The Rosetta Key

going on, something that leads them to vote the opposite of what they asserted just hours or days before. What could it be?” I knew what, of course. Silano had made progress translating the Book of Thoth. Spells were being said and woven, and minds were being clouded. Bewitched indeed! The entire city was being entranced.

Astiza and I looked at each other. There was no time to waste. “Mysteries of the East,” I said suddenly.

“What?”

“Jailer, have you ever heard of the Book of Thoth?” Astiza asked.

Boniface looked surprised. “But of course. All students of the past have heard of the Thrice Great, ancestor of Solomon, originator of all knowledge, the Way and the Word.” His voice had shrunk to a whisper. “Some say Thoth created an earthly paradise we’ve forgotten how to maintain, but others say that he’s the dark archangel himself, in a thousand guises: Baal, Beelzebub, Bahomet!”

“The book has been lost for thousands of years, has it not?” Now he looked sly. “Perhaps. There are rumors the Templars . . .”

“Jacques Boniface, the rumors are true,” I said, standing from the rude table where we shared a jug of cheap wine, my voice deepening.

“What charges are filed against Astiza and me?”

“Charges? Why none. We don’t need charges to hold you in Temple Prison.”

“Yet don’t you wonder why Bonaparte has confined us here? You can see for yourself we’re friendless and helpless. Confined us but not yet killed us, in case we may be useful yet. What is an odd pair like us doing in Paris at all, and what do we know that is so dangerous to the state?”

He looked at us warily. “I have wondered these things, yes.”

“Perhaps—allow the possibility, Boniface—we know of treasure.

The greatest on earth.” I leaned forward across the table.

“Treasure?” It was a squeak.

“Of the Knights Templar, hidden since that Friday the thirteenth, 1309, when they were arrested and tortured by the mad king of France.

Keeper of this keep, you are as trapped as us. How long do you want to be here?”

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w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h

“As long as my masters . . .”

“Because you could be master yourself, Boniface. Master of Thoth.

You and we, who are the true students of the past. We wouldn’t give sacred secrets to ambitious tyrants like Bonaparte, as Count Alessandro Silano is doing. We’d reserve them for all mankind, would we not?” He scratched his head. “I suppose so.”

“But to do so we must move, and quickly. Tonight is Napoleon’s coup, I think. And it depends on who holds a book that was once lost, now recovered. The Templars hid their wealth all right, in a place they reasoned no man would ever dare look,” I lied.

“Where?” He was holding his breath.

“Under the Temple of Reason, built on the Isle de la Cité exactly where the ancient Romans built their temple to Isis, goddess of Egypt.

But only the book will tell us exactly where it is.” His eyes goggled. “Notre Dame?” Poverty will make you believe anything, and a jailer’s wage is criminal.

“You’ll need a pick and courage, Monsieur Boniface. The courage to become the richest, most powerful man in the world! But only if you are willing to dig! And only one man can lead us to the precise spot! Silano lives only for his own greed, and we must capture him and do what’s right, for Freemasonry, Templar lore, and the mysteries of the ancients! Are you with me?”

“Will it be dangerous?”

“Just get us to Silano’s chambers and then you can hide in the crypts of Notre Dame while we decipher the secret. Then together we’ll change history!”

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In calmer times I might not have persuaded him. But with Paris on the edge of a coup, troops erecting barricades, legislative assemblies panicking, generals crowding in glittering array into Napoleon’s house, and the city dark and apprehensive, anything could happen.

More importantly, the Catholic priesthood had been shut down by the revolution and Notre Dame had become a grand ghost, used only t h e

r o s e t t a k e y

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by devout old women and swept out by the poor for welfare. Our jailer could get into its crypts easily enough. While Bonaparte was addressing thousands of men in the garden of the Tuileries, Boniface was assembling trenching tools.