The Rosetta Key (42 page)

“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.

“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.