Ethan Gage Collection # 1 (75 page)

“All seemed lost to his plotters a dozen times, and yet men wilted before his will,” our jailer said. “Now some deputies from the Five Hundred are being rounded up to do the same. The conspirators will take the oath of office after midnight!”

Later, men said it was all bluff, bayonet, and panic. But I wondered if that gibberish included words of power that hadn't been spoken for nearly five thousand years, words from an ancient book that had been buried in a City of Ghosts with a Knight Templar. I wondered if the Book of Thoth was already in motion. If its spells still had power, then Napoleon, new master of the most powerful nation on earth, would soon master the planet—and with him Silano's Egyptian Rite. A new rule of occult megalomaniacs would commence, and instead of a new dawn, a long darkness would fall upon human history.

We had to act.

“Have you discovered where Alessandro Silano is?”

“He's conducting experiments in the Tuileries, under Bonaparte's protection. But word is that he is away tonight, aiding the conspirators in their takeover of the government. Fortunately, most of the troops have marched to Saint-Cloud. There are a few guards at the Tuileries, but the old palace is largely empty. You can go to Silano's chambers and get your book.” He looked at us. “You are certain he has the secret? If we fail, it could mean the guillotine!”

“Once you have the book and treasure, Boniface, you will
control
the guillotine—and everything else.”

He nodded uncertainly, the stains from his last half-dozen suppers a mottled scramble on his shirt. “It's just that this is risky. I'm not sure it's the right thing.”

“All great things are difficult, or they would not be great!” It sounded like something Bonaparte would say, and Frenchmen love that kind of talk. “Get us to Silano's chambers and we'll take the risk while you go ahead to Notre Dame.”

“But I am your jailer! I can't leave you by yourself!”

“You think sharing the world's greatest treasure won't bind us more tightly than the strongest chain? Trust me, Boniface—you won't be able to get away from us.”

Our route through Paris was a mile and a half, and we went on foot instead of coach so that we could skirt the military checkpoints erected in the city. Paris seemed to be holding its breath. There were few lights, and those people on the streets were clustered, trading rumors of the attempted coup. Bonaparte was king. Bonaparte had been arrested. Bonaparte was at Saint-Cloud, or the Luxembourg Palace, or even Versailles. The deputies would rally the mob. The deputies had rallied to Bonaparte. The deputies had fled. It was a paralyzed chatter.

We passed city hall to the north bank of the Seine, and theaters dark instead of lively. I had fond memories of their lobbies crowded with courtesans, courting business. Then we followed the river westward past the Louvre. The great spires and buttresses of the cathedrals on the Isle de la Cité rose against a gray sky, illuminated by a shrouded moon. “That is where you must prepare the way for us,” I
said, pointing toward Notre Dame. “We'll come with the book and a captured Silano.”

He nodded. We ducked into a doorway while a company of cavalry clattered by.

Once I thought I sensed a figure following us and whirled, but it was only to catch a skirt disappearing into a doorway. Again, a flash of red hair. Had I imagined her? I wished I had my rifle, or any weapon, but if we were stopped with a gun we might be jailed. Firearms were prohibited in the city. “Did you see a strange woman?” I asked Astiza.

“Everyone in Paris looks strange to me.”

We passed by the Louvre, the river dark and molten, and at the Tuileries Gardens turned and followed the great façade of the Tuileries Palace, ordered by Catherine de Medici two centuries before. Like many European palaces it was a great pile of a place, eight times too large for any sensible need, and moreover had been largely abandoned after the construction of Versailles. Poor King Louis and Marie Antoinette had been forced to move back to it during the revolution, and then the edifice had been stormed by the mob and left a wreck ever since. It still had the air of ghostly abandon. Boniface had a police pass to get us by one bored, sleepy sentry at a side door, explaining we had urgent business. Who didn't these fretful days?

“I wouldn't take the woman up there,” the soldier advised, giving Astiza a gander. “No one does anymore. It's guarded by a spirit.”

“A spirit?” Boniface asked, paling.

“Men have heard things in the night.”

“You mean the count?”

“Something moves up there when he's gone.” He grinned, his teeth yellow. “You can leave the lady with me.”

“I
like
ghosts,” Astiza replied.

We climbed the stairs to the first floor. The architectural opulence of the Tuileries was still there: vast halls opening one to another in a long chain, intricately carved barrel ceilings, mosaic-like hardwood floors, and fireplace mantles with enough gewgaws to decorate half of Philadelphia. Our footsteps echoed. But the paint was dirty, the
paper was peeling, and the floor had been cracked and ruined by a cannon the mob dragged through here to confront Louis XVI back in 1792. Some of the grand windows were still boarded up from being broken. Most of the art had disappeared.

On we went, room after room, like a place seen endlessly through mirrors reflecting each other. At last our jailer stopped before a door. “These are Silano's chambers,” Boniface said. “He doesn't allow the sentries to come near. We must hurry, because he could return at any time.” He looked around. “Where is this ghost?”

“In your imagination,” I replied.

“But
something
keeps the curious away.”

“Yes. Credulity for silly stories.”

The door lock was easily picked: our jailer had had plenty of time to learn how from the criminals he housed.

“Fine work,” I told him. “You're just the man to penetrate the crypts. We'll meet you there.”

“You think me a fool? I'm not leaving you until I'm sure this count really has anything worth finding. So long as we hurry.” He looked over his shoulder.

So we passed together through an anteroom and into a larger, shadowy chamber and then stopped, uncertain. Silano had been busy.

Catching the eye first was a central table. A dead dog lay on it, lips curled in a snarl of frozen pain, its fur daubed with paint or shorn bare. Pins tied together with filaments of metal jutted from the carcass.

“
Mon dieu,
what is that?” Boniface whispered.

“An experiment, I think,” replied Astiza. “Silano is toying with resurrection.”

Our jailer crossed himself.

The shelves were jammed with books and scrolls Silano must have shipped from Egypt. There were also scores of preservative jars, their liquid yellow like bile, filled with organisms: saucer-eyed fish, ropey eels, birds with beaks tucked in their wet plumage, floating mammals, and parts of things I couldn't entirely identify. There were baby limbs and adult organs, brains and tongues, and in one—like marbles or olives—a container of eyes that looked disturbingly human. There
was a shelf of human skulls, and an assembled skeleton of some large creature I couldn't even name. Stuffed and mummified rodents and birds watched us from the shadows with eyes of glass.

Near the door a pentagram had been painted on the floor, inscribed with odd symbols from the book. Parchment and plaques with odd symbols hung on the walls, along with old maps and diagrams of the pyramids. I spied the kabbalah pattern we'd seen beneath Jerusalem, and other jumbles of numbers, lines, and symbols from arcane sources, like a backward, twisted cross. All was illuminated by low-burning candles: Silano had been gone for some time, but obviously expected to be back. On a second table was an ocean of paper, covered with the characters from the Book of Thoth and Silano's attempts at French translation. Half was crossed out and spattered with dots of ink. Additional vials held noxious liquids, and there were tin boxes with heaps of chemical powder. The room had a weird smell of ink, preservative, powdered metal, and some underlying rot.

“This is an evil place,” Boniface muttered. He looked as if he'd made a pact with the devil.

“That is why we must get the book from Silano,” Astiza said.

“Leave now if you're afraid,” I urged.

“No. I want to see this book.”

The floor was mostly covered with a grand wool carpet, stained and torn but no doubt left by the Bourbons. It ended at a balcony that overlooked a dark space. Below was a ground floor, paved with stone, that had large double doors leading outside like a barn. A coach and three carts were jammed into it, the carts heaped with boxes. So Silano was still unpacking. A wooden stair led to where we were, explaining why this particular apartment had been chosen. It was convenient for shipping things in and out.

Like a wooden sarcophagus.

The coffin from Rosetta had been lost in the shadows but I saw it now, leaning upright against the wall. The tracery of ancient decoration was gray in the dim light, but familiar. Yet there was something oddly forbidding about the case.

“It's the mummy,” I said. “I'll bet the count has spread word. This
is the spirit the sentry was talking about, the thing that keeps men from snooping in this room.”

“A dead man is in there?”

“Thousands of years dead, Boniface. Take a look. We'll all be like that, someday.”

“Open it? No! The guard said it comes alive!”

“Not without the book, I'll guess, and we don't have that yet. The key to the fortune under Notre Dame might be in that sarcophagus. You've sent men to execution, jailer. You're afraid of a wood box?”

“A casket.”

“Which Silano brought all the way from Egypt without trouble.”

So the goaded jailer screwed up his courage, marched over, and swung the lid open. And Omar, guardian mummy, face almost black, sockets eyeless and closed, teeth grimacing, slowly leaned out and fell into his arms.

Boniface shrieked. Linen wrappings flapped by his face and musty dust puffed into his eyes. He dropped Omar as if the mummy was on fire. “It's alive!”

The trouble with miserly pay for public servants is that you don't get the best.

“Calm yourself, Boniface,” I said. “He's dead as a sausage, and he's been dead for several thousand years. See? We call him Omar.”

The jailer crossed himself again, despite the Jacobin animosity to religion. “This is a mistake, what we're doing. We'll be damned for it.”

“Only if we lose our courage. Listen, the hour grows late. How much risk can you tolerate? Go to the church, pick its locks, and hide our tools. Hide, and wait for us.”

“But when will you come?”

“As soon as we get the book and answers from the count. Start tapping on the crypt floors. There has to be a hollow somewhere.”

He nodded, regaining some of his greed. “And you promise to come?”

“I won't be rich unless I do, will I?”

That satisfied him and, to our relief, he fled. I hoped it was the last I'd ever see of him, since to my knowledge there wasn't a scrap
of treasure under Notre Dame and I had no intention of going there. Omar the mummy had done us a favor.

I looked at the corpse warily. It
would
stay still, wouldn't it?

“We have to find the book fast,” I told Astiza. The trick was to finish before the count came back. “You take that side's shelves, I'll take this one.”

We flew along the books, spilling them out, searching for
the
book somewhere behind. Here were volumes on alchemy, witchcraft, Zoroaster, Mithras, Atlantis, and Ultima Thule. There were albums of Masonic imagery, sketches of Egyptian hieroglyphs, the hierarchy of the Knights Templar, and theories about Rosicrucians and the mystery of the Grail. Silano had treatises on electricity, longevity, aphrodisiacs, herbal cures, the origin of disease, and the age of the earth. His speculation was boundless, and yet we didn't find what we were looking for.

“Perhaps he takes it with him,” I guessed.

“He wouldn't dare do that, not on the streets of Paris. He's hidden it where we wouldn't think—or dare—to look.”

Dare to look? At Rosetta, Omar had served as sentry. I considered the poor tumbled mummy, its eroded nose to the floor. Could it be?

I rolled him over. There was a slit in its wrappings and his torso, I realized, was hollow, vital organs removed. Grimacing, I reached inside.

And felt the slick, tightly wrapped scroll. Clever.

“So the mouse has found the cheese,” said a voice from the doorway.

I turned, dismayed we weren't ready. It was Alessandro Silano, striding toward us erect and young, years flushed away, a drawn rapier flicking back and forth as he strode. His limp was gone and his look was murderous. “You're a hard man to kill, Ethan Gage, so I'm not going to repeat the indulgent mistake I made in Egypt. While I wanted to dig up your mummified corpse and toast it in my future palace, I was also hoping I'd someday have this chance—to run both of you through, as I will right now.”

A
stiza and I were both weaponless. The woman, for lack of something better, picked up a skull. For little more reason than to hold what we'd come for, I scooped up Omar and his eternal grin, the Book of Thoth still inside. He was light and fragile. The bandages were like old paper, rough and crumbly.

“It's fitting that we're back here in Paris where it all began, isn't it?” the count said. His rapier was a lethal wand, twitching like the tongue of a snake. With his free hand he undid the cord at his neck to let his street cloak fall. “Have you ever wondered, Gage, how different your life would be if you'd simply sold the medallion to me that first night in Paris?”

“Of course. I wouldn't have met Astiza and taken her away from you.”

He gave her a quick glance, her arm cocked to throw the skull. “I'll have her back to do with as I wish, soon enough.” So she hurled the bone. He knocked it away with the hilt of his rapier, his lips in a sneer, the skull making a loud clack as it fell. And he kept coming past the tables toward me.

He looked younger, yes—the book had done
something
for him—but it was an odd youthfulness, I realized, as if he'd been stretched.
His skin was tight and sallow, his eyes bright and yet shadowed by fatigue. He looked like a man who hadn't slept for weeks. Who might never sleep again. And because of that, his eyes had a hint of madness.

There was something terribly wrong with this scroll we'd found.

“Your study smells like hell, Alessandro,” I said. “Which god are you apprentice to?”

“It's simply a preview of where you're going, Gage. Right
now
!” And he thrust.

So I held up my macabre shield. Omar was penetrated, but the mummy trapped the point. I felt guilty about putting the old boy through all this, but then he was past caring, wasn't he? I shoved the mummy at Silano, twisting his wrist, but then his sword slipped entirely through the carcass and along my own side. Damn, that hurt! The rapier was like a razor.

Silano cursed and swung with his free arm—he'd regained his old litheness—and struck me a blow, knocking me back and wrestling the Egyptian cadaver away from me. He staggered to one side, his sword still entangled, but he groped inside the body's cavity and triumphantly pulled out the scroll. Now I had no shield at all. He held the book above his head, daring me to lunge so he could skewer me. Astiza had crouched, waiting for a chance.

I looked around wildly. The wooden sarcophagus! It was already leaning upright, so I grabbed it and wrestled the unwieldy box around to protect me. Silano had his sword free now, poor Omar almost broken in two, and he thrust the scroll into his shirt and came at me once again. I parried with the casket, letting the sword stab through the old wood but twisting, now knocking him backward and snapping the rapier in two. He kicked at the coffin angrily, smashing the decrepit wood, and when it fell apart something wedged inside broke free.

My rifle!

I dove for it, but when I reached out the broken sword slashed across my knuckles like the bite of a snake, so painful I couldn't get a grip on my gun. I rolled clear as Silano was kicking shattered wood
aside to get at me. Now he'd produced a pistol, his face twisted with rage and loathing. I threw myself back against the shelves just as the gun went off, feeling the wind of the bullet as it sped past. It hit one of his noxious glass jars at the end of the room and the vessel shattered. Liquid splashed onto the floor by the balcony and something hideous and pale went skittering. A poisonous smell arose, a stench of combustible fumes, to mix with the smell of gunpowder.

“Damn you!” He fumbled to reload.

And then old Ben came to my aid. “Energy and persistence conquer all,” I remembered again. Energy!

Astiza was under the table, creeping toward Silano. I took off my coat and threw it at him for distraction, and then tore off my shirt. The count looked at me as if I were a lunatic, but I needed bare, dry skin. There's nothing better for creating friction. I took two steps and dove forward toward the jar that had broken, hitting the wood carpet like a swimmer and skidding on my torso, gritting my teeth against the burn. Electricity, you see, is generated by friction, and the salt in our blood turns us into temporary batteries. As I slid to the end of the room, I had a charge.

The broken jar had a metal base. As I slid I thrust out my arm and extended my finger like Michelangelo's God reaching toward Adam. And when I came near, the energy I'd stored leapt, with a jolt, toward the metal.

There was a spark, and the room exploded.

The fumes of Silano's witch's brew became a fireball, shooting over my cringing body and ballooning toward the count, Astiza, and down toward the carts, coaches, and boxes below where the preservative had dripped. The puff of the blast threw the table's papers up in a whirlwind, singeing some, while below me the storage area caught fire. I struggled up, my hair singed and both sides burning—one from the scrape of the sword and the other from my slide on the carpet—and eyed my rifle. There was preservative on my remaining clothes, and I swatted out a puff of flame on my breeches. A dim, smoky haze filled the room. Silano, I saw, had fallen, but now he too was struggling upward, looking dazed but groping again for his
pistol. Then Astiza rose behind him and wrapped something around his neck.

It was the linen wrapping from Omar!

I crawled toward my gun.

Silano, writhing, lifted her off her feet but she hung grimly on his back. As they clumsily danced the hideous mummy bounced with them, a bizarre ménage à trois. I got to my gun and snapped a shot, but there was just a dry click.

“Ethan, hurry!”

The powder horn and shot bag were there, so I began to load, cursing a rifle's laborious ramming for the first time.

Measure, pour, wadding, ball. My hand was trembling. Astiza and Silano spun by me. The count was turning red from her choking but he had her hair and was twisting to get at her. Starter ram, now the hammering with the longer one…damn! The pair had crashed against the balcony railing, breaking part of it free. Fire rose below. The attached mummy continued its dance. The count twisted Astiza to his front, shielding himself as he eyed my rifle and struggled to lift his pistol clear. Smoke thickened against the ceiling. My one shot had to be perfect! He'd pulled the wrappings off his own throat and was tightening them on hers. He lifted his gun.

I threw out the ramrod, put a pinch of powder in the pan, my barrel coming up, Silano firing but his aim spoiled by Astiza, whom he twisted to hurl into the flames, just enough to expose his neck as they strained…

“He's going to burn me!”

I fired.

The ball hit his throat.

His scream was a bloody gargle. His eyes went wide in shock and pain.

And then he smashed through the balcony railing and down into the flames below, taking my woman with him.

“Astiza!”

It was the plunge from the balloon all over again. She gave a cry and was gone.

 

I
ran to the end of the study and peered down, expecting to see her in flames. But no, the mummy had snagged on one of the broken balustrades, its rib cage and dried muscles still tight after millennia. Astiza was hanging by its linen wrappings, her feet kicking above the hot fire.

Count Silano had disappeared into the holocaust, writhing on the makeshift pyre. The book was at his breast.

To hell with the cursed book!

I grasped the bandages, hauled, got her arm, and pulled her up. I wasn't going to let her drop with Silano again! As I dragged her across the lip of the balcony Omar broke free and fell, turning into a torch as his linens caught the flames. He banged down to burn with his master. I looked. His broken limbs were moving, as in agony! Was he somehow still alive? Or was it a trick of the heat?

He'd not been a curse but a savior. Thoth had smiled on us after all.

And the book? As Silano's clothes burned away, I could see the scroll curling on his dissolving chest. The flames were growing hotter as the count's flesh bubbled, and I backed away.

Astiza and I clung. There were church bells, shouts, a clatter of heavy wagons. The Paris fire brigade would be here soon. By the time they arrived, the secrets men had coveted for thousands of years would have turned to ash.

“Can you walk?” I asked her. “We don't have much time. We have to flee.”

“The book!”

“It's gone with Silano.”

She was weeping. For what, I wasn't sure.

Below, I heard the carriage doors being opened and water pumped. We slowly limped to the door we'd entered by, bloody and singed, stepping over a mess of glass, fluid, bone, books, and ruined papers.

The hall was smoky. For a moment I hoped the fire would push any pursuers away until we could make our escape.

But no, a platoon of sentries was pounding down the hall.

“That's him! That's the one!” It was an annoyingly familiar voice I hadn't heard for a year and a half. “He owes me rent!”

Madame Durrell! My former landlady in Paris, who I fled in unseemly circumstances, had been the red-haired mystery woman who'd haunted the periphery of my vision since I'd returned to Paris. She'd never been a believer in my character and at our parting had accused me of attempted rape. I'd deny it, but really, all you had to do is look at her. The pyramids are younger than Madame Durrell, and in better shape, too.

“Am I never to be free of you?” I groaned.

“You will when you pay what you owe me!”

“Creditors have better memories than debtors,” Ben liked to say. From experience, I knew he was right. “And you've been following me like one of Fouché's secret policemen?”

“I spied you in the prison wagon, where you belonged, but I knew you'd be out somehow, and up to no good! Oui, I kept an eye on Temple Prison, let me assure you! When I saw you enter the palace with that corrupt jailer I ran for help. Count Silano himself said he would confront you! Yet by the time I get back here the whole place is in flames!” She turned to the soldiers. “This is typical of the American. He lives like a wilderness savage. Try getting him to pay you!”

I sighed. “Madame Durrell, I'm afraid I've lost everything once again. I cannot pay you, no matter how many policemen you have.”

She squinted. “What about that gun there? Isn't that the one you stole from my apartment, the one you tried to shoot me with?”

“I did not steal it, it was mine, and I shot the lock, not at you. It's not even the same…” But Astiza put her hand on my arm and I looked past my old landlady. Bonaparte was coming down the corridor with a cluster of generals and aides. His gray eyes were ice, his features stormy. The last time I'd seen him that angry was when he'd heard of Josephine's infidelities and annihilated the Mamelukes at the Battle of the Pyramids.

I braced for the worst. Bonaparte's command of the language of the drill field was legendary. But, after glowering, he shook his head
in grudging wonder. “I should have guessed. Have you indeed discovered the secret of immortality, Monsieur Gage?”

“I'm just persistent.”

“So you follow me for two thousand miles, set fire to a royal palace, and leave my firemen to find two bodies in the ashes?”

“We were preventing worse things from happening, I assure you.”

“General, he owes me rent!” Madame Durrell piped up.

“I would prefer you refer to me as first consul, madame, a post to which I was elected at two o'clock this morning. And how much does he owe you?”

We could see her calculating, wondering how far she dared inflate the true total. “One hundred livres,” she finally tried. When no one erupted at this absurdity, she added, “With fifty, for interest.”

“Madame,” Napoleon said, “Were you the one who sounded the alarm?”

Durrell puffed herself up. “I was.”

“Then another fifty livres as a reward for that, as a gift from the government.” He turned. “Berthier, count out two hundred for this gallant woman.”

“Yes, General. I mean Consul.”

Madame Durrell beamed.

“But you must never breathe a word of this to anyone,” Bonaparte lectured her. “What has gone on here tonight involves the security of France, and our nation's fortunes rely on your discretion and courage. Can you handle such a burden, madame?”

“For two hundred livres I can.”

“Excellent. You are a true patriot.” His aide pulled her away to count out some money, and the new ruler of France turned back to me. “The bodies were burned beyond recognition. Can you identify them to me, Monsieur Gage?”

“One is Count Silano. It seems we could not renew our partnership.”

“I see.” He tapped his foot. “And the second?”

“An old Egyptian friend named Omar. He saved our lives, I think.”

Bonaparte sighed. “And the book?”

“A victim of the same conflagration, I'm afraid.”

“Was it? Search them.” And we were searched, roughly, but there was nothing to be found. A soldier confiscated my rifle yet again.

“So you betrayed me to the end.” He peered up at the smoke beginning to dissipate, frowning like a landlord at a leak. “Well, I have no need of the book any longer, given that I have France. You should watch what I do with her.”

“I'm sure you'll not sit still.”

“Unfortunately, you are long overdue to be shot, and France will be safer when that happens. Having left it to others before this night, without success, I think I'll tend to it myself. The Tuileries Gardens are as good a place as any.”

“Napoleon!” Astiza pleaded.

“You will not miss him, madame. I am going to shoot you too. And your jailer, if I can find him.”

“I think he's looking for treasure in the crypts of Notre Dame,” I said. “Don't blame him. He's a simple man with imagination, the only jailer I ever liked.”