“What on earth will you do with them once they’re on board?” I wanted to know.
“Valerie and I,” said Kamel, “will take them out to sea. I’ll arrange for an Algerian patrol boat to come out and meet us, once we’re in international waters. The Algerian government will be very pleased to capture the conspirators who’ve plotted with Colonel Khaddafi against OPEC and planned to assassinate its members. In fact, it may well be true. I’ve been suspicious about the colonel’s role in the Game ever since he inquired about you at the conference.”
“What a wonderful idea.” I laughed. “That should at least give us time to accomplish what we need without them getting in the way.” Leaning over toward Valerie, I added, “When you get to Algiers, give your mother and Wahad a big hug for me.”
“My brozzaire thinks you are very brave,” said Valerie, taking my hand warmly. “He ask me to say he hope one day you will return to Algeria, too!”
So Harry, Kamel, and Nim set off for Long Island with hostages in tow. At least Sharrif—and even Blanche, the White Queen—would get to see the inside of the Algerian prison Lily and I had ourselves avoided so narrowly.
Solarin, Lily, Mordecai, and I took Nim’s green Morgan. With the last four pieces we’d extracted from the secretary, we headed for Mordecai’s apartment in the diamond district to assemble the pieces and begin the real work that lay ahead: deciphering the formula that had been sought by so many for so long. Lily drove, I sat in Solarin’s lap once again, and Mordecai was jammed like a piece of luggage into the little crawlspace behind the seats, Carioca perched in his lap.
“Well, little dog,” said Mordecai, stroking Carioca with a smile, “after all these adventures, you’re practically a chess player yourself! And now we add to the eight pieces you’ve brought back from the desert, another unexpected six pieces captured from the white team. It’s been a productive day.”
“Plus the nine Minnie said you had,” I added. “That makes twenty-three.”
“Twenty-six,” cackled Mordecai. “I also have the three that Minnie retrieved in Russia in 1951—which Ladislaus Nim and his father brought across the seas to America!”
“That’s right!” I cried. “The nine you have are the ones Talleyrand buried in Vermont. But where did our eight come from—the ones Lily and I brought back from the desert?”
“Ah, that’s right. There’s something else I have for you, my dear,” chirped the cheerful Mordecai. “It’s at my apartment along with the pieces. Perhaps Nim told you that when Minnie bade him good-bye that night on the cliffs in Russia, she gave him some folded papers of great importance?”
“Yes,” Solarin interjected. “Cut from a book. I saw her do it. I remember, though I was only a child at the time. Was it the journal Minnie gave to Catherine? From the moment she showed it to me, I wondered.…”
“Soon you won’t have to wonder,” Mordecai said cryptically. “You will know. These pages, you see, reveal the final mystery. The secret of the Game.”
We parked Nim’s Morgan in a public garage at the end of the block and went to Mordecai’s apartment on foot. Solarin carried the collection of pieces, which was now too heavy for anyone else to lift.
It was after eight o’clock and nearly dark in the diamond district. We went past stores with iron gates across their facades. Newspapers blew across the empty pavement. It was still Labor Day weekend, and everything was closed.
About halfway down the block, Mordecai stopped and unlocked a metal grate. Inside was a long narrow stairway that led straight up toward the back of the building. We followed him up into the twilight, where, at the landing, he unlocked another door.
We went into an enormous loft where chandeliers hung from thirty-foot ceilings. A bank of high windows at one end reflected these glittering prisms of crystal when Mordecai threw on the lights. He crossed the room. Everywhere were deep carpets in dark colors, beautiful shimmering trees and furniture spread with furs, tables cluttered with objets d’art and books. It was what my old apartment would’ve looked like, had it been bigger and I richer. Along one whole wall hung a huge, magnificent tapestry that must have been as old as the Montglane Service itself.
Solarin, Lily, and I took seats on the soft, deep sofas. On the table before us a big chessboard had been set up. Lily swept away the pieces that were there, and Solarin started to remove our pieces from the bag and set them on the board.
The pieces of the Montglane Service were too large even for the oversized squares of Mordecai’s alabaster board, but they looked magnificent, gleaming beneath the chandelier’s soft glow.
Mordecai pulled aside the tapestry and unlocked a huge safe that was built into the brick. He extracted a large box containing twelve more pieces, which Solarin rushed to help him carry.
When they were all set up, we studied them. There were the prancing horses that were the Knights, the stately Bishops as elephants, camels with towerlike chairs on their backs that served as Rooks. The gold King riding his pachyderm, the Queen sitting in her sedan chair—all paved with jewels and detailed in sculpted metals with a precision and grace no craftsman could have duplicated in at least a thousand years. Only six pieces were absent: two silver pawns and one gold, a golden Knight, a silver Bishop, and the White King—silver as well.
It was incredible, seeing them all together like that, shining in our midst. What fabulous mind had invented the idea of combining something so beautiful with something so deadly?
We pulled out the cloth and spread it on the large coffee table beside the board. My eyes were dazzled by the strangely glowing forms, the beautiful colors of the stones—emerald and sapphire, ruby and diamond, the yellow of citrine, light blue of aquamarine, and the pale green peridot that nearly matched Solarin’s eyes. He reached over and pressed my hand as we sat there in silence.
Lily had pulled out the paper where we’d drawn our version of how the moves worked. Now she put it beside the cloth.
“There’s something I think you should see,” said Mordecai, who’d gone back to the safe. He returned to where I sat and handed me a small packet. I looked up into his eyes, magnified behind the thick glasses. His walnut face crumpled into a knowing smile. He held out his hand to Lily as if he expected her to rise. “Come, I want you to help me prepare some supper. We’ll wait for your father and Nim to come back. They’ll be hungry when they arrive. Meanwhile, our friend Cat can read what I’ve given her.”
He dragged Lily off under protest to the kitchen. Solarin moved closer to me as I opened the packet and extracted a folded bundle of paper. As Solarin had guessed—the same kind of antique paper as in Mireille’s ancient journal. Reaching over to take the original book from the bag that sat on the floor between us, I compared them. You could see where the paper had been cut and pulled away. I smiled at Solarin.
He slipped his arm around me as I leaned back into the soft lap of the sofa, unfolded the paper, and began to read. It was the last chapter in Mireille’s journal.…
THE BLACK QUEEN’S TALE
The chestnut trees were blooming in Paris when I left Charles Maurice Talleyrand that spring of 1799, to return to England. It pained me to go, for I was again with child. A new life was beginning inside me, and with it the same seed of single-minded purpose—to finish the Game once and for all.
It would be four more years before I saw Maurice again. Four years in which the world was shaken and altered by many events. In France, Napoleon would return to overthrow the Directory and be named first consul—then consul for life. In Russia, Paul the First would be assassinated by a cadre of his own generals—and his mother’s favorite lover, Plato Zubov. The mystical and mysterious Alexander—who’d stood with me in the forest beside the dying abbess—would now have access to that piece of the Montglane Service known as the Black Queen. The world I knew—England and France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia—would again go to war. And Talleyrand, the father of my children, would at last receive the papal dispensation I’d requested of him, to marry C
atherine Noel Worlée Grand—the White Queen.
But I had in my possession the cloth, the drawing of the board, and the certain knowledge that seventeen pieces were nearly within my grasp. Not only the nine buried in Vermont—whose location I now knew—but also the eight: those seven of Madame Grand’s and one belonging to Alexander. With this knowledge, I went to England—to Cambridge—where William Blake had told me the papers of Sir Isaac Newton were sequestered. Blake himself, who found almost morbid fascination in such things, secured me permission to study these works.
Boswell had died in May of 1795—and Philidor, that great chess master, had survived him by only three months. The old guard were dead—the White Queen’s reluctant team dismantled by death. Before she had time to assemble a new one, I had to make my move.
It was just before Shahin and Chariot returned with Napoleon from Egypt—on October 4 of 1799, exactly six months after my own birthday—that I gave birth in London to a little girl. I christened her Elisa, after Elissa the Red, that great woman who’d founded the city of Carthage—and for whom Napoleon’s own sister had been named. But I took to calling her Charlotte, not only for her father, Charles Maurice, and her brother, Chariot—but in memory of that other Charlotte who’d given her life in place of mine.
It was now, when Shahin and Chariot joined me in London, that the real work began. We labored by night over the ancient manuscripts of Newton, studying his many notes and experiments by candlelight. But all seemed in vain. After many months, I’d come to believe that even this great scientist had not discovered the secret. But then it occurred to me—perhaps I did not know what the secret really was.
“The Eight,” I said aloud one night as we sat in the Cambridge rooms overlooking the kitchen gardens, the place where Newton himself had labored nearly a century ago. “What does the Eight really mean?”
“In Egypt,” said Shahin, “they believed there were eight gods that preceded all the rest. In China they believe in the Eight Immortals. In India they think Krishna the Black—the eighth son—became an Immortal, too. An instrument of man’s salvation. And the Buddhists believe in the Eightfold Path to Nirvana. There are many eights in the world’s mythologies.…”
“But all mean the same thing,” chimed in Chariot, my little son who was older than his years. “The alchemists were seeking more than just to change one metal into another. They wanted the same thing the Egyptians did when they built the pyramids—the same as the Babylonians who sacrificed children to their pagan gods. These alchemists always begin with a prayer to Hermes, who was not only the messenger who took dead souls to Hades, but was the god of healing as well.…”
“Shahin has fed you too much mysticism,” I said. “What we’re seeking here is a scientific formula.”
“But Mother, that’s it—don’t you see?” replied Chariot. “That’s why they invoke the god Hermes. In the first phase of the experiment—sixteen steps—they produce a reddish-black powder, a residue. They form it into a cake, which is called the philosophers’ stone. In the second phase, they use this as a catalyst to transmute metals. In the third and final phase, they mix this powder with a special water, a water gathered from dew at a certain time of year—when the sun is between Taurot and the Belier, the Bull and the Ram. All the pictures in the books show this—it’s just on your birthday—when the water that falls from the moon is very heavy. This is the time when the final phase begins.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, confused. “What is this special water mixed with the powder of the philosophers’ stone?”
“They call it al-Iksir,” Shahin said softly. “When consumed, it brings health, long life, and heals all wounds.”
“Mother,” said Chariot, looking at me gravely, “it’s the secret of immortality. The elixir of life.”
Four years it took us to come to this juncture in the Game. But though we knew the formula’s purpose, we still did not know how it was made.
It was August of 1803 when I arrived with Shahin and my two children at the spa of Bourbon-l’Archambault in central France, the town for which the Bourbon kings were named. The town where Maurice Talleyrand went to take the thermal waters on this same month each summer.
The spa was surrounded by ancient oaks, its long walks bordered in peonies heavy with bloom. As I stood that first morning on the path in the long linen robes one wore to take the waters, I waited there amidst the butterflies and flowers—and saw Maurice coming along down the path.
In the four years since I’d last seen him, he had changed. Though I was not yet thirty, he would soon be fifty—his handsome face webbed with fine lines, the curls of his unpowdered hair shot with silver in the morning sun. He saw me and stopped cold upon the path, his eyes never leaving my face. Those eyes that were still the intense, sparkling blue I remembered from that first morning I’d seen him in David’s studio—with Valentine.
He came to me as if expecting to find me there, and put his hand in my hair as he gazed down at me.
“I shall never forgive you,” were his first words, “for teaching me what love is, then leaving me to contend with it myself. Why have you never answered my letters? Why do you vanish, then reappear only long enough to break my heart again, just as it’s nearly mended? Sometimes I find myself thinking of you—and wishing I’d never known you.”
Then, in defiance of his words, he grasped me and pulled me to him in a passionate embrace, his lips moving from my mouth to my throat, my breast. As before, I felt the blinding force of his love sweep over me. Struggling against the desire I felt myself, I pulled away.
“I have come to collect on your promise,” I told him in faint voice.
“I’ve done everything I promised—more than I promised,” he told me bitterly. “I’ve sacrificed everything for you—my life, my freedom, perhaps my immortal soul. In the eyes of God, I’m still a priest. For you, I’ve married a woman I don’t love, who can never bear me the children I want. While you, who’ve borne me two, have never let me glimpse them.”
“They are here with me now,” I told him. He watched me half in disbelief. “But first, where are the pieces of the White Queen?”
“The pieces,” he said harshly. “Never fear, I have them. Extracted by trickery from a woman who loves me more than you ever have or will. Now you hold my children as hostage to get them from me. My God, that I should want you at all astounds me.” He paused. The bitterness he felt could not be concealed, but it was mingled with a dark passion. “That I cannot live without you,” he whispered, “suddenly seems the height of impossibility.”
He trembled with the force of his emotion. His hands were on my face, my hair, his lips pressed to mine as we stood there on the public path, where people could come along at any moment. As always, the strength of his love was beyond bearing. My lips returned his kisses, my hands moved over the places where his robes had fallen open.
“This time,” he whispered, “we shall not make a child—but I shall make you love me if it’s the last thing I do.”
Maurice’s expression was more beatific than that of the holiest saint when—for the first time—he saw our children. We’d gone to the bathhouse at midnight, with Shahin guarding the door.
Chariot was now ten and already looked like the prophet Shahin had predicted he’d be, with his mass of red hair to his shoulders and the sparkling blue eyes of his father that seemed to see through time and space. At four, little Charlotte resembled Valentine at that age. It was she who captivated Talleyrand as we sat in the baths of Bourbon-l’Archambault in the steamy mineral waters.
“I want to take these children away with me,” Talleyrand said at last, stroking Charlotte’s fair hair as if he could not bear to let her go. “The life you insist upon leading is no life for a child. No one need know our relationship. I’ve acquired the estate of Valençay. I can give them their own titles and land. Let their origins remain a mystery. Only if you agree to this will I give you the pieces.”
I knew he was right. W
hat sort of mother could I be to them, when my life’s direction had already been chosen by powers beyond my control? I could see in his eyes that Maurice loved them both even beyond my natural bond with them as the one who’d given them life. But there was another problem.
“Chariot must remain,” I told him. “He was born in the eyes of the goddess—it is he who shall resolve the riddle. It was foretold.” Chariot moved through the hot waters to Talleyrand and put his hand on his father’s arm.
“You will be a great man,” he told him, “a prince with many powers. You will live long, but you’ll have no other children after us. You must take my sister, Charlotte—marry her into your family so her children will bond again with our blood. But I must return to the desert. My destiny is there.…”
Talleyrand looked at the little boy in amazement, but Chariot had not yet finished.
“You must cut your ties with Napoleon, for he is doomed to fall. If you do so, your own power will remain through many changes in the world. And you must do something else—for the Game. Get the Black Queen from Alexander of Russia. Tell him you come from me. With the seven you have already, that will make eight.”
“Alexander?” said Talleyrand, looking at me through the thick steam. “Has he a piece as well? But why should he give it to me?”
“You’ll give him Napoleon in return,” Chariot replied.
Talleyrand did meet Alexander at the Conference of Erfurt. Whatever pact they made, everything Chariot had predicted came to pass. Napoleon fell, returned, and fell for good. In the end, he saw it was Talleyrand who had betrayed him. “Monsieur,” he told him over breakfast one morning, in the eyes of all the court, “you are nothing but shit in a silk stocking.” But Talleyrand had already secured the Russian piece—the Black Queen. With this, he gave me also something of value: a Knight’s Tour done by the American, Benjamin Franklin, which purported to portray the formula.
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