Mireille heard a shout beneath her on the quay. Peering down, she saw Napoleone dashing through the crush of bodies toward a small, slender woman clutching the hand of a tiny child in each of hers. As Napoleone swept her into his arms, Mireille caught a flash of red-chestnut hair, white hands that fluttered up like doves about his neck, the children released and bobbing free about the entwined form of mother and son.
“Our mother, Letizia,” whispered Elisa, looking up at Mireille with a smile. “And my sister Maria-Carolina, who is ten, and little Girolamo, who was just a baby when I left for St.-Cyr. But Napoleone has always been Mother’s favorite. Come, I shall introduce you.” And they went down into the crowded port.
Letizia Ramolino Buonaparte was a tiny woman, thought Mireille. Though slender as a reed, she gave the impression of substance. From afar she watched Mireille and Elisa approach, her pale eyes as translucent as blue ice, her face tranquil as a blossom floating on a still pool. Though everything about her seemed placid, her presence was so commanding that Mireille felt it penetrate even the pandemonium of the crowded port. And she felt she had known Letizia before.
“Madame Mére,” said Elisa, embracing her mother, “I present our new friend. She comes from Madame de Roque—the Abbess of Montglane.”
Letizia looked at Mireille for a long while without speaking. Then she put forth her hand.
“Yes,” she said in a low voice, “I’ve been expecting you.”
“Expecting me?” said Mireille in surprise.
“You have a message for me—do you not? A message of some importance.”
“Madame Mère, we do have a message!” Elisa chimed in, tugging her mother’s sleeve. Letizia glanced at her daughter, who, at fifteen, was already taller than she. “I myself have met with the abbess at St.-Cyr, and she gave me this communication for you.…” Elisa bent to her mother’s ear.
Nothing could have transformed this impervious woman more astonishingly than these whispered words. Now, as she listened, her face grew dark. Her lips trembled with emotion as she stepped back, putting her hand on Napoleone’s shoulder for support.
“Mother, what is it?” he cried, grasping her hand and looking into her eyes with alarm.
“Madame,” urged Mireille, “you must tell us the meaning this message holds for you. My future actions—my very life—may depend upon it. I was bound for Algiers, but stopped here only because of my chance meeting with your children. This message may be …” But before she could speak further, Mireille was overcome by another wave of nausea. Letizia reached out to her just as Napoleone stepped in to catch her beneath the arm, lest she fall.
“Forgive me,” Mireille said faintly, cold sweat beading her brow, “I fear I must lie down—I’m not myself.”
Letizia seemed almost relieved at the distraction. She carefully felt the fevered brow and palpitating heart. Then, assuming nearly military bearing, she ordered and shooed children about as Napoleone carried Mireille up the steep hill to their cart. By the time Mireille had been placed in the back of the cart, Letizia seemed to have recovered her demeanor enough to broach the subject again.
“Mademoiselle,” she said carefully, glancing quickly to be certain they were not overheard, “though I’ve been braced for such news these thirty years—I find myself unprepared for this message. Despite what I’ve told my children for their own protection, I have known your abbess since I was Elisa’s age—my mother has been her closest confidante. I shall answer all your questions. But first we must contact Madame de Roque and discover how you fit in with her plans.”
“I cannot wait that long!” cried Mireille. “I must go to Algiers.”
“Nevertheless, I override your decision,” Letizia said, climbing into the cart and picking up the crop as she motioned for her children to follow suit. “You are not well enough to travel, and in attempting to do so, you may place others in more danger than yourself. For you do not understand the nature of this game you play, any more than the stakes.”
“I come from Montglane,” snapped Mireille. “I have touched the pieces with my own hands.” Letizia had whipped about to stare at her, and Napoleone and Elisa paid close attention as they lifted little Girolamo into the cart. For they themselves had never learned precisely what the treasure was.
“You know nothing!” Letizia cried fiercely. “Elissa of Carthage did not heed the warnings, either. She died by fire—immolated on a funeral pyre, like that fabulous bird from which the Phoenicians derive their identity.”
“But Mother,” said Elisa, helping Maria-Carolina into the cart, “according to the story, she threw herself on the pyre when Aeneas deserted her.”
“Perhaps,” Letizia said cryptically, “and perhaps there was another reason.”
“The phoenix!” whispered Mireille, hardly noticing as Elisa and Carolina wedged themselves in beside her. Napoleone had joined his mother on the driver’s seat. “And did Queen Elissa then rise from her own ashes—like that mythical bird of the desert?”
“No,” chirped Elisa, “for her shade was later seen in Hades by Aeneas himself.”
Letizia’s blue eyes still rested on Mireille as if she were lost in thought. At last she spoke—and Mireille felt a chill pass through her as she heard the words.
“But she has risen now—like the pieces of the Montglane Service. And we may well tremble, all of us. For this is the end that was foretold.”
Turning away, she flicked her crop lightly at the horse, and they rode off in silence.
The house of Letizia Buonaparte was a small, whitewashed two-story edifice on a narrow street in the hills above Ajaccio. Two olive trees were trained up the front wall, and despite the heavy mist, a few ambitious bees still worked on the thick, late-blooming hedge of rosemary that half covered the door.
No one had spoken on the trip back. But unloading themselves from the cart, Maria-Carolina was assigned the task of settling in Mireille, while the others went bustling about preparing supper. Still dressed in Courtiade’s old shirt, which was too large, and a skirt of Elisa’s, which was too small, her hair still thick with dust from the trip, her skin sticky from illness—Mireille felt enormous relief when ten-year-old Carolina appeared with two copper jugs of hot water for her bath.
Having bathed and changed into heavy woolens they’d found to fit her, Mireille felt somewhat better. For dinner, the table was groaning with local specialties: bruccio—a goat cream cheese, little cakes of corn meal, breads made from chestnuts, preserves from cherries that grew wild on the island, sage honey, small Mediterranean squid and octopus they caught themselves, wild rabbit prepared in Letizia’s special sauce, and that new transplant to Corsica—potatoes.
After they’d dined and the smaller children were in bed, Letizia poured little cups of apple brandy all around, and the four “adults” stayed near the brazier of hot coals in the dining room.
“Before anything else,” Letizia began, “I wish to apologize for my short temper, mademoiselle. My children have told me of your bravery in leaving Paris during the Terror, at night and alone. I’ve asked Napoleone and Elisa to hear what I’m about to say. I want them to know what I expect of them—which is to consider you, as I do, a member of our family. Whatever the future may bring, I expect them to come to your aid as one of our own.”
“Madame,” said Mireille, warming her apple brandy beside the brazier, “I’ve come to Corsica for one reason—to hear from your own lips the meaning of the abbess’s message. The mission I’m engaged in is one that was thrust upon me by events. The last of my family was destroyed because of the Montglane Service—and I pledge every drop of blood, every breath in my body, every hour I spend on this earth, to discovering the dark secret that lies behind these pieces.”
Letizia looked at Mireille, her red-gold hair shimmering in the brazier’s glow, the youth of her face so bitterly contrasted with the weariness of her words—and she felt a pang in her heart at what she had determined to do. She hoped the Abbess of Montglane would agre
e that it was right.
“I will tell you what you wish to know,” she said at last. “In my forty-two years, I’ve never discussed what I am about to say. Have patience, for it’s not a simple story. When I’ve finished, you’ll understand the terrible burden I’ve carried all these years—which I now pass on to you.”
MADAME MÈRE’S TALE
When I was a child of eight, Pasquale Paoli liberated the isle of Corsica from the Genoese. My father having died, my mother remarried a Swiss named Franz Fesch. In order to marry her, he had to renounce his Calvinist faith and become a Catholic. His family cut him off without a penny. It was this circumstance that set the wheels in motion for the Abbess of Montglane to enter our lives.
Few people know that Helene de Roque descends from an old and noble family of Savoy—but her family held property in many lands, and she herself had traveled widely. In the year I met her, 1764, she’d already achieved the position of abbess at Montglane, though she was not yet forty. She was acquainted with the family of Fesch and—as a noble of partly Swiss origin, though Catholic—she was held in high esteem by these thoroughly bourgeoise people. Knowing the situation, she took it upon herself to arbitrate between my stepfather and his family and reestablish familial relations—an act that at the time appeared purely unselfish.
My stepfather Franz Fesch was a tall, lean man with a craggy, charming face. Like a true Swiss, he spoke softly, volunteered his opinions rarely, and trusted almost no one. He was naturally grateful that Madame de Roque had arranged a reconciliation with his family, and he invited her to our home in Corsica. We could not have guessed that this had been her objective all along.
I shall never forget the day she arrived at our old stone house, perched high in the Corsican mountains nearly eight thousand feet above the sea. To reach it, one had to traverse the most rugged terrain of treacherous cliffs, steep ravines, and impenetrable macchia that in places formed walls of undergrowth six feet high. But the abbess was scarcely daunted by this journey. As soon as the formalities were dispensed with, she introduced the subject she’d come to discuss.
“I come hither not only by your gracious invitation, Franz Fesch,” she began, “but because of a matter of great urgency. There is a man—a Swiss like yourself, and like yourself converted to the Catholic faith. I fear him greatly, for he has my movements followed. I believe he seeks to learn of a secret that I guard—a secret that goes back perhaps a thousand years. All his activities suggest this, for he’s studied music, even writing a dictionary of music—and composing an opera with the famous André Philidor. He’s befriended the philosophes Grimm and Diderot, both patronized by the court of Catherine the Great in Russia. He even corresponded with Voltaire—a man he despises! And now, though too ill to travel much himself, he’s engaged the services of a spy who is headed here to Corsica. I ask your assistance: that you act in my behalf, as I have done for you.”
“Who is this Swiss?” asked Fesch with great interest. “Perhaps I know him.”
“Whether or not you know him, you’ll know his name,” the abbess replied. “It is Jean-Jacques Rousseau.”
“Rousseau! Impossible!” cried my mother, Angela-Maria. “But he is a great man! His theories of natural virtue are those upon which the Corsican revolution was founded! In fact, Paoli has chartered him to write our constitution—it was Rousseau who said, ‘Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.’”
“It is one thing to speak of the principles of freedom and virtue,” said the abbess dryly, “and another to act upon them. Here is a man who says all books are instruments of evil—yet he writes six hundred pages at a sitting. He says children should be nourished physically by their mothers and intellectually by their fathers—yet he deserts his own on the steps of a foundling home! More than one revolution will be launched in the name of the ‘virtues’ he preaches—yet he seeks a tool of such power that it would place all men in chains … except its possessor!” The abbess’s eyes glowed like the coals of this brazier. Fesch regarded her cautiously.
“You’d like to know what it is I want,” said the abbess with a smile. “I understand the Swiss, monsieur. I am nearly one myself. I go to the point at once. I want information and cooperation. I understand you can give me neither—until I tell you what is the secret I guard, that is buried at Montglane Abbey.”
For most of that day, the abbess proceeded to tell us a long and miraculous tale of a legendary chess service, said to have belonged to Charlemagne and believed to have been buried within Montglane Abbey for a thousand years. I say “believed”—for no one living had actually seen it, though many had sought to learn its location and the secret of its reputed powers. The abbess herself feared, as had each of her predecessors, that the treasure might have to be exhumed during her tenure. And she would be responsible for opening Pandora’s box. As a result, she’d come to fear those who crossed her path too closely, as a chess player watches with mistrust all pieces that may pin him—including his own—and plans his counterattacks in advance. It was to this end she’d come to Corsica.
“Perhaps I know what Rousseau seeks here,” said the abbess, “for this isle’s history is both ancient and mysterious. As I’ve said, the Montglane Service passed into Charlemagne’s hands through the Moors of Barcelona. But in the year 809 A.D.—five years before Charles’s death—another group of Moors took the island of Corsica.
“There are nearly as many sects in the Islamic faith as in the Christian,” she continued with a wry smile. “As early as Muhammed’s death, his own family went to war, splitting the faith apart. The sect that settled Corsica were the Shia, mystics who preached Talim, a secret doctrine that included the coming of a Redeemer. They founded a mystical cult with a lodge, secret rites of initiation, and a grand master—upon which the current Society of Freemasons have based their rituals. They subdued Carthage and Tripoli, establishing powerful dynasties there. And one of their order, a Persian from Mesopotamia who was called Q’armat after the ancient goddess Car, raised an army that attacked Mecca and stole the veil of the Kaaba and the sacred black stone that lay inside. At last they spawned the Hashhashin, a group of drug-inspired political murderers from which we drive the name ‘assassins.’
“I tell you these things,” said the abbess, “for this ruthless, politically motivated Shi’ite sect that landed on Corsica knew of the Montglane Service. They’d studied the ancient manuscripts of Egypt, Babylon, and Sumer, which spoke of the dark mysteries to which they believed the service held a key. And they wanted to get it back.
“During the centuries of war that followed—these clandestine mystics were repeatedly thwarted in their attempts to locate and retrieve the service. At last, the Moors were driven altogether from their strongholds in Italy and Spain. Split by internal factions, they ceased to be a major force in history.”
Through all the abbess’s speech, my mother had been strangely silent. Her usually forthright, open personality now seemed veiled and guarded. Both Fesch and I noticed this, and now he spoke—perhaps to draw her out:
“My family and I are held in thrall by the tale you’ve told,” he said. “But naturally, you would expect us to wonder what the secret is that Monsieur Rousseau might seek upon our island—and why you’ve chosen us as confidants in your attempt to thwart him.”
“Though Rousseau, as I’ve said, may be too ill to travel,” replied the abbess, “he would surely appoint his agent to visit one of his few fellow Swiss residing here. As for the secret he seeks—perhaps your wife, Angela-Maria, could tell us more. Her family roots go back very far on the isle of Corsica—if I’m not mistaken, even to before the Moors.…”
In a flash, I understood why the abbess had come! My mother’s sweet, fragile face flushed dark red as she glanced once, quickly, at Fesch and once at me. She twisted her hands in her lap and seemed uncertain which way to turn.
“I do not mean to disconcert you, Madame Fesch,” the abbess said in a calm voice, which nonetheless managed to convey a sense
of urgency. “But I’d hoped the Corsican sense of honor would require, for my favor, a favor in return. I admit I tricked you in providing a service where none had been requested. But now I hope my efforts will not have been in vain.” Fesch looked confused, but I was not. I’d lived on Corsica since my birth—and I knew the legends of my mother’s family, the Pietra-Santas, who counted their stay on this isle from the dim twilight of its very beginnings.
“Mother,” I said, “these are only old myths, or so you’ve always told me. What difference if you share them with Madame de Roque, when she’s done so much for us?” At this, Fesch put his hand over my mother’s and pressed it, to show his support.
“Madame de Roque,” said my mother in a trembling voice, “I owe you my gratitude, and mine are a people who honor their debts. But the story you’ve told has frightened me. Superstition runs deep in our blood. Though most families on this isle descend from Etruscany, Lombardy, or Sicily—mine were the first settlers. We come from Phoenicia, an ancient people from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. We colonized Corsica sixteen hundred years before the birth of Christ.”
The abbess was nodding her head slowly as my mother continued.
“These Phoenicians were traders, merchants, known in the ancient histories as ‘the People of the Sea.’ The Greeks called them Phoinikes—meaning ‘blood red’—perhaps for the purple-red dyes they produced from shells, perhaps for the legendary firebird, or the palm tree, both named Phoinix: ‘red like fire.’ There are those who think they came from the Red Sea and were called after their homeland. But none of these is true. We were named for the color of our hair. And all later tribes of the Phoenicians, such as the Venetians, were known by this flame-red sign. I dwell upon this, for red things, the color of flame and blood, were worshiped by these strange and primitive peoples.
“Though the Greeks called them Phoinikes, they called themselves the People of Khna—or Knossos—and later the Canaanites. From the Bible, we know they worshiped many gods, the gods of Babylon: the god Bel, whom they called Ba’al; Ishtar, who became Astarte; and Mel’Quarth, whom the Greeks called Car, meaning ‘Fate’ or ‘Destiny,’ and whom my people called the Moloch.”