“The crypt was the darkest place I’d ever been, all its candles firmly extinguished, and I was grateful for the two spots of light we carried. I lit the extinguished candles from the one I held. They blazed up, catching a sparkle of gold embroidery on the reliquary. My hands had begun to shake pretty badly, but I managed to take Turgut’s little dagger in its sheath out of my jacket pocket, where I had been keeping it since we’d left Sofia. I set it on the floor near the reliquary, and Helen and I gently lifted the two icons from their places-I found myself averting my eyes from the dragon and Saint George-and propped them against one wall. We removed the heavy cloth and Helen folded it out of the way. All this time I was listening with every fiber of my body for any sound, here or in the church above, so that the silence itself began to thrum and whine in my ears. Once Helen caught my sleeve, and we listened together, but nothing stirred.
“When the reliquary lay bare, we looked down on it, trembling. The top was beautifully molded with bas-relief-a long-haired saint with one hand raised to bless us, presumably a portrait of the martyr whose bones we might find inside. I caught myself hoping that we would indeed find just a few holy shards of bone, and then close the whole thing up. But then there was the emptiness that would follow-the lack of Rossi, the lack of revenge, the loss. The reliquary lid seemed nailed down, or bolted, and I couldn’t for the life of me pry it open. We tipped it a little in the process, and something shifted inside, gruesomely, and seemed to tap against the interior. It was indeed too small for anything but a child’s body, or some odd parts, but it was very heavy. It occurred to me for a horrible moment that perhaps only Vlad’s head had ended up here after all, although that would leave a lot of other matters unexplained. I began to sweat and to wonder if I should go back up and hunt for some tool in the church above, although I wasn’t very hopeful of finding anything.
“‘Let’s try to put it on the floor,’ I said through gritted teeth, and together we somehow slid the box safely down. There I might be able to get a better look at the hasps and hinges of the top, I thought, or even brace myself to yank it open.
“I was about to attempt this when Helen gave a little cry. ‘Paul, look!’ I turned quickly and saw that the dusty marble on which the reliquary had rested was not a solid block; the top had shifted a little with our struggle to move the reliquary off it. I don’t believe I was breathing anymore, but together, without words, we managed to remove the marble slab. It was not thick, but it weighed a fortune, and we were both panting by the time it was leaning against the back wall. Underneath lay a long slab of rock, the same rock as the floor and walls, a stone the length of a man. The portrait on it was crude in the extreme, chiseled directly into the hard surface-not the face of a saint but of a real man, a hard-faced man with staring almond eyes, a long nose, a long mustache-a cruel face topped with a triangular hat that managed to look jaunty even in this rough outline.
“Helen drew back, white lipped in the candlelight, and I fought the urge to take her arm and run up the steps. ‘Helen,’ I began softly, but there was nothing else to say. I picked up the dagger and Helen slipped a hand into some part of her clothing-I never did see where-and drew out the tiny pistol, which she put an arm’s-length away, near the wall. Then we reached under the edge of the gravestone and lifted. The stone slid halfway off, a marvelous construction. We were both shaking visibly, so that the stone all but slipped out of our grasp. When it was off we looked down at the body inside, the heavily closed eyes, the sallow skin, the unnaturally red lips, the shallow, soundless breathing. It was Professor Rossi.”
Chapter 72
“Iwish I could say that I did something brave, or useful, or caught Helen in my arms to make sure she wouldn’t faint, but I didn’t. There is almost nothing worse than a much-loved face transformed by death, or physical decay, or horrifying illness. Those faces are monsters of the most frightening kind-the unbearable beloved. ‘Oh, Ross,’ I said, and the tears welled up and ran down my cheeks so suddenly that I couldn’t even feel them coming.
“Helen took a step closer and looked down at him. I saw now that he was wearing the clothes he’d had on the night I’d last talked with him, nearly a month ago; they were torn and dirty, as if he’d been in an accident. His tie was gone. An ooze of blood filled the lines of one side of his neck and made a scarlet estuary on his soiled collar. His mouth was slack and swollen around that faint breath, and apart from the rise and fall of his shirt, he was still. Helen put out her hand. ‘Don’t touch him,’ I said sharply, which only increased my own horror.
“But Helen seemed as much in a trance as he was, and after a second, her lips trembling, she brushed his cheek with her fingers. I don’t know whether it was worse yet that he opened his eyes, but he did. They were still very blue, even in that murky candlelight, but the whites were bloodshot and the lids swollen. Those eyes were horribly alive, too, and puzzled, and they moved here and there as if trying to take in our faces, while his body stayed deathly still. Then his gaze seemed to settle on Helen, bending over him, and the blue of his eyes cleared with tremendous force, opening as if to take her in whole. ‘Oh, my love,’ he said very softly. His lips were cracked and thick, but his voice was the voice I loved, the crisp accent.
“‘No-my mother,’ Helen said as if groping for speech. She put her hand against his cheek. ‘Father, it’s Helen-Elena. I’m your daughter.’
“He lifted one hand then, as if he controlled it only waveringly, and took hers. His hand was bruised and the nails overgrown and yellowing. I wanted to tell him that we’d have him out of there in no time, that we were going home, but I knew already how desperately wounded he was. ‘Ross,’ I said, bending nearer. ‘It’s Paul. I’m here.’
“His eyes turned in bewilderment from me to Helen and back again, and then he closed them with a sigh that went all through his swollen frame. ‘Oh, Paul,’ he said. ‘You came for me. You shouldn’t have done it.’ He looked at Helen again, his eyes clouding over, and seemed to want to say something else. ‘I remember you,’ he murmured, after a moment.
“I fumbled for my inside jacket pocket and took out the ring Helen’s mother had given me. I held it close to his eyes, but not too close, and then he dropped Helen’s hand and touched the face of the ring clumsily. ‘For you,’ he said to Helen. Helen took it and put it on her finger.
“‘My mother,’ she said, her mouth trembling openly now. ‘Do you remember? You met her in Romania.’
“He looked at her with something like his old keenness and smiled, his face crooked. ‘Yes,’ he whispered at last. ‘I loved her. Where did she go?’
“‘She is safe in Hungary,’ Helen said.
“‘You are her daughter?’ There was a kind of wonder in his voice now.
“‘I am your daughter.’
“The tears came slowly up to the surface of his eyes, as if they did not flow with ease anymore, and ran down the lines at their corners. The trails they left glistened in the candlelight. ‘Please take care of her, Paul,’ he said faintly.
“‘I’m going to marry her,’ I told him. I put my hand on his chest. There was a kind of inhuman wheezing inside it, but I made myself hold him there.
“‘That’s-good,’ he said finally. ‘Is her mother alive and well?’
“‘Yes, Father.’ Helen’s face quivered. ‘She is safe in Hungary.’
“‘Yes, you said that.’ He closed his eyes again.
“‘She still loves you, Rossi.’ I stroked his shirtfront with an unsteady hand. ‘She sent you this ring and-a kiss.’
“‘I tried so many times to remember where she was, but something -’