“Fuss?”
“Yes, you know how babies are.”
“Not really.”
“Oh. Well, their little tummies know when things are supposed to happen, and if they don’t get fed right on time, they let you know they’re not happy about it.”
“So she was late, then?”
She thought for a moment. “A bit, I guess. No more than a few minutes.”
I thanked her and showed her out. I was starting to get an idea, but I tried not to dwell on it until I had more information. I wanted the theory to fit the facts, not the other way around. I made some quick notes and stared at the battle scene painted on the ceiling until the next timid knock on the door.
The maid Sally Sween was way too pretty to work in a bachelor household. Had she been in service back when Phil and I were teenagers, I shudder to think of the lengths to which we’d have gone to win her favors. As it was, her exquisite face was puffy with fear-spawned tears, since being summoned to the king’s office was almost never a good thing.
“Would you like a drink?” I asked. Her uniform worked hard to control her decolletage, which distracted me more than I wanted to admit. She shook her head. I poured myself one. She crossed enviable legs as she waited.
Finally I said, “You stated that when you first checked on the queen and the baby, she was asleep in the rocking chair, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was the baby asleep?”
She blinked. “Well… I assume so. He wasn’t crying or anything.”
I nodded. “Now I need you to think real hard on this one. Did you actually see the baby in the queen’s arms?”
She thought so hard I was afraid her eyes would pop from her face. “She had a bundle in her arms that I thought was her son, but… I can’t swear to actually seeing him. Is that important?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. But inside I felt another click as more things aligned.
I kept my gaze as even as I could. What I’d asked was horrendous even to me, but I couldn’t let Phil know that, or I knew he’d talk me out of it. He stared at me over his desk, speechless.
Wentrobe finally spoke. “Baron LaCrosse, are you sure that’s needed?”
The use of the title made me grit my teeth. “Pretty sure,” I said, although I kept my eyes on Phil.
“Well, I don’t know if I can condone this,” Wentrobe said. “It’s… it’s sacrilegious.”
“It’s necessary,” I said. “I just need one workman to help me. No one else has to know.”
Phil looked down for a minute. “Okay,” he said at last. “I did ask for your help, so I have to let you do your job.” Then he looked up and added, “But no workman. You and I’ll do it.”
Wentrobe looked stricken. “Your Majesty, I don’t think-”
“No one is going to desecrate my son’s tomb,” he snapped. “If I do it, then I know it’ll be done with respect.” He stood up and took a deep breath. “Exactly what do you think you’ll find?”
“The last piece of the frame,” I said. I didn’t want to give him my entire theory just yet. “Then maybe I can see the whole picture.”
EIGHT
The tombs for Arentia’s royal family were in a crypt deep beneath the castle. We waited until night to make our descent, when theoretically no one would notice that the king was up to anything so screwy. The air grew cooler and damper as we wound our way down the spiral stone steps, and my nascent discomfort at closed spaces began to flare. Despite the chill air, I was sweating like a pig.
Phil noticed and grinned at me. “Not scared of the dark, are you?” he teased, using any excuse to avoid expressing the feelings I knew churned within him.
“No, scared this half-assed castle might fall on my head,” I said. “Some kings build brand new ones, you know.”
“Hey, remember when you snuck down here thinking Tasha Ghent was waiting for you?”
“Oh, yeah, I remember. I still owe you for that one.” Phil had told me Tasha, a buxom young brunette who worked in the kingdom’s taxation office, had developed a crush on me even though I was six years younger. I received a note telling me she’d wait for me in the catacombs, along with a map showing me exactly where. At the time, my little head exerted more influence than my big one, so I followed the map and ended up in a disused, dead-end corridor; when I tried to backtrack my way out, I discovered that Phil had blocked me in with a fake wall. I didn’t know it was fake, of course, and to this day I swear I got my first gray hair screaming like a girl until he let me out.
We reached the final door. It was a huge iron-barred affair, ten feet high and locked at the center. Beyond it, our torches illuminated the first of many rows of sealed royal crypts.
Phil slipped the key into the lock, but paused a minute before he turned it. “You have any kids, Eddie?” he asked softly.
“No.”
“It changes the way you look at things. You completely stop living for yourself; you live for them.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t tell this to anybody else. I don’t know how to be a father who’s outlived his son. Not like this.”
“I wish I could help,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to let on what I suspected; even though it might have eased his mind a bit for the moment, it would be even worse if I turned out to be wrong.
“I completely trusted my wife,” he continued. “With everything-state secrets, personal secrets, even things I’ve never told anyone else. She was the mother of my child. If I could be that wrong about her… how can I ever trust my judgment again? How can I expect anyone else to trust it?”
“Things aren’t always what they seem,” I said as reassuringly as I dared. “C’mon, let’s go do this and then we can go get drunk.”
The gate creaked the way a mausoleum door should. I followed him past the bones of his ancestors, until we reached the most recent additions. He stopped before one whose capstone was still white with its newness. It bore his son’s name, and the beginning and end dates of a criminally short life. We placed our torches in holders on the wall behind us.
I opened the canvas bag and pulled out a hammer and chisel. Phil ran his finger down the line of fresh cement that sealed the tomb.
“Really have to do this?” he asked one last time.
“Really do.”
“I’m sorry, P.D.,” he said softly, and stepped back.
Removing the seal was a one-person job, so I didn’t begrudge Phil not helping. It took awhile to chip the cement away; it was still fresh and solid, unlike the crumbly stuff around older tombs. By the time I finished, my shoulders were in knots and I was drenched with sweat.
I dropped the tools back in the bag and pulled out two crowbars. We wedged them on either side of the stone and, accompanied by a great grinding sound, pulled it out and carefully lowered it to the floor.
Phil drew out the heartbreakingly tiny coffin. He placed it on the floor, took a deep breath and then lifted the lid. I leaned down to examine the contents.
I knew within moments that I’d been right. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” I said as I scrutinized the scattered, fleshless bones retrieved from the cauldron. “The good news is, this ain’t your boy.”
Instantly Phil was on his knees next to me. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.
I picked up one of the skeletal arms, intact from the elbow down. “Look at the hand bones. Baby bones are short and round, because they’re not fully formed yet. These are the finger bones of an adult. But here’s the clincher.” I picked up the skull, which was conveniently missing its lower jaw. “Look. Somebody was in a hurry, and they got a little sloppy. That look like a baby tooth to you?” I pointed at the single molar at the back of the jaw that had been missed when the gum was altered to look more infant-like.
“What is this?” Phil whispered, astounded.
“It might be a dwarf, but I’m betting it’s a monkey. Changed around a little so it would pass the kind of inspection it would get in a crisis. It wouldn’t occur to anyone that these bones wouldn’t be your son, especially since he was gone.” I dropped the skull into the coffin, where it landed with a dry clatter.