The Medusa Amulet

Chapter 20

In the winter of 1785, the frost lay on the valley of the Loire like a wrinkled white sheet. The apple orchards were barren, the fields deserted, and the post road, such as it was, had become a twisted ribbon of ice and snow. Anxious as the passengers were to reach the Chateau Perdu before dark, there was only so much the driver of the carriage could do. If he urged the horses on too fast, they could slip on the ice and break a leg, or a wheel could catch in a rut and snap loose from its axle. That had happened once already, and it was only with the help of the two armed guards-one riding in front of the carriage and one behind-that they’d been able to mend it well enough to continue on their way at all.

Charles Auguste Boehmer, official jeweler to the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, was beginning to regret having made the journey at all. Perhaps he and his partner, Paul Bassenge, reclining in the seat opposite, could have persuaded the queen to order the marquis to come to Versailles instead. It would have been so much easier, and, given the nature of what they were carrying, so much safer. But he knew that the Marquis di Sant’Angelo did only as he pleased, and it did not please him these days to come to Versailles. Boehmer suspected it was the presence at court of the infamous magician and mesmerist Count Cagliostro that was keeping him away. Boehmer had no use for the count, either, but so long as the man provided amusement to the queen and her retinue, he was sure to remain a fixture there.

At a crossroads, the carriage ground to a halt, and Boehmer, throwing his scarf around his neck, stuck his head out the window. The withered carcass of a cow was lying in the middle of the road, and three peasants, wrapped in rags, were hacking away at it with an assortment of knives and hatchets. They looked up at the coach-and its mounted guards-with barely concealed hostility. The whole countryside was starving-the winter had been especially harsh-and Boehmer knew that the rage, which had been simmering in France for years, might boil over into an outright rebellion any day.

He marveled that the king and queen were so blind to it.

“ Pardonne, monsieur,” Boehmer said to the one in the red stocking cap, who had stood up with his hatchet in his hand, “but can you tell us which of these roads leads to the Chateau Perdu?”

The man didn’t answer, but clomped instead, in his heavy wooden shoes, toward the carriage; he conspicuously admired its fine lacquered sheen and the pair of well-tended, black horses that drew it. The horses’ breath clouded in the air as they nervously pawed the icy road. Boehmer instinctively drew his head, like a turtle, farther into the cabin, and one of the armed riders spurred his mount closer to the coach.

“You have business with the marquis?” the man said, more insolently than he would ever have dared in years gone by.

“Official business of the court,” Boehmer said, to put the peasant on his guard.

The man stood on his tiptoes to survey the inside of the carriage, where Boehmer sat with a cashmere rug across his lap and Bassenge was filling his pipe with tobacco. The man nodded, as if this explained the armed riders, and said, “He is expecting you?”

“I don’t see where that’s any of your business,” Boehmer said, in a voice that he tried to make more forceful than he felt.

“The marquis makes it my business. He likes his privacy, and I help him to keep it.”

Bassenge, putting his pipe on the seat, seemed to divine what was going on before his partner did. Taking several francs from his pocket, he leaned toward the window and handed them to the man with the hatchet. “We thank you for your help, citizen.”

The man took the coins, rolled them around in his closed fist, then said, “Take the turn to the left. About three more kilometers. You’ll see the gatehouse.” Glancing up at the darkening sky, he said, “But I’d hurry if I were you.”

Boehmer did not know what precisely the vague threat implied, but he did not care to find out. “If you and your friends can clear the road, we would be grateful.”

“You would?” the man replied, and Bassenge, shaking his head at Boehmer’s slow-wittedness, again handed out a few more francs.

When the carcass had been dragged off the road, and the carriage was again on its way, Bassenge, a tall lean man with a sepulchral voice, chuckled. “To think that you still don’t understand what greases the wheels.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Money, my dear fellow. Money greases the wheels of the world.”

And Boehmer knew he was right. All his life, Boehmer had made it his business to be polite and amiable, open and fair, with everyone he met, and he still found it strange to live in a country where such suspicion and enmity prevailed. Like his partner, Bassenge, he had always been an outsider-a Swiss Jew now living in a French and Christian land-but through his skills and diplomacy, he had procured the office of Crown Jeweller, and he was allowed as many privileges at court as anyone of his background could ever hope to achieve.

As the carriage rattled on, it passed through a tiny town-no more than a tavern, a sawyer’s, and a deserted blacksmith’s shop-then over a millrace, where the wheel stood still in the frozen water, and on again into the deepening woods, which pressed closer to the carriage on both sides. Often, twisted boughs scratched the sides of the carriage, like plaintive bony fingers, and the wheels screeched as they caught in the icy ruts. The Chateau Perdu-the lost castle-was aptly named, he thought. Though he had never been there before-in fact, he knew no one who had-he was aware that it had been built nearly three hundred years before, by a Norman knight fresh from looting the Holy Land. Hidden away in the most remote corner of a vast estate, and perched on a cliff overlooking the Loire, it had been situated like a fortress, not a palace, and over the years, it had acquired an unsavory reputation-with rumors of terrible and sacrilegious deeds being performed there. Eventually, it had fallen into ruin.

And now it was inhabited by the mysterious Italian nobleman, the Marquis di Sant’Angelo.

As the carriage slowed, Boehmer looked out the window again and saw a stone gatehouse, with a lantern burning inside. A lame old man hobbled out, spoke with the rider in front, then unlocked the gates, and the carriage passed through. There was still no sign of the chateau, only a dense thicket of leafless trees all around, their trunks so closely spaced that they seemed to be fighting for their own room to grow. The twilight sky was filled with crows, swooping and cawing overhead like a flock of heralds. At several junctures the snow was so deep the carriage had to slow to a crawl, lest it fall into an unseen hole. More than once Boehmer saw dark shapes moving swiftly through the woods, tracking the humans’ progress with glinting yellow eyes. What, he wondered, could even the wolves find to eat in such a desolate landscape?

The road slowly rose, the trees began to fall away, and here, where the wind had blown the snow away, the wheels of the carriage were able to bite into the hard-packed dirt and gravel. Boehmer was looking out again, and Bassenge, puffing on his pipe said, “See anything yet?”

“Yes… but just.”

At first, it was only a tiny prick of light, burning as if in midair, but as the carriage rolled on, the light turned out to be a torch blazing at the top of a slender black turret, with its distinctively tapered pep-perpot top. The dimensions of the Chateau Perdu gradually took shape in the dusk-a crenellated stone wall, punctuated by five rounded towers, and sitting so high atop the land that anyone approaching it could be seen for at least a kilometer. Even now, Boehmer felt that they were being watched.

The dirt and ice of the road eventually gave way to an evenly laid bed of cobblestones, and the coach clattered toward a drawbridge spanning a wide green moat, also frozen over. The moment its wheels clattered through the postern gate and under the raised portcullis-its sharpened ends pointing down like daggers-the grate dropped again, chains rattling as it fell. The coach and horsemen drew up in a stone courtyard, surrounded on all sides by the gray slate walls and lighted windows of the chateau.

Boehmer straightened his clothes-it had been a long and arduous trip-and said to Bassenge, “Why don’t you do the honors?”

Bassenge tamped out his pipe, and reaching into a secret compartment beneath his seat, removed the walnut casket containing their precious cargo.

A footman from the chateau was opening the door and lowering the steps of their carriage as Boehmer stepped out. Night had fully fallen, as swiftly as a curtain might drop at L’Opera Francaise, and a cold wind was wailing around the courtyard. At the top of a flight of stone stairs, a pair of massive wooden doors, studded with iron rings, stood open, with a beckoning hearth just beyond. With every joint and bone in his body aching from the trip, Boehmer longed to stand before that fire and warm himself.

Other servants scurried out to help unload the coach and take the horses to the stable. The armed riders were led off to the staff quarters, while Boehmer and Bassenge ascended the steps as quickly as safety would allow, and entered the hall. The marquis himself, whom they had sometimes seen at court-more than once on the arm of Marie Antoinette herself-was descending the grand escalier with a pair of wolfhounds on either side. He was dressed, as was his wont, not in court finery, but leather breeches and riding boots. His black eyes sparkled in the firelight, and he appeared as robust as a stone-mason. Boehmer, whose considerable girth made him waddle like a duck, envied him his bearing. Not all noblemen struck such an aristocratic pose, he thought. The king himself made an unfortunate impression.

“I was about to send out a search party,” the marquis said, his French accented only slightly by his native Italian. “The brigands grow bolder every day.”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Boehmer said, clasping his extended hand, “but the roads are icy and we threw a wheel.”

“I’ll have my men make sure of the repairs.”

Bassenge thanked him, and while their bags were taken to their rooms, the marquis ushered his guests through the salle d’armes, where the walls were lined with medieval weaponry, and into the dining hall, its coffered ceiling gleaming gold in the light of a dozen candelabra. Here, they were served a lavish dinner of roasted boar and fresh pike, accompanied by several bottles of the local Sancerre. It was the best wine Boehmer had ever tasted, and he had tasted many.

The marquis himself was a pleasant enough host, but there remained about him an impenetrable air of mystery. His fortune appeared to be great, but no one at court had ever been able to trace his family or guess where the money had come from. Although he had been received at court by the previous king, Louis XV, he had quarreled with the king’s notorious mistress, Madame du Barry-it had had something to do with a portrait-and he’d soon found himself a close ally of the present queen, whose scorn for du Barry was no secret.

Marie Antoinette had come to rely upon this bold Italian’s taste in many things, especially questions regarding the fine arts, architecture, furnishings, and, above all, jewelry. It was in deference to his exquisite eye that the jewelers had made their pilgrimage to the Chateau Perdu. If they could procure a recommendation of the piece they had brought-a recommendation written in the marquis’s own hand-it would go far toward making up the queen’s mind.

Over dinner, the conversation quite naturally turned to the royal jewels-many of which Boehmer had created-and the marquis casually asked, while another bottle of Sancerre was uncorked, if any new trinkets had recently come to light. The royal coffers were deep, and Sant’Angelo evinced a particular interest in antique silver, perhaps with the old-fashioned niello finish. Boehmer was flattered to be asked, but, really, who was more in the queen’s confidence than the marquis?

“As you know, the queen favors more… glittering fare,” he said, nicely paving the way for what was to come.

It was only after the brandy had been served, along with platters of candied fruits and a redolent Feuille de Dreux-a soft, flat cheese topped with a chestnut leaf-that the more abstemious Bassenge caught his partner’s eye and laid a hand on the walnut box that had never left his side. The marquis did not miss the signal, either.

“The light will be better in the salon upstairs,” he said. “Come.”

The marquis led the way up the grand escalier, its two white wings ascending from the main hall, then down a long corridor lined with Gobelin tapestries (Boehmer’s eye never failed him) that rippled in the draft from the mullioned windows; a violent wind was blowing outside, rattling the iron frames and whistling through the cracks. At the end of the hall a warm light beckoned, and Boehmer, followed by Bassenge, entered a salon to rival the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

The walls were made of molded glass and gilded bronze, each of the mirrors long enough to reflect a man in his entirety, and alternated with bookshelves lined with ornately tooled volumes. The cost of such a room-a pentagon, oddly enough, in shape-must have been extraordinary. An enormous chandelier, its hanging crystals sparkling from the light of no less than a hundred white wax candles, hung overhead. The floor was covered with intricately woven Aubusson carpets, and on an oval table, in a corner of the room, a sturdy serving man was just setting down a silver pot and china cups.

“I thought you might like some hot chocolate,” the marquis said. “I’ve grown very fond of it myself.”

Boehmer, too, liked it, though Bassenge, he knew, was never much interested in anything to eat or drink. Already he had drifted over to the books, and with his head tilted to one side was scanning the titles.

Boehmer accepted a cup of the chocolate, thick and aromatic, and took it to the French doors that looked out into the night. He had to put his face close to the glass and shield his face with one hand, but then he could see past the reflection.

They were at the top of one of the towers, and just outside there was a slate terrace; beyond that, he could make out the tops of some very tall and ancient oaks, bending in the wind. Past the trees was a sheer cliff, falling away to the Loire, the longest river in France. Its surface glistened dully in the moonlight, like an enormous black serpent lying across the land. Boehmer imagined that the view might be quite spectacular by day, though right then it was both vertiginous and oddly disquieting.

“Haven’t you carried that box long enough?” the marquis said to Bassenge, who was indeed still clutching it under one arm.

Bassenge tore himself away from the books long enough to come to the claw-footed desk in the center of the room, where a bust of Dante had been moved to clear some space. He glanced at his partner to be sure that the time was right, and Boehmer said, “Open it, Paul.”

The box was the size of a chessboard and sealed with six brass clasps. Each one clicked as it was flicked back, then Bassenge lifted the gleaming lid, reached inside as delicately as if he were picking up a living thing, and withdrew a diamond necklace of such surpassing brilliance that it rivaled the chandelier above. Boehmer could not have been more pleased with the way the stones caught and magnified the light.

Bassenge’s bony fingers held it up by the two ends of its topmost loop-there were three in all-made up of exactly 647 of the most perfect African diamonds, some as large as filberts, culled from the inventory of dealers in Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Zurich. Weighing two thousand eight hundred carats, and accented by several red silk ribbons, it was the single most elaborate and costly necklace in the world-a piece that only royalty could afford to own, or bestow.

Which had been its original purpose. Boehmer and Bassenge had created it for Louis XV, as a gift for his mistress. But the king had died before it was done-before it could be given to Madame du Barry, and before it could be paid for… leaving it the most valuable, but most bereft, masterpiece in all the world.

Boehmer watched now as the marquis’s eye traveled over it, appraisingly, and he wondered if he was as amazed by its audacity and execution as he hoped. Would he be so favorably impressed that he would recommend it to Marie Antoinette? Could he persuade her to purchase the necklace herself? At 2 million livres, it was an astronomical sum, even for the Queen of France. But if she didn’t buy it, to whom else could Boehmer and Bassenge hope to sell it?

“Is there a diamond left in the world?” the marquis finally said, and Boehmer beamed.

“Not one to match the quality of these.”

“May I?” Sant’Angelo said, and taking it in his own hands, he held the necklace up to the light, gently turning it this way and that and studying the way its thousand facets captured and refracted the glow of the candles. Boehmer noted that the marquis himself wore a simple silver ring on one finger, cast in the shape of the Medusa. Bassenge must have noticed it, too.

“Like Count Cagliostro’s,” he said to his partner, sotto voce.

“What’s that about the so-called count?” the marquis said, his attention still riveted on the necklace.

“He is quite the rage at Versailles these days,” Boehmer said.

“So I’ve been told,” the marquis replied disdainfully.

“And he wears a medallion much like your ring,” Bassenge explained.

The marquis stopped, as if frozen for an instant, before saying, with affected nonchalance, “Does he now?”

Boehmer nodded his agreement.

“Did you know that I made this ring myself?”

“I had always understood that Your Excellency was proficient in our trade,” Boehmer said-which wasn’t to say he understood why. A nobleman who was also a silversmith? But then the king himself had a passion for locksmithing. Who could understand all their idiosyncrasies?

“And you say it resembles this Medusa?” Sant’Angelo said, keeping the necklace in one hand while holding out the other that wore the ring, so that they might more closely inspect it.

“Yes. Identical, I would hazard,” Boehmer said.

“With ruby eyes?”

“No,” Boehmer said, “unless they have been removed. It is really quite plain.”

Sant’Angelo’s face betrayed no emotion, but he carefully placed the diamond necklace back in its velvet-lined casket, then offered to refresh their hot chocolate from the still-warm pot.

“Why should I simply write a letter?” he said, pouring another dollop into Boehmer’s waiting cup. “I will accompany you to Versailles tomorrow.”

“And you will personally speak to the queen about the necklace?” Boehmer said, beside himself with joy. The sale might yet be made and the fortune he had invested in the piece recovered!

“I can promise nothing,” the marquis replied, “but I will indeed speak to her about it.”

All that night, the Marquis di Sant’Angelo paced the floor, waiting for the dawn to break. If he could have wrenched the sun into the sky with his own bare hands, he would have done it.

Boehmer and Bassenge had gone to bed, but he remained in the mirrored salon, sometimes stepping out on its balcony, where the cold wind rippled the sleeves of his shirt and whipped his black hair into a frenzy. The barren branches of the old oaks creaked like hinges, and a pack of wolves, hunting along the banks of the Loire, howled at the moon. The sky was clear, and the stars twinkled as white and bright as the diamonds in the necklace he had been shown a few hours before.

But it wasn’t the necklace that occupied his thoughts. The queen knew it had been made for her nemesis, du Barry, and for that reason alone, even if it were the most beautiful necklace in all the world, she would never buy it.

No, what occupied his thoughts was La Medusa… apparently adorning the greatest charlatan in France-a man who claimed to be three thousand years old. A patent sham, professing to know the wisdom of ancient Egypt.

How in the name of Heaven had he come by it?

And did he know-or had he discovered-its secret?

For over two hundred years, the Marquis di Sant’Angelo-as he had titled himself on the very night he left Florence-had searched for the glass. But ever since the day it had been torn from his neck by the Duke of Castro and handed over to the Pope, it had vanished without a trace. His spies at the Vatican had never been able to discover it, and the marquis had eventually assumed that, like so much of the papal treasure, and so many of his other great works, it had been melted down or dismantled… destroyed by someone who could never have guessed its latent power.

Caterina-his model, his muse, his love-had known. She had discovered it by chance… and to her great misfortune. But as a papal retainer had confided to him years ago-at the tip of Cellini’s dagger-she had died in a shipwreck, fleeing the Duke of Castro’s inquisitors. As proof, the man had shown him the ship’s manifest and passenger lists, left in Cherbourg. She had changed her name, but Cellini recognized well her peculiar and barely legible handwriting. Reports of the ship’s destruction had been widely circulated at the time.

Perhaps the sea had conferred a blessing upon her.

There were times when he wondered if he might not have been better off himself, inhabiting that tomb in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata. Sleeping there, in silence, until the Second Coming.

But what reason was there to believe that Christ was going to return at all? What reason was there to believe in anything?

A hawk, with a rodent clutched in its talons, settled onto a swaying branch and proceeded to devour its screeching prey.

That was the way of the world, he thought. Every living creature was ultimately a banquet for some other. And no one had ever seen more of the grisly and unending spectacle than he had.

Over the centuries, he had uncovered secrets no other man had. He had delved more deeply into arcane matters than anyone else had ever done, even the learned Dr. Strozzi. And he had escaped death, a hundred times. But at what cost?

Life, he had discovered, knew its own limits. When the thread had been meant to be cut, it was cut… and all the time thereafter was only a hollow enactment of things never intended to occur.

Oh, he had lived on, but once he had reached his mortal span-seventy, seventy-five, whatever God had intended-his life had become as great a lie as Cagliostro’s.

Was that, he wondered, why he had always harbored such hatred for the man?

He lifted his hands, still gnarled from his days as the great and applauded artisan, and wondered where, precisely, their genius had gone. On the night the old beggar had been buried in his tomb, it was as if his gifts had been buried then, too. He could sculpt, he could mold, but only as well as some rough, untutored apprentice in his shop might have done-as anyone with ten fingers and two eyes could do. He could not create works worthy of the artist he had once been, and so, over time, he had ceased to try. It was too painful, too degrading, to produce pieces of anything less than transcendent beauty.

The waters of eternity, he thought, the light of the ancient moon

… united in the Medusa, they had granted him the gift he sought. But the gift they bestowed was an empty vessel. It was a life without purpose, and a destiny with no fitting end. He might have laughed if he were not the one who had been tricked.