The Eight: The Fire Part 14

None of the master chefs would ever have set up the rotisserie that way much less Rodo. He'd be infuriated. And Leda, even if she were strong enough to set it up, was no cook. Yet someone must have, since none of this was here when I'd left the cellar at two o'clock this morning.

I privately vowed to get to the bottom of it all just as soon as Rodo arrived. Meanwhile, I hauled down the longest ceramic dripping pan I could find and placed it under the sheep, then poured in some water and got out the basting siphon.

The mystery of this fireplace setup made me recall that other one I'd just left behind in Colorado what seemed like aeons ago: which also triggered my memory of my arrangement with Key, that I'd phone her on Monday to find out what she'd managed to learn about my mother's disappearance.

I never knew exactly where Key might be found but, given the remote spots where she did her work, she kept her satellite phone beside her at all times. Before I could pull out my cell phone, though, I remembered that the Secret Service had temporarily commandeered it.

There was a phone with an outside line near the restaurant entrance, behind the matre d's desk, so I trotted upstairs to use it; I could put the charges on my card. I wasn't concerned about being overheard or taped by the SS guys, though it was a cinch they'd bugged the place. Key and I had been masters of our own private espionage lingo ever since our youth. When we got going we sometimes had trouble understanding each other or even ourselves.

'Key to the Kingdom,' she answered her phone. 'Can you read me? Speak now or forever hold your peace.' That was 'Key' code that she knew it was I phoning and asking whether the coast was clear.

'I read you,' I said. 'But it's sort of in one ear and out the other.' Establis.h.i.+ng that others were likely listening in to whatever we said. 'So what's new, p.u.s.s.ycat?'

'Oh, you know me,' said Key. 'A rolling stone gathers no moss, as they say. But time sure flies when you're having a good time.'

This meant that she'd rolled on out of Colorado in her vintage bush plane, Ophelia Otter, and was already back up in Wyoming doing her job in Yellowstone National Park, where she'd commuted throughout high school and college. She had been studying geothermal features geysers, mud holes, the steam vents called fumaroles all powered by magma from the Yellowstone Caldera, or cauldron, created by the ancient supervolcano that now slept miles beneath the earth's crust.

When Key wasn't s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around in that crazy plane of hers running around to events where bush pilots took joy in coasting in onto melting icebergs she was one of the top experts in the thermal field. And in great demand lately, given the escalating numbers of 'hot spots' on our planet.

'What's up with you?' she was saying.

'Oh, you know me, too.' I followed our usual patter. 'Out of the frying pan, into the fire. That's the problem with chefs, we love those flames. But it's my job to follow orders. As they say, "Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die "'

Key and I had been doing our Navajo-Code-Talker routine so long that I was pretty sure she'd know the next line of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' 'Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred' and would grasp it meant I was headed into the proverbial box canyon at this very moment. And it was clear she got the hint with respect to my job and my boss, but Key had a surprise of her own in store.

'That job of yours,' she said, in a tsk-tsk tone. 'It's such a shame you had to rush away like that. You should have stayed: They also serve who only stand and wait, you know. If you'd waited just a bit longer you wouldn't have missed that meeting of the Botany Club, Sunday night. But it's okay I sat in for you.'

'You?' I said, in shock.

Nokomis Key was hobn.o.bbing with the Livingstons after I'd left Colorado?

'In a backroom kind of way,' Key said offhandedly. 'I wasn't actually invited. You know I've never gotten on well with their chairwoman, that Miss Brightstone. She was never the brightest bulb in the chandelier, as they say, but she can be illuminating. Sunday night would have interested you. The subjects were right up your alley Exotic Lilies and Russian Herbal Remedies.'

Good Lord! Sage met with Lily and Vartan? It sure sounded like it but how? They were both down in Denver.

'The club must have changed its venue,' I suggested. 'Was everyone able to get there?'

'It was moved to Molly's place,' Key affirmed. 'Attendance was slim but Mr Skywalker managed to make it.'

'Molly's Place' was our standard code for that flamboyant millionairess of the Colorado Gold Rush era, the Unsinkable Molly Brown, and her former stomping ground: Denver. So Sage was there! Nor was 'Mr Skywalker' much of a stretch. That would be Galen March, the mysterious recent purchaser of Sky Ranch.

What in G.o.d's name were he and Sage Livingston doing hoity-toitying down in Denver (apparently just after my departure) with Vartan and Lily Rad? And how did Key learn of this mysterious coven? It all sounded pretty suspicious.

But the subtext was getting too complex for my limited supply of aphorisms, and Rodo might show up any moment to crash the party. I urgently needed to know how all this might relate to the topic I'd phoned Key about my mother. So I jettisoned our repertory of quips from Familiar Quotations and cut straight to the chase.

'I'm here at work, expecting my boss soon,' I told Key. 'I'm using the house phone; I really shouldn't tie it up longer. But before we hang up, tell me about your job progress: anything new with the...Minerva hot spring lately?'

Key was at Yellowstone and this was all I could think of in a pinch, to connect. Minerva was a famous 'stairstep' or terraced hot spring at Yellowstone, a spot that boasted more than ten thousand such dramatic geothermal features, the largest group in the world. Minerva herself, a magnificent steaming waterfall of breathtaking rainbow colors, had been a premiere Yellowstone attraction. I say 'had been,' since over the past ten years Minerva had in-explicably and mysteriously dried up the entire enormous hot spring and waterfall had simply vanished, just like my mother.

'Interesting you should ask,' said Key, not missing a beat. 'I was working on that problem only yesterday. Sunday. Looks like the Yellowstone Caldera's getting warmer. Might cause a new eruption where we're least expecting it. As for Minerva, our defunct hot spring, I think she may make a comeback sooner than we thought.'

Did that mean what it sounded like? My heart was pounding.

I was about to ask more. But just at that instant, the front door of the restaurant was flung open and Rodo came barreling in with a large chicken tucked under each arm and one of the sungla.s.sed Secret Service guys in tow, bearing a stack of containers.

'Bonjour encore une fois, Neskato Geldo,' Rodo boomed at me while gesturing to the SS chap, like a minion, to set down his stack of foodstuffs on a nearby table.

While the guy's back was turned, Rodo pa.s.sed by me at the desk and hissed beneath his breath, 'I pray you will not be very sorry for using that telephone.' Then in a louder voice, he added, 'Well, Cinder Girl, let's go downstairs and have a look at our gros mouton!'

'Sounds like you gotta go see a man about a sheep,' said Key, sotto voce in my ear. She added, 'I'll e-mail you my notes about the Botany Club and the results of our geothermal study. You'll find it all fascinating.' We signed off.

Of course, Key and I never used e-mail. This just meant she'd get back to me off-line as quickly as she could. It couldn't be quick enough.

As I followed Rodo down the steps to the dungeon, I couldn't keep two nagging questions from my mind.

What had taken place at that clandestine meeting in Denver?

Had Nokomis Key somehow picked up the trail of my mother?

Rodo hefted the large chickens one at a time, suspending them by their strings over the hearth. With these birds, unlike the Meschoui, no basting would be required due to his dry-roasting method. The birds would have been carefully dried inside and out, sprinkled with rock salt, then trussed using his own unique design bound by a crisscross lattice cage and attached by a string to a long skewer run horizontally through each bird. This permitted the bird to swing freely above the hearth from heavy hooks embedded in the stone mantel. The heat from the embers first rotated the bird counterclockwise, then clockwise in an endless motion like Foucault's pendulum.

When I finished basting the lamb and returned upstairs for the foodstuffs, per Rodo's command, I found that our dour bridge guards seemed to have been pressed into a bit more than Secret Service. A vast array of containers of food sat just inside the door, with an official-looking seal on each box. Rodo had never been one to let a pair of spare hands go to waste, but this was absurd.

I counted the boxes there were thirty, just as he'd said then I dead-bolted the outer doors as he'd instructed, and I started carrying the stacks downstairs to the Dictator of the Dungeon.

For more than an hour we worked together without speaking, but that was par for the course. Rodo's kitchen was always managed in complete silence. Everything functioned with cleanliness, detail, and precision: the kind of skilled precision I knew I needed like a game of chess. For instance, on an ordinary night at the Hearth, with dozens of workers in the kitchens, the only sound heard might be the soft tap-tapping of a knife slicing vegetables, or, from time to time, the hushed voice of the chief steward or sommelier over the intercom, placing an order from the main dining room upstairs.

Luckily, today all the preprep here had already been handled by others, or we'd never have made it by dinner. Before I'd even finished hauling the final load of containers downstairs, Rodo already had the baby artichokes, tiny purple and white eggplants, little green and yellow zucchini, and grape tomatoes, like a gorgeous harvest cornucopia, basting in the dripping pans.

But I couldn't help wondering how the meal-serving was going to fare with just the two of us. Mondays like this, when the restaurant was usually closed, were training days for the waiters. They learned to place silver and gla.s.sware properly and what to do if a diner (they were never called customers) spilled a drink or a bit of sauce on the tablecloth. If this occurred even when diners were in mid-meal half a dozen waiters and busboys would swiftly descend upon the table, whisk everything away without disturbing the diners, quickly remove and replace the cloth, and put everything back as it had been, including the correct drinks and meals before each diner, like a conjuring act. Rodo timed it with a stopwatch: The whole process had to take under forty seconds.

Watching Rodo now as he moved silently back and forth among the hearths, wordlessly handing me subordinate tasks, was an education in itself that could never be taught in any school. You had to see it in action. And only a true perfectionist with plenty of practice could demonstrate Key's favorite motto.

Difficult as Rodo might be, I'd never regretted coming to apprentice here.

Until tonight, that is.

'Neskato!' Rodo announced, as I was down on my knees turning the vegetables with the tongs. 'I want you to go upstairs now, unplug the intercom and telephone, and bring them here to me.'

When I glanced up at him strangely, he slapped his open hand flat against the stone cellar wall and bestowed a rare smile on me.

'See these stones?' he said.

For the first time I took a close look at the hand-hewn rocks of the wall, likely cut and set in place more than two hundred years ago. They were milky-white and shot through with an unusual apricot-colored vein.

'Quartz crystal, it's native here in the soil,' Rodo said. 'It has excellent properties for transmission of sound waves but will interfere with communications unless they are how do you say it? hardwired.'

Hence, decommissioning the phone and the intercom. And bolting the doors. Rodo was n.o.body's fool. He clearly had something to tell me, but although I was dying to hear it, I couldn't help my stomach b.u.t.terflies knowing that the highest echelons of government security were flitting about just outside that upstairs door.

When I came back with the gear, he took it and put it into the giant refrigerator. Then he turned to me and took my two hands in his.

'I want you to sit on this stool while I tell you a small story,' he said.

'I hope it's going to answer some of those questions I asked you this morning,' I told him, 'that is, if you're really sure that no one can hear us speaking.'

'They cannot, which is why we arranged for tonight's dinner to be held down here as well. However, that phone you were speaking on, and my house, Euskal Herria, are perhaps a different matter. More of that later,' he said. 'There is something first, more important the reason why we are here. Do you know the story of Olentzero?'

When I shook my head in the negative, taking my seat on the high stool, he added, 'With a name like Olentzero, of course he was Basque. It's a legend that we reenact each year at Epiphany. I myself often dance the part of the famous Olentzero, which requires very many high kicks in the air. I will show you sometime.'

'Okay,' I said, thinking, Where on earth is this going?

'You know,' said Rodo, 'that the Roman Church tells us that the baby Jesus was discovered by three Magi those Zoroastrian fire wors.h.i.+ppers who traveled from Persia. But we think this story isn't quite true. It was Olentzero, a Basque, who first saw the Christ child. Olentzero was a how you say a Charbonnier, a Charcoal Burner you know, one of those who traveled through the lands, cutting and burning wood to sell as charcoal for cooking and heat. He was our ancestor. Which is why we Basques are famous for being great cooks-'

'Whoa,' I said. 'You dragged me back from Colorado through a raging blizzard and down to this cellar with no food or sleep just to get me alone and tell a story about some mythical two-thousand-year-old Basque kick-dancer who sold coal?'

I was in a complete fury, but trying to keep it under my breath since I still wasn't sure we couldn't be overheard.

'Not entirely,' Rodo said, unperturbed. 'You are here because it was the only way I could arrange for us to speak alone before tonight's dinner. And it is critical that we must do so. You do understand that you are in great danger?'

Danger.

That did it. That word again. I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. All I could do was stare at him.

'That's better,' he said. 'For once, a little payment of the attention.'

He went over to the hearth and stirred the bouillabaisse for a moment, then returned to me with a grave expression.

'Go ahead now, ask your questions again,' he said. 'I will answer them.'

I decided I had to pull myself together; it seemed it was now or never. I gritted my teeth.

'Okay. Exactly how did you ever learn that I'd gone to Colorado in the first place?' I asked him. 'What is this boum that's happening tonight? And why do you think I'm in some kind of danger about it? What does this all have to do with me?'

'Perhaps you don't know exactly who these Charcoal Burners are?' Rodo changed the topic, though I had noted that he'd said who they are, not were.

'Whoever they are,' I said, 'how would that answer any of my questions?'

'It may answer all of your questions. And some that you do not even know of just yet,' Rodo informed me quite seriously. 'The Charbonniers in Italy they were called the Carbonari it's a secret society that has existed for more than two hundred years, though they themselves say they are far more ancient. And they claim they still have tremendous power. Like the Rosicrucians, Freemasons, the Illuminati, these Charcoal Burners also say they possess a secret wisdom only known by the initiated such as themselves. But it is not true. This secret was known in Greece, Egypt, Persia, and even earlier in India-'

'What secret?' I said, though I was afraid I already knew what was coming.

'A secret knowledge that was finally written down more than twelve hundred years ago,' he said. 'Then it was in danger of no longer being kept a secret. Though no one could decipher its meaning, it was hidden in plain view within a chess set created in Baghdad. Then for a thousand years it was buried in the Pyrenees the Fire Mountains, Euskal Herria home of the Basques who helped to protect it. But now it has surfaced once more, only weeks ago, which may place you in great danger unless you can understand who you are and what role you shall play tonight-'

Rodo looked at me as if that should answer all my questions. Not a chance.

'What role?' I said. 'And who am I?'

I felt truly ill. I wanted to crawl under my high stool and weep.

'As I've always told you,' said Rodo with a strange smile. 'You are Cendrillon or Neskato Geldo, the Little Cinder Girl, the one who sleeps in the ashes behind the stove. Then she rises from the ashes to become the queen as you may find out, only hours from now. But I shall be with you. For it's they who are dining here with all this secrecy tonight. It's they who requested that you be present, and they who knew that you'd gone to Colorado. I only learned of your departure too late.'

'Why me? I'm afraid I still don't get it,' I said, though I was a great deal more than afraid that I actually did.

'The one who organized this meal knows you quite well or so I understand,' said Rodo. 'The name is Livingston.'

Basil Livingston.

Of course he was a player. Why would I be surprised? But might he not be more than that, given his suspicious long-term connections with the recently murdered Taras Petrossian?

I was, however, astonished that I found myself here, buried in this dungeon-cellar with my crazy Basque boss, who seemed to know more than I did about the dangers posed by this even crazier Game.

I resolved to hear more. And exceptional though it was, for once Rodo seemed more than ready to open up.

'You perhaps know of the Chanson de Roland,' he began, as he started setting a dozen or so clay pots on the hearth, 'that medieval story about Charlemagne's famous retreat through the Roncesvalles Pa.s.s in the Pyrenees it contains the key to everything. You are familiar with the Chanson?'

'I'm afraid I haven't read it,' I admitted, 'but I know what it's about. Charlemagne's defeat by the "Saracen," as they called them the Moors. They wiped out his rear flank as his army retreated from Spain back into France. His nephew Roland, hero of the song, was killed there on the pa.s.s, wasn't he?'

'Yes, that's the story they've told,' Rodo a.s.sured me. 'But hidden underneath is the real mystery the true secret of Montglane.' He'd dipped his fingertips in olive oil and was oiling the insides of the pots.

'So what do Charlemagne's retreat and this "secret of Montglane" have to do with tonight's mysterious coven? Or with that chess set you mentioned?' I asked him.

'You understand, Cinder Girl, it was never the Islamic Moors who destroyed Charlemagne's rear flank or who killed his nephew Roland,' Rodo told me. 'It was the Basques.'

'The Basques?'

Now he unwrapped the boulles of shepherd's dough from their damp cloths and carefully set one boulle in each pot. I handed him the long-handled shovel to push the pots back into the firebox.

Once Rodo had shoveled the ash up around the pots, he turned to me and added, 'The Basques had always controlled the Pyrenees. But the Chanson de Roland was written hundreds of years after the events it tells us about. When the retreat through Roncesvalles Pa.s.s actually happened, in AD 778, Charlemagne was not yet powerful or famous. He was still merely Karl, king of the Franks uneducated northern peasants. It was more than twenty years before he would be anointed Holy Roman Emperor "Carolus Magnus" or Karl der Grosse, as the Franks call him, Defender of the Faith by the pope. Karl the Frank became Charlemagne because by then he was already the possessor and defender of the chess set that was known as the Montglane Service.'

I knew we were definitely on to something. This supported my aunt Lily's story of the legendary chess set and its fabled powers. But Rodo's additions still hadn't answered all my questions.

'I thought that the pope made Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor in order to get his help defending Christian Europe against incursions by the Muslims,' I said, racking my brain for all the medieval trivia I could recall. 'In the mere quarter century before Charlemagne's arrival, hadn't the Islamic faith conquered most of the world, including Western Europe?'

'Exactly,' Rodo agreed. 'And now, only four years after Charlemagne's roust at Roncesvalles, the most powerful possession of Islam had fallen into the hands of Islam's worst enemy.'

'But how had Charlemagne been able to get his hands on this chess set so fast?' I asked.

In my interest, I'd temporarily forgotten that I had a job to do and that we were soon to be descended upon by a bevy of undesirable 'diners.' But Rodo hadn't. He pa.s.sed me the crate of eggs and a stack of nested copper bowls as he went on.

'It's told that the Service was sent to him by the Moorish governor of Barcelona, though for reasons that are still quite unclear,' Rodo told me. 'It certainly wasn't for Charlemagne's "aid" against the Basques, whom he'd never defeated and who were nowhere operating in the vicinity of Barcelona, anyhow.

'It's more likely that the governor himself, Ibn al'Arabi, had some important reason for wanting to hide the set as far from al-Islam as possible and the Frankish court at Aix-la-Chapelle, or Aachen, was more than one thousand kilometers north, as the bird would fly.'

Rodo paused to review my egg-separation technique. He always insisted it be performed single-handed, with the yolk and whites dropped into separate bowls and the sh.e.l.ls flipped into the third. (For the compost heap: Waste not, want not, as Key would say.) 'But why would a Spanish Muslim official want to send something to a Christian monarch more than six hundred miles away, just to keep it from Islamic hands?' I asked.

'Do you know why they called this chess set "the Montglane Service"?' he replied. 'It's a revealing name, for there never was such a place in the Basque Pyrenees back then named Montglane.'

'I thought it was a fortress and later an abbey,' I said. But then I bit my tongue, for I recalled that it was Lily who'd told me that, not Rodo.