All these men had achieved great advances in many disciplines. They studied the human body, identified diseases, and proposed cures. But nothing linked any of them to the Ouroboros, nor did she find anything in their work that had a nefarious aspect to it. They were simply interested in mastering the forces of nature.
If anything, these scientist-philosophers were interested in bettering mankind, not destroying it.
She picked up the photographs of the underground chamber and studied them again. She tried to imagine what went on there and considered it with new eyes. There was actually nothing sinister about it. She followed that line of thought and picked up a sheet from the file on which Evelyn had sketched out a plan of the chambers and marked it with what they’d found. They’d found no bones there, no traces of dried blood, no cutting tools or sacrificial altars. Evelyn seemed to have reached the same conclusion. At the bottom of the sketch, scribbled in her distinctive script, she’d written and underlined the word Sanctuary, followed by another question mark.
A sanctuary from what? Whom, or what, were they hiding from?
The battery in Mia’s laptop died out, and as it did, a deep-seated tiredness swamped her. She put the file away and found her bed again.
This time, it didn’t take her long to drift off into sleep, but as she did, one lingering, confused thought seemed determined to ride roughshod over any hopes of a peaceful rest: the idea of an ancient terror being resuscitated to unleash havoc on this world, presaged by the haunting image of the tail-devouring snake, which had inexorably wormed its way into the deepest recesses of her mind.
Chapter 32
The false count navigated wearily through the hot, suffocating ballroom, his head pounding from the haughty chatter, the garish laughter, and the incessant, relentless music, his eyes assaulted by the sparks from the spinning Catherine wheels and the gloriously outlandish costumes of giraffes, peacocks, and other exotic animals that paraded before him.
It was on nights like these that he missed the Orient most. But he knew those days were long, long gone.
He cast his tired eyes around the great room, feeling every inch the impostor that he was. Papier-mâché animal heads sitting precariously on powdered wigs stared down at him and tall feathers tickled at his nostrils as, all around him, the guests at the Palais des Tuileries mingled and danced with abandon. Pearls and diamonds ensnared his gaze everywhere he turned, shimmering under the light of hundreds of candles that carelessly soiled the carpets with mounds of molten wax. It wasn’t his first ball, nor would it be his last. He knew he would suffer many more evenings like tonight’s bal de la jungle, the jungle ball — more dreadful displays of unbridled pomp, more throwaway conversations, more unabashed flirtations. It was all part of the new life he’d created for himself, and his presence was expected — anticipated, even — at occasions like these. He also knew the pain wouldn’t end here: In the days and nights to come, he would have to endure endless, giddy retellings, in countless salons, of the evening’s public glories and of its more private, salacious goings-on.
It was a price he had to pay for access, and access was what he needed if he was ever to succeed, although, with each passing year, that success seemed more and more remote.
It was, truly, an impossible task.
Often, as tonight, he would find himself wandering, lost in his thoughts, trying to remember who he really was, what he was doing here, what his life was really about.
It didn’t always come to him that easily.
More and more frequently, he was finding it hard to keep his creation at bay and not fully lose himself in his false persona. The temptation hounded him at every step. Each day, he passed scores of poor folk in the streets, men and women who would give their right arm for the life he enjoyed — the life they believed he was enjoying. He wondered if he hadn’t struggled enough, if he hadn’t hidden enough, if he hadn’t been alone long enough. He felt tempted to abandon his quest and relinquish the role that had been entrusted to him in that dungeon in Tomar all those years ago, and to embrace his outwardly fortunate position, settle down, and live out the rest of his days in pampered comfort and — more important — in normalcy.
It was a temptation that was getting harder and harder to dispel.
His journey to Paris had been anything but straightforward.
He’d managed to slip away from Naples, but he knew he wasn’t safe anywhere, certainly not in Italy, and that di Sangro would not rest until he found him. He had seen it in the prince’s eyes; he also knew the prince had the money and the manpower to track him down. And so he set out to muddy his trail, establishing new identities wherever he went before moving on and leaving behind confusing fabrications as to their backgrounds and their movements.
He had carefully seeded deceptions in Pisa, Milan, and Orléans on his way to the great city, taking on new names as he traveled forth: the Comte Bellamare, the Marquis d’Aymar, the Chevalier Schoening. More names would — some justly, others falsely — come to be associated with him in the years to come. For now, however, he was comfortably settled into his Paris apartments and his new persona, that of the Comte de St. Germain.
Paris suited the count. It was a huge, bustling city — the largest human settlement in Europe — and it attracted plenty of travelers and adventurers, the boisterous as well as the discreet. His appearance there would be diluted by those of countless others. Here he could meet other travelers, men who, like him, had been to the Orient and who may have come across the symbol of the tail-eater in their travels. It was also a city of learning and discourse, and a repository of great knowledge, with rich libraries and untold collections of manuscripts, books, and relics, including the ones that were of particular interest to him: those pilfered from the Orient during the Crusades, and those confiscated after the suppression of the Templars almost five centuries earlier. The ones that could house the missing piece of the puzzle that had ambushed his life all those years ago.
He arrived in Paris at a time when the great city was in transition. Radical thinkers were challenging the twin tyrannies of monarchy and Church. The city was bubbling with contradiction and upheaval, with enlightenment and intrigue — intrigue that St. Germain put to good use.
Within weeks of his arrival, he managed to befriend the king’s minister of war and with his help, he insinuated himself into the king’s orbit. Impressing the aristocrats wasn’t hard. His knowledge of chemistry and physics, gleaned from his years in the East, were enough to regale and hoodwink the debauched buffoons. His familiarity with foreign lands and his mastery of numerous languages — his French in Paris was as impeccable as his Italian was in Naples, to add to his fluent mastery of English, Spanish, Arabic, and his native Portuguese — were cautiously wielded if and when his notability needed an additional boost. He was soon comfortably ensconced in the king’s coterie of pampered acolytes.