The Sanctuary (24 page)

She thought back to the date, tenth century, and went back to her laptop. She ran a search on the scientists of the era. Some of the big names she remembered—Avicenna, Jabir ibn Hayyan—popped up immediately. She surfed from one site to another, gathering tidbits of interest and logging into her account at the Britannica online edition along the way.

Mia’s mind was nestled in a comfort zone she was well used to as she worked her way through the research material on the screen before her. The more she read, though, the more that comfort eroded. Nothing in what she found seemed to shed any light on what the hakeem was after.

It wasn’t for a lack of great minds working in the area at the time of the Brethren. She trawled through a couple of biographies of Al-Farabi, who was widely considered second only to Aristotle in his grasp of science and philosophy, earning him the moniker of Second Teacher. She read about Al-Razi, who would be known to the Europeans, much later, as Rhazes, the father of what we now refer to as plaster of paris, who was already using it to set broken bones in the tenth century; and Al-Biruni, who traveled extensively in the
Far East
and wrote extensive treatises about conjoined twins. More relevant to Mia’s thinking, though, was Ibn Sina, or Avicenna, as he became known in the West. The most influencial physician of his time, Avicenna had become an accomplished philosopher and poet by the age of eighteen. By twenty-one, he’d written long, expert tracts about all the sciences known at the time. He differed from his predecessors in that he was more interested in the potential of chemicals to treat disease. In that vein, he’d studied illnesses such as tuberculosis and diabetes in great detail, and his masterwork, the fourteen-volume
Canon of Medicine
, was so authoritative and advanced that it remained the standard medical reference text in Europe until the 1600s—well over five hundred years after he wrote it.

All these men had achieved great advances in many disciplines. They studied the human body, identified diseases, and proposed cures. But nothing linked any of them to the Ouroboros, nor did she find anything in their work that had a nefarious aspect to it. They were simply interested in mastering the forces of nature.

If anything, these scientist-philosophers were interested in bettering mankind, not destroying it.

She picked up the photographs of the underground chamber and studied them again. She tried to imagine what went on there and considered it with new eyes. There was actually nothing sinister about it. She followed that line of thought and picked up a sheet from the file on which Evelyn had sketched out a plan of the chambers and marked it with what they’d found. They’d found no bones there, no traces of dried blood, no cutting tools or sacrificial altars. Evelyn seemed to have reached the same conclusion. At the bottom of the sketch, scribbled in her distinctive script, she’d written and underlined the word
Sanctuary
, followed by another question mark.

A sanctuary from what?
Whom, or what, were they hiding from?

The battery in Mia’s laptop died out, and as it did, a deep-seated tiredness swamped her. She put the file away and found her bed again.

This time, it didn’t take her long to drift off into sleep, but as she did, one lingering, confused thought seemed determined to ride roughshod over any hopes of a peaceful rest: the idea of an ancient terror being resuscitated to unleash havoc on this world, presaged by the haunting image of the tail-devouring snake, which had inexorably wormed its way into the deepest recesses of her mind.

T
he false count navigated wearily through the hot, suffocating ballroom, his head pounding from the haughty chatter, the garish laughter, and the incessant, relentless music, his eyes assaulted by the sparks from the spinning Catherine wheels and the gloriously outlandish costumes of giraffes, peacocks, and other exotic animals that paraded before him.

It was on nights like these that he missed the Orient most. But he knew those days were long, long gone.

He cast his tired eyes around the great room, feeling every inch the impostor that he was. Papier-mâché animal heads sitting precariously on powdered wigs stared down at him and tall feathers tickled at his nostrils as, all around him, the guests at the Palais des Tuileries mingled and danced with abandon. Pearls and diamonds ensnared his gaze everywhere he
turned,
shimmering under the light of hundreds of candles that carelessly soiled the carpets with mounds of molten wax. It wasn’t his first ball, nor would it be his last. He knew he would suffer many more evenings like tonight’s
bal de la jungle
, the jungle ball—more dreadful displays of unbridled pomp, more throwaway conversations, more unabashed flirtations. It was all part of the new life he’d created for himself, and his presence was expected—anticipated, even—at occasions like these. He also knew the pain wouldn’t end here: In the days and nights to come, he would have to endure endless, giddy retellings, in countless salons, of the evening’s public glories and of its more private, salacious goings-on.

It was a price he had to pay for access, and access was what he needed if he was ever to succeed, although, with each passing year, that success seemed more and more remote.

It was, truly, an impossible task.

Often, as tonight, he would find himself wandering, lost in his thoughts, trying to remember who he really was, what he was doing here, what his life was really about.

It didn’t always come to him that easily.

More and more frequently, he was finding it hard to keep his creation at bay and not fully lose himself in his false persona. The temptation hounded him at every step. Each day, he passed scores of poor folk in the streets, men and women who would give their right arm for the life he enjoyed—the life they believed he was enjoying. He wondered if he hadn’t struggled enough, if he hadn’t hidden enough, if he hadn’t been alone long enough. He felt tempted to abandon his quest and relinquish the role that had been entrusted to him in that dungeon in Tomar all those years ago, and to embrace his outwardly fortunate position, settle down, and live out the rest of his days in pampered comfort and—more important—in normalcy.

It was a temptation that was getting harder and harder to dispel.

HIS JOURNEY TO PARIS had been anything but straightforward.

He’d managed to slip away from
Naples
, but he knew he wasn’t safe anywhere, certainly not in
Italy
, and that di Sangro would not rest until he found him. He had seen it in the prince’s eyes; he also knew the prince had the money and the manpower to track him down. And so he set out to muddy his trail, establishing new identities wherever he went before moving on and leaving behind confusing fabrications as to their backgrounds and their movements.

He had carefully seeded deceptions in
Pisa
,
Milan
, and Orléans on his way to the great city, taking on new names as he traveled forth: the Comte Bellamare, the Marquis d’Aymar, the Chevalier Schoening. More names would—some justly, others falsely—come to be associated with him in the years to come. For now, however, he was comfortably settled into his
Paris
apartments and his new persona, that of the Comte de St. Germain.

Paris
suited the count. It was a huge, bustling city—the largest human settlement in
Europe
—and it attracted plenty of travelers and adventurers, the boisterous as well as the discreet. His appearance there would be diluted by those of countless others. Here he could meet other travelers, men who, like him, had been to the Orient and who may have come across the symbol of the tail-eater in their travels. It was also a city of learning and discourse, and a repository of great knowledge, with rich libraries and untold collections of manuscripts, books, and relics, including the ones that were of particular interest to him: those pilfered from the Orient during the Crusades, and those confiscated after the suppression of the Templars almost five centuries earlier.
The ones that could house the missing piece of the puzzle that had ambushed his life all those years ago.

He arrived in
Paris
at a time when the great city was in transition. Radical thinkers were challenging the twin tyrannies of monarchy and Church. The city was bubbling with contradiction and upheaval, with enlightenment and intrigue—intrigue that St. Germain put to good use.

Within weeks of his arrival, he managed to befriend the king’s minister of war and with his help, he insinuated himself into the king’s orbit. Impressing the aristocrats wasn’t hard. His knowledge of chemistry and physics, gleaned from his years in the East, were enough to regale and hoodwink the debauched buffoons. His familiarity with foreign lands and his mastery of numerous languages—his French in Paris was as impeccable as his Italian was in Naples, to add to his fluent mastery of English, Spanish, Arabic, and his native Portuguese—were cautiously wielded if and when his notability needed an additional boost. He was soon comfortably ensconced in the king’s coterie of pampered acolytes.

With his credentials established, he was able to resume his quest.
He smooth-talked his way into the great houses of the nobility and into the most private of collections.
He ingratiated himself with the clergy in order to delve through the libraries and crypts of their monasteries. He also read extensively, immersing himself in the travelogues of Tavernier, the studies of pathology of Morgagni, the medical treatises of Boerhaave, and other great works that were appearing at the time. He’d studied Thomas Fuller’s
Pharmacopoeia Extemporanea
and Luigi Cornaro’s intriguing
Discourses on the Temperate Life
in great detail—the man had died a vibrant ninety-eight-year old. And while he gained a great wealth of knowledge from these works, he was no closer to a solution to his impossible quest.

The symbol of the tail-eater was nowhere to be found, nor did there seem to be any medical or scientific clues to overcoming the critical deficiency of the substance.

He hovered between enthusiasm and despair. New leads would excite him, and then, with each dead end, the doubts about his mission would resurface and further undermine his resolve. He wished he could share his burden with someone else, draft someone to help him and perhaps even take over from him, but after seeing how even the vaguest smell of it had turned di Sangro into an obsessed predator, he couldn’t bring himself to risk approaching anyone else.

Many nights, he’d wonder whether ridding himself of the substance and of its demonic formulation would release him from its slavery. He managed to go without it a few times, but never for more than a week or two. And then a renewed sense of destiny would overcome him, and he’d resign himself to the only life he knew.

“I BEG YOUR PARDON, my dear sir.”

The woman’s voice jarred him out of his tortured daze.

He turned to see a bizarre herd of jovial revelers standing before him. Their expressions ranged from giddy to
confused
. An older woman nearing sixty in a ballooning sheep’s costume gingerly inched forward from among them. Something about her sent shards of distress cutting through him. She studied him with a curious, perplexed expression on her round face before extending her hand and introducing herself as Madame de Fontenay. The name drove the shards in deeper. He masked his unease as he gave her a slight bow and took her hand.

“My dear count,” she asked, flustered with nervous excitement, “would you have the kindness to tell me whether a close relative of yours was in
Rome
around forty years ago? An uncle, perhaps, or even”—she hesitated—“your father?”

The false count smiled effusively with practiced insincerity.
“Quite possibly, madame.
My family seems encumbered with an insatiable will to travel. As for my father, I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you for certain. It was hard enough for me to keep up with his touring when I was a child, and I’m afraid I am completely in the dark as to his movements before my birth.” The small herd chuckled loudly and far more generously than St. Germain’s remark merited. “Why, if I may,” he added, “do you ask?”

The curious look in her eye hadn’t dulled. “I knew a man at the time. He paid me court, you see. I still remember our first encounter,” she reminisced. “We sang a few barcaroles of his composing
together,
and…” A serene glimmer lit up her eyes as her mind seemed to wander back to that time. “His features, his hair, his complexion…even his carriage. He had the impress and the nobility that one only finds in the great.” She seemed genuinely startled. “I see the same, all of it, in you.”

St. Germain bowed with false modesty. “You are far too generous, madame.”

The woman waved away his words. “Please, Count. I beseech you to think about it and let me know if I was indeed in the presence of a relation of yours. The similarity is simply too uncanny to discount.”

St. Germain moved to put an end to his discomfort. He beamed at his inquisitor. “Madame, you are most kind to pay me such a compliment,” he gushed. “I will not rest until I have conjured up the identity of my illustrious relation who so impressed you.” He gave the woman a concluding half-bow, his body language coaxing her to move on, but she would not budge. She just stood there, transfixed by him.