‘I’ve far more than that,’ my companion boasted. ‘I’ve got special cotton for the desert heat, treatises on our destination, several leather-bound notebooks, and a cylinder of fresh quills. My medicines we will supplement with the mummies of Egypt.’
‘Surely you don’t subscribe to such quackery.’ The crumbled dust of the dead had become a popular remedy in Europe, but selling what looked like a vial of dirt encouraged all kinds of fraud.
‘The medicine’s very unreliability in France is the reason I want a mummy of my own. After recovering our health we can sell the remainder.’
‘A glass of wine does more good with less trouble.’
‘On the contrary, alcohol can lead to ruin, my friend.’ His aversion to wine was as odd for a Frenchman as his fondness for potatoes.
‘So you’d rather eat the dead?’
‘Dead who were prepared for everlasting life. The elixirs of the ancients are in their remains!’
‘Then why are they dead?’
‘Are they? Or did they achieve some kind of immortality?’
And with that illogic we were off. Our companions in the coach proper were a hatter, a vintner, a Toulon cordage maker, and a customs officer who seemed determined to sleep the length of France. I’d hoped for the companionship of a lady or two, but none boarded. Our passage was swift on the paved French highways, but tedious, like all travel. We slept much of the rest of the night, and the day was a numbing routine of brief stops to change horses, buy mediocre fare, and use the rural privies. I kept looking behind but saw no pursuit. When I dozed I had dreams of Madame Durrell demanding rent.
Soon enough we grew bored, and Talma began to pass the time with his tireless theories of conspiracies and mysticism. ‘You and I could be on a mission of historic importance, Ethan,’ he told me as our coach clattered down the valley of the Rhone.
‘I thought we were merely running from my troubles.’
‘On the contrary, we have something vital to contribute to this expedition. We understand the limits of science. Berthollet is a man of reason, of cold chemical fact. But we Freemasons both respect science yet know the deepest answers to the greatest mysteries are in the temples of the East. As an artist, I sense my destiny is to find what science is blind to.’
I looked at him sceptically, given that he had already swallowed three nostrums against the filth of the sewers, complained of stomach cramps, and thought the fact that his leg had gone asleep signalled final paralysis. His travelling coat was purple, as military as a slipper. This man was journeying to a Muslim stronghold? ‘Antoine, there are diseases in the East we don’t even have names for. I’m astounded you’re going at all.’
‘Our destination has gardens and palaces and minarets and harems. It is paradise on Earth, my friend, a repository of the wisdom of the pharaohs.’
‘Mummy powder.’
‘Don’t scoff. I’ve heard of miracle cures.’
‘Frankly, all this Masonic talk of Eastern mysteries hasn’t really made sense to me,’ I said, twisting to stretch my legs. ‘What’s to be learnt from a heap of ruins?’
‘That’s because you never really listen at our meetings,’ Talma lectured. ‘The Freemasons were the original men of learning, the master builders who constructed the pyramids and great cathedrals. What unites us is our reverence for knowledge, and what distinguishes us is our willingness to rediscover truths from the distant past. Ancient magicians knew powers we cannot dream of. Hiram Abiff, the great craftsman who built Solomon’s temple, was murdered by his jealous rivals and raised from the dead by the Master Mason himself.’
Masons were required to play out some of this fantastic story upon initiation, a ritual that had left me feeling foolish. One version of the story suggested resurrection, while another mere recovery of the body from a dastardly murder, but neither tale had any point to it that I could see. ‘Talma, you can’t really believe that.’
‘You’re just an initiate. As we climb the ranks, we will learn extraordinary things. A thousand secrets are buried in old monuments, and the few with the courage to uncover them have become mankind’s greatest teachers. Jesus. Muhammad. Buddha. Plato. Pythagoras. All learnt secret Egyptian knowledge from a great age long lost, from civilisations that raised works we no longer know how to build. Select groups of men – we Freemasons, the Knights Templar, the Illuminati, the followers of the Rosy Cross, Luciferians – all have sought to rediscover this knowledge.’
‘True, but these secret societies are often at odds with each other, as mainstream Freemasonry is with the Egyptian Rite. The Luciferians, if I understand it, give Satan a status equal to God.’
‘Not Satan, Lucifer. They simply believe in the duality of good and evil, and that gods exhibit a dual nature. In any event, I’m not equating these groups. I’m simply saying they recognise that the lost knowledge of the past is as important as scientific discovery in the future. Pythagoras himself spent eighteen years studying with the priests of Memphis. And where was Jesus for a similar time during his life, on which the gospels are silent? Some contend he studied in Egypt as well. Somewhere there is the power to remake the world, to restore harmony and recapture a golden age, which is why our slogan is ‘Order out of Chaos’. Men like Berthollet go to examine rocks and rivers. They are hypnotised by the natural world. But you and I, Gage, we sense the supernatural one that underlies it. Electricity, for example! We do not see it, and yet it is there! We know that the world of our senses is but a veil. The Egyptians knew, too. If we could read their hieroglyphics, we would become masters!’
Like all writers, my friend had a fervent imagination and not a lick of sense. ‘Electricity is a natural phenomena, Antoine. It is lightning in the sky and a shock at a parlour party. You sound like that charlatan Cagliostro.’
‘He was a dangerous man who wanted to use Egyptian rites for dark purposes, but no charlatan.’
‘When he practiced alchemy in Poland they caught him cheating.’
‘He was framed by the jealous! Witnesses say he healed sick people that ordinary doctors despaired of. He consorted with royalty. He may have been centuries old, like Saint Germain, who was actually Prince Ragoczy of Transylvania and who personally knew Cleopatra and Jesus. Cagliostro was a student of this prince. He…’
‘Was mocked and hounded and died in prison after being betrayed by his own wife, who had the reputation of being the greatest whore in Europe. You said yourself his Egyptian Rite is occult nonsense. What proof is there that any of these self-proclaimed sorcerers are centuries old? Listen, I don’t doubt there are interesting things to learn in Muslim lands, but I was recruited as a scientist, not a priest. Your own revolution has scorned religion and mysticism.’
‘Which is why there’s so much interest in the mystical today! Reason is creating a vacuum of wonder. Religious persecution has created a thirst for spirituality.’
‘Surely you don’t think Bonaparte’s motive is…’
‘Hush!’ Talma nodded toward the coach wall. ‘Remember your oath.’
Ah, yes. Our expedition leader and ultimate destination was supposed to be secret, as if any fool couldn’t guess it from our conversation. I dutifully nodded, knowing that given the wheel rumble and our position to the rear, they could hear little anyway. ‘Are you saying these mysteries are our true purpose?’ I said more quietly.
‘I’m saying our expedition has multiple purposes.’
I sat back, staring moodily at the grim hills of stumps created by the insatiable hunger the new factories had for wood. It seemed like the forests themselves were being recruited for the wars and trade spawned by revolution. While industrialists grew rich, the countryside grew bare and cities became shrouded in stinking fogs. If the ancients could do things by clean magic, more power to them.
‘Besides, the knowledge to be sought is science,’ Talma went on. ‘Plato brought it to philosophy. Pythagoras brought it to geometry. Moses and Solon brought it to law. All are different aspects of Truth. Some say it was the last great native pharaoh, the magician Nectanebo, who lay with Olympias and fathered Alexander the Great.’
‘I’ve told you I don’t want to emulate a man who died at thirty-two.’
‘In Toulon you will meet the new Alexander, perhaps.’
Or perhaps Bonaparte was simply the latest momentary hero, one defeat away from obscurity. In the meantime, I’d milk him for a pardon for a crime I hadn’t committed by being as ingratiating as I could tolerate.
We left the devastation, the highway entering what once was aristocratic parkland. It had been confiscated by the Directory from whichever noble or church official had owned it. Now it was open to peasants, poachers, and squatters, and I could glimpse crude camps of the poor set amid the trees, wisps of smoke drifting from their fires. It was getting near evening, and I hoped we’d reach an inn soon. My bottom ached from the pounding.
