The Eight: The Fire Part 15

I'd caught myself just in the nick of time. In my distraction, I'd nearly gotten a fleck of egg yolk into the bowl of whites and ruined the whole batch. I tossed the sh.e.l.l yolk and all into the compost bowl and wiped my sweaty hands on my butcher's ap.r.o.n before resuming my task. When I glanced over to see if Rodo had noticed my faux pas, I was relieved to see that he was beaming with approval.

'They say that women cannot concentrate on two things at one time,' he told me. 'And yet here you have done it! I am happy on behalf of the future existence of my famous meringue.'

Rodo was the only person I'd ever heard of or even imagined who would attempt a souffle or meringue over an open hearth. But his pice de resistance the Beret Basque, that rich gteau au chocolat called for both. Rodo remained forever undaunted, even delighted, by such 'small challenges.'

Now I had a challenge of my own: how to get back to the topic. But Rodo beat me there.

'So you do know something of the story,' he said. 'Yes, Charlemagne named the place Montglane, and he also created the fortress and a t.i.tle of n.o.bility to go with it. But all were located extremely far from Barcelona and the Mediterranean in the south, and also very far from his capital in the north at Aachen.

'Instead, he chose the impossible-to-penetrate terrain of the Basque Pyrenees, atop a high mountain. And strangely, this location was not so very far from that exact place of his own disastrous retreat. And he named this spot where he put his fortress: Montglane it means Le Mont des Glaneurs, the Mountain of, how you say, the Gleaners. Like the famous painting by Millet.'

Rodo demonstrated the gesture with his hands, as if he were swinging a scythe.

'You mean the Reapers?' I said. 'The Mountain of Reapers? Why would he call it that?'

I'd set down my copper bowl of yolks in preparation for whipping the whites. But Rodo took the bowl of whites, stuck his finger in it, and shook his head not ready yet. It had to be the right temperature. He set the bowl down again.

'To each thing its time,' he told me. 'It's from the Bible. This includes all things, as well as the egg whites. And so is the other, the one about the Reapers. It says, "Whatever seeds you sow on the earth, that also you shall, ah recolte collect." But I can say it much better how it is written in Latin: Quod Severis Metes.'

'As ye sow, so shall ye reap?' I guessed.

Rodo nodded. Something about that rang a strange bell in the back of my mind. But I had to let it go.

'Clarify for me,' I asked him. 'What do sowing and reaping have to do with Charlemagne and that chess set? Why does anyone even want it if it's so dangerous? What does any of it have to do with the Basques, with tonight, or with why I'm supposed to be here? I just don't get it.'

'Yes, you certainly do "get it,"' Rodo a.s.sured me. 'You are not compltement folle!'

Then briefly testing the egg whites with a finger once more, he nodded, tossed in a handful of tartar, and pa.s.sed the copper bowl with its whisk to me.

'Think of it!' he added. 'More than one thousand years ago this chess set was sent to a remote place; it was guarded so carefully by those who owned it those who understood and feared its power. It was buried in the ground just like seeds, for they knew it was something that one day would surely bear fruit of a good or an evil kind.'

He held up an eggsh.e.l.l in front of my face.

'And now the egg has hatched. But like that harvest gleaned from the mountain of Montglane, it has now risen like a phoenix from the ashes,' he finished.

I let the mixed metaphor go by the wayside. 'But why me?' I repeated, though it took as much effort as I could muster to remain calm. This was too close to home.

'Because, my dear firebird,' said Rodo, 'whether you want it or not, you yourself have risen from that moment two weeks ago along with that chess set. I know what is the date of your birthday, you see, and so do these others October 4, exactly opposite your mother's birthday boum, announcing her own.

'That is what has placed you into this danger. That is what has convinced them they must examine you tonight, that they believe they know who you really are.'

That expression again. But this time, it drove the fear of G.o.d into me, like a stake through my heart.

'Who am I?' I repeated.

'I do not know,' said my boss, looking far from crazy. 'All I know is what others believe. And they believe that you are the new White Queen.'

The Pyramid.

Sh.e.l.ley's ashes were later conveyed to Rome and buried where they now lie on the slope of the Protestant cemetery under the shadow of the great grey pyramid of Caius Cestius that place of pilgrimage for English-speaking people from all over the world for more than a hundred years.

Isabel C. Clarke, Sh.e.l.ley and Byron.

Pyramid of Caius Cestius: A ma.s.sive sepulchral monument of brick and stone, at Rome, 114 feet high, incrusted with white marble. Each side of the base measures 90 feet... The pyramid is of the time of Augustus.

The Century Dictionary.

The mausoleum of Caius Cestius...inspired eighteenth-century garden pyramids including those at the Desert de Retz and Parc Monceau, as well as the Masonic pyramid that appears on the American dollar bill.

Diana Ketcham, Le Desert de Retz.

Cimetero Acattolico degli Inglesi, Roma.

(Protestant Cemetery of the English, Rome).

January 21, 1823.

The 'English Maria' stood in the bitter fog beside the stone wall, in the shadow of the enormous, two-thousand-year-old Egyptian pyramid tomb of the Roman senator Caius Cestius. Attired in her plain gray traveling dress and cape, she watched a little apart from the other mourners, whom she scarcely knew as the small urn was placed into its shallow grave.

How appropriate, she thought, that Percy Sh.e.l.ley's ashes should be laid here in this ancient, sacred spot, on this special day. The author of Prometheus Unbound had been the quintessential Poet of Fire, had he not? And today, January 21, was Maria's favorite holy day, the feast of Saint Agnes, the saint who could not be killed by fire. Even now, Maria's eyes were watering, not from the cold but from the many brushfires that had been lit here on the Aventine Hill to honor the ancient martyr, their smoke mingling with the dank fog from the Tiber below. In England last night, on Saint Agnes's Eve, young girls would have gone to bed hungry, fasting in hopes of a dreamed glimpse of their future husbands, as in the popular romantic poem by John Keats.

But, though Maria herself had long lived in England and knew their customs, she was not English, even if she'd been known as pittrice Inglese, an 'English paintress,' from age seventeen when she was inducted into the Accademia del Disegno at Florence. She was, in fact, a native Italian born in Livorno more than sixty years ago who felt more at home here in Italy than she ever would in England, the land of her parents' birth.

And though she had not been back to this sacred spot in more than thirty years, Maria knew, perhaps better than anyone, the mystery that lay beneath the 'English' topsoil here on this southernmost hill just outside the gate of ancient Rome. For here in Rome, where Saint Agnes had been martyred, where her feast day would soon be celebrated, lay a mystery far older than either the bones of the saint or the pyramid tomb of Caius Cestius a mystery perhaps more ancient than Rome itself.

This spot on the Aventine Hill, where Caius Cestius had built his ostentatious pyramid in the time of Jesus and the emperor Augustus, had been a sacred place from the earliest times. It lay just at the edge of the Pomerium, the 'apple line,' an ancient though invisible boundary just outside the city walls, beyond which the auspicia urbana, the official divination to protect the city, could not take place. The auspicia avis specio, 'watching the birds' could only be conducted by the established collegium of priests skilled in studying omens from the sky, whether thunder and lightning, the movements of clouds, or the patterns and cries of birds. But beyond the Pomerium, a different power had held sway.

Beyond this line lay the Horrea, the granaries that fed all of Rome. And here on the Aventine, too, was the most famous temple to the cult of the G.o.ddess of grain, Ceres. Her name, Ker, meant growth, and she shared her temple here with Liber and Libera, G.o.d and G.o.ddess of freedom, virility, the juice of life. They were equal to the more ancient Ja.n.u.s and Janna, G.o.d of the two faces, for which the town of Janina in Albania, site of one of her earliest shrines, had been named. But here, Ceres' two great festivals lay outside the boundaries of establishment control: the feriae s.e.m.e.ntiuae, the sowing festivals, which commenced with burning the old fields' stubble with enormous fires in the month named for Ja.n.u.s; and the harvesting or reaping festival, Cerialia, which took place in the month named for the emperor Augustus, whose birth name, Octavian, meant 'the Eighth.'

The fires lit to Ceres in the first month, the ancients believed, would portend what they reaped in the eighth. QUOD SEVERIS METES, it was written above her temple: As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

The mystery behind this was so deep and ancient that it ran in the blood itself: There was no need of auspices performed under the law by church and state or official prognostications; it was performed outside the gate, outside the city.

It was an Eternal Order.

Maria knew that on this day the memory of the past and the divination of the future were somehow linked, as they had been for thousands of years. For today Saint Agnes's Day, January 21 was the day of Divination by Fire. And here in Rome, the Eternal City, it might also prove to be the day when the secret that Percy Sh.e.l.ley took to his watery grave six months ago the secret of that order would rise from his ashes.

At least that is what Maria's friend and patron, Cardinal Joseph Fesch, intended to find out. That is why he and his sister, Letizia Bonaparte, had summoned her here today. After more than thirty years, the Anglo-Italian artist Maria Hadfield Cosway had come home for good.

Palazzo Falconieri Roma Through me mankind ceased to foresee death...

Blind hopes I made to dwell in them...

And more than all I gave them fire.

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound George Gordon, Lord Byron, painfully paced the drawing room of Cardinal Joseph Fesch's Palazzo Falconieri. Despite his private wealth, Byron felt out of place here in this lavish mausoleum to a dead emperor. For though the cardinal's nephew, Napoleon Bonaparte, was gone these past two years, the wealth he'd lavished on his relations had remained scarcely hidden here. The damascened walls of this room were no exception, plastered from end to end with the paintings of the finest masters of Europe, and more were stacked upon the floors, including works of the cardinal's longtime protegee, the painter Madame Cosway, at whose request they'd all been peremptorily called here today. Overtly, at least.

The note had taken some time to reach him, for it had been directed at first to Pisa. On the morning he'd received it at his new villa at Genoa Casa Saluzzo, overlooking Portofino and the sea Byron had hastily departed before he'd even had time to settle in. He'd abandoned his menage of lover, family, and unwanted guests, and his menagerie of animals monkeys, peac.o.c.ks, dogs, and exotic birds all scarcely unloaded from his flotilla of boats from Pisa.

For it was clear something important had happened. Or was about to.

Ignoring his fevers and the pains that endlessly pierced his intestines, like those that plagued Prometheus, Byron rode so hard this past week in order to arrive here at Rome that he'd had little time even to bathe or to shave at those dreadful inns where he and his valet, Fletcher, had put up. He realized that he must look a sight by now, but in the circ.u.mstance it scarcely mattered.

Now, having been ushered into the palazzo and proffered a crystal cup of the cardinal's excellent claret to settle his stomach, Byron for the first time looked about at the gorgeously appointed drawing room, and in the same instant realized that he not only felt out of place, he smelled out of place! He was still attired in his riding habit and covered with dust from the road: a close-cropped blue military jacket, mud-splashed boots, and the long, full nankeen cotton pantaloons that covered his deformed foot. With a sigh, he set down the gla.s.s of ruby-colored claret and unwound the turbaned scarf he habitually wore outdoors to protect his fair skin from the sun. Much as he longed to leave right now, to send round for Fletcher, to find a place to bathe and change, he knew it was impossible.

Because time was of the essence. And how much of it did he really have?

When Byron was quite young, a soothsayer had predicted that he would not survive his thirty-sixth year, a date that had seemed an eternity away. Yet tomorrow, January 22, Byron would turn thirty-five. In just a few months, he would leave Italy for Greece to fight in and to finance that very War of Independence that his friend, Ali Pasha, had sacrificed his life to launch.

But of course, Ali had also sacrificed something else.

Which could be the only meaning of the message.

For although the note sent to Byron by Letizia Bonaparte was patently written in response to his earlier veiled query about Sh.e.l.ley, the import of the message she expressed in her melange of languages could not have been plainer: Signor Gordon, Lord Byron Palazzo Lanfranchi, Lung' Arno, Pisa Chr Monsieur, Je vous invite un vernissage de la pittrice Inglese, Mme Maria Hadfield Cosway, date: le 21 Janvier, 1823, lieu: Palazzo Falconieri, Roma. Nous attendons votre reponse.

Les sujets des peintures suivi: Siste Viator Ecce Signum Urbi et Orbi Ut Supra, Ut Infra By this, he was invited to a showing of the paintings of Madame Cosway, a woman whose reputation he knew quite well, given the fame her late husband had enjoyed as royal painter to the Prince of Wales. And she herself was protegee not only of Cardinal Fesch but also, for years in Paris, of the famous French painter, Jacques-Louis David.

It was not this invitation itself, however, but the meaning of the message that had riveted Byron's attention and hastened his departure from Genoa. First, the 'subjects' of Madame's 'paintings' as they were listed were hardly topics normally chosen by artists. But they were all highly meaningful when one read between the lines.

Siste Viator, 'Stop, Traveler': a phrase used on every roadside tomb in ancient Rome.

Ecce Signum, 'Behold the sign': this was followed by a small triangle.

Urbi et Orbi, 'To the City and the World': a motto of Rome, Eternal City.

Ut Supra, Ut Infra, 'As Above, So Below': a motto of alchemy.

Nor could it be coincidence that this invitation was scheduled for the same date and location as poor Percy Sh.e.l.ley's burial, which, thanks to merciful G.o.d, had taken place hours before Byron reached Rome. He did not regret having missed it. Try as he might, he could not forget what he'd had to bear on the day of Sh.e.l.ley's cremation, those many months past, nor the fears for his own life he'd harbored ever since.

This message was clear: 'Stop seeking and behold what we have found: the sign, the triangle, of the famous Egyptian pyramid tomb at Rome that was adopted by the Carbonari, the Freemasons, and other such groups as a sign among brothers. It represented a new order connecting spirit and matter, the worlds of above and below.'

This was the message that Percy Sh.e.l.ley had tried to send him just before he'd been killed. Now Byron understood what it meant, though it chilled him to the core. For even if Letizia Bonaparte and her cohorts knew something of the mystery, or of the missing Black Queen as this invitation certainly suggested they did how could they have guessed that single word? The only word that would definitely bring Byron here to Rome, if nothing else would. The word that Letizia Bonaparte had used to close her letter.

Byron's favorite name, which he'd shared as a pa.s.sword with only one person on earth Ali Pasha, who was now dead.

But just as he thought that name, he heard the door open and a soft voice spoke it to him from across the room: 'Father, I am your daughter. Haidee.'

He had an only daughter, called Haidee, The greatest heiress of the Eastern Isles; Besides, so very beautiful was she, Her dowry was as nothing to her smiles Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto II, CXXVIII Byron could not contain himself. He could not yet even think of the chess piece she must surely be carrying, for he was beside himself with joy. He was weeping, at first pressing the child to his breast, then holding her away to stare, shaking his head in disbelief, as he felt the hot tears making tracks in the dust that still coated his face.

Good Lord! She was the very image of Vasiliki, who perhaps had been only a few years older than this when Byron had fallen in love with her at Janina. She had those same silvery eyes of Vasia's, which seemed like luminous mirrors, though Haidee also had traits of her father the cleft chin and that pale, translucent skin that had won him the nickname 'Alba,' which meant 'white.'

What a blessing, he thought. For his other daughters had been lost to him in one way or another through death, separation, scandal, exile. Little Ada, his legitimate child by his wife Annabella, who would now be just seven years old. He'd not seen her since her birth, due to the scandal Lady Byron had put about that had driven Byron into exile these many years the rumor that his sister Augusta's daughter, Medora, now eight years old, was Byron's child as well.

Then his daughter by Claire Clairmont, Mary Sh.e.l.ley's stepsister, who'd been so besotted with Byron that she'd followed him from London the length and breadth of Europe till she'd accomplished her goal, a child by the famous poet. That was dear little Allegra, who'd died last year at the age of five.

But now this precious jewel-like gift, this incredible beauty Haidee a daughter from Vasiliki, perhaps the one woman he'd ever truly loved. A woman who'd placed no claims upon him, who'd sought nothing and had given him everything in return.

And Byron understood that this slip of a girl before him was no ordinary child. Ali Pasha might be her father in name only, but Haidee seemed to possess that inner strength that Byron had rarely glimpsed and had long forgotten. Like one of the pasha's brave, gray-eyed Palikhari troops from the mountains of Albania. Like Arslan the lion, Ali Pasha himself.

How strong the pasha and Vasia must have been to have had the presence of mind, in those final moments, to send to Byron his own daughter for safekeeping, and to place the valuable Queen into her hands. Byron hoped that he would have such strength himself to carry through with what he now understood he must do. But he also knew better than anyone the risk that this involved not just to himself, but certainly to Haidee as well.

Now that he'd found this daughter, was he prepared to lose her so soon, as he'd lost the others?

But Byron saw something more that the pasha must long have planned this moment, even as long ago as Haidee's birth. For hadn't he named the girl after their own secret code, Byron's private name for her mother, Vasiliki? And yet he'd never known of his daughter's existence, nor the role for which she may have been chosen perhaps even trained from the very beginning.

But what precisely was that role? Why was Haidee here, of all places, in this Roman palazzo in the very heart of Rome and today, on the Day of Fire? Who were these others? What role did they play? Why had they lured Byron here with secret codes, rather than bringing Haidee and the chess piece to him?

Was this a trap?

And just as urgently, in Byron's role as 'Alba,' he needed to discover and quickly the part he himself now played within this larger Game.

For if he failed now, all hope might indeed be lost for the White Team.

Porto Ostia, Roma January 22, 1823 Haidee could scarcely quell those dozens of warring emotions raging within her. She'd tried to come to grips with it all ever since that morning, weeks ago, when she'd first seen Kauri's face beside the others, looking down from that parapet in Fez, that morning when she'd known, against all hope or expectation, that he'd at last found her and she would be saved. She was free finally, delivered to an exotic foreign land that she'd never even dreamed existed Rome and to a father whose very existence seemed to her just as exotic and strange.

However, last night due to the strain of Byron's lengthy and difficult journey, and its impact upon the fragile state of his health not to mention the proximity of the extensive entourage in residence at the palazzo he'd slept in the privacy of rooms that his valet Fletcher had acquired. They'd arranged that this morning in darkness hours, before they were to meet the others at their appointed rendezvous at the pyramid, Haidee, with Kauri as her protector, should slip away from the palazzo to meet him.

Now, with Lord Byron clutching his daughter's hand, these three threaded their way through the deserted streets in the silvery predawn fog. Haidee knew, given all she'd learned during their retreat from Morocco, given all that Charlot and Shahin had told them aboard the s.h.i.+p, that Lord Byron himself might be the one person still living who held the key to the mystery of Ali Pasha's Black Queen. And she knew that this morning's private meeting with her newfound father might be her one chance to learn what she so desperately needed to know.

As the three moved away from the center of town past the ancient public baths, toward the outskirts of Rome where the pyramid lay, the young people, at Lord Byron's request, told him of how the Black Queen had been retrieved from its hiding place in Albania, of the ancient Baba Shemimi's arrival over the mountain pa.s.ses, of the old man's important tale regarding the true history of al-Jabir's creation of the Ser-vice of the Tarik'at, and finally, Ali Pasha's last words and brave deeds in the Monastery of St Pantaleon, just before the arrival of the Turks.

Byron listened attentively until they'd finished. Then, still holding his daughter's hand in his, he pressed the boy's shoulder in thanks as well. 'Your mother was very brave,' he told Haidee, 'to send you off at the very moment when she and the pasha might be facing their own death.'

'The last thing my mother said to me was that she loved you very much,' Haidee told him, 'and the Pasha said he felt the same. At whatever the cost to themselves, Father, they both trusted you entirely to keep the chess piece from the wrong hands. And so, too, did the great Baba who sent Kauri to protect both me and the chess piece.

'But despite all these careful plans,' she went on, 'things did not happen at all as anyone had expected. Kauri and I set sail by sea, planning to find you at Venice. We thought we did not have far to travel, but we were mistaken. Off the point of Pirene, our s.h.i.+p was captured by corsairs and was diverted to Morocco, where Kauri was seized at the docks by slave merchants. He vanished from my life I feared, forever. The Black Queen was taken from me by the sultan's men, and I was placed in the royal harem at Fez. I was alone and terrified, surrounded by strangers with no one I could trust. I was saved from a worse fate, I think, only because they did not know who I was. They suspected that I, or that black lump of ore, might have some value that wasn't apparent on the surface.'

'And how right they would have been,' said Byron grimly, putting his arm about his daughter's shoulder. 'You've been very strong in the face of such dangers, my child. Others have died for the secret you were protecting,' he said, thinking of Sh.e.l.ley.

'Haidee was very brave,' agreed Kauri. 'Even though I managed to escape and seek protection in the mountains, I quickly understood that despite my relative freedom, she was as lost to me as I was to her. We couldn't find a trace. Then, when the sultan died, only weeks ago, and she was threatened with slavery along with the rest of the harem, Haidee still maintained silence; she refused to reveal anything about herself or the mission she'd been bound for. She was already at the auction block when we found her.'

Haidee could not control the shudder that ran through her at this memory. Byron felt it through her slender shoulder. 'It seems a miracle that either of you survived, much less that you managed to rescue the chess piece,' he said gravely, pressing her to him as they walked.

'But Kauri never would have found me,' said Haidee, 'we should never have arrived here at all, never have completed the mission with which the pasha and the Baba entrusted us if it hadn't been for Kauri's father, Shahin. And his companion, the red-haired man whom they call Charlot-'

Haidee looked past Byron to Kauri with a questioning expression. The boy nodded and said, 'It is Charlot whom Haidee wished to speak to you of this morning, before you meet him with the others at the pyramid. That's why we wished to arrange a more private meeting to discuss with you this man's intimate involvement with the Black Queen.'

'But who is this Charlot you speak of?' asked Byron. 'And what has he to do with the chess piece?'

'Kauri and I aren't referring to the chess piece,' said Haidee. 'The true Black Queen, the living one, is Charlot's mother, Mireille.'

Byron felt ill, and not only from his stomach difficulties. He had stopped, for he saw that just as the sun rose, they'd reached the gates of the Protestant cemetery and were close to the place of their intended rendezvous, just moments from now. He took a seat on the low stone wall and regarded both Kauri and Haidee gravely.