The Rosetta Key (40 page)

So we crept to a magistrate’s house, “borrowed” his coach and team, and were on our way to Paris. I was awed by the lush green-gold of the countryside after Egypt and Syria. The last grapes hung round and fat. The fields were pregnant with yellow haystacks. Lingering fruit gave the air a ripe, fermented scent. Wagons groaning with autumn produce pulled aside as Stefan’s men cried commands and cracked the whip as if we were really republican deputies of importance. Even the farm girls looked succulent, seeming half-dressed after the robes of the desert, their breasts like melons, their hips a merry bushel, their calves stained with wine juice. Their lips were red and full from sucking on plums.

“Isn’t it beautiful, Astiza?”

She was more troubled by the cloudy skies, the turning leaves, and trees that formed unruly arbors over the highways.

“I can’t see,” she replied.

Several times we passed through towns with sagging decorations of tricolor bunting, dried flower petals on the roads, and wine bottles discarded in ditches. Each was evidence of Napoleon’s passing.

“The little general?” an innkeeper remembered. “A rooster of a man!”

“Handsome as the devil,” his wife added. “Black lock of hair, fierce gray eyes. They say he conquered half of Asia!”

“The treasure of the ancients is coming right after him, they say!”

“And his brave men!”

W
e drove well into the night and rose before dawn, but Paris is a multiday journey. As we went north; the sky grew grayer and the season advanced. Our coach blew the highway’s carpet of leaves into a rooster tail. Our horses steamed when we stopped for water. And so we were clattering onward in the dusk of the fourth day, Paris just hours ahead, when suddenly another fine team and coach burst out of a lane to our left and swerved right in front of us. Horses screamed and crashed, the teams dragging each other down. Our own coach tilted, balanced on two wheels, and then slid into a ditch and slowly went over. Astiza and I tumbled to one side in the coach. The gypsies leapt clear.

“Imbeciles!” a woman shouted. “My husband could have you shot!”

We shakily climbed out of the wreck. Our coach’s front axel was broken, as were the legs of two of our screaming horses. Cavalry who were escorting whomever we’d collided with had dismounted and were moving forward with pistols to dispatch the injured horses and disentangle the others. Shouting at us from the window of her own coach was an impressively fashionable woman — her clothes would beggar a banker — with a frantic look. She had the hauteur of a Parisian, but I didn’t immediately recognize her. I was an American, illegally back in France, still wanted for murder as far as I knew, who had not even obeyed the forty-day quarantine imposed on those traveling from the East. (Neither had Bonaparte.) Now there were soldiers and questions, even though her coach was in the wrong. I had a feeling being in the right wouldn’t matter much here.

“My business is of paramount importance for the state!” the woman shouted in panic. “Get your animals away from mine!”

“
You
pulled out in front of
us
!” Astiza replied, her accent plain.

“You are as rude as you are incompetent!”

“Wait,” I cautioned. “She has soldiers.”

Too late. “And you are as impertinent as you are clumsy!” the woman shrieked. “Do you know who I am? I could have you arrested!”

I went forward to head off a cat fight by making a bogus offer of later payment, just to get the harridan on her way. Our gypsies had wisely melted into the trees. Two pistol shots rang out, silencing the worst screams of the horses, and then the cavalrymen turned to us, hands on the hilts of their swords.

“Please, madame, it was just a simple accident,” I said, smiling with my usual affable charm. “A moment more and you’ll be on your way. And you’re heading to?”

“My husband, if I can find him! Oh, this is disaster! We took the wrong turn and I missed him on the highway, and now his brothers will get to him first and tell their lies about me. If you’ve delayed me too much, you’ll answer for it!”

I thought the guillotine had thinned out this kind of arrogance, but apparently it hadn’t gotten them all. “But Paris is that way,” I pointed.

“I wanted to meet him! But he’s got past us and we were taking this lane to swing back. Now he’ll already be home, and I not being there will confirm the worst!”

“What worst?”

“That I’m unfaithful!” And she burst into tears.

It was then that I recognized her features, somewhat famous in the Parisian social circles at whose fringes I’d moved. This was none other than Josephine, Napoleon’s wife! What the devil was she doing on a dark road with night falling? And of course tears brought sympathy. I am nothing if not gallant, and weeping will disarm any gentleman.

“It’s Bonaparte’s wife,” I whispered to Astiza. “When he heard she was an adulteress, on the eve of the Battle of the Pyramids, he nearly went insane.”

“Is that why she’s frightened?”

“We know how mercurial he is. He might put her in front of a firing squad.”

Astiza considered, then moved swiftly to the coach door. “Lady, we know your husband.”

“What?” She was a small woman, I now assessed, slim and finely dressed, neither homely nor particularly beautiful, her skin warm, her nose straight, her lips full, her eyes attractively wide and dark and, even in their desperation, intelligent. She had dark hair and finely sculpted ears, but her complexion was blotchy from crying. “How could you know him?”

“We served with Bonaparte in Egypt. We’re hurrying ourselves, to warn him of terrible danger.”

“You
do
know him! What danger? An assassination?”

“That a companion, Alessandro Silano, plans to betray him.”

“Count Silano? He’s coming with my husband, I heard. He’s supposed to be a confidant and adviser.”

“He’s bewitched Napoleon, and has tried to turn him against you. But we can help. You’re attempting to reconcile?”

She bowed her head, eyes wet. “It’s been such a surprise. We had no warning he was coming. I rushed from my dearest friend to meet him. But these idiots took a wrong turn.” She leaned out the carriage window and gripped Astiza’s arms. “You must tell him that despite everything, I still love him! If he divorces me, I lose everything! My children will be penniless! Is it my fault he goes away for months and years?”

“Then the gods have arranged this accident, don’t you think?” Astiza said.

“The gods?”

I drew my companion back. “What are you doing?” I hissed.

“Here is our key to Bonaparte!” Astiza whispered. “He’ll be surrounded by soldiers. How else are we going to get to him save through his wife? She’s not faithful to him or anything else, which means she’ll ally with anyone who suits her purpose. That means we have to enlist Josephine on our side. She can find out where the scroll is when she beds him, when men lose what little wits they have. Then we steal it back!”

“What are you whispering about?” Josephine called.

Astiza smiled. “Please, lady, our own carriage is ruined but it’s imperative we reach your husband. I think we can help each other. If you’d let us ride with you we can help you reconcile.”

“How?”

“My companion is a wise Freemason. We know the key to a sacred book that could give Napoleon great power.”

“Freemason?” She squinted at me. “Abbot Barruel in his famed book said they were behind the revolution. The Jacobins were all a Masonic plot. But the
Journal of Free Men
says the Masons are actually Royalists, plotting to bring back the king. Which are you?”

“I see the future in your husband, lady,” I lied.

Josephine looked intrigued, and calculating. “Sacred book?”

“From Egypt,” Astiza said. “If we ride we can be in Paris by dawn.”

Somewhat surprisingly, she assented. She was so rattled by Napoleon’s reappearance and his undoubted fury at her adulterous ways that she was eager for any help, no matter how improbable. So we left our own stolen coach a wreck, half its horses shot, our gypsies hiding, and took hers to Paris.

“Now. You must tell me what you know or I will throw you out,” she warned.

We had to gamble. “I found a book that conveys great powers,” I began.

“What kind of powers?”

“The power to persuade. To enchant. To live unnaturally long, perhaps forever. To manipulate objects.”

Her eyes were wide and greedy.

“Count Silano has stolen this book and fastened onto Bonaparte like a leech, draining his mind. But the book hasn’t been translated. Only we can do so. If his wife was to offer the key, on the understanding that Silano must be displaced, then you’d get your marriage back. I’m proposing an alliance. With our secret, you can get into your husband’s bedchamber. With your influence, we can get back our book, dispose of Silano, and help Napoleon.”

She was wary. “What key?”

“To a strange, ancient language, long lost.” Astiza turned on Josephine’s coach seat and I gently unlaced the back of her dress. The fabric parted, revealing the intricate alphabet in henna.

The Frenchwoman gasped. “It looks like Satan’s writing!”

“Or God’s.”

Josephine considered. “Who cares whose it is, if we win?”

Was Thoth finally smiling on us? We raced toward Bonaparte’s house on the newly renamed Rue de la Victoire, a tribute to his victories in Italy. And, with no plan, no confederates, and no weapons, we drew this ambitious social climber into our confidence.

What did I know about Josephine? The kind of gossip Paris thrived on. She grew up on the island of Martinique, was half a dozen years older than Napoleon, two inches shorter, and a tenacious survivor. She’d married a rich young army officer, Alexandre de Beauharnais, but he was so embarrassed by her provincial manners that he refused to present her to the court of Marie Antoinette. She separated from him, returned to the Caribbean, fled a slave revolt there to return to Paris at the height of the revolution, lost her husband to the guillotine in 1794, and then was imprisoned herself. Only the coup that ended the Terror saved her head. When a young army officer named Bonaparte called to compliment her on the conduct of her son Eugene, who had asked for help in retrieving the sword of his executed father, she seduced him. In desperation she gambled on this rising Corsican and married him, but then slept with everyone in sight while he was in Italy and Egypt. Some whispered she was a nymphomaniac. She’d been living with a former officer named Hippolyte Charles, now a businessman, when the alarming news arrived of her husband’s return. With the revolution having allowed divorce, she was now in danger of losing everything at the very moment Bonaparte was seeking ultimate power. At thirty-six, with discoloring teeth, she might not have another chance.

Her eyes widened at Astiza’s explanation of supernatural powers. A child of the Sugar Isles, tales of magic weren’t alien to her.

“This book can destroy men who possess it,” Astiza said, “and wreck nations in which it is unleashed. The ancients knew this and hid it away, but Count Silano has tempted fate by stealing it. He’s bewitched your husband with dreams of unlimited power. It could drive Napoleon mad. You must help us get it back.”

“But how?”

“We’ll safeguard the book if you give it to us. Your knowledge of it will give you tremendous influence over him.”

“But who are you?”

“My name is Astiza and this is Ethan Gage, an American.”

“Gage? The electrician? Franklin’s man?”

“Madame, I am honored to make your acquaintance and flattered that you have heard of me.” I took her hand. “I hope we can be allies.”

She snatched it away. “But you are a murderer!” She looked at me doubtfully. “Of a cheap adventuress! Aren’t you?”

“A perfect example of Silano’s lies, the kind that can entrap your husband and ruin his dreams. I was the victim of an unjust accusation. Let us help get this kind of poison away from your husband, and your married bliss will return to normal.”

“Yes. It is Silano’s fault, not mine. This book contains terrible power, you say?”

“The kind that can enslave souls.”

She thought carefully. Finally she sat back and smiled. “You’re right. God is looking out for me.”

T
he Bonaparte house, bought by Josephine before they were married, was in the fashionable part of Paris known as Chaussée d’Antin, a once-marshy area where the rich had built charming homes called “follies” over the past century. It was a modest two-story abode with a rose garden at the end of its bloom and a terrace that Josephine had covered with a wooden roof and hung with flags and tapestries: a respectable home for striving, midlevel functionaries. Her carriage pulled into a gravel drive under linden trees and she got out, nervous and flustered, plucking at her cheeks. “How do I look?”

“Like a woman with a secret,” Astiza assured her. “In control.”

Josephine smiled wanly and took a breath. Then we entered.

The rooms were a curious mix of feminine and masculine, with rich wallpaper and lacy curtains but hung with maps and plans of cities. There were the mistress’s flowers, and the master’s books, heaps of them, some just unpacked from Egypt. Her neatness was apparent, even as his boots were discarded in the dining room and his greatcoat thrown over one chair. A staircase led upward.

“He is in his bedchamber,” she whispered.

“Go to him.”

“His brothers will have told him everything. He will hate me! I am a wicked, unfaithful woman. I can’t help it. I love love so. I thought he would be killed!”

“You are human, as is he,” I soothed. “He’s not a saint either, trust me. Go, ask forgiveness, and tell him you’ve been busy recruiting allies. Explain how you’ve persuaded us to help him, that his future depends on the three of us.”

I didn’t trust Josephine, but what other weapon did we have? I was worried that Silano might be lurking about. Summoning her courage, she mounted the twenty steps to the floor above, tapping on his door. “My sweet general?”

It was quiet for a while, and then we heard pounding, and then weeping, and then sob-wracked pleas for forgiveness. Bonaparte, it seemed, had locked the door. He was determined for divorce. We could hear his wife pleading through the wood. Then the shouting quieted and there was quieter talk, and once I thought I heard the click of a lock being turned. Then, silence. I took the stairs down to the basement kitchen and a maid found us some cheese and bread to eat. The staff clustered like mice, awaiting the outcome of the storm above. We dozed, in our weariness.