suggests a similar great awakening, but recalls it with dread. We believe men were wiser in those days, and knew magical things. The world was cleaner and happier.’ She pointed to a painting on the wall of Enoch’s library. It was of a man with the head of a bird.
‘That’s Thoth?’ There’s something disturbing about people with the heads of animals. ‘Why a bird? They’re dumber than donkeys.’
‘It’s an ibis, and we Egyptians find the unity of humans and animals quite beautiful.’ There was a certain frost in her tone. ‘He’s also portrayed as a baboon. Egyptians believed there were no sharp differences between humans and animals, man and god, life and death, creator and created. All are part of one. It is Thoth who presides when our hearts are weighed against a feather before a jury of the forty-two gods. We must proclaim the evil we did not commit, lest our soul be devoured by a crocodile.’
‘I see,’ I said, even though I didn’t.
‘Sometimes he would roam the world to observe and would disguise his wisdom as he learnt still more. Men called him “the Fool”.’
‘The Fool?’
‘The jester, the wit, the truth teller,’ Enoch said. ‘He emerges again and again. The saying is that the fool shall seek the Fool.’
Now I was really disturbed. Wasn’t that what the gypsy Sarylla had said in the French forest when she dealt the tarot cards? Had what I dismissed as vague nonsense actually been real prophecy? She had called me the fool, as well. ‘But why all the excitement about one more book?’
‘This is not another book, but the first book,’ said Enoch. ‘And surely you agree that books can drive the world, be it the Bible, the Koran, the works of Isaac Newton, or the songs of the Iliad that inspired Alexander. At their best, they are a distillation of thought, wisdom, hope, and desire. The Book of Thoth is reputed to be forty-two papyrus scrolls, a mere sampling of the 36,535 scrolls – one hundred for each day of the solar year – on which Thoth inscribed his secret knowledge and hid around the earth, to be found only by the worthy when the time was right. On these scrolls is a summary of the deepest power of the masters who built the pyramids: Might. Love. Immortality. Joy. Revenge. Levitation. Invisibility. The ability to see the world as it truly is, rather than the dreamlike illusion we live in. There is some pattern that underlies our world, some invisible structure, which legend says can be manipulated to magical effect. The ancient Egyptians knew how to do so. We have forgotten.’
‘That’s why everyone is so desperate for this medallion?’
‘Yes. It may be a clue for a quest as old as history. What if people didn’t have to die, or could be revived if they did? For an individual, time alone would eventually allow the accumulation of knowledge that would make him master of all other men. For armies, it would mean indestructibility. What would an army be like that knew no fear? What would a tyrant be like who had no end? What if what we call magic was nothing more than ancient science, directed by a book brought by a being, or beings, so ancient and wise that we’ve lost all memory of who they were and why they came?’
‘Surely Bonaparte doesn’t expect…’
‘I don’t think the French know exactly what they seek or what it could do for them, or else they’d already be taking our nation apart. There are stories, and that is enough. What do they have to lose by seeking? Bonaparte is a manipulator. He has put you to work on the problem, and savants like Jomard, as well. Now Silano. But Silano is different, I suspect. He pretends to work for the French government, but really he uses their support to work for himself. He’s following Cagliostro’s footsteps, trying to see if the legends are real.’
‘But they aren’t,’ I objected. ‘I mean, this is crazy. If this book exists, why don’t we see some sign of it? People have always died, even in ancient Egypt. They must, for society to renew, for young people to succeed the old. If they didn’t, people would go crazy with impatience. Natural death would be supplanted by murder.’
‘You have wisdom beyond your years!’ Enoch cried. ‘And you have begun to understand why such powerful secrets were rarely used and must continue to sleep. The book exists, but remains dangerous. No mere mortal man can handle godlike power. Thoth knew his knowledge must be safeguarded until our moral and emotional advancement balanced our cleverness and ambition, so he hid his books somewhere. Yet the dream runs through all of history, and perhaps fragments of the writings have been learnt. Alexander the Great came to Egypt, visited the oracle, and went on to conquer the world. Caesar and his family triumphed after he studied with Cleopatra here. The Arabs became the world’s most powerful civilisation after overrunning Egypt. In the Middle Ages, the Christians came to the Holy Land. For the Crusades? Or for deeper, more secret reasons? Later, other Europeans began to roam the ancient places. Why? Some contended it was for Christian artifacts. Some cite the legend of the Holy Grail. But what if the grail is a metaphor for this book, a metaphor of ultimate wisdom itself? What if it stands for the most dangerous kind of Promethean fire? Have any of the battles you’ve witnessed so far convinced you we are ready for such knowledge? We’re barely more than animals. So our old order slowly wakened from its lethargy, fearing that graves long buried were about to be reopened, that a book of secrets long lost might be rediscovered. Yet we know not ourselves what, precisely, it is we are guarding! Now the godless magi have come with your Bonaparte.’
‘You mean the savants.’
‘And this conjurer, Silano.’
‘Do you want to destroy the medallion, then, so the book can’t be found?’
‘No,’ said Ashraf. ‘It has been rediscovered for a reason. Your coming is a sign in itself, Ethan Gage. But these secrets are for Egypt, not for France.’
‘We have our own spies,’ Astiza went on. ‘Word came that an American was arriving with something that could be a key to the past, an artifact that had been lost for centuries and was a clue to powers lost for millennia. They warned it would be best just to kill you. But in Alexandria you killed my master instead, and I saw that Isis had another plan.’
‘Word came from whom?’
She hesitated. ‘Gypsies.’
‘Gypsies!’
‘A band sent warning from France.’
I sat back, rocked by this new revelation. By Jupiter and Jehovah, had I been betrayed by the Rom as well? Had Stefan and Sarylla been distracting me while word was sent ahead of my coming? What kind of string puppet was I? And were these people around me now, these people I liked and trusted, true informants who could lead me to a treasured book – or a nest of lunatics?
‘Who are you?’
‘The last priests of the old gods, who were earthly manifestations of a time and race with far more wisdom than ours,’ Enoch said. ‘Their origins and purpose are lost in the fog of the past. We are our own kind of Masonry, if you will, the heirs of the beginning and the watchmen of the end. We are guardians not entirely certain of what it is we are guarding, but entrusted to keep this book out of the wrong hands. The old religions never completely die; they are simply absorbed into the new. Our task is to discover the door before unprincipled opportunists do – and then shut it again forever.’
‘What door?’
‘That is what we don’t know.’
‘And you want to shut it only after taking a peek.’
‘We cannot decide what best to do with the book until we find it. We should see if it offers hope or peril, redemption or damnation. But until we do find it, we live with the fear that someone else far less scrupulous could find it first.’
I shook my head. ‘Between bungling my assassination in Alexandria and not having much more of a clue than I do, you’re not much of a priesthood,’ I grouched.
‘The goddess does things in her own good time,’ Astiza said serenely.
‘And Silano does his in his.’ I looked grimly at our little gathering. ‘Isis didn’t help poor Talma, and she won’t protect us. I don’t think we’re safe here.’
‘My house is guarded…’ Enoch began.
‘And known. Your address is no longer a secret, that oil jar tells us. You must move, now. You think he won’t come knocking if he’s desperate enough?’
‘Move! I will not run from evil. I will not leave the books and artifacts I’ve spent a lifetime accumulating. My servants can protect me. And besides, trying to move my library would give any new hiding place away. My job is to
