I carefully unfold the Scion map, lay it out on the seat beside me. And that’s what it is: a map of the organization through the ages, the chronicle of its power. The circles toward the bottom of the expanding tree are mostly blank, some of them filled only with the name of a financial institution, a government agency, or a surname. I don’t know how this information was collected, or how reliable it is. Can only imagine the cost of adding even one name to its morbid genealogy.

The lineage of the hunted on the other side is far more tragically complete. There’s a pen clipped to the seatback in front of me. I take it and carefully fill in the name of my mother’s killer:

Nikola, so-called Prince of Budapest. Traitor.

Though it may end up in Nikola’s hands, it will at least show the truth.

I turn my attention to the rest of the assortment on my lap: several pages, worn and folded, my name written on one side. I unfold and smooth them out. Notes, penned in Hungarian, the English translation added more recently in the margins:

Trial documents sealed by Habsburg court—discovered by Jesuit priest 1720s

Thurzo wife multiple visits to E. 1612. steals E.’s jewelry each time (payment???)

E. daughter Katalin visit—living at Keresztur? at time

2 weeks before E. dies, priests Andras Kerpelich and Imre Agriensy come to witness will from Esztergom bishopric

Buried Cachtice—NOT removed to Nyirbator.

Lamosz Cemetery Budapest? No—no longer exists

Trnava, Slovakia

I gather that these are the details of Elizabeth’s visitors as she lived walled up in darkness. The potential burial site of her body, which as far as I read was never found.

This isn’t my handwriting—whose notes are these?

I flip through page after page like this, translations of the original notes written from the margins into the corners in thick, broad curves, and feverishly across the back. At least I wasn’t the only one seemingly obsessed.

The last three pages are penned in the same hand, their rushed and sprawling lines solely in English.

Audra, my heart, my love . . .

This is a letter addressed to me. I rifle to the last page.

It is signed “Amerie.”

These pages, like the others, were written by my mother.

I read with shaking hands.

Audra, my heart, my love . . .

How do you put a lifetime on a page?

The day you were born I felt more alive than I had ever been before. On the day that you look into your own child’s eyes, you will understand what I am saying: that I saw the face of God.

I had never known such love, such gratitude and humility, as the moment I held you. Such purpose, and fire, as the instant I let you go. Determination to change the future that pulled us apart.