The Rosetta Key

by William Dietrich

  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.”
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br />   “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.”

  The Bonaparte house, bought by Josephine before they were married, was in the fashionable part of Paris known as Chaussee 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.

  Near dawn, a maid roused us. “My mistress wants to see you,” she whispered.

  We were led upstairs. The maid tapped and Josephine’s voice replied “Come in” with a lightness I hadn’t heard before.

  We entered, and there the victor of Abukir and his newly faithful wife lay side by side in bed, covers to their chin, both looking as satisfied as cats with cream.

  “Good God, Gage,” Napoleon greeted. “You’re still not dead? If my soldiers could survive like you, I could conquer the world.”

  “We’re only trying to save it, General.”

  “Silano said he left you buried! And my wife has been telling your stories.”

  “We only want to do what is best for you and France, General.”

  “You want the book. Everyone does. Yet no one can read it.”

  “We can.”

  “So she says, with a record of what you helped destroy. I admire your cleverness. Well, rest assured one thing good has come from your long night. You’ve helped reconcile me to Josephine, and for that I am in a generous mood.”

  I brightened. Maybe this would work. I began glancing around for the book.

  Then there were heavy steps behind and I turned. A troop of gen-darmes was mounting the stairs. When I looked back, Napoleon was holding a pistol.

  “She’s convinced me that instead of simply shooting you, I should lock you in Temple Prison. Your execution can wait until you stand trial for that whore’s murder.” He smiled. “I must say, my Josephine has been tireless on your behalf.” He pointed to Astiza. “As for you, you will disrobe in my wife’s dressing room with her and my maids watching. I’ve summoned secretaries to copy your secret.”

  CHAPTER 27

  T here was irony in being imprisoned in a “temple” first built as headquarters for the Knight Templars, then used as a dungeon to hold King Louis and Marie Antoinette before they were beheaded, and finally serving as an unsuccessful jail for Sidney Smith. The English captain had escaped in part by signaling a lady he’d bedded through the prison windows, which was resourcefulness after my own heart. Now, eighteen months later, Astiza and I got to experience the accommodations ourselves, our lodgekeeper the portly, greasy, obsequious, officious, dim, but curious jailer Jacques Boniface, who’d entertained Sir Sidney with legends of the Knights.

  We were driven there in the jail’s iron wagon, watching Paris through iron bars. The city seemed drab in November, the people apprehensive, the skies gray. We were watched in turn, like animals, and it was a depressing way to introduce Astiza to a great city. All was foreign to her: the great cathedral steeples, the clamor of the leather and linen and fruit markets, the cacophony of neighing horse traffic and sidewalk merchants, and the boldness of women wrapped in fur and velvet strategically opened to give a glimpse of breast and ankle.

  Astiza had been humiliated by her stripping to copy the key, and didn’t speak. When we alighted alongside the outer keep, in a cold and treeless courtyard, something caught my eye at the compound gate. There were people staring through the grillwork, always glad to see wretches even less fortunate than they, and I was startled to spy one head of bright red, wiry hair, as familiar as a bill of rent and as pesky as an unwanted memory. Could it be? No, of course not.

  Temple Prison, which dated from the thirteenth century, was a narrow, ugly castle that rose two hundred feet to the peak of its pyramidal roof, its tower cells lit by narrow barred windows. They opened on the inside to galleries around a central atrium, climbed by a spiral staircase. It says something for the efficiency of the Terror that the prison was largely empty. Its royalist inmates had all been guillotined.

  As prisons go, I’ve seen worse. Astiza and I were allowed to stroll the parapet around the roof—it was much too high to try to jump or climb from—and the food was better than in some of the khans I’d experienced near Jerusalem. We were in France, after all. If it wasn’t for the fact that we were shut up tight, and that Bonaparte and Silano seemed intent on mastery of the world, I might have welcomed the rest. There’s nothing like treasure hunting, ancient legends, and battles to make one appreciate a good nap.

  But the Book of Thoth pulled on us, and Boniface was a gossip who enjoyed relating the machinations of a city at war and under strain.

  Plots and conspiracies were fried quick as a crepe, each cabal looking for “a sword” to provide the necessary military muscle to take over the government. The Directory of five leading politicians was constantly reshuffled by the two legislative chambers. And the Council of the Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred were raucous, pompous assembl
ies who wore Roman mantles, indulged in shameless graft, and kept an orchestra on hand to punctuate legislation with patriotic songs. The economy was a wreck, the army was beggared for supplies, half of western France was in a revolt fueled by British gold, and most generals had one eye on the battlefield and the other on Paris.

  “We need a leader,” our jailer said. “Everyone is sick of democracy. You’re lucky to be here, Gage, away from the turmoil. When I go into the city I never feel safe.”

  “Pity.”

  “Yet people don’t want a dictator. Few seek the return of the king. We must preserve the republic, but how can anyone take the reins of our fractious assembly? It’s like controlling the cats of Paris. We need the wisdom of Solomon.”

  “Do you now?” We were sharing supper in the confines of my cell.

  Boniface had done the same with Smith because the jailer was bored and had no friends. I suppose his company was supposed to be part of our torture, but I’d taken an odd liking to him. He showed more tolerance of his prisoners than some hosts show guests, and paid better attention. It didn’t hurt that Astiza remained quite fine to look at and that I, of course, was uncommonly good company.

  Now he nodded. “Bonaparte wants to be a George Washington, reluctantly accepting stewardship of his country, but he hasn’t the gravity and reserve. Yes, I’ve studied Washington, and his stoic modesty is a credit to your young nation. The Corsican arrived thinking he might be swept into the Directory by popular acclaim, but his superiors received him with coldness. What is he doing back from Egypt without orders? Have you two seen Le Messenger?”

  “If you will recall, Monsieur Boniface, we are confined to this tower,” Astiza said gently.

  “Yes, yes, of course. Oh, that brave periodical denounced the Egyptian campaign! Made a mockery of it! An army abandoned! Soldiers thrown uselessly at the ramparts of Acre! Bonaparte humiliated by the man once imprisoned here, Sir Sidney Smith! The newspapers are a voice for the assembly, you know. It’s all over for Napoleon.”