I’m a member of the Invisible College, that brotherhood that seeks truth in a world of lies and illusion. You can see I’m old; it’s been a lengthy pursuit.”
“I’ve known seekers who tend to shoot or torture folk who don’t agree with them on what the truth is. Like Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite.”
He gestured toward my waist. “I believe in tolerance. And it’s you who are armed, not me.”
“My tomahawk? For firewood and home repair.” I glanced around our morbid meeting room. I’ve camped in ruins, hidden in a sarcophagus, and shoved aside skeletons, but this dump of the dead was the most macabre meeting place yet. Every skull here had thought itself the center of existence in its day, and now it was all black sockets and toothy grins. Would a man like Napoleon be chastened by bones that mocked ambition, or driven more than ever to escape their anonymity? “You’ve an odd way of communicating, Monsieur Palatine, if you rely on flowers found in books and rooms stuffed with the dead.”
“Not odd if it works. And what if you had a means of foretelling just what messages would work and which would not?”
“You mean the automaton of Albertus Magnus,” Astiza said. “Surely you don’t already have it.”
“Alas, no. Legend among legends. But those legends suggest that seekers shall find the rose. What would you say, madame, if I told you what I was really interested in was not the flower, but the stem?”
“I don’t understand.”
“It has thorns, does it not?”
“Yes.”
“So we’re going to make a bargain, you and me. I can start you on your quest for the secrets of Albertus and the rosy cross, but only if our purposes are aligned.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“To thwart Bonaparte, not aid him. Isn’t that what you really seek?”
We had to be careful here. “Perhaps.”
“You can have my help to seek what Napoleon has asked you to seek only if you ensure that it never falls into his hands, because he is entirely too dangerous. He’s capable, but dedicated only to his own glory. So I’m going to tell you of a relic that can spoil his coronation, if you promise to keep the alchemical magic of Albertus Magnus out of reach of his marching armies. I don’t know if the Brazen Head exists or not, but there are enough stories to make me fearful.”
“What’s wrong with telling the future?”
“Controlling it. Chaos can result. Such a machine belongs with scholars, not soldiers.”
A thousand skulls were staring at me. “Spoiling a coronation sounds risky, if not impossible.”
“So does knowing your own future.” He gave a grim smile. “We all think just one more discovery will enlighten us, while actually it deepens the abyss of incomplete understanding. Each answer poses more questions. Still, we’re humans: it’s what we do. So my order is well aware of your reputation, Ethan Gage, and we are nothing like the heretic Egyptian Rite. The Invisible College simply wants your mission for Napoleon to give you the ability to carry out the same mission for us; to probe old legends and decide if any are true.”
“And the legends are what, exactly?” Astiza asked.
“Well back in the thirteenth century—”
“The time of Albertus Magnus,” I interrupted.
“The castle of Gemelshausen stood in the middle of Germany’s Thuringia Forest. The family that inhabited it had the reputation as grim pagans who made their living as brigands. By rumor, they worshipped an eroded statue of an old goddess set in the castle courtyard. Athena, perhaps.”
“A guise of the eternal goddess. Isis and Mary as well,” Astiza said.
“A Dominican friar named Tors was on a rampage to root out unbelievers, aided by a one-eyed henchman named Rollo who claimed to be able to detect heretics at a glance. The two decided Gemelshausen was a fortress of evil, and they convinced Count Conrad of Thuringia to raze it. A siege commenced, culminating in a bloody massacre in which almost the entire Gemelshausen clan was slaughtered. The only survivor was a five-year-old boy, rescued by a monk and carried out from the flaming castle through a secret cave. This monk, a guest of the castle, studied ancient mysteries like us. He took the boy for safety to the refugee survivors of the Albigensian sect in southern France.”
“The Albi-what?” I asked.
“They were also called the Cathars,” Astiza explained. “A twelfth- and thirteenth- century mix of Eastern and Western religion that sees life on earth as hell. The world is a struggle between good and evil, or light and dark,