Three Emperors (9780062194138) (19 page)

I passed the stubby blade around. Aaron took a look, but it was Gideon who discovered the obvious. “It uses the rose as a pommel.”

“What?” I couldn't believe I'd missed this detail. The pommel on the butt of the sword's hilt was smooth silver, but I now noticed that the edge, where it cupped the hilt, was cut in what could be regarded as the edge of a rosebud. The effect was subtle, but elegant and obvious once you saw it. “A good eye, Gideon. It's odd how the rose keeps turning up in my life.”

“How so?”

“My wife found a dried rose that led to a mysterious man named Palatine, who persuaded us to try to sabotage Napoleon. An English spy was named Rose, and I fetched her help with a rose. Rose windows in cathedrals and rose symbols among the Rosicrucians. The mystic Christian Rosenkreutz may have stolen the Brazen Head from Albertus, or was given it to prevent its destruction by Thomas Aquinas. Have you heard of Rosenkreutz?”

“Of course. By repute he disappeared here in Bohemia. No one knows where.”

Rabbi Abraham took the sword back, dipped a cloth in his glass of wine, and rubbed the stub of blade. I'd never bothered to clean the rust, and in fact the centuries of tarnish had gotten worse when I was at sea. My host, however, began methodically polishing. “Perhaps there's some kind of inscription.”

I was embarrassed I'd left this task to others.

Gideon looked over his shoulder. “A letter perhaps.
C
?”

“More like a moon, it seems to me.”

Now Aaron joined them. “No, narrow at one end and broad at the other. It looks like a horn.”

Now I hobbled over to look. “A cattle horn?”

“Yes, but as a musical instrument,” Abraham theorized. “A battle horn.”

“We haven't used that sort of horn since medieval times,” Gideon said. “Look, there's something on the other side of the blade. A letter.”

It was an R.

The rabbi's eyes narrowed, then widened. “A rose, a horn, an initial. Was Rosenkreutz ever in Spain?”

“By legend he studied there with a sect called the Alumbrados that was outlawed. You think this ‘R' stands for his name?”

“Unlikely. No, this is much more interesting. We'll have to consult the texts.”

“What texts?”

“First, the history of Charlemagne and the very beginnings of the Holy Roman Empire.” Abraham went to his shelves and brought down a fat volume, threading its pages until he found the entry he was looking for. There was a woodcut print of a knight wielding a sword in a great battle, a horn strapped to his side. “This broken sword has spirit, I think. Soul. You can feel it, can you not?”

“Only its edge.”

“I can feel the soul of the man who wielded it.” He thumped the pages. “This relic of yours is what men have long been waiting for, I suspect.”

My head throbbed. “Speak to the point, please. My shoulder feels like nails are being driven into it. I'm addled from weariness.”

He smiled. “Congratulations. You haven't found the Brazen Head, Ethan Gage, but you may bear the fragmentary remains of one of the most famous weapons that ever existed. You've heard of Excalibur?”

“King Arthur's sword? I'm aware of Malory's stories.”

“Its legend is probably a myth, but the potent symbolism of a great sword is rooted in countless episodes of history.”

“How does a rabbi know this?”

“This relic you bring is intimately connected to French history, so much so that mad Rudolf II here in Prague reputedly collected its other half. That's why I looked up Charlemagne.”

“You mean Rudolf owned the blade? The missing part of what I have here?”

“Yes, the blade of Durendal, the sacred sword of Roland.”

“Roland! The French medieval hero?”

“You're God's messenger, American, and have brought the ancient hilt of the sword wielded by Charlemagne's lieutenant Roland, who died at the Pass of Roncesvalles in 778 while defending the rear of the French army from the Basques. He blew his great horn, Oliphant, for relief that came too late. Wouldn't Napoleon long to own such a powerful symbol?”

He certainly would. He'd hoped to use Charlemagne's own sword at his coronation, but when competing cities offered several lengths of old hardware with claim to the pedigree, Napoleon gave up on identifying the true sword and ordered that a replica coronation sword be made instead. Desired relics have a way of multiplying when money or prestige is at stake. And yet famed swords might well be passed down, and one of them must be real. Could this be the handle of Durendal? “Why would Talleyrand have it?” I wondered aloud.

“He would buy it because of rumors of its power.” Abraham came around the table to grasp my good shoulder, ignoring my wince when the pressure pulled at my wound. “Ethan, you've unwittingly brought into this synagogue one of the most momentous relics in the world, and you've brought it to the one place in the world where it can be safely hidden: this ghetto. Just as soon as you find the other half, the sacred blade.”

“And how am I to do that?”

“Legend here has long held that it was concealed in the Star Summer Palace, a nearby seat of mysticism and magic where mad Rudolf hid his most important treasures.”

“It's kept on display there?” I'd not heard of this place.

“It disappeared. Skeptics question whether it exists at all, but your arrival is too convenient not to be God's will. Your new friends will help you.”

I stood wearily and went around to peer, bleary-eyed, at the old book. Yellowed pages, Latin script, and decorative lettering to start each entry. Combative Roland had the fierce and fatalistic look of a man already dead. “After I get some rest.”

“Yes, yes, you can sleep here in my quarters. Sharpen your mind before we sharpen the sword.”

As I turned away, the light caught something almost invisible on the page, and I ran my finger to pick it up. I thought it a fine thread at first, possibly from the binding, and rotated it between thumb and forefinger. But no, it was only a long, blond human hair.

Chapter 22

Harry

I
don't like the bad man. I'm sorry I burned his face, but he was hitting Mama. She tells me I did the right thing and calls me her little hero, but now we have to live in a smelly cave. I try to be brave like Papa is, but when Mama cries, I cry, too.

The ugly man knows I don't like dogs. He showed me dogs when they brought us to an old tower, and they barked at me. I didn't like that. I don't like the way the ugly man looks at me, either.

They made us go down long, winding stairs, deep into the earth, and then locked the door. Mama says we're in prison. She says we aren't bad people, we are good, and that the really bad people made the prison. Someday Papa will come and rescue us so we can leave.

The ugly man keeps saying he will burn Mama and eat me, but I am more afraid of the dogs than him. He is short like me. I will burn him, too, if he gets too close, and I think he knows it. He looks mean, but afraid. I've seen Napoleon. Napoleon is never afraid, not even of dogs.

It is very boring here. Mama has helped make me a knight out of old rags and a horse that rolls on wheels she cut from a walking stick, so I play soldier. I saw soldiers with Papa. It's hard to remember, because it was very long ago. When I get tired of my toys, there is nowhere to go and no one to play with. Mama works with furnaces and pots and curly tubes. Nasty juice drips out the end.

She says the world is made up of just a few things, and she is trying to boil smelly soups down to those things. I don't know why. Grown-ups are boring. I want a boy to play with.

My hands hurt because I burned them melting the bad man. I still have bandages. The bandages make Mama feel better. She calls them magic ribbons and tells me to keep them on. Sometimes I can use them to pick up hot things. She calls me a big word I can't remember, but she says it means “helper.”

Here is what I remember about Papa. He is very tall, like a giant, and very strong. He can lift me up and hold me upside down. He tickles. He laughs when he's with me, and never cries. Ever. He had a gun that Napoleon gave him. I wasn't allowed to touch it.

Sometimes he kisses Mama.

He took me to fun places in Paris, and once we saw the sun shine through a magnifying glass and set off a cannon. I covered my ears. I had to promise not to tell Mama that we'd gone there. Once I went down a chimney and found candy, and we slept in a church.

We have fun when we're with Papa.

Mama said he ran away to protect us, which I don't understand. I wish he would come. My eyes hurt down here, because it's always smoky. I sleep a lot, but when I wake up it is always night.

I dream about dogs and the burned man.

I want a house with windows someday. I will live there with Mama and Papa, and Mama promises they will only let good people inside.

Each evening, Mama does something to her bowls of drips. She says she can't finish, because then they wouldn't need us anymore. I don't understand. I wish we could just go away.

Mama says she has a plan. She has asked the ugly man, whose name is Auric, to fetch some powders from the big city and bring them here. She says she can't finish without more colored powders. So Auric went away, which is good. The burned man went away, too. But other men keep our door locked and feed us bad food.

Mama tells me stories when we lie on the floor to sleep. She knows lots and lots of stories. They are good ones about gods and goddesses and heroes and princesses.

One of my favorite stories is about a knight named Roland. He was the bravest knight in all of France, and the favorite of the king. One day an army was chasing the king, and Roland and his men stayed behind so the king could run away. Roland and his men were attacked by thousands of soldiers. Roland had a great sword and fought for hours. But finally the sword broke.

Roland also had a great horn. He put the horn to his mouth and he blew a big sound. It was like the biggest sound in the world. He blew and he blew and he blew, asking the king to come back and help him. The king did, but it was too late. Roland was dead. The king cried.

I wish I had a great horn. I would blow and blow and blow.

I would blow until Papa came and took us somewhere bright.

Chapter 23

T
he Star Summer Palace rises from the trees in a game park west of Prague. It is a four-story tower built in the shape of a six-pointed star. The castle thus has twelve vertical walls, a complex and impractical design chosen for magical power.

“The star is called Solomon's seal,” Rabbi Abraham said, “after the biblical king. It's made of two triangles, one overlapping the other, and represents the duality of the universe. All things are opposites—light and dark, male and female, fire and water—and yet together they represent unity. King Solomon had this royal seal cast into a ring of supernatural power. Alchemists believe it brings purity and transformation. We Jews adopted it first. Of course, astrologers and sorcerers consider the five-pointed pentagram mystical as well, but when Archduke Ferdinand built his palace, in the middle of the sixteenth century, it was the six points he chose to convey his message.”

“Which was?” I asked.

“That's not entirely clear.”

“These mystic codes never seem entirely clear.”

“That is to reserve their power for those with the fitness to use them responsibly. The palace has been closed for decades, and by reputation it is filled with astrological and mythical symbols. Some of Rudolf's curiosities may have disappeared into this building.”

“So it's a gigantic cabinet?”

“The curiosities weren't stored. They vanished. Authorities aren't sure if the building is a gateway to heaven or hell, but whichever of Rudolf's possessions were put there were never found again.”

“Perhaps it was stolen. I saw that problem in the pyramids. Sealed tight as a stopper, yet empty as a beggar's stomach. The architects swiped what the pharaoh wanted to take with him, I'm guessing. Except that in the Great Pyramid it turned out there was a different door. Strangest place you ever saw, and I would have been rich beyond imagination if the exit hadn't been so difficult.”

My companions looked at me doubtfully. The trouble with having extraordinary experiences is that they're too fantastic to be believed. “The Star Summer Palace had no obvious everyday utility and so was closed up,” Abraham went on. “The loss of a broken sword there, if it was lost, has never caused much regret, because there was no proof it was Roland's, or that Rudolf ever put it there. Historians aren't even sure Roland was a real person.”

“Like Arthur and Excalibur,” I said. “But French foreign minister Talleyrand pressed into my hand the hilt of an old sword he thought I'd find of use here in Bohemia. Which you identify with a French hero fighting in Spain. And the other half is a blade that came into the possession of Rudolf II of the Holy Roman Empire. Which is all very peculiar, yet why would this antique make a difference?”

“Something to do with the Rosicrucians, perhaps,” Gideon said. “Roland lived long before the Rosicrucians existed, but maybe Rosenkreutz came across the sword in Spain and incorporated it into his ceremonies. Perhaps he brought the broken blade here, and Rudolf acquired it. Meanwhile, if Rosenkreutz took your golem, he hid it. To open a hiding place, you need a key. This sword Durendal, perhaps, is that key, or could somehow lead us to the key. It's a link between Spain, France, and Bohemia. So we find the blade, steal it, reforge it, and . . .”

“And what?” I asked. “Did my wife go to this Star Palace?”

“We've no rumor of that.”

“We're getting ahead of ourselves,” Abraham said. “We need to find the sword blade first, and to do that we must break into a locked palace haunted by mystery and legend. If the groundsmen find Jews hunting for Christian relics, what do you think will become of us? Or if they capture the wounded American and enemy alien Ethan Gage, renowned for nefarious schemes?”

They'd clearly researched my background, as well as mastered big words such as
nefarious
. And he had a point. “This is my quest. Direct me to this odd palace and I'll explore it alone.”

“With a wounded shoulder?” Gideon objected.

The room was indeed still unsteady. “I can't wait for it to heal. My wife and son need me.”

“Nor can you afford to collapse where you don't belong. A poke at your shoulder and you'd betray everything you know, including us.”

I
had
learned that a useful response to torture is to blabber and plead. Such realism means they'll never erect a statue to me, but I
am
still alive.

“Get some food and rest,” Gideon counseled, “and when you're fitter we'll search this palace together.”

“You've already saved my life. I keep increasing my debt.”

“Nonsense. You saved me before I saved you. This is part of our infamous partnership to find the Brazen Head. Let's see it through.”

“Partners in infamy. Perhaps we could start a firm with that name. In the meantime, thank you, Gideon. I can use the help.”

“And I want to see this sword, your exotic wife, and this mechanical golem.” He grinned. “I'll ask it to forecast my own fortune.”

We were several days preparing, which helped enormously in healing enough to regain some strength. I slept like the dead for almost three days, and my wound began to mend without infection. Gideon, meanwhile, learned of architectural drawings for the Star Summer Palace in the Capitular Library, at St. Vitus Cathedral. This enormous church in Prague's castle complex includes the tombs of Rudolf II, Saint Wenceslas, Saint Adalbert, and Saint John of Nepomuk, to name just a few. There's a royal mausoleum below, with an entire platoon of less saintly royals, and having spent time in a plain coffin, I appreciated these ornate ones when I visited to research. When my time comes, it would be flattering to be gussied up with marble, silver, and sculpture. The library itself was adjacent in a church tower, and had the smell of paper, ink, glue, stone, and dust that Astiza is addicted to. My spirit wrenched at the scent. I missed her desperately.

As is my habit, I poked about. Across the courtyard from the library is the Old Royal Palace, a warren of rooms built atop Roman ruins. Included is a parliamentary chamber with a stairway big enough to ride horses up, since getting on and off in full armor was not a simple task. A land registry has ceiling and walls painted with dynastic seals and books of deeds thicker than a Bible. I peered out the window, through which two Catholic governors were once tossed out of by Protestant legislators, a Czech custom, called “defenestration,” that ignited the Thirty Years' War. Interestingly, the men survived a fall of seventy feet. Catholics said angels saved them. Protestants said they fell into horse manure.

The Star Palace plans gave no clue to where a sacred sword might be hidden. In fact, it was the oddest building I'd ever studied. The first floor is a cellar, and a pyramidal roof tops the fourth. On each level, six hallways and six chambers surround a round central foyer. Windows are tiny. Shapes are not square. Two of the star's points are oriented north–south, and another points toward Spain, but nothing in the drawings gave a clue to the palace's purpose. It has no kitchen, bedchambers, privy, or banquet hall.

The royalty of Bohemia seem quite mad.

In the spirit of lunacy, Gideon and I set out on a moonlit Christmas Eve to examine the place, reasoning that all good Christians would be at home. Snow reflected enough illumination to navigate by, and we carried lanterns to use once we broke inside. The night was cold as witches' breath, bony tree branches thrusting at the stars. The icy crust coughed with every step.

The palace, reached at midnight, was as odd as it had looked on paper. Imagine an ordinary building folded and creased, roof and root, to create a star. The exterior is simple white stucco. There are two or three shuttered windows on each facet of the star, but the facade is remarkably bland. The roof is steep as a wizard's hat, small dormers ventilating its attic. Gideon and I studied the architecture from the shelter of the trees. My nostrils felt frozen.

“It looks deserted,” he said.

“Nor do I see any footprints or tracks,” I added. We were trying to build each other's courage.

“Not a forbidding building, but not inviting, either. What do you think, Ethan?”

I have, as I've said, a peculiar wife, who gives me insight ordinary men don't enjoy. “Magic. Wise men believe numbers represent the universe, and that both God and men can express those numbers with divine geometry.”

A small porch roof marked the door, firmly shut and thick enough to withstand a battering ram. We circled the structure, no larger in its footprint than a large barn, and found no other means of entry. Shuttered cellar windows hugged the ground. The place was tight as a vault and miles from the closest house. Its star pattern reminded me vaguely of a military fort, and while this palace was impractical as a real castle, it still had a fortress feel.

“We should have brought a siege gun,” I said.

“Or at least axes and grappling hooks,” Gideon said.

I looked up. “We could crawl through those attic dormers if we could get to them, but the walls are straight and slick as the face of a glacier. No ledges, no vines, no creviced stonework, no balconies.”

“I did see one possibility,” Gideon said. He led me around to a jutting point of wall and pointed to a metal cable running down its apex. “Maybe this could get us to the roof.”

My left arm was still in a sling. “Impossible for me. I'm more useless than I like to be.”

“Not if I can open the door from inside.” He began climbing, his gloves on the odd metal cable and his legs gripping either side of the jutting walls.

I stood back to watch. Gideon scaled the sheer star point to the roof eave, hauled himself onto a roof ridge, shimmied like a monkey, and then let go to slide down a roof slope to a dormer opening. Snow came cascading down with him. Before I could shout instructions he didn't need, he broke through wooden louvers and disappeared into the palace's attic. When he lit his lantern, I could see a glimmer from outside.

I hoped no golems rested there.

I waited impatiently. Gideon would have to find his way to an attic hatch giving access to the rooms below. My shoulder wasn't throbbing anymore, but the ache made me stiff, and cold air didn't help. I looked in the direction of Prague. It was hidden from here, an immaculate snow-covered field giving way to woods. The world looked empty. The stars were ice, and this castle an iceberg. I stamped restlessly. The night gives free rein to imagination, and for a moment I felt as if the trees had moved. There—was that something?

No.

Far in the distance, a dog began to bark.

A thump made me jump. I turned. The massive door opened a crack, and Gideon beckoned me inside. “Or do you want to play sentry in the cold?” He shut the door behind us and slid back a beam, locking it in place.

I lit my own lamp. A short corridor led to a central round hall, with six hallways radiating off it. On each hallway were two doors, leading to the quadrangular rooms that occupied the points of the star. Accordingly, each room had two doors, each leading to a different corridor on either side. They also had two small windows, shrouded by shutters. In the round hall we found three randomly placed hard chairs and two freestanding mirrors, but no other furnishings.

“Not much of a place to live,” my companion said. “Two dozen oddly shaped, impractical, empty rooms. No fireplaces, and no sense.” The place was cold as a tomb. “Why mirrors, with no boudoir or bedchamber?”

I examined them from different spots. “I'm guessing they reflect the patterns of the architectural geometry. Angles upon angles upon angles. Did you spy a sword?”

“No. If King Rudolf hid it, he did a careful job.”

“Let's start at the bottom.”

A brick stairway in one of the star points led to a half-buried basement with a central rotunda and the same radiating hallways and odd rooms, making what my mathematician friend Gaspard Monge would call dodecagons. Geometry was clearly the point here, and the point was made over and over.

“If we take away the point dedicated to the stairs,” I mused, “we get a five-pointed star.”

“How brilliant of you to subtract one from six, my American friend.”

“That creates a pentagram. A human with head and outstretched arms and legs occupies a five-pointed space. Have you seen the figure Leonardo da Vinci drew?”

“And yet the archduke included six. And Emperor Rudolf stored nothing that I can see. All these points seem pointless.”

I tried to think like Astiza. “Twelve is a sacred number, like the apostles, and this place has twelve outside walls and twenty-four rooms. If you include the central chamber, each floor has seven spaces, another sacred number. The three aboveground floors have twenty-one, the number of letters in the sacred Jewish alphabet, which I learned while in Jerusalem. My wife is a numerologist, and so we chat about such things.”

“How interesting your love life is. So the sword is where, wizard?”

“I don't know. It could be buried under the floor.” I walked about, looking for signs of a hatchway. The walls were dark, the floor stone. It was a gloomy underworld with no clues that I could discern, except that the echoes were extraordinary. I could speak in a normal voice at one extension of the basement and be clearly heard at the other.

I stamped, seeking hollows, but didn't find any. Just geometry.

“Let's try upstairs.”

The ground floor was white, and its ceiling was an alabaster riot of Roman gods in bas-relief. We picked out a centaur, Minerva, Jupiter, Mercury, Nike, Bacchus, Ceres, Hercules, Perseus, and Europa.

“Archduke Ferdinand was the son of a holy Roman emperor,” Gideon said. “He'd have an affinity for Rome.”

“Look, there's Mars, next to one of the star's chambers. That seems a logical room for a sword.”

It was as empty as the others.