Three Emperors (9780062194138) (14 page)

And yet I had the distinct feeling he had. Did he wink?

Then he was past, the next unit cheering, and our own torches slowly snuffed out in the dark. I silently cursed. Any chance to steal away had been ruined by Napoleon's exciting us as if it were Christmas. Every man was alert and feverish now, and all would see me try to leave. I'd be stopped, questioned, and probably shot.

So I must wait for the fog of battle. Gun smoke and chaos would be my friends. I'd scramble at the peak of confusion, and go rescue wife and son.

Napoleon was in the distance now, new torches lighting, old ones burning out, men cheering themselves hoarse. I've no idea what the Austrians and Russians made of it. There were no cheers or torches from their side.

I came back into the firelight. “Digeon, where were you!” cried Henri. “Did you see him touch me? It was magic! It was like being touched by Christ! How I burn to fight for him!”

“He looked like Caesar,” said Duval.

“Handsomer than I would have guessed,” said Charles. “And taller.”

Gideon put his hand on my shoulder. “So we've seen history, eh, my friend? Not a man here high enough to enter a palace, but we're the ones who have seen him in the field. That's the Napoleon people will remember. And since he's here, I'll fight for him cheerfully enough. What do you think will happen tomorrow?”

“Something great and terrible,” I predicted. “The other side longs for battle.”

I couldn't explain how I knew this, but my newest friend accepted my wisdom. “We'd better get what rest we can, then.”

So we bedded down, once more without sleeping, and I remembered again what the next day was.

The one-year anniversary of Napoleon's coronation, the one I'd tried to sabotage and that he had turned into triumph.

Chapter 16

Astiza

T
he grandly named Golden Lane turned out to be a slit of a street squeezed between the walls of Prague Castle and its in-buildings. I was eager and yet apprehensive when we reached the low, arched gate giving access. Prague Castle is vast, the biggest in Europe, and its complexity is intimidating. There are the guarded royal apartments, the vast St. Vitus Cathedral, the high offices of government, army barracks, kitchens, chapels, sub-palaces, and the galleries where Rudolf kept his bizarre collection. Tucked against the fortress wall in a corner near the Black Tower is the Lane, its row of tiny houses inhabited by goldsmiths, moneylenders, alchemists, and, it appeared, men proclaiming to be warlocks. I don't believe in witches of either sex, but I do believe that some creatures seek dark magic and selfish power. King Rudolf allowed this tiny slum to encourage alchemy. Now, I guessed, it drew dreamers, madmen, and frauds.

Fulcanelli smiled reassuringly. “Come, come. Sometimes the oddest people have the deepest insight.”

The Lane was like a trench, a blank wall on one side and hovel doors on the other. The sky was a ribbon above, and the cobbles uneven and worn. Wise men, vagabonds, whores, chemists, seers, and astrologers loitered there. Horus shrank against my leg as we pushed through a swarm of the colorful and eccentric, and once more I felt guilty at the life I'd given him. What kind of nomadic existence had I inflicted on my little boy? He squeezed my fingers as if being held over a precipice.

“No worries, Horus,” Fulcanelli assured. “Auric likes children.”

“I don't like dogs.”

“No dogs.”

There were gypsies, beggars, cripples, black-clad Jews, strutting mercenaries, lovelorn noblewomen looking for potions, and fat merchants in thick fur robes. I felt like I'd gone back in time. While the West abandoned magic, Prague incorporated it. The bishop nonetheless led us confidently, a hand on a sword, his manner unlike that of any churchman I'd known. “Don't worry, I've been here before.” And indeed, the crowd recognized him and parted. He strode like an earl.

We had to stoop to enter Auric's hovel, a low-ceilinged room that was smoky, hot, and sulfurous.

“It stinks, Mama,” Horus whispered. I squeezed his hand back. What a brave explorer he was! With the Brazen Head I might learn of my husband, or bargain for him. I might win us peace.

The warlock Auric Nachash was as ugly as Fulcanelli was handsome, a squat and warty dwarf with bulbous nose and absent chin. “You brought them! Welcome! Welcome!” His look was a gleam and his laugh a cackle, like a nightmare marionette.

“This lady needs your wisdom.”

Ethan, Ethan, where are you?

The heat came from a stove with boiling pots. Coiled copper tubing led to bowls iridescent with pools of metallic green, blue, and red, the wafting fumes like a preview of the underworld. It was an alchemical laboratory, and I wondered what Auric's neighbors thought of his experiments. Distillation of exotic compounds was a notorious source of fire. Yet he slept next to his brews like a hausfrau next to her kitchen. Now he bowed to Fulcanelli.

“She's a pretty witch.”

“Not a witch, but a scholar,” Fulcanelli corrected.

“And a boy as well! How did you find them?”

“She found me. Everything is fated, Auric, as I've told you.” He addressed me. “Is that not so, priestess? Were you not meant to be here, at this time, with us?”

I looked about. The door was shut tight, and the single window to the Lane grimy. Glass jars held dead, hairless animals and organs, all of them colored pus white. I guessed they were used for spells. Harry looked at them with the cautious fascination of a child. I prayed to Isis and Mary. “If we find what we seek. Fate is amended by free will, Bishop.” I turned warily to the warlock. “Can you help us?”

“Let's try to help each other.” His grin had no friendship in it, and in fact he couldn't hold a gaze. His eyes slid away when he talked, to fasten on things that didn't look back. There was something missing in his character. But he would also cast furtive glances. I caught him looking at my son the way a bird looks at a worm, while Harry shuffled closer to the stove.

“Horus, be careful,” I said.

“It's hot, Mama.”

“Auric is a seer like you,” Fulcanelli said.

“Not as pretty, not as pretty,” the dwarf sing-sang. He hopped from foot to foot.

“But we constantly amend and improve our partnership,” the bishop went on. “Now you're in our fellowship as well. Our triumvirate is meant to find the Philosopher's Stone and the Brazen Head together. Succeed or fail together. Learn together. Wield power together.”

I wasn't sure what kind of partnership he really wanted. “I have a husband,” I reminded him.

“No doubt a fine fellow, who, unfortunately, has abandoned you,” Fulcanelli said. “I admire your fidelity, and hope you accept our friendship, too.” He smiled, standing close.

“Not abandoned. He was detained, perhaps.” Was I being punished for seeking knowledge instead of waiting for Ethan? Should I have submitted to imprisonment at Notre Dame? No, we had to escape to find the automaton.

“The Brazen Head has the answers,” Fulcanelli said. “But we have to find it first.”

I looked down at Auric. “I hope your colleague can help.” He had tiny, deep-drilled eyes and bad teeth. The cloying gases had spotted him with warts, pustules, and tumors. His scraggly hair was thin, and his hands reddened as if burned. “I'm told you've studied Albertus Magnus's
Book of Secrets
. Some say it's a dangerous text.”

“I've read books both praised and forbidden, madame. I've searched for power as resolutely as a knight searching for gold in a dragon's cave. I've summoned angels and demons and faced the great dark eye itself.” The creature was proud of his sorcery. “Albertus was a great man, but I've gone beyond him.”

“Not for worldly reward,” I remarked drily, examining his surroundings. I've found wry observation an effective tactic. The dwarf flushed.

“My eyes hurt, Mama,” Harry chimed in. “I don't like it here.” He had the instincts of a young animal.

“Just a short visit. We need this man's help.”

“All my profits go into my studies,” Auric said, annoyed at having to justify his hovel. “I'm Prague's greatest necromancer. Important men seek my counsel.” He cast an eye at Fulcanelli. “I am Merlin. I am Faust. So sit, sit, we'll exchange secrets.”

He gestured to a blanket atop a plank bed with straw mattress. I suspected fleas but reluctantly sat, since there was nowhere else to do so, pulling Harry to me. Auric turned to rummage on a workbench while Fulcanelli moved near the door, more like a guard than a guide. He smiled again to reassure me, but everything suddenly seemed false. The smile was chilly, and his eyes speculative. Best to get this over quickly.

“We're searching for a mechanical man made by Albert long ago in Paris,” I began.

“It's like a toy that can talk,” put in Harry, since I'd tried to explain why we were wandering. “We're going to use it to find Papa.”

Auric turned to a sloping shelf crammed with books. He took off a heavy one, dusty and stained. “Yes, the Brazen Head. Fabulous legend. An automaton to tell the future! And yet destroyed by Thomas Aquinas, no?”

“Some in Paris thought it might have survived.” I could impress or frighten them with names like Napoleon and Talleyrand, and yet those ambitious men were very far away. “I'm trying to follow the trail of Christian Rosenkreutz, because of legends that he took the android.”

“Ah, Rosenkreutz. The whereabouts of his tomb is a great mystery. And yet there are tales of a ruined castle in Bohemia or Moravia, and caverns beneath a sacred mountain. No one knows which one, yet treasure is reputed to be buried there. I would like treasure. I would like that very much.”

I decided to hold back what I'd guessed at Český Krumlov. Best to keep our ultimate destination to myself.

“As a fellowship, we might find it.” The dwarf nodded, more to himself than to us. “Success will make us rich.”

“The Brazen Head promises only wisdom.”

“When rich enough, men will judge us wise. It's not that the wise always win, but that winners are deemed wise.” He cackled again, then grew serious. “Do you know which castle?”

“No.” This was only half a lie.

He looked annoyed and glanced at Fulcanelli. “Is she useful?”

The bishop shrugged.

I gestured at his alchemical stews. “Have you made lead into gold?”

“I haven't achieved that purity, no. So what
do
you know, Astiza? How can you aid us on this quest?”

I glanced at Fulcanelli, but the bishop was only watching us expectantly. “I'd expect to find roses on Christian's path.”

“Hmph. Do you know alchemy?”

“I studied in Egypt.”

“Perhaps we can make gold together.”

“I'm not interested in gold. I'm a pilgrim looking for a relic. It's why I came to Bishop Fulcanelli at the library, and why I've come to you.”

Now Fulcanelli's look was possessive, and his glance at Auric was a smirk. Something was terribly wrong. When the bishop spoke, his tone was critical. “You walk a thousand miles, scamp in tow, knowing so little? I don't believe you, Astiza. Share your secrets with Auric, and let's get things done.”

“Don't call my son a scamp.” I held Horus closer. “He's a good boy.”

“Very good,” said Nachash, and then he shocked me by obscenely running his tongue around his lips. What foulness was this? I stood to go, confused and alarmed. Why had he brought me here? But the bishop blocked the door.

“Primus, please.”

Fulcanelli stepped forward and shoved, harder than he had to, so that I sat back down hard on the bed. Harry began to cry.

“What's wrong with you?” I looked furiously at bishop and dwarf. “I'm asking you as a mother and wife for help!”

“You're a widow, not a wife,” Fulcanelli said coldly. “Your husband is almost certainly dead.”

“You don't know that!”

“I know your betrayal of Minister Talleyrand, your theft of sacred objects, and the fact that your husband has been chained to a French warship that is likely doomed to destruction.”

“A warship? What?”

“Gage is in Spain, shackled in chains of his own forging.”

“Then he's alive!”

“Soon to be dead, I think. Nelson is coming.”

“If he escapes, he'll come here! I know he will!” I thought furiously, picturing maps in my head. “Through Venice, perhaps. By sea!”

“That would be magical indeed.”

“Why are you treating me like this?”

“Because you care more for sorcery than love, and I am not a patient man. You care more for a mechanical head than the head of your child.”

“Child soup,” Nachash said. “Bones and fat, bubbling in a broth. Or we will bake him in the oven, Baron Wolf, and crack his bones for their marrow.” His grin was hideous. “Did you know the marrow becomes sweeter in the first roasting, when the little boys scream?” He cackled again and danced a little jig.

I was paralyzed at my own foolishness. What folly to come here, and to trust a man I didn't really know! My head was whirling. Was this a bad dream? “Baron?” I managed. “I thought you were a bishop.”

“I am what I say I am,” Fulcanelli said.

So was he even Fulcanelli?

“You should kneel,” Auric suggested. “Kneel at his belt. He's Baron Wolf Richter, high priest of the Invisible College, and you try my master's patience.” The little monster was clearly mad. Was he even human? He was a pustule of a creature, a casting gone wrong.

Fulcanelli's stare was lifelessly cold, as pitiless as a serpent's, and the confiding empathy we'd shared at the Astronomical Tower had vanished like smoke.

“Where is the sword hilt?” he demanded.

“What
sword hilt?”

“You think us fools? Tell us what you know. What game is your family playing?”

“You're mad. I came here because I didn't know enough!”

“Tell us or we cook your son,” Auric said. And he scuttled to put across a beam to bar the door.

“I thought you liked me,” I protested weakly. “We were partners.”

“We're still partners,” Fulcanelli—or this baron—said. “And, oh yes, I like you, I like you very much. Tell me what you really know, Astiza. Why did you go one way and your husband another?”

“We were fleeing!”

“Why does a mother bring her boy here? What have you learned about the Brazen Head that makes you risk everything to find it?”

I closed my eyes. “I want to find it so we'll be left alone.”

“Tell me the truth, or by Satan I'll have you now on this crude bed, in front of your whining brat, just before my servant eats him.” Fulcanelli's voice—no, it was this Wolf Richter's!—had changed, becoming deeper, more guttural. Or was it I who had gone mad?

Somehow I had to force my way past two men or Harry and I would be doomed. My meeting with Fulcanelli-Richter had been no accident, I realized; somehow he'd been waiting for me here in Prague. Had Duke Schwarzenberg alerted him from Český Krumlov? The grotesque alchemist was not a wizard of dark arts but a creature of evil tortures. I was without help. My hands scrabbled on the bed, looking for a weapon. All I had was the dirty tick of straw.

I stood again. “Let me go or I'll scream.”

Nachash laughed, and so I did scream, or tried to, but this terrible baron hit me with a blow so hard that the room flashed white and roared as it whirled. I spun and fell hard on the mattress, facedown. I could hardly see. I could hardly breathe. I felt nauseated.

“Mama!” Harry was screaming in terror.