The King's Gold by Yxta Maya Murray Read Free Book Online Page B

I keep him alive. In truth, I find him most intriguing.
    For he is the first to have discovered the truth about me.
    Note my new seal, Cousin: I am a Wolf. And with the warlocks’ secret fire, I shall achieve what I could not through all my hacking away at peasants & felons, for all my reading.
    You see, I will usher the world into an Age of Reason.
    But it shall be made for my Reason, and not that of any other.
    Do you understand? Cease spending at once what shall be my money, which shall build the Grand Schools I will set up all over the world, like Alexander the Great, like Caesar.
    If you do not, Beware.
    Antonio.
    “This doesn’t look the same as your document,” I answered to Marco’s intense gaze, once I’d read this monomaniac’s description of the flammable “amber-colored mud” that reminded me of naphtha—the ancient Moorish incendiary weapon, used most famously by Alexander the Great against the Indians, that is inflamed by water but doused by powders.
    This recognition had only flitted through my mind for a moment: I focused less on the substance of the letter than the very look of it. I’ve studied the mysteries of penmanship—not only practicing calligraphy myself but reading everything from FBI manuals on the science of forensic handwriting identification to sixteenth-century tomes on occult graphology. Immediately I could see that the ductus, or pen angle, of this document’s calligraphy differed from Marco’s.
    “Well, you mean the letters don’t read alike.” Marco impatiently slapped at the air with his long pianist’s hands. “The tone of the thing, I mean, the literary style.”
    Dr. Riccardi leveled her glasses at us. “It is true that if your letter had been authored by Antonio after his return with Cortés’s fleet, it would not read like this one—so savagely, that is. In his middle and late life, his character matured because of an illness, which he called the Condition . He also mellowed on account of his wife’s beneficent influence—”
    “Sofia,” Marco and I both said at the same time.
    “Yes. But Lola was speaking, I believe, of the penmanship?”
    The noble-looking professor sat with his back to us while reading, grunting as if to communicate distaste at the volume of our conversation.
    “Marco,” I whispered. “Bring your letter out—I have to take a closer look at it.”
    He slipped the pages from the envelope; the transparent pages glowed like pearls.
    I said, “The paper of Marco’s letter is strange, now that I think of it. What do I remember about onionskin—it wasn’t used much in the Renaissance, was it?”
    Dr. Riccardi shook her head. “No, it wasn’t. And it would be an odd choice of writing paper for Antonio to make. The Medici wrote on parchment, as in the other letters. This isn’t onionskin, precisely, but rather a hemp fiber, which has been scraped so fine as to become transparent. And it became popular only in the seventeenth century, and then mostly with parvenu courtesans who absurdly thought it lascivious, as it resembled the fabric of their lingerie.”
    “But the real problem is the handwriting,” I said. “In Marco’s letter, the script is slightly more cramped, in the ascenders, the garlands. The difference is subtle.”
    Dr. Riccardi nodded. “It is actually quite glaring to my eye.”
    “Lola, don’t make a snap decision, take your time ,” Marco ordered me, in a low voice.
    By Antonio’s letter to the pope, I placed the letter that Marco had purchased from Mr. Soto-Relada, which I quote again for clarity:
    My dear nephew Cosimo, Duke of Florence,
    I write this missive in response to your call for funds, on the eve of your battle against the Sienese...a war I have told you I find in bad taste...When did we last meet, before you Exiled my wife, Sofia the Dragon, and me? It was in the 1520s, I believe, just after I returned from America, in the few months when I was still allowed to feast at our family’s palazzo. The