The Rosetta Key

Like many European palaces it was a great pile of a place, eight times too large for any sensible need, and moreover had been largely abandoned after the construction of Versailles. Poor King Louis and Marie Antoinette had been forced to move back to it during the revolution, and then the edifice had been stormed by the mob and left a wreck ever since. It still had the air of ghostly abandon. Boniface had a police pass to get us by one bored, sleepy sentry at a side door, explaining we had urgent business. Who didn’t these fretful days?

“I wouldn’t take the woman up there,” the soldier advised, giving Astiza a gander. “No one does anymore. It’s guarded by a spirit.”

“A spirit?” Boniface asked, paling.

“Men have heard things in the night.”

“You mean the count?”

“Something moves up there when he’s gone.” He grinned, his teeth yellow. “You can leave the lady with me.”

“I like ghosts,” Astiza replied.

We climbed the stairs to the first floor. The architectural opulence of the Tuileries was still there: vast halls opening one to another in a long chain, intricately carved barrel ceilings, mosaic-like hardwood floors, and fireplace mantles with enough gewgaws to decorate half of Philadelphia. Our footsteps echoed. But the paint was dirty, the 3 2 2

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paper was peeling, and the floor had been cracked and ruined by a cannon the mob dragged through here to confront Louis XVI back in 1792. Some of the grand windows were still boarded up from being broken. Most of the art had disappeared.

On we went, room after room, like a place seen endlessly through mirrors reflecting each other. At last our jailer stopped before a door.

“These are Silano’s chambers,” Boniface said. “He doesn’t allow the sentries to come near. We must hurry, because he could return at any time.” He looked around. “Where is this ghost?”

“In your imagination,” I replied.

“But something keeps the curious away.”

“Yes. Credulity for silly stories.”

The door lock was easily picked: our jailer had had plenty of time to learn how from the criminals he housed.

“Fine work,” I told him. “You’re just the man to penetrate the crypts. We’ll meet you there.”

“You think me a fool? I’m not leaving you until I’m sure this count really has anything worth finding. So long as we hurry.” He looked over his shoulder.

So we passed together through an anteroom and into a larger, shadowy chamber and then stopped, uncertain. Silano had been busy.

Catching the eye first was a central table. A dead dog lay on it, lips curled in a snarl of frozen pain, its fur daubed with paint or shorn bare.

Pins tied together with filaments of metal jutted from the carcass.

“Mon dieu, what is that?” Boniface whispered.

“An experiment, I think,” replied Astiza. “Silano is toying with resurrection.”

Our jailer crossed himself.

The shelves were jammed with books and scrolls Silano must have shipped from Egypt. There were also scores of preservative jars, their liquid yellow like bile, filled with organisms: saucer-eyed fish, ropey eels, birds with beaks tucked in their wet plumage, floating mammals, and parts of things I couldn’t entirely identify. There were baby limbs and adult organs, brains and tongues, and in one—like marbles or olives—a container of eyes that looked disturbingly human. There t h e

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was a shelf of human skulls, and an assembled skeleton of some large creature I couldn’t even name. Stuffed and mummified rodents and birds watched us from the shadows with eyes of glass.

Near the door a pentagram had been painted on the floor, inscribed with odd symbols from the book. Parchment and plaques with odd symbols hung on the walls, along with old maps and diagrams of the pyramids. I spied the kabbalah pattern we’d seen beneath Jerusalem, and other jumbles of numbers, lines, and symbols from arcane sources, like a backward, twisted cross. All was illuminated by low-burning candles: Silano had been gone for some time, but obviously expected to be back. On a second table was an ocean of paper, covered with the characters from the Book of Thoth and Silano’s attempts at French translation. Half was crossed out and spattered with dots of ink. Additional vials held noxious liquids, and there were tin boxes with heaps of chemical powder. The room had a weird smell of ink, preservative, powdered metal, and some underlying rot.

“This is an evil place,” Boniface muttered. He looked as if he’d made a pact with the devil.

“That is why we must get the book from Silano,” Astiza said.

“Leave now if you’re afraid,” I urged.

“No. I want to see this book.”