“He gave them to me. I have studied the pages, and I have experimented with what I believe are ingredients from the plants drawn on the pages. And there are other things I didn’t first understand, but then slowly I came to realize the book was telling me how to cure the hemophilia.” He lowered his voice. “I tried it on another last month in a neighboring village. It worked. The child thrives. But Your Highness, word has gotten out. There are cries of evil and blasphemy, and threats of death against me. You must swear to stay silent.”
“I swear. Of course I will not put you in harm’s way, but what do the pages tell you to do?”
Rasputin looked over at the boy, precocious, studious, too old for his age. The fear of death around every corner had made him thoughtful beyond his few years. Rasputin saw Alexei’s eyes were still fastened on the pages he held in his hand. He said nothing, merely turned to show the czarina the pages. She couldn’t understand the symbols, the letters, of course, and the strange drawings in muted reds and greens resembled nothing she had ever seen.
He hadn’t been able to read the strange language or understand the symbols, the bizarre drawings, either, until one night when he was nearly insensible from drink. He’d thought of the czarevitch, and suddenly he saw meaning in the strange letters and had recognition for the drawings; he saw herbs he’d never seen before, and he recognized them. It was further proof the pages were from God.
The next day he’d collected the herbs and begun to experiment. And he came to understand that whenever he thought of the dying boy, the pages somehow made it possible for him to read and understand and learn. He said to the czarina, his voice even softer, lowered now to a near whisper, “My method, it is unorthodox, but it will work. Your son will not only grow strong, he will live a very long life.”
She whispered, “Is it witchcraft?”
He immediately reassured her. “No, no, it is not, my lady. It is science. Proven science.”
But she was shaking her head at him. “You misunderstand me. I care not what you call it. I do not care if it is witchcraft. Will it save my son? And saving him will save Russia? How does it work? What must you do?”
Rasputin leaned close and whispered to her. She jerked back, her face draining of color. “No, that is worse than witchcraft, that is blasphemous, barbarous. It is—evil.”
Only at rare times had he seen her go stubborn, not that he could blame her, not this time. He found it exciting, the passion in this beautiful woman. He set out again to soothe, to calm her. “Your Highness, I will admit the cure is esoteric, yes, but it cannot be evil, because I know God sent me the pages.” Still she sat frozen, staring at him.
He said, “There is a potion first, and it is not dangerous nor is it witchcraft. Then we will do what we must. As I said, I have witnessed its results. I will be discreet, naturally. No one will know but you and me.”
“And Alexei. He’s the one who will be taking this—treatment. He will not abide such a thing—he won’t.”
“Even to be healed, once and for all? To know that he must rule after his father, so Russia will grow in strength and power under his hand?”
The czarina paced, at last coming to a stop at the window. She looked out upon the courtyard. Only her coachman was there, feeding the horses. If she agreed to this, would she be cursed into eternity? Yes, she knew she would, it was horrifying. How could she allow such a thing, how?
The young boy said from the chaise set close to the fire, “Mother, I do not want to die, and you know I will. One careless prick, and I will bleed to death. Please, Mother, I do not know what this method is, but I wish to try it. Let him.”
She hadn’t heard Alexei speak with such passion for a very long time, her poor boy, weak, pale, his skin stretched so tightly over his bones. To look at him smote her. Some days she didn’t think she could bear it another minute, another hour. He wanted this? But he didn’t know. She went to him, kneeled beside the chaise, and took his small wasted hand. “Alexei? You don’t know what it is you ask.”
The boy said simply, “I want to be well. I am tired of being ill. I am willing to try anything.”
“But this method, it is wrong, it is accursed.”
Alexei sat up, his pale face filled with excitement, with determination, and in that moment she could see the future czar. “Mother, you will listen. I have decided. I do not want to die. I do not care if the method is cursed. Do what you must, Rasputin. And give me the pages. I should like to read them.”
Rasputin stilled. He said slowly, “Most cannot read them, they are a mystery. Do you think you can?”
Alexei gave him a faint smile, and her boy’s voice sounded suddenly full of conviction. “Of course I can read them. Even now I can hear them speaking to me from across the room.”
The man called the Mad Monk, demon, and spawn of Satan, bowed his head. He believed the boy. Hadn’t he only understood what herbs to mix when he thought of him? And the blood, its directions so clearly coming into his mind?
He watched the czarina slowly get to her feet. She looked at him. Slowly, she nodded.
Rasputin bowed to her. “It will be done. I will come to you at midnight.” He was aware the boy stared at the pages as he placed them back into his black bag.
It was only after Rasputin left that Alexandra explained to her son what Rasputin would give him. She’d fully expected him to draw back, horrified. To her shock, he had not. He leaned close. “The pages, Mother, they already told me what I must do. If the monk were to bring me a goat, it wouldn’t matter.” He smiled at her, took her hand between his thin ones. “I will drink the potion, I will drink the blood, and then I will be well, Mother. I trust the pages. I will be well.”
And she said nothing more, but he saw a tear running down her face.
“Mother, I know you do not wish to believe in magic, and thus you believe me mad to claim the pages Rasputin has brought speak to me.” He shrugged a thin shoulder. “If I hear the pages speaking, then they can hear me, they understand what is wrong with me. The pages tell me I can be cured.”
Still she fretted and paced, wondering how such a thing could be possible. Alexei hearing pages speaking to him? It was his illness, finally it was in his head, in his brain, yet he had spoken with such clarity of thought and so logically. Were the pages telling him what to say to convince her?
When she turned back to him, he said, “Mother, I feel so weak, I know I will die. How can I lead our magnificent country if I am dead?”
She had no more arguments. Though her fear, her revulsion, was great, at the appointed time, she took her son to a small room in the basement of the lodge, far away from the servants and the guards.
Rasputin was there.
The girl with him was pale as fresh cream, with dark hair and fear in her glazed eyes. Alexei stared at her, felt something deep inside him stir. He heard the pages, softly singing to him. He knew what he would do to her. And suddenly, he wanted it very badly.
He said in a formal voice, “Mother, I wish you to wait outside. When it is done, I will come out to you.” Rasputin opened the door, waited for her to slowly walk from the room, one last look at the girl and her son. When she was gone, the door locked, Alexei said simply, “Let us begin.”
Her blood was so warm, like heated silver and salt. Rasputin had fed her opium to keep her calm, and so she was. The very pretty young girl sagged against Alexei as he drank, and drank, and drank from the cut in her neck. The opium in her blood went to his head, making him dizzy with swirling colors bleeding into each other, colors so bright they burned his eyes, and suddenly he was flying in bright skies filled with low-lying clouds dripping golden drops of rain to the fields below. And birds, so many he didn’t recognize, in all colors and shapes, were all singing to him. And it was beautiful, and he was happy.
Just as suddenly, Alexei felt himself thrown from the present back, back, into the past, where a French soldier, no he was far more important than a simple soldier, he was a long-dead emperor and he w
as listening to an old man with a white mane of hair and brilliant blue eyes telling him a tale of two boys, twins, one strong and one weak with the blood disease, like him. And then he saw piles of dead and fires burning entire villages, heard screams and saw the emperor’s face, pale as death, and he was riding away, surrounded by soldiers.
Then he was thrown into the future, but he saw nothing at all, only whiteness, but he heard clearly the pages singing to him as he drank. Of life, of death, of simply being. And he rejoiced. It seemed to take forever, but perhaps it was only moments, Alexei did not know.
When it was done, and the girl was dead, Alexei didn’t want to let her go. She was part of him, her lifeblood filling him, giving him a future. He rocked her against him, kissed her white slack mouth. Rasputin finally pulled her away.
He studied Alexei. So little amazed him, but this did. The pages, the pages had wrought this miracle. The boy glowed with health, his cheeks were fuller, his eyes bright, his shoulders straight. He was weeping. “Please, don’t take her away, not yet.”
“I must,” Rasputin said. “I will see she’s properly taken care of.”
Rasputin then examined Alexei, listened to his heart and lungs, checked his pupils. He stepped back, nearly tripping over the girl’s body.
“It is good, Czarevitch. You are healed.” And he carried the young girl over his shoulder, past Alexei’s white-faced mother, through the back of the lodge, deep into the forest.
And for some time, Alexei was healed. He was strong and able to play without worry of falling and having blood flow out of him, and not stop.
Eventually, though, he sickened again. He came alone, not telling his mother. Rasputin brought another girl, a blond china doll this time, younger than the first. Alexei didn’t like the taste of her as much. He much preferred the third; even with the drug Rasputin had forced down her throat, she fought and screamed. He thought of her as the fighter, with raven hair and blue eyes. Rasputin finally bound her. She was helpless, and the horror of him and what he was doing made the blood taste tart and rich. And he flew again back, back to a long-ago castle in a faraway land and he saw two young brothers, one well and one sick, like him. And they had the pages. And they spoke to the pages, and the pages spoke to them, sang to them, and wept when they were parted.
And then he was flung into the future, only this time there wasn’t only blank whiteness. No, he saw a peasant boy kneeling by a rowan tree. He saw him pull out the pages from his shirt and wrap them carefully in a dirty woolen cloth. He dug a hole and buried them there, beneath the rowan, and he ran, never seeing the small girl from the nearby Gypsy encampment watching him.
* * *
Two years later, Rasputin, fearing the nobles had discovered what he had done, knew he had to rid himself of the magic pages. He was deaf to Alexei’s pleas that he have them. He sent them off with a young boy, an acolyte, cautioning him to take them away as far as he could and bury them under a rowan tree.
He didn’t have to tell Alexei what he’d done, the boy already knew, because he could no longer hear the pages sing to him. They were too far away. He was inconsolable.
When Rasputin finally met his end, his last thought was of the magic pages buried under the rowan tree, and the boy.
Without the potion given him to drink before he drank from a girl, Alexei weakened. He dreamed often of the now-silent pages, so far away from him, buried under a rowan tree. And he dreamed of the small gypsy girl watching, and wondered.
His end came on a hot evening in July.
His exhausted blood was no match for the bullets.
THE FOURTH DAY
FRIDAY
Bitcoin is a digital cryptocurrency with a mixed reputation. At worst, it’s the currency of hackers and criminals, at best, a lively new free market that allows anonymity, security, and lack of government oversight. With its value all over the map and raiders regularly stealing it from other “wallets,” this new digital currency has moved beyond a techie playground and is now a speculative investors’ nirvana.
—J.T. ELLISON
CHAPTER SIXTY
You don’t need to tie a big chunk of meat to the lure, a tidbit the size of the end of your finger will do. Start by putting your hooded bird on the floor inside the house. Put the lure, garnished with the tidbit, on the floor about a foot away from it, then pop the hood off.
—American Falconry Magazine
The Old Garden
Twickenham
Richmond upon Thames, London
Roman leaned back against the wall, wiping the sweat from his brow. The delivery had gone well. The drone army was now in London, safe, and even better, accessible. Ready to use. Against Barstow? Possible. Very possible.
Back in the house, he went first to the cast. They were hungry and ready to fly. He pressed the button that exposed the roof to the sky, untethered them, and watched them take off, one by one. The eagles went last, their massive wings helping them soar straight into the sky.
“Good hunting, my lovelies. Be back before dark.”
They would, he knew. The cabal would hunt on the grounds and come back to him, sated and happy.
He left the roof open and went to the lab. Radu was standing over Isabella Marin, talking animatedly. Roman was shocked. Radu willingly talking to a stranger? Of course, she spoke Voynichese, and perhaps that made the difference. He wondered if she were indeed a blood match, how long she would survive, being exsanguinated over and over again.
Radu saw his brother enter and signaled for him. He went to the lab, and Roman followed.
When the hermetically sealed door hissed shut, he whispered, “She’s a match.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“Excitement, perhaps? We should do the transfusion now.”
“She may have diseases. She may have anomalies.”
“No, Roman. The blood is clear. She is perfect. She is a descendant, as we are. She is the cure. The pages spoke of an angel who would come in the night. She is our angel.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you quite so excited, Brother.”
“It’s hard not to be thrilled, after all these years. And she speaks our language, not unexpected, since she, too, is our own familial line. Let’s hurry, Roman, I want to move ahead with the transfusion immediately.”
“We don’t have time right now. I must deal with Barstow.” Roman shrugged. “If he fails to give me my money, I will kill him.” As he walked away, he reached into his pocket for a tab of LSD, thumbed it onto his tongue. To his astonishment, Radu exploded.
“Barstow’s been stringing you along for seven months, and you chose to believe him. And what has he done? He had Caleb Temora hack Radulov to ruin your company to destroy everything we’ve built. You know he won’t give you your money. He never intended to give you the billion pounds. He wanted it for himself.
“Look at you! Another microdose of LSD? And your wretched savior complex. Who cares about the terrorists taking over Africa? You tell me over and over I’m the most important thing in your life, to cure me is your highest priority. Well, prove it.
“We have our cure, and I’m ready. Save me, Roman. You know time is running out, we may not get another chance.”
“Calm yourself, Radu. We have all the time in the world. No one knows we’re here. No one knows where she is. As soon as I’ve dealt with Barstow—”
Radu shook his head. “You’ve lost all sense of reality, Brother. You murdered Isabella’s fiancé. It’s all over the news. They’re looking for her, everywhere. Looking for you, too, though they only know the name of your alter ego, Laurence Bruce. I refuse to lose my chance to be cured because you’ve acted recklessly, yet again. We’re going to do this my way. I know exactly what I’m getting into, and I want you to give me this one small thing. And then you can go after your filthy money, I care not.”
Rage built inside Roman. “That filthy money is what’s allowing you to have this home, away from all stimulation that might upset you. It
’s what paid for your lab, to search for this cure. Do you not understand, Radu? All I do, I do for you. Everything I’ve done, always, is for you.” He was panting, he was so enraged, nearly beyond himself, and now his brother was questioning him?
Radu touched his brother’s arm, his voice calm again. “Then hook us up. I can hear her blood singing to me, Roman, like the pages sing to both of us. I’ve never felt this before. She is my life’s blood. She is the cure. We’ve been wrong all along. The Voynich, the pages, they’re only part of the story. It is Isabella: she is what we’ve looked for all this time. Roman, listen to me. Blood doesn’t lie. Isabella’s blood will save me. Now, stop making excuses, stop putting everything above me, and start the transfusion. Iago can watch over me while you go play with Barstow. It will take hours. You will have plenty of time. She really is my gift from God.”
Roman stared at his brother. He was right. “All right, Radu. Prepare yourself. I will ready Isabella.”
When Radu hurried out of the room, Roman rubbed his forehead, then slipped another dose into his mouth. He stopped by his office for his notebook. Like Radu, he kept notes on every experiment, on every observation. And this one would surely be the most important.
A small red light was flashing on his computer screen. He bumped the mouse and saw camera footage, knew immediately it was the flat in Belgravia. The flat’s perimeter sensors were activated. Someone had gone inside.
Something else to make him crazy. He calmed himself, scanned the flat but saw nothing. A system failure, a short circuit? No, he knew better. He flashed to the external cameras. There were two men in a black SUV sitting across from the entrance.