“The pelt!” Matteo cried.
Annja frowned and delivered another swift strike up under the man’s jaw. That tilted his head to the side sharply, stealing his consciousness. Blood drooled from his mouth. “He’s out.”
She rose and wiped her hands down her pant legs.
“He believes it, too,” Ian said, the camera pointed toward the ground, the green run light showing he’d filmed Matteo’s confession. “Now what?”
The cell phone in Annja’s pocket vibrated. She swiped a loose strand of hair from her face and over her ear and strode toward the parking lot, gesturing for Ian to follow. Matteo would be fine.
Annja answered the call in a harsh tone. “Seriously? This had better be good.”
“Sounds like someone needs a nap.”
The French accent had become a familiar voice in her life. Yet it had been a while since she’d talked to the old coot. Usually it was she who contacted him.
“Roux.” She blew out a breath, calming her thundering heartbeat. “Sorry. It’s been a long day. And I think I’ve spent most of it with a selkie.”
“Selkies, eh? A bit fantastical, even for your wild adventures. I thought you preferred kneeling hunched over a pile of dirt?”
“I do, but I do work for a television program that tracks monsters. Selkies are not so fantastical when you think about it. You do know it’s—” she cast her gaze toward the sky, then turned the phone to check the time display “—close to midnight?”
“Not where I am. The sun is shining and I’m, well... What can I say?”
No details. Never any details unless the man considered them salacious or wanted to tease her, which was often. But Annja wasn’t interested. She didn’t want to do the math to calculate what time zone he could be in to be calling her during the day.
“Like you said, I need to get some rest, so make this quick.”
“I’ve a simple question. One I thought would intrigue you.”
She closed her eyes and blew in and released a deep breath. A half-hour shower was the only thing she could think about. Her neck ached. She’d have a bruise there by the time she hit said shower. “What’s that?”
“Very well. Do you know what Leonardo da Vinci and Joan of Arc had in common?”
Any mention of Joan of Arc straightened Annja’s spine. She opened her eyes wide and, seeing Ian’s intent interest, turned her back to him. Some things she only talked about with certain people. And those few people—actually, only two—also had a keen interest in the sainted martyr.
“Bonus points if you can name their common benefactor,” Roux added cheerily.
Well, that narrowed it down to one person. Annja liked a good quiz. But she needn’t the clue.
She’d read a lot on the young woman who had boldly led the French army to war in the fifteenth century, only to be labeled a heretic and burned at the stake by the English forces. Joan interested her because Annja had an inexplicable connection to her. One that she could never completely explain and so had accepted on blind faith. And there was the fact that whenever she was in trouble and needed protection, she could call Joan of Arc’s sword to hand from the otherwhere.
Cool. Weird. Fortuitous when she was in a bind. And she tended to find herself in a bind more often than the average archaeologist. Just call her a jet-setting dirt digger and sometime crime fighter and defender of the innocent.
It worked for her.
“Let’s see...” Annja kicked at the smooth stones that had been turned over and over by high tides and infinite time. “Joan was burned in 1431. Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t born until 1452. So someone who had known Joan and was very young at that time, who then later traveled to Italy, possibly— Aha!
“Good King René,” she answered. “I believe René d’Anjou’s mother, Yolande, tutored Jeanne at a young age. And René and da Vinci were quite possibly known to each other as well, both being men of the Renaissance.”
“Exactly. The Duke d’Anjou, besides being a philanthropist, was literally one of the first men of his age and time who sought to share knowledge instead of suppress it. He wasn’t as close to Jeanne as was his mother, but still, there was a loose connection, we think.”
That he paused now piqued Annja’s interest even more. If ever there existed someone who knew historic details—firsthand—it was Roux. He had lived through the past five hundred years. It meant that Roux had witnessed Joan’s sword being broken beside those very flames that had ended her life. Flames were a recurring nightmare of Annja’s. She hadn’t had any bad dreams lately and wished that would continue forever.
“That’s not the reason for my call,” Roux said, sidestepping what exciting secrets Annja had hoped he would reveal to her. “You guessed right. René d’Anjou was likely associated with both our Joan and Leonardo. Are you familiar with a theft that took place six months ago at the main antiquities museum in Poland?”
Annja glanced over her shoulder. Ian strolled along the waterline, kicking stones here and there, the camera held slack at his side.
“Are we on a new topic now?” she asked. “Renaissance painters, burned saints and add to that the fact my day has been occupied by a possible selkie sighting. My brain is fried, Roux. If you’ve got a point, please get to it.”
“The stolen items from the museum were believed to have been abandoned in a Venetian canal due to a quarrel between the thieves. Both were arrested, one in Milan, the other in the States. Neither has revealed where the items were dropped into which canal. And with little evidence, they were set free.”
“So there are valuable ancient artifacts sitting somewhere at the bottom of a Venetian canal? What’s new?”
“It’s not what is new, Annja, but what was old and possibly dumped in the drink. A Lorraine cross believed to have once belonged to Leonardo da Vinci.”
There were so many styles of crosses. The Lorraine cross was a particular favorite of hers. “Right. A heraldic cross with two horizontal crossbars of the same length. Got it.”
“The Lorraine type of cross was carried into the Crusades by the Knights Templars, and later, the image was adopted by the Duke d’Anjou, but only after receiving such a cross as a gift, reputedly from Joan of Arc.”
“So what you’re saying is...” She strode over to Matteo’s inert body and leaned over him. Still out yet, oddly, smiling in his unconscious slumber. “I’m not following you, Roux.”
“It is speculated that the cross that belonged to Leonardo da Vinci was gifted to him by René d’Anjou.”
“Are you supposing that the cross stolen from the museum was originally a cross that belonged to Joan of Arc?”
“That I am.”
“Huh.” Annja stood, hand to her hip, and paced the clattering stones. Ian now sat on the grassy hillside that inclined toward the parking lot, camera on his lap. A giddy excitement stirred her from exhausted to merely semi-tired. “So, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Absolutely, Annja. What do you say to a diving excursion in Venice?”
He was inviting her to do something together? Suspicion immediately set off Annja’s warning bells. Roux was always in it for himself, and he’d step over others to get what he wanted.
On the other hand, she’d just been invited to go diving for lost treasure. And she now had a reason to stay in Italy, as she and Ian had just been discussing. And if the stay was funded by Roux, she didn’t need to bother Doug Morrell with the expenses.
“Sounds good.