 страниц)
CHAPTER 5
A short while later, Duilio stood before the threshold of the small apartment Joaquim Tavares rented on Restauração Street. The tall, narrow house was well maintained by grace of the elderly widow who owned the building and kept a hawklike eye on all her tenants.
Duilio knocked on the door and heard a request called back to wait a moment. Only a second or two passed before the door swung open, revealing a half-dressed Joaquim, still buttoning his shirt cuffs. He wore a matching waistcoat and trousers in a beige check—a casual suit. He seemed surprised to find Duilio waiting in the narrow hall. “What are you doing here?”
Although a cousin, Joaquim was closer to Duilio than either Alessio or Erdano in both temperament and appearance. They had the same height and build, and their faces bore the stamps of the Ferreira family: square jaws and wide brows. But what made for pleasant features on Duilio’s face translated to handsome in Joaquim’s case, possibly because he had inherited his Spanish mother’s darker coloration. Duilio smiled ruefully at Joaquim’s apparent annoyance. “Who were you expecting?”
“Mrs. Domingues, bringing a pastry for my breakfast.”
Duilio rolled his eyes at the idea of such a skimpy morning meal. “Are you going to invite me in or not?”
Joaquim grabbed Duilio’s shoulder to draw him inside. “Yes, but I’m about to leave for the station.”
“I’ll walk with you.” Duilio closed the door while Joaquim went to fetch his suit coat. The apartment was furnished in items cast off from other houses, either the Tavares or the Ferreira home. Two worn armchairs, one upholstered and one covered in leather, waited near the single window in the front room. The leather one had been in Joaquim’s room in the Ferreira house as a child.
Duilio felt as much at home here as he did in his own library. He turned to peruse the mismatched bookshelves that lined the wall next to the door. Joaquim had always had an interest in history and philosophy, which showed in the selection of books neatly lining those shelves. After laying his folded newspaper on one shelf, Duilio ran a finger along the rows, hunting for the requisite volume of Camões that must lurk there.
“A woman was seen out near the houses last night,” Duilio called in the direction of the bedroom. “I need to find her.” Joaquim had a talent for finding lost people, one of the many skills for which the police valued him.
“Which houses?” Joaquim returned.
“The City Under the Sea.”Duilio located the book he was looking for, the epic poem studied by every Portuguese schoolboy wherein the author detailed the voyages of Vasco da Gama.
Joaquim came back into the room, tugging on his loose suit coat. “Doing what?”
An inspector’s pay didn’t afford him the same quality of garb he’d had as a child in the Ferreira household, but Duilio knew better than to comment on the coat’s poor fit. He could afford a fancy valet like Marcellin to turn him out in fine frock coats and silk waistcoats. In fact, he could easily afford to pay for a valet for Joaquim, but his cousin was prickly about money matters, so Duilio didn’t interfere. He pulled out the book he’d located instead. “She was in the water. . . .” he answered.
Reaching for the tweed hat on the shelf nearest the door, Joaquim paused. “Swimming?”
“Yes. That’s not what’s important. I think she was in one of the houses.”
Joaquim cast a perplexed look in his direction.
“She was meant to be a victim, Joaquim. I think she escapedfrom it.”
Joaquim went still as he worked out the ramifications of that. They’d assumed the victims were sacrificed to keep the houses floating, but such a use of necromancy would have to be enacted before the houses were placed in the river. The possibility that the victims had been put into those houses while still alivehad never occurred to them. “If that’s true, we need to find her. How did youfind out?”
“Aga saw her and told me.”
Joaquim rubbed a hand over his face, a sign of frustration. “Aga?”
Starting at the beginning would take too long. “One of Erdano’s girls. The thing is . . . I think I know the woman she described to me. It’s Miss Paredes, who’s companion to Lady Isabel Amaral.” Duilio slid the folded newspaper off the bookshelf and pointed to the questionable item on the social page. “Rumor says Lady Isabel eloped last night, in that same companion’s company, with Marianus Efisio.”
Joaquim perused the notice, a doubtful expression crossing his features. He set the paper back on the shelf. “If she eloped, how would the gossips already know?”
Duilio shook his head. That wasn’t the point. “Lady Amaral must have spread the rumor last night herself. To stave off her creditors, I’d expect.”
Joaquim rolled his dark eyes. “Oh yes. I recall the woman now.”
Duilio resisted repeating anything he’d heard of the impecunious noblewoman.
“So, what makes you think this companion was in one of the houses,” Joaquim asked, “if she’s supposedly off eloping with two other people?”
Duilio dropped into the upholstered chair, the one he usually took when visiting, and continued flipping through the book. “She wasn’t eloping with them. He went ahead. The companion was probably going along as a chaperone until the wedding.”
Joaquim settled in the other chair. “Get to the point, Duilio.”
“If I’m correct,” Duilio said, “the Amaral house was added to the artwork sometime last night, and we’ll find out that Miss Paredes wasn’t the only one who didn’t get on that train.”
“You’re suggesting that Isabel Amaral was in that house as well.” Joaquim’s fingers tapped loudly on the leather arm of his chair. “We knew we were about due for a new house to show up.”
New houses had been appearing in the artwork at roughly two-week intervals. Duilio found the passage he was looking for, stuck a finger in the book to mark the place, and closed it so he could focus on Joaquim. “My gift tells me that Isabel Amaral is dead, no matter what the newspapers claim.”
Joaquim closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross. Duilio’s gift had been passed to all males of the Ferreira line. A cousin on the distaffside of the Ferreira family, Joaquim didn’t have the gift, but having grown up around Duilio and Alessio, he knew very well how it worked.
Duilio went on. “The only thing that makes sense of her companion’s appearance in the water at midnight is that neither of them reached the train station. To find out exactly what happened, I have to find Miss Paredes.”
“Won’t she return to the Amaral household?”
As soon as Joaquim asked, Duilio shook his head. “No. I don’t think Lady Amaral would take Miss Paredes back once she told her what happened. That woman needs people to believe her daughter alive to keep her creditors at bay. She would be more likely to hide the truth.”
Joaquim nodded slowly. Apparently, he too believed the woman would put concern about her creditors over concern for her daughter’s fate, a sad commentary on the woman’s priorities. “Then the police,” Joaquim said. “Surely your Miss Paredes would have taken her story to the police if her employer was killed.”
No, that was one place she wouldn’t go. They would ask how she could have survived if Isabel hadn’t, and Miss Paredes couldn’t reveal that. “She will not go to the police,” Duilio said firmly. “We’re going to have to hunt her down.”
Joaquim frowned. “Is that your gift speaking, too?”
How could he answer that without lying to Joaquim? He wasn’t ready to hand over all the truth yet, not until he was sureshe was a sereia. “I have reason to believe she won’t go to the police.”
Joaquim’s expression showed he recognized that evasion for what it was. “I’m not supposed to be investigating this any longer.”
That had never stopped Joaquim before.
“I’ll go talk to the submersible captains,” Duilio told him, “and ask if they’ve seen a new house in the water.” A handful of entrepreneurial captains had invested in submersible crafts that could be attached to their ships, pumping air down into vessels that would allow their passengers to go underwater and view the artwork. Despite the cost of maintaining what were essentially oversized diving bells, the investment had reportedly paid off. Their tours of the artwork were filled by the idle wealthy and the curious. Duilio had even gone down in one of the vessels a couple of times himself. He tapped his fingers on the chair’s arm, weighing what he most needed from Joaquim. “Could you put together a list of places an upper servant might go if left on her own? Between positions, perhaps. Not a lot of money. A hotel or apartment?”
“More likely a rented room.” Joaquim fell silent, probably mulling over what needed to be done. “I’ll stay late tonight,” he said after a moment. “I’ll put together a list and drop it off by the house.”
Duilio hid a smile. While Joaquim might not be allowed to expend further police time and resources on the investigation, Duilio hadn’t had any doubt that he would help on his own time. Joaquim had a revolutionary streak in his soul. He counted every one of those missing servants the equal of Lady Isabel Amaral, and kept their names in neat files in his cabinet at the station.
Once they’d made a connection between the missing servants and the work of art, it hadn’t taken too long to confirm that each of the servants, all of whom worked in great houses along the Street of Flowers, had disappeared within a few days of the appearance of their masters’ homes in the artwork. Most of those servants had claimed they’d been offered positions elsewhere. Others said they were going home to visit family in the country. It had taken time to determine that those events hadn’t ever happened. It had taken a good deal more effort to determine that everyhousehold represented in the artwork had lost two servants. Most hadn’t bothered to report their servants’ absence, assuming their employees had indeed moved on to other positions.
Even so, they couldn’t concretelytie the missing servants to the houses. When the police had made inquiries about opening one of the houses, an order had come back almost immediately to shut down the investigation.
Joaquim’s hands had been tied after that, but he had still helped Duilio in his efforts to track down the artist, Gabriel Espinoza. Unfortunately the man had disappeared from the city completely, but he couldn’t be doing the work alone. There had to be a number of coconspirators to create an artwork of this size, not only builders and watermen to get the artwork into the river, but someone had to be funding all of that as well. They had researched how the houses were built and how they were chained to huge weights on the river’s bed. They had tried tracking down some of the building materials, from shipments of wood to the proper grade of chain. Unfortunately, so far all their leads had gone nowhere. Duilio hoped that finding Miss Paredes would breathe some new life into the investigation.
“I can’t help you look today,” Joaquim finally allowed, “but I can ask the officers at the front desk to tell me if they hear anything from the Amaral woman.”
“Thank you,” Duilio said. “I’ll see what I can find out at the Amaral household as well.”
“Don’t talk to the servants, though. I’ll do that on my way by the house tonight.” Joaquim would be better to handle that as he didn’t have a presence in society. The servants would perceive a policeman as closer to their class.
“I’ll see if I can wheedle Lady Amaral into admitting something, then.” Duilio doubted he’d be successful. He lifted the copy of Camões and glanced down at the section where the poet described Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the Ilhas das Sereias in 1499—a violent introduction that had sown distrust between the sereia and the Portuguese for the past four hundred years. To this day, the islands of the sereia didn’t appear on any map, although it was said the Church knew where they were to be found. The sereia preferred to stay hidden. “Can I borrow this book for a bit?”
“You have a copy,” Joaquim said, sounding bewildered now.
It was a safe guess that the book could be found in most libraries in Northern Portugal, but if Joaquim said there should be one in the Ferreira library, there was. “I don’t have it withme,” Duilio pointed out.
Joaquim rolled his eyes and rose. “Fine.”
“So, will you come for dinner tonight, then?” Duilio asked, rising and slipping the book under his arm. He retrieved his newspaper as well. “Mother would like to see you.”
Suddenly somber, Joaquim rubbed a hand over his face. “How is she?”
“The same as yesterday.” Duilio pressed his lips together, but then added, “I know how painful this is for you, but for her sake, please. It helps her to see us.”
“I know.” Joaquim sounded guilty. “I’ll come.”
That was a relief. “Thank you. Now shall we go?”
Joaquim collected his hat and paused with one hand on the door latch. “How do you know your Miss Paredes hasn’t fled the city?”
Another good question. Duilio just couldn’t believe he’d seen the last of her.
CHAPTER 6
SUNDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER 1902
Oriana had spent several hours Saturday in the back rooms of the Porto Gazette, trying to locate every last article they’d printed covering The City Under the Sea. They had stacks of old papers carefully shelved, but no one could tell her in which days’ newspapers to look, so she’d hunted through them issue by issue, taking down every scrap of information she could find on the artwork and its creator. No one seemed to be aware that the water around the artwork tasted of death, that Isabel could not have been the first to die there. Who those other victims might be Oriana didn’t yet know. And the only hint of magic mentioned was the presence of buoyancy charms inscribed atop each house meant to keep them afloat, the sort boatbuilders used. What she needed was an ally who knew far more about human magic than she did. Fortunately, she knew where to find one.
Nela wasn’t precisely a scholar, but the old woman had studied human lore with Oriana’s grandmother prior to being exiled from the islands for sedition. When Oriana first recognized the old woman walking along the street almost two years before, Nela had nodded at her once. Nothing more passed between them. But that bare instant of recognition had given Oriana the courage to contact the woman, no matter that it was a clear violation of the ministry’s directive not to interact with the exiles. Nela had consented to meet with her, although it hadn’t come for free, and Oriana’s supply of coins was dwindling quickly. Nevertheless, she was relieved she’d found someone willing to aid her, so she’d gladly said she would wait until Sunday afternoon to visit.
Nela’s druggist’s shop on the first floor was closed that afternoon, but Oriana and its owner were in the tiny apartment above. The woman handed Oriana a cup of tea and settled across from her in a chair upholstered in a faded blue floral. A white cloth with fringe about the edging covered a small square table, and atop that lay the sketch Oriana had drawn that first morning after settling into her rented room.
Oriana turned it so that Nela could read the letters. “Does this mean anything?”
Her drawing showed the half circle of the tabletop that had lit following Isabel’s death. Oriana had remembered the four words that circled the perimeter of the table. There had been another ring of figures inside that, but those hadn’t been familiar to her at all and had faded from her memory before she’d had access to paper to record them. The center of the table—the half she had been able to make out—was occupied by a large T with a dash under one arm and a line above it. That meant nothing to her either.
Nela’s scarred fingers traced the words in the outer ring. Oriana watched the old woman’s hands, wondering who had done the surgery to remove her webbing. It had been poorly done, leaving her with ugly scars on the sides of each finger. Perhaps Nela had done it herself. But she wasable to wear gloves, which meant the woman was far safer than Oriana in this city.
“ Ego autem et domus,” Nela read musingly. “That’s Latin, I believe, but I’m not very familiar with the language. I don’t know what it means.”
Oriana didn’t either. “I see.”
“Where did this come from?” Nela asked.
“I don’t think I should say.”
The old woman regarded her doubtfully. “Child, don’t waste my time.”
Oriana swallowed. She would have to trust someone if she was going to find out who had created this monstrosity. With her gray-shot hair, this woman reminded Oriana of her own grandmother, her father’s mother back on the island of Amado. Her grandmother had been a woman one could trust. “It’s from The City Under the Sea.”
Nela sat back, her dark eyes narrowing. “You didn’t go down there, did you, child? The Special Police patrol that part of the river well.”
“I know,” Oriana said. The newspapers had noted the frequency of police patrols in that area, particularly at night.
“Someone saw this there and told you about it?” Nela shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Oriana took a deep breath. “It’s not important where it was. Is this a spell? A charm?”
Nela tapped her nose with one finger. “Spells, I think, since they’re combined. A charm has to be kept simple. We have two languages represented: Latin and whatever the next ring is written in. Choice of language is purely stylistic in human witchcraft, so the two disparate languages imply two differentspells. The symbol in the center means nothing to me, especially given that I’m only looking at half of it. Why do you have only half?”
How could she answer that without telling Nela everything? The addition of the Amaral house to the work of art hadn’t been mentioned in the city’s newspapers until Saturday morning, and Oriana hadn’t seen anything yet about Isabel’s absence. Lady Amaral apparently hadn’t told anyone, which meant the police probably weren’t even looking for Isabel. Nothing had been heard from Mr. Efisio either. Perhaps the man was still waiting in Paris for Isabel’s arrival.
“It was dark. A girl was seated at the table, with her hands tied to it. She died, and”—Oriana’s stomach twisted, but she forced herself to go on—“and when she did, her half of the table lit. This was inscribed on the surface of the table.”
Nela picked up her tea and took a slow sip, eyeing Oriana over the rim. After a moment, she set the cup aside. “Lit how?”
“The symbols themselves glowed. I think they were metal set into the wood.”
Nela’s dark eyes were wary now. “That sounds like necromancy, needing death to feed it. What have you gotten yourself involved in, child?”
“It was not by choice,” Oriana said with a quick shake of her head. “I need to find the person who madethis spell. I need to stop him before he does it again.”
Nela gazed at her appraisingly and gave one sharp nod. “You need to talk to the Lady.”
“Which lady?” Oriana asked, baffled.
The old woman leaned over and set a hand on Oriana’s arm. “ TheLady. She doesn’t have a name. She’s an expert on human magics. She would be able to tell you what this is.”
That sounded promising. “Where can I find her?”
“You can’t,” Nela said. “No one finds her.”
Now it didn’tsound promising. “But . . .”
“I’ll tell a few well-placed people that you’re looking for the Lady. If she wants to, she’ll find you. Can you give me your direction?”
Oriana hesitated. She didn’t want to give Nela the address of the boarding house on Escura Street. Not just because she was afraid of being tracked there, but she already knew she would have to find somewhere else to stay. She was running out of funds and had no intention of paying for her room in the fashion Carlos had in mind. “I’m not sure where I’ll be.”
“Then come by here in a few days, and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.” The old woman rose, rubbing her hands together as if they ached.
Oriana realized that meant their interview was over. She set down her cup, folded up the sketch, and tucked it into her notebook as she got up. She opened her handbag to dig out her payment. “We agreed . . .”
Nela laid a wrinkled hand atop Oriana’s mitt-covered ones. “Don’t bother. Consider it a favor, for your grandmother’s sake. You look like you need it more than I do.”
“Thank you,” Oriana mumbled. She took in the shabby apartment one more time. “If there’s anything I can do for you . . .”
The old woman pushed her gently out the door. “Go on, child. If there’s a necromancer out there, he needs finding and killing.”
Oriana nodded helplessly as she went down the stairs to the building’s front door. She paused at the landing, her stomach churning. Was thatwhat she was doing? Hunting a necromancer?
If so, she had wandered into a shiver of sharks.
* * *
On the southern shore of the Douro River, Duilio waited on a low wall in the shade of an old olive tree next to one of the wineries that crowded Vila Nova de Gaia. The vintner had sold him a case of brandy, giving him ample reason to sit in the shade and sample a leisurely glass. He gazed across the river at the Golden City, tapping one foot against the wall.
He wished his contact would hurry. If this appointment hadn’t been set the previous week, he would have put it off. He had a woman to find. Despite having a couple of friends in common with Marianus Efisio, it had taken Duilio the better part of the day Friday to find someone who knew what hotel the man was fixed at in Paris. He’d sent a telegram to Mr. Efisio, explaining briefly that Lady Isabel was missing. He hadn’t revealed what he suspected, not wanting to cause the man grief until he had proof. He hoped he would find Mr. Efisio’s response waiting when he got back to the house. He’d spent much of Saturday hunting down every boarding house on Joaquim’s list, scouring the old town for the elusive Miss Paredes, to no avail.
On the opposite side of the river, the painted walls of the Ribeira rose above the quay, a jumble of reds and yellows, creams and grays in the afternoon sun. Houses had been crammed into every inch of space, sometimes at odd angles, on the ancient riverbank. The red-tiled rooftops rose layer after layer up the hills. From his vantage point, Duilio could see the Clérigos tower crowning one hill and the fanciful palace topping another. The tower had been the higher—as had been the power of the Church—until the current prince’s grandfather, Sebastião II, built the ornate palace. To ensure his structure would be the taller, the second Sebastião had the hillside built up, an effort to put the Church in its place, no doubt.
Duilio had always loved the city. It had changed since he was a child, but not as much as it should have. Part of that was the stultifying influence of the Absolutists so powerful in the north, but even normal progress had ground to a stop here.
Prince Fabricio had halted all his father’s and grandfather’s plans for modernization. Many projects started in the 1880s had simply been abandoned or had idled for the two decades since he ascended the throne. The new port north of the city at Leixões was left half-built, accessible to the navy but not practical for shipping. The funicular at the base of the Dom Sebastião III Bridge had never been finished. The trams that climbed the city’s steep streets had been electrified only through privatefunding.
Prince Fabricio’s refusal to change had left Northern Portugal and the Golden City behind its contemporaries, with Liberal-led Southern Portugal becoming more powerful every day. The current prince of Southern Portugal—Dinis II—had made many improvements there, and Lisboa had become a destination for vacationers. Just in June, the city had announced that all Lisboa now had electricity. In the north, the Golden City’s infrastructure had begun to fall into disrepair. Duilio had never taken much interest in the politics of the country, but he found he sided more with the Liberals and their desire for progress than he did with the Absolutists, who wanted everything to stay as it was.
He turned his eyes toward the Dom Sebastião III Bridge, an elegant creation of iron that stretched between the Golden City and Vila Nova de Gaia. Two levels of traffic moved over the river there, one atop the grand iron arch coming from the heights of the city to the mount on the far shore. The other traveled across at the level of the quay. And from that direction, a tall and gangly Englishman approached Duilio’s perch on the low wall, striding up the lane under the shade of the olive trees.
Duilio held out the bottle when he got closer. “Would you like a taste?”
The Englishman, one Augustus Smithson, took it and downed a healthy drink before he folded himself onto the wall. “I’ve made inquiries, Mr. Ferreira,” he said in English, “but I can’t find any information on your footman, Martim Romero.”
Smithson was the fourth investigator Duilio had hired in the past year, hoping an Englishman might be able to bring fresh connections to the search for his mother’s pelt. Duilio answered the man in his own tongue. “Any idea who hired him?”
“None,” Smithson rumbled, shifting as if the stone wall was digging into his bony backside. “There arepeople who collect magical artifacts. Most of them are secretive about it. They don’t want the others to know what they have.”
Duilio didn’t actually believe that his mother’s pelt was in the hands of a collector, but it was a possibility he had to consider. “Do you have any names or not? I’ll pay what you want.”
Smithson’s shoulders hunched as he leaned closer. “What I have is a neatly worded note, Mr. Ferreira, left on my desk in my own sitting room, informing me I was to drop the matter. Whoever left it easily entered my home without leaving any trace behind.” He glanced about nervously. “A witch. It had to be. That means I might wake up dead one morning.”
Duilio had neverseen evidence that a witch existed who could transport himself into a locked room—it was the stuff of fantasy. However, he’d met plenty of thieves who could get in and out without leaving a sign. Either way, though, Smithson wasn’t going to be any more help to him. Duilio sighed and pushed himself off the wall. “Please send your bill to my man of business, Mr. Smithson.”
Smithson rose and shook his hand, his expression sheepish, likely embarrassed by having been frightened off. Duilio headed back to where his driver waited with the carriage in the vintner’s front court. He climbed into the carriage and settled back against the leather seat. The ride across the bridge and up the steep streets to his own home gave him time to think.
It was interesting that the man was so determined to keep the pelt that he chose to interfere with the investigators Duilio hired . . . and to do it in such a dramatic way. He could have bought off the investigators rather than writing cryptic notes. That spoke of an obsession with secrecy . . . or a childish streak of melodrama.
Duilio hadn’t been able to provewho’d hired Martim Romero, the fake footman, but he had a good idea. There was one man who’d disliked Duilio’s father enough to strike at him by hurting his wife: Paolo Silva. It wasn’t for anything Duilio’s father had done, but because Duilio’s father had been the legitimate son, whereas Paolo Silva was merely his bastard brother, gotten on a housemaid. Silva had spent his first ten years in the house that Duilio now owned, kept out of sight of the Ferreira family. Then his mother had died of a fever and young Paolo had been shunted off to a distant relative out in the countryside. Alexandre Ferreira, only seven at the time, hadn’t even known that the boy who lived in the servants’ areas was his half brother.
But Silva had never forgotten his expulsion. He had disappeared for years, only to return to the Golden City just as Prince Fabricio ascended the throne. Silva quickly wormed his way into the young prince’s favor. He’d become the prince’s favorite seer, displacing Alexandre Ferreira as an adviser. While always polite in public, Silva had privately told Duilio’s father that it was his intent to ruin the whole Ferreira family for their treatment of him.
If only his grandfather had been a little kinder—or faithful to his wife—Duilio suspected he wouldn’t be hunting for his mother’s pelt in his spare moments.
