"That's very kind of you. Can I help?"
Annja chopped the basil and Garin grated the Parmesan. She mixed both with the eggs, then poured olive oil into the skillet. "Have you really lived over five hundred years?" she asked, suddenly aware of feeling comfortably domestic with this mysterious stranger.
Garin smiled. "You find that hard to believe?"
Annja didn't answer. She sliced the garlic bread and the melon.
"You know what happened to the sword, don't you?" Garin asked. "You've got it."
Annja poured the eggs into the skillet, then popped the bread into the toaster.
"Where is the sword?" Garin asked.
"It disappeared," Annja replied. "Somewhere outside Paris."
Grinning, he said, "I don't believe you."
"We share a trait for skepticism." Annja scrambled the eggs. "Would you care for some orange juice?"
Garin walked around the loft, gazing at all the things Annja had collected during her years as an archaeologist. "You have a nice home," he said softly.
Annja had deliberately left the bread knife close at hand. So far, Garin didn't appear to be armed. "Thank you," she said, watching him closely.
"I know you're lying about the sword," Garin said, looking at her.
The bread slices popped out of the toaster. She laid them on plates, buttered them. "That's not a polite thing to say to someone about to serve you breakfast."
"The sword was on the bed when I arrived," Garin told her.
For a moment, Annja felt panic race through her. She concentrated on the eggs, removing the skillet from the heat. If he'd taken the sword, he wouldn't be here now.
"It disappeared when I tried to touch it," Garin said.
"Maybe it was just a figment of your imagination," Annja said, flooded with relief.
Garin shook his head. "No. I've seen that sword before. And I've lived with its curse."
"What curse?" Annja asked.
Approaching her but staying out of arm's reach, Garin leaned a hip against the kitchen counter. "A story for a story," he told her. "It's the only fair way to do this."
Annja dished the scrambled eggs onto the garlic toast. She added slices of melon.
"Very pretty," Garin said.
"I prefer to think of it as nourishing." Annja handed him his plate.
Garin looked around. "I don't see a dining table."
"That's because I don't have one." Scooping up her own plate and orange juice, Annja walked to the window seat. She thought about the Mercedes Garin had driven in Lozère. "Probably isn't exactly the lifestyle you're used to," she said, feeling a little self-conscious.
"Not the lifestyle I now have," he agreed. "But this is a lot better than I started out with."
Annja folded herself onto one end of the window seat. "Where did you grow up?"
"One of the city-states in Germany. A backwoods place. Its name is long forgotten now." Garin sat and ate his food. "I was the illegitimate son of a famous knight."
"How famous?"
Garin shook his head. "He's been forgotten now. But back then, he was a name. Famous in battle and in tournaments. I was the only mistake he'd ever made."
For a moment, Annja felt sorry for Garin. Parents and relatives who simply hadn't wanted to deal with kids had dumped them at the orphanage. It was an old story. Evidently it hadn't changed in hundreds of years.
If Garin could be believed.
"I like to think that my father cared for me in some way," Garin went on. "After all, he didn't give me to a peasant family as he could have. Or let my mother kill me, as she'd tried on a couple of occasions."
Annja kept eating. There were horrible stories throughout all histories. She wasn't inured to them, but she had learned to accept that there were some things she couldn't do anything about.
"Instead," Garin went on, "my father gave me to a wizard."
"Roux?" That news startled Annja.
"Yes. At least that's what men like him were called in the old days. Once upon a time, Roux's name was enough to strike terror in the hearts of men. When he cursed someone, that person's life was never the same again."
"But that could simply be the perception of the person cursed," Annja said. "Zombies created by voodoo have been found to be living beings who are so steeped in their belief that their conscious minds can't accept that after their burial and 'resurrection' they are not zombies. They truly believe they are."
"What makes the sword disappear?" Garin asked, smiling.
"We weren't finished talking about you." Annja took another bite of toast, then the melon, which was sweet and crisp.
"I was nine years old when I was given to Roux," Garin went on. "I was twenty-one when he allied himself with the Maid."
"He allied himself with Joan of Arc?"
Garin nodded. "He felt he had to. So we traveled with her and were part of her retinue."
"Fancy word," Annja teased, surprising herself.
"My vocabulary is vast. I also speak several languages."
"Joan of Arc," Annja reminded.
"Roux and I served with her. He was one of her counsels. When she was captured by the English, Roux stayed nearby."
"Why didn't he rescue her?"
"Because he believed God would."
"But that didn't happen?"
Garin shook his head. "We were… gone when the English decided to burn her at the stake. We arrived too late. Roux tried to stop them, but there were too many English. She died."
Annja turned pale. It was all too fantastic to be believed, yet she didn't feel any sense of danger – just curiosity. Who is this man? she wondered. What is going on?
"Are you all right?" Concern showed on Garin's handsome face.
"I am. Just tired."
He didn't appear convinced.
"What about the sword?" Annja asked.
Garin balanced his empty plate on his knee. "It was shattered. I watched them do it."
"The English?"
He nodded. "Afterward, Roux and I realized we were cursed."
Annja couldn't help herself. She smiled. Anyone could have read about the legendary sword. The details were open to interpretation or exaggeration, as all historical accounts were. Where will this elaborate hoax lead? she wondered.
Then she remembered how Bart McGilley had told her that the fingerprints – friction ridges– she'd pulled from the euro Roux had given her belonged to a suspect in a sixty-three-year-old homicide. She thought about the sword.
"Who cursed you?" she asked.
Garin hesitated, as if he were about to tell her an impossible thing. "I don't know what Roux thinks, but I believe we were cursed by God."
Chapter 23
AFTER GARIN FINISHED his story, Annja sat quietly and looked at him. The fear that he had felt all those years ago – and, in spite of herself, she did believe him about the five hundred years – still showed in his dark features.
"You helped Roux look for the sword?" Annja asked.
Garin shook his head. "No."
"Why?"
"I was angry after Joan's death and I had no idea there would be consequences if the pieces of the sword weren't found."
Annja had to admit the man had a point. "So when did you start to believe?"
"About twenty years later."
"When you didn't age?"
"No," Garin answered. "I aged. A little. It was when I saw Roux again and saw that he hadn't aged. I began to believe then. I'd thought he would be dead."