Ethan Gage Collection # 1 (74 page)

“My husband, if I can find him! Oh, this is disaster! We took the wrong turn and I missed him on the highway, and now his brothers will get to him first and tell their lies about me. If you've delayed me too much, you'll answer for it!”

I thought the guillotine had thinned out this kind of arrogance, but apparently it hadn't gotten them all. “But Paris is that way,” I pointed.

“I wanted to meet him! But he's got past us and we were taking this lane to swing back. Now he'll already be home, and I not being there will confirm the worst!”

“What worst?”

“That I'm unfaithful!” And she burst into tears.

It was then that I recognized her features, somewhat famous in the Parisian social circles at whose fringes I'd moved. This was none other than Josephine, Napoleon's wife! What the devil was she doing on a dark road with night falling? And of course tears brought sympathy. I am nothing if not gallant, and weeping will disarm any gentleman.

“It's Bonaparte's wife,” I whispered to Astiza. “When he heard she was an adulteress, on the eve of the Battle of the Pyramids, he nearly went insane.”

“Is that why she's frightened?”

“We know how mercurial he is. He might put her in front of a firing squad.”

Astiza considered, then moved swiftly to the coach door. “Lady, we know your husband.”

“What?” She was a small woman, I now assessed, slim and finely dressed, neither homely nor particularly beautiful, her skin warm, her nose straight, her lips full, her eyes attractively wide and dark and, even in their desperation, intelligent. She had dark hair and finely sculpted ears, but her complexion was blotchy from crying. “How could you know him?”

“We served with Bonaparte in Egypt. We're hurrying ourselves, to warn him of terrible danger.”

“You
do
know him! What danger? An assassination?”

“That a companion, Alessandro Silano, plans to betray him.”

“Count Silano? He's coming with my husband, I heard. He's supposed to be a confidant and adviser.”

“He's bewitched Napoleon, and has tried to turn him against you. But we can help. You're attempting to reconcile?”

She bowed her head, eyes wet. “It's been such a surprise. We had no warning he was coming. I rushed from my dearest friend to meet him. But these idiots took a wrong turn.” She leaned out the carriage window and gripped Astiza's arms. “You must tell him that despite everything, I still love him! If he divorces me, I lose everything! My children will be penniless! Is it my fault he goes away for months and years?”

“Then the gods have arranged this accident, don't you think?” Astiza said.

“The gods?”

I drew my companion back. “What are you doing?” I hissed.

“Here is our key to Bonaparte!” Astiza whispered. “He'll be surrounded by soldiers. How else are we going to get to him save through his wife? She's not faithful to him or anything else, which means she'll ally with anyone who suits her purpose. That means we have to enlist Josephine on our side. She can find out where the scroll is when she beds him, when men lose what little wits they have. Then we steal it back!”

“What are you whispering about?” Josephine called.

Astiza smiled. “Please, lady, our own carriage is ruined but it's
imperative we reach your husband. I think we can help each other. If you'd let us ride with you we can help you reconcile.”

“How?”

“My companion is a wise Freemason. We know the key to a sacred book that could give Napoleon great power.”

“Freemason?” She squinted at me. “Abbot Barruel in his famed book said they were behind the revolution. The Jacobins were all a Masonic plot. But the
Journal of Free Men
says the Masons are actually Royalists, plotting to bring back the king. Which are you?”

“I see the future in your husband, lady,” I lied.

Josephine looked intrigued, and calculating. “Sacred book?”

“From Egypt,” Astiza said. “If we ride we can be in Paris by dawn.”

Somewhat surprisingly, she assented. She was so rattled by Napoleon's reappearance and his undoubted fury at her adulterous ways that she was eager for any help, no matter how improbable. So we left our own stolen coach a wreck, half its horses shot, our gypsies hiding, and took hers to Paris.

“Now. You must tell me what you know or I will throw you out,” she warned.

We had to gamble. “I found a book that conveys great powers,” I began.

“What kind of powers?”

“The power to persuade. To enchant. To live unnaturally long, perhaps forever. To manipulate objects.”

Her eyes were wide and greedy.

“Count Silano has stolen this book and fastened onto Bonaparte like a leech, draining his mind. But the book hasn't been translated. Only we can do so. If his wife was to offer the key, on the understanding that Silano must be displaced, then you'd get your marriage back. I'm proposing an alliance. With our secret, you can get into your husband's bedchamber. With your influence, we can get back our book, dispose of Silano, and help Napoleon.”

She was wary. “What key?”

“To a strange, ancient language, long lost.” Astiza turned on Jose
phine's coach seat and I gently unlaced the back of her dress. The fabric parted, revealing the intricate alphabet in henna.

The Frenchwoman gasped. “It looks like Satan's writing!”

“Or God's.”

Josephine considered. “Who cares whose it is, if we win?”

Was Thoth finally smiling on us? We raced toward Bonaparte's house on the newly renamed Rue de la Victoire, a tribute to his victories in Italy. And, with no plan, no confederates, and no weapons, we drew this ambitious social climber into our confidence.

What did I know about Josephine? The kind of gossip Paris thrived on. She grew up on the island of Martinique, was half a dozen years older than Napoleon, two inches shorter, and a tenacious survivor. She'd married a rich young army officer, Alexandre de Beauharnais, but he was so embarrassed by her provincial manners that he refused to present her to the court of Marie Antoinette. She separated from him, returned to the Caribbean, fled a slave revolt there to return to Paris at the height of the revolution, lost her husband to the guillotine in 1794, and then was imprisoned herself. Only the coup that ended the Terror saved her head. When a young army officer named Bonaparte called to compliment her on the conduct of her son Eugene, who had asked for help in retrieving the sword of his executed father, she seduced him. In desperation she gambled on this rising Corsican and married him, but then slept with everyone in sight while he was in Italy and Egypt. Some whispered she was a nymphomaniac. She'd been living with a former officer named Hippolyte Charles, now a businessman, when the alarming news arrived of her husband's return. With the revolution having allowed divorce, she was now in danger of losing everything at the very moment Bonaparte was seeking ultimate power. At thirty-six, with discoloring teeth, she might not have another chance.

Her eyes widened at Astiza's explanation of supernatural powers. A child of the Sugar Isles, tales of magic weren't alien to her.

“This book can destroy men who possess it,” Astiza said, “and wreck nations in which it is unleashed. The ancients knew this and hid it away, but Count Silano has tempted fate by stealing it. He's
bewitched your husband with dreams of unlimited power. It could drive Napoleon mad. You must help us get it back.”

“But how?”

“We'll safeguard the book if you give it to us. Your knowledge of it will give you tremendous influence over him.”

“But who are you?”

“My name is Astiza and this is Ethan Gage, an American.”

“Gage? The electrician? Franklin's man?”

“Madame, I am honored to make your acquaintance and flattered that you have heard of me.” I took her hand. “I hope we can be allies.”

She snatched it away. “But you are a murderer!” She looked at me doubtfully. “Of a cheap adventuress! Aren't you?”

“A perfect example of Silano's lies, the kind that can entrap your husband and ruin his dreams. I was the victim of an unjust accusation. Let us help get this kind of poison away from your husband, and your married bliss will return to normal.”

“Yes. It is Silano's fault, not mine. This book contains terrible power, you say?”

“The kind that can enslave souls.”

She thought carefully. Finally she sat back and smiled. “You're right. God is looking out for me.”

 

T
he Bonaparte house, bought by Josephine before they were married, was in the fashionable part of Paris known as Chaussée d'Antin, a once-marshy area where the rich had built charming homes called “follies” over the past century. It was a modest two-story abode with a rose garden at the end of its bloom and a terrace that Josephine had covered with a wooden roof and hung with flags and tapestries: a respectable home for striving, midlevel functionaries. Her carriage pulled into a gravel drive under linden trees and she got out, nervous and flustered, plucking at her cheeks. “How do I look?”

“Like a woman with a secret,” Astiza assured her. “In control.”

Josephine smiled wanly and took a breath. Then we entered.

The rooms were a curious mix of feminine and masculine, with rich wallpaper and lacy curtains but hung with maps and plans of cities. There were the mistress's flowers, and the master's books, heaps of them, some just unpacked from Egypt. Her neatness was apparent, even as his boots were discarded in the dining room and his greatcoat thrown over one chair. A staircase led upward.

“He is in his bedchamber,” she whispered.

“Go to him.”

“His brothers will have told him everything. He will hate me! I am a wicked, unfaithful woman. I can't help it. I love love so. I thought he would be killed!”

“You are human, as is he,” I soothed. “He's not a saint either, trust me. Go, ask forgiveness, and tell him you've been busy recruiting allies. Explain how you've persuaded us to help him, that his future depends on the three of us.”

I didn't trust Josephine, but what other weapon did we have? I was worried that Silano might be lurking about. Summoning her courage, she mounted the twenty steps to the floor above, tapping on his door. “My sweet general?”

It was quiet for a while, and then we heard pounding, and then weeping, and then sob-wracked pleas for forgiveness. Bonaparte, it seemed, had locked the door. He was determined for divorce. We could hear his wife pleading through the wood. Then the shouting quieted and there was quieter talk, and once I thought I heard the click of a lock being turned. Then, silence. I took the stairs down to the basement kitchen and a maid found us some cheese and bread to eat. The staff clustered like mice, awaiting the outcome of the storm above. We dozed, in our weariness.

Near dawn, a maid roused us. “My mistress wants to see you,” she whispered.

We were led upstairs. The maid tapped and Josephine's voice replied “Come in” with a lightness I hadn't heard before.

We entered, and there the victor of Abukir and his newly faithful wife lay side by side in bed, covers to their chin, both looking as satisfied as cats with cream.

“Good God, Gage,” Napoleon greeted. “You're still not dead? If my soldiers could survive like you, I could conquer the world.”

“We're only trying to save it, General.”

“Silano said he left you buried! And my wife has been telling your stories.”

“We only want to do what is best for you and France, General.”

“You want the book. Everyone does. Yet no one can read it.”

“We can.”

“So she says, with a record of what you helped destroy. I admire your cleverness. Well, rest assured one thing good has come from your long night. You've helped reconcile me to Josephine, and for that I am in a generous mood.”

I brightened. Maybe this would work. I began glancing around for the book.

Then there were heavy steps behind and I turned. A troop of gendarmes was mounting the stairs. When I looked back, Napoleon was holding a pistol.

“She's convinced me that instead of simply shooting you, I should lock you in Temple Prison. Your execution can wait until you stand trial for that whore's murder.” He smiled. “I must say, my Josephine has been tireless on your behalf.” He pointed to Astiza. “As for you, you will disrobe in my wife's dressing room with her and my maids watching. I've summoned secretaries to copy your secret.”

T
here was irony in being imprisoned in a “temple” first built as headquarters for the Knight Templars, then used as a dungeon to hold King Louis and Marie Antoinette before they were beheaded, and finally serving as an unsuccessful jail for Sidney Smith. The English captain had escaped in part by signaling a lady he'd bedded through the prison windows, which was resourcefulness after my own heart. Now, eighteen months later, Astiza and I got to experience the accommodations ourselves, our lodgekeeper the portly, greasy, obsequious, officious, dim, but curious jailer Jacques Boniface, who'd entertained Sir Sidney with legends of the Knights.

We were driven there in the jail's iron wagon, watching Paris through iron bars. The city seemed drab in November, the people apprehensive, the skies gray. We were watched in turn, like animals, and it was a depressing way to introduce Astiza to a great city. All was foreign to her: the great cathedral steeples, the clamor of the leather and linen and fruit markets, the cacophony of neighing horse traffic and sidewalk merchants, and the boldness of women wrapped in fur and velvet strategically opened to give a glimpse of breast and ankle.
Astiza had been humiliated by her stripping to copy the key, and didn't speak. When we alighted alongside the outer keep, in a cold and treeless courtyard, something caught my eye at the compound gate. There were people staring through the grillwork, always glad to see wretches even less fortunate than they, and I was startled to spy one head of bright red, wiry hair, as familiar as a bill of rent and as pesky as an unwanted memory. Could it be? No, of course not.

Temple Prison, which dated from the thirteenth century, was a narrow, ugly castle that rose two hundred feet to the peak of its pyramidal roof, its tower cells lit by narrow barred windows. They opened on the inside to galleries around a central atrium, climbed by a spiral staircase. It says something for the efficiency of the Terror that the prison was largely empty. Its royalist inmates had all been guillotined.

As prisons go, I've seen worse. Astiza and I were allowed to stroll the parapet around the roof—it was much too high to try to jump or climb from—and the food was better than in some of the
khans
I'd experienced near Jerusalem. We were in France, after all. If it wasn't for the fact that we were shut up tight, and that Bonaparte and Silano seemed intent on mastery of the world, I might have welcomed the rest. There's nothing like treasure hunting, ancient legends, and battles to make one appreciate a good nap.

But the Book of Thoth pulled on us, and Boniface was a gossip who enjoyed relating the machinations of a city at war and under strain. Plots and conspiracies were fried quick as a crêpe, each cabal looking for “a sword” to provide the necessary military muscle to take over the government. The Directory of five leading politicians was constantly reshuffled by the two legislative chambers. And the Council of the Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred were raucous, pompous assemblies who wore Roman mantles, indulged in shameless graft, and kept an orchestra on hand to punctuate legislation with patriotic songs. The economy was a wreck, the army was beggared for supplies, half of western France was in a revolt fueled by British gold, and most generals had one eye on the battlefield and the other on Paris.

“We need a leader,” our jailer said. “Everyone is sick of democracy.
You're lucky to be here, Gage, away from the turmoil. When I go into the city I never feel safe.”

“Pity.”

“Yet people don't want a dictator. Few seek the return of the king. We must preserve the republic, but how can anyone take the reins of our fractious assembly? It's like controlling the cats of Paris. We need the wisdom of Solomon.”

“Do you now?” We were sharing supper in the confines of my cell. Boniface had done the same with Smith because the jailer was bored and had no friends. I suppose his company was supposed to be part of our torture, but I'd taken an odd liking to him. He showed more tolerance of his prisoners than some hosts show guests, and paid better attention. It didn't hurt that Astiza remained quite fine to look at and that I, of course, was uncommonly good company.

Now he nodded. “Bonaparte wants to be a George Washington, reluctantly accepting stewardship of his country, but he hasn't the gravity and reserve. Yes, I've studied Washington, and his stoic modesty is a credit to your young nation. The Corsican arrived thinking he might be swept into the Directory by popular acclaim, but his superiors received him with coldness. What is he doing back from Egypt without orders? Have you two seen
Le Messenger
?”

“If you will recall, Monsieur Boniface, we are confined to this tower,” Astiza said gently.

“Yes, yes, of course. Oh, that brave periodical denounced the Egyptian campaign! Made a mockery of it! An army abandoned! Soldiers thrown uselessly at the ramparts of Acre! Bonaparte humiliated by the man once imprisoned here, Sir Sidney Smith! The newspapers are a voice for the assembly, you know. It's all over for Napoleon.”

Talma had told me that Bonaparte feared hostile newspapers more than bayonets. But what no one knew was that Napoleon had the book, and that Silano once again had the full code to read it. So much for bargaining with Josephine, the scheming slut. That woman could seduce the pope, and reduce him to beggary in the process.

When I asked Boniface about the Knight Templars who'd built this place, it was like turning the handle on a pump. Facts and theo
ries gushed out. “Jacques de Molay himself was grand master here and then tortured! There are ghosts here, young people, ghosts I've heard shrieking in winter storms. The Templars were burned and beaten until they admitted to the worst kinds of abominations and devil worship, and then they were sent to the stake. Yet where was their treasure? The rooms you're confined in were supposed to be stuffed, yet when the French king arrived to pillage them, they were empty. And where was the rumored source of Templar power? De Molay would say nothing, except when he went to the stake. Then he prophesized king and pope would be dead within the year. Oh, the shiver in the crowd when he prophesized that! And it was true! These Templars were not just warrior-monks, my friend, they were magicians. They'd found something in Jerusalem that gave them strange powers.”

“Imagine if such power could be rediscovered,” Astiza murmured.

“A man like Bonaparte would seize the state in an instant. Then we'll see things change, let me tell you, for better
and
worse.”

“Is that when our trial will be?”

“No. That's when you'll be guillotined.” He gave a Gallic shrug.

Our jailer was eager to hear our adventures, which we cautiously edited. Had we been inside the Great Pyramid? Oh yes. Nothing to see.

And Jerusalem's Temple Mount?

A Muslim holy site now, with Christian access prohibited.

What about rumors of lost cities in the desert?

If they are lost, how could we find them?

The ancients could not raise their great monuments without colossal secrets, Boniface insisted. Magic had been lost with the priests of yore. Ours was a pale modern age, stripped of wonder, mechanical and cynical. Science was subduing mystery, and rationalism was trampling wonder. Nothing like Egypt!

“Yet what if it were found again?” I hinted.

“You know something, don't you, American? No, don't shake your head! You know something, and I, Boniface, am going to get it out of you!”

 

O
n October 26, our jailer brought electrifying news. Lucien Bonaparte, age twenty-four, had just been elected president of the Council of Five Hundred!

I knew Lucien had been working on his brother's behalf in Paris long before Napoleon left Egypt. He was a gifted politician. But president of France's most powerful chamber? “I thought you had to be thirty years old to hold that post?”

“That's why Paris is buzzing! He lied of course—had to, in order to comply with the Constitution—but everyone knows the lie. Yet they elected him anyway! This is Napoleon's doing, somehow. The deputies are frightened, or bewitched.”

More intriguing news followed. Napoleon Bonaparte, who'd been snubbed by the Directory, now was to have a banquet in his honor. Was public opinion turning? Had the general been wooing the city's politicians to his side?

On November 9, 1799—18 Brumaire on the new revolutionary calendar—Boniface came to us goggle-eyed. The man was a walking newspaper. “I don't believe it!” he exclaimed. “It's as if our legislators are under the spell of Mesmer! At half past four this morning, the Council of Ancients was roused out of bed and sleepily assembled in the horse ring of the Tuileries, where they voted to remove themselves outside the city to the estate of Saint-Cloud to deliberate there. The decision is insane: it separates them from support of the mob. They did this willingly, and the Five Hundred will follow them! All is confusion and speculation. But more than that has Paris holding its breath.”

“What?”

“Napoleon has been given command of the city's garrison, with General Moreau removed! Now troops are moving to Saint-Cloud. Others are manning barricades. Bayonets are everywhere.”

“Command of the garrison? That's ten thousand men. The army of Paris was what kept everyone, including Bonaparte, in check.”

“Exactly. Why would the chambers allow this? Something odd is
going on, something that leads them to vote the opposite of what they asserted just hours or days before. What could it be?”

I knew what, of course. Silano had made progress translating the Book of Thoth. Spells were being said and woven, and minds were being clouded. Bewitched indeed! The entire city was being entranced. Astiza and I looked at each other. There was no time to waste. “Mysteries of the East,” I said suddenly.

“What?”

“Jailer, have you ever heard of the Book of Thoth?” Astiza asked.

Boniface looked surprised. “But of course. All students of the past have heard of the Thrice Great, ancestor of Solomon, originator of all knowledge, the Way and the Word.” His voice had shrunk to a whisper. “Some say Thoth created an earthly paradise we've forgotten how to maintain, but others say that he's the dark archangel himself, in a thousand guises: Baal, Beelzebub, Bahomet!”

“The book has been lost for thousands of years, has it not?”

Now he looked sly. “Perhaps. There are rumors the Templars…”

“Jacques Boniface, the rumors are true,” I said, standing from the rude table where we shared a jug of cheap wine, my voice deepening.

“What charges are filed against Astiza and me?”

“Charges? Why none. We don't need charges to hold you in Temple Prison.”

“Yet don't you wonder why Bonaparte has confined us here? You can see for yourself we're friendless and helpless. Confined us but not yet killed us, in case we may be useful yet. What is an odd pair like us doing in Paris at all, and what do we know that is so dangerous to the state?”

He looked at us warily. “I have wondered these things, yes.”

“Perhaps—allow the possibility, Boniface—we know of
treasure.
The greatest on earth.” I leaned forward across the table.

“Treasure?” It was a squeak.

“Of the Knights Templar, hidden since that Friday the thirteenth, 1309, when they were arrested and tortured by the mad king of France. Keeper of this keep, you are as trapped as us. How long do you want to be here?”

“As long as my masters…”

“Because
you
could be master yourself, Boniface. Master of Thoth. You and we, who are the true students of the past.
We
wouldn't give sacred secrets to ambitious tyrants like Bonaparte, as Count Alessandro Silano is doing. We'd reserve them for all mankind, would we not?”

He scratched his head. “I suppose so.”

“But to do so we must move, and quickly. Tonight is Napoleon's coup, I think. And it depends on who holds a book that was once lost, now recovered. The Templars hid their wealth all right, in a place they reasoned no man would ever dare look,” I lied.

“Where?” He was holding his breath.

“Under the Temple of Reason, built on the Isle de la Cité exactly where the ancient Romans built their temple to Isis, goddess of Egypt. But only the book will tell us
exactly
where it is.”

His eyes goggled. “Notre Dame?” Poverty will make you believe anything, and a jailer's wage is criminal.

“You'll need a pick and courage, Monsieur Boniface. The courage to become the richest, most powerful man in the world! But only if you are willing to dig! And only one man can lead us to the precise spot! Silano lives only for his own greed, and we must capture him and do what's right, for Freemasonry, Templar lore, and the mysteries of the ancients! Are you with me?”

“Will it be dangerous?”

“Just get us to Silano's chambers and then you can hide in the crypts of Notre Dame while we decipher the secret. Then together we'll change history!”

 

I
n calmer times I might not have persuaded him. But with Paris on the edge of a coup, troops erecting barricades, legislative assemblies panicking, generals crowding in glittering array into Napoleon's house, and the city dark and apprehensive, anything could happen. More importantly, the Catholic priesthood had been shut down by the revolution and Notre Dame had become a grand ghost, used only
by devout old women and swept out by the poor for welfare. Our jailer could get into its crypts easily enough. While Bonaparte was addressing thousands of men in the garden of the Tuileries, Boniface was assembling trenching tools.

To let us out was a blatant violation of the responsibilities of his office, of course. Yet I warned him he'd never find the book, or read it, without us. That he'd spend the rest of his days as jailer of Temple Prison, gossiping with the condemned instead of inheriting the wealth and power of the Knight Templars. That evening Boniface reported that Bonaparte had stormed into the Council of the Ancients when they balked at his demands to disband the Directory and appoint him first consul. His speech had been volcanic and nonsensical, by all accounts, so much so that his own aides pulled him away. He was shouting gibberish! All seemed lost. And yet the deputies did not order his arrest or refuse to meet. They instead seemed inclined to meet his demands. Why? That evening, after Napoleon's mesmerized troops had cleared Saint-Cloud's Orangerie of the Council of Five Hundred, some of the deputies leaping from windows to get away, the Ancients passed a new decree dictating that a “temporary executive committee” led by Bonaparte had replaced the nation's Directory.