The Rosetta Key (41 page)

Near dawn, a maid roused us. “My mistress wants to see you,” she whispered.

We were led upstairs. The maid tapped and Josephine’s voice replied “Come in” with a lightness I hadn’t heard before.

We entered, and there the victor of Abukir and his newly faithful wife lay side by side in bed, covers to their chin, both looking as satisfied as cats with cream.

“Good God, Gage,” Napoleon greeted. “You’re still not dead? If my soldiers could survive like you, I could conquer the world.”

“We’re only trying to save it, General.”

“Silano said he left you buried! And my wife has been telling your stories.”

“We only want to do what is best for you and France, General.”

“You want the book. Everyone does. Yet no one can read it.”

“We can.”

“So she says, with a record of what you helped destroy. I admire your cleverness. Well, rest assured one thing good has come from your long night. You’ve helped reconcile me to Josephine, and for that I am in a generous mood.”

I brightened. Maybe this would work. I began glancing around for the book.

Then there were heavy steps behind and I turned. A troop of gendarmes was mounting the stairs. When I looked back, Napoleon was holding a pistol.

“She’s convinced me that instead of simply shooting you, I should lock you in Temple Prison. Your execution can wait until you stand trial for that whore’s murder.” He smiled. “I must say, my Josephine has been tireless on your behalf.” He pointed to Astiza. “As for you, you will disrobe in my wife’s dressing room with her and my maids watching. I’ve summoned secretaries to copy your secret.”

T
here was irony in being imprisoned in a “temple” first built as headquarters for the Knight Templars, then used as a dungeon to hold King Louis and Marie Antoinette before they were beheaded, and finally serving as an unsuccessful jail for Sidney Smith. The English captain had escaped in part by signaling a lady he’d bedded through the prison windows, which was resourcefulness after my own heart. Now, eighteen months later, Astiza and I got to experience the accommodations ourselves, our lodgekeeper the portly, greasy, obsequious, officious, dim, but curious jailer Jacques Boniface, who’d entertained Sir Sidney with legends of the Knights.

We were driven there in the jail’s iron wagon, watching Paris through iron bars. The city seemed drab in November, the people apprehensive, the skies gray. We were watched in turn, like animals, and it was a depressing way to introduce Astiza to a great city. All was foreign to her: the great cathedral steeples, the clamor of the leather and linen and fruit markets, the cacophony of neighing horse traffic and sidewalk merchants, and the boldness of women wrapped in fur and velvet strategically opened to give a glimpse of breast and ankle. Astiza had been humiliated by her stripping to copy the key, and didn’t speak. When we alighted alongside the outer keep, in a cold and treeless courtyard, something caught my eye at the compound gate. There were people staring through the grillwork, always glad to see wretches even less fortunate than they, and I was startled to spy one head of bright red, wiry hair, as familiar as a bill of rent and as pesky as an unwanted memory. Could it be? No, of course not.

Temple Prison, which dated from the thirteenth century, was a narrow, ugly castle that rose two hundred feet to the peak of its pyramidal roof, its tower cells lit by narrow barred windows. They opened on the inside to galleries around a central atrium, climbed by a spiral staircase. It says something for the efficiency of the Terror that the prison was largely empty. Its royalist inmates had all been guillotined.

As prisons go, I’ve seen worse. Astiza and I were allowed to stroll the parapet around the roof — it was much too high to try to jump or climb from — and the food was better than in some of the
khans
I’d experienced near Jerusalem. We were in France, after all. If it wasn’t for the fact that we were shut up tight, and that Bonaparte and Silano seemed intent on mastery of the world, I might have welcomed the rest. There’s nothing like treasure hunting, ancient legends, and battles to make one appreciate a good nap.

But the Book of Thoth pulled on us, and Boniface was a gossip who enjoyed relating the machinations of a city at war and under strain. Plots and conspiracies were fried quick as a crêpe, each cabal looking for “a sword” to provide the necessary military muscle to take over the government. The Directory of five leading politicians was constantly reshuffled by the two legislative chambers. And the Council of the Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred were raucous, pompous assemblies who wore Roman mantles, indulged in shameless graft, and kept an orchestra on hand to punctuate legislation with patriotic songs. The economy was a wreck, the army was beggared for supplies, half of western France was in a revolt fueled by British gold, and most generals had one eye on the battlefield and the other on Paris.

“We need a leader,” our jailer said. “Everyone is sick of democracy. You’re lucky to be here, Gage, away from the turmoil. When I go into the city I never feel safe.”

“Pity.”

“Yet people don’t want a dictator. Few seek the return of the king. We must preserve the republic, but how can anyone take the reins of our fractious assembly? It’s like controlling the cats of Paris. We need the wisdom of Solomon.”

“Do you now?” We were sharing supper in the confines of my cell. Boniface had done the same with Smith because the jailer was bored and had no friends. I suppose his company was supposed to be part of our torture, but I’d taken an odd liking to him. He showed more tolerance of his prisoners than some hosts show guests, and paid better attention. It didn’t hurt that Astiza remained quite fine to look at and that I, of course, was uncommonly good company.

Now he nodded. “Bonaparte wants to be a George Washington, reluctantly accepting stewardship of his country, but he hasn’t the gravity and reserve. Yes, I’ve studied Washington, and his stoic modesty is a credit to your young nation. The Corsican arrived thinking he might be swept into the Directory by popular acclaim, but his superiors received him with coldness. What is he doing back from Egypt without orders? Have you two seen
Le Messenger
?”

“If you will recall, Monsieur Boniface, we are confined to this tower,” Astiza said gently.

“Yes, yes, of course. Oh, that brave periodical denounced the Egyptian campaign! Made a mockery of it! An army abandoned! Soldiers thrown uselessly at the ramparts of Acre! Bonaparte humiliated by the man once imprisoned here, Sir Sidney Smith! The newspapers are a voice for the assembly, you know. It’s all over for Napoleon.”

Talma had told me that Bonaparte feared hostile newspapers more than bayonets. But what no one knew was that Napoleon had the book, and that Silano once again had the full code to read it. So much for bargaining with Josephine, the scheming slut. That woman could seduce the pope, and reduce him to beggary in the process.

When I asked Boniface about the Knight Templars who’d built this place, it was like turning the handle on a pump. Facts and theories gushed out. “Jacques de Molay himself was grand master here and then tortured! There are ghosts here, young people, ghosts I’ve heard shrieking in winter storms. The Templars were burned and beaten until they admitted to the worst kinds of abominations and devil worship, and then they were sent to the stake. Yet where was their treasure? The rooms you’re confined in were supposed to be stuffed, yet when the French king arrived to pillage them, they were empty. And where was the rumored source of Templar power? De Molay would say nothing, except when he went to the stake. Then he prophesized king and pope would be dead within the year. Oh, the shiver in the crowd when he prophesized that! And it was true! These Templars were not just warrior-monks, my friend, they were magicians. They’d found something in Jerusalem that gave them strange powers.”

“Imagine if such power could be rediscovered,” Astiza murmured.

“A man like Bonaparte would seize the state in an instant. Then we’ll see things change, let me tell you, for better
and
worse.”

“Is that when our trial will be?”

“No. That’s when you’ll be guillotined.” He gave a Gallic shrug.

Our jailer was eager to hear our adventures, which we cautiously edited. Had we been inside the Great Pyramid? Oh yes. Nothing to see.

And Jerusalem’s Temple Mount?

A Muslim holy site now, with Christian access prohibited.

What about rumors of lost cities in the desert?

If they are lost, how could we find them?

The ancients could not raise their great monuments without colossal secrets, Boniface insisted. Magic had been lost with the priests of yore. Ours was a pale modern age, stripped of wonder, mechanical and cynical. Science was subduing mystery, and rationalism was trampling wonder. Nothing like Egypt!

“Yet what if it were found again?” I hinted.

“You know something, don’t you, American? No, don’t shake your head! You know something, and I, Boniface, am going to get it out of you!”

O
n October 26, our jailer brought electrifying news. Lucien Bonaparte, age twenty-four, had just been elected president of the Council of Five Hundred!

I knew Lucien had been working on his brother’s behalf in Paris long before Napoleon left Egypt. He was a gifted politician. But president of France’s most powerful chamber? “I thought you had to be thirty years old to hold that post?”

“That’s why Paris is buzzing! He lied of course — had to, in order to comply with the Constitution — but everyone knows the lie. Yet they elected him anyway! This is Napoleon’s doing, somehow. The deputies are frightened, or bewitched.”

More intriguing news followed. Napoleon Bonaparte, who’d been snubbed by the Directory, now was to have a banquet in his honor. Was public opinion turning? Had the general been wooing the city’s politicians to his side?

On November 9, 1799 — 18 Brumaire on the new revolutionary calendar — Boniface came to us goggle-eyed. The man was a walking newspaper. “I don’t believe it!” he exclaimed. “It’s as if our legislators are under the spell of Mesmer! At half past four this morning, the Council of Ancients was roused out of bed and sleepily assembled in the horse ring of the Tuileries, where they voted to remove themselves outside the city to the estate of Saint-Cloud to deliberate there. The decision is insane: it separates them from support of the mob. They did this willingly, and the Five Hundred will follow them! All is confusion and speculation. But more than that has Paris holding its breath.”

“What?”

“Napoleon has been given command of the city’s garrison, with General Moreau removed! Now troops are moving to Saint-Cloud. Others are manning barricades. Bayonets are everywhere.”

“Command of the garrison? That’s ten thousand men. The army of Paris was what kept everyone, including Bonaparte, in check.”

“Exactly. Why would the chambers allow this? Something odd is going on, something that leads them to vote the opposite of what they asserted just hours or days before. What could it be?”

I knew what, of course. Silano had made progress translating the Book of Thoth. Spells were being said and woven, and minds were being clouded. Bewitched indeed! The entire city was being entranced. Astiza and I looked at each other. There was no time to waste. “Mysteries of the East,” I said suddenly.

“What?”

“Jailer, have you ever heard of the Book of Thoth?” Astiza asked.

Boniface looked surprised. “But of course. All students of the past have heard of the Thrice Great, ancestor of Solomon, originator of all knowledge, the Way and the Word.” His voice had shrunk to a whisper. “Some say Thoth created an earthly paradise we’ve forgotten how to maintain, but others say that he’s the dark archangel himself, in a thousand guises: Baal, Beelzebub, Bahomet!”

“The book has been lost for thousands of years, has it not?”

Now he looked sly. “Perhaps. There are rumors the Templars…”

“Jacques Boniface, the rumors are true,” I said, standing from the rude table where we shared a jug of cheap wine, my voice deepening.

“What charges are filed against Astiza and me?”

“Charges? Why none. We don’t need charges to hold you in Temple Prison.”

“Yet don’t you wonder why Bonaparte has confined us here? You can see for yourself we’re friendless and helpless. Confined us but not yet killed us, in case we may be useful yet. What is an odd pair like us doing in Paris at all, and what do we know that is so dangerous to the state?”

He looked at us warily. “I have wondered these things, yes.”

“Perhaps — allow the possibility, Boniface — we know of
treasure.
The greatest on earth.” I leaned forward across the table.

“Treasure?” It was a squeak.

“Of the Knights Templar, hidden since that Friday the thirteenth, 1309, when they were arrested and tortured by the mad king of France. Keeper of this keep, you are as trapped as us. How long do you want to be here?”

“As long as my masters…”

“Because
you
could be master yourself, Boniface. Master of Thoth. You and we, who are the true students of the past.
We
wouldn’t give sacred secrets to ambitious tyrants like Bonaparte, as Count Alessandro Silano is doing. We’d reserve them for all mankind, would we not?”

He scratched his head. “I suppose so.”

“But to do so we must move, and quickly. Tonight is Napoleon’s coup, I think. And it depends on who holds a book that was once lost, now recovered. The Templars hid their wealth all right, in a place they reasoned no man would ever dare look,” I lied.

“Where?” He was holding his breath.

“Under the Temple of Reason, built on the Isle de la Cité exactly where the ancient Romans built their temple to Isis, goddess of Egypt. But only the book will tell us
exactly
where it is.”

His eyes goggled. “Notre Dame?” Poverty will make you believe anything, and a jailer’s wage is criminal.

“You’ll need a pick and courage, Monsieur Boniface. The courage to become the richest, most powerful man in the world! But only if you are willing to dig! And only one man can lead us to the precise spot! Silano lives only for his own greed, and we must capture him and do what’s right, for Freemasonry, Templar lore, and the mysteries of the ancients! Are you with me?”