Once everyone had done so, and a fair amount of nervous giggling had subsided, he asked for volunteers for the first experiment—and Mme. Polignac’s hand went up in an instant. She came forward, grinning, and took a chair he set out. Cagliostro drew himself up to his full height (augmented, the marquis was convinced, by platforms in his boots) and carefully removed La Medusa from around his neck. Holding it up, he let it dangle in the air.
As the others watched silently, he instructed the young princess to attend only to the sound of his voice, and gaze only at the medallion, which he swung slowly back and forth, back and forth. Sant’Angelo had seen similar displays at the salons of Franz Mesmer in Vienna, and within minutes the suggestible young woman was under his sway.
“You are in a deep sleep,” he intoned, “a deep and comforting sleep … but when I tell you to awake, you will awake, and you will rush to kiss the oldest man you see in the room.”
For a split second, the marquis wondered if he would be unmasked.
But when the duchess came out of her trance, she glanced about, as if unaware that anything at all had happened, then scurried to a dignified old burgher, distantly related to the Habsburgs, and throwing her arms around his neck, kissed him.
The room erupted into laughter, and the duchess, blushing fiercely, stepped back, her hand to her mouth. The burgher reached out playfully, as if to claim another kiss, but Cagliostro called him forward instead. The man took the chair the princess had vacated, and once again the count placed him under his spell.
“And when you awake,” he suggested this time, “you will stand on one leg and crow like a rooster anytime Her Majesty plays the refrain of ‘C’est Mon Ami.’ ”
A ripple of subdued mirth went through the room, and Cagliostro raised a finger to hush them. Bringing the burgher back to his wits, he said, mournfully, “Alas, your will was too strong for me.”
“I could have told you that before you went to so much trouble,” the old man huffed, proudly.
“I could do nothing to overcome it,” Cagliostro said, as the queen crept to the harpsichord and began to play the refrain of “C’est Mon Ami.”
Not even back in his own seat yet, the burgher suddenly lifted one leg and let out a trilling cock-a-doodle-do. Then, so surprised was he at his own action—and in front of the queen yet!—he tumbled, beet red, onto a velvet settee.
The marquis knew where this was going—the count was going to mesmerize everyone at once, then do something to leave the proof that he’d done it—removing and hiding all their shoes, for instance. Mesmer had once switched everyone’s jewelry around. It was all just a parlor game, and Sant’Angelo knew that it depended upon the willing abdication of will on the part of everyone in the room … a phenomenon he knew could sweep over an intimate group quite readily.
So, when the count did indeed ask for everyone’s attention, and insist that they all follow his instructions and his voice to the letter, he played along, lowering his own eyelids, then his head on cue. But his hands were folded in his lap, like an arrow, and his thoughts were directed, straight as a rapier, at the count.
Already, he could sense a hesitancy creeping into Cagliostro’s words.
The marquis raised his eyes, and even in the gloom, he could see that the count was studying him.
Yes, I know every trick in your bag, Sant’Angelo thought.
And like a lightning bolt, a thought shot right back into his own head. Every trick?
The marquis rocked back in his chair, in shock. This so-called count had greater powers than he had ever imagined, powers that Sant’Angelo assumed only he possessed. The marquis knew nothing of the Egyptian Masons, with whom Cagliostro claimed to have studied, but it was clear that he had learned great secrets, nonetheless. What Sant’Angelo had divined from the ancient stregheria of Sicilian witches, the count must have imbibed from his Coptic priests. While heads drooped and arms hung listlessly all around the room, Sant’Angelo and his adversary were wide awake, all their respective faculties focused on each other.
But you challenge the power of the pharaohs, my friend.
To Sant’Angelo’s astonishment, the shadows in the room began to move and take on the shape of birds—fat black ravens—that swirled across the walls and ceiling, before ominously massing. The marquis’s respect for Cagliostro’s powers grew even larger as he braced himself for an attack.
Which came only seconds later.
In a silent horde, their wings spread and beaks open, the ravens swooped down and Sant’Angelo instinctively started to raise his hands to protect himself against them. But then he caught himself—if you gave in to the illusion, you only gave strength to it—and deliberately let his arms drop to his sides.
If you let your adversary alter your reality, you became his slave.
And Sant’Angelo was not about to let that happen.
The parrot on the mantelpiece squawked in alarm, and the white monkey screeched. The little dogs yapped and scuttled from the room, as the queen stirred in her chair, and Fersen muttered uneasily.
I know what you’ve come for, the count continued.
The marquis berated himself for allowing his desires to become evident.