Not more than an inch in height, the small gold figure might have been an amulet; there was a rounded link at the top of it. After considering the object, I decided I would not care to wear it. It was meant to represent an animal of some kind. The wide, grinning jaws and pop eyes rather suggested a frog, but no frog I had ever met had such a wicked look. The Drachenstein crest had nothing to do with frogs. Whatever this monstrosity had been meant to be, it was not a dragon. It certainly wasn’t one of Riemenschneider’s pieces. He couldn’t have produced an abortion like this if he had wanted to. In fact, the trinket had a look of antiquity far older than the sixteenth century.

I shrugged and dropped it into the pocket of my robe. Maybe it was a talisman or lucky piece belonging to an ancestor of Burckhardt’s—that same crusading count who had brought the jewels back to Drachenstein. The amulet had an eastern look….

And with that, a dark and elusive memory stirred unpleasantly in the back of my mind—stirred and subsided, like a slimy thing in a swamp.

Ten

MY SLEEPLESS NIGHTS WERE BEGINNING TO catch up with me. I didn’t wake till almost noon next day. I had dreamed that some faceless intruder was tampering with the little chest, but when I stretched out an anxious hand, I found it on the nightstand where I had left it. That had been a stupid place to put it, but I had been too tired the night before to think straight. I tucked the chest into a corner of my suitcase and locked the case.

I didn’t see Tony till lunchtime. I found him alone at our table. George had gone off to Creglingen to see the altar there. Tony seemed vexed by this. His mood was not improved when the Gräfin came in, a royal procession of one, and joined us at our table. I wondered what she was after this time.

“I wished to tell you again how sorry I am that your vacation has been so unpleasant,” she began. “It is unaccountable. Never, until you came, have we known such violence.”

“Is that right,” I said. “You surprise me. I would think a place like this had seen a lot of violence over the years.”

“Many years ago, perhaps. But this is ancient history now. There has not been a prisoner in those horrid cells since sixteen hundred and thirty. And on that occasion Graf Otto was severely reprimanded by the emperor.”

I exchanged glances with Tony. Damn her, the woman knew every move we had made.

“You are well acquainted with the family history for someone who is not a Drachenstein by birth,” I said.