Three Emperors (9780062194138) (22 page)

When there is no alternative, surrender and wait. “What do you really want, Wolf?”

“Astiza says she's concocting the Spit of the Moon, whatever that is, to complete her experiments. She wants chemicals, gold, and you, though why she cares for that final item I cannot fathom. As the noblest of our triangle, I propose cooperation. You'll be brought to her, at the price of your purse. No one steals from me. Ever.”

“Take the damn money.” They'd find it anyway. I took a strip of coins from my boot.

“If she achieves the Philosopher's Stone, you'll be reunited. And together, in the name of legend and science, we'll seek the Brazen Head. The two of you have resourcefulness the Invisible College can put to use.”

“And then?”

“You'll join our fraternity forever.”

“And why would I do that?”

“To keep me,” the little man said, “from cooking and eating your little boy.”

Chapter 27

T
he Bohemian city of Kutná Hora is forty miles east of Prague, a day's journey by coach. I rode with the homeliest companions imaginable. They tirelessly informed me that my boy was a whining hellion, my wife a procrastinating temptress, and I a failed schemer, and that we were alive only because we might know lost secrets. We could cooperate or be tortured.

If Gideon spied me being marched from the Golden Lane, he gave no sign. I peeked in hopes he was following, but I saw nothing. I could only surmise he'd been cowed by Richter's gang and its show of strength and gone back to the ghetto, giving up Ethan Gage and family as a lost cause. Couldn't blame him.

Which meant that all I had left was bravado. “My son usually doesn't disfigure people, nor does he typically have the means to do so,” I persisted. “What was your meeting all about?”

“An alliance, until your brat spoiled it.”

“The rape of my wife?” My fury rose again. “Making a cuckold of her husband?”

“She led me on,” Richter said. “It was misunderstanding that led to confusion.”

“My boy panicked, it sounds like.”

“Malevolence by an urchin. You're lucky, Gage, that your whelp isn't dead.”

“Master was trying to be friends,” Auric added.

Master! The title was as absurd as Murat's “Serene Highness.”

“If you work with us, a great deal of sorrow can be averted,” Richter went on, avoiding my question. “The Invisible College works to set mankind on a higher plane with alchemical triumph and knowledge of the future. We represent progress and enlightenment. We're heroes, not villains.”

“With extortion, torture, and treachery,” I amended. “Is this so-called college invisible because I've never seen nor heard of it?”

“The idea was that of Christian Rosenkreutz. He conceived a secret society of scholars devoted to true knowledge and unhampered by religious restriction. The idea has inspired Freemasonry and the Royal Society of London. Rosicrucian adherents combine scientific inquiry with alchemy, mysticism, and faith. Ours is the Invisible College of the Rosy Cross, a network of scholars sworn to discovery and secrecy. It's a noble cause your wife has been conscripted to.”

“A cause with professors who serve as sentries, fire guns, and chase me across rooftops.”

“You're the one who played thief, Ethan Gage. I am the wronged party.”

“Who cheated at cards, according to Lord Ramsey.”

“Ramsey is an old fool, and you are simply a bad gambler.”

I longed to finish on the upper half of his face what my son had started on the lower, but revenge would have to be delayed until I found my family. Richter was also biding his time for payback, I knew. He'd never let us survive, let alone go free, and was only waiting to see what use he could make of us before eventual torture and execution. He and I were poised like fencers, waiting for the signal for the real duel to begin. “So how exactly did you broach this idea of cooperation and unity, that time that Harry melted you?”

“With sincerity misinterpreted.”

“As I'm confused by a network of scholars that has the furtiveness of assassins and the gunnery of an infantry regiment.”

“Unsavory means are required for noble ends. Ask Bonaparte. Except that we are subtler than Bonaparte. What he accomplishes with the slaughter of thousands, we achieve with a few well-placed assassinations. It is completely unfair that he gets an imperial crown for his massacres, while we must hide in the shadows. When we heard the French were in pursuit of the Brazen Head, we knew we must find it first. Napoleon and Talleyrand would use the machine for tyranny. We will use it for enlightenment.”

I turned to his froggy minion. “You realize that your master is a complete madman.”

Auric's grin was the one they master in hell. “But none likelier to command the future. I'll be a little king, to feed my large appetites.”

Satan and dwarf. Equally ambitious.

“How can a machine tell the future?” I asked Richter. “The idea is absurd.”

“On the contrary. Albertus Magnus pointed out that we all try to predict the future. That's why we study the past. Would not an omnipotent God, knowing all things and all possibilities, be able to predict what comes next? Of course. And if a machine could be built that turned probabilities into numbers represented by cogs and gears, it could prophesize. But by legend the Brazen Head goes beyond even the intricacy of its own construction. Albert infused it with something spiritual that pierced the veil into the world beyond this one. Aquinas called it blasphemous. Rosenkreutz called it magical.”

“Why was it locked away, then?”

“Great power demands great responsibility. The machine awaits a person like me.”

“Perhaps it will only prove frustrating, like the golem.”

“Find it first and we shall see. You, me, and your wife together.”

My problem was that I was curious, too. To know the future, to avoid danger, to pick the right investment and make the right friends! I didn't just want to escape the Invisible College. I wanted to take the thing they coveted. I forever struggle between idealism and crassness, and so am the most human of men.

As usual I had few belongings. But lashed to our coach was Durendal, the alleged sword of Roland. I was allowed to swing it to exercise my left arm as my shoulder healed, while Richter's “monks” warily watched me with bayoneted muskets. Indulging me amused Richter. The first time I picked up the blade, it felt as heavy as a double-bitted ax, but slowly I worked repairing muscles in my arm, chest, and back. I'd never played with a blade in anything but my right hand, and the ambidextrous exercise put me in my best shape since paddling canoes across half of North America.

“Mules are strong, too,” Richter said.

“And stubborn,” I reminded him.

Kutná Hora rambles along the side of a ridge above a narrow river valley, the slag piles and abandoned smelters hinting that its bucolic views hide the termite tunneling of silver mines below.

“In medieval times, this was the richest mining district in Europe,” Richter lectured pedantically as we rode into the town, which had long been in decline. “Miners delved two thousand feet deep, following veins of silver in a network extending many miles. But the mines began to play out just as the new mines of Mexico and Peru opened. Then came war, displacement, and fire.”

Kutná Hora looked sullen under the gray winter sky. Half the houses were burned-out shells. None of the others looked less than two hundred years old. Potholes were small craters. The few inhabitants who peered at our black coach from grimy windows or dark doorways were as reclusive as lepers. The road twisted and dipped, the city's square so tilted that it seemed about to tip into the mines somewhere below. We passed through the center to a rural dirt lane beyond and followed this to the desolation of abandoned farms, coming at last to a plain, onion-domed church on a lonely hill. The surrounding tombstones poked up like bad teeth.

“When the abbot returned from visiting the Holy Land, he sprinkled soil from Golgotha, where Christ was crucified,” Richter said as we climbed out. “His piety led people to be buried here.”

“This is where my wife is?”

“Where she will be if you don't cooperate. Come.”

The grass was dead and thigh-high. Night was falling on fallow soil and patches of dirty snow, everything cold and bleak.

“Inside.”

A weathered door with iron hinges squealed open to an unremarkable interior. The church was empty. Richter gestured with a pistol. “Downstairs.”

Under the nave was a crypt. The windows near its ceiling were at ground level, reminding me of the cellar of the Star Summer Palace. This basement was shaped not like a star but like a cross, so that four alcoves or chapels radiated from its center. Except that they were not chapels, and in fact were filled.

Choked with bones.

Skulls made a rubble avalanche. Femurs were stacked like firewood. Knucklebones were pebbles, ribs were woven like baskets, and shoulder blades made shoals. It was like the Paris catacombs I'd visited with Astiza.

“Unfortunately, the church's popularity as a burial site overwhelmed its priests. People brought more corpses than there was cemetery, particularly during the Thirty Years' War. A half-blind monk was given the job of digging up the older bones to make room for the new. He stored the old-timers here.”

My quest for the Brazen Head kept brushing up against death. “I'm all too aware of mortality, Baron. Are you trying to make some macabre point?”

“I wanted you to be reminded of the stakes involved.”

Then there was a high shout. “Papa!” It was almost a scream.

Harry erupted from the shadows, pulling away from another “Invisible” I hadn't realized was standing there, and came running with arms outstretched. My spirit soared like one of Congreve's newfangled rockets. By the saints, even in one year Harry seemed to have erupted in size, lengthening into a boy not quite five. In relief and joy, I collapsed onto my knees for a hug, gathering him in with my arms as if he were elusive as smoke, and feeling his hot, anxious breath on my cheek. He looked up past me at Richter and Auric. “The bad men are back!”

I got to my feet, scooping him up. “I'm here now, Harry.” I almost squeezed the breath out of him, gasping from my own relief.

He sobbed into my shoulder, body shaking, and once more my anger silently boiled. How dare this cabal imprison and terrify my son! More men in robes emerged from the shadows like dark-clad ghosts, and a dozen rogues held pistols and pikes. Harry trembled like a puppy.

“This is what you do to children.”

“He's entirely unharmed after mutilating me,” Richter said calmly. “Homesick, perhaps, but then his father has never given him a real home, has he? The poor lad has been dragged around the world as his mother's occult slave, turned by his parents into a perfect little monster. Don't lecture me, American.”

“Lecturing is not what I intend to do.”

“You've no power, and no wife yet, if you'll take the time to notice.” He swung his arm, taking in the hillocks of bone. “I'm letting you hold your son as a sign of goodwill. At your wife's demand, I've brought you and your gold to Kutná Hora.
She
asked for your last coins, not I. At your demand, I've brought proof your family is alive. You've robbed me, your wife has shunned me, and your son has harmed me. Yet I remain a man of reason.”

I squeezed my boy. “Harry, is Mama all right?”

“She keeps away the bad people.” He wept with relief and fear.

“You've made your point,” I growled to Richter. “What now?”

“We're going to deliver you and your gold so Astiza will finish her work, now that we have you. When she completes her alchemy, I'll allow reunion and we'll decide the next step. You live as long as you cooperate.”

“Where is she?”

“Safe in a laboratory, built in an upper drift of the old mines.”

“Decide about what next step?”

“The Brazen Head and immortality, if you see reason. And which of these rubble piles of bone—east, west, north, or south—you join, if you don't.”

Chapter 28

Astiza

S
ince I couldn't see the sky to pray, I prayed to the earth. There's no greater torment than not knowing, and I yearned to learn the fate of my husband. My powers of prophecy had deserted me, and if Harry didn't escape soon, we'd go quite mad. Then the earth seemed to answer. Isis sent me my path. Suddenly the old texts I'd read, the experiments I'd conducted, and the scraps of information I'd gleaned gave a flash of insight. Such revelations are a gift. I had a plan, and with a plan came hope. I began to feel Ethan was near. As if to confirm such suspicions, my jailers became surlier. They're impatient, as if in a race with other villains. I eavesdropped at the door while guards murmured of a battle, French schemes, Jewish calculation, and refugees streaming into Prague. So I asked for gold.

“You cannot achieve final purification without a seed,” I insisted to Baron Richter. “You can't forge the Philosopher's Stone without a dissolution of real gold. Any alchemist knows this. Have the courage to invest in your dreams. Bring me something to work with.”

His look was suspicious. He knows I'm procrastinating. And yet here in the pit of hell, what use was gold except for alchemical stews? There was nothing to buy and no one to bribe, and no escape through solid rock. So he agreed, lusting for his great prize.

Then one day they said they needed to take Harry away to meet “a stranger.” I screamed and fought, fearing the worst. I imagined my son in that trunk of bones. His death would kill me, and before I died I would turn the alchemical laboratory into my funeral pyre. My captors stunned me with a club, leaving me dazed on the floor, and when I regained full consciousness I was feverish with anxiety. But hours later, I heard the noises of people returning, the lock rasped on the door's metal, and Harry wriggled out of Auric's grasp and ran to me with an excited shout.

“Papa is here to save us!”

There was a clang as someone was thrust into another cell far down the corridor.

“Your husband is here as my prisoner,” Richter corrected, stepping into the room. He was wearing his bishop's robe—or, rather, costume—a sword strapped to his side. “It is still possible, madame, for us to work together and for me to show mercy. But only if you do what I expect.”

I was dizzy with longing. “I don't believe you. Show him to me.”

“We'll never have friendship without trust, Astiza.”

I felt the blood crusted on my scalp.

“You had my trust, and betrayed it when you took me to your mutant blacksmith. You were the great Primus Fulcanelli, seeker of truth, instead of a corrupt and venal German baron seeking small advantage, one of thousands of little men scuttling in the shadows of emperors.”

He flushed. “We'll see who scuttles when I possess the Brazen Head.”

“I thought
we
were going to possess it.”

“You
are going to find the Stone and turn lead into gold! Or have you already forgotten your promise? Your own son will testify I kept mine. His father is here. Tell her, boy!”

“Papa hugged me, Mama.”

I knelt and hugged him, too, while looking up at Richter. “Did you bring me my seed of precious metal?”

“Yes. Coins of your husband's.”

Harry turned his own face up to Richter. “Why can't Papa stay with us?”

“I don't trust you together.”

I was close to fainting from fear and anger. “Show him to me and I'll do anything you ask. If you're lying, I'll destroy all I've accomplished.”

“No! Do what you already promised! Complete your experiments!”

“Show me first or you'll have nothing!”

“Damn you, I'll pen the boy away as well if you don't accomplish something!”

I stood, Harry clutched to my side, my hair grimy, my hands raw, my eyes those of a madwoman. “Show me or I'll curse you all!”

Richter's eyes blazed, his ruined mouth clenched, arms levitating as if readying to strike. But he still had no clues. He snarled, ruined lips twisted over teeth, and then he turned to the men crowded in the corridor. “Show her the fool.”

The cell was reopened, there was jostling, and Ethan was thrust forward, instantly recognizable even though he was only a silhouette in the gloom.

“Astiza!”

“Ethan! Thank the Goddess!” Despite being faint with relief, I managed to whirl on Richter. “I want him now.”

An amused shake of the head. “A beauty like you could do so much better.”

“Let us stay together, and we'll do anything you ask.”

Ethan shouted to me. “Has he hurt you?”

“I'm alive.”

“Astiza, we forged an old sword. It may have something to do with Rosenkreutz.”

“Silence!”

“Did you bring it?” I asked.

“Richter has it.”

“Why is your shoulder bandaged?”

“I was wounded in the war.”

What war? I wondered. “Enough!” the baron interrupted. “Put him back.” The sentries dragged my husband away, ignoring his struggles and protests.

I was thinking furiously. How to complete the final act? “If I can do the alchemical miracle, you'll let us go?” I asked Richter.

“Absolutely not. But we'll leave here together to find the Brazen Head. Do that and you can go.”

I needed to know how much or little Richter knew. “Is it nearby?”

He shrugged. “Bohemia. Moravia. We'll have to hunt.”

“A cave?” I was trying to mislead.

“A cave with a tomb.” He nodded as if he knew, convincing me that he didn't. “Now you're tantalized, yes? I've let your child live, brought back your oaf of a husband, and even delivered gold. All I seek is partnership. You and I can still be friends.” Such a ghastly grin, a slit in scar tissue. I tried to hide my shudder.

“I'll finish,” I promised him.

“How long?”

“Not long with the gold. It's the seed I needed from the beginning.”

“How
long
?” His dwarf danced behind him, like a child needing to pee.

“A day or two to finish formulating the Spit of the Moon and then transferring its purity. The last step is dangerous, having killed more than one alchemist. Are you ready for risk?”

“My whole life is a risk.” Richter blinked when he said it.

“Partners, but nothing more. You must never touch me or my child.”

“I'm talking about minds, not bodies.” How his eyes lied as he said it! Once he had what he wanted, we'd just hours to live.

And to avenge his deformity, he'd humiliate and ravish me before the end.