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

me the manuscripts were Pandora’s, and that they were written in some kind of code. Swiftly followed, a bit too coincidentally, a call from Ms. Helena Lengthy-Moniker of the Washington Post—who’d obtained my private phone number directly from my father, and who told me the manuscripts might be Zoe’s instead. How did I know she really worked for the Post and not for my father? Still, none of this proved that Augustus was the culprit trying to piece together these divided manuscripts—much less that he might be a mad bomber.

“Do you know who was the executor of Pandora’s estate?” I asked Sam.

“Exactly! That’s the critical point.” He grasped both my arms. Pain shot up to my shoulder; I winced and couldn’t keep from crying out. Sam released me quickly, in alarm.

“What is it?” he said.

“Fourteen stitches. I almost collided with an avalanche,” I told him—one of the less dramatic of last week’s events that I’d managed to leave out of my earlier account. I drew in my breath and gingerly touched my twinging arm beneath the fabric.

Sam was looking at me with concern. He reached over to stroke my hair tenderly, shaking his head.

“It’s almost healed; I’m okay,” I said. “But it did occur to me that Pandora would have to be pretty confident to let anyone hand out documents, after her death, that she’d spent her life collecting and protecting.”

“The exact conclusion I arrived at—more so, given the odd circumstances,” said Sam. “My own mother, Bright Cloud, had died only a few months before Pandora did. Father and I were both in shock and in mourning, and I’d never traveled so far away as Europe. Father therefore requested he be sent by mail any legal papers he needed to sign for the bequest. To his surprise, he was told it wouldn’t be possible: that under the terms of Pandora’s will, he must sign for and receive his legacy from the executor in person. So father and I went to Vienna.”

“Then the executor did have an important role,” I said. “Who was he?”

“The man we’ve just learned was Laf’s first violin teacher,” said Sam. “Pandora’s dark, romantic cousin Dacian Bassarides, who joined her and the children on the merry-go-round at the Prater, then went with them to the Hofburg to see the weapons. When my father and I went to Vienna for the will, I was only four years old and Dacian Bassarides was in his seventies, but I’ll never forget his face. It was wildly handsome. Wild—just as Laf described the young Pandora.

“It’s interesting, too, Laf’s mentioning that business on the merry-go-round about Hitler telling the children that Earn meant eagle in Old High German, and Daci meant wolf. Such words seem important. Quite a few of the manuscripts I’ve translated involve the family of the Roman emperor Augustus. I’d love to learn who it was that gave your father that same name. And of course, you know what Pandora’s family name, Bassarides, means in Greek?”

I shook my head.

“The skins or pelts of foxes,” said Sam. “But I’ve learned that the root is from a Libyan Berber word, bassara, which means vixen—the female fox. Very much as Laf had described Pandora, a wild animal. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“‘Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes,’” I quoted from the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s.

Sam glanced up in astonishment, followed by the dazzling smile of approval that always made me feel, as a child, that I’d just done something intolerably clever.

“So you did understand my message!” he said. “I knew you could do it, hotshot, but I didn’t think you’d have time to put it together that quickly.”

“I didn’t,” I said, though my mind was still racing. “I only deciphered enough to figure out our meeting place this morning—not whatever else it was you wanted me to know.”

“But that’s it, don’t you see?” said Sam. “That’s the irony. The cunning little vixen, Pandora, actually did spoil the grapes—for at least the last twenty-five years—by keeping these manuscripts so successfully apart. I didn’t begin to realize what she’d done until after I’d already sent you that parcel.” Then his smile faded as he looked at me in the dim light of the fire with his silvery eyes. “Ariel,” he said softly, “I think we both understand what we must do.”

My heart sank, but I knew he was right. If this puzzle was so dangerous and ancient that everyone wanted it, we wouldn’t be safe till we knew what it was all about.

“If the parcel you sent never shows up,” I said, “I guess you’ll have to reconstruct everything from those originals you’ve hidden; and Zoe’s runes—”

“That can wait, since at least we know there are originals,” said Sam. “But, Ariel, if someone has been so desperate to get these manuscripts that our lives are in real danger, our first priority is to learn what the four divided parts are, and why Pandora collected them in the first place. I need to go see the one person who can answer that question: her cousin and executor, Dacian Bassarides.”

“What makes you believe Dacian Bassarides is still alive?” I said. “If he was close to Pandora’s age, way back in Vienna, by now he’s pushing a century. And how do you expect to find him? After all, twenty-five years have passed since you saw him. The trail’s a bit cold by now, I should think.”

“To the contrary,” Sam said. “Dacian Bassarides is alive and well at ninety-five, and still remembered in some quarters. Half a century ago, he was a noted violinist in that tempestuous Paganini style: they used to call him Prince of Foxes. If you haven’t heard of him, it’s only because for some reason, though he performed in public, he refused to record. Until this morning, I’d never known he’d taught Laf, too. But as to where he can be found today, I’d have thought your friend Hauser might have told you.