The Rosetta Key

by William Dietrich

  Like a wooden sarcophagus.

  The coffin from Rosetta had been lost in the shadows but I saw it now, leaning upright against the wall. The tracery of ancient decoration was gray in the dim light, but familiar. Yet there was something oddly forbidding about the case.

  “It’s the mummy,” I said. “I’ll bet the count has spread word. This is the spirit the sentry was talking about, the thing that keeps men from snooping in this room.”

  “A dead man is in there?”

  “Thousands of years dead, Boniface. Take a look. We’ll all be like that, someday.”

  “Open it? No! The guard said it comes alive!”

  “Not without the book, I’ll guess, and we don’t have that yet. The key to the fortune under Notre Dame might be in that sarcophagus. You’ve sent men to execution, jailer. You’re afraid of a wood box?”

  “A casket.”

  “Which Silano brought all the way from Egypt without trouble.”

  So the goaded jailer screwed up his courage, marched over, and swung the lid open. And Omar, guardian mummy, face almost black, sockets eyeless and closed, teeth grimacing, slowly leaned out and fell into his arms.

  Boniface shrieked. Linen wrappings flapped by his face and musty dust puffed into his eyes. He dropped Omar as if the mummy was on fire. “It’s alive!”

  The trouble with miserly pay for public servants is that you don’t get the best.

  “Calm yourself, Boniface,” I said. “He’s dead as a sausage, and he’s been dead for several thousand years. See? We call him Omar.”

  The jailer crossed himself again, despite the Jacobin animosity to religion. “This is a mistake, what we’re doing. We’ll be damned for it.”

  “Only if we lose our courage. Listen, the hour grows late. How much risk can you tolerate? Go to the church, pick its locks, and hide our tools. Hide, and wait for us.”

  “But when will you come?”

  “As soon as we get the book and answers from the count. Start tapping on the crypt floors. There has to be a hollow somewhere.”

  He nodded, regaining some of his greed. “And you promise to come?”

  “I won’t be rich unless I do, will I?”

  That satisfied him and, to our relief, he fled. I hoped it was the last I’d ever see of him, since to my knowledge there wasn’t a scrap of treasure under Notre Dame and I had no intention of going there.

  Omar the mummy had done us a favor.

  I looked at the corpse warily. It would stay still, wouldn’t it?

  “We have to find the book fast,” I told Astiza. The trick was to finish before the count came back. “You take that side’s shelves, I’ll take this one.”

  We flew along the books, spilling them out, searching for the book somewhere behind. Here were volumes on alchemy, witchcraft, Zoro-aster, Mithras, Atlantis, and Ultima Thule. There were albums of Masonic imagery, sketches of Egyptian hieroglyphs, the hierarchy of the Knights Templar, and theories about Rosicrucians and the mystery of the Grail. Silano had treatises on electricity, longevity, aphro-disiacs, herbal cures, the origin of disease, and the age of the earth.

  His speculation was boundless, and yet we didn’t find what we were looking for.

  “Perhaps he takes it with him,” I guessed.

  “He wouldn’t dare do that, not on the streets of Paris. He’s hidden it where we wouldn’t think—or dare—to look.”

  Dare to look? At Rosetta, Omar had served as sentry. I considered the poor tumbled mummy, its eroded nose to the floor. Could it be?

  I rolled him over. There was a slit in its wrappings and his torso, I realized, was hollow, vital organs removed. Grimacing, I reached inside.

  And felt the slick, tightly wrapped scroll. Clever.

  “So the mouse has found the cheese,” said a voice from the doorway.

  I turned, dismayed we weren’t ready. It was Alessandro Silano, striding toward us erect and young, years flushed away, a drawn rapier flicking back and forth as he strode. His limp was gone and his look was murderous. “You’re a hard man to kill, Ethan Gage, so I’m not going to repeat the indulgent mistake I made in Egypt. While I wanted to dig up your mummified corpse and toast it in my future palace, I was also hoping I’d someday have this chance—to run both of you through, as I will right now.”

  CHAPTER 28

  A stiza and I were both weaponless. The woman, for lack of something better, picked up a skull.

  For little more reason than to hold what we’d come for, I scooped up Omar and his eternal grin, the Book of Thoth still inside. He was light and fragile. The bandages were like old paper, rough and crumbly.

  “It’s fitting that we’re back here in Paris where it all began, isn’t it?” the count said. His rapier was a lethal wand, twitching like the tongue of a snake. With his free hand he undid the cord at his neck to let his street cloak fall. “Have you ever wondered, Gage, how different your life would be if you’d simply sold the medallion to me that first night in Paris?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t have met Astiza and taken her away from you.”

  He gave her a quick glance, her arm cocked to throw the skull. “I’ll have her back to do with as I wish, soon enough.” So she hurled the bone. He knocked it away with the hilt of his rapier, his lips in a sneer, the skull making a loud clack as it fell. And he kept coming past the tables toward me.

  He looked younger, yes—the book had done something for him—but it was an odd youthfulness, I realized, as if he’d been stretched.

  His skin was tight and sallow, his eyes bright and yet shadowed by fatigue. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept for weeks. Who might never sleep again. And because of that, his eyes had a hint of madness.

  There was something terribly wrong with this scroll we’d found.

  “Your study smells like hell, Alessandro,” I said. “Which god are you apprentice to?”

  “It’s simply a preview of where you’re going, Gage. Right now!”

  And he thrust.

  So I held up my macabre shield. Omar was penetrated, but the mummy trapped the point. I felt guilty about putting the old boy through all this, but then he was past caring, wasn’t he? I shoved the mummy at Silano, twisting his wrist, but then his sword slipped entirely through the carcass and along my own side. Damn, that hurt!

  The rapier was like a razor.

  Silano cursed and swung with his free arm—he’d regained his old litheness—and struck me a blow, knocking me back and wrestling the Egyptian cadaver away from me. He staggered to one side, his sword still entangled, but he groped inside the body’s cavity and triumphantly pulled out the scroll. Now I had no shield at all. He held the book above his head, daring me to lunge so he could skewer me.

  Astiza had crouched, waiting for a chance.

  I looked around wildly. The wooden sarcophagus! It was already leaning upright, so I grabbed it and wrestled the unwieldy box around to protect me. Silano had his sword free now, poor Omar almost broken in two, and he thrust the scroll into his shirt and came at me once again. I parried with the casket, letting the sword stab through the old wood but twisting, now knocking him backward and snapping the rapier in two. He kicked at the coffin angrily, smashing the decrepit wood, and when it fell apart something wedged inside broke free.

  My rifle!

  I dove for it, but when I reached out the broken sword slashed across my knuckles like the bite of a snake, so painful I couldn’t get a grip on my gun. I rolled clear as Silano was kicking shattered wood aside to get at me. Now he’d produced a pistol, his face twisted with rage and loathing. I threw myself back against the shelves just as the gun went off, feeling the wind of the bullet as it sped past. It hit one of his noxious glass jars at the end of the room and the vessel shattered. Liquid splashed onto the floor by the balcony and something hideous and pale went skittering. A poisonous smell arose, a stench of combustible fumes, to mix with the smell of gunpowder.

  “Damn you!” He fumbled to reload.

  And then o
ld Ben came to my aid. “Energy and persistence conquer all,” I remembered again. Energy!

  Astiza was under the table, creeping toward Silano. I took off my coat and threw it at him for distraction, and then tore off my shirt.

  The count looked at me as if I were a lunatic, but I needed bare, dry skin. There’s nothing better for creating friction. I took two steps and dove forward toward the jar that had broken, hitting the wood carpet like a swimmer and skidding on my torso, gritting my teeth against the burn. Electricity, you see, is generated by friction, and the salt in our blood turns us into temporary batteries. As I slid to the end of the room, I had a charge.

  The broken jar had a metal base. As I slid I thrust out my arm and extended my finger like Michelangelo’s God reaching toward Adam.

  And when I came near, the energy I’d stored leapt, with a jolt, toward the metal.

  There was a spark, and the room exploded.

  The fumes of Silano’s witch’s brew became a fireball, shooting over my cringing body and ballooning toward the count, Astiza, and down toward the carts, coaches, and boxes below where the preservative had dripped. The puff of the blast threw the table’s papers up in a whirlwind, singeing some, while below me the storage area caught fire. I struggled up, my hair singed and both sides burning—one from the scrape of the sword and the other from my slide on the carpet—and eyed my rifle. There was preservative on my remaining clothes, and I swatted out a puff of flame on my breeches. A dim, smoky haze filled the room. Silano, I saw, had fallen, but now he too was struggling upward, looking dazed but groping again for his pistol. Then Astiza rose behind him and wrapped something around his neck.

  It was the linen wrapping from Omar!

  I crawled toward my gun.

  Silano, writhing, lifted her off her feet but she hung grimly on his back. As they clumsily danced the hideous mummy bounced with them, a bizarre menage a trois. I got to my gun and snapped a shot, but there was just a dry click.

  “Ethan, hurry!”

  The powder horn and shot bag were there, so I began to load, cursing a rifle’s laborious ramming for the first time.

  Measure, pour, wadding, ball. My hand was trembling. Astiza and Silano spun by me. The count was turning red from her choking but he had her hair and was twisting to get at her. Starter ram, now the hammering with the longer one … damn! The pair had crashed against the balcony railing, breaking part of it free. Fire rose below.

  The attached mummy continued its dance. The count twisted Astiza to his front, shielding himself as he eyed my rifle and struggled to lift his pistol clear. Smoke thickened against the ceiling. My one shot had to be perfect! He’d pulled the wrappings off his own throat and was tightening them on hers. He lifted his gun.

  I threw out the ramrod, put a pinch of powder in the pan, my barrel coming up, Silano firing but his aim spoiled by Astiza, whom he twisted to hurl into the flames, just enough to expose his neck as they strained …

  “He’s going to burn me!”

  I fired.

  The ball hit his throat.

  His scream was a bloody gargle. His eyes went wide in shock and pain.

  And then he smashed through the balcony railing and down into the flames below, taking my woman with him.

  “Astiza!”

  It was the plunge from the balloon all over again. She gave a cry and was gone.

  I ran to the end of the study and peered down, expecting to see her in flames. But no, the mummy had snagged on one of the broken balustrades, its rib cage and dried muscles still tight after millennia.

  Astiza was hanging by its linen wrappings, her feet kicking above the hot fire.

  Count Silano had disappeared into the holocaust, writhing on the makeshift pyre. The book was at his breast.

  To hell with the cursed book!

  I grasped the bandages, hauled, got her arm, and pulled her up. I wasn’t going to let her drop with Silano again! As I dragged her across the lip of the balcony Omar broke free and fell, turning into a torch as his linens caught the flames. He banged down to burn with his master. I looked. His broken limbs were moving, as in agony! Was he somehow still alive? Or was it a trick of the heat?

  He’d not been a curse but a savior. Thoth had smiled on us after all.

  And the book? As Silano’s clothes burned away, I could see the scroll curling on his dissolving chest. The flames were growing hotter as the count’s flesh bubbled, and I backed away.

  Astiza and I clung. There were church bells, shouts, a clatter of heavy wagons. The Paris fire brigade would be here soon. By the time they arrived, the secrets men had coveted for thousands of years would have turned to ash.

  “Can you walk?” I asked her. “We don’t have much time. We have to flee.”

  “The book!”

  “It’s gone with Silano.”

  She was weeping. For what, I wasn’t sure.

  Below, I heard the carriage doors being opened and water pumped.

  We slowly limped to the door we’d entered by, bloody and singed, stepping over a mess of glass, fluid, bone, books, and ruined papers.

  The hall was smoky. For a moment I hoped the fire would push any pursuers away until we could make our escape.

  But no, a platoon of sentries was pounding down the hall.

  “That’s him! That’s the one!” It was an annoyingly familiar voice I hadn’t heard for a year and a half. “He owes me rent!”

  Madame Durrell! My former landlady in Paris, who I fled in unseemly circumstances, had been the red-haired mystery woman who’d haunted the periphery of my vision since I’d returned to Paris.

  She’d never been a believer in my character and at our parting had accused me of attempted rape. I’d deny it, but really, all you had to do is look at her. The pyramids are younger than Madame Durrell, and in better shape, too.

  “Am I never to be free of you?” I groaned.

  “You will when you pay what you owe me!”

  “Creditors have better memories than debtors,” Ben liked to say.

  From experience, I knew he was right. “And you’ve been following me like one of Fouche’s secret policemen?”

  “I spied you in the prison wagon, where you belonged, but I knew you’d be out somehow, and up to no good! Oui, I kept an eye on Temple Prison, let me assure you! When I saw you enter the palace with that corrupt jailer I ran for help. Count Silano himself said he would confront you! Yet by the time I get back here the whole place is in flames!” She turned to the soldiers. “This is typical of the American. He lives like a wilderness savage. Try getting him to pay you!”

  I sighed. “Madame Durrell, I’m afraid I’ve lost everything once again. I cannot pay you, no matter how many policemen you have.”

  She squinted. “What about that gun there? Isn’t that the one you stole from my apartment, the one you tried to shoot me with?”

  “I did not steal it, it was mine, and I shot the lock, not at you. It’s not even the same …” But Astiza put her hand on my arm and I looked past my old landlady. Bonaparte was coming down the corridor with a cluster of generals and aides. His gray eyes were ice, his features stormy. The last time I’d seen him that angry was when he’d heard of Josephine’s infidelities and annihilated the Mamelukes at the Battle of the Pyramids.

  I braced for the worst. Bonaparte’s command of the language of the drill field was legendary. But, after glowering, he shook his head in grudging wonder. “I should have guessed. Have you indeed discovered the secret of immortality, Monsieur Gage?”

  “I’m just persistent.”

  “So you follow me for two thousand miles, set fire to a royal palace, and leave my firemen to find two bodies in the ashes?”

  “We were preventing worse things from happening, I assure you.”

  “General, he owes me rent!” Madame Durrell piped up.

  “I would prefer you refer to me as first consul, madame, a post to which I was elected at two o’clock this morning. And how much does he owe you?”

/>   We could see her calculating, wondering how far she dared inflate the true total. “One hundred livres,” she finally tried. When no one erupted at this absurdity, she added, “With fifty, for interest.”

  “Madame,” Napoleon said, “Were you the one who sounded the alarm?”

  Durrell puffed herself up. “I was.”

  “Then another fifty livres as a reward for that, as a gift from the government.” He turned. “Berthier, count out two hundred for this gallant woman.”

  “Yes, General. I mean Consul.”

  Madame Durrell beamed.

  “But you must never breathe a word of this to anyone,” Bonaparte lectured her. “What has gone on here tonight involves the security of France, and our nation’s fortunes rely on your discretion and courage. Can you handle such a burden, madame?”

  “For two hundred livres I can.”

  “Excellent. You are a true patriot.” His aide pulled her away to count out some money, and the new ruler of France turned back to me. “The bodies were burned beyond recognition. Can you identify them to me, Monsieur Gage?”

  “One is Count Silano. It seems we could not renew our partnership.”

  “I see.” He tapped his foot. “And the second?”

  “An old Egyptian friend named Omar. He saved our lives, I think.”

  Bonaparte sighed. “And the book?”

  “A victim of the same conflagration, I’m afraid.”

  “Was it? Search them.” And we were searched, roughly, but there was nothing to be found. A soldier confiscated my rifle yet again.

  “So you betrayed me to the end.” He peered up at the smoke beginning to dissipate, frowning like a landlord at a leak. “Well, I have no need of the book any longer, given that I have France. You should watch what I do with her.”