The Amber Knight by Katherine John Read Free Book Online

surface of the amber, presumably a calculated touch to convince sceptical buyers the knight was genuine.
    ‘I’ve found just the place for the pieces you’ve bought,’ Edmund flung back the door, crashing it against the wall. ‘We’ll have to adjust the lighting over the powder horn so no one can examine it too closely…’
    ‘Take a look at this,’ Adam interrupted, handing Edmund a close up of the coffin.
    ‘Is it a quiz? It looks like lumps of sausage in yellow pea soup.’
    ‘There’s a certificate signed by Ludwig Krefta authenticating it as Helmut von Mau’s body.’
    ‘The Amber Knight! Holy Mother of God! I never thought he would surface again.’ Staring at the photograph Edmund fumbled blindly for the others.
    ‘I’m surprised at the authentication. I assumed both Kreftas died years ago.’ Adam pushed the photographs into Edmund’s hand.
    ‘The elder did. As for the younger, an amber-smith doesn’t always die when he stops exhibiting, and the curtailment of government grants after the fall of Communism hit some artists hard.’
    ‘And the bad ones who relied on the subsidies hardest of all,’ Adam observed cynically.
    ‘Who’s to say what’s bad?’
    Adam killed the argument before it began. ‘I admit I’m a philistine. Could these be for real?’
    ‘It would be marvellous if they were. My old tutor always believed von Mau’s body and the Amber Room ended up in the private collection of someone like your Howard Hughes; a recluse rich and mad enough to gloat over his ill-gotten gains in private.’
    ‘Let’s hope they did. Some of your countrymen are crazy and avaricious enough to break up anything for a quick profit.’
    ‘Touché. Can the Institute afford fifty million dollars?’
    ‘Only if I earmarked the whole of the European budget for the next fifty years including my own and Magdalena’s salary.’
    ‘Can’t you persuade the trustees to view this as a special case?’ Edmund pleaded. ‘If this is authentic it would set the museum on the international tourist map. The legendary Amber Knight, here in Gdansk. They’d pour through the doors. We’d have to employ another dozen guides just to herd them around.’
    ‘You mean more people would want to see the Amber Knight than your collection of Sudanese mud huts?’
    Edmund had the grace to remain silent. When Adam had arrived at the museum its exhibits had comprised a motley collection of Roman fragments, Bronze Age bones and African huts and spears, all the museum could afford, and most of which had absolutely no connection with Gdansk or Baltic culture.
    ‘Just think what this means if it is the real thing?’ Carried away by the prospect of recovering the knight, Edmund began mentally re-arranging the museum’s layout. ‘If we emptied the long gallery on the second floor and re-furbished it – dark blue would look good and complement the amber – put in subdued lighting and raised the coffin on a dais, people could walk around the amber-encased body of the man who founded Christian civilization on the Baltic. We wouldn’t need another exhibit on the floor, and we could double, if not treble, our admission fees. I bet we’d even have to put in ropes to control the queues.’
    ‘Wasn’t von Mau a German?’ Adam wondered which other institutions would be interested – and rich enough – to make a bid.
    ‘He was born in Saxony, but that’s like saying St Patrick’s Welsh, not Irish. After he and von Balk vanquished the barbarians…’
    ‘The Prussians, you mean.’
    ‘What’s in a name?’ Edmund questioned impatiently. ‘Everyone knows the original Prussian tribes were savages, and Prussia as a state didn’t exist until the Teutonic knights founded it. It’s our history, the history of this region that goes back over seven hundred years.’
    ‘I hate to dampen your enthusiasm, but you’re forgetting two small technicalities. One, even if this is the real McCoy we haven’t got anything like fifty