couples to entwine. Velvet drapes invited tactile sensation. A new piano, far more fashionable than the aristocratic harpsichord, provided a mix of symphonic and patriotic tunes. Sharps, ladies of pleasure, officers on leave, merchants trying to impress the gossips, writers, newly pompous bureaucrats, informers, women hoping to marry strategically, ruined heirs: all could be found there. Those ranked around the game’s shoe included a politician who had been in prison just eight months before, a colonel who had lost an arm in the revolutionary conquest of Belgium, a wine merchant getting rich by supplying restaurants opened by chefs who’d lost their aristocratic employers, and a captain from Bonaparte’s Army of Italy, who was spending his loot as quickly as he’d nabbed it.
And me. I’d served as a secretary to Franklin for his last three years in Paris just before the French Revolution, returned to America for some adventures in the fur trade, made some living as a shipping agent in London and New York at the height of the Terror, and now had returned to Paris in hopes my fluent French might help me cement timber, hemp, and tobacco deals with the Directory. There’s always a chance to get rich during war. I also hoped for respectability as an ‘electrician’ – a new, exotic word – and by following up on Franklin’s curiosity about Masonic mysteries. He’d hinted they might have some practical application. Indeed, some claimed the United States itself had been founded by Masons for some secret, as yet unrevealed, purpose, and that ours was a nation with a mission in mind. Alas, Masonic lore required tedious steps toward degree advancement. The British blockade impeded my trade schemes. And one thing the Revolution had not changed was the size and pace of France’s implacable bureaucracy; it was easy to get an audience and impossible to get an answer. Accordingly, I had plenty of time between interviews for other pursuits, such as gambling.
It was a pleasant enough way to spend one’s nights. The wine was agreeable, the cheeses delectable, and in candlelight every male face seemed chiselled, every woman a beauty.
My problem that Friday the thirteenth was not that I was losing, but that I was winning. By this time the revolutionary assignats and mandats had become worthless, paper rubbish and specie rare. So my pile consisted of not just gold and silver francs but a ruby, a deed to an abandoned estate in Bordeaux I had no intention of visiting before unloading on someone else, and wooden chips that represented promises of a meal, a bottle, or a woman. Even an illicit gold louis or two had found their way to my side of the green felt. I was so lucky that the colonel accused me of wanting his other arm, the wine merchant lamented he could not tempt me to full drunkenness, and the politician wanted to know who I’d bribed.
‘I simply count cards in English,’ I tried to joke, but it was a poor joke because England was reportedly what Bonaparte, back from his triumphs in northern Italy, was trying to invade. He was camped somewhere in Brittany, watching the rain and wishing the British navy would go away.
The captain drew, considered, and blushed, his skin a proclamation of his thought. It reminded me of the story of the guillotined head of Charlotte Corday, which reportedly reddened with indignation when the executioner slapped it before the crowd. There has been scientific debate since about the precise moment of death, and Dr Xavier Bichat has taken corpses from the guillotine and tried to animate their muscles with electricity, in the same manner that the Italian Galvani has done with frogs.
The captain wanted to double his bet, but was frustrated by his empty purse. ‘The American has taken all my money!’ I was the dealer at the moment, and he looked at me. ‘Credit, monsieur, for a gallant soldier.’
I was in no mood to finance a betting war with a gambler excited about his cards. ‘A cautious banker needs collateral.’
‘What, my horse?’
‘I’ve no need of one in Paris.’
‘My pistols, my sword?’
‘Please, I would not be complicit in your dishonour.’
He sulked, peeking again at what he held. Then the kind of inspiration struck that means trouble for everyone within range. ‘My medallion!’
‘Your what?’
He pulled out a large and heavy trinket that had hung, unseen, inside his shirt. It was a gold disc, pierced and inscribed with a curious tracery of lines and holes, with two long arms like twigs hanging beneath. It seemed crude and hammered, as if forged on Thor’s anvil. ‘I found it in Italy. Look at its weight and antiquity! The jailer I took it from said it came from Cleopatra herself!’
‘He knew the lady?’ I asked dryly.
‘He was told that by Count Cagliostro!’
This piqued my curiosity. ‘Cagliostro?’ The famed healer, alchemist, and blasphemer, once the darling of the courts of Europe, had been imprisoned in the Pope’s Fortress of San Leo and died of madness in 1795. Revolutionary troops had subsequently overrun the fortress last year. The alchemist’s involvement in the affair of the necklace more than a decade ago had helped precipitate the Revolution by making the monarchy look greedy and foolish. Marie Antoinette had despised the man, calling him a sorcerer and a fraud.
‘The Count tried to use this as a bribe to escape,’ the captain went on. ‘The jailer simply confiscated it and, when we stormed the fort, I took it from him. It has power, perhaps, and is very old, passed down for centuries. I will sell it to you for…’ – he eyed my pile – ‘a thousand silver francs.’
‘Captain, you jest. It’s an interesting bauble but…’
‘It comes from Egypt, the jailer told me! It has sacred value!’
‘Egyptian, you say?’ Someone spoke with the purr of a big cat, urbane and lazily amused. I looked up to see Count Alessandro Silano, an aristocrat of French-Italian descent who’d lost a fortune to the Revolution and was rumoured to be trying to build another by turning democrat, plying devious roles in diplomatic intrigues. Rumour had it that Silano was a tool of the recently reinstated Talleyrand himself, France’s minister of foreign affairs. He also professed himself a student of the secrets of antiquity, on the model of Cagliostro, Kolmer, or Saint-Germain. A few whispered his rehabilitation in government circles owed something to the black arts. He thrived on such mystery, bluffing at cards by claiming his luck was augmented by sorcery. He still lost as often as he won, however, so no one knew whether to take him seriously.
‘Yes, Count,’ the captain said. ‘You of all men should recognise its value.’
‘Should I?’ He took a seat at our table with his usual languid grace, his strong features saturnine, his lips sensual, his eyes dark, his brows heavy, exhibiting the handsomeness of a Pan. Like the famed hypnotist Mesmer, he put women under a spell.
‘I mean your position in the Egyptian Rite.’
Silano nodded. ‘And my time at studies in Egypt. Captain Bellaird, is it not?’
‘You know me, monsieur?’
‘By reputation as a gallant soldier. I closely followed the bulletins from Italy. If you will honour me with your acquaintance, I would join your game.’
The captain was flattered. ‘But of course.’
Silano sat and women gathered, drawn by his reputation as adept lover, duelist, gambler, and spy. He was also reputed to adhere to Cagliostro’s discredited Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, or fraternal lodges that inducted female adherents as well as male. These heretic lodges played at various occult practices, and there were juicy tales of dark ceremonies, naked orgies, and lurid sacrifice. Perhaps a tenth of it was true. Still, Egypt was reputed to be the source of ancient wisdom, and more than one mystic had claimed to have discovered mighty secrets in mysterious pilgrimages there. As a result, antiquities were in vogue from a nation closed to most Europeans since the Arab conquest eleven centuries before. Silano was reputed to have studied in Cairo before the ruling Mamelukes began harassing traders and scholars.
Now the captain nodded eagerly to cement Silano’s interest. ‘The jailer told me the arms on the end could point the way to great power! A man of learning such as you, Count, might make sense of it.’
‘Or pay for a piece of nonsense. Let me see it.’
The captain lifted it off his neck. ‘Look how odd it is.’
Silano took the medallion, exhibiting the long, strong fingers of a fencer, and turned it to examine both sides. The disc was a bit larger than a communion wafer. ‘Not pretty enough for Cleopatra.’ When he held it to a candle, light shone through its holes. An incised groove extended across its circle. ‘How do you know it’s from Egypt? It looks as though it could be from anywhere: Assyrian, Aztec, Chinese, even Italian.’
‘No, no, it’s thousands of years old! A gypsy king told me to look for it in San Leo, where Cagliostro had died. Though some say he still lives, as a guru in India.’
