The Eight: The Fire Part 16

'Please explain yourselves,' he asked them.

'According to Charlot, as he told us on the s.h.i.+p,' said Haidee, 'his mother, Mireille, was one of the original nuns at Montglane when the service was first brought to light after a thousand years. She was sent to Kauri's father, Shahin, in the desert. There, her child Charlot was born beneath the eyes of the White Queen, just as it was foretold in the ancient legend.'

'My father raised him,' Kauri explained. 'He told us Charlot possessed the second sight, also predicted one who would help to a.s.semble the pieces and solve the mystery.'

'But Charlot claims that his mother possesses something else of tremendous power,' Haidee added, 'something that makes our entire mission seem...impossible.'

'If a nun from Montglane is his mother,' Byron said, 'it does not require any "second sight" to guess what you have to tell me. This Charlot of whom you speak believes he and his mother are in possession of something he's just learned that we own instead. Something the two of you have risked your lives to bring across mountains and seas. Is that not it?'

'But how can it be?' said Haidee. 'If his mother helped dig the pieces from the earth at Montglane Abbey with her own bare hands; if she's collected the pieces from the ends of the earth ever since; if she's even received the Black Queen from the tsar of all the Russias, grandson of Catherine the Great, then how can there be a second queen? And if there were, how could the one that was owned by the Bektas.h.i.+ Sufis be the real one?'

'Before trying to answer that question,' said Byron, 'I suggest we pay cautious and careful attention to what we've been brought to this place to hear. And by whom: Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte, Cardinal Fesch, and even Madame Cosway all scions of the Church, which, after all, had retained these pieces in Christian hands since the time of Charlemagne.'

'But Father,' said Haidee, glancing at Kauri for his support, 'this must surely be the explanation, the very reason why we all are here! According to Charlot, his mother, the nun Mireille, was sent thirty years ago to Kauri's father, Shahin, in the Sahara by someone who must be the missing connection: Angela-Maria di Pietra Santa. A close friend of the Abbess of Montglane, and also the mother of our two hosts here today, Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte and, by a different father, also of Cardinal Joseph Fesch. Angela-Maria was Napoleon's grandmother! Don't you see, Father? They are on the opposing team!'

'My child,' protested Byron, drawing his daughter to him and wrapping his arms around her, 'it doesn't matter, this business of teams. It's the chess service itself that is important the powers it holds, not this foolish Game. That's why the Sufis have sought for so long to retrieve the pieces, to return them to the hands of those who will protect them and never exploit them for individual power only for the good of all.'

'Charlot thinks differently,' insisted Haidee. 'We are the White Team and they are the Black! And I believe that he and Shahin are on our side.'

The Pyramid, Roma January 22, 1823 Only one dim oil lamp burned in the crypt where they'd gathered, at Letizia Bonaparte's proposal, on the morning after Sh.e.l.ley's funeral. All else within the enormous pyramid was swallowed in darkness, which provided Charlot the first s.p.a.ce he'd had to think in since departing Fez.

Letizia had asked them here, she explained, because the artist Madame Cosway had important information to impart to them all. And what better spot than this very pyramid, which contained the crux of the secret Maria had agreed, after so many years, to reveal.

Madame Mre now lit the sconces she'd brought and set them beside the tomb of Caius Cestius. Their flickering light cast shadows upon the high vaulted stone ceiling of the crypt.

Charlot looked at the faces encircled about him. The eight whom Letizia Bonaparte and her brother had brought together in Rome, at Shahin's behest, were all present. And each played a critical role, as Charlot now understood: Letizia and her brother, Cardinal Fesch; Shahin and his son, Kauri; Lord Byron and the painter, Madame Cosway; Charlot himself and Haidee.

Charlot knew that he no longer required such external light to identify the dangers all around him. Only days ago, at that marketplace in Fez, his vision had returned full-force a situation wholly unexpected, at once as exciting and as frightening as if he'd suddenly found himself amid a meteor shower. The past and the future were again his traveling companions, the contents of his mind lit like a pinwheel of ten thousand glittering sparks in a midnight sky.

Only one thing remained dark to him: Haidee.

'There is one thing no prophet, regardless how great, can see for himself,' Shahin had told him that night in the cave above Fez. 'And that is his own destiny.'

But in that moment when Charlot had first gazed down from that parapet in the medina and seen the girl in the slave market below though he'd spoken of this to no one since, not even to Shahin he'd glimpsed for a single dreadful instant just where that destiny might lead.

Though he still could not see precisely how his destiny was entwined with hers, Charlot knew that his premonition about Haidee had been a true one, just as he'd first been drawn three months ago to leave France, to journey a thousand miles into the canyons of the Ta.s.sili, to find the White Queen, that ancient G.o.ddess whose image was painted high on the cliffs, in the hollow of the great stone wall.

And now that he'd found her in flesh and blood, embodied in this young girl, he understood something more: Whatever Madame Cosway had to reveal about it, whatever role these others played, it was Haidee herself who stood at center board, holding the Black Queen, and Charlot must stand with her.

Cardinal Joseph Fesch looked around the candlelit crypt at the others who, he thought, sat huddled like mourners at a funeral.

'Madame Maria Hadfield Cosway is known to many of you by reputation, if not in person until today,' he began. 'Her parents, Charles and Isabella Hadfield, ran the famous English group of inns in Florence, Carlo's, which catered to British travelers on the Grand Tour, like the historian Edward Gibbon and the biographer James Boswell. Maria grew up surrounded by the aristocracy of the arts and became a great artist herself. When Charles died, Isabella closed up the inns and took Maria and her siblings to England, where Maria was married to the famous painter, Richard Cosway.

'Although my sister, Letizia, and I did not make the acquaintance of Maria Cosway until Napoleon came to power, from then we have remained the closest of friends. I am myself today a sponsor of the girls' school she founded just north of here, at Lodi. We have asked Maria to tell a story involving this very pyramid in which we are seated today, and its connection with her late husband, Richard Cosway, who has recently died in London. The tale she will tell she has never revealed in full to anyone not even to us ourselves. It took place more than thirty years ago, in 1786, when she went with her husband to Paris. And something happened there that may be of deep concern to everyone here in this chamber.'

The cardinal took his seat and deferred to Maria.

As if uncertain how to proceed, she removed her moleskin gloves and set them aside. With her fingertip she took a bit of the soft candle wax from the nearby sconce and rolled it into a ball between her thumb and forefinger.

'Ma chre madame,' said Cardinal Fesch, placing his hand over hers to prompt her to continue.

Maria smiled and nodded.

'It was in September of 1786,' she began in her soft, lightly inflected Italian, 'and my husband Richard Cosway and I had recently crossed la Manche, the English Channel, from London. Our reputations had preceded us. We were both award-winning painters, and our salon in London was known to be the most sought-after. Richard had an important commission in France to paint the children of the duc d'Orleans, cousin to Louis XVI, and a great friend of my husband's English patron, the Prince of Wales, now King George IV. At Paris, we were feted by artists and n.o.bility alike. Our friend and colleague, the painter Jacques-Louis David, arranged our presentation at the French court to the king and Marie Antoinette.

'A word must be said here of my husband, Richard. Many envious people in London had long thought ill of him, for he'd come from poverty and had risen very far. Richard did little to a.s.suage these enemies, but bore himself with extravagance and ostentation at all times. He favored a coat of mulberry satin embroidered with strawberries, a large sword that dragged upon the ground, hats heavily laden with ostrich plumes, and shoes with red heels. In the press he was called a "macaroni" a fop and his appearance was likened to his own pet monkey, who some maliciously called his natural child.

'But only privately known was that Richard was also one of the great virtuosi, or arbiters of taste, a connoisseur and collector of rare and valuable antiquities. Not only the famous Gobelin tapestries, but he also possessed twenty-six rooms of rareties: an Egyptian mummy, the relics of saints, Chinese ivories, rare esoteric works from Arabia and India, and even what he believed to be a tail feather of the phoenix.

'Richard himself was of mystical bent, a follower of earlier visionaries like Emanuel Swedenborg. In London, along with my brother, George, an architectural student, we'd attended the private lectures of Thomas Taylor, "the Platonist," who'd recently translated secret doctrines of the earliest Greek esoteric writers for avid subscribers to such mysteries, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Blake.

'This background is important. For it appears that my husband, unknown to me, had discovered through the duc d'Orleans something involving a great mystery that had been buried for nearly a thousand years in France, a mystery that was about to resurface into the light, not long after that morning, thirty years ago, when we first arrived in France.

'I remember the day. It was Sunday, September 3, 1786, a golden morning that brought Richard and me on an outing to the Halle au Ble, the famous Paris grain market, an enormous rotunda where wheat, peas, rye, lentils, oats, and barley were all sold. It has since burned down, but was then known as one of the most beautifully designed buildings in Paris, with curving stairways, a lofty dome with skylights that flooded everything with daylight like a fairy palace floating through the sky.

'It was there, in that magical, silvery light, that we encountered the person who would soon change everything. But at that moment, so long ago, I could hardly have foreseen how my life and the lives of my family would be so completely altered by events that had just been set in motion.

'The American painter John Trumbull had arrived in the company of his friend, a tall, pale man with copper-blond hair, at whose residence on the Champs-elysees Trumbull himself was staying. Trumbull's host, we soon learned, was the delegate from the new American Republic to the French court, a statesman whose own fame was shortly to eclipse all our own. His name was Thomas Jefferson.

'By all appearances, Mr Jefferson was completely captivated by the Halle au Ble; he spoke in rhapsodies about the beauties of its design, and was thrilled with a rush of excitement when John Trumbull mentioned the architectural works of my brother, George, a fellow at the Royal Academy in London.

'Mr Jefferson insisted upon accompanying us throughout the day. From our meeting at Paris, we four spent the afternoon in the countryside at St Cloud, where we dined. Then we canceled all evening plans and went instead to Montmartre, to the outdoor garden at the Ruggieris', the family of pyrotechnicians who'd created a lavish display of fireworks; the play "The Triumph of Vulcan" was performed, about the mysteries of that great underworld figure whom the Greeks called Hephaistos, G.o.d of the forge.

'It was this extravagant dramatic display of the underworld mysteries, it seems, that prompted my husband, Richard, to speak so openly to Mr Jefferson about the great pyramids and fire temples, resembling those of Egypt, that were built in the wilderness pleasure gardens just outside Paris like those of Parc Monceau, the famous estate of our French patron, the duc d'Orleans. My husband shared with the duc a deep interest in the knowledge of hidden things.

'And just as Jefferson had succeeded Benjamin Franklin as emissary to France, the duc d'Orleans himself had succeeded Franklin as Grand Master of the Paris Freemasons. Their secret initiations often took place among the grottoes and cla.s.sical ruins of his gardens.

'But more intriguing to Thomas Jefferson was Richard's allusion to another mysterious spot, farther from Paris, en route to Versailles, which was created by the duc's close friend, Nicolas Racine de Monville. According to the duc, so my husband revealed to us that night, this ninety-acre park, filled with strange mystical symbols, concealed a secret as old as the pyramids indeed, it boasted a pyramid that was an exact replica of this one. Mozart's Magic Flute had been performed there.

'There was something more intriguing still about the place so much so that Mr Jefferson lost no time in abandoning his ministerial work and arranging a jaunt, only a few days later, into the countryside with me alone to view this hidden garden.

'Ever since the tale of that first biblical lost garden, we humans always seem to value things more once they've been lost. In the case of Monsieur Racine de Monville, with the dawn of the French Revolution not far away, he would soon lose his fortune as well as his gardens. The duc d'Orleans would fare far worse: dubbing himself Philippe egalite, he would side with the Revolution, would vote to condemn his cousin, the king, but be guillotined by the revolutionaries, nonetheless.

'As for Thomas Jefferson and me we found something that day in de Monville's garden, something neither of us had expected: the key to an ancient lost wisdom. The garden itself provided the key.

'It was called le Desert de Retz. In the ancient French parlance, this meant "the Wilderness of the King" the Lost Domaine.'

The Tale of the Artist and the Architect But gardens also exist in our collective subconscious. The garden was man's first domain, and in the course of centuries he gave it numerous names meaning the Earthly Paradise, Eden. The hanging gardens of Babylon were one of the seven wonders of the world... Our efforts to recreate it always remain works of the imagination.

Olivier Choppin de Janvry, Le Desert de Retz I cannot think but that he meant to imitate the Tower of Babel.

Thomas Blaikie, Royal Gardener, speaking of the Desert of Retz We set out from Paris that Friday, September 8, with Mr Jefferson's elegant carriage and grays, and we crossed the river into the glorious countryside. But nothing would prove more glorious than our destination, the Desert de Retz.

One abandoned the carriage and entered the park on foot through a grotto opening into an enchanted landscape, resembling a Watteau painting of late summer colors, hazy purples and mauves and rust. The rolling hills and meandering paths throughout the park were dotted by copses of copper beeches, pomegranates, mimosas, along with two-hundred-year-old sycamores, maples, lindens, and hornbeams: all trees with meaning for the initiated eye.

At each turn throughout the vista, interesting structures had been created that seemed to appear through sleight of hand, peeking from within a hidden grove or rising magically from a lake.

The stone pyramid was the one Jefferson noted with that same excitement he'd manifested when first viewing the Halle au Ble.

'A model of the tomb of Caius Cestius,' he said. 'I recognize it from its prototype, that famous Roman structure shaped like an Egyptian pyramid, a "mountain of fire," of which your countryman, Piranesi, made so many popular engravings.'

He added, 'The original of it at Rome possesses unusual properties. The square base measures ninety by ninety a number of great significance, for it sums up to three hundred and sixty, the number of degrees in a circle. "Squaring the Circle"! That was the most challenging and important puzzle for the ancients, concealing several meanings. They weren't just trying to discover some dry mathematical formula that would enable them to convert the area of a circle into that of a square, but much, much more. For them, squaring the circle meant a deep kind of transformation: transforming the circle that represents the celestial realm into the square, that is, the material world. Bringing heaven to earth, as one might say.'

'The "Alchemical Marriage" the marriage of Spirit and Matter,' I agreed. 'Or one might also say, the wedding of the head and the heart. My husband, Richard, and I have been students of ancient mysteries like this one over a great, great many years.'

Jefferson laughed, seeming slightly embarra.s.sed by his own unsolicited diatribe.

'As long ago as that?' he said with a winning smile. 'Yet you look to be no more than twenty, an unlikely age for an attractive young woman to be impressed with the overweening pontifications of an elder statesman like myself.'

'Twenty-six,' I told him, returning his smile. 'But Mr Cosway is just your age. So I've grown accustomed on a daily basis to the benefits of such thought-provoking wisdom! I hope you'll share even more.'

Jefferson seemed quite pleased to hear it, and he tucked my arm beneath his as we strolled on deeper into the park.

'A wedding of the head and the heart, you say?' He repeated my remark, still smiling down at me, rather wryly, from his lofty height. 'Ancient wisdom, perhaps, my dear lady. But I find my own head and heart more often bickering with each other, rather than preparing themselves for a trip down the aisle to the altar of marital bliss!'

'What concern could these organs of yours possibly have, that they should be so at odds about it with each other?' I asked him with great amus.e.m.e.nt.

'Can you not imagine?' he asked me, quite unexpectedly. I shook my head and hoped that the shadow of my bonnet concealed the flush I felt rus.h.i.+ng to my face.

Luckily, his next words relieved me considerably. 'Then I promise, I shall write you all my thoughts on the topic one day quite soon.' Then he added, 'But for the moment at least as the head is in charge of all mathematical and architectural problems such as the bearing weight of an arch or the squaring of a circle, it informs me that this nine-by-nine square of our pyramid has another, more important meaning. When we consult Herodotus, we discover that this very same proportion appeared in the layout of the ancient city of Babylon, a city of nine by nine miles. This evokes a fascinating mathematical puzzle you may not have heard of a "magic square" where each box of this nine-by-nine matrix must be filled with a number, in such fas.h.i.+on that each row, each column, and each diagonal will sum to the same total.

'My predecessor as American delegate to France, Benjamin Franklin, was an expert in magic squares. They were common to the cultures of China, Egypt, and India, he believed. He amused himself completing them whilst sitting in Congress. He could create one, he said, as quickly as he could jot down the numbers in their boxes, and he discovered many ingenious solutions to the formulas.'

'Did Dr Franklin discover a formula for the square of Babylon?' I asked, relieved to be set upon a safer path of inquiry than the direction in which our last had appeared to be headed.

I confess, though, I was reticent to mention the true reason for my interest. I'd done copies myself, for Richard's collection of rare esoteric works, of Albrecht Drer's famous 1506 copper engraving of a magic square, which showed its relations.h.i.+p to the golden mean of Pythagoras and The Elements of Euclid.

'Franklin did even better!' Jefferson seemed delighted that I should ask. 'Dr Franklin believed that in re-creating the ancient formulas for all of these squares he could demonstrate that any city built upon such a grid had been created to invoke the specific powers of that formula, along with its specific number, planet, or G.o.d.

'Franklin was, of course, a Freemason like our General Was.h.i.+ngton, and a bit of a mystic. But in truth, there is little that is mystical in such an idea. All great civilizations in ancient times, from China to the Americas, built a new city whenever they first established their new rule. That's what "civilization" means, after all civitas, of the city, from Sanskrit ci, "to settle, to lie down, to put in roots," as opposed to the savage or nomad who builds structures he can collapse and carry with him that are often round. By creating cities in the form of a square with such magical properties, the civilized ancients were hoping to invoke a new world order, an order that can only be created by sedentary peoples architects of order, if you will.'

'But what of those cities designed on the plan of a circle, like Vienna, Karlsruhe, or Baghdad?' I asked.

My question was to be answered in an unexpected way, for just at that moment, as we came through the copse of ancient lindens, the underbrush parted and we beheld the tower. Jefferson and I both halted, breathless in astonishment.

The Colonne Detruite or ruined column, as it was called was often written of by those who'd seen it, and many drawings and engravings had been made. But none of these did justice to the sheer impact of coming upon it in the woods like this.

It was a house built in the guise of a column an enormous, crenellated, cream-colored pillar, nearly eighty feet high, with a jagged top that made it appear it had been struck by lightning and broken in two. All around the sides were square and rectangular and oval windows. When we entered, we saw that the center of the vast s.p.a.ce was dominated by a spiral stairway, flooded with natural light, which seemed to soar toward the sky. Overhanging the railings were baskets of exotic hothouse flowers mixed with wild vines.

As I preceded Jefferson up the stairs, we marveled at the cleverness of the interior s.p.a.ces. Each circular floor was divided into oval-shaped rooms with fan-shaped salons fitted in between. There were two floors that lay underground in darkness and four above, all surrounded by windows. Above these, on the uppermost floor, was an attic surrounding the conical skylight, which washed everything on the floors beneath in silvery light. As we pa.s.sed through the floors, we saw views from the oval windows across the landscape including the pyramid, gothic ruins, temples to G.o.ds, a Chinese pavilion, and a Tatar tent. Through all this, we never spoke a word.

'Astonis.h.i.+ng,' said Jefferson at last, when we'd finished our tour and descended to the ground floor back to earth again, as it seemed. 'Just like the circular cities you asked of, but more like a citadel, a fortress the fortress, for it's a ruined tower of seven stories like the biblical one that once was built as an altar, a ladder to G.o.d.'

'This entire journey today seems symbolic,' I agreed. 'From an artist's eye, it's like a story that's been painted upon the land: the tale of Babylon throughout the Bible. First, its legendary history as a succession of wondrous gardens Eden on the Tigris and Euphrates, or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Then its conjunction with the four elements. Earth the magic square you described in the pyramid. Then those twin biblical catastrophes the destruction of the Tower of Babel, symbolizing air, the sky, the language, the voice and the great Flood of Mesopotamia, signifying water. And last, of course, in the Apocalypse the final destruction of the once-great city. Its end by fire.'

'Indeed,' said Jefferson. 'When the Eden of the East, Babylon, is destroyed, though, it is replaced, according to John in the Book of Revelation, by another magic square, a twelve-by-twelve matrix that descends from the sky: the New Jerusalem.'

When Maria Cosway completed this story, she looked around the room at the others, then bowed her head in contemplation. No one spoke for a very long time.

But there was something strange in this tale, as Haidee knew. She glanced at Kauri beside her, and he nodded once in confirmation. At last Haidee, who'd sat quietly between Kauri and Byron, got to her feet and came around the room to Maria's side, placing her hand on the older woman's shoulder.

'Madame Cosway,' said Haidee, 'you have told us a story very different from what any of us had been led to believe. We all understand that your tale is meant to allude to that other matrix, of eight by eight. The chessboard. Yet even before Mr Jefferson could have known of the Montglane Service, even before it was ever removed from the ground, he had the idea that it was really the board itself the matrix, as he called it rather than the pieces, that might be the most important part. Did he say where he got this idea?'

'Everyone knows,' said Maria, 'that after Thomas Jefferson's European sojourn, he went on to become American secretary of state, then vice president, then third president of the United States. Some believe he was also a Freemason, but I know that was not the case. He didn't care for joining orders invented by others; he had always preferred creating a new order of his own.

'It is also widely known that Jefferson was a great scholar and a student of architecture, especially of the designs of that fifteenth-century Venetian, Andrea della Gondola, nicknamed "Palladio" after Pallas Athene, patroness of Athena. The man who, during the Renaissance, had revived architecture all' antica reconstructions of the ancient Roman forms. What is less known, but more significant, is that Jefferson was also a student of the works of Palladio's great master, Vitruvius Pollio, the first-century architect whose works, the Ten Books on Architecture, had just been rediscovered in Palladio's day. These books are critical to any understanding of the roots of ancient architecture and its meaning, whether by Palladio or by Jefferson, and the influence of these books is revealed in everything either of them ever built.

'Vitruvius explains the importance of symmetry and proportion in building a temple with respect to the human body. Of siting a city and planning the directions of the streets with respect to the eight directions of the winds. The effects of the zodiac, the sun, the moon, and the planets upon the construction of a new religious or civil site.'

'I don't follow how this answers my daughter's question,' said Byron. 'What do the works of Palladio, much less Vitruvius, two thousand years ago, have to do with the importance of the chessboard we've come here to discuss? Have you an answer?'

'The chessboard doesn't provide the answer,' said Maria cryptically. 'It provides the key.'

'Ah,' said Haidee, glancing toward Byron. 'The architect Vitruvius also lived at Rome in the time of Jesus and Augustus and of Caius Cestius, too. You mean, madame, that it was Vitruvius who designed this very pyramid with its cosmic proportions. "Squaring the Circle" bringing heaven to earth here in Rome!'

'Indeed,' said Maria Cosway with a smile. 'And Jefferson, great student of architecture that he was, understood the meaning of it all the very moment he went to the Desert. As soon as possible, Jefferson traveled to each city he could in Europe, studied the layout, and bought expensive, accurate engravings of the plans of each. At the dawn of the French Revolution he returned home from Europe and I never saw him again, though we continued an intermittent correspondence.

'But someone else shared his intimate confidence,' she explained. 'A prizewinning Italian architect, a member of the Royal Academy who'd studied in both London and Rome, a student of the works of both Palladio and Vitruvius, an expert in disegno all' antica. And a cla.s.smate and intimate friend of our colleague John Trumbull, who'd introduced us to Jefferson at the Halle au Ble that day. Jefferson and Trumbull lured this man to America with an important architectural commission. He stayed there until his death. It is through him that I know much of what I have told you here today.'

'Who was this architect with whom Jefferson was so intimate, in whom he placed such confidence?' asked Byron.

'My brother, George Hadfield,' Maria said.

Haidee's heart was now thumping so loudly she thought it might be heard by the others. She knew she was close to the truth. Though still standing beside Maria, she saw Kauri cast her a warning glance. 'What was the commission your brother received?' Haidee asked the older woman.

'In 1790,' said Maria, 'as soon as Jefferson returned from Europe, and the very moment that George Was.h.i.+ngton was elected first president, Jefferson persuaded the president to have Congress purchase a piece of land in the form of a Pythagorean square, that is, one based on the number ten.

'Through the heart of this square ran three rivers, meeting at the center to form the letter Y a Pythagorean symbol. As soon as a designer was chosen Pierre l'Enfant Jefferson presented him with all the maps he'd collected of the European cities. But in Jefferson's letter to L'Enfant, there was a caveat: "They are none of them however comparable to the old Babylon." My brother, George Hadfield, was hired by Jefferson and Trumbull to complete the map as well as the design and construction of the Capitol building for this great new city.'

'Astounding!' said Byron. 'The chessboard, the biblical city of Babylon, and the new city created by Jefferson and Was.h.i.+ngton are all based upon the same plan! You've explained the significance of their design as "magic squares," and the deeper meaning that might entail. But what of their differences? These may be important, too.'

They certainly were, as Haidee had grasped in a flash.

And now she understood the importance of the Baba Shemimi's story. She understood the meaning of Kauri's warning glance, for this was what the Sufis surely had most feared all along. The chessboard was the key.

Al-Jabir's chessboard square of eight by eight as even the Baba had pointed out from square one had twenty-eight squares around its perimeter, the number of letters in the Arabic alphabet.

The nine-by-nine square of the Egyptian pyramid, of the ancient city of Babylon, had a perimeter of thirty-two squares: the letters of the Persian alphabet.

But a ten-by-ten square would contain thirty-six squares around its perimeter, representing not letters of an alphabet, but rather the 360 degrees of a circle.

The new city that Jefferson had built on three rivers, the city that he had even been first to occupy as a sitting president of the United States, had itself been designed to bring heaven to earth, to unite the head and the heart to square the circle.

That city was Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.