“I’m confused. It seems like the Order was simply trying to defend the power of the Holy Roman Empire. But from the way you talk about them, there must have been something far more sinister going on. I guess what I’m trying to ask is: was the Order of the Dragon good or bad?”

“What kind of a question is that?” Dr. Winter asked. “I believe it was Napoleon who said: ‘History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.’ Whether the Order of the Dragon is good or bad will be determined by this night, by whether the Order succeeds or fails.”

“Succeeds or fails at what?”

“At claiming the secret!” Dr. Winter pronounced. “The Gutenberg Bible is what they want. You see, Gutenberg acted as a spy among the kings and princes of his day. He walked in their courts. He heard their conversations, their plans, all because he was creating works of art for them: Bibles.”

“The illuminations!”

“Yes. As you know, commoners could never have afforded the workmanship of an illuminator. The very inks cost a fortune, and the work took months, even years, to produce. Gutenberg realized this gave him the opportunity to expand his knowledge of the secret the Order was holding, as well as a method for hiding the evidence once he was gone: he hid it in the illuminations, in the very Bibles the Order commissioned. It also offered safety, for a Bible in the hands of a commoner could have been destroyed, but the Bibles commissioned by the members of the Order were treated like the fine works of art that they are.”

“Gutenberg recorded their secret and preserved it under their own noses! Brilliant.”

“It was brilliant, save for one problem: the Orphans were destroyed, and with them, the knowledge of what Gutenberg had hidden in the illuminations.”

“The Orphans were destroyed? I thought you said that you were part of the Orphans.”

“Newly formed, I should have added. The Orphans came into existence again during the World Wars, when the Order of the Dragon came into power once again.”

“Hitler was a Dragon?”

“Have you heard of the Thule Society?” Dr. Winter asked.

“Sounds familiar.”

“They were later known as the Nazi Party, after Hitler took command. The Thule Society was full of occultists, but was mostly based on the same principles as the Order of the Dragon. The name changed, but the philosophy remained the same.”

April fiddled with the plastic lid of the Styrofoam cup, drumming on it with her fingers. “So let me see if I have this straight: the Orphans have been trying for hundreds of years to get their hands on Gutenberg’s secret knowledge of the Order, and somehow, my innocent family and I are now mixed up in the mess.”