“So the fool has returned,” a familiar voice said from the brush.
“He who found the Fool, father of all thought, originator of civilization, blessing and curse of kings.” Men materialized, swarthy and in boots and broad hats, bright sashes at their waists that held silver knives. Their leader bowed.
“Welcome back to the Rom,” said Stefan the gypsy.
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I was pleasantly astounded by this reunion. I’d met these gypsies, or “gyptians,” as some in Europe called them—wanderers supposedly descended from the ancients—the year before when my friend Talma and I had fled Paris to join Napoleon’s expedition. After Najac and his gutter scoundrels had ambushed us on the Toulon stage, I’d escaped into the woods and found refuge with Stefan’s band. There I had first met Sidney Smith and, more agreeably, the beautiful Sarylla who had told my fortune, told me I was the fool to seek the Fool (another name for Thoth) and instructed me in lovemaking tech-niques of the ancients. It had been a pleasant way to complete my journey to Toulon, encapsulated in a gypsy wagon and safe from those pursuing my sacred medallion. Now, like a rabbit popping from a hole, my gypsy saviors were here again.
“What in the tarot are you doing here?” I asked.
“But waiting for you, of course.”
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“I sent word ahead to them on an English cutter,” Astiza said.
Ah. Hadn’t these same gypsies sent word ahead to her, of the medallion and my coming? Which almost led to my head being blown off by Astiza’s former master, not the easiest of introductions.
“Bonaparte is ahead of you, and word of his latest victories just ahead of him,” Stefan said.“His journey to Paris has become a triumph.
Men hope the conqueror of Egypt may be the savior of France. With only a little help from Alessandro Silano, he may achieve everything he desires, and desire is dangerous. You must separate Bonaparte from the book, and safekeep it. The Templar hiding place lasted nearly five centuries. Yours, hopefully, will last five millennia, or more.”
“We have to catch him first.”
“Yes, we must hurry. Great things are about to happen.”
“Stefan, I’m delighted and amazed to see you, but hurrying is the last thing I thought gypsies capable of. We ambled to Toulon about as fast as a grazing cow, if I remember, and your little ponies can’t pull your wagons much faster.”
“True. But the Rom have a knack for borrowing things. We’re going to find a coach and a fast team, my friend, and drive you—a member of the Council of Five Hundred, let us pretend—at break-neck pace to Paris. I shall be a captain of police, say, and André here your driver. Carlo as your footman, the lady as your lady . . .”
“The first thing we’re going to do back in France is steal a coach and four?”
“If you act as if you deserve it, it doesn’t look like stealing.”
“We’re not even legally in France. And I’m still charged with murdering a prostitute. My enemies could use it against me.”
“Won’t they kill you regardless?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then what is your worry? But come. We’ll ask Sarylla what to do.” The gypsy fortune-teller who taught me more than my fortune—
lord, I fondly remembered the yelps she made—was as beautiful as I remembered, dark and mysterious, rings glittering on her fingers and hoop earrings catching the firelight. I was not entirely glad to bump into a former paramour with Astiza in tow, and the two women 3 0 2
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bristled silently in that way they have, like wary cats. Yet Astiza sat quietly at my shoulder while the gypsy woman plied the cards of the tarot.
“Fortune speeds you on your way,” Sarylla intoned, as her turn of cards revealed the chariot. “We will have no problem liberating a carriage for our purposes.”
“See?” Stefan said with satisfaction.
I like the tarot. It can tell you anything you want to hear.
Sarylla turned more cards. “But you will meet a woman in hurried circumstances. Your route will become circuitous.” Another woman? “But will we be successful?” She turned more cards. I saw the tower, the magician, the fool, and the emperor. “It will be a near-fought thing.” Another card. The lovers. She looked at us. “You must work together.”
Astiza took my hand and smiled.
And she turned again. Death.
“I do not know who this is for. The magician, the fool, the emperor, or the lover? Your way is perilous.”
“But possible?” Death for Silano, certainly. And perhaps I should assassinate Bonaparte too.
Another card. The wheel of fortune. “You are a gambler, no?”
“When I have to be.”
Another card. The world. “You have no choice.” She looked at us with her great, dark eyes. “You will have strange allies and strange enemies.”
I grimaced. “Everything’s normal then.” She shook her head, mystified. “Wait to see which is which.” She looked hard at the cards and then at Astiza. “There is danger for your new woman, Ethan Gage. Great danger, and something even deeper than that, I think. Sorrow.”
Here it was, that rivalry. “What do you mean?”
“What the cards say. Nothing more.”
I was disturbed. If Sarylla’s original fortune hadn’t come true, I’d have brushed this off. I am, after all, a Franklin man, a savant. But t h e
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however I might mock the tarot, there was something eerie about its power. I was frightened for the woman beside me.
“There may be fighting,” I said to Astiza. “You can wait for me on the English ship. It’s not too late to signal them.” Astiza considered the cards and the gypsy for some time, and then shook her head. “I have my own magic and we’ve come this far,” she said, pulling her cloak around her against the unaccustomed European chill of October, already reaching south. “Our real danger is time. We must hurry.”
Sarylla looked sympathetic and gave her the tarot card for the star.
“Keep this. It is for meditation and enlightenment. May faith be with you, lady.”
Astiza looked surprised, and touched. “And you.” So we crept to a magistrate’s house, “borrowed” his coach and team, and were on our way to Paris. I was awed by the lush green-gold of the countryside after Egypt and Syria. The last grapes hung round and fat. The fields were pregnant with yellow haystacks. Lingering fruit gave the air a ripe, fermented scent. Wagons groaning with autumn produce pulled aside as Stefan’s men cried commands and cracked the whip as if we were really republican deputies of importance. Even the farm girls looked succulent, seeming half-dressed after the robes of the desert, their breasts like melons, their hips a merry bushel, their calves stained with wine juice. Their lips were red and full from sucking on plums.
“Isn’t it beautiful, Astiza?”
She was more troubled by the cloudy skies, the turning leaves, and trees that formed unruly arbors over the highways.
“I can’t see,” she replied.
Several times we passed through towns with sagging decorations of tricolor bunting, dried flower petals on the roads, and wine bottles discarded in ditches. Each was evidence of Napoleon’s passing.
“The little general?” an innkeeper remembered. “A rooster of a man!”
“Handsome as the devil,” his wife added. “Black lock of hair, fierce gray eyes. They say he conquered half of Asia!” 3 0 4
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“The treasure of the ancients is coming right after him, they say!”
“And his brave men!”
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We drove well into the night and rose before dawn, but Paris is a multiday journey. As we went north; the sky grew grayer and the season advanced. Our coach blew the highway’s carpet of leaves into a rooster tail. Our horses steamed when we stopped for water. And so we were clattering onward in the dusk of the fourth day, Paris just hours ahead, when suddenly another fine team and coach burst out of a lane to our left and swerved right in front of us.