I crept ahead.
Through the years I’ve honed a few instincts, the kind that come from chasing trouble. I’ve always liked trouble. Why? Hard to say. Maybe because it’s so unpredictable. So spontaneous. The knowing, but not knowing. It’s what lies ahead that makes life interesting.
I’m a glass-half-full kind of girl. Nothing to be gained by always looking at the sour side of things. It probably comes from a rich, affluent upbringing. I wanted for little. My parents were billionaires, but they were no coddlers. My father was tough, my mother tougher. They were also Mormon, converted in middle age, which instilled in them a deep sense of duty and responsibility. They were firm believers and, at the time, there weren’t all that many Latter-Day Saints in northern Spain. Being different was an open invitation to trouble. But my father had never been afraid of trouble either. He actually seemed to thrive in its presence. So it’s no surprise that I turned out the way I did. By the time he died, the local Mormon ward numbered in the thousands, all thanks to him.
Thoughts of him always kept me going when trouble arrived.
Like now.
I came to the next bend in the Philosopher’s Walk, which inched ever closer to the edge. No railings protected anyone from the drop, which was several hundred meters down among jutting rocks, prickly shrubs, and trees. Not a fall anyone would survive without some serious injury, and not one I was anxious to experience. The woods around me seemed a sodden, gloomy world, pungent with a dark smell of soaked earth. Beyond the trail’s edge, the fuzzy silhouettes of distant mountains stood against the gray sky.
Movement to the left caught my attention.
A form sprang from the trees and shoved me to the ground, the weight of a body forcing my face into the wet dirt. I decided to kick and roll, taking my attacker with me, and caught a quick glimpse of the face.
Hildick-Smith.
Interesting he’d not used his gun. Instead, he’d opted for hand-to-hand. No nerve? Or something else? An underestimation? Maybe. But enough playtime. I thrust my legs upward and recoiled his body off me, his head ending up on my belly. I shoved him off to the muddy ground, but not before driving a quick jab of my left fist into his windpipe. I sprang to my feet as he gasped, trying to find air to breathe. But I’d been careful. The force had been just enough to get his attention, but not enough to kill him.
I spat the mud from my mouth and asked, “Was all this necessary?”
He pushed himself up into a sitting position, his breathing still stabilizing. “I must . . . have . . . that box.”
Which was nowhere to be seen. “Where is it?”
He motioned and I saw the knapsack propped near the trunk of a tree. “Over there.”
My best option for learning what was going on seemed to be conciliatory. He was tall, gangly, maybe mid-thirties, with a thick black mat of hair, wet and not combed in any particular direction. Clearly he wasn’t all that good at stealing, fleeing, or fighting. Nothing about him seemed even remotely dangerous. I stood and retrieved the knapsack, laying it on the ground beside him. Trees overhead shielded us from the majority of the rain.
“That box doesn’t belong to you.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Not according to my friend, Nicodème.”
“I tried to buy it from him. It belongs to my family. Your friend, Nicodème, bought it a few years ago in Paris at an auction house once half owned by my family. The box should have never been placed for sale. Someone did that hoping I wouldn’t notice. But I did. It’s how I knew your friend owned it.”
“And who would do that?”
“That’s what I am trying to find out.” He motioned to the knapsack. “May I?”
I recalled the gun from the shop. “Where’s your weapon?”
“Inside the sack.”
I bent down, unzipped the top, and fished out the pistol.
“It’s not loaded,” he said.
I ejected the magazine and checked the chamber. No rounds anywhere.
“I just wanted to scare him,” he said.
I watched as he dug into the sack and came out with a sheaf of papers, the letterhead from the Louvre in Paris. He handed them over. I shielded them from the rain and read.
France 16th century, TRAVELING SABBAT CABINET WITH VARIOUS SEMI-PRECIOUS STONES SET IN GOLD BEZELS, inscribed in pen: 240588 - and with illegible inscriptions to the rosewood exterior with an etched iron lock and iron handles and hinges. The interior is inlaid with ivory and marquetry in the central compartment. There are a total of 15 compartments, 10 of them containing glass bottles possibly as old as 5th century. The contents of the bottles include oils and dried herbs not as yet identified. Owner François Lussac.
I knew the name.
The Lussac château and vineyard dated back to the 15th century. Some of the best cognac came from their label thanks to the sunshine, humidity, and the chalky reddish soil close to the marshes of southern France.
“François Lussac was my father,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
He seemed recovered from the assault and tossed me a semblance of a smile. “Do you have a name?”
“Cassiopeia Vitt.”
“I’m Antoine Lussac,” he said. “Not Peter Hildick-Smith. I thought it better to use an alias.”
“Is your family related to the Lussac family who owns the château in the Cognac Valley?”
He nodded. “My older brother and I run the vineyard. Are you familiar with our brandy?”
“I am, and I’m even more familiar with the château. I’ve been studying medieval architecture for years.”
His eyes lit. “Cassiopeia Vitt. Of course. I’ve read about your castle project and seen pictures. Quite an undertaking. I wish you could have met my father. He was obsessed with ancient buildings and spent a fortune restoring ours. Just like you, everything had to be original and period correct. That’s how we came to own the Sabbat Box.” He pointed at the knapsack. “He found it during an excavation of a cave on our property, about ten years ago.”
He reached back inside and removed the box, cradling it with great care. I noticed the same inlay of stones—amethysts, moonstones, garnets, and sapphires(from when I first saw it back at the shop.
He opened the lid.
As the document from the Louvre had described, inside were compartments, each one holding a thick glass bottle dotted with bubbles and flaws. Another compartment held two small copper funnels, green with age, and another contained some uneven glass pipettes. A crisscross of wood protected each bottle, proved by the fact that during the entire run through Eze and down the mountain everything had remained intact. I examined the inside lid where a leather portfolio held bits of old paper, now decayed.
“We think there were once formulas recorded there,” he said.
On the lower front were two iron pulls. I tried them, opening a drawer containing more tools. A small mortar and pestle, a knife, and an iron pan with scorch marks on its underside.
I closed the drawer. “This is extraordinary.”
“It is. But don’t uncork any of the bottles. Oddly, the scents are still potent. Five years ago we were doing research on them when the box disappeared. Then, as we now know, it found its way into the auction.” He pointed to one. “I can attest to the fact that this bottle contains fumes with some kind of hallucinogenic properties. I experienced a wild vision when I made the mistake of taking a sniff.”
Something about the box, the stones on top, the thick glass bottles, the iron corners, even the drawer, gave me pause. As if it were familiar, yet not. The feeling had started back in the shop, before the theft, while it had sat on the counter. There’d been no time to explore those feelings before all the excitement intervened.
But now—
A thought raced through my brain.
Somehow I knew that there should be vellum labels affixed to the bottom of each bottle. How? Why? I had no idea. Only that it was true. I gently touched one of them, then stopped and looked at Antoine. “May I take it out, if I don’t open it?”
He nodded.
I had to see if I was right.
I lifted out the bottle. Underneath was a label. Discolored and deteriorated with age. A word, written in a sepia script, had faded but could still be read.
Belladonna.
I replaced the bottle and reached for another.
Even before I lifted it out I knew that under it would be Diospyros.
And I was right.
I removed a third, but before I could peek beneath it I heard the grating sound of stones being ground beneath the soles of shoes and turned to see a man leaping toward me. Antoine shoved the newcomer away, then shouted for me to grab the box and run. Before I could move, a booted foot made contact with my arm. Somehow, I kept hold of the bottle in my grasp, but I was driven down to the wet ground. I tried to recoil and go on the offensive but another blow found my brow.
Red hot pain exploded across my skull.
Then, nothing.