The Rosetta Key

“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 t h e

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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 Jose-3 0 8

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phine’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 t h e

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bewitched your husband with dreams of unlimited power. It could drive Napoleon mad. You must help us get it back.”

“But how?”