Free Highbinders by Ross Thomas Page B

Arts suddenly acquired a gaggle of gold treasures from the Bronze Age, from Turkey probably. Then there was that Raphael portrait of the Duchess of Urbino that the same museum got and had to give back to Italy. More recently has been the uproar concerning what they’re calling the Great Calyx Krater mystery. That was the Greek vase done by the Athenian artist Euphronius. It went for a million dollars and turned up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.”
    “Can’t see how any of this has to do with armor,” Christenberry said.
    “I’m coming to that, if you’ll bear with me. What we’d like to do is to anticipate some of the treasures that might pop up. The Peking Man, for example. That disappeared in China just after Pearl Harbor. Now there’s talk that it might turn up any day.”
    “Not much interested in paintings,” Christenberry said. “Ignorant about them really. Greek pots, too. I seem to recall that the Peking Man’s nothing but old bones.”
    “But priceless,” I said.
    “Can’t see why. The world’s nothing but a graveyard filled with old bones.”
    “That’s just one example,” I said. “We’ve also heard rumors that several other lost or missing items are about to surface. They’re just rumors though and I’m trying to check them out. For instance, I’ve got a line on somebody who claims to know the whereabouts of the crown of the Infante Fernando. Another lead I have to follow up on is that somebody’s holding the gold and silver shield of Ruy Diaz de Bivar. You know, El Cid.”
    “I know,” Christenberry said drily.
    “I thought you might,” I said. “And then there’s another persistent rumor that keeps cropping up about something called the Sword of St. Louis.”
    I watched him as I spun my tale. His lips had twisted themselves into what I took to be a sneer until I got to the Sword of St. Louis. Then they clamped themselves down into a line so tightly closed that I thought I might have to pry it open.
    But after a moment he sipped his tea and popped another cookie into his mouth. “You are off on the wrong track, young man. Indeed you are.”
    “How?”
    “The Infante Fernando had no crown. I’ll spare you the details, but if you’d done any research at all, you’d know that. There was no crown.”
    “All right,” I said.
    “As for the Cid having a shield of silver and gold, that’s utter rot. He was a fighting man and an excellent one. He certainly wouldn’t have burdened himself with an overly elaborate shield. Where could you have heard such rubbish?”
    “Around,” I said. “What about the Sword of St. Louis? Is that rubbish, too?”
    Those thin lips clamped themselves together again. He had wet gray eyes, as nervous as quicksilver, and they darted around the room as though looking for the escape hatch until they finally lit on something—something reassuring, I thought, a Basilard dagger perhaps.
    “It was a bastard sword,” he said in a low voice.
    “A what?”
    “A bastard sword. That meant that it had a hand-and-a-half hilt. One could wield it with one hand or both, if the action called for it. Fine steel, too, it was. Not razor sharp, of course; none of them was, but it took an edge that can’t be matched on any of today’s knives.”
    “So it existed,” I said.
    “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. There’s no doubt of that. It’s far too well authenticated.”
    “Including the diamond as big as an egg in the pommel?”
    His eyes started skittering around the room again. “So you’ve heard that, have you?” he said, not looking at me.
    “I’ve heard.”
    “Rock crystal most likely, if that. Swords were damned democratic things in medieval times. There was a brotherhood then among knights which made the simplest of them the equal of kings. A knight was as good as his sword and not many indulged themselves in fancy trimmings.”
    “So you don’t believe there was a diamond?”
    “If Louis had had a diamond as large as you claim, he