“Aye-aye, Skipper,” Lily said. “Let’s rig the yardarm and jig the boom. I vote we hit the road.”
“By water it is, then,” said Solarin happily.
“May the great goddess Car smile upon all our nautical endeavors,” I said.
“I’ll hoist sail to that,” said Lily. And she did.
THE SECRET
Newton was not the first of the Age of Reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians … because he looked on the universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher’s treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood.…
He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty—just as he himself wrapt the discovery of the calculus in a cryptogram when he communicated with Leibniz. By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate.
—John Maynard Keynes
We have in the end come back to a version of the doctrine of old Pythagoras, from whom mathematics and mathematical physics took their rise. He … directed attention to numbers as characterizing the periodicity of notes of music.… And now in the twentieth century we find physicists largely engaged in the periodicity of atoms.
—Alfred North Whitehead
Number, then, appears to lead towards truth.
—Plato
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
OCTOBER 1798
Paul I, Czar of all the Russias, paced about his chambers slapping a riding crop against the breeches of his dark green military uniform. He was proud of these uniforms of coarse cloth, fashioned after those used by the troops of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Paul flicked something from the lapel of his high-cut waistcoat and raised his eyes to those of his son Alexander, who stood at attention across the room.
What a disappointment Alexander had proven, thought Paul. Pale, poetic, and so handsome as to be considered pretty, there was something both mystical and vacuous floating behind those blue-gray eyes he’d inherited from his grandmother. But he had not inherited her brains. He lacked everything one looked for in a leader.
In a way this was fortunate, thought Paul. For the twenty-one-year-old lad, far from wishing to seize the throne Catherine had intended to be his, had actually announced his wish to abdicate should such a responsibility be thrust upon him. He preferred, he said, the quiet life of a man of letters—living somewhere in obscurity on the Danube rather than mingling in the seductive but dangerous court at Petersburg, where his father commanded him to remain.
Now, as Alexander stood gazing through the windows into the autumn gardens, his vacant eyes suggested there was nothing more on his mind than daydreams. In fact, however, his thoughts were far from idle. Beneath those silken curls was a mind whose workings were far more complex than Paul could ever fathom. The problem he worked on now was how to broach a certain subject without arousing Paul’s suspicions—a topic that was never mentioned at Paul’s court, not since the death of Catherine nearly two years ago. The topic of the Abbess of Montglane.
Alexander had a vital reason for trying to discover what had become of this old woman, who’d disappeared as into a vacuum only a few days after his grandmother’s death. But before he could think how to begin, Paul had wheeled to face him, still slapping his crop like an idiotic toy soldier. Alexander tried to pay attention.
“I know you do not care to hear of the affairs of state,” Paul told his son disdainfully. “But you really must show some interest. After all, one day this empire will be yours. The actions I take today will be your responsibility tomorrow. I’ve called you here today to tell you something in complete confidence, which may alter the future of Russia.” He paused for effect. “I’ve decided to form a treaty with England.”
“But Father, you hate the British!” said Alexander.
“Yes, I despise them,” Paul said, “but I’ve little choice. The French, not satisfied with breaking up the Austrian Empire, expanding their borders into every surrounding country, and massacring half their own populace to keep them quiet—have now sent this bloodthirsty General Bonaparte across the sea to take Malta and Egypt!” He slammed his crop down on the leather desk, his face clouding dark like a summer storm. Alexander said nothing.
“I am the elected grand master of the Knights of Malta!” screamed Paul, pounding a gold medal on the dark ribbon that crossed his chest. “I wear the eight-point star of the Maltese Cross! That island belongs to me! For centuries we’ve sought a warm-water port like Malta—and now at last we almost had one. Until this French assassin came along with his forty thousand troops.” He looked at Alexander as if expecting a response.
“Why would a French general try to take a country that’s been a thorn in the side of the Ottoman Turks for over three hundred years?” he said, privately wondering why Paul would wish to oppose such a move. It could only divert those Muslim Turks his grandmother had battled for twenty years over control of Constantinople and the Black Sea.
“Can’t you guess what he’s after, this Bonaparte?” whispered Paul, stepping up to look Alexander in the face as he rubbed his hands together.
Alexander shook his head. “Do you think the British will serve you any better?” he asked. “My tutor La Harpe used to call England Perfidious Albion.…”
“That is not the issue!” cried Paul. “As usual, you mix poetry and politics, doing disservice to each. I know why that blackguard Bonaparte went into Egypt—no matter what he’s told those fools who dole out money in the French Directory, no matter how many tens of thousands of soldiers he’s landed there! Restore the powers of the Sublime Porte? Put down the Mamelukes? Bah! It’s all camouflage.” Alexander was still and guarded but paying close attention as his father ranted on. “Mark my words, he will not stop with Egypt. He’ll move on to Syria and Assyria, Phoenicia and Babylon—the lands my mother always wanted. She even named you Alexander and your brother Constantine as a good-luck charm.” Paul paused and looked about the room, his eyes falling upon a tapestry depicting a hunt scene. A wounded hart, bleeding and riddled with arrows, struggled into the forest with hunters and hounds in pursuit. Paul turned back to Alexander with a cold smile.
“This Bonaparte doesn’t want territory—he wants power! He’s taken as many scientists as soldiers: the mathematician Monge, Berthollet the chemist, the physicist Fourier … He’s cleaned out the École Polytechnique and the Institut National! Why so, I ask you, if it was only conquest he thirsted after?”
“What do you mean?” whispered Alexander, the first glimmer of a thought beginning to light his mind.
“The secret of the Montglane Service is hidden there!” hissed Paul, his face a mask of fear and hatred. “That’s what he’s after.”
“But Father,” said Alexander, choosing his words with extreme caution. “Surely you don’t believe those old myths? After all, the Abbess of Montglane herself—”
“Of course I believe it!” screamed Paul. His face had turned dark, and he lowered his voice to an hysterical whisper. “I myself have one of the pieces.” His hands were tightened into balled fists; he’d dropped his crop on the floor. “There are others hidden here. I know it! But even two years in Ropsha Prison haven’t loosened that woman’s tongue. She’s like the Sphinx. But one day she will break—and when she does …”
Alexander hardly heard anything further as his father ranted on about the French, the British, his plans in Malta—and the insidious Bonaparte whom he planned to destroy. It was unlikely any of these threats would bear fruit, Alexander knew, since Paul’s own troops already despised him as children loathe a tyrannical governess.
Alexander complimented his father upon the brilliant political strategy, excused himself, and left the quarters. So the abbess was incarcerated at Ropsha Prison, he thought as he strode through the long halls of the Winter Palace. So Bonaparte had landed in Egypt with a b
oatload of scientists. So Paul had one of the pieces of the Montglane Service. It had been a productive day. Things were coming together at last.
It took Alexander nearly half an hour to reach the indoor stables, which took up an entire wing at the far end of the Winter Palace—a wing nearly as large as the mirrored hall at Versailles. The air there was steamy with the heady smell of animals and fodder. He strode down the straw-strewn corridors as pigs and chickens waddled from his path. Rosy-cheeked servants in their jerkins, dirndls, white aprons, and thick boots turned to look after the young prince as he passed, smiling to one another behind his back. His handsome face, his curly chestnut hair and sparkling blue-gray eyes, reminded them of the youthful Czarina Catherine, his grandmother, when she used to ride forth in the snowy streets on her speckled gelding, dressed in military attire.
This was the boy they wished they had as czar. The very things his father found annoying—his silence and mystique, the veiled mystery beneath his blue-gray gaze—aroused the dark strain of mysticism buried deep in their Slavic souls.
Alexander went to the groomsman to have his horse saddled, then mounted and rode forth. The servants and stable hands stood watching. Always watching. They knew the time was near at hand. He was the one they waited for, the one who was foretold since the time of Peter the Great. The silent, mysterious Alexander who was chosen not to lead them out, but to descend with them—into darkness. To become the soul of Russia.
Alexander had always felt uncomfortable around the serfs and peasants. It was almost as if they regarded him as a saint—and expected him to live up to the role.
This was also dangerous. Paul guarded zealously the throne that had been withheld from him so long. Now he took the power he’d so long lusted for—cherished it, used it, and abused it like a mistress whom one desires but cannot control.
Alexander crossed the Neva and passed the city markets, letting his big white horse break into a canter only when he’d passed the open pastureland and crossed into the wet autumn fields.
He rode for hours through the forest, as if aimlessly. The yellow leaves lay like heaps of corn husks on the ground. At last, in an empty quarter of the forest, he came to a silent glen where a maze of black branches and wet webs of golden leaves partially masked the outline of an old sod hut. He dismounted casually and began to walk his steaming horse.
The reins held lightly between his fingers, he moved over the soft, richly scented leaf mulch of the forest floor. His lean athletic form, the black military jacket with its high collar reaching nearly to his chin, the tight white breeches and stiff black boots, made him appear as a simple soldier wandering in the forest. Some water toppled from the bough of a tree. He brushed it from the fringe of his gold epaulet and drew his sword, touching it casually as if merely examining its sharpness. He glanced for an instant at the hut, where two horses grazed nearby.
Alexander looked around the silent forest. A cuckoo called three times—then nothing. Only the sound of water softly plopping from the branches of the trees. He dropped his horse’s reins and walked toward the hut.
He pushed the door ajar with a creaking sound. Inside, it was nearly black. His eyes could not adjust to the light, but he could smell the bare earth floor—the scent of a tallow candle recently doused. He thought he heard something stirring in the darkness. His heart raced faster.
“Are you there?” Alexander whispered in the darkness. Then a small shower of sparks—the smell of burnt straw as a flame blazed up—a candle being lighted. Above its glow, he saw the beautiful oval face, the brilliant tumult of strawberry hair, the glittering green eyes looking up searchingly into his.
“Did you succeed?” said Mireille in a voice so low he had to strain to hear it.
“Yes. She’s at Ropsha Prison,” Alexander whispered back, though he’d seen no one for miles around who could hear him. “I can take you there. But there’s more. He has one of the pieces, just as you feared.”
“And the rest?” said Mireille quietly. Her green eyes dazzled him.
“I could learn nothing more without arousing his suspicions. It seemed a miracle he spoke as much as he did. Ah, yes—it seems that French expedition into Egypt may be more than we thought, a cover-up, perhaps. General Bonaparte has taken many scientists along.”
“Scientists?” Mireille said quickly, sitting forward on her chair.
“Mathematicians, physicists, chemists,” said Alexander.
Mireille had glanced over her shoulder into the dark corner of the room. Now, from the shadows, emerged the tall and slender form of a craggy, hawk-faced man dressed completely in black. He held the hand of a little boy of about five, who smiled sweetly up at Alexander. The Crown Prince smiled back.
“You heard?” Mireille asked Shahin. He nodded silently. “Napoleone is in Egypt, but not at my request. What does he do there? How much has he learned? I want him brought back to France. If you go now, how quickly can you reach him?”
“Perhaps he is at Alexandria, perhaps at Cairo,” said Shahin. “If I pass through the Turkish Empire, I can reach him at either place within two moons. I must bring al-Kalim with me—those Ottomans will see he is the Prophet, the Porte will let me pass and lead me to the son of Letizia Bonaparte.”
Alexander was staring in amazement at this interchange. “You speak of General Bonaparte as if you knew him,” he told Mireille.
“He is a Corsican,” she said curtly. “Your French is far better than his. But we haven’t time to dally—take me to Ropsha before it’s too late.”
Alexander turned to the door, helping Mireille draw her cape around her, when he noticed little Chariot standing beside his elbow.
“Al-Kalim has something to tell you, Majesty,” Shahin said, motioning to Chariot. Alexander looked down at the child with a smile.
“Soon you will be a great king,” said little Chariot in his piping, childish voice. Alexander was still smiling, but his smile faded at the child’s next words. “The blood on your hands will leave a smaller stain than that on your grandmother’s, but for a similar deed. A man you admire will betray you—I see a cold winter and a great fire. You have helped my mother. Because of this you’ll be saved from the hands of this disloyal person and live to rule twenty-five years.…”
“Chariot, that’s quite enough!” Mireille hissed, grabbing her son by the hand as she shot a dark look at Shahin.
Alexander stood there frozen—chilled to the bone. “This child has the second sight!” he whispered.
“Then let him put it to some use,” she snapped, “instead of going about casting fortunes like an old witch over a tarot.” Dragging Chariot behind her, she bustled through the door leaving the astounded Prince of Russia in her wake. As he turned to Shahin and looked into the impenetrable black eyes, he heard the voice of little Chariot:
“I’m sorry, Maman,” he piped. “I only forgot. I promise I won’t do it again.”
Ropsha Prison made the Bastille seem a palace by comparison. Cold and damp, with no windows to let in even a crack of light, it was in every sense a dungeon of despair. For two years the abbess had survived here, drinking brackish water and eating food that was little better than pig slop. Two years of which Mireille had spent every hour, every minute, trying to discover her location.
Now Alexander slipped them into the prison and spoke with the guards, who loved him far better than his father and would do anything he asked. Mireille, still holding Chariot’s hand, went through the dark corridors behind the guard’s lantern, as Alexander and Shahin brought up the rear.
The abbess’s cell was deep in the bowels of the prison, a small hole secured by a heavy metal door. Mireille felt a horrible cold fear. The guard admitted her, and she stepped across the room. The old woman lay there like a doll whose stuffing had been removed, her withered skin yellowed like a dead leaf in the pale lantern light. Mireille fell on her knees beside the plank and threw her arms around the abbess, lifting her to sit up. There was no substance to her at all—it seemed
she might crumble away to dust.
Chariot came up and took the abbess’s withered hand in his tiny one. “Maman,” he whispered, “this lady is very sick. She wishes we would take her out of this place before she dies.…” Mireille looked down at him, then glanced up at Alexander, who stood behind her.
“Let me see what I can do,” he said. He stepped outside with the guard. Shahin came up beside the bed. With extreme effort, the abbess tried to open her eyelids but failed. Mireille bent her head over the old woman’s breast and felt the hot tears rising behind her eyes, burning her throat. Chariot put his hand on her shoulder.
“There is something she needs to say,” he told his mother quietly. “I can hear her thoughts.… She does not wish to be buried by others.… Mother,” he whispered, “there is something inside her dress! Something we must have—she wants us to have it.”
“Good God,” murmured Mireille just as Alexander returned to the chamber.
“Come, let us take her before the guard changes his mind,” he whispered urgently. Shahin bent over the bed and lifted the abbess like a feather in his arms. The four of them hurried from the prison, leaving by a door that led to a long corridor that ran beneath the earth. At last they came up into the light of day, not far from where they’d left their horses. Shahin, holding the fragile abbess in one cupped arm, swung into his saddle with ease and headed for the forest with the others just behind.
As soon as they reached an isolated spot, they drew up and dismounted. Alexander lifted the abbess down in his arms. Mireille spread her cape on the ground for the dying woman to lie upon. The abbess, her eyes still closed, was struggling to speak. Alexander brought her water in cupped hands from a nearby stream, but she was too weak to drink.
“I knew …” she said in a hoarse and faltering voice.