Cradle Of Solitude. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ emptied the revolver, carefully storing the percussion caps, bullets and powder in separate vials, eliminating the chance of an accident while she examined the weapon.

      When she was finished with the revolver she turned her attention to the sword. Since she’d miraculously inherited Joan of Arc’s famous sword, bladed weapons had become a passion for Annja and she immediately recognized this one as a Shelby cavalry sabre, named after General Joseph O. Shelby, leader of the Iron Brigade. When the Confederacy fell, Shelby, one of the few Confederate generals who had never been defeated in combat by Union troops, took his entire command to Mexico rather than surrender. The cavalry sword he’d carried throughout the war, a common enough model produced by the Ames sword company, was renamed in his honor after the war.

      The blade was about forty inches in length and bore the CSA, or Confederate States of America, inscription, as did the brass guard. The grip was leather, wrapped with twisted brass wire. The entire weapon seemed to be in excellent shape and Annja gave it a few experimental swings through the air to get the sense of it. It was well-balanced, though shorter and lighter than the weapon she was used to using.

      Putting the weapon back down on the examination table, she moved over to the rest of Parker’s clothing.

      He’d been wearing leather cavalry boots rather than the usual leather brogans, but Annja wasn’t surprised by this, as Confederate footwear had been notoriously bad. The boots were in fairly good shape, but didn’t tell her anything new about their owner. The same was true for the regulation trousers that she examined next.

      The shirt was a bit more interesting, if only because it held the evidence of the gunshot that had ended Parker’s life. There was a bullet hole in the front of the shirt, just to the left of the sternum, but no corresponding hole on the back. This meant the bullet hadn’t passed completely through his body, as she might have expected at such close range, but had remained lodged somewhere inside his chest. It was a good reminder that modern weapons were far more powerful than those of a hundred years ago and she told herself to keep that in mind as she examined the evidence of Parker’s demise.

      Annja wished they had the bullet to examine, as it might have been able to tell them something about the gun that had been used. That could have narrowed their avenues of inquiry a bit, but she’d been unable to find it among Parker’s remains.

      It’s probably on the floor of the antechamber. Maybe I’ll go back and try to find it later, she thought.

      Annja was about to put the shirt aside when she noticed an odd double stitch along one of the seams. She ran her fingers over the cloth at that point and felt something there, just beneath the surface.

      It was small, no more than an inch long and less than a quarter-inch thick, and it hadn’t gotten there by accident. Whatever it was, someone had taken a bit of trouble to hide it inside the seam of the shirt.

      “I think I’ve got something,” Annja said, and when Bernard came back over to her station as he had done before, she showed him what she had found. They both agreed that it merited further investigation. They photographed the shirt from a variety of angles, wanting to preserve a record of its condition before they altered it in any way, and then they x-rayed it, as well. The latter was inconclusive, however; it showed the object and confirmed its rectangular shape, but it didn’t provide any information as to what it might be.

      They were going to have to take a look for themselves.

      Scalpel in hand, Annja carefully cut each of the threads that held the seam closed and then, using the flat of the blade, she lifted the edge of the cloth, revealing what was hidden inside—a folded piece of paper. Annja held the pocket of cloth open with the scalpel while Bernard used a pair of tweezers to tease the paper free of its hiding place and move it onto its own examination plate.

      With the aid of a low-power magnifying glass Annja could see that two edges of the paper were evenly cut, while the others were ragged, indicating it had been torn from a larger source.

      A few words had been written on the small slip of paper in a hurried scrawl. Using the magnifying glass, Annja read them aloud.

      “Berceau de solitude.”

      Annja didn’t need Bernard to translate. She knew the words were Cradle of Solitude, but she hoped he might have some insight on what it meant, because she didn’t have a clue.

      “Only place I know by that name is a monastery in the Pyrenees,” he told her.

      “A monastery? Can you think of any reason it might be connected to our mysterious friend here?” she asked.

      “Not particularly. If memory serves, it started out as a convent in the early 1500s, was abandoned about a hundred years later and then was bought by a sect of Benedictine monks just before the French Revolution. They’ve been running the place ever since.”

      Benedictine monks. She couldn’t think of any obvious connection between the religious order and the Confederacy, but it wasn’t her area of expertise. Still, there had to be a connection, for no one went through the kind of trouble Parker had to hide a piece of paper if it wasn’t important.

      The monastery was the key to this mystery.

      She was sure of it.

      “Is it far from here?”

      Bernard shrugged. “Four, maybe four and a half hours by car. There’s a train that runs in that direction, as well, but you’d have to find transportation up the mountain. Not much sense in going, though.”

      “And why’s that?”

      “It’s closed to the public. Outside visitors have to be approved in advance by the abbot and the process takes several months. I spent some time there a few years ago examining one of the books they have in their library and I remember the process being an absolute nightmare to get through.”

      “So you’ve met the abbot?”

      “The abbot, hmmm. Abbot Deschanel. Yes, I have. A charming man, actually.”

      “Would he remember you?”

      “I should think so,” Bernard told her. “We spent several evenings discussing a variety of topics over a glass of wine or two and I…” He paused, finally putting two and two together. “Oh, no.”

      Annja smiled at him sweetly. “What?”

      “You want me to call over there and try to get you in to see the abbott without going through the standard process.”

      “You’d do that for me?” she replied, letting her eyes go wide and feigning innocent surprise.

      Bernard laughed. “I’m supposed to believe that the idea never even occurred to you, right?”

      “You can believe what you want. But now that you’ve brought it up I think it’s an excellent idea.”

      “It’s been more than a hundred years, Annja. What do you expect to find?”

      She shrugged. “I don’t have any idea. But I’m sure something will occur to me once I’m there. There has to be a reason that Parker went through all the trouble of hiding the name of the monastery inside the seam of his shirt. That doesn’t just happen by accident.”

      Bernard СКАЧАТЬ