He jabbed a finger at the book.
“In answer to your earlier question, this is indeed Sedlec, where the Black Angel came into being. That is why Garcia was working on his bone sculptures: he was commissioned to create a version of the ossuary at Sedlec, an environment worthy of holding the Black Angel until its secrets could be unlocked. You think such a thing to be strange?”
There was a new fervor to him now. Stuckler was a fanatic, just like Brightwell and the Believers. His veneer of sophisticated give-and-take was falling away, and to my benefit. On the subject of his particular obsession, Stuckler could not contain himself.
“Why are you so certain that it exists?” I said.
“Because I have seen it replicated,” said Stuckler. “You have too, in a way.”
He stood suddenly.
“Come, please.”
Murnos started to object, but Stuckler silenced him with a raised hand.
“Don’t worry, Alexis. Everything is coming to its natural conclusion.”
I followed Stuckler through the house until we came to a doorway beneath the main stairs. Murnos stayed behind me all the way, even as Stuckler unlocked the door, and we descended into the cellars of the house. They were expansive, and lined with stone. Most of the area was given over to a wine collection, which must have stretched to a thousand bottles, all carefully stored, with a thermostat on the wall monitoring the temperature. We passed through the racks of bottles until we came to a second door, this time made of metal and accessed using a keypad and a retinal scanner. Murnos opened this door, then stepped aside to allow Stuckler and me to enter.
We were in a square stone room. Glassed alcoves around the walls contained what were clearly Stuckler’s most treasured items: there were three icons, the gold upon them still intact, the colors rich and vibrant; there were gold chalices, and ornate crosses; there were paintings, and small sculptures of men that might have been Roman or Greek.
But the room was dominated by a statue, perhaps eight feet in height and constructed entirely from human bones. I had seen a similar piece of sculpture before, except on a much smaller scale, in Garcia’s apartment.
It was the Black Angel. A single great skeletal wing was unfurled, its spines the slightly curved bones of the radius and ulna. Its arms were made from femurs and fibulae to achieve the sense of scale, its great jointed legs an ornate arrangement of skillfully wired bones, the barest hint of the joins visible between them. Its head was made up of fragments of many skulls, each carefully cut and fused to create the whole. Ribs and vertebrae had been used to construct the main horn that rose from its head and curved down to its collarbone. It rested on a granite pedestal, its clawed toes hanging slightly over the edge and gripping the stone. In its presence, I felt a terrible sense of fear and disgust. The pictures of the bone adornments at Sedlec had unsettled me, but at least there might have been some purpose to them, some recognition of the passage of all mortal things. Yet this was something without merit: human beings reduced to constituent parts in the creation of an image of profound evil.
“Extraordinary, don’t you think?” said Stuckler. I could not guess at how often he had stood here before it, but judging from the tone of his voice, his awe at this possession never faded.
“It’s one word for it,” I replied. “Where did it come from?”
“My father discovered it in the monastery at Morimondo in Lombardy, during the search for clues about the Fontfroide fragment. It was the first sign that he was close to the map. There was some damage to it, as you can see.”
Stuckler pointed out fragmented bones, a crudely repaired fissure in the spine, missing fingers.
“My father’s guess was that it had been transported from Sedlec, probably some time after the initial dispersal of the map fragments, and had eventually found its way to Italy. A double bluff, perhaps, to direct attention away from the original. He ordered it to be concealed. He had a number of locations for such things, and nobody dared to question his instructions on these matters. It was to have been a gift for the Reichsführer, but my father was killed before he could arrange for its transportation. Instead, it passed to my mother after the war, along with some of the other items accumulated by my father.”
“But surely anyone could have made this?” I said.
“No,” said Stuckler, with absolute conviction. “Only someone who had examined the original could have created it.”
“How do you know, if you’ve never seen the original?”
Stuckler strode across to one of the alcoves and carefully opened the glass cover. I followed him over. He activated a light inside. It revealed two small silver boxes, now open, with a simple cross carved into the lid of each. Beside them, carefully protected between thin layers of glass, were two pieces of vellum, each perhaps a foot square. I saw sections of a drawing, depicting a wall and window, with a series of symbols around the edge: a Sacred Heart entangled with thorns, a beehive, a pelican. There was also a series of dots on each, probably representing numbers, and the corners of what might have been shields or coats of arms. Almost immediately, I saw the combination of roman numerals and a single letter that Reid had described.
One manuscript was dominated by the drawing of a great leg, curving backward, and the clawed toes at its feet. It was almost identical to that of the statue behind us. I could detect the faintest trace of lettering concealed in the leg, but I could not read any of the letters. The second manuscript showed one-half of a skull: again, it was identical to the skull on Stuckler’s bone statue.
“You see?” said Stuckler. “These fragments have been separated for centuries, ever since the creation of the map. Only someone who had seen the drawing could have constructed a representation of the Black Angel, but only someone who had seen the original could have done so in such detail. The drawing is relatively crude, the actuality much less so. You asked me why I believe it exists: this is why.”
I turned my back on Stuckler and his statue. Murnos was watching me without expression.
“So you have two of the fragments,” I said. “And you’ll bid at auction for a third.”
“I will bid, as you suggest. Once the auction is complete, I will make contact with the other bidders in order to see who among them is also in possession of pieces of the map. Nobody knows of the existence of this cellar and its contents, apart from Alexis and I. You are the first outsider to have the privilege of seeing it, and only because of the imminence of the auction. I am a wealthy man, Mr. Parker. I will establish contacts. Deals will be struck, and I will acquire sufficient knowledge to make an accurate determination of the Black Angel’s resting place.”
“And the Believers? You think you can buy them out?”
“Don’t be fooled by the ease with which you dealt with the hired help in Maine, Mr. Parker. You were not regarded as a real danger. We can take care of them, if necessary, but I would prefer to reach an accommodation agreeable to both sides.”
I doubted if that would happen. From what I had learned so far, Stuckler’s reasons for seeking the Black Angel were very different from those of Brightwell and his kind. To Stuckler, it was merely another treasure to be stored away in his cave, albeit one with links to his own dead father. The Black Angel would stand alongside the bone sculpture, one darkly mirroring the other, and he would adore them both in his neat, obsessive way. But Brightwell, and the individual to whom he answered, believed that there was something hidden beneath the silver, a living being. Stuckler wanted the statue to remain intact and unexamined. Brightwell wanted to explore what lay within.