Three
Beau turned in a slow circle, arms out at his sides as if to steady himself. He’d forgotten his fears. He’d forgotten he was cold and wet. He’d forgotten his own name.
The room he’d just entered, the castle’s great hall, was so magnificent it made him dizzy.
Its vaulted ceiling rose three stories high. Crystal chandeliers, each as tall as a man, blazed with candles. A gilt mirror hung above the fireplace. Adorning three of the four walls were tapestries, each as big as a ship’s sail, and dozens of portraits. The fourth wall, coffered in mahogany, was bare. In one corner, a large silver music box played.
But the most wondrous thing the room contained was a long ebony table, standing in its center. Set with fine porcelain, snow-white linen, and gleaming silver, it looked like something out of a fairy tale. The thieves barely noticed the table’s beautiful settings, though; their eyes were on the mountain of food that covered it.
It was a feast fit for royalty. An enormous roast beef, carved into slabs, lay on a platter. Game birds, their skins so crisp they looked as if they would shatter at a touch, were nestled on a serving tray. Golden-crusted pies of venison and pheasant stood tall. Grilled fish glistened under melting herb butters. Wine sparkled in crystal decanters.
Miguel licked his lips. “Just look at it all!” he said. His goatish eyes darted warily around the room. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hello! Is anybody here?” he shouted.
“Idiot. Of course somebody’s here,” Antonio said. “You think that platter of beef walked itself to the table?”
“Who’s this for?” asked Beau.
“Us,” Raphael said.
Antonio glanced at the thief lord. “Who says?”
Raphael patted the pistol at his hip. “I do.”
That was all the men needed to hear. They fell upon the feast like wolves upon a lamb. Some didn’t even wait to sit down before tearing legs off ducks or spearing slices of beef with their daggers. Ravenous after their long, harrowing ride, they ate ferociously.
Beau, used to the greasy stews and charred chops Rodrigo cooked for them, relished every bite—the gamy richness of pheasant, the bright tang of the red-currant sauce he spooned over it, the fat-crisped crackle of roasted potatoes. He finished one plateful, then helped himself to another, washing it all down with glass after glass of fine Bordeaux that tasted of earth and rain, time and secrets.
After he’d polished off three helpings, Beau leaned back in his chair and closed his weary eyes. The food, the wine, the roaring fire—they’d warmed him inside and out. For the first time that day, he took a deep breath.
It wasn’t his fault everything had gone so wrong. He’d done his part and done it well. Getting himself hired as a servant at a wealthy merchant’s home. Catching his mistress’s eye. Smiling as he set her dinner plate down. Brushing her hand as he picked it up again.
It was just this past morning, when his mistress had brushed his hand and lifted it to her lips, that he’d sent word to Raphael. Tonight.
He’d left the kitchen door unlocked, and some hours later—when the servants were asleep, and he and his mistress were not—the thieves entered the house. The strongbox quickly surrendered to Raphael’s skilled hands, but before the thieves could empty it, the lady’s husband had come home. No one expected him. He’d been away for months on business, but suddenly there he was—standing in the kitchen with his men, bellowing for food and drink.
The servants tumbled out of their beds and the thieves were discovered. Swords were drawn, pistols loaded. The merchant scrambled upstairs to his wife’s chambers. Beau scrambled for the window. Horses were waiting for them, hidden in the woods. The merchant’s men were fast, but the thieves were faster. They leapt into their saddles and rode off, moving like smoke through the trees.
They were lucky to have made it out of the merchant’s manor alive and were grateful for that luck, but gratitude wouldn’t get them out of France where they were wanted men. It wouldn’t get them across the rugged borderlands to Spain, then to the coast and Barcelona. From there, Raphael hoped to find a ship bound for Istanbul, Tangier, or Mombasa—some teeming port town where nobody cared who they were or what they’d done.
That was the plan, but sea passage costs money and they’d only been able to grab a small bag of silver coins from the merchant’s strongbox before they were discovered.
Now Rodrigo cursed the time they’d wasted. “Before we get to Barcelona, we have to cross over the mountains and it’s nearly winter,” he said. “We’ll need warm coats. Blankets. Food for ourselves and our horses. How are we going to pay for it all? These things aren’t bought with words and wishes.”
“Neither are pretty women,” said a drunken Miguel. “And Barcelona’s full of them!”
Beau opened his eyes. He played along. His plans involved his little brother, not a ship, but no one else could find that out. “Well, that’s one expense we won’t have to worry about,” he said, lobbing a piece of bread at Miguel. “Even if we robbed fifty merchants, we wouldn’t have enough gold to get a woman to smile at you.”
“Bastard!” Miguel shouted. He threw the bread back but missed. Beau laughed; he gave Miguel the finger. Miguel jumped to his feet and reached for his dagger, but Antonio, who was sitting next to him, pulled him back down. “Enough,” he warned.
Raphael, gnawing a bone, glanced between Beau and Miguel but said nothing. He just sat in his chair at the head of the table, his hooded eyes unknowable. His silence made Beau wary. Like a wolf, Raphael always went quiet just before a kill.
The men continued to gorge themselves until finally they could hold no more. Some loosened their belts; others leaned back in their chairs and belched. Beau unbuttoned his jacket. Miguel stood up unsteadily and pissed in a corner. The music box had wound down, and a ticking, muffled and low, as if coming from a clock in another room, could now be heard. The prickling sense of uneasiness Beau had felt, banished for a bit by the feast, returned. He pushed his plate away and sat up. His eyes flickered to the room’s shadowed doorways. How did all this food get here? Who cooked it? Where are they? he wondered.
“There aren’t many of them,” Raphael said, reading his mind. “An old man, maybe. Or a widow. A handful of servants.” He tossed his gnawed bone onto his plate and wiped his greasy hands on the tablecloth. “They were about to have dinner but heard us coming and hid. They won’t trouble us.” A cold smile curved his lips. “But we’ll trouble them. I want everything we can carry. Take the silver. Rip the tapestries down. Then spread out and find the strongbox.”
Miguel had staggered back to the table to pour himself more wine. At Raphael’s words, he drained his glass and threw it on the floor. “We’ll be the kings of Barcelona!” he crowed as it shattered.
The thieves burst into cheers. They guzzled more wine. Ate dainty cakes and sucked the icing off their fingers. And then they got busy. Miguel gathered knives and forks in his hands like a sheaf of wheat. Antonio stuffed a silver ladle down his shirt. Beau slipped a pair of jeweled napkin rings into his pocket.
Raphael plucked a red rose from a vase and threaded the stem through a buttonhole in his jacket. Then he stood and struck a pose, his hand inside his jacket, an arrogant tilt to his chin, just like the grand aristocrats in the portraits. His men laughed, smacking one another with the backs of their hands. Boisterous and tipsy, they boasted loudly of the fancy pistols and fine britches, the soft boots and gold earrings they’d buy in Barcelona.
Beau was about to grab a silver pepper pot when he felt it.
It started as a soft shudder, as if the castle itself was stretching and waking, then deepened to a low rumble. He could sense the vibrations under his feet; they moved up into his body, rattling his bones. Prisms dangling from chandeliers swayed and collided, their crystalline clinking like a dark fairy’s laughter.
He glanced at the others; they were frozen in place. Only their eyes moved, warily trying to pinpoint the source of the noise. A metallic whirring started. It was followed by a grinding clunk. Invisible wheels turned. Gears engaged. And then a crack, as sharp as a gunshot, sent the thieves ducking for cover. But it wasn’t a firearm that had made the noise.
“Look!” Rodrigo said, pointing at the far wall, one bare of tapestries or paintings.
A thin crevice, running from floor to ceiling, split the coffering down its center. As the men watched, transfixed, the two sides of the wall began to slide apart and a honeyed gleam streamed from the space between them. Wider and wider the opening grew, and what it revealed snatched Beau’s breath away. He set his dagger down and took a few steps forward, spellbound by the sheer impossibility of the object before him.
It was a golden clock that spanned the entire width of the wall and rose in three columned tiers to the ceiling. The topmost tier housed a large silver bell. The middle held the clock’s shimmering dial, fashioned from mother-of-pearl. Its hands were cast from silver; inlaid gemstones formed its numerals. In the recesses of the bottom tier, a silver pendulum swung back and forth. Behind it, brass weights dangled from heavy chains.
“Damn,”Beau breathed, his eyes as round as pie plates.
The clock had to be twenty feet high by thirty wide. At either end of it stood a set of tall double doors. A track ran between them, curving in a semicircle. Beau moved closer. He couldn’t tear his gaze from it. All that silver, those gemstones, that gold.
The clock had been faced with thin sheets of the precious metal, ingeniously seamed with tiny nails, and there was enough of it to buy every man here his own towering castle. The thieves stood in silence, their awestruck faces warmed by the clock’s golden glow. Raphael was the first one to break it.
“How does it feel, boys,” he asked, “to be as rich as God?”
Beau walked closer to the clock. He tilted his head back, wondering how quickly he could scale those gilded columns.
It was then that he saw him. Standing on the platform of the topmost tier.
A man, tall and pale, thin as a whisper, gazing down.