Three Emperors (9780062194138) (25 page)

The next morning, we skirted the eastern side of Nymburk and followed the river Mrlina northeast, the land slowly rising, with Poland over the horizon. Far ahead we could see the gentle crest of the Krkonoše Mountains. The terrain became more rumpled. The snow gave way to clear weather, the earth like frosting. Catherine announced that we had passed into the year 1806. Then we trotted by the villages of Dětenice, Dolní Bousov, Sobotka, and Troskovice.

From a high pasture, we saw our goal curdled in mist.

“Trosky Castle,” Astiza said.

Two rock spires rose from the top of a wooded hill. Atop each outcrop was a stone watchtower. “One is called Baba and the other Panna, meaning ‘grandmother' and ‘maiden,' ” Astiza told us. “Crone and virgin.” Linking the two rock crags was a castle wall. “It was built by Čeněk of Wartenberg late in the fourteenth century and passed on to Ota of Bergov. The younger Ota, his son, plundered nearby Opatovice Monastery and by legend hid its treasure under the castle, never to be found. I think Christian Rosenkreutz came here.”

“You're certain?” Catherine asked.

“No. But this castle's peculiar shape fits the only clues I have. It burned shortly after Rosenkreutz would have arrived.”

It was the oddest edifice I'd ever seen. The geology would have been strange enough, the twin rocks like gigantic fangs. To have each topped by additional towers gave the hill the fantastic silhouette of a horned god.

“You think this was built to mirror an Egyptian hieroglyph?” I murmured to my wife.

“No. But Rosenkreutz might have recognized the glyph and its astrological significance. What better resting and hiding place?”

“It's a ruin. How could he and the automaton be hidden here and remain unfound?”

“Not everyone has the searching ability of Ethan Gage.” She squeezed my hand. “Books say there are hidden caverns here.”

“I'm done with caves. For all time.”

“And yet our path toward heaven requires sojourns in hell,” my wife said.

Chapter 32

Astiza

E
than thought me merely calm in our new captivity, even resigned, but the truth was that I was secretly happy, a fact I preferred not to share with our captors. The wicked dwarf was dead, and we were ahead of Baron Richter. After months of captivity in a stinking chamber, fermenting our own urine, I breathed fresh air. My son had healed. My husband had returned. Given such victories, the threat represented by Catherine Marceau was real but manageable. We'd been forced to live with her in Paris, and I knew her too well. She was ambitious, vain, duplicitous, flirtatious, and more practical than cruel. She wanted to use us, not abuse us. Meanwhile, the idea of finally finding the tomb of Christian Rosenkreutz and the Brazen Head thrilled me. Nothing is more disquieting than straying from destiny's path, and nothing is more satisfying than doing what should be done. After months of imprisonment, we were coming to an ending.

The horned castle of Trosky is a castle of ka, of soul. Once a medieval fortress, now a ruin, it wouldn't reveal its nature to an ordinary visitor. But there was magic to someone like Rosenkreutz. To build one watchtower on a pinnacle is logical. To build two, less than a hundred yards apart, is a sign. The place is a magnet for tumult, and not just Baron Ota and his sacrilegious stolen treasure. The robber knight Sofa of Helfenburk captured the place in a night raid and made it a base for his depredations. Siege and counter-siege resulted in the castle passing to Zitava, Zajic, King George of Poděbrady, the Selmberks, the Bibrštejns, the Lobkowiczes, and the Valdštejns. The pinnacles rise from pools of blood.

We rode up the wooded hill, the old lane to the castle gate overgrown but discernible. Our horses were picketed in the bare trees below the masonry. It was late, the shadows long, the walls cracked and crumbling. When we walked inside the arched gate, their wooden doors long rotted away, there wasn't much to see. Tilted stairs led to rectangular courtyards stretched between the twin monoliths of lava rock. The ramparts were weedy. Many of the stones were blackened by fire. All roofs were gone, and all shelter. I saw no sign of village children playing here, or animals denning. The place was forbidding.

The giant Pasques walked the ramparts, a pinnacle himself in the gloom. He said almost nothing on our journey, as is his habit. But now he descended to confer with Catherine.

“A fine place for a trap.” I noticed he leaned closer to the woman than he had to.

“Or a defense.” She was oblivious, or indifferent, to the policeman's desire.

“If this is where the Brazen Head can be found,” Pasques said, “let's come back with a regiment of agents and a cartload of picks and shovels. I don't trust Gage by half, and I don't trust his wife at all.”

“We're in a race with the Invisible College. We don't have time to seek reinforcements. And the witch is our only hope.” She turned to me. “A picturesque ruin, but little more than a burned-out shell. Are you trying to make fools of us?”

“Can't you feel it, Comtesse?” I deliberately used the title with a mocking tone. Under the open sky, I felt my helplessness changing to power. “There are places in the world where spirit converges. This is one.”

“Does the convergence include an automaton?”

“So anxious you are! What will you ask it?”

Catherine smiled. “When I shall prevail.”

“But if you possess it, you have prevailed, have you not?”

“I have other desires as well.” She glanced at my husband, enjoying her ability to provoke him—and me.

“As do I,” I said calmly, knowing it is my calm that provokes her. “You must help search for the Brazen Head with purity of heart and mind. Where should we look, Comtesse?”

“Under this rubble heap, obviously.”

“Yes.” I stamped my foot. “Perhaps there are caves. Let's fan out to look for them.”

But a half hour's search revealed no entrances, which surprised no one. There were only abandoned pits left by peasants seeking monastery treasure. If it were that easy, the android would have been looted long ago. “Let's look from the watchtower.” I pointed to Baba.

“You look for a cave from a tower?” Pasques asked.

“As above, so below, the astrologers say.”

The Baba pinnacle was sheer, dark, and rough. Nothing but lichen grew on it. Its wooden stairs had burned or rotted, so Ethan and I climbed like goats while the others watched from below, Harry kept hostage. At the top was a square tower with room for not much more than the two of us, overseeing a panorama of wintry fields and woods. Ethan brought the old sword and we probed the basalt floor, but it was solid rock. I was puzzled. I felt we were in the right place, but it seemed bald of clues.

“Let's try Panna,” I said.

This lava outcrop was fatter and not quite as steep, although still lofty. Here the watchtower's wooden roof had burned away, leaving a room that was an open shell. The floor, however, was stone instead of bare rock. Our tapping yielded nothing.

“They'll be angry if we led them to the wrong place, Astiza.”

“And not just them.” I pointed. I'd looked out over the countryside again. Miles away, the setting winter sun etched a line of black-clad horsemen galloping toward our strange outcrop. They were dressed in black, riding single file.

“It's Richter,” Ethan surmised. “He's gotten out of the mines and followed us. Look, one has peeled off, maybe to flank us.” My husband studied their approach and then gave that wry grin of determination I'd fallen in love with. “Which is worse?”

“Catherine is greedy,” I said, “but Fulcanelli is evil.”

“Fulcanelli?”

“His church name, an imposture I allowed myself to be seduced by.” I immediately regretted the choice of word.

His smile tightened. “Seduced? What kind of relationship did you have before Richter was burned?”

I flushed, heart hammering. Could I honestly answer that question even to myself? Before Fulcanelli used me, I was using him. “What kind of relationship did you have with Catherine?” I countered evasively.

A long moment, too long, ticked between us.

“What do you see?” Pasques shouted up at us from below, sounding impatient. It was a welcome interruption.

“Baron Richter is coming!” Ethan shouted down. He turned to me. “Maybe they'll fight it out between them.”

“Or combine to torment us. Best to disappear, as Richter's henchmen seem to do. But how, how?” I paced the floor. “Truth is usually obvious once you see it.”

Ethan studied where I was walking. “The stonework has a pattern,” he suddenly said.

The light was poor and the floor filthy, but I scolded myself for not spying it before. I knelt to sweep with my sleeves. “It's laid in the pattern of a rose.”

As we hurriedly cleaned, the picture the joints made became more evident. “A lot of bother for a military watchtower.”

“But not for a tomb entrance, Ethan.” The rose mosaic of large flagstones lay in a circle made by an incision in the rock.

“A rose for Rosenkreutz. But what else?”

The messages of mystics can be as elusive as a forgotten song and as blunt as a blow. “This tower has the name Virgin,” I said. “One of many meanings for the rose has been its association with a woman's portal.”

“Portal?”

“The opening between her legs. Poets have alluded to roses.”

“Ah.” My husband was uncharacteristically silent for a moment. Then: “I remember such a line from one of Catherine's romance novels. Just took a peek, you understand. So this is a door?”

“I hope.”

“How does it open? I mean, we've had some experience, but . . .”

I thought furiously and finally guessed again, because we had no time to waste. I called down. “Pasques, Marceau! Bring wood for torches and more faggots besides! Bring Horus! Hurry!”

“What's your plan, lovely wife?”

“What opens a rose in nature, Ethan?”

“Well, sunlight.”

“And its heat. I want to see if fire has any effect.”

“But the castle has already burned.”

“Precisely. And why did it burn shortly after Rosenkreutz came here? Was someone seeking entry but didn't know exactly where? And did the fire burn directly against this floor? The roof is burned away.” I leaned out again. “I may have found something.” And then, “No, not yet!”

Pasques had lit his torch before starting up. The flame could be seen for miles.

Richter's men would hurry.

Chapter 33

I
s your wife mad?” Catherine asked me as Astiza fed a ring of fire around the periphery of the tower.

“Eccentric,” I said, wondering myself. “Smarter than you or me.” Astiza had built a ring of fire on the stone rose, and now smoke and sparks rolled skyward, leaving us slow-roasted on one side and chilled on the other. It was a signal seen for miles, a beacon to anyone approaching.

My wife wiped her brow and addressed our dubious looks. “Heat causes metal to expand. Hot water can be used to crack stones in quarries. Rosenkreutz would recognize fire as one of the elements. Earth, fire, water, and air, all working together.”

“If it doesn't open, the Invisible College will besiege us up here,” Pasques said.

“We'll drop you on the baron like a boulder,” I suggested.

“Only after we've thrown you like a lance.”

The smoke began to whiten.

“Steam,” Astiza said.

Creaks and groans began to issue from the floor. It seemed to settle slightly and sigh. The incised became more defined, marking the rose from the surrounding stone of the tower. Then there was a whistle that made us jump.

A jet of steam issued from the far side of the tower base like a little geyser, followed by another, and another. Our fire had turned our tower into a teakettle. As the pressure climbed, there was a great clanking and creaking and one end of the rose dipped while the other climbed into the air, a circular section of the tower floor rotating vertically to reveal a shaft. Hot coals cascaded into the pit. The lid stopped to leave a narrow, half-moon entrance on each side of the opening, with just enough room for a human to squeeze and descend.

“The Mansions of the Moon,” Astiza murmured. “They mark time, and this door invites us to the future.”

“You think Rosenkreutz built this door?” Catherine asked.

“It certainly shows the kind of mechanical ingenuity required to maintain an automaton.”

Catherine shouted down orders to her French henchmen to deploy around the castle walls to hold off Richter's deadly monks. She had a pistol tucked in a sash. Pasques had a powerful blunderbuss, a monstrous shotgun that reminded me of Lady Nahir.

I drew Astiza aside. Our earlier conversation had been interrupted, but I wanted answers before we went below. “Richter is risking a battle with French agents over an object that might not even exist,” I whispered. “He intercepted me in Venice, kidnapped you, and pursues us in winter. His fervor is out of proportion to the stakes. Why is he still after us?”

“We injured his face, Ethan.”

I glanced toward my son, looking down the hole with game curiosity. It made me proud and terrified that he was taking after his father, but it was an occupational necessity. Secret things tend to be in dark places. “Was it an accident?”

“Harry was trying to save me.”

“Save you from what? I thought you were working with Richter—or Fulcanelli—or whoever the hell you thought he was.”

She looked away from me. “When we were in the Golden Lane, they wouldn't let us go.”

“And Harry threw acid in a man's face?”

She closed her eyes. “He attacked me.”

“Who attacked you? Auric?”

“Primus—I mean Richter—tried to rape me.”

“What?”

“Ethan, it was a nightmare.” She sighed. “He claimed I'd led him on.”

“Did you?”

“No. No! Of course not. We did nothing. But I was alone, and I thought he was a bishop, and we'd become friends. I needed help. He misinterpreted. It was very confusing.”

My emotions boiled, and not just because this impostor and kidnapper had assaulted my wife. Oh, I was angry, but there was more to it than that. I felt guilty. Hadn't I been flirtatious with Lady Nahir and, before that, with Catherine Marceau? Didn't I enjoy sending salacious signals to pretty women during long absences from my wife? Richter hadn't just attempted rape—he'd unwittingly mocked my own bad behavior.

And it had been left to my son, not yet five, to avenge and protect.

I struggled for words. “I'm so sorry.”

“You weren't there.”

“Exactly.”

“Ethan, it all happened in a moment. Harry didn't even know what he was doing. Richter got what he deserved. That should have ended it, but of course it didn't. And here he comes again.”

“Yes.”

“Let's find the android. Maybe we can bargain with it to be left alone.”

I looked over the broken tower wall. The riders had disappeared into the trees and were climbing the hill. “No. He wants revenge for his humiliation. He wants to possess you, to regain his pride, and then kill you and Harry so the world will never know the embarrassment of how he lost his face.”

“Then we ally with Catherine and Pasques. Numbers are our only hope.”

It had grown so dark that our faces were masked. “Yes,” I said. “Our only hope. You go first.” She scooped up Harry and started. “Unless there's another ending,” I whispered, too quiet for her to hear.

The others started down iron rungs in the shaft that led into the earth, first Catherine, then Astiza, with Harry in one arm, and Pasques last, Gideon's rope looped over his vast shoulder. He called impatiently. “Hurry, American.”

“Start without me, Pasques.”

“What?”

“I have something to settle with Baron Richter.”

“Pasques, come!” I heard Catherine call from somewhere below.

“Take care of them, policeman.” And with the sword of Roland slung across my back, I leaped across the broken wall and clambered back down the outside of the basalt pinnacle to kill Wolf Richter.

And by so doing, expunge some of my worst guilt for too often choosing adventure and pride before my own family, leaving them alone.