Three Emperors (9780062194138) (6 page)

I drew Harry close. “The cards don't always say what we want to hear.”

“This theater is a place of joy.” He eyed me as if I crept on my belly like the demon Ialdabaoth, a monster from suppressed religions.

“If I've not amused you, I'll take my fee for your wife's prophecy, ask my question, and go.”

“No more talers. Not for that.”

I took a breath. “I'm not a witch, sire, I'm a scholar. Cheat me of payment if you must, but I pray to search your library for clues to a quest.”

“No. You bring ill tidings. I don't want you under my roof.”

Persistence is courage when the host could call soldiers. “You promised to answer a question.”

“I've changed my mind.”

“Don't tempt fate by cheating the tarot, sire.”

“Josef, please,” Paulina said.

He didn't fear me, but he feared bad luck. He scowled. “Ask your damned question, and then take your pup out of here.”

I couldn't betray fear. If one wants to be a seer to the noble and wealthy, self-confidence is imperative. We're actors. “I've learned from my studies that the mystic Christian Rosenkreutz, seeker of the secrets of the rose, may have sought shelter in this castle, and possibly hid an object he was protecting from Catholic inquisitors. Do you know anything of this episode, or where Rosenkreutz went? It's his path I seek.”

“The founder of the Rosicrucians? You think that's why the House of Rožmberk, builders of this castle, adopted the rose as their coat of arms?”

“Your chapel ceiling has the golden triangle with the all-seeing eye. There were mystics here, my lord.”

“There are mystics everywhere in this land of caves and forest.” Now the duke looked intrigued. He knew something. And I was confirming that the legends he'd learned as a boy might have a grain of truth. Had he seen the ghost of the White Lady on moonlit evenings and realized there's more to reality than we admit?

“The tale is that an odd mystic named Rosenkreutz did come with a wooden coffin. Inside was a being variously described as a corpse, a mummy, or . . .”

“An automaton,” I finished. “A mechanical man. The word
android
was coined for it a century ago, from the Greek meaning ‘in the shape of a man.' ”

“A golem, some say. The Jewish mud men who come alive and roam the night.” He shuddered. “They tear Christians limb from limb.”

“Only those who harass the ghetto.”

“The Rožmberks welcomed this strange Rosenkreutz as a scholar and diversion, a prophet like you, and then came to distrust him, as I distrust you. Was he a seeker of truth or an agent of Satan? They shut him in the dungeon, telling him to buy his way out by turning lead into gold. He ordered furnaces, crucibles, and chemicals. Then he burst through the castle wall.”

“Broke through solid stone?”

“By magic. There was an explosion, but he had no gunpowder. He lowered his mysterious cargo to a waiting boat on the Vltava River and set out rowing for Prague. There he disappeared among magicians, astrologers, and numerologists.”

“But where was he going?”

“His motto was ‘As above, so below.' From the depth of our dungeons, he wanted to climb the Astronomical Tower in Prague's Klementinum.”

“And?”

“Legend swallowed him up. Whatever it was he dragged in that coffin, it disappeared.” He looked sourly at me. “It's said he vanished into a hidden tomb in a ruined castle. Be careful, fortune-teller.”

“Josef, the cards aren't her fault,” Paulina said.

“Go to the Klementinum, priestess. I'm told there's a wandering bishop there making the same kind of inquiries.” He looked at me slyly, and I wondered if this duke was as simple as he pretended. “His name is Primus Fulcanelli, and perhaps you can tell
his
fortune.”

“And where would this ruined castle be?” I persisted.

“If anyone knew that, it would have turned from castle to pit from treasure hunters digging there.”

“So Rosenkreutz was at least here. Can you show me his cell?”

“Superstition and old wives' tales, all of it. But I'll give you a peek at the dungeons so you won't be tempted to come back.”

The descent was to earlier and grimmer architecture. Sunlit baroque rooms gave way to medieval apartments below, and then stone cellars and cells. Here one could see the bony rock that the castle clung to. Color disappeared. Windows were arrow slits. Our lanterns seemed to dim.

My boy jumped at the squeal when a heavy wooden door with a small grilled window was hauled open. It had been ages, I guessed, since any prisoner had been housed here. The cell was empty, barren, and cold.

“No window?”

“Masons filled it in after the explosion.”

The repair, of different-colored stone, was about six feet in diameter.

“And Rosenkreutz left nothing behind?”

“He took his coffin with him.”

I tingled at his presence. Yes, centuries had passed, but wisdom had resided in this room. As if by an invisible spirit, my head was turned to gaze upon the opposite wall. “Swing the open door away from the stone there,” I commanded.

Josef hesitated, then nodded, and a servant complied.

I took a lantern and studied the wall. There were scratches, so grimed that a quick inspection would miss them. One was a crude drawing of a rose, worked on the stone by a rusty nail or spoon. Below were letters in Latin:

SICUT IN CAELO ET IN TERRA.

“It's a church phrase,” I said. “ ‘As in heaven, so on earth.' ” An abbreviated version of the Hermetic wisdom, ‘That which is below is as that which is above, and that which is above is as that which is below.' ”

“What does that mean?” Josef asked.

“Unity. Our lives are mirrored in the heavens, because in the end heaven and earth are one. We look to the sky for the chart of our hearts.”

“That's lovely,” Paulina said.

“Pretentious,” said Josef.

“There's another mark here. Look.” Above the rose was a single scratched line. It could be described as a very broad
U
, or a
C
laid on its side, or a bowl, or a valley. Yet the angle where the base turned upright was angular, not curved. I shivered. “Does this mean anything to you?”

“Prisoners make all kinds of marks,” Josef said. “Most are obscene. Rosenkreutz was simply mad.”

“But he left signs like bread crumbs in a forest.”

“If that's a sign, Madame Witch, you are welcome to it.”

“The written word has power. Letters have power. Hieroglyphs have power. In ancient Egypt, this hieroglyph symbolized ka, the eternal soul. This could have been a mark of Christian's union with God, or his expectation of life after death.”

“Or the fact he expected to die in here.”

“And yet he didn't. How far down to the river?”

“A hundred feet, but one could work down the steep cliffs. How he lowered his mysterious box I've no idea.”

I turned to Paulina. “The Goddess meant for us to meet this day, duchess, to teach your husband a lesson and give you warning. Don't forget it! The world of your theater is a plaything. The world beyond grows dangerous. War is coming, and I and my son must hurry before it arrives.”

Chapter 7

M
y freedom lasted the one exhausting week it took me to flee by coach through the Carinthian Alps to Vienna. It was nearly a year since I had been separated from my wife and son at Notre Dame, and nearly two months since Catherine Marceau had written to warn that they were captive in Bohemia. Each day that dragged as we traveled increased my dread that I would be too late. I didn't know what had happened to Astiza, and I didn't know if Baron Richter had any connection to it, but I did know, in my soul, that she and Harry were in grave danger.

As usual, it was a miserable trip. The autumn disrepair of the roads left my ribs sore, my digestion in turmoil, and my sleep fragmented. Passengers were conscripted eight times to help push the vehicle through mud and snow. My pantaloons were spattered to my waist, my stockings were clotted, and between exertions I had to wrap a scarf around my ears to keep warm. Six men crowded our cab, and I became dizzy from pipe smoke and their breath of salt fish, sausage, and garlic. When they bought spirits to ward off the cold, the jouncing coach always reduced at least one of them to vomiting.

The narrow spires of Vienna finally poked above the horizon like salvation. Surely Bohemia, Prague, and my wife and son could not be far beyond! Yet the vast Schonbrunn Palace, outside the city—Versailles of the Austrian empire—was curiously quiet when we went by. We clopped past empty grass drilling grounds outside Vienna's walls, and passengers peering from the windows muttered that the Schotten Gate had no Austrian guards.

A French tricolor flew instead.

We were allowed to pass into the city as if swimming into a net. Vienna was as intricate as its pastries, a toy land of Germanic architecture sliced like a pie by grand avenues that led to great squares. It was subdued this gray dawn of Wednesday, November 13, 1805. Shops were shuttered, market stalls empty, and pedestrians few. A banner advertising a new Beethoven opera,
Leonore/Fidelio
, was being taken down before its premiere performance.

Invasion had closed the Opera House doors. The French had arrived before me. This was wretched luck.

I knew nothing of marching armies but could shed light on music. “Napoleon no longer cares for Beethoven,” I told my fellow travelers. “The composer was going to dedicate a symphony to the First Consul and then changed the name to Eroica to protest the shooting of the Duc d'Enghien. Be careful what you hum.”

We alighted from the coach to learn that all my calculations had been overturned. When I last saw Napoleon, at the end of August, he was on the English Channel, just starting to march east. Armies move ponderously, and I'd assumed there was plenty of time to make a run around his empire by sea and get to my wife. Yet here in early November, the French had already seized the enemy capital, searing across Europe like a comet. While Nelson was winning at Trafalgar, Austrian general Mack was surrendering to Napoleon at Ulm. Emperor Francis's Russian allies had been outflanked and sent fleeing. In less than three brilliant months, the French army had killed, wounded, or captured a hundred thousand enemy troops.

French cavalry were clattering aimlessly this way and that, as if not sure how to actually possess what they'd captured. Most Viennese had disappeared indoors. Women were completely invisible, although the streetwalkers would venture out soon enough. I began hiking toward the Danube River, noticing the scrubbed cobbles and polished windows. The Austrian capital is half the size of Paris, twice as clean, and smells three times sweeter than Venice.

For a quarter-mile I congratulated myself on passing unchallenged. However the curiously scarred Baron Richter had learned my true identity, surely no one else would! But then there was a thunder of hooves, I moved to one side to let the French pass, and a Napoleonic prince riding a black charger suddenly reined up to turn and stare at me with astonished recognition. I gaped back, since his mount was worthy of a circus. The stallion had a tiger-skin saddlecloth, with the tiger's head bouncing above the steed's tail. The four paws and tail drooped to the horse's belly. There was a golden bit, embroidered reins, and silver spurs.

“By the Blessed Mother of Christ, it's Ethan Gage!” the rider cried. “Is fortune finally smiling?”

With dismay, I recognized Marshal Joachim Murat, a hard-charging cavalry general who'd played a key role in Napoleon's self-crowning. “Hello, Joachim,” I said warily. We'd known each other slightly in Egypt.

By reputation, Murat's dimness as a strategist was rivaled only by his courage as a warrior. As vain as he was handsome, he was born to model for dramatic portraits, with a powerful torso, a riot of black curls that fell to his shoulders, muttonchop whiskers that clamped a manly cleft chin, and lips locked in a jaunty duelist's grin. Even in the middle of a lightning campaign in foul November weather, the general was a peacock. He wore a shako hat with ostrich plumes, a pelisse of wolverine fur on one shoulder to ward off sword blows, a tunic stiff as a breastplate from its excess of braid, a diamond-hilted saber, and red Moroccan boots. Skintight cavalry breeches showed off his muscled legs, and epaulets exaggerated the width of his shoulders.
It is the eye of other people that ruins us
, Franklin said.
If I were blind I would want neither fine clothes, fine houses, or fine furniture.

Murat carried a black riding crop in his white-gloved left fist and maneuvered his gigantic horse to block my way. What truly arrested me, however, was not Murat's size but his expression. The habitual swagger was spoiled by desperation. His eyes betrayed worry and, at the sight of me, hope.

Which is the last thing I wanted.

He turned to staff officers reining up around us. “Look! This man has been a spy for Napoleon; I knew him at Abukir. If the American electrician has been sent by our emperor to lend wizardry, maybe this day isn't as confounding as I feared.”

Confounding? Despite myself, I was curious. “You just conquered the Austrian capital, did you not?”

He leaned down to whisper. “And been scolded by Bonaparte for doing so. I swear he hectors me more as brother-in-law than he did as general.”

“It's hard to stay on Napoleon's good side,” I commiserated. Powerful generals are more tractable if you can address them as equal. “But I hear you're doing well. I'd chat, but I'm in something of a hurry.”

I'd first met Murat when he campaigned with Napoleon in Egypt and the Holy Land seven years before. He'd taken a bullet through his cheeks at Abukir while sabering off the fingers of a pasha, and grew his whiskers to hide the scar. His mouth had been open and shouting at the time—Murat had a reputation for seldom shutting up, especially about himself—and the ball had passed through without clipping either teeth or tongue.

“It's the first time he opened it to good purpose,” Napoleon quipped. The emperor thought his marshal had the force, and intelligence, of a cannonball.

The twin pockmark scars, just barely visible, only added to Murat's dangerous allure. He had acrobat muscles, bedchamber eyes, and a prodigious sexual appetite requiring satisfaction every time he camped. He'd probably sired a dozen illegitimate offspring during this campaign alone. This roguish reputation had only intrigued Napoleon's sister Caroline, who'd fallen in love with a man fifteen years her senior when she was still a child. When it had come time to marry, she passed over the general Bonaparte preferred—the quietly competent Jean Lannes—and chose the flamboyant Murat, whose fierce ambition matched her own. The emperor's brother-in-law earned the nicknames “Golden Eagle,” from his men, and “Don Quixote,” from Napoleon.

“Doing well?” he replied to me now. “I'm a grand admiral!” He laughed at his own absurd fortune. Murat wouldn't know an anchor from a rudderpost and had been miserably seasick on the voyage to Egypt. The title was bestowed as another excuse to shower the royal couple with money. Napoleon spoiled while lecturing, hoping to buy love at the same time he tried to shame into respect. His sister and brother-in-law responded with manipulation. The rumor was that Murat and his wife believed they'd be a better emperor and empress than Napoleon and Joséphine, or at least handsomer ones. Caroline pouted and wept until her brother proclaimed her a princess. This made Murat not just a marshal in charge of a cavalry corps but a prince.

By contrast, Bonaparte had done little but make me a fugitive. I know life isn't fair, but it's irritating to be reminded of it by the master of a prancing horse with bouncing tiger head—dressed in a uniform costing more than I'd earned in years of service—while simply trying to cross the street.

“Excuse my interruption,” I said, trying to step around. “I'm sure you're busy.” A bugler mounted on a white mare blocked my way. The street had filled with cavalry, putting me in a ring of intimidating horsemen. Some had bearskin hats that rose like shaggy towers, and their sabers banged and rang like chimes. Sashes held pistol butts, and pennants were topped with lance heads.

“You've an odd way of turning up, Gage,” Murat said, and addressed the others. “This American was at the pyramids and Marengo, but I've also seen him at Boulogne, the Invalides, and Mortefontaine. He's like a cat hurled into a pond that finds its way home. It amuses the emperor.” He turned back to me. “Are you on a mission?”

“To Prague. Secret, hurried, vital. I have to cross the Danube.”

“Then fortune has indeed united us! There's no crossing to be had. The enemy holds Tabor Bridge, and they'll shoot if you come from our lines.”

“I wasn't planning on there being any French lines.”

“Neither did Emperor Francis! We're pushing him to his own frontier!” Murat leaned down again, treating me like a confidant. Men always want to either shoot me or trust me, neither course warranted by the facts. “Truth be told, we've ridden ahead of Napoleon's orders. Vienna was a fruit begging to be picked.”

And its capture would assure Murat fame. “Then I'll search for a boat,” I tried. “I need to get to Bohemia.”

“But you're Talleyrand's man, are you not? Like me?” The patronage of the grand chamberlain was typical of the interwoven strands of Napoleon's new aristocracy, a gang as tight and treacherous as Corsican bandits. Twenty years before, Talleyrand had been a churchman who didn't believe, and Murat a boy bored by studying for a priesthood. The two had allied and risen together.

“Perhaps.” I stalled. I'd been recruited to work for the foreign minister at the coronation but agreed only out of expediency, and escaped after stealing Talleyrand's cloak and taking the broken sword. I'd cut my puppet strings.

“Good news, Gage. I've seen the grand chamberlain's other agents here, your comtesse and policeman. You'll be joining together?”

I tried not to choke. Catherine Marceau and Pasques, my two enemies from my adventures before Trafalgar, were in the Austrian capital? Catherine had pretended to be a comtesse while betraying us, and Pasques was a policeman the size of a bull who'd plagued me since I met him. I'd escaped from Richter in Venice, only to stumble across another nest of plotters in Vienna?

All looking for the Brazen Head, I guessed.

I couldn't risk having them see me, lest they cry “English spy” and have me arrested, tortured, seduced, or lectured. I feared they were looking for Astiza and that my presence would convince them that they were getting close.

“Certainly not, Marshal,” I said. “My orders are to remain alone and anonymous.” I had no orders, of course. “You've put me at hazard by calling my name and surrounding me with cavalry. You must let me slip anonymously by.”

“The marshal prefers to be called Your Serene Highness,” the bugler interrupted.

“I'm afraid I must borrow you, Gage,” Murat said. “I'm in trouble with the emperor because of my own initiative. I'm winning the war yet being blamed for losing it. I've galloped ahead and been told to fall behind. It's all jealousy, posturing, and politics. You've a reputation for being sly. Swing up behind my bugler there and come to my headquarters. Maybe we can help each other across the river.”

This was tempting. “It's imperative I not be seen by Talleyrand's other agents. Imperial secrecy.”

Murat addressed the bugler. “Give Gage a cuirassier helmet. The horsehair plume and cheekpieces will hide him.” He turned to his cavalrymen. “The American is a rogue and a scamp, but a master of intrigue. Remember, you've never seen him. He will disappear like the Invisible College.”

That name gave me a start, reminding me of Richter's oddly invisible agents. We set off at a brisk trot, the muscular cavalry column filling the street. I leaned in close to Murat. “What's the Invisible College?”

“Mystics. Talleyrand told me to keep watch for them; I don't know why. There always seems to be secret societies here and there, mucking about.”

At Stephansplatz, an entire regiment had paused to await orders in the chill air, drinking from the fountain and ordering stableboys to fetch hay for the horses. There was an inn in the shadow of the great cathedral, and here Murat had established his command post. We dismounted and he beckoned me inside.

The interior was warm, dark, and smoky. “Privacy!” Murat demanded.

“A room in the back, general?” the frightened innkeeper inquired.

“Your Serene Highness,” the bugler corrected again.

Murat's boots clomped, spurs jangling, and his scabbard swung like his tiger's tail as he led me deeper into the building. There was no obvious escape. How could I turn this conscription to my advantage?

“I imagine you enjoy being at the center of things again,” Murat said as he plopped onto one wooden chair and put his red boots on another. The place smelled of beer. Despite the early hour, I wished I had one in hand.

“Being useful is a mixed blessing.” I looked for another chair, but there was only a stool to balance on. A hussar slammed shut the door.