Three Emperors (9780062194138) (26 page)

Chapter 34

T
he French agents weren't experienced soldiers. One of Catherine's men fired too soon for proper ambush, felling one of Richter's party but allowing the rest to retreat into the shelter of trees under a pelting of bullets, their horses neighing in consternation.

Then gunfire began the other way. I had no gun, only the sword, and so crouched in an old alcove of the castle wall and waited while bullets pinged.

There was a sharp little fight in the gloom. The French seemed to be holding their own, and one shouted, “They're in retreat!” I saw men on Richter's side fall. But then a blast of gunfire from the opposite direction made me jump. Some of the baron's Invisible College monks had flanked the defenders and attacked them from behind. Two of Catherine's defenders pitched over, struck in the back. Another whirled and charged, only to be cut down. Two more fled, one of them hit and skidding on his deathbed of frozen grass. A monk materialized from the dusk and finished the wounded man with a knife, grunting as he cut.

I thought the last French agent had escaped into the woods, but then I heard shouts and a series of shots in the trees below.

His last cry, and then silence. Finally the sound of a hunting horn, bringing to mind the horn of Roland at his last stand.

All of Catherine's men were dead. The victorious monks who were still alive gathered below the tower we'd climbed. I counted half a dozen, plus the baron.

Now I stepped out, hand on the sheathed hilt of my medieval sword.

This wasn't foolish bravado. Richter and I had one thing in common, an unresolved need for vengeance. I'd never paid for invading his bedchamber and stealing his purse. He'd never paid for assaulting my wife and imprisoning my little boy. We were two cocks in a pit, our swords the spurs. I was counting on a duel.

“Luck let you survive the silver mines of Kutná Hora,” I said as I stepped into view.

His men whirled and trained guns on me. They could have shot me down in an instant but wouldn't until the baron gave them permission.

“You should have stayed there instead of overplaying your hand,” I went on.

“Monsieur Gage.” Richter stepped forward, face hideous, hand on his own hilt, pretending to be puzzled. “Left your wife again?” He looked around warily. “Or is she so tired of your presence that she has already left you?”

“It is I who am tired, and what I'm tired of is you worrying about the presence of my wife.” I addressed the others. “Why do you follow a rapist?”

Richter scowled. “That is slander, monsieur. I did not rape your wife. Nor do I rely on luck, either in brelan or the mines. I unreeled line to find my way out of Kutná Hora's tunnels, knowing we'd eventually catch you anyway.”

Again I addressed the others. “Ask my son, a mere child, why the monster you follow has a burned face. What precipitated his disfigurement?”

“Gage doesn't know what he's talking about.”

“I know that your very presence is an insult to her husband, Baron, that you are an odious schemer, a cheat at cards, a bumbler at alchemy, a failure as a jailer, and stupefied by real mystery. Your only chance at finding medieval secrets was to follow us, since you and your Invisible College dunces here are incapable of discovering anything on your own.” I knew rage had swamped my customary prudence, but I longed to finish what Harry had started on this villain.

Richter drew his rapier. It flashed in the twilight as he cut the air, the thin blade a thread of lightning. “All right, the truth then.” He bowed like a duelist. “Your wife is a whore, American. She led me on. She's lied to you. Die for her if you wish, but don't die an ass. Face the truth.”

“Yes, truth.” I drew Durendal with a great rasp. It was a medieval broadsword made for cleaving shield and armor. I cut my own circle in the air, and the sword sang like a choir. “Let our duel decide who's the scoundrel and who the wronged. No guns, and no seconds. We should have ended this in Venice.”

He smiled, dangerously so. “I tried to. But you ran and hid in the grave from what I heard. You want to return to it now?”

“I want you to have your own taste of bitter earth.”

“He's trying to delay us,” Richter told the others. “They've fled down some rabbit hole. But I'm quick with my blade. This won't take long.”

I knew he trumped me in swordsmanship. Richter had the quickness of his narrow blade, and under normal circumstances he would quickly have gotten under my guard. I'm a man of our modern nineteenth century, appreciative of the rifle. Still, I had a strategy. I had the weight of steel on my side. His point flicked and buzzed, but my hacker sizzled as I swung, keeping him at bay with arcs worthy of an executioner, if not nearly swift enough to catch him. It was as if I was boxing with haymakers, and Richter jabbing from a distance. He laughed as I grunted. His companions stood in a circle to create an impromptu arena, and we circled in purple twilight, patches of snow and frost casting just enough light to see.

“That antique is obsolete, Gage. You look ridiculous.”

“Look again when your head is separated from your shoulders.”

“I'm simply waiting for you to get tired.” He lunged, hoping he'd distracted me. I clanged away his assault, but not before he cut a shallow furrow across my chest and forearm, ruining my clothing and puckering the skin underneath. Blood welled from the sting.

“Maybe I shall undress you,” he said. “As I dreamed of doing with your wife.”

So I feigned rage and charged, the clumsiest of bulls, and let him lightly rake me again, this time on my thigh. I howled for effect, but in fact it
did
hurt like the devil. I had to end this before he stabbed me through.

So it was my time for my brelan surprise. My wound at Austerlitz had weakened me, but the weeks since had given me time to exercise my left shoulder and arm. Durendal made an excellent weight, and the left side of my torso had come to equal and then exceed the strength of my right for the first time in my life. My injury had mostly healed, and my power had grown.

I tossed the medieval sword up and caught it with my left hand.

Richter hesitated.

Fencers learn to counter a left-armed opponent, but it takes a moment of adjustment and a rejiggering of strategy. I did not give such time. I lunged, making him back up, and swung. His parry was clumsy, and then his heel caught a stone in the ruined courtyard and he struggled to maintain balance.

It gave me time to lift and cut a downward stroke capable of cleaving him in two.

He blocked and turned my swing, but it was a reed against an oak, and with a great shout worthy of Roland I slammed down on his rapier, forcing its tip to the frozen earth and snapping its blade. Richter cried out as his wrist turned. Now he did fall, scrambling backward on all fours as I came after him, his eyes wide with frank fear.

He collided with one of his henchmen and desperately groped for the man's musket. I leaped forward to kill him before he could point and fire.

Durendal hissed down with a Valkyrie's cry, and Richter only had time to lift the gun barrel against my chop. My sword snapped it in two, the charge going off and the baron howling as fragments flew and sliced. The other monks fired, but I dropped an instant before they pulled. Now their guns were empty.

I lifted my arm to stab the baron, only to find Durendal curiously light.

The medieval relic had shattered again, the blade breaking into half a dozen pieces. I was once more left with a stub. I froze in astonishment, while Richter, the wind knocked out of him and his ruined face pitted with tiny bleeds, seemed equally surprised.

It wasn't just the dissolution of the famous blade that astounded me, however. It was the hilt. The force of the collision had jarred the rose pommel, popping it off. A black protuberance jutted from the end of the handle.

By the soul of Christian Rosenkreutz, it was a key! I'd been carrying it for more than a year without knowing it was there.

No wonder Talleyrand had been told the sword stub was a clue.

All this took an instant to comprehend. I sprang up, Richter out of reach but his monks busy reloading. While they fumbled with cartridge and primer, I sprinted for the basalt pinnacle and its virgin tower. I sprang halfway up just from momentum. Below me, guns swung to aim.

“Leave him!” Richter roared. “He'll lead us to the witch and her treasure!”

Not if I shut the door, I thought.

I heaved myself over a lip of wall, fell to the tower floor, and slipped into the hatchway of two half-moons where the others had gone, hanging on to the iron rungs in the shaft. I could hear the Invisibles climbing, but I had a minute's lead.

Steam had opened the door, but the mechanism was out of fuel. So I reached up and hauled and, with a grind of gears and sigh of pistons, the great lid came down with a crash.

I was in blackness, clinging.

“Astiza!”

“Ethan!” It was a faint call, far below and far away.

To hell with Richter. We'd find the machine, learn our future, and leave all these plotters far behind. The Brazen Head would somehow save us.

A great frustrated hammering began from above. Then there was ominous silence.

Chapter 35

I
descended through a basalt pinnacle to what I guessed was the level of the castle walls, and then far deeper. The shaft was a natural volcanic vent, its walls frozen, ropy lava. In places it had been hacked wider by men. At the bottom, a rock floor sloped downward. As I followed this, the dark basalt gave way to paler limestone, the ancient volcano having extruded through the earlier ancient reef. Now the tunnel widened, eventually opening into a true cavern. Glossy white-and-pink limestone pillars held up a ceiling big enough for a ballroom. The middle was fifty feet high, but at the cavern's far end, rubble climbed until floor and roof pinched together.

I heard voices and saw a lantern. The four others were examining one of the cavern walls. I shouted greeting, and Astiza rushed to hug me. “I thought I'd lost you again!”

“The baron and I had some unfinished business.” I turned to Catherine. “Your men are wiped out, I'm afraid. It's only us now.”

“Did you kill Richter?”

“No. Both our blades broke.”

“Durendal was shattered?” my wife asked.

“I'm afraid so. I had to shut the hatch after me. They banged on it but quit. Richter will try something else, I'm guessing. We must hurry.” I looked about. “We're always climbing into hell, aren't we?”

“This hell is very pretty,” Astiza said. “The hanging rock reminds me of glistening, graceful roots.”

“I prefer to think of the underworld as a depository,” Catherine added, “as rich in artifacts as the bottom of the sea must be for treasure ships.”

“I wouldn't have guessed you so poetic,” I said.

“I'm a romantic, Ethan.”

I was quite sure she wasn't.

“My theory,” Catherine went on, “is that this cave network was found before the castle existed. The fortress was built to seal and guard it. They left one entrance where few would think to look—in a watchtower at the top instead of a cellar at the bottom—and left hidden what we've now rediscovered.”

“And what is that, my doughty fellowship?” I said it sarcastically, but in fact we were unwilling allies again with Catherine and Pasques. Danger forces strange compromises.

“Show him,” Catherine ordered.

My wife took a lamp and walked toward one of the natural pillars, lifting the light. The thick stalagmite, I saw, had been carved into the shape of a woman. Subsequent years and dripping water had softened the carving, but the feminine form and face were still recognizable.

“The White Madonna,” Astiza said. “It's a representation of the Goddess, Ethan. It's Isis, Mary, Cybele, and Artemis.”

“It's a woman, anyway.”

She moved on. “And here's a god.” This was a powerful man, bearded, helmeted, carved from a darker hue, and again eroded by dripping water. At first I thought he might be clutching his privates, but then I realized his hands were on the hilt of a grounded sword.

“Not a god,” I objected. “They don't need steel weapons.”

“Masculine power, then,” she said. “All things are dual, and this cave is a repository of symbols.” She pointed. Astrological signs were inscribed on the floor. Wreaths of rock wound across the ceiling, carved imps and fairies peering through stone fronds. Grooves on the floor inscribed “golden triangles” of perfect proportion from pillar to pillar. And why did our feeble light seem so bright? Because on the walls were great sheets of bronze that, even when tarnished, reflected a ghostly image of us. Those images were echoed on the opposite wall and back yet again, so that our figures receded into infinity.

“What is this place?”

“An anteroom of the sacred,” Catherine said.

“A trap,” Pasques said. The giant kept looking around uneasily.

“I think we've truly found where Rosenkreutz came to rest,” Catherine said, “but we face a challenge. This way, Ethan.”

At the far end of the cave room was a great bronze door, inscribed with symbols. There were circles divided into four quarters, with a symbolic animal or god's head in each. And there were squares divided into smaller tiles, each tile bearing letters or characters from a foreign script.

“The language in the center is Enochian, the tongue of angels,” Astiza said. “The ancients knew it, but we moderns have forgot.”

“I hope what it's saying is not a curse,” I said.

“An invitation, to the right person.”

There was also a date, in Latin script:
ANNO DOMINI MCDLXXXIV
, or 1484.

“The date Rosenkreutz was sealed within,” Catherine guessed.

“The Rosicrucians claimed they entered this chamber 120 years later and found the texts that form the base of their organization,” Astiza said. “If true, the tomb beyond may be empty.”

“Unless they didn't find everything,” I said.

“You think you're wiser, Ethan?” Catherine teased me.

“Cleverer, perhaps. We've come this far under terrible circumstances, so fate wants us to find the Brazen Head, don't you think?”

“To harness it.”

“Or destroy it.” That had been Thomas Aquinas's idea, and he was a saint, an honor to which no one has thought to nominate me.

“That won't happen,” she said.

“The door is locked,” Astiza interrupted. “We have no tools.”

“No gunpowder and no battering ram,” Pasques said, with a note of genuine regret. Bashing things in is what men do.

“You could be our ram, Pasques,” I said.

“With your head the tip,” he replied.

“The lettering could be a code,” Astiza said.

“But we have no time to puzzle one, and no magical incantation,” Catherine responded impatiently. She kicked the portal. “Your wife promised you have a key, Ethan.”

“I will try it.” I was nonchalant, and yet mystified that Astiza had predicted my usefulness so confidently. She believes in me more than I believe in myself, which is one reason I love her.

“You really have one?” Catherine asked. She has occasionally proclaimed my usefulness, too, but then been surprised when I confirm it.

“When Durendal shattered, its rose hilt opened and this popped out.” I revealed to the others what was in my hand. “Hidden for centuries.”

Their intake of breath was audible. “This unlocks this door?”

“Why else all the fuss over an antique sword?” Destiny had become an avalanche, and I was meant to be here and nowhere else. I stepped forward, inserted the key, turned it against rusty resistance, and heard a click. Reforging the sword had allowed it to be swung with power, and the resulting jolt had been violent enough to free the key. People had probably been trying to reunite hilt and blade for a long time.

With a ponderous creak, the great door revealed a chamber beyond. I thrilled to success, and a hundred colors. The others looked at me with respect. Treasure hunting is addictive.

“You're performing well, Ethan.” Catherine's praise was the kind used for a hunting dog or stud horse. “My investment in you has paid off.”

“My wife gets the credit. We make a partnership.”

“You and I are partners, too.” She said it lightly, offhandedly, but just slyly enough that it annoyed me. Catherine had been imperiously remote when I first met her, and then dangerously flirtatious when she lived with my entire family. She was instructive yet treacherous, vain yet insecure. Here we were in the devil's armpit, our escape unclear, looking for a mechanical golem a saint had wanted destroyed, and she dropped sentiments like heedless crumbs. I was baffled. Why insult me one moment and play games the next? The French Revolution had broken something in her, I guessed. Her soul. Her sanity.

It was not my duty to repair it. Nor was I going to allow her to toy with our emotions, batting them like a cat. “Let's see if the Brazen Head of Albertus Magnus and Christian Rosenkreutz really awaits.”

We stepped inside the new chamber, immediately confused by its complexity.

Then there was a great boom that shook the chamber, a roll like thunder, and a great cascade of rock that sluiced down the lava shaft to bounce down the tunnel at the far side of the room. A cloud of dust rolled out.

Wolf Richter had blown his way from tower to tomb with a blast of gunpowder. He would soon be climbing down to join us.

“We don't have much time,” I said.