Thorn Read online

  The auctioneers, as I have said, were a bit uneasy about this young, comparatively poorly dressed couple. What bothered them was not the fact that Mary wore blue jeans—so did a couple of other women in that small crowd. But Mary’s jeans were probably of the wrong brand, and their fadedness suggested not some manufacturer’s process, but utilitarian wear. Successful experts in the world of fine art can be amazingly sensitive to subtle differences in color and texture, not only in the merchandise but in the customers.

  But mainly I think it was that the faces of Mary and her escort stood out in that little gathering. Their countenances were not filled with thinly veiled greed for the treasures (so far only quite minor ones) displayed, nor with calculation as to how to bid on them. Oh, it was evident enough from Mary’s face that she had some keen purpose in that room—but what could it be? That she might try to buy anything seemed highly unlikely, considering the prices that were certain to be asked and bid. If she and her companion were really wealthy eccentrics who simply enjoyed dressing in the style of the non-wealthy, then who belonged to that old Ford out front? Anyone who drove that car out of eccentricity would probably be staying at home anyway, in rooms filled with piled garbage and a thousand cats.

  Whatever apprehensions the auctioneers may have developed regarding Mary—that she might be contemplating some mad attempt at robbery, or an even more hopeless effort at social protest— these doubts must have been at least somewhat allayed by the face and attitude of the young man seated at her side. He was a bearded young man, with his arms folded in his not very expensive checked sports shirt. His look was not one of fanaticism, but of uncomfortable loyalty. He was bracing himself, perhaps—but not for bullets, only for boredom or embarrassment.

  Also present, to define the opposite end of the auctioneers’ spectrum of respect, was Ellison Seabright. When Seabright entered the front door, a few minutes after Mr. Thorn, the salesmen gave him the warmest welcome they could manage without seeming to be effusive about it, without drawing possibly unwelcome attention to his presence: the greeting for a celebrity, but one who temporarily has more attention than he wants.

  Seabright was about fifty years old. In general appearance, he reminded Mr. Thorn strongly of Rodrigo Borgia. Mr. Seabright weighed about three hundred pounds, Thorn judged, and if the tales of the family wealth were anywhere near accurate he might have balanced himself in gold and had enough left over to purchase any painting or sculpture that he might desire. According to the publicity that had begun to appear since his brother’s kidnapping and strange death, it was a family trait to desire a good many.

  Ellison Seabright, from where he stood in quiet conversation with the auctioneers, once or twice shot a hurried, grim glance in the direction of Mary Rogers—as if he knew her, which was interesting. Mr. Thorn, from his chair in the front row, could not tell how the young woman in the rear reacted to these glances, if at all.

  The other potential bidders in the room all glowed in their not very distinctive auras of material wealth. The auctioneers, when they conferred privately (as they thought) among themselves in the next room, had voiced hopes that a local record was going to be set. They were daring to compare themselves tonight with Christie’s, with Sotheby Parke Bernet. This time, even leaving aside such relatively minor treasures as Mimbres bowls and Chinese jade, this time they had a probably genuine Verrocchio to put on the block.

  Mr. Thorn was doubtless among those they were counting on to run the bidding up when it officially began tomorrow night. Although they had never seen or heard of him before, it was surely apparent to such artistically expert eyes that Thorn’s dark suit had been tailored at one of the best London shops, and that his shoes were a good match for the suit. He wore, on the third finger of his right hand, a worn-thin ring of ancient gold. His general appearance was at least as elegant as that of Mr. Seabright.

  The height of the two men was about the same, somewhat above the average. Thorn’s weight was considerably less—though not so very much less as it appeared to be. He looked to be Seabright’s junior by ten or fifteen years, but that comparison was deceptive too. Their faces were both striking, in different ways: Seabright’s for massive arrogance, Thorn’s—in a way not nearly so massive. As for their relative wealth—but Mr. Thorn had not really come to Scottsdale to bid and buy.

  “No, I’m sure it’s going to go to Ellison,” Mary Rogers was whispering to her dour young companion with the sandy beard. “The old bastard probably has more money than all these others put together. And he wants it, I know how he wants it. After what he’s done already he’s not going to let mere money stop him.”

  There were several rows of chairs between Mary and Mr. Thorn. The room was abuzz with the noise of other conversations. And her whisper was really more discreet—that was the key word of the evening, up to now—than her misfit appearance promised. So Mary’s words could be heard only by her friend seated beside her, and by Mr. Thorn, whose ears were wonderfully keen. Also it is a fact that Thorn was constitutionally unable to ignore either of the two women in the room he found genuinely attractive.

  The second genuinely attractive woman was dark and slender, somewhere in her mid-thirties, and sheathed in a gown that you might think had been designed expressly to wear while inspecting expensive art. She was physically young for her years, but not as young as she wanted to be or tried to be. Probably to no one’s surprise, she was clinging to Ellison Seabright’s right arm. Certain subtleties of body language in her pose suggested to Thorn that she was clinging there in order to avoid having to swim elsewhere. At the moment her massive escort was standing at the right end of the front row of chairs, in conversation with the head auctioneer, and with one who must be a fellow collector, a bearded elderly gentleman wearing another New York suit. Seabright was turning his massive head, looking round him in irritation. “Where’s Gliddon?” he was inquiring of the world in general, though his voice was hardly more than whisper-loud. A voice not in the least Borgia, but thoroughly American. “Got as far as the front door with me, and then …”

  A bodyguard even taller than Seabright, and almost as wide, stood nearby teetering on his toes. He was not very obtrusive, handling at least the passive aspects of his job quite well. The dark woman clung to Seabright’s arm, smiled brightly, and seemed to attend closely to his every word, meanwhile wistfully wishing that she were somewhere else. Mr. Thorn could tell. He had hopes of soon discovering her name.

  “Then you might as well give up, hadn’t you?” the young man at Mary Rogers’ side was whispering into her ear. His tone was quietly despairing, that of one who knows full well that argument is folly, but feels compelled to argue anyway. “You think he’s going to listen to any kind of an appeal now?”

  “No.” Mary’s monosyllable was quietly ominous.

  “Then why the hell did we come here? I thought …”

  At that point every conversation in the room trailed into silence.

  Through a curtained doorway at the front of the room, between the two large tables, two armed and uniformed men came into view, rolling a mobile stand between them. The stand was draped with a white cloth, completely covering the upright rectangle that was its cargo. The rectangle was about the size of the top of a card table, somewhat larger than Mr. Thorn had been expecting. Then he remembered the frame. According to the news stories and the sale catalogue, a frame had been added to the painting, probably sometime during the eighteenth century.

  With the stand position on the dais between the tables, the two armed men stood still, alert, on either side of it. An auctioneer came to join them, placing his pale hand on the white cloth. He let his showman’s hand stay there, motionlessly holding the cloth, while in a low voice he made a brief and scrupulously correct announcement.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, as most of you know, Verrocchio has signed this piece. But in the time and place in which he worked, such a signature often signified no more than a master’s approval of work done by an apprentice. What
we can say with absolute certainty is that this painting is from Verrocchio’s workshop, and that it is in his mature style. The minimum bid tomorrow night will be two hundred thousand dollars.”

  With one firm twitch, the showman’s hand removed the cloth.

  Mr. Thorn forgot even the live and lovely flesh of the two genuinely attractive breathing women in the room. He rose from his folding chair and like a man in a trance stepped forward, closer to the painting. It of course shows Magdalen, not as she came to Christ, but as she must have looked when rising from His feet with sins forgiven. Yes, of course, painted in the mature style of Verrocchio. But by an imitator—though transfiguration would be a better word than imitation for what the creator of this painting had accomplished. How could they all fail to see the truth?

  And of course at the same time the face is that of the model who posed for it, that young runaway girl of more than half a thousand years ago. An excellent likeness, if that is what you wish…

  Incipient tears in the eyes of Mr. Thorn were stopped by harsh cries of alarm. Another sort of liquid, flung from behind, struck him on the shoulder, and scarlet droplets spattered past his ear to mar the cheek and hair of Magdalen.

  He turned with a snarl. The girl in unfashionable blue jeans was on her feet, holding in one hand a small plastic bag almost emptied but still drooling red on the expensive carpet. Vindictive triumph ruled her face. Closer at hand, Ellison Seabright had been incarnadined from head to foot, Rodrigo Borgia skinned alive, standing in stunned disbelief. His bodyguard, galvanized too late, came pushing forward in a fury. Men and women in uniform, springing from the walls and woodwork, were all around the triumphant girl, about to seize her. You are under arrest, they cried, and in a moment they would manacle her wrists.

  Chapter Two

  Quite early in the game, long before our long marching column approached Buda, the chains of hand-wrought iron were unlocked and taken from my wrists. At the same time, my ankles were untied, and I was given a better horse to ride. To my thinking all this served as an early confirmation of my own good judgment in deciding to throw myself upon the mercy of King Matthias. Of course with the Turks close at my heels and the remnants of my own outnumbered army fast dissolving, there had been little real choice.

  The king, when he accepted my surrender, had been angry with me—mainly as a result of certain false accusations, lying letters planted by my enemies for him to intercept, a whole devious chain of circumstances that I do not mean to go into here. But evidently His Majesty soon realized the truth. I did not have another chance to talk to him during the march to Buda, but his officers must have been given orders to treat me well. When we reached Buda they put me into a cell high up in the fortress, a stone chamber better ventilated and cleaner than many of the free houses of the time.

  My food also was good, by the standards of the time and place, and plentiful enough. This was, you understand, more than twelve years before I fell under the treacherous swords of would-be murderers, stopped breathing, and acquired my present idiosyncrasies of diet. And when cold weather arrived I was allowed a fire. Guards took me out each day for exercise in a courtyard. There I sometimes walked under the noses of papal legates—I recognized Nicholas of Modrusa once—ambassadors from here and there, some other important men and curious ladies whom I could not identify. None of these ever spoke to me, but observed silently, from balconies where they usually chose to remain half concealed. Even then, you will understand, my reputation was under construction, by German enemies who employed Goebbelsian thoroughness in their attempted destruction of the truth. Now, for important folk visiting His Majesty at Buda, the in thing to do was evidently to ask to see the monster caged. Well, at the time I enjoyed my walks despite observers, and perhaps I should now think more kindly of them. Some were doubtless sympathetic to my cause, and they may have expressed their feelings to Matthias. Still, I spent a year in that first cell.

  From time to time I was given brief audience by the king, who limited himself for the most part to looking at me keenly and inquiring how I was. Matthias was then only twenty years of age, but had already spent four years on the throne of Hungary. He had come to power by what amounted to popular acclamation; and time had already begun to vindicate the confidence thus shown him by his people.

  At the end of a year I was suddenly moved about fifty kilometers up the Danube to Visegrad Palace, where Matthias was currently spending a good deal of his time. A good deal of money, also, which he extracted mercilessly from the wealthy landowners of his realm, and not all of it was going to feed and equip his formidable army. Scholars and artists from across Europe were beginning to assemble there at his invitation. Already they had started to put together the magnificent library that would be known as the Corvina, and only a few years later the palace would house the first printing press in all that region of Europe … but I am beginning to stray from my story.

  At the Palace of Visegrad I was again incarcerated. Just as the history books of the twentieth century will tell you—they do now and then get something right, at least—I was put into a cell in what was called the Tower of Solomon. My cell, or perhaps I should even call it a room, was even more comfortable than before, and the conditions of my confinement still more lenient. The thought of attempting to escape from Matthias had never struck me as a very good idea, and now even the faintest tendencies in that direction quite vanished from my mind. All signs tended to reassure me that my instinct to trust the king had been correct. Escape, even if it succeeded, could hardly get me anywhere, for I had literally nowhere to go. But patience would reveal what plans that wise, just prince was formulating, in which he meant me to play a role.

  I felt increasingly certain that the king’s plans, whatever they might be, must offer me something better than mere confinement, however mild its terms. I had never been more than technically Matthias’s foe; his anger at me was due more to the conniving of my enemies than to anything that I had really done. And, if I may say so myself, I was too good to be wasted. Sooner or later the king would determine the right place in which to use me, and when that happened I could not fail to be restored to a position of power and official honor.

  As you will see, my thinking in all this was basically correct. Even if never, in my highest flights of fancy, did I guess correctly just what the king would ultimately decide my right place was to be…

  What you will find set down in today’s history books is that the Tower of Solomon remained my prison for the next eleven years. The historical experts, who in other respects often behave as if they are perfectly sober, relate that during that time I was often granted the special boon of having small animals brought living to my cell, that I might entertain myself by torturing them and impaling them on miniature stakes. This quaint behavior must have so impressed the humanist Matthias that it was during this very period that he decided to arrange my marriage to his sister. At the same time, to punish her for consorting with such a beast as Drakulya, he had her name obliterated from all the family records. (And it is true, that historians can now find out hardly anything about her, save the mere fact of her existence, and our marriage.) When eleven years of this idyll had passed, Matthias decided for unknown reasons that it was time for a change, abruptly brought me out of my cell—whether my bride had meanwhile been locked up with me is left to the imagination of the reader—and in due course restored me to my former eminence as Prince of Wallachia.

  Now, I ask you. Does it require prolonged reflection, penetrating intelligence of the first order, to infer that the above scenario lacks something, that it might perhaps profit by correction?

  Truth is hard to attain. But let me at least try to restore to the record a little sanity. After the move to Visegrad, the king saw me more frequently. At each audience he probed me deeply with searching young eyes, eyes rapidly growing wise beyond their years with the experience of statecraft. At each meeting now he asked me many questions. What did I think about this particular military proble
m? Supposing I were the king’s chief adviser, what course would I recommend in that political difficulty? What was George of Podebrady up to, and how about the Germans? Should women be encouraged to read and write? He interrogated me in areas philosophical and moral, he sought to know my mind on matters of theology and art. Always I strove to answer truthfully, weak though my knowledge was in many fields. I wanted to appear to His Majesty as neither more nor less than what I truly was: loyal and capable, yet prone, as all men are, to human imperfection.

  The key conversation between us took place one sunny day in the early spring of 1464, when I had been about six months at Visegrad. My guards, whose gradually improving courtesy had fed my hopes, on that day positively bowed as they came to escort me from my now well-furnished cell. I was led into a part of the palace that I had not previously visited, through rooms where some of Matthias’s growing legion of painters and bookworms were at work. The king himself was waiting for me in a large chamber, magnificently furnished. Its broad shelves contained more books, all hand-copied of course, than I had ever seen before in my entire non-bookish life.