Three Emperors (9780062194138)

by Dietrich, William

  Shouts from our pursuers echoed to tag us. Some of the Invisibles apparently turned the wrong way, and we heard cries of “I’m lost!” reverberate down the mine shafts. Others spotted the faint light of our candles before we turned a corner and they began to sprint toward us. “It’s them!”

  “Go faster,” I ordered.

  “We can’t go faster.”

  “Go as fast as you can while I make them hesitate.”

  “I have chalk,” Astiza said. “If we make a turn, I’ll make a mark.”

  Clever girl.

  I crouched at an elbow in the mine, my candle in a crevice to minimize its light. Auric’s pistols were small, women’s guns to fit a dwarf, but lethal enough at close range. Richter’s gang came heedlessly on, remembering us helpless and cursing in order to keep up their courage. A torch lit four who drew near. When they got within ten paces, I fired.

  A man screamed and pitched backward. Auric’s pistol had a pretty punch. Smoke filled the tunnel, the others fell flat, and I fled, the other gun still ready.

  I’d no means to reload.

  My shot stalled the pursuit. A chalk mark led me to a new branch that curled down into blackness. I dreaded more descent, even while hoping that our bold plunge into the heart of the mines would lose them. Water dripped everywhere, and I splashed through puddles.

  I caught up with Astiza and Harry in a few hundred yards.

  “Did you shoot the bad men, Papa?”

  “One of them.”

  “I want to go outside.”

  “As soon as we get away.” Yet I could hear running water and feared we were fleeing into a dead end. If the bottom of the mines were drowned, why were we going that way?

  “Did they give up?” Astiza asked.

  “Perhaps.”

  Then we heard dogs barking.

  “Or not.”

  “I don’t like dogs,” Harry contributed.

  Someday I’m going to get the boy a nice puppy, but no time for that now. We began to trot. Richter had fetched hounds.

  A distant murmur rose to a rumble, and then a roar. We soon saw the cause. Our passage joined another tunnel half-filled with an underground river. It plunged from a cliff upstream, the waterfall meaning there was no chance of ascending. We’d have to plunge into black water and float downstream.

  It was hopeless, but so was surrender. The dogs were getting closer.

  “Harry, can you swim?”

  “I’m scared.” He looked miserably at the current.

  “I taught him to float,” Astiza said. “But he needs something to hold on to.”

  The baying of the hounds grew louder. Harry was crying. I crouched. “Horus, listen to me. I’m going to shoot one of the dogs, and then we’re going to leap into the water. Dogs can’t smell us there.”

  “Can doggies swim?”

  “Yes, but they won’t follow, I promise.” Dogs have too much sense. “You must hold tight to Papa.”

  He was shaking, cheeks wet, but he looked at me with trust. “Don’t let me die.”

  I hugged him. “I won’t.” Then, “Astiza, take the cauldron for a moment.”

  “Ethan, why did you bring that thing?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I put my candle on a rock shelf, strapped Durendal to my back, cocked the second pistol, and put my left arm around Harry. I could feel him shake. The baying of the hounds was amplified by the mines into a great echoing clamor of canine excitement. Then there was a blur of movement as they spied our light and charged in excitement, snapping and yowling.

  I fired.

  The lead animal somersaulted. I hurled both pistols, hearing yips as they struck. Then I plunged with Harry into swift, waist-deep water, my boots sliding on the slippery bottom. Astiza was wading ahead of us, dress dragging, gamely holding a candle in one hand and the cauldron in the other. I eased in to float on my back, gasping from the chill, and held my son to my chest. “Easy, boy. Now we get away from the hounds.”

  He shivered.

  The animals had halted, confused and wary, sniffing the body of their dead companion. Some came to the edge of the water, barking. Harry clutched me as tight as he could. One dog jumped in and Harry shouted in terror, but then the hound thought better of it, turned, and paddled to heave himself out. I heard men’s voices, and then shouts of frustration. We floated out of sight.

  The water deepened. Astiza was swimming, too, trying to keep the candle alight. I floated like an otter, Harry on my chest.

  Then a splash as my wife’s candle finally went under, and it was dark—not just dark but as black as it is possible to be. The three of us were carried deeper into the underworld. I reached up and brushed rock. The water was closer to the ceiling. We swirled at the speed of a trot, blind and cold.

  “Astiza, are you there?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was small, with a tremble to it.

  To think that medieval miners came into this hell every day of their lives.

  “Ethan, the air disappears! Stop!”

  I bumped up against her, legs drifting down to find a precarious hold. “Here, take Harry.” We were all shivering. I felt past her and ahead. As she said, the ceiling dipped so that there was no air between it and the rushing river. If we went farther, we’d drown. If we went back we’d be tortured and killed. I could still hear the dogs, barking in frustration.

  “This is just like old times,” I gasped in encouragement, fighting the cold and my own fear of the dark. “We’ve done this before.”

  “That pyramid path was engineered. This is a drowned mine. We’ve no idea how long this river goes. And Horus can’t hold his breath very long.”

  “Somewhere this river will emerge.”

  “Miles from here.”

  “You’re scaring Harry.”

  “I don’t like the dogs!” he shouted, the sound bouncing.

  “We don’t have a choice,” I insisted. “It ends here, or life has a purpose for us. Do you have the cauldron?”

  “It’s an anchor, filled with water.”

  “Empty it.”

  I could hear the pour as she did so, holding it against the low rock ceiling.

  “I’m going to take Harry with me, using the cauldron like the diving bell in the Caribbean. If we invert it, we trap air and give him a little to breathe.”

  She moaned. “My Goddess, why are you testing me so cruelly?”

  “You go first, and we’ll follow.”

  “No,” she pleaded, her strength exhausted. “I can’t do this to Harry. What if he drowns? We go back and beg for mercy. Beg for him. Our lives for his.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Astiza. There is no mercy. You know that.”

  “Ethan, I can’t . . .”

  “Follow your son.” And I grabbed the cauldron, took a huge breath, put the cauldron over my little boy’s head before he could even ask what I was doing, let go the rock wall, and let us be swept into oblivion.

  I had to hope, and dread, that she trusted me enough to follow.

  Harry squirmed like a terrier as we rushed, but I held him with one arm and the cauldron with the other, listening to him cough and scream as he choked on the air. I held my breath, silently ticking off seconds as we traveled. I wanted to know, just before we drowned, how long I’d made it.

  Thirty seconds. We caromed off a rock wall, I almost sucked in water, and then we were swirling along again, the walls slick as ice. I kicked to hurry us.

  A minute. The pressure to breathe was building now, Harry alarmingly slack. Had he fainted? I had no idea if my wife had followed.

  Ninety seconds. My chest was a slow burn.

  Two minutes. I banged my head against a rock, but the agony in my body worked to keep me from blacking out. Pain arced from skull to heart to lungs.

  Eternity ticked on. My body seemed to swell, my nerves crying not so much for air to be sucked in but for what I’d consumed to be released. I let out a train of bubbles.

  Two minutes twenty, and I couldn�
��t do it more. I hadn’t trained for this.

  Two-thirty, then, and I’d agree to be dead. I counted, endlessly.

  Two-forty, every fiber screaming, floating upward . . .

  My head broke clear and my lungs exploded in release, and then I sucked in another breath, went down, fought up, shoved Harry toward the ceiling so the cauldron clanged but the air was refreshed, then down again in eerie blackness, gulping in a pocket of air. I floated on my back and the cauldron rolled off us and was lost in an instant, my boy frighteningly still, as if dead. I felt the worse but could see nothing in the dark.

  Surely my wife couldn’t have lasted that long.

  “Ethan!” It was almost a scream, and then a cough.

  “Here! With Harry!”

  By thunder, we’d done it.

  And then the ceiling dipped and we were under again, hurled along in a nightmare, but this one was shorter, the length of a room, and with joy I felt Harry tighten against me with a fearful clutch like a cat’s. He was alive!

  We came out in the dark again, gasping, but suddenly there was a feeling of space above the water, as if we’d slid from old mine tunnel to broader cave. The current slackened.

  “Astiza, where are you?”

  “Here.” She was splashing, trying to find us.

  Harry was hacking, proof of life that made me weep.

  Far, far away—as far as the stars—I saw a glimmer of light. I thought I was hallucinating for a moment, but the illumination slowly grew. Escape!

  We drifted out the cave exit to a forested ravine, branches bare and snow drifting down. Too exhausted to do anything but stare at the cloudy daylight—we’d no idea what time it was—we drifted in a pool for a moment, numb and reprieved, nearly frozen, until our leaden legs grounded in shallows. We numbly stood, shaking with exhaustion and cold. Had we escaped Astiza’s prison, only to freeze to death?

  “Ethan!”

  A miracle appeared. It was Gideon, rising from winter underbrush and stumbling across a rocky bar to help us stagger to shore. He hadn’t deserted me after all! Somehow he’d even anticipated our emergence and waited for us.

  “How, how . . .” I couldn’t even make a coherent sentence. But maybe he could get my boy to a fire. I was weeping with gratitude, so grateful for this second reprieve. Astiza and I dripped, teetering from shock, amazed we were all still in this world. The three of us held one another.

  Then other figures emerged from the brush and joined Gideon, pistols and muskets aimed. One was gigantic, another blond, and several looked like French secret police.

  “Hello, Ethan,” said Catherine Marceau. “At last we are reunited.”

  Chapter 31

  Catherine wore a hooded cloak of midnight blue with fur ruff, snow flecking her golden hair like diamonds. Her riding dress was maroon. She wore a dark stone at her throat, brown leather boots with silver spurs, and kid gloves, and she carried a riding crop in her left fist. She was beautiful, clever, persistent, and wicked. French agents pointed half a dozen guns. I was annoyed that I was shaking, but it was from cold, not fear. Mostly.

  “I’ve enjoyed every moment of separation,” I replied.

  While I’d lusted after Catherine Marceau as any man would, given her voluptuous figure and seductive habit, she’d not only foiled my plan to disrupt Napoleon’s coronation but had taken a shot at me with a pistol that, with rare foresight, I’d loaded with black pepper. I got a satisfying sneeze from her, but it was still Catherine who tore our family asunder by forcing Astiza and Harry to prematurely flee from Notre Dame.

  She’d later had the cheek to write me at Cadiz, offering alliance to hunt for the Brazen Head, under her own conspiratorial control. “Who is it you work for at the moment?” I asked her now. “Royalists, Napoleon, Talleyrand, or the Invisible College? It’s difficult to keep track.”

  “You know me better than that. Catherine works for Catherine.”

  I looked at Gideon. “Did you betray us, too?”

  “They captured me. I’m sorry, Ethan. I followed you to save you, but I’m failing my half of our partnership.”

  So I’d dragged him into her web, too. “It’s my debt that is mounting.”

  “We followed from Prague,” said Pasques, the gigantic French policeman. He was thick as a wine barrel, had arms nearly the diameter of my legs, and carried the disposition of a tax inspector mated to a paddock bull. “We caught this one lurking at Kutná Hora, sly and sinister like his kind.”

  “You mean discreet and observant.”

  “We were far from surprised that you’d fallen in with Jews and deserters, Gage.”

  “I live to meet your expectations, Pasques.”

  He grinned with the satisfaction of a cat that has stalked a mouse. “It’s taken a great deal of trouble to find you. Yet here we are.”

  “It does seem serendipitous, does it not? And yet not entirely coincidental. Catherine, I’m guessing you reached Rabbi Abraham before we did?”

  “Ethan, you’re not always so astute.”

  “We were directed to the Star Summer Palace after our host consulted a book that was left with a long golden hair. I presume you studied the ancient texts?”

  “The good rabbi was persuaded that his interests lie with France. He became an instrument to once more bring us together.”

  Astiza glanced at me, no doubt wondering about my faithfulness this past year, as I had wondered about hers, given Richter’s leering. We’d been imperfect, lonely, loyal, and merely tempted. Or so I hoped.

  “Napoleon knew you wanted to go to Prague and recognized you at the end of the Battle at Austerlitz,” Catherine related, relishing her triumph. “Did you notice his glance? His eye is an eagle’s. Officers made inquiries to find your unit and your friend. It wasn’t hard to guess you’d flee to the biggest ghetto in Europe—and be easily manipulated once you arrived.”

  The cold water that hadn’t dripped off me was beginning to freeze. “But how did you know we’d emerge here?”

  “Your Jew told us that your witch had a plan to break out.”

  “Gideon has a name, Catherine.”

  “He eavesdropped on your meeting with the Invisible College in the Golden Lane. You left Prague with Baron Richter, you didn’t emerge from the cells in Kutná Hora, and this is the only known outlet of the underground river that floods the mines. It was far from certain, but then, I’m very lucky, aren’t I?”

  I looked about the wintry ravine. “Standing with us, still poor, cold, single, and childless, in a muddy dell in the snow.”

  She refused to react. “Rumor is that you copied the ingenuity I invented in Paris by pretending to be dead in Venice. You flatter me with imitation, Ethan.”

  “Except the Comtesse Marceau is truly dead.” Years before, Catherine had taken a strangled girl’s identity and shipped to England pretending to be a refugee royalist, while actually operating as a French spy. It was nothing to be proud about. In fact, I wondered if she’d done the throttling herself.

  “And I’ll keep you alive, but only if your wife takes me to the Brazen Head.” She smiled at my family. “Work with me and I will make you rich and powerful. Defy me and I will debate whether to execute you or give you back to Richter to be tortured. All this trouble would have been avoided if we’d remained partners from the beginning.” And to emphasize her goodwill, her agents gestured with their gun barrels to move us off the riverbank and into the cover of the woods.

  I felt exhausted. To emerge from drowning to the muzzles of guns? To escape one set of tormentors, only to fall in with another cabal of lunatics? To desert the French army and be recaptured by Napoleonic agents? Astiza and I knew too much, and were cursed by our usefulness.

  “This was destined to happen,” Catherine went on as we shambled stiffly toward her party’s horses. “We were always meant to be together. Weren’t we, Astiza?”

  My wife, drenched, frozen, exhausted, and defiantly erect, was dangerously calm. “Should it serve the gods.”
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  “We’re a partnership,” Catherine insisted. “You need clothes, food, and protection from Richter’s gang of mystic cutthroats, who are no more true Rosicrucians than the Borgias were saints. Fear not! We represent the French government and the power it projects. Cooperating with us will restore you to Napoleon’s good graces. Give him a machine that tells the future and you’ll share that future. Always we give you opportunity, Ethan.”

  I looked at Astiza, who was not only wet and shivering but wasted, cut, and half-poisoned from her long months underground. Yet her dark eyes were bright, and she could be as calculating as Catherine. I’d just seen my wife blow her way through a rock wall, and I wouldn’t underestimate her now.

  “Our nanny is right,” Astiza said to me, not even giving Marceau the courtesy of “governess” in reminding her of our household roles in Paris the year before. “We need help to keep from freezing and to keep Richter at bay. Do you have extra horses, Comtesse Counterfeit?”

  She ignored the gibe. “Yes. And money. And tools.”

  “Then indeed, let’s be partners. My clue is a castle that Christian Rosenkreutz may have fled to. It’s an educated guess, not a certainty, and I’ve no idea if the Brazen Head is there. But let’s try to find it together.”

  I was surprised at her acquiescence. Catherine was not.

  “Astiza has always been more sensible and practical than you, Ethan. It’s a mother’s trait. And our destination, Madame Gage?”

  “If I told you that, you’d have less need of us. I’ll be our guide, but my price is the survival and freedom of my husband, my son, and his Jewish friend. For now, we need to get north across the Elbe River before nightfall.”

  “When we get to this castle, do you have a key?”

  “Ethan does.”

  This was news to me.

  “My husband is more useful than you think,” she added to Catherine.