“Not here in the east wing. There are twenty or more rooms here, but none are occupied or used. The servants are afraid to come up here. But some of the top of the west wing is still in use—and we are almost at the door into it.”

They had just emerged from a very narrow hallway out into one somewhat wider and higher. Immediately the voices of the two older men could be heard echoing through the passage from behind them.

“Hurry!” said Sabina, running to her left. “Let’s don’t let them catch us.”

Matthew followed, and moments later they had walked through an ancient iron-studded wood door that likewise appeared to belong to a dungeon. Sabina closed it carefully behind them.

“We’ll hide from them in the armory!” she said, leading on into the west wing.

Here the passages were not nearly so narrow and dungeonlike, and they were somewhat better lit, though still curved and winding this way and that. Matthew hadn’t the slightest notion of their location or direction, until his guide led him through yet another door. Suddenly he found himself inside a large room, very oddly shaped and well lit from a skylight in the roof. All around him on the walls hung dozens of varieties of swords, knives, daggers, coats of mail, shields, and guns. In each of the four corners of the room stood a full coat of armor, looking almost human in their metallic silence as they stood watchful guard over these weapons of the centuries.

Matthew stood gaping at the incredible collection. Never had he seen such relics before. But Sabina gave him no leisure to admire them.

“Papa’s sure to bring your father in here!” she said. “It’s one of his favorite places in the whole house, next to the library. They’ll be here any minute—let’s hide behind the armor! I’ll hide here—you get behind that fellow over there,” she said, pointing to the adjacent corner. “He’s bigger.”

Matthew complied.

Sabina continued to whisper to him for another minute or two until they heard the door begin to open.

“Shhh…!” she said.

“…though I personally consider myself a pacifist,” the baron was saying as they entered, “I must confess to a fascination with old weapons. I find it somewhat embarrassing, yet there it is, and I cannot deny it.”

The reaction of Matthew’s father to the room was much like his son’s. “I’m no authority on the subject, Baron,” he said, “but I would judge this to be an extraordinary collection worthy of any of the finest museums in Europe.”

“I think you are probably right, Thaddeus.”

“Is the armory your own doing?”