One With the Shadows (39 page)

She set the box down and unfolded the paper. Holding it to the light, she recognized Buonarroti’s spidery hand. Really, how could such a brilliant artist write so badly?

“Go to the catacombs under Il Duomo. Take the corridor at the south end. Behind the end wall is something that will make you happy, Donnatella, I promise.” It was signed “Michelangelo” in just the scribble one could still see on the base of the
Pieta.

Whatever could he mean?

And why leave a note for … for more than three hundred years inside a puzzle box? Why, she might never have opened the little secret drawer. He’d never shown her how when he demonstrated the box back in 1501.

Maria knocked discreetly and let herself in. She bustled about opening the wardrobe. “Which dress would you like tonight, your ladyship?”

“The rust silk,” Donnatella murmured, still staring at the note.
Behind the end wall is something that will make you happy
.… Not likely. Only one thing would make her happy, and it was eighteen hundred years too late to get it. Buonarroti hadn’t even known what it was.

Still …

She rose so suddenly the chair toppled over. “Never mind the rust silk, Maria. Get out the dress I wore when we reorganized the wine cellar.”

The maid’s eyes widened. “Your ladyship is never going to wear that dress to the opera!”

“No, I am not. And find my sturdiest half-boots.” She rang the bell again. It sounded as though she’d need a tool for demolition. A blacksmith’s sledgehammer perhaps. Bucarro, her faithful majordomo, would know where to procure one. A footman peeped into the room.

“Get Bucarro,” she ordered. This was insane. But she was going to the catacombs.

*   *   *

Donnatella stood alone in her rooms, the sledgehammer and a lantern concealed under her cloak. She dared not meet any late-returning revelers in the streets. So she called on the Companion in her blood. Power surged up her veins, trembling like the threat of sheet lightning in the air around her. A red film dropped over her field of vision.
Companion, more!
she thought. And that being that was the other half of her answered with a surge. A whirling blackness rose up around her, obscuring all. She pictured the Baptistery of the Duomo in her mind. Not many living knew about the catacombs beneath it anymore. But she did. The familiar pain seared through her just as the blackness overwhelmed her. She gasped.

The blackness drained away, leaving only the dim interior of the octagonal Baptistery. She did not bother with the lamp. To humans the mosaics of the dome above her would be lost in shadows, but she saw well in darkness. The place felt like the crossroads of the world. The building itself was clearly Roman, almost like the Pantheon, but the sarcophagi on display were Egyptian, the frescoes Germanic in flavor. The floor, with its Islamic inlay, stretched ahead to the baptismal font. Her boots clicked across the marble. Behind the font was a staircase. She skipped down into the darkness without hesitation. Below, the walls of the vast chamber were of plain stone, the floor above supported with round columns and arches. Marble tombs of cardinals and saints lined the edges. It smelled of damp stone and, ever so faintly, decay.

But this was not her destination. A large rectangular stone carved in an ornate medieval style lay in the middle of the floor. It was perhaps four feet across and six long, six inches thick. Setting down her sledgehammer, she stooped and lifted.
Thank the gods for vampire strength.

She dragged the stone aside so that it only partially covered the opening. A black maw revealed rough stone stairs leading down. The smell of human dust assailed her. Rats skittered somewhere. Now she took out her flint and striker, and lit the lamp. Stepping into the darkness, she turned and lifted the stone above her once again. It dropped into place with a resounding thud, concealing the stairs. Holding the lamp high in one hand, she started down. Light flickered on the stone walls on either side of the staircase. Catacombs at night were the stuff of nightmares for most of the world. But she was not afraid. She was the stuff of nightmares too.

The stairs finally opened out on a maze of corridors, each lined with niches to hold the bodies of the early Christian dead. Most were filled only with piles of dust now or sometimes a clutter of bones. Occasionally a skeleton hand intact still clutched a crucifix, or some shred of rotted fabric fluttered in the air that circulated from somewhere.

Before she headed into the maze, she got her bearings. She was at the north end. She must go southeast. That would take her back under the nave of the main building of the Duomo. She took a breath and started out. It took her several wrong turnings to make her way to the other edge of the maze, but she was rewarded by finding a long, straight corridor that led away from the main catacombs.

This was it. She knew it. Whatever Michelangelo Buonarroti thought would make her happy was at the end of this corridor. This was foolish. There was no doubt about that. He couldn’t know what would make her happy, and if he did, he couldn’t give it to her. Traipsing around in catacombs on a treasure hunt that would no doubt prove disappointing if it wasn’t useless altogether was a sign of just how desperate she had become.

But she
was
desperate. She didn’t know how much more she could take of the gnawing regret that had overwhelmed her in the last years. So, foolish as this was, however likely to end in disappointment, she couldn’t turn and walk away. She started down the corridor.

It ended abruptly in a solid wall of plaster. She set down her lantern, her stomach fluttering no matter how she tried to tell it there was no cause for excitement. Hefting the sledgehammer, she hauled it back and slammed it into the wall with all her strength. The plaster crumbled, revealing carefully cut stone that fitted exactly together. Dust choked the air. This would take some doing. Again and again she swung at the stones until she could pry at the ruined corners. Her fingertips were bloodied. No matter. They healed even as she glanced at them. But she was going about this the wrong way. Instead of trying to heave the stone out, she pushed on it. It toppled into the darkness beyond. She pushed on the neighboring stone, and then another until she was standing in front of a large opening, coughing.

She lifted her lantern and stepped through the cloud of dust into the darkness.

And gasped.

What stood towering above her was a maze of a different kind. Giant gears and levers interlocked in some crazy pattern that was positively beautiful. The metal gleamed golden, still shiny with oil. At points in the mechanism were set what looked like jewels the size of her fist, red and green and blue and clear white. Those couldn’t be diamonds, could they?

She stood dumbfounded, staring. What was this thing? A machine of some kind. But what was it for?

It was long minutes before she could tear her eyes away from the beautiful intricacy and look around the room. There was no dust, except for the puff that had wafted in from her exertions with the wall. The place must have been tightly sealed to have kept out even dust. How long had it been sealed like this? Probably since the note was written. Besides the machine the room contained only a simple metal chair, golden like the machine, and a table to match in a corner, unobtrusive. And on the table was a leather-covered book.

Emotions churned through her. Disappointment lurked at the edges of her mind. A machine could not give her back happiness, no matter what it pumped or measured. And yet, there was something almost otherworldly about this most human of creations.

She pulled out the chair, sat, and drew the book toward her. The cover had mold on it. Even a sealed room couldn’t keep out mold. Carefully she opened it. The first page startled her. “For Contessa Donnatella Margherita Luchella di Poliziano, from her friend Leonardo da Vinci. I dedicate to you my greatest work.”

Shivers ran down her spine. Twice in one night she had received notes from friends dead three hundred years. They must have expected her to open them long ago, since they believed she would have been dead as long as they were. Whatever they wanted her to know or do with this machine, she was very late in accomplishing.

She turned another page.

“When you read this, for I know you will, you will have found my machine. Magnificent, isn’t it? And only I could have designed it.”

Leonardo, the dear, always had quite an ego. Still, the man was amazing. He was probably right about the machine.

“I could never find enough power to test it, and yet I know it works. Or at least in one possible reality, it works. But really it is all too complicated, even for one of my intellect. I must find a way to get you here. Something you will keep by you through all the years, something valuable. A piece of art? You love the arts. Buonarroti, that dwarf, will know something. But of course, whatever I do works, because you are here, reading this, and I know you are reading this because …

Or it doesn’t work, and everything is changed, and I never built the machine, or wrote this explanation, and I am not who I am, and you are not who you are.…

Well, never mind that. I have no choice but to fulfill my part in this epic, or this tragedy, whatever it turns out to be.

So here is all the truth I know.

What you see before you is a time machine.”

Gods, do you jest?
she thought, looking up at the machine filling the space. It gleamed in flickering lamplight, towering above her. The jewels sparkled as the light caught them. The possibilities flickered through her in response. What if she could go back? Undo the decision that took Jergan away from her, have the promise of happiness she had seen in Gian’s and Kate’s eyes this evening. This might be the one thing that
could
make her happy.

Her eyes darted back to the journal. But he said he had never tested it.…

“You are asking yourself how it works. If you care to read the journal, you will know. But if you are in haste, know this, time is not a river but a vortex, and with enough power man can jump into another part of the swirl.

Or perhaps man can’t, but you can, my dear Contessa, you who are not human. Do you think I did not notice the hum of energy about you? I measured it without your knowledge, and was astounded. The people around you feel it as vitality, a force of personality, an incredible attraction to you, but I know better. Your power is real and it is incredibly strong. It keeps you young and heals you. The you of today thinks I did not know those things about you either. But the you who you will be told me. It is the knowledge of this source of power that inspires me to build a machine worthy of its use.

My only regret is that I will not live to see it used. But you, who started me on this quest, told me you must not find it until after I am dead. It will wait for you, who live forever, to use when the time is right.

So, my dear Contessa, pull the lever. Use your power, think of the moment you want to be as you jump into the maelstrom. That will influence the machine. You will end up in the moment you imagine.

But be warned: The machine will go with you but it cannot stay long in another time. To return, you must use it again before it disappears. I do not know how long it can stay. I do not know what will happen if you make it back to the time you are in now, or what will happen if you don’t. I give you only the means to change your destiny, or perhaps all of our destinies. Use it if you will.

Donnatella sat there, stunned. She couldn’t think. A time machine? And one that confused even the grand intellect of the one who made it. She leafed through the pages of the journal. Complicated drawings, long blotted passages containing theoretical explanations of the vortex, records of his useless attempts to find enough energy to power the machine flipped past her. She stopped and read a few. She was doing it only to delay the moment of decision.

And why? She knew what she would do here. Once she had been too timid to break the Rules and grab for the prize of true love. Now she was willing to risk everything, and determined to have the courage to do it.

Her heart thudded in her chest as she rose from the table and stared up at the great machine. Did her Companion have enough power to run it? She could just test the theory—pull back if she got some initial result. But she wouldn’t. What if timidity ruined everything as it had so long ago? What if she drained herself in an experiment, making the real effort impossible?

No, it was all or nothing.

She swallowed, her eyes filling for the second time tonight.

The handle of the machine was a brass lever about three feet long and topped by a glowing jewel. She reached out for it. The great diamond fit her palm exactly.

She pulled. There was a creak, but nothing else changed.

“Companion.” She called her other half out loud in the wavering lamplight. A surge of power shot up her veins. A red film fell over her field of vision. Above her, the early morning light would be filtering into the nave of Il Duomo. The priests would be moving quietly about, tending the votive candles or kneeling in prayer. The machine was still.

“Companion! More!” The whirling black vortex of translocation began to swirl around her feet. She couldn’t allow that. She pushed it down, but kept the power humming in the air. There was a great grinding sound and the largest of the metal cogs in front of her began to move. Still she called the power from the parasite in her blood that was part of her, and more than her. A white glow formed a halo around her. Every detail of the cavern stood out, sharp-edged. The movement of the gears cascaded down from the great, cogged wheel to the hundred smaller ones. The jewels sparkled. Gears whirled ever faster until the eye could not follow them.