Napoleon Must Die (13 page)

Nusair exchanged several short sentences with his First Wife, then looked at Lirylah. “And you? What do you want in this?” He spoke in French so that his guests would hear the answer for themselves. “You have my word as a true son of the Prophet, with my hand on the Quran. It will be as you wish.”

Lirylah stared directly at Murat. “I will come with you, if Allah wills.”

“Lirylah!” her father burst out.

“You asked me, treasured father,” she said, flinching at the tone of his voice but sticking to her words. “I will accompany Madame Vernet. Otherwise she will have to go with a woman she does not know and cannot trust. Upriver that can be a great risk, and well you know it.” Her veil obscured her mouth but Victoire sensed she was pouting.

“But—” Nusair began.

“You said I might decide, treasured father,” Lirylah reminded him softly. “And who else can we recommend to them who is appropriate? How many women do you know who speak any French?”

Nusair coughed. “It is folly to educate a daughter. Everyone warned me and I would not listen.” He folded his arms and glared at her. “Very well. Since you will have it, go with Madame Vernet on her quest. But if any dishonor comes to you, I will not take you back into the house.”

Victoire intervened. “What dishonor could happen? She will assure my honor and I will assure hers. I have no wish to see her compromised and she cannot want to have any disrepute come to me. Roustam-Raza will be with us, and he is a most upright and correct Muslim. He will not permit your daughter to be taken advantage of, either out of intent or ignorance. What could be safer?”

“Staying under her father’s roof,” said Nusair bluntly. “But she has expressed her wish and I have said it will be granted. Why I should have had such a daughter—” He gave a gesture of vexation. “Very well.”

“There are gardens in Paradise for you, treasured father,” said Lirylah.

“Where your behavior will speedily send me,” he responded gloomily.

“Well, we had best set about our plans, before you depart on this madness.”

Victoire and Murat exchanged glances, and then he moved to where Nusair sat and began to soothe the merchant’s nerves with the assurances of the favor he would certainly enjoy.

* * *

Murat stood in the aft of the dhow, watching the first light change the surface of the river from indigo to silver to blush, his heart lightened by the beauty of it. He was dressed like a prosperous Greek merchant, his dashing cavalry whiskers shaved off in favor of a short new beard, and his curly brown hair was clipped close.

“We’ll reach Abydos this morning, they tell me,” Victoire said as she came up to him. She, too, wore Greek clothing, hers appropriate to a weaver from Hydra.

“Excellent,” he said after a long, distracted moment. “Are the horses ready?”

“Probably more than ready,” said Victoire. “They’ve been standing in stalls for the better part of five days. Roustam-Raza will have to exercise them with you before they’re fit to ride.” She regarded him, finding his face unusually set. “What is it, Murat? What’s troubling you? Are you worried we will not recover the scepter?”

He looked at her, faintly startled. “Well, yes. Yes. That, of course ...” He did not continue.

Victoire closed her eyes; Murat confirmed what she had suspected in the four and a half days they had been aboard the dhow. “Does she know? That you love her.”

Murat was still for a dozen heartbeats, then shook his head. “I hope not,” he said.

“Then you plan to say nothing?” she asked him. When he did speak, she went on, “For she loves you, Murat. It’s in her face every time she looks at you.”

He turned away from her. “Madame Vernet, please. It is hard enough to bear within myself. If I speak of her to you, it could weaken my resolve.”

“To say nothing?” she asked.

“I am a man of honor, Madame Vernet. How could I speak to her?” His eyes were bright with an emotion that was not quite anger or despair.

“Would speaking alone dishonor either of you?” She was as aware of the strictures that bound him as he was. She sought for some solution to his turmoil.

“An acknowledgment is not a declaration.”

“In my case, I fear it would have to be,” he said very softly. “How could I tell her ... anything? It would take advantage of her innocence.” He stared out toward the hot line of the eastern horizon where the sun was emerging.

“But she loves you, Murat, with all her soul,” Victoire said simply.

His sigh was not quite steady. “I know.”

“Is that so terrible?” Victoire did not give him time to answer. “How did we end up in Egypt, in any case? Why did France seek this place?”

Murat was visibly relieved. “Politics, Madame,” he said with an attempt at his usual jauntiness.

“Politics, of course. We are Frenchmen, so it has to be politics or love.” The cavalry officer glanced toward where Lirylah slept. “There is much every citizen knows about the great battles that saved the Republic. Few outside Paris realize the true nature of the Directoire that now rules our land.” Murat lost some of his normal exuberance here. His voice took on an almost conspiratorial tone. “I must ask you to repeat none of this. I find you an exceptional, er, person and so will speak on it. In some places to talk so plainly could bring you a visit to Dr. Guillotine’s merciful invention.”

“I am the wife of a Gendarme officer,” Victoire assured Murat.

“Of course,” the cavalryman smiled. “And we are all here with Napoleon. In fact, we are all here because of Napoleon.

“You see, the members of the Directoire hold the reins of power as tightly as they dare. Even so, their grip is feeble and France a powerful steed. They can never feel in control of the land they run, much less comfortable or secure. All of today’s Directoire gained their jobs, sometimes literally, over the bodies of those who preceded them. I cannot recall any who have retired peacefully from such employment. These men are ambitious. Perhaps more ambitious than competent. They fear anyone who could someday challenge them.

“Napoleon was such a man. He was a hero after he put down the rebellion at Toulon and forced the English to flee the city. To be rid of him, the Directoire sent the general to Italy. There a despondent and poorly trained army had been many times defeated by the Austrians. All France loves a winner, but has no memory for those who lose. They must have hoped that Napoleon would slow the inevitable Austrian success, or at worst, fail completely and lose his popularity.

“Instead, in battles so brilliant that they rival those of Alexander, our general drove two Austrian armies, each larger than our own, from Italy. This made him an even greater hero. And an even greater threat. They tried to leave Napoleon to rot with the honors they were forced to bestow on him. Ours is not a leader to sit idly by. He began to agitate, through powerful supporters in the city, for another command. For an expedition against the British.

“The British Empire is the bank for all the monarchs. Without English money we could all live in peace. It is English gold that pays the Austrian grenadiers and Russian cuirassiers to fight us. Their navy is still too strong for us to cross the Channel and defeat them on their own island. Instead Napoleon argued that we must cut them off from the source of their wealth, the Orient. Hence he argued for an expedition against Egypt, and, he has hinted, perhaps to conquer many more lands, even all those that were Alexander’s.

“The Directoire, seeing another chance for Napoleon to disgrace himself, found the idea appealing. Even more appealing, I suspect, was to have the general so far from Paris.”

Victoire could see Murat more clearly now that the sun was rising on their left, and the long shadows reached away from them toward the riverbank. “What do they want, those men in Paris?”

Murat actually grinned as he thought how to answer the question. Finally he spoke, his arms gesturing widely to emphasize each point.

“It is not what they want, but what they have. The members of the Directoire control France. Those few men control all the wealth, all the legions of battalions, every ship in the most powerful nation of the world. For a man of ambition, it must be a heady drink.

“But also this must be a disappointment. For they have no further to go. This, I suspect, drives them as much as any desire to spread Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité to the rest of Europe. And even so, to keep this power they have made themselves greater dictators than most kings. It must be a terrible fate, to have so much of what you desire that your only goal is not to lose it. But the people are not all fools. There has been a price. They say the loss of liberty was necessary to save us from the kings, but their control has not meant peace. The roads between the cities are not safe, the administrators corrupt, and the laws change daily. The people are tired of all this and search for a strong leader. If the Directors all ever agree on anything, it is to make sure no one arises that will be this leader. We are here with one man they rightly see as one who could lead all France, perhaps all Europe, and gloriously.”

The sun was higher now and more of the crew was on deck. One of the hands—almost certainly a slave—brought food to the horses in stalls on the foredeck, and a new helmsman took over the tiller.

“We’re in the way,” said Murat to Victoire, and gestured to a place halfway along the deck. “That’s safe enough. We won’t be in anyone’s path.”

It was possible to sit on bales of cargo at this place, and Victoire availed herself of the lowest of them. “You implied that there are those in Paris who want to compromise Napoleon.”

“Because there are,” said Murat, his frown quick but less tormented than the one he had worn when she had first spoken to him. “There is a whole country at stake. There are men who would undertake ... anything for such a prize.”

“When you say there are men, you have someone in mind, don’t you?” said Victoire, hoping that Murat would tell her everything he knew.

“Let us say that I have reason to be wary of certain ones.”

“And of these men, who do you trust the least?” asked Victoire acutely.

Murat laughed without humor. “Tallyrand. He’s more dangerous than all the others rolled together and doubled. He is a survivor, something any soldier admires. But not in the way he does it.

“Charles Maurice Tallyrand-Perigord L’Eveque d’Autun, Prince de Bénévent, began life as one of the nobility. When he was but twenty-one, his father purchased for him the position as head of the largest
abbaye
in Rheims. He quickly became an important figure in the clergy and rose to become bishop of Autun. When the Revolution began, he was one of the chief delegates from the Second Estate to the Estates General. He is one of the few of that Estate to accept the civil constitution.

“When the troubles began, he abandoned even his family and had himself appointed ambassador to London and then the United States in the Americas. He proved himself so valuable that each new government found it expedient to use his services. To retain his position he resigned his bishopric, which meant little, as the state had seized all church properties. When the Directoire no longer felt they could trust him, even that far away, he took up residence in Holland and then some of the German states. He returned just two years ago, now that Madame Guillotine is less thirsty for noble blood.

“He is not even a member of the Directoire. Yet he is said to control two of those who are. Perhaps he thinks it is safer that way. You could say that Tallyrand has spent his life in service to the state. Others contend the state is more in service to him. Still, recently he has spoken out in favor of Napoleon. His efforts were vital in gaining the materials needed for this expedition. No one is sure why, but he made every effort to see us well equipped.”

“But what you describe is an admirable servant,” said Victoire ironically. “Who serves without taking the highest offices.”

“That’s his pose, certainly, and the reason that he has not fallen before now. Men like Tallyrand are like cats, always landing on their feet. I trust him, but only to be untrustworthy.” Murat was about to go on when Lirylah, in Greek clothing like Victoire’s, stepped onto the deck, shaking out her lustrous hair. Murat devoured her with his eyes until she turned toward him; he caught his lower lip in his teeth, averting his gaze.

Victoire put her hand on his arm. “She knows, Murat.”

“Then let that be enough,” he said brusquely.

But Victoire shook her head. “Knowing isn’t enough. Unless she hears you say it, she will always wonder.”

Murat shook his arm free. “We’d better prepare to land at Abydos,” he said, and strode away from her.

* * *

Abydos was two days behind them, and the guides they had hired were starting to hint about higher fees as they neared Hiw. Their camp that night was close to the Nile
—
close enough to make Roustam-Raza mutter about crocodiles and rats and for Victoire to remember all of Larrey’s warnings about animalcules making the water dangerous to drink or wash in.

“I spoke to the merchants who passed us before sunset,” said Roustam-Raza as he prepared their campfire. “They said that the English are ahead of us still, bound invariably upriver.”

“And do they know where they’re going?” asked Murat, his temper shorter than usual. “Be damned to them.”

The Mameluke warrior studiously went about his task, glancing toward the tent where Victoire and Lirylah were cutting the goat meat he had bought. When he was certain he could speak with respect he said, “If we press hard tomorrow, we can close the gap between us. If you wish, we will dispense with the guides.”

“You don’t trust them, do you?” said Murat, looking over the campsite for the dozenth time. “You think we should be rid of them.”

“So do you,” said Roustam-Raza.

“I ...” Murat was watching Lirylah and it took him a short while to resume his thought. “I suppose it would be wise. We don’t want to lose the English, and with those guides ...”