Talma had told me that Bonaparte feared hostile newspapers more than bayonets. But what no one knew was that Napoleon had the book, and that Silano once again had the full code to read it. So much for bargaining with Josephine, the scheming slut. That woman could seduce the pope, and reduce him to beggary in the process.
When I asked Boniface about the Knight Templars who’d built this place, it was like turning the handle on a pump. Facts and theories gushed out. “Jacques de Molay himself was grand master here and then tortured! There are ghosts here, young people, ghosts I’ve heard shrieking in winter storms. The Templars were burned and beaten until they admitted to the worst kinds of abominations and devil worship, and then they were sent to the stake. Yet where was their treasure? The rooms you’re confined in were supposed to be stuffed, yet when the French king arrived to pillage them, they were empty. And where was the rumored source of Templar power? De Molay would say nothing, except when he went to the stake. Then he prophesized king and pope would be dead within the year. Oh, the shiver in the crowd when he prophesized that! And it was true! These Templars were not just warrior-monks, my friend, they were magicians. They’d found something in Jerusalem that gave them strange powers.”
“Imagine if such power could be rediscovered,” Astiza murmured.
“A man like Bonaparte would seize the state in an instant. Then we’ll see things change, let me tell you, for better and worse.”
“Is that when our trial will be?”
“No. That’s when you’ll be guillotined.” He gave a Gallic shrug.
Our jailer was eager to hear our adventures, which we cautiously edited. Had we been inside the Great Pyramid? Oh yes. Nothing to see.
And Jerusalem’s Temple Mount?
A Muslim holy site now, with Christian access prohibited.
What about rumors of lost cities in the desert?
If they are lost, how could we find them?
The ancients could not raise their great monuments without colossal secrets, Boniface insisted. Magic had been lost with the priests of yore. Ours was a pale modern age, stripped of wonder, mechanical and cynical. Science was subduing mystery, and rationalism was trampling wonder. Nothing like Egypt!
“Yet what if it were found again?” I hinted.
“You know something, don’t you, American? No, don’t shake your head! You know something, and I, Boniface, am going to get it out of you!”
On October 26, our jailer brought electrifying news. Lucien Bonaparte, age twenty-four, had just been elected president of the Council of Five Hundred!
I knew Lucien had been working on his brother’s behalf in Paris long before Napoleon left Egypt. He was a gifted politician. But president of France’s most powerful chamber? “I thought you had to be thirty years old to hold that post?”
“That’s why Paris is buzzing! He lied of course—had to, in order to comply with the Constitution—but everyone knows the lie. Yet they elected him anyway! This is Napoleon’s doing, somehow. The deputies are frightened, or bewitched.”
More intriguing news followed. Napoleon Bonaparte, who’d been snubbed by the Directory, now was to have a banquet in his honor.
Was public opinion turning? Had the general been wooing the city’s politicians to his side?
On November 9, 1799—18 Brumaire on the new revolutionary calendar—Boniface came to us goggle-eyed. The man was a walking newspaper. “I don’t believe it!” he exclaimed. “It’s as if our legislators are under the spell of Mesmer! At half past four this morning, the Council of Ancients was roused out of bed and sleepily assembled in the horse ring of the Tuileries, where they voted to remove themselves outside the city to the estate of Saint-Cloud to deliberate there. The decision is insane: it separates them from support of the mob. They did this willingly, and the Five Hundred will follow them! All is confusion and speculation. But more than that has Paris holding its breath.”
“What?”
“Napoleon has been given command of the city’s garrison, with General Moreau removed! Now troops are moving to Saint-Cloud. Others are manning barricades. Bayonets are everywhere.”
“Command of the garrison? That’s ten thousand men. The army of Paris was what kept everyone, including Bonaparte, in check.”
“Exactly. Why would the chambers allow this? Something odd is going on, something that leads them to vote the opposite of what they asserted just hours or days before. What could it be?”
I knew what, of course. Silano had made progress translating the Book of Thoth. Spells were being said and woven, and minds were being clouded. Bewitched indeed! The entire city was being entranced.
Astiza and I looked at each other. There was no time to waste. “Mysteries of the East,” I said suddenly.
“What?”
“Jailer, have you ever heard of the Book of Thoth?” Astiza asked.
Boniface looked surprised. “But of course. All students of the past have heard of the Thrice Great, ancestor of Solomon, originator of all knowledge, the Way and the Word.” His voice had shrunk to a whisper. “Some say Thoth created an earthly paradise we’ve forgotten how to maintain, but others say that he’s the dark archangel himself, in a thousand guises: Baal, Beelzebub, Bahomet!”
“The book has been lost for thousands of years, has it not?”
Now he looked sly. “Perhaps. There are rumors the Templars …”
“Jacques Boniface, the rumors are true,” I said, standing from the rude table where we shared a jug of cheap wine, my voice deepening.
“What charges are filed against Astiza and me?”
“Charges? Why none. We don’t need charges to hold you in Temple Prison.”
“Yet don’t you wonder why Bonaparte has confined us here? You can see for yourself we’re friendless and helpless. Confined us but not yet killed us, in case we may be useful yet. What is an odd pair like us doing in Paris at all, and what do we know that is so dangerous to the state?”
He looked at us warily. “I have wondered these things, yes.”
“Perhaps—allow the possibility, Boniface—we know of treasure. The greatest on earth.” I leaned forward across the table.
“Treasure?” It was a squeak.
“Of the Knights Templar, hidden since that Friday the thirteenth, 1309, when they were arrested and tortured by the mad king of France. Keeper of this keep, you are as trapped as us. How long do you want to be here?”
“As long as my masters …”
“Because you could be master yourself, Boniface. Master of Thoth. You and we, who are the true students of the past. We wouldn’t give sacred secrets to ambitious tyrants like Bonaparte, as Count Alessandro Silano is doing. We’d reserve them for all mankind, would we not?”
He scratched his head. “I suppose so.”
“But to do so we must move, and quickly. Tonight is Napoleon’s coup, I think. And it depends on who holds a book that was once lost, now recovered. The Templars hid their wealth all right, in a place they reasoned no man would ever dare look,” I lied.
“Where?” He was holding his breath.
“Under the Temple of Reason, built on the Isle de la Cite exactly where the ancient Romans built their temple to Isis, goddess of Egypt. But only the book will tell us exactly where it is.”
His eyes goggled. “Notre Dame?” Poverty will make you believe anything, and a jailer’s wage is criminal.
“You’ll need a pick and courage, Monsieur Boniface. The courage to become the richest, most powerful man in the world! But only if you are willing to dig! And only one man can lead us to the precise spot! Silano lives only for his own greed, and we must capture him and do what’s right, for Freemasonry, Templar lore, and the mysteries of the ancients! Are you with me?”
“Will it be dangerous?”
“Just get us to Silano’s chambers and then you can hide in the crypts of Notre Dame while we decipher the secret. Then together we’ll change history!”
In calmer times I might not have persuaded him. But
with Paris on the edge of a coup, troops erecting barricades, legislative assemblies panicking, generals crowding in glittering array into Napoleon’s house, and the city dark and apprehensive, anything could happen.
More importantly, the Catholic priesthood had been shut down by the revolution and Notre Dame had become a grand ghost, used only by devout old women and swept out by the poor for welfare. Our jailer could get into its crypts easily enough. While Bonaparte was addressing thousands of men in the garden of the Tuileries, Boniface was assembling trenching tools.
To let us out was a blatant violation of the responsibilities of his office, of course. Yet I warned him he’d never find the book, or read it, without us. That he’d spend the rest of his days as jailer of Temple Prison, gossiping with the condemned instead of inheriting the wealth and power of the Knight Templars. That evening Boniface reported that Bonaparte had stormed into the Council of the Ancients when they balked at his demands to disband the Directory and appoint him first consul. His speech had been volcanic and nonsensical, by all accounts, so much so that his own aides pulled him away. He was shouting gibberish! All seemed lost. And yet the deputies did not order his arrest or refuse to meet. They instead seemed inclined to meet his demands. Why? That evening, after Napoleon’s mesmerized troops had cleared Saint-Cloud’s Orangerie of the Council of Five Hundred, some of the deputies leaping from windows to get away, the Ancients passed a new decree dictating that a “temporary executive committee” led by Bonaparte had replaced the nation’s Directory.
“All seemed lost to his plotters a dozen times, and yet men wilted before his will,” our jailer said. “Now some deputies from the Five Hundred are being rounded up to do the same. The conspirators will take the oath of office after midnight!”
Later, men said it was all bluff, bayonet, and panic. But I wondered if that gibberish included words of power that hadn’t been spoken for nearly five thousand years, words from an ancient book that had been buried in a City of Ghosts with a Knight Templar. I wondered if the Book of Thoth was already in motion. If its spells still had power, then Napoleon, new master of the most powerful nation on earth, would soon master the planet—and with him Silano’s Egyptian Rite.
A new rule of occult megalomaniacs would commence, and instead of a new dawn, a long darkness would fall upon human history.
We had to act.
“Have you discovered where Alessandro Silano is?”
“He’s conducting experiments in the Tuileries, under Bonaparte’s protection. But word is that he is away tonight, aiding the conspirators in their takeover of the government. Fortunately, most of the troops have marched to Saint-Cloud. There are a few guards at the Tuileries, but the old palace is largely empty. You can go to Silano’s chambers and get your book.” He looked at us. “You are certain he has the secret? If we fail, it could mean the guillotine!”
“Once you have the book and treasure, Boniface, you will control the guillotine—and everything else.”
He nodded uncertainly, the stains from his last half-dozen suppers a mottled scramble on his shirt. “It’s just that this is risky. I’m not sure it’s the right thing.”
“All great things are difficult, or they would not be great!” It sounded like something Bonaparte would say, and Frenchmen love that kind of talk. “Get us to Silano’s chambers and we’ll take the risk while you go ahead to Notre Dame.”
“But I am your jailer! I can’t leave you by yourself!”
“You think sharing the world’s greatest treasure won’t bind us more tightly than the strongest chain? Trust me, Boniface—you won’t be able to get away from us.”
Our route through Paris was a mile and a half, and we went on foot instead of coach so that we could skirt the military checkpoints erected in the city. Paris seemed to be holding its breath. There were few lights, and those people on the streets were clustered, trading rumors of the attempted coup. Bonaparte was king. Bonaparte had been arrested. Bonaparte was at Saint-Cloud, or the Luxembourg Palace, or even Versailles. The deputies would rally the mob. The deputies had rallied to Bonaparte. The deputies had fled. It was a paralyzed chatter.
We passed city hall to the north bank of the Seine, and theaters dark instead of lively. I had fond memories of their lobbies crowded with courtesans, courting business. Then we followed the river westward past the Louvre. The great spires and buttresses of the cathedrals on the Isle de la Cite rose against a gray sky, illuminated by a shrouded moon. “That is where you must prepare the way for us,” I said, pointing toward Notre Dame. “We’ll come with the book and a captured Silano.”
He nodded. We ducked into a doorway while a company of cavalry clattered by.
Once I thought I sensed a figure following us and whirled, but it was only to catch a skirt disappearing into a doorway. Again, a flash of red hair. Had I imagined her? I wished I had my rifle, or any weapon, but if we were stopped with a gun we might be jailed. Firearms were prohibited in the city. “Did you see a strange woman?” I asked Astiza.
“Everyone in Paris looks strange to me.”
We passed by the Louvre, the river dark and molten, and at the Tuileries Gardens turned and followed the great facade of the Tuileries Palace, ordered by Catherine de Medici two centuries before.
Like many European palaces it was a great pile of a place, eight times too large for any sensible need, and moreover had been largely abandoned after the construction of Versailles. Poor King Louis and Marie Antoinette had been forced to move back to it during the revolution, and then the edifice had been stormed by the mob and left a wreck ever since. It still had the air of ghostly abandon. Boniface had a police pass to get us by one bored, sleepy sentry at a side door, explaining we had urgent business. Who didn’t these fretful days?
“I wouldn’t take the woman up there,” the soldier advised, giving Astiza a gander. “No one does anymore. It’s guarded by a spirit.”
“A spirit?” Boniface asked, paling.
“Men have heard things in the night.”
“You mean the count?”
“Something moves up there when he’s gone.” He grinned, his teeth yellow. “You can leave the lady with me.”
“I like ghosts,” Astiza replied.
We climbed the stairs to the first floor. The architectural opulence of the Tuileries was still there: vast halls opening one to another in a long chain, intricately carved barrel ceilings, mosaic-like hardwood floors, and fireplace mantles with enough gewgaws to decorate half of Philadelphia. Our footsteps echoed. But the paint was dirty, the paper was peeling, and the floor had been cracked and ruined by a cannon the mob dragged through here to confront Louis XVI back in 1792. Some of the grand windows were still boarded up from being broken. Most of the art had disappeared.
On we went, room after room, like a place seen endlessly through mirrors reflecting each other. At last our jailer stopped before a door.
“These are Silano’s chambers,” Boniface said. “He doesn’t allow the sentries to come near. We must hurry, because he could return at any time.” He looked around. “Where is this ghost?”
“In your imagination,” I replied.
“But something keeps the curious away.”
“Yes. Credulity for silly stories.”
The door lock was easily picked: our jailer had had plenty of time to learn how from the criminals he housed.
“Fine work,” I told him. “You’re just the man to penetrate the crypts. We’ll meet you there.”
“You think me a fool? I’m not leaving you until I’m sure this count really has anything worth finding. So long as we hurry.” He looked over his shoulder.
So we passed together through an anteroom and into a larger, shadowy chamber and then stopped, uncertain. Silano had been busy.
Catching the eye first was a central table. A dead dog lay on it, lips curled in a snarl of frozen pain, its fur daubed with paint or shorn bare.
Pins tied together with filaments of metal jutted from the carcass.
“An experiment, I think,” replied Astiza. “Silano is toying with resurrection.”
Our jailer crossed himself.
The shelves were jammed with books and scrolls Silano must have shipped from Egypt. There were also scores of preservative jars, their liquid yellow like bile, filled with organisms: saucer-eyed fish, ropey eels, birds with beaks tucked in their wet plumage, floating mammals, and parts of things I couldn’t entirely identify. There were baby limbs and adult organs, brains and tongues, and in one—like marbles or olives—a container of eyes that looked disturbingly human. There was a shelf of human skulls, and an assembled skeleton of some large creature I couldn’t even name. Stuffed and mummified rodents and birds watched us from the shadows with eyes of glass.
Near the door a pentagram had been painted on the floor, inscribed with odd symbols from the book. Parchment and plaques with odd symbols hung on the walls, along with old maps and diagrams of the pyramids. I spied the kabbalah pattern we’d seen beneath Jerusalem, and other jumbles of numbers, lines, and symbols from arcane sources, like a backward, twisted cross. All was illuminated by low-burning candles: Silano had been gone for some time, but obviously expected to be back. On a second table was an ocean of paper, covered with the characters from the Book of Thoth and Silano’s attempts at French translation. Half was crossed out and spattered with dots of ink. Additional vials held noxious liquids, and there were tin boxes with heaps of chemical powder. The room had a weird smell of ink, preservative, powdered metal, and some underlying rot.
“This is an evil place,” Boniface muttered. He looked as if he’d made a pact with the devil.
“That is why we must get the book from Silano,” Astiza said.
“Leave now if you’re afraid,” I urged.
“No. I want to see this book.”
The floor was mostly covered with a grand wool carpet, stained and torn but no doubt left by the Bourbons. It ended at a balcony that overlooked a dark space. Below was a ground floor, paved with stone, that had large double doors leading outside like a barn. A coach and three carts were jammed into it, the carts heaped with boxes. So Silano was still unpacking. A wooden stair led to where we were, explaining why this particular apartment had been chosen. It was convenient for shipping things in and out.
The Rosetta Key Page 33