Three Emperors (9780062194138) (20 page)

We came back to the center, and Gideon pointed up. “There's an ancient hero following a star. Aeneas is said to have followed a star west from Troy to found Rome. In your own religion, the Magi followed a star to Jesus. Does this building represent a guiding star?”

“If so, we're inside what's guiding us, devoured by our own beacon.”

“My father would say we are the Ouroboros, the serpent that devours its own tail.”

“You've a speculative mind, Gideon. Are you a cabalist?”

“Just a Jew who thinks that people are brought together for a reason. How peculiar that we met, Ethan. We're meant to find something. I think this building is a book to be read, and you're the one to read it.”

I was heartened by his confidence, and skeptical of my skills. “Or the rabbi has led us on a wild goose chase. Let's finish this.”

The floor above the ground one was yellow, and the topmost or fourth floor was purple. More reliefs and symbols on the ceiling, reminding me of the zodiac the French army had found at Egypt's Dendera Temple. Mystics relish complex obscurity. State a fact and people will accept it as common sense, giving you no credit. Pose a riddle, ornamented with gods and goddesses, and the confusion will be hailed as genius you can charge money for.

What was the point of this palace? The Red Indians I'd encountered saw reality through the prism of a spirit world. Greeks and Egyptians sought understanding through shapes and symbols. Alchemists boil the complex down to the simple.

“These floors represent the elements as understood by Aristotle,” I suddenly realized. “Four floors, to represent earth at the bottom, then water in white, air in yellow, and fire with imperial purple. These are the colors of astrologers. The six points are the planets, and the central chamber the sun. The palace is a model of existence. We're standing inside the universe.”

“Perhaps a sword could be a compass needle, embedded in the floor?”

“As good a suggestion as any, but I've seen no sign of it. Let's search each level again.”

We did so, but the building seemed emptier than ever. Its owner had supposedly constructed it for a lover, but it was one of those male miscalculations. I doubted she'd spend a day in this chill geometry. “If Rudolf or his successors ever stored relics here, I think they've been removed.”

Gideon reluctantly nodded. “Unless there's a hidden chamber beneath the cellar, I fear you're right. Yet I feel we're close. Don't you feel it, Ethan?”

Oddly, I did. What were we missing? Earth, water, air, and fire. Planets, guiding stars, halls for gods, death and rebirth . . .

“The fifth element,” I said.

“I thought you said there were four.”

“Astrologers added a fifth to the Greek tally—the life force itself. It's the mysterious energy that calls us into being. The soul. The spirit. The electricity that fires us. There should be a fifth floor here.”

“The stairs take us to only four.”

“With a pyramidal roof above. Pyramids have power. What was in the attic, my friend?”

“Nothing that I saw.”

In a flash I saw the solution. The subconscious notices what the eyes miss. “But I saw something from the outside that I barely noted at the time. By the gracious wisdom of Solomon, I'm an idiot. What was that cable you used to climb up?”

“Twisted copper wire.”

“Attached to what?”

“The peak, I suppose. I didn't climb that high.”

“And why was it there?”

“I've no idea.”

“My mentor was the late and great Benjamin Franklin. He shared credit for the invention of the lightning rod with the Czech savant Prokop DiviÅ¡, who made one independent of Franklin shortly after the Sage of Philadelphia demonstrated his. DiviÅ¡, Ben told me, had the insight to carry the rod all the way down into the earth, where it could discharge harmlessly into the ground. And the Czech experimented shortly after this palace was built. What's the slogan of the astrologers, my friend?”

“I've no idea.”

“As above, so below. The sky mirrors the earth. We have the consistency of stars. What we found at ground level, we find above. What you climbed, I'm betting, is the wire leading from a lightning rod at the roof peak.”

“So?”

“So perhaps the sword is hidden in plain sight. I can't climb up there with my wound, but perhaps you can. What serves as lightning rod?”

“The sword?”

“Where better to hide something than plain sight?”

“I think I can scale the timber framing of the roof.” He climbed back into the attic with his lamp and then poked down his head.

“There does appear to be something very much like a blade jutting from the pyramidal peak of the roof,” he reported. “Its base is clasped in a lock with a large keyhole. Lacking tools, I don't know how we can open it.”

I took out the sword hilt I'd carried across half of Europe and examined it in the lantern light. For the first time I realized that the stub of blade was too neatly serrated to be merely broken. It had been cut and filed, waiting for reunion. The most profound insights are always in front of our blind eyes. “Here's your key.”

Again a wait while Gideon climbed, listening to his thumps and the squealing of old metal. Finally he reappeared. “Astonishing.”

He proffered an old blade, blackened and pitted.

And then there was a great boom from the palace door below.

Chapter 24

A
nother crash, and another. The building shuddered. Someone was trying to break in.

“We've been followed!” I hissed, as if they could overhear us through the thunderous thuds as they rammed the stout door. “I saw something in the woods but thought it my imagination.”

“We need another exit,” Gideon said.

“The roof again, and down the cable! You can help me.”

He grimaced. “When the sword as lightning rod came free, so did the wire. I heard it clatter on the tiles as it slithered to the ground below.”

I looked at a window on the fourth floor. “I can't jump with this arm. Even if I didn't break something, I'd reopen the wound and leave a trail of blood on the snow.” I thought fast. “As above, so below. The cellar windows.”

We hurtled down the stairs, the crash of the ram echoing in the stairwell like a bell.

“It will take time to break through the window shutter,” Gideon warned.

“Take the sword. I'll delay them and find you.”

I stopped at the ground floor, watching the stout door bulge from angry attack. Then I dragged one of the freestanding mirrors to face it. Another I positioned to one side, calculating the reflections in the glass.

Now I waited, curious to see my enemies.

The crossbar cracked, splinters springing and wood twisting. There was a final oath, then a heavy slam, and the bar snapped in two, each end dangling from brackets that still prevented entry. Someone huge heaved against it, again and again, and the door finally shattered completely, disintegrating.

The attacker stumbled in through its ruins. Pasques! I couldn't make out the face, but the bulky silhouette was all too familiar. The Paris policeman had the strength of three men. He'd first accosted me at the guillotine, fought with me at Notre Dame, and confounded me by proving as opportunistic as I am. Now he charged and stopped in confusion.

It was shadowy in the entry, the mirror backlit by my lantern, and in the gloom Pasques saw the menacing reflection of a huge adversary. It took him a moment to realize he was being challenged by his own image.

Other men crowded in behind him. “There! Shoot!” There was the crash of a volley of shots, blessedly emptying their guns. The mirror exploded.

“Fools!” They argued as I dashed to the basement.

It was dark, Gideon's lantern extinguished, but a glance told me which way to go. Light from a broken window gleamed from one of the short corridors, reflecting off the snow. I ran to it. My companion was already outside and reached to pull me through.

I howled. “The other shoulder!”

He switched and hauled as if I were a fish, and I heaved onto the snow. Pain beat like a drum. Ah, well, the wound certainly kept me alert. It would take our pursuers a minute or two to reload their guns and deduce which way we'd gone.

“You still have the blade and hilt?”

“Yes. I used them to pry off the shutters.”

“You carry one shutter and I the other.”

“Why?”

“Escape.”

We ran across the snowy lawn for the woods. I glanced back, light spilling from the doorway. Shouts in French echoed while boots thudded. Talleyrand's agents were still searching for us inside.

We were just yards into the trees when shots finally rang out. They'd spotted us. Bullets buzzed or whapped, puffs of snow marking their trajectory. We weaved and dodged, wishing the moon would go away. I heard barks.

We came to a long pasture of virgin snow descending toward Prague. The baying and rush of hunting dogs was urgent now.

“Sled!”

We threw the shutters down and belly-flopped with a grunt, me favoring my left shoulder, then we began to slide. The hill was steep enough. Cold air buffeted my half-frozen face.

I heard snarls, a last snapping at my heels, and growls of frustration as we plummeted ahead of the racing dogs. The animals ran, bellies to the white, snow flying, but they began to founder. On the crest behind us men ran up, shouting, and I could imagine them reloading.

By the time they shot again, we'd raced three hundred yards and were still accelerating, their dogs bogged. The reports sounded faint. We slid firmly out of range, Gideon whooping, and managed almost a full mile of sledding before Newton's gravity gave up on us.

We bounded up and ran like madmen until we disappeared into the edges of Prague. Side streets, the castle—we trotted around its periphery and dropped down through the gardens into the New Town, wary of any stranger. We liberated a boat on the Vltava bank to row to the Jewish ghetto. I steered while Gideon pulled, skeins of ice sliding by our hull. We were sweating.

“A close-run thing, American. But who were those men? How did they know we'd be there?”

“I recognized one of them, a policeman from Paris who is an agent of Talleyrand's.”

“The French foreign minister has agents in Prague?”

“Agents everywhere, but I first spotted Pasques back in the army. Somehow he learned we'd left Napoleon to come here.”

“And the others?”

“His companions, I surmise.” That might include the exceedingly seductive, and exceeding dangerous, Catherine Marceau. Somehow they'd tracked me from the battlefield. Had Napoleon seen me after all, at the end of Austerlitz, and relayed my intention to go to Prague? Had they let me lead them to the antique sword? Yet only Aaron and Abraham knew our exact plan.

“We need to get the sword and ourselves out of this city,” I said. “Who can we trust?”

“There's my father on the bank, waving to us.”

We put ashore.

“Thank God you're back,” the old man exclaimed. “I thought you'd been betrayed to the French!”

“We have been,” his son said grimly. “We narrowly escaped. But we also found the sword blade. We must hurry to Rabbi Stern.”

“But it was Stern who betrayed you.”

“What?!”

“I'm dismayed by his duplicity. He wants French political reforms after all, to help the Jews, and decided to cooperate with Bonaparte's agents.”

“But he said just the opposite!”

“No one can be trusted when automatons, golems, and politics are at stake. The French told him that the Star Palace might contain what you were looking for, so he directed you there.”

The blond hair on the book! I scolded myself. Catherine Marceau had been doing research before us. She'd helped me with research, and I'd helped her by finding the sword blade. Damnation. We were partners again, despite my efforts to avoid it.

“Father, how do you know this?”

“I was making my way to the rabbi's house after bartering in the Old Town when a man called to me in a narrow lane.”

“What man?”

“One moment he didn't exist, and the next he appeared as if by magic. I was so startled, I thought he might be a spirit. But his breath fogged in the cold like mortal men.”

“Or the devil.”

“He said he had a message for Ethan.”

“A message! How did he know I'm here?”

“I don't know.”

“What did he look like?”

“He had a cowl that hid his features. The alley was dark, and he'd picked a spot where people don't congregate. I feared he was a thief, but he said only one thing. ‘Tell Gage that Rabbi Abraham Stern betrayed him to the French. To escape the woman, seek the swordsmith of the Golden Lane. There all will be answered.”

“All
what
will be answered?”

“That's all he said. He melted into the shadows as suddenly as he appeared. It was as if he was invisible at will.”

I immediately thought of Richter's odd gang around Ca' Rezzonico, in Venice. The Invisible College. Which reminded me of another group I'd tangled with, the Egyptian Rite. The only fraternities that seem to seek me are made of stealthy cutthroats, greedy and vile. “That's all? No proof?”

“He showed me two things he said would convince you to come. The first was this, which he said a female French agent had left for you at Abraham's house.”

I took the slim volume. It was a French romance fashionable at the Seine bookstalls. Catherine and Astiza had devoured them, and I'd read one or two myself, solely from scholarly curiosity, of course. This one was called
Vulcan's Fire
. Inside was an inscription: “For Ethan.”

I flipped some pages. On the frontispiece was a stain that provoked a memory. As spies in Paris we'd used sympathetic ink, a new chemistry to hide secret messages. “Do you have a candle? We need some heat.” I warmed the page. Inked was a single word, “Beware.” It looked like Catherine's handwriting. This invisible stranger hadn't read it, but Catherine would guess I might.

“This proves nothing,” I said, while fearing it proved all. Catherine had collaborated with Rabbi Stern before we arrived, leaving a blond hair on a crucial book about Roland. Yet she'd also left this curious message. Once again I was being ensnared in puppet strings from all sides.

“He gave me something else to pass on. I don't understand its significance, but he said you would.” He held out his palm.

It was a marble. Harry had scattered marbles at Notre Dame to make the police slide and tumble when they pursued his mother. I recognized this one from Paris, an agate beauty I'd bought him near Les Halles. I felt the same dizziness I'd suffered from my wound. I snatched and held it to my cold cheek. “My son!”

“This was his?” asked Aaron.

“It
is
his. I remember buying it. That cloaked bastard knows where Harry and Astiza are.”

“Then we must go where he commanded. What other lead do we have? A smith on the Golden Lane, a homely dwarf, but apparently well versed in the arts of metallurgy.”

“He's heard of Astiza?”

“He sees and hears everything, by reputation. Auric is his name. This cloaked man promised we could trust him.”

I looked again at the book.
Vulcan's Fire
. Was Catherine warning about the smith and forge? But would she not be in league with whoever took Astiza? I looked at Aaron. If I couldn't trust Rabbi Abraham, why should I trust Gideon's father? Who was friend and who was foe, and who was allied with whom? I was tired from the long night, dizzy with hope, and filled with foreboding.

“Have you heard of this smith?” Gideon asked me.

“No. But clearly, too many people have heard of us.”

“You dare not return to the rabbi's house,” Aaron warned.

I sighed, choosing between bad alternatives. “It's time we made our own conspiracies,” I said. “Gideon, I need you to follow me to this Golden Lane but not enter the dwarf's smithy. Should I come out alone with a reforged sword, reunite with me. But should I come out as a prisoner, trail us at a distance. I need a hidden card to play in our game, and you must be it.”

“Of course.”

“Aaron, you're too obvious with your wagon. If we leave Prague, I need you to conspicuously stay here so that whoever is watching us assumes your son and I stay with you. Gideon is safest if no one is certain where he is.”

“I understand.”

“I'll go to meet this Auric, and hope he knows the fate of my family.” I sighed. “We have to put our trust in someone, but just who remains a gamble.”