Three Emperors (9780062194138)

by Dietrich, William

  “The Brazen Head has the answers,” Fulcanelli said. “But we have to find it first.”

  I looked down at Auric. “I hope your colleague can help.” He had tiny, deep-drilled eyes and bad teeth. The cloying gases had spotted him with warts, pustules, and tumors. His scraggly hair was thin, and his hands reddened as if burned. “I’m told you’ve studied Albertus Magnus’s Book of Secrets. Some say it’s a dangerous text.”

  “I’ve read books both praised and forbidden, madame. I’ve searched for power as resolutely as a knight searching for gold in a dragon’s cave. I’ve summoned angels and demons and faced the great dark eye itself.” The creature was proud of his sorcery. “Albertus was a great man, but I’ve gone beyond him.”

  “Not for worldly reward,” I remarked drily, examining his surroundings. I’ve found wry observation an effective tactic. The dwarf flushed.

  “My eyes hurt, Mama,” Harry chimed in. “I don’t like it here.” He had the instincts of a young animal.

  “Just a short visit. We need this man’s help.”

  “All my profits go into my studies,” Auric said, annoyed at having to justify his hovel. “I’m Prague’s greatest necromancer. Important men seek my counsel.” He cast an eye at Fulcanelli. “I am Merlin. I am Faust. So sit, sit, we’ll exchange secrets.”

  He gestured to a blanket atop a plank bed with straw mattress. I suspected fleas but reluctantly sat, since there was nowhere else to do so, pulling Harry to me. Auric turned to rummage on a workbench while Fulcanelli moved near the door, more like a guard than a guide. He smiled again to reassure me, but everything suddenly seemed false. The smile was chilly, and his eyes speculative. Best to get this over quickly.

  “We’re searching for a mechanical man made by Albert long ago in Paris,” I began.

  “It’s like a toy that can talk,” put in Harry, since I’d tried to explain why we were wandering. “We’re going to use it to find Papa.”

  Auric turned to a sloping shelf crammed with books. He took off a heavy one, dusty and stained. “Yes, the Brazen Head. Fabulous legend. An automaton to tell the future! And yet destroyed by Thomas Aquinas, no?”

  “Some in Paris thought it might have survived.” I could impress or frighten them with names like Napoleon and Talleyrand, and yet those ambitious men were very far away. “I’m trying to follow the trail of Christian Rosenkreutz, because of legends that he took the android.”

  “Ah, Rosenkreutz. The whereabouts of his tomb is a great mystery. And yet there are tales of a ruined castle in Bohemia or Moravia, and caverns beneath a sacred mountain. No one knows which one, yet treasure is reputed to be buried there. I would like treasure. I would like that very much.”

  I decided to hold back what I’d guessed at Český Krumlov. Best to keep our ultimate destination to myself.

  “As a fellowship, we might find it.” The dwarf nodded, more to himself than to us. “Success will make us rich.”

  “The Brazen Head promises only wisdom.”

  “When rich enough, men will judge us wise. It’s not that the wise always win, but that winners are deemed wise.” He cackled again, then grew serious. “Do you know which castle?”

  “No.” This was only half a lie.

  He looked annoyed and glanced at Fulcanelli. “Is she useful?”

  The bishop shrugged.

  I gestured at his alchemical stews. “Have you made lead into gold?”

  “I haven’t achieved that purity, no. So what do you know, Astiza? How can you aid us on this quest?”

  I glanced at Fulcanelli, but the bishop was only watching us expectantly. “I’d expect to find roses on Christian’s path.”

  “Hmph. Do you know alchemy?”

  “I studied in Egypt.”

  “Perhaps we can make gold together.”

  “I’m not interested in gold. I’m a pilgrim looking for a relic. It’s why I came to Bishop Fulcanelli at the library, and why I’ve come to you.”

  Now Fulcanelli’s look was possessive, and his glance at Auric was a smirk. Something was terribly wrong. When the bishop spoke, his tone was critical. “You walk a thousand miles, scamp in tow, knowing so little? I don’t believe you, Astiza. Share your secrets with Auric, and let’s get things done.”

  “Don’t call my son a scamp.” I held Horus closer. “He’s a good boy.”

  “Very good,” said Nachash, and then he shocked me by obscenely running his tongue around his lips. What foulness was this? I stood to go, confused and alarmed. Why had he brought me here? But the bishop blocked the door.

  “Primus, please.”

  Fulcanelli stepped forward and shoved, harder than he had to, so that I sat back down hard on the bed. Harry began to cry.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I looked furiously at bishop and dwarf. “I’m asking you as a mother and wife for help!”

  “You’re a widow, not a wife,” Fulcanelli said coldly. “Your husband is almost certainly dead.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “I know your betrayal of Minister Talleyrand, your theft of sacred objects, and the fact that your husband has been chained to a French warship that is likely doomed to destruction.”

  “A warship? What?”

  “Gage is in Spain, shackled in chains of his own forging.”

  “Then he’s alive!”

  “Soon to be dead, I think. Nelson is coming.”

  “If he escapes, he’ll come here! I know he will!” I thought furiously, picturing maps in my head. “Through Venice, perhaps. By sea!”

  “That would be magical indeed.”

  “Why are you treating me like this?”

  “Because you care more for sorcery than love, and I am not a patient man. You care more for a mechanical head than the head of your child.”

  “Child soup,” Nachash said. “Bones and fat, bubbling in a broth. Or we will bake him in the oven, Baron Wolf, and crack his bones for their marrow.” His grin was hideous. “Did you know the marrow becomes sweeter in the first roasting, when the little boys scream?” He cackled again and danced a little jig.

  I was paralyzed at my own foolishness. What folly to come here, and to trust a man I didn’t really know! My head was whirling. Was this a bad dream? “Baron?” I managed. “I thought you were a bishop.”

  “I am what I say I am,” Fulcanelli said.

  So was he even Fulcanelli?

  “You should kneel,” Auric suggested. “Kneel at his belt. He’s Baron Wolf Richter, high priest of the Invisible College, and you try my master’s patience.” The little monster was clearly mad. Was he even human? He was a pustule of a creature, a casting gone wrong.

  Fulcanelli’s stare was lifelessly cold, as pitiless as a serpent’s, and the confiding empathy we’d shared at the Astronomical Tower had vanished like smoke.

  “Where is the sword hilt?” he demanded.

  “What sword hilt?”

  “You think us fools? Tell us what you know. What game is your family playing?”

  “You’re mad. I came here because I didn’t know enough!”

  “Tell us or we cook your son,” Auric said. And he scuttled to put across a beam to bar the door.

  “I thought you liked me,” I protested weakly. “We were partners.”

  “We’re still partners,” Fulcanelli—or this baron—said. “And, oh yes, I like you, I like you very much. Tell me what you really know, Astiza. Why did you go one way and your husband another?”

  “We were fleeing!”

  “Why does a mother bring her boy here? What have you learned about the Brazen Head that makes you risk everything to find it?”

  I closed my eyes. “I want to find it so we’ll be left alone.”

  “Tell me the truth, or by Satan I’ll have you now on this crude bed, in front of your whining brat, just before my servant eats him.” Fulcanelli’s voice—no, it was this Wolf Richter’s!—had changed, becoming deeper, more guttural. Or was it I who had gone mad?

  Somehow I had t
o force my way past two men or Harry and I would be doomed. My meeting with Fulcanelli-Richter had been no accident, I realized; somehow he’d been waiting for me here in Prague. Had Duke Schwarzenberg alerted him from Český Krumlov? The grotesque alchemist was not a wizard of dark arts but a creature of evil tortures. I was without help. My hands scrabbled on the bed, looking for a weapon. All I had was the dirty tick of straw.

  I stood again. “Let me go or I’ll scream.”

  Nachash laughed, and so I did scream, or tried to, but this terrible baron hit me with a blow so hard that the room flashed white and roared as it whirled. I spun and fell hard on the mattress, facedown. I could hardly see. I could hardly breathe. I felt nauseated.

  “Mama!” Harry was screaming in terror.

  “By God, I’ll have you now.”

  “It’s better when they resist,” the little ogre encouraged.

  The baron’s powerful hands gripped the top of my gown and tore it down the back. I twisted to claw at his face, so he stopped to slap me and spit.

  We’re about to be murdered, I thought dimly. We’ve come to a devil’s lane and found a portal to hell. I smelled it when we entered. Why didn’t I run?

  A hand grasped my necklace, with its ankh and Eye of Horus, and twisted it tight. I couldn’t breathe.

  And then Richter howled from a shock of his own. “Bastard imp!” He lurched off me and spun as if stung, and Harry flew hard and banged against a wall. I got enough air to shriek with fury. The tumult had knocked Auric aside, too.

  “The whelp bit me!”

  The dwarf chortled. “You can have a sip of my soup.”

  “I’ll bash the hellion’s brain in.” He wheezed and bent toward my son. I lurched upward, sick from fumes, breathless from strangulation, my gown in ruin, and reached to grab his arms. The baron was strong as a stag, but I hindered him for just a moment. He tried to shake me off. Auric began banging on me with an iron kettle, baying with merriment at the chaos. The more I resisted, the more he cackled.

  Richter shoved again to bounce me on the bed. “Wait your turn,” he growled. He turned back to my son.

  And screamed. Horus, in wild desperation, and with the courage of a youth three times his age, had grabbed one of the stone bowls holding the metallic distillates and hurled it at the madman’s face.

  The potion was hot, acidic, and sticky. A sluice of goo slashed across Richter’s jaw and cheeks, sizzling, and more hit a candle and flared up like breath from a fire-eater. My assailant howled in shock and surprise.

  “You little demon!”

  “Harry!”

  “I melted him, Mama!”

  “May Satan damn you!” the crazed Richter-Fulcanelli roared, clutching at his burning face as he staggered around the room. His flesh was melting like candle wax.

  Auric watched in shocked fascination, the other’s pain seeming to calm him. “Don’t kill her,” he cautioned. “Not until we have the other.”

  Richter found a bucket of water and emptied it over his own smoking head. “Aggghhhh! You bitch of a sorceress!” His flesh steamed.

  “We need them all, every one, to control each other,” Auric went on. “The mines, master, the mines!”

  And then his kettle swung to strike my dizzy head, and that’s all I can remember.

  Chapter 17

  The snow stopped during the night, replaced by cold fog. The long dark seemed endless. It was victory when I was finally able to see my outstretched hand, triumph to make out the prone and hunched forms of my companions, and reassurance to spy the trunk of a tree ten paces away. Dawn was sluggish and clammy. Beyond our immediate surroundings, the world was shrouded. I stood, shivering and miserable, to stamp my feet and rub my gums. Wood was added to the fire, we dipped our last soggy bread in the reheated stew, and we looked to our equipment. The campfire smoke added to the miasma.

  “A foul day for fighting,” Hulot muttered. “I need another tonnelet of brandy.”

  “Then give me leave to fetch one,” I suggested.

  “Ha! You wouldn’t stop until you reached Paris, Digeon. None of us would. No, I’ll keep you for battle.”

  Escape would not be easy.

  From somewhere to our right a rumble began, like distant thunder. Someone was shooting at someone. “Our flank is getting an uncomfortable reveille,” Hulot remarked. “It wakes you up, doesn’t it?” It did seem to match Napoleon’s prediction that the Allies would seek to overrun the French right flank and get into our rear. Yet I’d neither seen nor heard sign that Bonaparte was shifting forces to block such a move. In fact, he’d given up the commanding Pratzen Heights and passively invited attack in this valley. It was foolish and lazy.

  I knew him better than that.

  Whatever his plan, I was stuck in the middle, hoping that Soult’s corps would remain in reserve. If ever there was a war I cared nothing about, it was this one. What cursed luck to have run into Murat in Vienna, chaining me to this madness ever since. The harder I tried to escape, the deeper I seemed to be ensnared.

  “Digeon, you’ll replace Garat in the front rank,” Hulot instructed as we formed. “The imbecile broke his foot by allowing a cannon wheel to run over it and will miss his chance at glory.”

  “Allowed? Or arranged?”

  “He wept when told he couldn’t fight.”

  Good God, the world is full of fools. “I’m rather tall,” I tried. “Wouldn’t it be wiser to have me behind, where I could shoot over the heads of others?”

  “New men go in front to be watched and backed by their fellows. Besides, maybe the enemy will find you intimidating. Rise up on your tiptoes, Goliath, and put them to flight.”

  “As tempting target.”

  “Be proud of this opportunity to prove yourself.”

  I was frustrated, caught in a vast military machine, with no flexibility to exercise my habitual cleverness. The front rank sponged up bullets, and putting a man of my capabilities there was a terrible waste, at least to me. “I’m actually rather expert with a rifle,” I tried again. “Perhaps I could serve as a chasseur.” These skirmishers moved independently and sought cover.

  “Is that a rifle you are carrying, idiot? Did you arrive from a chasseur regiment and dye your coat from green to blue? No, you are line infantry like the rest of us. Shoulder your musket and take your place like a man.”

  The others hooted. I pretended I was only joking and lamely tried to retrieve a reputation for courage by demonstrating experience. “Do you have any buckshot? I spent time in America, where frontiersmen shoot with both buck and ball. Given a musket’s inaccuracy, it might increase our chances of hitting something.”

  “Ah, you mistake me for an armory? All our buckshot seems to be taken, Digeon. The Big Hats must have gone fowling. But here, idiot, is your bayonet, which is guaranteed to hit something should you get close enough to the enemy to stick them with it. Shall I instruct which end is the front?”

  This brought another good laugh. The sergeant was on his own tiptoes to address me, his mustache almost close enough to become my own. I could see flecks of tobacco in the hairs.

  “I suspect I can remember.”

  He rocked back to his heels and clapped me on the shoulder. “If you don’t, I will stab you myself.” Then he addressed the others. “Oui! Our newest replacement is so stupid that he may forget in which direction the enemy resides! Should he charge the wrong way, toward our rear, will the rest of you kindly shoot him?”

  “You may rest assured, sergeant,” Cheval said. “Put the cardsharp in front of me. I will keep him in step.”

  “No need to put biting horses in the same harness,” Hulot said. “Digeon here will be near the standard so he can’t get lost or waste time experimenting with his musket load.” He nodded at me. “Fight well, straggler, I have my eye on you. Pray that your card luck carries over to battle.”

  With this encouragement, I fell in with the fatalism all men feel when marching into combat. One is swept by fate into a torrent.
We checked our gear for the hundredth time in the fantasy that something would make a difference. Men entrusted last letters to one another. I had nowhere to write to, and realized Astiza might never hear of my death.

  Units began to form in column. We’d wheel into line when at grips with the enemy.

  Officers on horseback loomed out of the fog, gesturing with swords, while the thuds from our right grew louder, thumping like tribal drumming. The order came to cease speaking. We obeyed better than schoolboys, in hopes we’d be hidden until the worst was over.

  Then began the waiting. I’d experienced this agony at the light winds of Trafalgar while Nelson’s fleet closed ponderously with the French and Spanish. Here the anxiety was again. The brain can conjure horrors more terrible than any actual one, and so the tedious standing gave ample time for imagination.

  “Let’s get on with it,” Gideon muttered under his breath.

  We stood still as statues so there wouldn’t be a rattle of equipment. I could see only fifty paces in the fog and thus spied little beyond the universe of my small company. In theory, Soult’s gigantic corps of twenty-six thousand men was poised around me, but it felt as if my fellows and I were waiting by ourselves for the entire Russian and Austrian armies. We’d eaten little, out of the belief that gut wounds were worse on a full stomach, and drunk less, knowing we wouldn’t be allowed to fall out to piss. We preferred not to humiliate ourselves by wetting our trousers. By midday we’d be parched, but better dehydration than embarrassment. So we stood, hungry, thirsty, and cold, our breath adding to the fog, without a word of explanation about what we were supposed to do or when we were supposed to do it.

  The light grew stronger, and the mist changed from gray to white. It was a sunny winter’s day on the Pratzen Heights, I guessed, reminiscent of the sun that had glowed at Napoleon’s coronation the year before. Yet in our valley the fog hung and hid, each man damp and alone with his thoughts. Even prayers had to be silent. It was quiet enough to hear the click of rosary beads.