Page 46 of The Last Kingdom

“Welcome,” Albert, Duke of Bavaria, said.

Chapter 25

COTTON WAS LEERY OF MARC FENN.

Definitely someone clearly in the know. But a little strange.

Odd. Out of kilter.

“You still haven’t said why Ludwig’s body has to be found?”

“The story of the last kingdom is replete with hyperbole that has grown over the past hundred years. Tales of a vast treasure. Ludwig’s missing personal property—”

“What property?”

“After he was deposed, much of Ludwig’s effects—his books, papers, clothes, keepsakes, things like that—vanished. No one knows if they were stolen by servants, intentionally hidden away by the prince regent, or a combination. Only some of his correspondence survived.A great deal of it was destroyed by him shortly before he was arrested. The story goes that most of his belongings were hidden away with him.”

He got the message. “And you know better?”

“Here’s where we delve into the realm of speculation.”

He caught the crease of amusement on Fenn’s face. “Which you enjoy.”

“That I do.”

So he indulged the man. “I do, too, actually.”

“Luckily, we now have the book and the envelope, so we can begin, in earnest, the search.”

He pointed at the map open on the desk. “Do you know what those lines of text mean from the envelope?”

Fenn nodded. “I think I do.”

He wondered if he was going to regret this. Yogi Berra was right.You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.Ain’t that the truth. But what the hell. “Tell me.”

Fenn seemed pleased with the invitation. “I was so hoping you would be interested. I know I am. The envelope you found inside the desk is a most vital clue.” Fenn reached down for the sheet of paper that the envelope had contained. “These lines are handwritten. I believe by Ludwig III himself. Thankfully, many examples of his penmanship exist. I plan to have a comparison made tomorrow. I have translated these words into English, though I understand you speak German.”

“You seem to know a lot about me.”

Fenn waved off the observation. “An eidetic memory. What a trait to possess.”

“A gift from my mother’s side of the family. Who told you?”

“Herr Koger. But not to worry. I was curious about who I would be working with, so he provided a few details. It’s one of my smaller obsessions.”

Yeah, right. Along with owning a castle and heading a brotherhood of guys who run around in black robes.

“Where Matthias Strokes the Strings. Edelweiss Over Black Forest. No Water Cold. Pulpit, Cross, and Garland. Northeast the Crown. Ends of the Dance,” Fenn said. “The first line is easy. Matthias Klotz was a famous violin maker. He lived in Mittenwald. Here.”

Fenn lifted a pen from the desk and circled the town, which was located in the extreme southern portion of Bavaria, in the Alps, right on the Austrian border.

“The second line is a bit of a paradox.‘Edelweiss Over Black Forest.’ Let’s leave it for a moment. The third line, ‘No Water Cold,’ is easy. Baden-Baden. A spa town. There are numerous hot springs there. The region has for a long time, dating back to the nineteenth century, advertised itself as having ‘no cold water.’”

Fenn circled the town, located in the southwestern part of Germany, at the northwestern edge of the Black Forest, against the French border, west of Mittenwald.

“The fourth line, ‘Pulpit, Cross and Garland,’ is Glücksburg. Here. The far most northern settlement in Germany, against the Baltic Sea. In its main church is a famous pulpit adorned with a cross and garland. The fifth line, ‘Northeast the Crown,’ is here.Krone, German for ‘crown,’ a small village that sits against the Polish border, to the northeast. Fenn circled both Krone and Glücksburg. “All in all a fairly simple riddle to decipher. So we have to assume that whoever crafted it wanted it solved.”

Cotton noticed that the four towns were roughly situated with one in each quadrant of the compass. He watched as Fenn, with the pen, connected the northwest to the southeast, then the northeast to the southwest, forming an oblong-shaped X. At the center point, where the lines crossed, lay another town.