"December 2, 1939: It is understandable, I believe, that I thought ill of Ferdinando when I first met him, as he was so very drunk and not a little bit billigerant. From that first meeting until today, however, I must confess that I had disliked him for all the ways in which he reminded me of myself in my younger days. His nature is the affable and personable reflection of the harsh, stern manner I have fallen into since Anabelle's death. Today, for the first time in years, I caught a glimpse of some of that hope which I had lost, and for that I owe my thanks to the Tuscan gentleman I am now proud to call my friend.
By the time we reached Marienburg castle I was, of course, convinced that the Nazis had something of great import and strangeness secluded there, but still felt that rumors about the Grail and the Spear of Longinus were mere supersticious rumor. As it was, they proved to be if anything, conservative. The interrogation of an outlying sentry informed us that Marienburg was serving as a prison with but a single guest. Once inside the castle, we were able to reach the prisoner - she was a woman bent with long year's and dressed as a member of the local peasantry, much like many of the Polish natives we had seen since entering the country. She was bound with chains of a dull and frigid metal which seemed to reflect the countenances of inumerable wailing and lamenting souls - she explained that these manacles bound her in a way that castle walls and machine-gun carrying guards could not. She called herself "Madame Marthesine", and claimed to be a wandering godess of some antideluvian age, invested with the guardianship of all things lost. The Nazi commando squad had captured and improsoned her that they might plunder the limitless treasury of lost wonders, kept in the magical dimensions of her travelling sack. She seemed so mundane, I confess I did not believe she could be anything other than mad, but Ferdinando seemed not in the least surprised or unconvinced by her tale.
Ferdinando freed her from her cell, and though her shackles proved terrible in their resilience, they were not completely ageless, it seems, and so she was quickly free. With a smile that was all wisdom and no kindness, she asked us each to name the boon she owed us for our aid. I was about to protest that we had no further time to daudle foolishly, when my companion broke in with a complex and evidently previously devised set of instructions. He wished to be privy, he said, to all of the great unread and unrecieved missives of the ages, to each secret never quite shared. He required that she favor him with 14 such letters a year from her infinite collection, for as long as he should live. Their deal struck, Madame Marthesine turned once more to hear my request, and just as I was about to again protest the entire scene, Ferdinando interrupted me again. This time, he offered me a friendly reminder "Dear Maxwell," he said "is there nothing in this world which you have lost that you might wish to find again?" For that kind insight, I cannot thank the man enough.
With her second bargain sealed, Madam Marthesine disapeared entirely, though quietly and without pomp. Leaving her cell we found the castle and its grounds desterted entirely, without a trace of the 60 or more soldiers who had been guarding it when we arrived. This evening we have come to rest in the loft of a gracious local, and tomorrow will begin the long road back to Switzerland."
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