The Magic Circle Katherine Neville (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📖

“I don’t believe in coincidences, young man,” Lucky told me. “I believe only in destiny. For example, I find interesting the animals you boys have chosen from all this enormous menagerie. The name for eagle in Old High German is Earn, and Earnest sits astride an eagle—while the beast you’ve chosen is a wolf. Pandora’s cousin Dacian here, his name comes from Daci, the wolfmen of ancient Thrace, one of the oldest hunting tribes in Europe. You see, study enhances not only the intellect but the very way in which we perceive ourselves and our history. My nickname, Lucky, is something of a private joke among my friends. My Christian name in Old High German is Athal-wulf, meaning highborn or fortunate wolf—Lucky Wolf, do you see? And my family name originally must have meant the same as Boer: Heideler, or ‘heath man,’ like Bauer, one who lives from the land—”

“Whoa,” I cried, stopping Uncle Laf’s life story in midstream with a wave of my hand as we sat there in the Sun Valley Lodge dining room. “Rein up there, partner—you mean to say this guy was Adolf Hitler?”

When Laf merely smiled, I looked at Olivier and Bambi, who both had glazed expressions like a trout that’s just realized it’s no longer breathing water.

“Gavroche, the story was almost over,” Laf said.

“It’s definitely over for me,” I told him, pushing aside my half-eaten saumon fumé omelette and getting to my feet.

“Where are you going?” asked Laf pleasantly.

Olivier was wrestling with his napkin, trying to figure out whether he was my guest or Laf’s. I motioned him to stay seated.

“Outside for a walk,” I told Laf. “I need to swallow some fresh air before you ask me to swallow anything else.”

“I ask you to swallow nothing but a bit more champagne,” he said, still smiling and patting me on my good arm. “Then I shall go for the walk with you—or perhaps even have a swim?—while your friend here shows Bambi a bit of the mountain. That is, if you don’t mind.” Laf raised his brow in question to Olivier, who leapt to his feet.

After a flurry of waiters and coats and thanks and hugs, Bambi and Olivier vanished to the slopes and Laf and I headed off to the glass-walled outdoor thermal pool, surrounded by the mountains, its roof open to the sky. Volga Dragonoff met us there with bathing suits.

“Uncle Laf,” I said when we two were alone at last, ensconced in the steamy relaxing mineral waters, “how could you have told a ridiculous story like that one at breakfast? Olivier’s a friend of mine, but he’s also my colleague. After this morning, he’s going to think my family’s even crazier than you all actually are.”

“Crazy? I see nothing crazy about my story,” Laf objected. “Every single thing was completely truth.”

He ducked his head under the water. When he came up, the silvery mane was slicked back, accentuating the magnificent bone structure of his face and those sharp blue eyes. I thought how truly handsome he must have been when he was young. No wonder Pandora had fallen for him. But wasn’t that part of the problem?

“Everything you said was a myth,” I pointed out to Laf, “especially the parts about our family. That’s the first I’ve heard of your father being English—much less having a fortune of something like a hundred million dollars! And if Pandora really hated my grandfather Hieronymus as much as you say, why did she wind up marrying him that same year, when you were still only twelve, and staying married long enough to have a child by him?”

“I can imagine what Augustus’s version must be of the story,” Laf said with the first note of cynicism I’d heard so far. “But I’ll be direct, now that we’re alone. Though I hate to be the one to tell you of your own grandfather, Gavroche, you asked the question—and a good one—why Pandora might marry so despicable a man.

“When we returned that afternoon to the house in Vienna, we learned my mother had died in our absence. The younger children were distraught, beside themselves, and we were all sent early to bed. Next morning, in the predawn light, I was taken by several strong male servants to the train and forcibly escorted back to Salzburg.

“That day would be the last I would see of Pandora in nearly five years, for she was taken from Vienna and then the First World War intervened. Only five years after would I learn how she had been raped by my stepfather that very night—more than once. How he forced her to marry him, under the threat that he would reveal things about her that might bring great danger, to her and to her family as well.”

“He what?” I gaped at him. “Are you mad?”

“No—but I thought I might go mad, back then,” Laf told me with a bittersweet smile. I knew by the way he said it he was telling the truth, and I wondered whether he’d ever told anybody of this before now.

“Why don’t you finish your story, Uncle Laf?” I said, moving over through the water to put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry about what I said. I really do want to know everything.”

“Let me begin anew, with Lucky going with us in our carriage to the Hofburg to see the weapons collections and his discovery there of a mysterious and fascinating ancient treasure.…”

THE SWORD AND THE SPEAR

Over many centuries, the Austrian Habsburgs had cut and glued together their vast empire through a series of brilliant marriages to women who were heiresses to countries like Spain, Hungary, and so on. Now a part of the Hofburg, the Habsburg winter palace, had been converted to a museum to show to the public the royal jewels, the silver, the many collections accumulated over centuries.

The collection, one of the world’s most extensive; was of special interest to Lucky. He had said