He was black as a briquette and rapidly flagging.
“All right, the bedchamber if we must, but quiet as a confessional,” I said. “If the cardinal suspects what we’ve done, the whole scheme comes to naught.”
One stroke of luck was that the aged like to sleep warm. The prelate had drawn the heavy silk curtains on his sumptuous bed to make a cozy tent, and his snores were faint, which meant our burglary was also muffled. “Ethan, Harry and I are lighter and quieter,” Astiza whispered. “You walk like a moose. Stand watch by the door.”
“A stag, perhaps. Or a stallion.”
“We’ll be only a minute.” My wife and son disappeared into the gloom of the bedroom. I’d given her the vial of fox fire to provide meager light, but shadows swallowed them.
I waited nervously, imagining a thousand disasters. And of course, one soon occurred. The palace was big enough to boast a corridor, and suddenly a shadow rose at its far end, where a stairway led to the ground floor.
Someone was ascending the steps.
“Astiza!” I hissed. “Hide!” But I dared not say it loud enough for her to hear. I stood in shadow by the bedroom door, trying to communicate with my family by will alone. That didn’t work. She’d passed into a dressing room.
A lamp rose from the lip of the stairs like a rising sun, and with it a figure. A priest, thank goodness, not a soldier or gendarme.
He bore a pitcher of water or wine and made straight for the cardinal’s room. Wash water, perhaps, for the morning? Need he bring it now? Then I remembered holy men rise at ungodly hours, as if the Almighty were on a tight schedule.
A hand touched my arm, and I jumped. It was my wife.
“All I found were miter hats and sacramental robes,” she whispered. “And I’ve lost Harry.”
“Lost him?” I was getting panicked. “It’s just a bedchamber.”
“He didn’t come back to you, did he?”
“He’s hiding, I hope, as you were supposed to. A priest is coming.”
“Now?”
“Slide under the bed. I’ll take care of the servant.” I closed the door nearly shut and skipped to the library on the other side. When the priest came abreast of the bishop’s bedroom, I spilled some books to make a thud.
“Excellency?” The priest stepped into the library, dark except for the gray rectangle that marked its window.
I put out my leg.
He tripped, grunting, and fell to the carpet, me catching the pitcher just before it shattered. Then I let it drop on his head, not enough to break but enough to stun, and taking care it didn’t tip and spill its liquid. I’m fastidious in my own way. Before he could react I dragged him square with the rug and started rolling him up. In moments he was encased in a wool sandwich, his dazed cries muffled by the carpeting. I yanked down more drapery holders, letting the curtains make it even darker, and tied the rug at either end, taking care to leave just enough of a gap so he could breathe. Smothering a priest would be sure to doom our quest with divine wrath. What a bollocks our adventure had become!
I knelt and put my mouth to the hole at the end of the roll of carpet. “My apologies, Father, we’ll be on our way soon.” My captive shouted something, but I couldn’t make out what, since it came out as a muffled whisper. I glanced toward the bedchamber. When the priest didn’t return, a guard would come looking. It was past time to flee.
I went back to the cardinal’s door and swung it open to look for my wife, but she was already there, holding Harry.
“He was under the bed,” she explained.
“Papa, I found a nest,” he said proudly.
Astiza held out a wreath of ancient brambles, as unprepossessing a crown as can be imagined. Had this “nest” of reeds really topped Jesus? Medieval fragments of the crucifixion were as plentiful as homes in which George Washington reputedly slept, so except for the periodic mummified feet or heart of a saint, all but the most devout were skeptical that anything was real. Yet I felt a chill and an odd feeling of the sacred, as if the wisps of dry vines had supernatural power. Stealing the Crown of Thorns was our maddest act yet.
If the pope lifted this Crown of Thorns in surprise as the hat for the new French emperor, the entire ceremony—and Bonaparte’s campaign to win respectability—would come apart. Claiming