“Yes, I get the sense it was mostly her.”
“Never have strong-willed children, Montague. Or at least don’t allow them to adore you. Don’t turn them against their mother because you think you need an ally.”
“I’ll remember that, sir.”
“Sir? You’re a gentleman.”
“Not always.” I snuffle again—I can taste blood all up and down the back of my throat. “Helena made a deal with the Duke of Bourbon.”
“My release for the box, is that right?” I nod. “So if they gave it to him, why aren’t I free to chastise them myself?”
“Well, I think your freedom was contingent upon the duke having access to the key. So take heart in that—he doesn’t have it yet.”
“Are you making a joke?”
“What?”
“Take heart?”
“Oh. No. Not intentionally.”
“Your nose is bleeding again.” I swipe at it. Mateu stares down at the blood across the back of my hand. “Did Dante tell you about his mother?”
“She’s the panacea. In the tomb.”
Pain darts across his features, clear as glass and sharp as flint. “I was not good to my wife, Montague. We were not good to each other.”
“Then why does it matter what happens to her now? You could give the duke her heart and be free.”
“If I give that heart to a man who did not count the cost, it would not be long before yet another business would spring up in this world around the barter and sale of human life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, tell me this: Who would decide which life was worth taking so that someone else could be cured? The duke and his men want political leverage—keep their people alive, keep them in power, keep their hold on that power. And if one house has it, how long before the others want it too? With this heart in the wrong hands, imagine how many men will have to die for their kings.”
“So, why didn’t you destroy it? If you knew it was a dangerous thing.”
“I was foolish to shut her away rather than be through with it. But it was my wife and my work, and she existed, even though she didn’t really exist any longer. I can’t give her to any man—noble-hearted or not—because she’s my wife. That’s her life.” He rubs the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Now there’s nothing I can do about it.” He laughs, humorless.
“But it worked?” I ask. “Her heart is truly a panacea? It will cure anything?”
“If it’s consumed.”
“You mean you have to eat it?” That’s a sour thought, though I suppose one unsavory meal for a lifetime of health isn’t a bad trade.
Mateu cocks his head at me. “What is your intention with my Lazarus Key, Montague? If you’re just a thief doing a good turn, why are you here?”
Which seems as good a time as any to make my offer. “If you tell me how to open the box, we’ll go to Venice for you.”
His eyes narrow in a very Helena-like way. “So they’ve sent you to work on me.”
“No, I swear to it.”
“Was it Helena, or the duke himself? Or has Dante been dragged in now as well?”
“Neither. None of them, I swear to it. We want to help you. The island where you’ve kept her—it’s sinking.”
He blinks. “It’s what?”
“The whole thing is collapsing. If you don’t get to her soon, she’s going to be sleeping at the bottom of the sea forever. You’re not going anywhere for a while, but we could bring her to Barcelona, if you want. Or at least take her somewhere else where she’d be protected until you could get to her. Or destroy the panacea. Whatever you want, but you’re running out of time to make peace with this.”
He must not have known about the sinking, for his face settles into a different sort of frown. A thinking one. “How do I know you aren’t lying?”
“Look, I know what it’s like,” I say, “to feel you’ve failed someone completely, and that you need to make penance or peace or something for that but you can’t because you made a choice and now all that’s left is feeling guilty for it. And if I could make it right—even in a way that didn’t make it right at all—I’d take it. In a moment. And if I can do that for you, I would. I will. Please. Let us help you.”
That soliloquy was not part of my rehearsed script, and I’m not entirely certain where it came from or whether it makes any difference. Mateu is drawing in the dusty prison floor with his fingers, not looking at me. “That key,” he says, “and that heart, is a tremendous thing for any man to possess.”
“And we know the duke will use it for ill—”
“I’m not speaking of the duke,” he says. He’s still scratching at the dust, but then he looks up at me, and it’s a hard thing to hold his gaze. I’m feeling guiltier than I expected, because here I am clamped onto his weaknesses and twisting them up for my own intentions. But I don’t let go.
I pull the cuffs of the coat over my hands, then take it off entirely and extend it to him. “Here.”
He doesn’t take it. “What’s this for?”
“It’s your coat. Sorry if I got . . . I don’t think there’s any blood on it.” When he still doesn’t move, I set it on the floor between us.
He stares at it for a moment, then smiles. “I wore that coat to both my children’s christenings. It was in much better shape then.” He takes the sleeve between his fingers, running them over a patch where the ribbing has frayed to nothing. “Helena would always hold my hand in one of hers and my sleeve in the other, just here. Dante—you couldn’t make that child hold on to you. Never wanted to be touched or held or stood too close to. But Helena wanted to be as close to me as she could—if my hands were full, she’d clutch at my legs. Didn’t want to be alone. And she was always so afraid we’d leave her. She’d wake us in the middle of the night to be certain we hadn’t gone. Made her mother furious.”
It is hard to imagine this Helena, with big eyes and baby teeth, weeping and lonely and sick with fear she might be left behind. But then I think of the way she’s handed her mother over to the duke—perhaps handed him the lives of hundreds of men, the fate of nations—all to have her father sleeping in the next room over again.
So perhaps not hard to imagine at all.
“We used to run a string,” Mateu says, fingers walking the stitchery upon the hem, “between her room and ours, one end knotted to her finger, and the other to mine. And in the night, she could give that string a tug, and I would tug back. And then she’d know I was still there.”
Across the room, the prison door suddenly bangs open, and from the hallway a jailer barks, “Henry Montague.”
Dear God, my time is already up. Felicity is nothing if not aggressively punctual.
“Please,” I say to Mateu. “We can help you.”
“Montague!” the jailer shouts again. He’s looking around for me. “Your bail has been posted.”
Mateu looks up at me. “So help me,” he says, and when I look down, he’s drawn out six letters in the dust.
A G C D A F
“That’s it? That’s the cipher? It’s random.” I almost laugh. “It’s not even a word.”
“It’s not random,” he says. “It’s notes.”