“Oh, I think he’s useful.” She turned to her six French policemen. “Pasques, take that sword he has and any other weapons. Give the family dry clothes and tie Ethan to his saddle. Jew, I am feeling magnanimous, and have no more use for you. Scuttle back to your ghetto and do not stray into great affairs again.”
“I’d prefer to stay and serve my friends.”
“And I’d prefer you work with Rabbi Abraham Stern for French interests. Be gone, before I change my mind. Tell him we are near success.”
Her agents grinned evilly at Gideon, making plain he had no choice.
“I brought rope for climbing,” he finally said. “Can I leave it with Ethan? It may prove useful.”
“You may leave it with Pasques. Quickly. Oh, and, Monsieur Dray?”
“Yes.”
“Not a word to the other side. I don’t wish to have to hunt you down again and kill you next time.” Dismissing Gideon, she turned to the rest of us. “Let’s get well away from the Invisible College before making camp. How many miles, Madame Gage?”
“Perhaps a hundred to the castle.”
“Then there’s no time to waste.”
We changed out of our sodden clothing, fought our shivers with brandy and sausage, left Dray abandoned on the riverbank, and climbed onto the horses provided by our new escort, Harry riding in front of me. As I watched my new friend fade from view through the light snow, I felt even more helpless. My shoulder ached, my heart was embarrassed by failure, and my son looked despondent. We set out to the north, crossing the Elbe at a ford and trotting through flurries. At least we warmed as we rode.
Catherine eventually slowed her horse to drop back alongside me. “You think me a Fury, Ethan, because I’m a capable woman.”
“A dogged one, I’ll give you that.”
“I do not give up. I can be ruthless, but ruthless only as men taught me. I’m not a comtesse, no. My father was a solicitor, Pierre Avalon, who rose in the Assembly after the Revolution and made too many enemies. Then he fell afoul of the Terror and they imprisoned all of us except my brother, who managed to run and disappear. You think me a spy and impostor. But my parents were beheaded, and I was given the choice of following them or using my beauty to serve the Revolution as a spy. I’ve only done what I had to do.”
“Killing the real Comtesse Marceau.”
“No one killed her. That was a foul rumor. She died in her cell of disease. I was an orphan, her title was vacant, and my jailers would have raped me first if I’d chosen the guillotine. So I took her name, fled to London, and pretended to be a royalist. I survived, loyal to myself.” She turned to stare me in the eye. “Are we really any different, you and I?”
“I live for my family.”
“I had the beauty to marry, but not the stupidity. The last thing I wanted was to be chattel of an aristocratic twit, either an exiled Frenchman or a haughty Englishman. I had many offers! But I wanted more.”
“You’re lonely. I’ve seen it in your eyes.”
“I decided on power, and then Bonaparte brought sanity to chaos.”
“Dictatorship.”
“Order. He and I are alike, too. Survivors. Opportunists. So I was told of a woman researching ancient secrets, told to ally with her wayward husband and get them to Paris. Yet it wasn’t I who rebuffed friendship. It was you.”
“I’m married. You tempted me like a courtesan.”
“Like another opportunity, which you ignored. Don’t be priggish with me; I know you too well. Now you’re in my power. Your wife is fond of fate, but where has fate delivered you? Back to me. Why? Think about that.” She leaned in close. “We ride to find an oracle of the future. But think of your own future, Ethan, and which woman promises you more.”
Then she kicked her mare with her silver spurs and trotted ahead. Yes, she wanted me, I knew. But only for the triumph of possession. I also knew she would become bored of any man, like a spoiled child with toys, and toss them away. She had been aloof to intrigue me with challenge, and seductive to undermine my wife. And what did she really desire? To win, but what, and why, she had no idea. Her manipulations were a drug to forestall her own deep dissatisfaction. The most driven are the most cursed.
We avoided any highway and followed farm lanes without inns, so Catherine bargained for a barn where our group could bed in the hayloft. Astiza, Harry, and I made a nest in the straw, with Catherine and Pasques to one side and three rough-looking French agents on the other. A few yards’ separation gave meager privacy. Two more stood guard below.
I had one ankle shackled to a barn post.
It was, however, my first opportunity for conversation with my family. I hugged them fiercely and inspected my son’s recovered hands, and we briefly reviewed a year of journeying since Napoleon’s coronation. Harry said, “Stop going away, Papa,” which both warmed my heart and broke it. He was relieved to be out of the cell, profoundly happy that we were reunited—he credited his escape to my appearance, since I’d shot a bad man and a bad dog—and fearful of what was to come. He was old enough to know that bulky men with big guns meant trouble, and young enough to think I could still protect him.
Finally, he fell into exhausted and troubled sleep.
My wife and I kissed again, but our passion was held in check by tension and the proximity of our enemies. I showed her my bullet wound with odd pride, as if being shot in the back was a mark of honor. She touched both scars, front and back, with fascination. Reminders of mortality hypnotize us.
“What’s your plan?” I whispered, since I had none of my own.
“I’ve made a guess from fragmentary hints in old books and the markings on a dungeon wall at Český Krumlov,” my wife murmured. “There’s no certainty the Brazen Head still exists, but there’s a peculiar castle that could have attracted a seeker such as Rosenkreutz. Its architecture is symbolic.”
“Gideon and I found the old sword blade in a tower built in the shape of Solomon’s seal. The palace was built as a place to speculate.”
“Like an astronomical tower,” my wife said.
“Yes, except this one looked inward instead of outward.”
“What is within is without. What is above is below.”
“So what do the stars tell you now?”
“I haven’t seen them in many months. It’s cloudy tonight. But our destination has a shape that reminds me of the Egyptian hieroglyph for ka, or soul. What better place for our medieval mystic to rest?”
“You think Rosenkreutz is buried there, too?”
“We’ll shortly find out.”
“And if not?”
She looked at Catherine and Pasques, who were watching our whispering. “Then our usefulness will be at an end. Be ready for a final fight.”
The next morning, we skirted the eastern side of Nymburk and followed the river Mrlina northeast, the land slowly rising, with Poland over the horizon. Far ahead we could see the gentle crest of the Krkonoše Mountains. The terrain became more rumpled. The snow gave way to clear weather, the earth like frosting. Catherine announced that we had passed into the year 1806. Then we trotted by the villages of Dětenice, Dolní Bousov, Sobotka, and Troskovice.
From a high pasture, we saw our goal curdled in mist.
“Trosky Castle,” Astiza said.
Two rock spires rose from the top of a wooded hill. Atop each outcrop was a stone watchtower. “One is called Baba and the other Panna, meaning ‘grandmother’ and ‘maiden,’ ” Astiza told us. “Crone and virgin.” Linking the two rock crags was a castle wall. “It was built by Čeněk of Wartenberg late in the fourteenth century and passed on to Ota of Bergov. The younger Ota, his son, plundered nearby Opatovice Monastery and by legend hid its treasure under the castle, never to be found. I think Christian Rosenkreutz came here.”
“You’re certain?” Catherine asked.
“No. But this castle’s peculiar shape fits the only clues I have. It burned shortly after Rosenkreutz would have arrived.”
It was the oddest edific
e I’d ever seen. The geology would have been strange enough, the twin rocks like gigantic fangs. To have each topped by additional towers gave the hill the fantastic silhouette of a horned god.
“You think this was built to mirror an Egyptian hieroglyph?” I murmured to my wife.
“No. But Rosenkreutz might have recognized the glyph and its astrological significance. What better resting and hiding place?”
“It’s a ruin. How could he and the automaton be hidden here and remain unfound?”
“Not everyone has the searching ability of Ethan Gage.” She squeezed my hand. “Books say there are hidden caverns here.”
“I’m done with caves. For all time.”
“And yet our path toward heaven requires sojourns in hell,” my wife said.
Chapter 32
Astiza
Ethan thought me merely calm in our new captivity, even resigned, but the truth was that I was secretly happy, a fact I preferred not to share with our captors. The wicked dwarf was dead, and we were ahead of Baron Richter. After months of captivity in a stinking chamber, fermenting our own urine, I breathed fresh air. My son had healed. My husband had returned. Given such victories, the threat represented by Catherine Marceau was real but manageable. We’d been forced to live with her in Paris, and I knew her too well. She was ambitious, vain, duplicitous, flirtatious, and more practical than cruel. She wanted to use us, not abuse us. Meanwhile, the idea of finally finding the tomb of Christian Rosenkreutz and the Brazen Head thrilled me. Nothing is more disquieting than straying from destiny’s path, and nothing is more satisfying than doing what should be done. After months of imprisonment, we were coming to an ending.
The horned castle of Trosky is a castle of ka, of soul. Once a medieval fortress, now a ruin, it wouldn’t reveal its nature to an ordinary visitor. But there was magic to someone like Rosenkreutz. To build one watchtower on a pinnacle is logical. To build two, less than a hundred yards apart, is a sign. The place is a magnet for tumult, and not just Baron Ota and his sacrilegious stolen treasure. The robber knight Sofa of Helfenburk captured the place in a night raid and made it a base for his depredations. Siege and counter-siege resulted in the castle passing to Zitava, Zajic, King George of Poděbrady, the Selmberks, the Bibrštejns, the Lobkowiczes, and the Valdštejns. The pinnacles rise from pools of blood.
We rode up the wooded hill, the old lane to the castle gate overgrown but discernible. Our horses were picketed in the bare trees below the masonry. It was late, the shadows long, the walls cracked and crumbling. When we walked inside the arched gate, their wooden doors long rotted away, there wasn’t much to see. Tilted stairs led to rectangular courtyards stretched between the twin monoliths of lava rock. The ramparts were weedy. Many of the stones were blackened by fire. All roofs were gone, and all shelter. I saw no sign of village children playing here, or animals denning. The place was forbidding.
The giant Pasques walked the ramparts, a pinnacle himself in the gloom. He said almost nothing on our journey, as is his habit. But now he descended to confer with Catherine.
“A fine place for a trap.” I noticed he leaned closer to the woman than he had to.
“Or a defense.” She was oblivious, or indifferent, to the policeman’s desire.
“If this is where the Brazen Head can be found,” Pasques said, “let’s come back with a regiment of agents and a cartload of picks and shovels. I don’t trust Gage by half, and I don’t trust his wife at all.”
“We’re in a race with the Invisible College. We don’t have time to seek reinforcements. And the witch is our only hope.” She turned to me. “A picturesque ruin, but little more than a burned-out shell. Are you trying to make fools of us?”
“Can’t you feel it, Comtesse?” I deliberately used the title with a mocking tone. Under the open sky, I felt my helplessness changing to power. “There are places in the world where spirit converges. This is one.”
“Does the convergence include an automaton?”
“So anxious you are! What will you ask it?”
Catherine smiled. “When I shall prevail.”
“But if you possess it, you have prevailed, have you not?”
“I have other desires as well.” She glanced at my husband, enjoying her ability to provoke him—and me.
“As do I,” I said calmly, knowing it is my calm that provokes her. “You must help search for the Brazen Head with purity of heart and mind. Where should we look, Comtesse?”
“Under this rubble heap, obviously.”
“Yes.” I stamped my foot. “Perhaps there are caves. Let’s fan out to look for them.”
But a half hour’s search revealed no entrances, which surprised no one. There were only abandoned pits left by peasants seeking monastery treasure. If it were that easy, the android would have been looted long ago. “Let’s look from the watchtower.” I pointed to Baba.
“You look for a cave from a tower?” Pasques asked.
“As above, so below, the astrologers say.”
The Baba pinnacle was sheer, dark, and rough. Nothing but lichen grew on it. Its wooden stairs had burned or rotted, so Ethan and I climbed like goats while the others watched from below, Harry kept hostage. At the top was a square tower with room for not much more than the two of us, overseeing a panorama of wintry fields and woods. Ethan brought the old sword and we probed the basalt floor, but it was solid rock. I was puzzled. I felt we were in the right place, but it seemed bald of clues.
“Let’s try Panna,” I said.
This lava outcrop was fatter and not quite as steep, although still lofty. Here the watchtower’s wooden roof had burned away, leaving a room that was an open shell. The floor, however, was stone instead of bare rock. Our tapping yielded nothing.
“They’ll be angry if we led them to the wrong place, Astiza.”
“And not just them.” I pointed. I’d looked out over the countryside again. Miles away, the setting winter sun etched a line of black-clad horsemen galloping toward our strange outcrop. They were dressed in black, riding single file.
“It’s Richter,” Ethan surmised. “He’s gotten out of the mines and followed us. Look, one has peeled off, maybe to flank us.” My husband studied their approach and then gave that wry grin of determination I’d fallen in love with. “Which is worse?”
“Catherine is greedy,” I said, “but Fulcanelli is evil.”
“Fulcanelli?”
“His church name, an imposture I allowed myself to be seduced by.” I immediately regretted the choice of word.
His smile tightened. “Seduced? What kind of relationship did you have before Richter was burned?”
I flushed, heart hammering. Could I honestly answer that question even to myself? Before Fulcanelli used me, I was using him. “What kind of relationship did you have with Catherine?” I countered evasively.
A long moment, too long, ticked between us.
“What do you see?” Pasques shouted up at us from below, sounding impatient. It was a welcome interruption.
“Baron Richter is coming!” Ethan shouted down. He turned to me. “Maybe they’ll fight it out between them.”
“Or combine to torment us. Best to disappear, as Richter’s henchmen seem to do. But how, how?” I paced the floor. “Truth is usually obvious once you see it.”
Ethan studied where I was walking. “The stonework has a pattern,” he suddenly said.
The light was poor and the floor filthy, but I scolded myself for not spying it before. I knelt to sweep with my sleeves. “It’s laid in the pattern of a rose.”
As we hurriedly cleaned, the picture the joints made became more evident. “A lot of bother for a military watchtower.”
“But not for a tomb entrance, Ethan.” The rose mosaic of large flagstones lay in a circle made by an incision in the rock.
“A rose for Rosenkreutz. But what else?”
The messages of mystics can be as elusive as a forgotten song and as blunt as a blow. “This tower has the name Virgin,”
I said. “One of many meanings for the rose has been its association with a woman’s portal.”
“Portal?”
“The opening between her legs. Poets have alluded to roses.”
“Ah.” My husband was uncharacteristically silent for a moment. Then: “I remember such a line from one of Catherine’s romance novels. Just took a peek, you understand. So this is a door?”
“I hope.”
“How does it open? I mean, we’ve had some experience, but . . .”
I thought furiously and finally guessed again, because we had no time to waste. I called down. “Pasques, Marceau! Bring wood for torches and more faggots besides! Bring Horus! Hurry!”
“What’s your plan, lovely wife?”
“What opens a rose in nature, Ethan?”
“Well, sunlight.”
“And its heat. I want to see if fire has any effect.”
“But the castle has already burned.”
“Precisely. And why did it burn shortly after Rosenkreutz came here? Was someone seeking entry but didn’t know exactly where? And did the fire burn directly against this floor? The roof is burned away.” I leaned out again. “I may have found something.” And then, “No, not yet!”
Pasques had lit his torch before starting up. The flame could be seen for miles.
Richter’s men would hurry.
Chapter 33
Is your wife mad?” Catherine asked me as Astiza fed a ring of fire around the periphery of the tower.
“Eccentric,” I said, wondering myself. “Smarter than you or me.” Astiza had built a ring of fire on the stone rose, and now smoke and sparks rolled skyward, leaving us slow-roasted on one side and chilled on the other. It was a signal seen for miles, a beacon to anyone approaching.
My wife wiped her brow and addressed our dubious looks. “Heat causes metal to expand. Hot water can be used to crack stones in quarries. Rosenkreutz would recognize fire as one of the elements. Earth, fire, water, and air, all working together.”
“If it doesn’t open, the Invisible College will besiege us up here,” Pasques said.
“We’ll drop you on the baron like a boulder,” I suggested.
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