Read Online Three Emperors (9780062194138) by William Dietrich - Free Book Online Page A

mind.”
    â€œDon’t tempt fate by cheating the tarot, sire.”
    â€œJosef, please,” Paulina said.
    He didn’t fear me, but he feared bad luck. He scowled. “Ask your damned question, and then take your pup out of here.”
    I couldn’t betray fear. If one wants to be a seer to the noble and wealthy, self-confidence is imperative. We’re actors. “I’ve learned from my studies that the mystic Christian Rosenkreutz, seeker of the secrets of the rose, may have sought shelter in this castle, and possibly hid an object he was protecting from Catholic inquisitors. Do you know anything of this episode, or where Rosenkreutz went? It’s his path I seek.”
    â€œThe founder of the Rosicrucians? You think that’s why the House of Rožmberk, builders of this castle, adopted the rose as their coat of arms?”
    â€œYour chapel ceiling has the golden triangle with the all-seeing eye. There were mystics here, my lord.”
    â€œThere are mystics everywhere in this land of caves and forest.” Now the duke looked intrigued. He knew something. And I was confirming that the legends he’d learned as a boy might have a grain of truth. Had he seen the ghost of the White Lady on moonlit evenings and realized there’s more to reality than we admit?
    â€œThe tale is that an odd mystic named Rosenkreutz did come with a wooden coffin. Inside was a being variously described as a corpse, a mummy, or . . .”
    â€œAn automaton,” I finished. “A mechanical man. The word android was coined for it a century ago, from the Greek meaning ‘in the shape of a man.’ ”
    â€œA golem, some say. The Jewish mud men who come alive and roam the night.” He shuddered. “They tear Christians limb from limb.”
    â€œOnly those who harass the ghetto.”
    â€œThe Rožmberks welcomed this strange Rosenkreutz as a scholar and diversion, a prophet like you, and then came to distrust him, as I distrust you. Was he a seeker of truth or an agent of Satan? They shut him in the dungeon, telling him to buy his way out by turning lead into gold. He ordered furnaces, crucibles, and chemicals. Then he burst through the castle wall.”
    â€œBroke through solid stone?”
    â€œBy magic. There was an explosion, but he had no gunpowder. He lowered his mysterious cargo to a waiting boat on the Vltava River and set out rowing for Prague. There he disappeared among magicians, astrologers, and numerologists.”
    â€œBut where was he going?”
    â€œHis motto was ‘As above, so below.’ From the depth of our dungeons, he wanted to climb the Astronomical Tower in Prague’s Klementinum.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œLegend swallowed him up. Whatever it was he dragged in that coffin, it disappeared.” He looked sourly at me. “It’s said he vanished into a hidden tomb in a ruined castle. Be careful, fortune-teller.”
    â€œJosef, the cards aren’t her fault,” Paulina said.
    â€œGo to the Klementinum, priestess. I’m told there’s a wandering bishop there making the same kind of inquiries.” He looked at me slyly, and I wondered if this duke was as simple as he pretended. “His name is Primus Fulcanelli, and perhaps you can tell his fortune.”
    â€œAnd where would this ruined castle be?” I persisted.
    â€œIf anyone knew that, it would have turned from castle to pit from treasure hunters digging there.”
    â€œSo Rosenkreutz was at least here. Can you show me his cell?”
    â€œSuperstition and old wives’ tales, all of it. But I’ll give you a peek at the dungeons so you won’t be tempted to come back.”
    The descent was to earlier and grimmer architecture. Sunlit baroque rooms gave way to medieval apartments below, and then stone cellars and cells. Here one could see the bony rock that the castle clung to. Color disappeared. Windows were arrow slits. Our