The Fire (26 page)

‘But what of those cities designed on the plan of a circle, like Vienna, Karlsruhe, or Baghdad?’ I asked.

My question was to be answered in an unexpected way, for just at that moment, as we came through the copse of ancient lindens, the underbrush parted and we beheld the tower. Jefferson and I both halted, breathless in astonishment.

The Colonne Détruite – or ruined column, as it was called – was often written of by those who’d seen it, and many drawings and engravings had been made. But none of these did justice to the sheer impact of coming upon it in the woods like this.

It was a house built in the guise of a column – an enormous,
crenellated, cream-colored pillar, nearly eighty feet high, with a jagged top that made it appear it had been struck by lightning and broken in two. All around the sides were square and rectangular and oval windows. When we entered, we saw that the center of the vast space was dominated by a spiral stairway, flooded with natural light, which seemed to soar toward the sky. Overhanging the railings were baskets of exotic hothouse flowers mixed with wild vines.

As I preceded Jefferson up the stairs, we marveled at the cleverness of the interior spaces. Each circular floor was divided into oval-shaped rooms with fan-shaped salons fitted in between. There were two floors that lay underground in darkness and four above, all surrounded by windows. Above these, on the uppermost floor, was an attic surrounding the conical skylight, which washed everything on the floors beneath in silvery light. As we passed through the floors, we saw views from the oval windows across the landscape including the pyramid, gothic ruins, temples to gods, a Chinese pavilion, and a Tatar tent. Through all this, we never spoke a word.

‘Astonishing,’ said Jefferson at last, when we’d finished our tour and descended to the ground floor – back to earth again, as it seemed. ‘Just like the circular cities you asked of, but more like a citadel, a fortress –
the
fortress, for it’s a ruined tower of seven stories like the biblical one that once was built as an altar, a ladder to God.’

‘This entire journey today seems symbolic,’ I agreed. ‘From an artist’s eye, it’s like a story that’s been painted upon the land: the tale of Babylon throughout the Bible. First, its legendary history as a succession of wondrous gardens – Eden on the Tigris and Euphrates, or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Then its conjunction with the four elements. Earth – the magic square you described in the pyramid. Then those twin biblical
catastrophes – the destruction of the Tower of Babel, symbolizing air, the sky, the language, the voice – and the great Flood of Mesopotamia, signifying water. And last, of course, in the Apocalypse – the final destruction of the once-great city. Its end by fire.’

‘Indeed,’ said Jefferson. ‘When the Eden of the East, Babylon, is destroyed, though, it is replaced, according to John in the Book of Revelation, by another magic square, a twelve-by-twelve matrix that descends from the sky: the New Jerusalem.’

When Maria Cosway completed this story, she looked around the room at the others, then bowed her head in contemplation. No one spoke for a very long time.

But there was something strange in this tale, as Haidée knew. She glanced at Kauri beside her, and he nodded once in confirmation. At last Haidée, who’d sat quietly between Kauri and Byron, got to her feet and came around the room to Maria’s side, placing her hand on the older woman’s shoulder.

‘Madame Cosway,’ said Haidée, ‘you have told us a story very different from what any of us had been led to believe. We all understand that your tale is meant to allude to that other matrix, of eight by eight. The chessboard. Yet even before Mr Jefferson could have known of the Montglane Service, even before it was ever removed from the ground, he had the idea that it was really the board itself – the matrix, as he called it – rather than the pieces, that might be the most important part. Did he say where he got this idea?’

‘Everyone knows,’ said Maria, ‘that after Thomas Jefferson’s European sojourn, he went on to become American secretary of state, then vice president, then third president of the United States. Some believe he was also a Freemason, but I know that was not the case. He didn’t care for joining
orders invented by others; he had always preferred creating a new order of his own.

‘It is also widely known that Jefferson was a great scholar and a student of architecture, especially of the designs of that fifteenth-century Venetian, Andrea della Gondola, nicknamed “Palladio” after Pallas Athene, patroness of Athena. The man who, during the Renaissance, had revived architecture
all’ antica –
reconstructions of the ancient Roman forms. What is less known, but more significant, is that Jefferson was also a student of the works of Palladio’s great master, Vitruvius Pollio, the first-century architect whose works, the
Ten Books on Architecture,
had just been rediscovered in Palladio’s day. These books are critical to any understanding of the roots of ancient architecture and its meaning, whether by Palladio or by Jefferson, and the influence of these books is revealed in everything either of them ever built.

‘Vitruvius explains the importance of symmetry and proportion in building a temple with respect to the human body. Of siting a city and planning the directions of the streets with respect to the eight directions of the winds. The effects of the zodiac, the sun, the moon, and the planets upon the construction of a new religious or civil site.’

‘I don’t follow how this answers my daughter’s question,’ said Byron. ‘What do the works of Palladio, much less Vitruvius, two thousand years ago, have to do with the importance of the chessboard we’ve come here to discuss? Have you an answer?’

‘The chessboard doesn’t provide the answer,’ said Maria cryptically. ‘It provides the key.’

‘Ah,’ said Haidée, glancing toward Byron. ‘The architect Vitruvius
also
lived at Rome in the time of Jesus and Augustus – and of Caius Cestius, too. You mean, madame, that it was
Vitruvius
who designed this very pyramid with its cosmic
proportions. “Squaring the Circle” – bringing heaven to earth here in Rome!’

‘Indeed,’ said Maria Cosway with a smile. ‘And Jefferson, great student of architecture that he was, understood the meaning of it all the very moment he went to the Désert. As soon as possible, Jefferson traveled to each city he could in Europe, studied the layout, and bought expensive, accurate engravings of the plans of each. At the dawn of the French Revolution he returned home from Europe and I never saw him again, though we continued an intermittent correspondence.

‘But someone else shared his intimate confidence,’ she explained. ‘A prizewinning Italian architect, a member of the Royal Academy who’d studied in both London and Rome, a student of the works of both Palladio and Vitruvius, an expert in
disegno all’ antica
. And a classmate and intimate friend of our colleague John Trumbull, who’d introduced us to Jefferson at the Halle au Blé that day. Jefferson and Trumbull lured this man to America with an important architectural commission. He stayed there until his death. It is through
him
that I know much of what I have told you here today.’

‘Who was this architect with whom Jefferson was so intimate, in whom he placed such confidence?’ asked Byron.

‘My brother, George Hadfield,’ Maria said.

Haidée’s heart was now thumping so loudly she thought it might be heard by the others. She knew she was close to the truth. Though still standing beside Maria, she saw Kauri cast her a warning glance. ‘What was the commission your brother received?’ Haidée asked the older woman.

‘In 1790,’ said Maria, ‘as soon as Jefferson returned from Europe, and the very moment that George Washington was elected first president, Jefferson persuaded the president to have Congress purchase a piece of land
in the form of a Pythagorean square, that is, one based on the number ten.

‘Through the heart of this square ran three rivers, meeting at the center to form the letter Y – a Pythagorean symbol. As soon as a designer was chosen – Pierre l’Enfant – Jefferson presented him with all the maps he’d collected of the European cities. But in Jefferson’s letter to L’Enfant, there was a caveat: “
They are none of them however comparable to the old Babylon.”
My brother, George Hadfield, was hired by Jefferson and Trumbull to complete the map – as well as the design and construction of the Capitol building – for this great new city.’

‘Astounding!’ said Byron. ‘The chessboard, the biblical city of Babylon, and the new city created by Jefferson and Washington are all based upon the same plan! You’ve explained the significance of their design as “magic squares,” and the deeper meaning that might entail. But what of their differences? These may be important, too.’

They certainly were, as Haidée had grasped in a flash.

And now she understood the importance of the Baba Shemimi’s story. She understood the meaning of Kauri’s warning glance, for this was what the Sufis surely had most feared all along. The chessboard was the key.

Al-Jabir’s chessboard square of eight by eight – as even the Baba had pointed out from square one – had twenty-eight squares around its perimeter, the number of letters in the Arabic alphabet.

The nine-by-nine square of the Egyptian pyramid, of the ancient city of Babylon, had a perimeter of thirty-two squares: the letters of the Persian alphabet.

But a ten-by-ten square would contain thirty-six squares around its perimeter, representing not letters of an alphabet, but rather the 360 degrees of a circle.

The new city that Jefferson had built on three rivers, the
city that he had even been first to occupy as a sitting president of the United States, had
itself
been designed to bring heaven to earth, to unite the head and the heart – to square the circle.

That city was Washington, D.C.

It had taken longer for a woman [the queen] to appear beside the king on the Russian chessboard than in any other non-Muslim country, including China.

– Marilyn Yalom,
Birth of the Chess Queen

White Queen? how could I be the White Queen in this Game when my mother – if one believed Aunt Lily’s version – was the Black Queen? Though we hadn’t always been on the best of terms, Mother and I could hardly be on opposite sides – especially in a Game as dangerous as this one was purported to be. And what on earth did our birthdays have to do with it?

I knew I needed to talk to Lily, and fast, to untie this unanticipated knot. But before I could begin unraveling anything, another queen had arrived on the scene – the very last person on earth I hoped to see just at this moment, though I surely might have known. It was none other than that Queen Mother and Queen Bee all rolled into one: Rosemary Livingston.

Though it was only a few days since I’d last seen Sage’s
mother enveloped in her clouds of fur, back in Colorado, I was as nonplussed as always by her appearance here tonight. And I don’t mean just her arrival.

Rosemary made her usual impression as she descended the sweep of stone steps into the cellar, surrounded by men. Some of her exotic escorts were dressed in white desert robes and others, like Basil, were clad in elegant business suits. Rosemary herself wore a trailing gown of shimmering bronze-colored silk the exact color of her eyes and hair, her tresses partly covered with a shawl of sari silk so fine and opalescent that it seemed to be made of pure spun gold.

Rosemary’s appearance had always stopped traffic, but never more so than here and now, in her natural element, surrounded by a gaggle of goggling males. But I quickly realized these were no ordinary oglers – many of these men I recognized from the Fortune 500. If a bomb were dropped in Rosemary’s wake just now, I thought, the news of it might drop the New York Stock Exchange twelve hundred points by tomorrow morning.

Rosemary’s powerful sense of presence, like a heady perfume, wasn’t anything you could really put your finger on, much less aspire to imitate. But I’d often attempted, in my own mind, to define it.

There were women like my aunt Lily who could carry off the kind of flamboyant glamour that was always part and parcel of their own celebrity. There were others, like Sage, who had polished their chiseled looks into the flawless perfection of the born-again beauty queen. My mother herself had always seemed innately to possess a different kind of aura: the healthy beauty and grace of a wild creature, naturally adapted for survival in the forest or jungle – perhaps the reason she’d been nicknamed Cat. Rosemary Livingston, on the other hand, had managed almost alchemically to combine
bits of each of these traits into a powerful presence all her own: a kind of regal elegance that at first glimpse fairly took your breath away, leaving you grateful to be touched by the glimmer of her golden presence.

That is, until you actually got to know her.

Now, as Basil removed her wrap just on the other side of the curved glass partition that separated the private dining room from the hearth, Rosemary was blowing a
moue
at me, something between a pout and a kiss.

Though Rodo had told me plenty, at least enough to raise the hair on my neck, I wished like mad that I’d had time to pump him for more information on whatever he knew about this dinner. I couldn’t help wondering exactly what the Livingstons were doing, apparently hosting this strange entourage of multinational millionaires. But given those connections that I myself had only recently made involving the chess set, the Game, and Baghdad, it did not seem to me to bode well that many of these diners seemed themselves to be noted figures from the Middle East.

And though as a serving girl myself at this gig I hadn’t exactly been introduced to them, I knew these were not just high-level muckety-mucks, as Leda and Eremon had guessed, but there were a few whom I thought I’d even recognized as sheikhs or princes of royal families. No wonder security was at an all-time high over on the canal footbridge!

And beneath everything, of course – with a deep-seated unease after Rodo’s recent edification about my own projected role – I was desperate to know what it all had to do with the Game. Or more specifically, with
me.

But these thoughts were cut short, for Rodo had taken me firmly by the arm and was ushering me out to greet the group.

‘Mademoiselle Alexandra and I have a special meal prepared for you tonight,’ Rodo assured Basil. ‘Your guests
and madame’s have, I hope, prepared yourselves for something unique. You will each find your
menu du soir
at your table.’

He squeezed my arm tightly from beneath his own: a far-from-subtle hint that I should keep our prior conversation under my chef’s cloche and follow his commands until otherwise notified.

Having made certain that everyone was seated within viewing distance of our performance back at the hearth, Rodo dragged me off to beyond the glass wall and hissed in my ear, ‘
Faites attention
. Tonight when you serve the food you must be the…
entzula
. Not the
jongleur des mots, comme d’habitude
!’

That is, I should be a ‘listener’ and should avoid my usual ‘word juggler’ behavior, whatever that was supposed to mean.

‘If these guys are who I think they are, they all speak French, too,’ I hissed back at him under my breath. ‘So why don’t you stick with talking in Euzkera? Then nobody will understand you – including, if I’m lucky, me!’

With that, Rodo made like a clam and shut up.

The bouillabaisse was followed by the
bacalao –
an enormous cod poached in a Basque lemon sauce with olives, accompanied by heaps of the steamy
boulles
of ash-baked shepherd’s bread.

My mouth was watering – that stuffed potato at lunch seemed to have worn off – but I held my ground and pushed my serving cart back and forth, planting dishes on the table for each course, removing them to the larder where I slipped them into the dishwashing machine to await the morning staff.

It did occur to me that this was almost the mirror image of my mother’s birthday
boum,
where I’d made a point to glean as much information as I could about this deadly Game in the midst of which I’d found myself.

But though Rodo had told me to be the listener here as well, I couldn’t follow the dinner conversation, due to my duties. Everyone seemed quite chatty until I came into the room to serve each course. And though there were many compliments for Rodo’s brilliant cuisine, the talk then seemed to drift away as I swept the dishes off and lay the fresh food before the diners.

Perhaps it was my imagination – or Rodo’s sinister suggestion just before their arrival – but they didn’t seem to be worried that I might overhear their dinner conversation. They seemed to be
watching
me.

It wasn’t until the
Meschoui
course – his pièce de résistance – that Rodo left the hearth and accompanied me to the dining room. Traditionally, the lamb must be served still on its spit, with everyone gathered around, all standing up, so they can pull pieces of the succulent, herb-infused meat from the carcass with their fingers.

I couldn’t wait to see Rosemary Livingston attempting this feat in her costly gown of Parisian silk. But one of the desert princes had moved swiftly to rectify matters.

‘Permit me,’ he said. ‘Women should never be required to stand beside the men at a
Meschoui
!’ Motioning for Rosemary to remain seated, he personally pulled a small plate of lamb just for her, which gentlemanly Basil delivered to her place at table.

This seemed just the opportunity the Queen Bee had been awaiting. Once she was left alone at the table, with Rodo rotating the spit for the men gathered around the lamb, she motioned for me to bring the water pitcher to replenish her glass.

Though I suspected, given Rodo’s cautionary glance in my direction, that it was a ruse, I bent over the table and poured the water. Rosemary, regardless of her snobbery, was not to be put off by convention when she wanted
something. Deftly circumventing the table to come around and buss me at either cheek with her trademark ‘air kiss,’ she held me away and breathed, ‘Darling! After hearing of that dreadful storm due to arrive, Basil and I never hoped to see you back here so quickly from Colorado. We’re delighted! And we do hope your mother got over her crisis – or whatever took her away. We ourselves, of course, took the Lear back to the East Coast that very same night!’

Hardly surprising. I knew that the Livingstons kept a stable of pilots and designer planes at the ready at all times, on their private tarmac in Redlands, in the event that Rosemary might get a craving to go off somewhere and shop till she dropped – though of course, they might have offered
us
a lift, too, instead of leaving us stranded in the path of that incoming storm.

As if she’d read my mind, Rosemary added, ‘You know, if we’d realized you were going down to Denver we might have dropped you and the others, along with Sage and our neighbor, Mr March.’

‘Oh, I wish I’d known,’ I told her in the same lofty tone. ‘But don’t let me keep you from your meal; the
Meschoui
is a Sutalde specialty. Rodo almost never prepares it; he’ll be upset if my gabbing with the guests lets yours grow cold before you’ve even tasted it.’

‘Then sit beside me for a moment,’ Rosemary said, in the most ingratiating tone I’d ever heard from her. She slipped back to her place and patted the empty seat just beside her with a smile.

I was in shock at this lapse of protocol – here before all these dignitaries – especially on the part of the biggest snob I’d ever met. But her next words were even more flabbergasting.

‘I’m sure that your employer, Monsieur Boujaron, won’t
mind if you and I chat for just a moment,’ she assured me. ‘I’ve already told him you were a family friend.’

Friend! What a concept!

I made my way around to her side of the table, replenished a few water glasses, and glanced once, quickly, in Rodo’s direction. He’d raised one eyebrow slightly as if to ask if I was okay.

When I reached Rosemary’s side, I said, ‘Well, Mr Boujaron is looking our way. I’d better get back to the kitchen. As you see from your menu, there are three more courses following this one. And as wonderful as the cuisine is, we don’t want it spoiled by ruining the timing. Nor would you want to be here all night.’

Rosemary grasped me by the arm in a deathlike vise and pulled me down to the chair beside her. I was so surprised, I nearly spilled the water pitcher in her lap.

‘I said I’d like to talk,’ she announced – under her breath yet in a tone that qualified as one of imperial command.

My heart was racing. What in God’s name did she think she was up to? Could someone be killed at a private dinner party in a famous restaurant when Secret Service were crawling all around outside? But I couldn’t help recall, with sinking spirits, Rodo’s comment about the blocked communications down here in the cellar. So I set the pitcher down on the table and nodded.

‘Sure. I guess a few moments won’t matter,’ I said with as much calm as I could muster, peeling her fingers carefully away. ‘What took Sage and Galen to Denver?’

Rosemary’s face shut down. ‘You know perfectly well what they were doing there,’ she said. ‘Your little half-breed friend Nokomis Key has already passed you the word, hasn’t she?’

There were spies everywhere.

Then with steely eyes, she unleashed the persona with which I was more familiar. ‘Exactly whom do you believe
you are dealing with, my girl? Do you have any possible conception of
who I am
?’

I thought of saying that I was having trouble just figuring out who
I
was. But, given Rosemary’s most recent reaction, not to mention the composition of this mysterious group, I thought we all might be best served if I’d checked my levity, along with that cell phone, at the door.

‘Who you
are
?’ I finally said. ‘You mean – other than Rosemary Livingston? My former neighbor?’

Rosemary sighed with enormous impatience and tapped her nail on the plate of
Meschoui
before her, which she still hadn’t touched.

‘I told Basil this was all foolishness – a
dinner,
for heaven’s sake – but he simply wouldn’t listen,’ she said, almost as if to herself. Then she looked back at me with narrowed eyes.

‘You
do
know who Vartan Azov actually is, of course?’ she said. ‘I mean, apart from his
avocation
as a world-class chess master.’

When I shook my head, confused, she added, ‘Naturally we’ve known Vartan since he was just a boy. He was then the stepson of Taras Petrossian, Basil’s business associate who’s just passed away in London. Vartan never likes to speak of their relationship. Nor the fact that he himself is sole heir to the Petrossian estate, which is quite extensive.’

Much as I hoped to avoid showing what I felt at this revelation, I couldn’t help staring and quickly averted my gaze. Of course Petrossian was rich. He’d been an ‘oligarch’ during the brief heydey of Russian capitalism, hadn’t he? And, too, Basil Livingston would hardly have had truck with anyone who wasn’t.

But Rosemary hadn’t quite finished. Indeed, she seemed to be waxing on her poisonous theme with unprecedented gusto.

‘I wonder if you could explain for me,’ she said, her voice
still low, ‘exactly how Vartan Azov, a Ukrainian subject, managed to obtain a visa for the United States with such short notice, just to attend a party? Or why he and Lily Rad – if they were really in such a hurry to reach Colorado – decided to
drive together
cross-country in a private car?’

I kicked myself for being a mental midget. If Rosemary was trying to throw suspicion upon my friends, she was doing a really great job. Why had it never occurred to
me
to ask such questions?