The Fire (24 page)

Then his daughter by Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister, who’d been so besotted with Byron that she’d followed him from London the length and breadth of Europe till she’d accomplished her goal, a child by the famous poet. That was dear little Allegra, who’d died last year at the age of five.

But now this precious jewel-like gift, this incredible beauty – Haidée – a daughter from Vasiliki, perhaps the one woman he’d ever truly loved. A woman who’d placed no claims upon him, who’d sought nothing and had given him everything in return.

And Byron understood that this slip of a girl before him was no ordinary child. Ali Pasha might be her father in name only, but Haidée seemed to possess that inner strength that Byron had rarely glimpsed and had long forgotten. Like one of the pasha’s brave, gray-eyed Palikhari troops from the mountains of Albania. Like Arslan the lion, Ali Pasha himself.

How strong the pasha and Vasia must have been to have had the presence of mind, in those final moments, to send to Byron his own daughter for safekeeping, and to place the valuable Queen into her hands. Byron hoped that he would have such strength himself to carry through with what he now understood he must do. But he also knew better than anyone the risk that this involved – not just to himself, but certainly to Haidée as well.

Now that he’d found this daughter, was he prepared to lose her so soon, as he’d lost the others?

But Byron saw something more – that the pasha must long have planned this moment, even as long ago as Haidée’s birth. For hadn’t he named the girl after their own secret code, Byron’s private name for her mother, Vasiliki? And yet he’d never known of his daughter’s existence, nor the role for which she may have been chosen – perhaps even trained – from the very beginning.

But what precisely
was
that role? Why was Haidée
here
, of all places, in this Roman palazzo in the very heart of Rome – and today, on the Day of Fire? Who were these others? What role did they play? Why had they lured Byron here with secret codes, rather than bringing Haidée and the chess piece to
him
?

Was this a trap?

And just as urgently, in Byron’s role as ‘Alba,’ he needed to discover – and quickly – the part he himself now played within this larger Game.

For if he failed now, all hope might indeed be lost for the White Team.

Porto Ostia, Roma

January 22, 1823

Haidée could scarcely quell those dozens of warring emotions raging within her. She’d tried to come to grips with it all ever since that morning, weeks ago, when she’d first seen Kauri’s face beside the others, looking down from that parapet in Fez, that morning when she’d known, against all hope or expectation, that he’d at last found her and she would be saved. She was free finally, delivered to an exotic foreign land that she’d never even dreamed existed – Rome – and to a father whose very existence seemed to her just as exotic and strange.

However, last night due to the strain of Byron’s lengthy and difficult journey, and its impact upon the fragile state of his health – not to mention the proximity of the extensive entourage in residence at the palazzo – he’d slept in the privacy of rooms that his valet Fletcher had acquired. They’d arranged that this morning in darkness hours, before they were to meet the others at their appointed rendezvous at the pyramid, Haidée, with Kauri as her protector, should slip away from the palazzo to meet him.

Now, with Lord Byron clutching his daughter’s hand, these three threaded their way through the deserted streets in the silvery predawn fog. Haidée knew, given all she’d learned during their retreat from Morocco, given all that Charlot and Shahin had told them aboard the ship, that Lord Byron himself might be the one person still living who held the key to the mystery of Ali Pasha’s Black Queen. And she knew that this morning’s private meeting with her newfound father might be her one chance to learn what she so desperately needed to know.

As the three moved away from the center of town past the ancient public baths, toward the outskirts of Rome where the pyramid lay, the young people, at Lord Byron’s request, told him of how the Black Queen had been retrieved from its hiding place in Albania, of the ancient Baba Shemimi’s arrival over the mountain passes, of the old man’s important tale regarding the true history of al-Jabir’s creation of the Ser-vice of the Tarik’at, and finally, Ali Pasha’s last words and brave deeds in the Monastery of St Pantaleon, just before the arrival of the Turks.

Byron listened attentively until they’d finished. Then, still holding his daughter’s hand in his, he pressed the boy’s shoulder in thanks as well. ‘Your mother was very brave,’ he told Haidée, ‘to send you off at the very moment when she and the pasha might be facing their own death.’

‘The last thing my mother said to me was that she loved you very much,’ Haidée told him, ‘and the Pasha said he felt the same. At whatever the cost to themselves, Father, they both trusted you entirely to keep the chess piece from the wrong hands. And so, too, did the great Baba who sent Kauri to protect both me and the chess piece.

‘But despite all these careful plans,’ she went on, ‘things did not happen at all as anyone had expected. Kauri and I set sail by sea, planning to find you at Venice. We thought we did not have far to travel, but we were mistaken. Off the point of Pirene, our ship was captured by corsairs and was diverted to Morocco, where Kauri was seized at the docks by slave merchants. He vanished from my life – I feared, forever. The Black Queen was taken from me by the sultan’s men, and I was placed in the royal harem at Fez. I was alone and terrified, surrounded by strangers with no one I could trust. I was saved from a worse fate, I think, only because they did not know who I was. They suspected that I, or that black lump of ore, might have some value that wasn’t apparent on the surface.’

‘And how right they would have been,’ said Byron grimly, putting his arm about his daughter’s shoulder. ‘You’ve been very strong in the face of such dangers, my child. Others have died for the secret you were protecting,’ he said, thinking of Shelley.

‘Haidée was very brave,’ agreed Kauri. ‘Even though I managed to escape and seek protection in the mountains, I quickly understood that despite my relative freedom, she was as lost to me as I was to her. We couldn’t find a trace. Then, when the sultan died, only weeks ago, and she was threatened with slavery along with the rest of the harem, Haidée still maintained silence; she refused to reveal anything about herself or the mission she’d been bound for. She was already at the auction block when we found her.’

Haidée could not control the shudder that ran through her at this memory. Byron felt it through her slender shoulder. ‘It seems a miracle that either of you survived, much less that you managed to rescue the chess piece,’ he said gravely, pressing her to him as they walked.

‘But Kauri never would have found me,’ said Haidée, ‘we should never have arrived here at all, never have completed the mission with which the pasha and the Baba entrusted us – if it hadn’t been for Kauri’s father, Shahin. And his companion, the red-haired man whom they call Charlot—’

Haidée looked past Byron to Kauri with a questioning expression. The boy nodded and said, ‘It is Charlot whom Haidée wished to speak to you of this morning, before you meet him with the others at the pyramid. That’s why we wished to arrange a more private meeting – to discuss with you this man’s intimate involvement with the Black Queen.’

‘But who is this Charlot you speak of?’ asked Byron. ‘And what has he to do with the chess piece?’

‘Kauri and I aren’t referring to the chess piece,’ said Haidée. ‘The true Black Queen, the living one, is Charlot’s mother, Mireille.’

Byron felt ill, and not only from his stomach difficulties. He had stopped, for he saw that just as the sun rose, they’d reached the gates of the Protestant cemetery and were close to the place of their intended rendezvous, just moments from now. He took a seat on the low stone wall and regarded both Kauri and Haidée gravely.

‘Please explain yourselves,’ he asked them.

‘According to Charlot, as he told us on the ship,’ said Haidée, ‘his mother, Mireille, was one of the original nuns at Montglane when the service was first brought to light after a thousand years. She was sent to Kauri’s father, Shahin, in the desert. There, her child Charlot was born beneath the
eyes of the White Queen, just as it was foretold in the ancient legend.’

‘My father raised him,’ Kauri explained. ‘He told us Charlot possessed the second sight, also predicted one who would help to assemble the pieces and solve the mystery.’

‘But Charlot claims that his mother possesses something else of tremendous power,’ Haidée added, ‘something that makes our entire mission seem…impossible.’

‘If a nun from Montglane is his mother,’ Byron said, ‘it does not require any “second sight” to guess what you have to tell me. This Charlot of whom you speak believes he and his mother are in possession of something he’s just learned that
we
own instead. Something the two of you have risked your lives to bring across mountains and seas. Is that not it?’

‘But how can it be?’ said Haidée. ‘If his mother helped dig the pieces from the earth at Montglane Abbey with her own bare hands; if she’s collected the pieces from the ends of the earth ever since; if she’s even received the Black Queen from the tsar of all the Russias, grandson of Catherine the Great, then how can there be a second queen? And if there were, how could the one that was owned by the Bektashi Sufis be the real one?’

‘Before trying to answer that question,’ said Byron, ‘I suggest we pay cautious and careful attention to what we’ve been brought to this place to hear. And by whom: Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte, Cardinal Fesch, and even Madame Cosway – all scions of the Church, which, after all, had retained these pieces in Christian hands since the time of Charlemagne.’

‘But Father,’ said Haidée, glancing at Kauri for his support, ‘this must surely be the explanation, the very reason why we all are here! According to Charlot, his mother, the nun Mireille, was sent thirty years ago to Kauri’s father, Shahin,
in the Sahara by someone who must be the missing connection: Angela-Maria di Pietra Santa. A close friend of the Abbess of Montglane, and also the mother of our two hosts here today, Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte and, by a different father, also of Cardinal Joseph Fesch. Angela-Maria was Napoleon’s grandmother! Don’t you see, Father? They are on the opposing team!’

‘My child,’ protested Byron, drawing his daughter to him and wrapping his arms around her, ‘it doesn’t matter, this business of teams. It’s the chess service itself that is important – the powers it holds, not this foolish Game. That’s why the Sufis have sought for so long to retrieve the pieces, to return them to the hands of those who will protect them and never exploit them for individual power – only for the good of all.’

‘Charlot thinks differently,’ insisted Haidée. ‘We are the White Team and they are the Black! And I believe that he and Shahin are on
our
side.’

The Pyramid, Roma

January 22, 1823

Only one dim oil lamp burned in the crypt where they’d gathered, at Letizia Bonaparte’s proposal, on the morning after Shelley’s funeral. All else within the enormous pyramid was swallowed in darkness, which provided Charlot the first space he’d had to think in since departing Fez.

Letizia had asked them here, she explained, because the artist Madame Cosway had important information to impart to them all. And what better spot than this very pyramid, which contained the crux of the secret Maria had agreed, after so many years, to reveal.

Madame Mère now lit the sconces she’d brought and set them beside the tomb of Caius Cestius. Their flickering light cast shadows upon the high vaulted stone ceiling of the crypt.

Charlot looked at the faces encircled about him. The eight whom Letizia Bonaparte and her brother had brought together in Rome, at Shahin’s behest, were all present. And each played a critical role, as Charlot now understood: Letizia and her brother, Cardinal Fesch; Shahin and his son, Kauri; Lord Byron and the painter, Madame Cosway; Charlot himself and Haidée.

Charlot knew that he no longer required such external light to identify the dangers all around him. Only days ago, at that marketplace in Fez, his vision had returned full-force – a situation wholly unexpected, at once as exciting and as frightening as if he’d suddenly found himself amid a meteor shower. The past and the future were again his traveling companions, the contents of his mind lit like a pinwheel of ten thousand glittering sparks in a midnight sky.

Only one thing remained dark to him: Haidée.

‘There is one thing no prophet, regardless how great, can see for himself,’ Shahin had told him that night in the cave above Fez. ‘And that is his own destiny.’

But in that moment when Charlot had first gazed down from that parapet in the medina and seen the girl in the slave market below – though he’d spoken of this to no one since, not even to Shahin – he’d glimpsed for a single dreadful instant just where that destiny might lead.

Though he still could not see precisely
how
his destiny was entwined with hers, Charlot knew that his premonition about Haidée had been a true one, just as he’d first been drawn three months ago to leave France, to journey a thousand miles into the canyons of the Tassili, to find the White Queen, that ancient goddess whose image was painted high on the cliffs, in the hollow of the great stone wall.

And now that he’d found her in flesh and blood, embodied in this young girl, he understood something more: Whatever Madame Cosway had to reveal about it, whatever role these
others played, it was Haidée herself who stood at center board, holding the Black Queen, and Charlot must stand with her.

Cardinal Joseph Fesch looked around the candlelit crypt at the others who, he thought, sat huddled like mourners at a funeral.

‘Madame Maria Hadfield Cosway is known to many of you by reputation, if not in person until today,’ he began. ‘Her parents, Charles and Isabella Hadfield, ran the famous English group of inns in Florence, Carlo’s, which catered to British travelers on the Grand Tour, like the historian Edward Gibbon and the biographer James Boswell. Maria grew up surrounded by the aristocracy of the arts and became a great artist herself. When Charles died, Isabella closed up the inns and took Maria and her siblings to England, where Maria was married to the famous painter, Richard Cosway.