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order that the Fisherman's Ring might not slide off his diminished finger.
His weary gaze moved out through the open doorway of the tent, vainly questioning the sea-horizon
once again. Then it returned to me.
"Yet you are here. It must have taken great courage for you to come alone, my son. I have heard of
you."
And had written about me, too, the damned compulsive old scribbler, repeating for posterity all the vile
gossip transmitted from Buda by his loquacious legate Nicholas. But at the time I did not know that Pius
was a writer, and I pitied him. I said: "You have probably heard little to my credit, Holiness."
He sighed. "Yet you are here, when Catholic kings have turned their backs. Your sins will be forgiven
you. I would like to give you my blessing."
Lacking the heart to explain to that sad old man the truth about my presence, down I went on my knees
again and bowed my head. He yearned to lead an army, to see the banners fly, to smite the unbeliever, to
retake Constantinople. But he had trouble getting the attention of one of the monks to bring him a pan to
piss in. That old man, though, bestowed a blessing on me which I remember still. I suppose it must have
been the last he ever gave.
Together we watched darkness slowly cover the horizon. Neither of us had the least idea how wide the
oceans were, or that America lay undiscovered somewhere in their midst. Side by side in the harbor rode
the two Venetian galleys, twin lanterns burning, their captains probably already in private conference
deciding how soon they might be able to give up the farce and sail for home. The Pope's breathing was
growing louder and more labored. I remained in the tent, unchallenged and almost unnoticed, as
physicians and prelates, recalled from God knows where in that small town, began to gather.
A final time Pius beckoned me to his side. "You will be going far, my son. To a strange, long life, in
distant lands. You will be going farther than . . ."
I bent over him, trying to hear more. But the rest was lost in the struggle of his old lungs to breathe, in a
chanted dirge the monks chose that moment to begin. Pius died near midnight, and the ranking
churchmen on his staff scrambled away in an excited effort to be first back to Rome.
FIVE
Travel by automobile was not something that Mr. Thorn enjoyed. In fact except for flying machines of
all types, which he liked immensely complex machinery of any kind had always impressed him as
perverse and unreliable. He detested, for example, firearms. But he could get along in an uneasy
coexistence with mechanism when he had to; and recently he had been brought to the reluctant
conclusion that the advantages of being able to drive oneself about in one's own automobile outweighed
the attendant irritations. Thus it was that two evenings after Mary Rogers had splashed her Hollywood
blood on Ellison Seabright, and one evening after her visit to Thorn's hotel, Thorn was alone in a rented
vehicle, on his way to see the Magdalen again. Or so he hoped.
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Persistence on the telephone had finally paid off, and he had wangled for himself an invitation to the
Seabright mansion. Persistence, and a ploy of passing along for Mr. Seabright's ears some hints of
information that Thorn guessed the most recent purchaser of the supposed Verrocchio would be unable
to resist. The guess was evidently right.
The house lay in what was probably the wealthiest suburb of the metropolis. The high wall enclosing its
several hectares of grounds was constructed in large part of real adobe; looking at this wall, Mr. Thorn
thought that some segments of it, near the house, were possibly old enough to have seen forays by hostile
Indians. He knew little of the history of this part of the world, but meant someday to study it, an effort he
suspected would not be easy. History, unlike machinery, he always found interesting; but he had seen too
much of history to have any faith in the official account of anything.
As soon as the drive leading to the house parted company with the curving public road, it passed under
an iron gate, now closed, in the old wall. Just outside the gate, Thorn stopped his Blazer having seen
what a high proportion of the natives elected to use four-wheel-drive vehicles, he suspected they had
some good reason and had followed their example. A gatekeeper, a Spanish-looking man, appeared
now inside the ironwork, which opened itself on electric tracks as soon as Thorn rolled down his window
and announced his name.
Inside the gates the graveled drive curved to and fro through spacious lawns now enjoying their evening
sprinkling from an automatic system. Citrus blossoms blessed the air. From behind a mass of greenery
the house came into view for its time and place, quite an impressive villa, though it was not like some
that Mr. Thorn had visited. Like its surrounding wall it was eclectic, with some good old sections that
looked especially venerable. Additions over a number of decades, some quite recent, had made it very
large.
As Mr. Thorn parked his Blazer and approached the sizable front portico, there sounded from
somewhere on the other side of the building the thrum of a diving board, followed by the trim splash of a
lithe body entering a pool. It was, somehow, a definitely female splash; and Thorn, with no more than that
to go on, immediately visualized the dark and slender woman who had been with Seabright two evenings
ago. Stephanie Seabright, bereft of her only child just two months past. Stephanie who did not seem to
mourn, but yearned. And swam, too, evidently; though Thorn could not really be sure from a mere splash
that it was she.
At the front door Thorn was met by a butler, who resembled physically the bodyguard who had
attended Seabright at the auction room. This man was a little slimmer and younger, though, and therefore
presumably a little faster on his feet.
"Come in, sir, you're expected. Right this way, please."
"Thank you." To Mr. Thorn, the simple crossing of any house's threshold for the first time was always
something of an event; and in this house he had a special interest. Once inside, enveloped by air
conditioning, he was led across a wide entry floored with Mexican tile into a sort of manorial hall that
made the house seem even larger than it had looked from outside. The ceiling of this hall, at about
third-story level, was supported by wooden beams so gigantic that the whole effect reminded Thorn of
nothing so much as the passenger concourse of the Albuquerque airport, where not long ago he had
spent part of a long bright afternoon between planes, beseiged by sunlight, squinting through sunglasses
and changing his place in search of deeper shadow. He had in his time been inside private homes that had
rooms bigger than this hall. But not many such homes, and not much bigger.
Pushing open a massive door of carven wood, his guide stood deferentially aside. Halfway down the
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length of the booklined study thus revealed, Rodrigo Borgia rose up from behind a desk, all red smears
cleaned away, and dressed as for a leisurely safari.
"Mr. Thorn, glad to see you again," Ellison Seabright boomed. "That's all, Brandreth," he added in an
aside to the butler, and then came forward as to some old friend, extending one great arm for a
handshake. "Too bad we didn't have more of a chance to talk the other night." In fact they had never
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