Princess (30 page)

Just when he checked his fob watch and read the time, three o’clock, amid the deafening clamor of the city’s church bells, suddenly celebratory cannon fire boomed, vibrating in his chest.

Darius narrowed his eyes, put his fob away, took a last pull from the cheroot, then crushed it out. Calmly, he reached for the loaded flintlock rifle.

He wet his lips, chapped slightly by the constant breeze so far above the ground. Bringing the rifle up, he rested the muzzle on a convenient bit of tracery to secure his shot.

He might only get one shot, he realized, but as long as Napoleon was in the open, he planned to fire as many times as possible before they realized his location.

His objectives were very simple.

Kill Napoleon.

Don’t be taken alive.

Next to his guitar case on the ground lay the brown robe of a friar. With the robe’s cowl to hide his face and the sheer number of clergy in the city, he believed he might be able to escape the roof and blend in somewhere below in the church.

If that proved impossible, he had the arsenic.

In total concentration, Darius coolly watched the shimmering imperial coach, which was covered in mirrors and gilded honeybees. The afternoon sun glinted off the gaudy vehicle, momentarily dazzling him. He squinted.

Drawn by eight bay horses with golden plumes on their heads, the immense coach rolled majestically into the square below.

He felt increasingly aware of everything, the sun’s warmth on his skin, the sprawling crowd’s unenthusiastic welcome below; in the corner of his eye, the fluttering of some pigeons.

With one hand, he snapped the tiny spyglass into place on the rifle. Staring through it, his finger on the trigger, all his focus homed in on the shimmering golden coach below.

Everything seemed to move very slowly.

First Joseph Bonaparte, then the younger one, Lucien, stepped out of the coach onto the ground. Both clad in white satin, together they waited at the coach door as the weak-chinned Empress Josephine emerged, dressed also in white, her imperial diadem on her head, her neck laden with jewels.

Darius watched her place her hands gracefully, one in each of her brothers-in-law’s hands, and she stepped down.

He licked his lips. His fingertip caressed the trigger.

Napoleon Bonaparte appeared in the open door of the coach.

Darius aimed.

He fired just as the sun glinted off the mirrored carriage into his eyes, blinding him.

He stared in shock—utter disbelief.

I missed.

He cursed, loaded again relentlessly, saw that there was only confusion among those standing nearest the emperor. With all the church bells and cannon fire, it had been too loud to hear his shot. He didn’t know who or what he had hit, he only knew he had missed Napoleon. As he brought up the rifle again swiftly, he saw through the telescope that the dragoon who had been standing next to Lucien was on the ground. Napoleon had stepped down from the coach.

He fired again but he was shaken by his miss and the shot merely shattered one of the mirrors of the coach behind Napoleon, just over his shoulder. Then it was too late.

Below, the dragoons piled around Napoleon and the other three Bonapartes, rushing them into the cathedral.

Darius cast off the rifle. Moving swiftly and methodically, while his heart pounded as if it would burst, he jumped down from his stone perch and threw on the brown robe of his disguise. He was wearing a six-pistol chest holster, a sword, and his ebony-handled dagger. Drawing two of the six pistols, he ran for the roof’s exit, the brown robe trailing out behind him, billowing in the high wind, catching on his sword.

Shouldn’t have taken that second shot. Wasted time,
he thought, too late, for even now the first guard appeared in the doorway of the roof’s only exit.

He knew troops had been stationed inside the cathedral. They came up quickly. Following the first man, a squadron swarmed through the door to the roof. Darius stopped just long enough to consider trying to fight his way past them.

“Over there!” a man shouted, pointing at him.

Darius ran through the forest of spires shooting up out of the roof.

If he could elude them and double back around them to the door . . . But more kept coming, twenty men holding their post at the exit. He shrugged off the brown cloak and dodged behind a pair of large, fanged gargoyles.

“There he is!”

He whirled around the statue and fired the pistols, one then the other. Two men dropped.

“After him!”

He bolted, heart pounding. Again he ensconced himself behind a statue but he was not much nearer the door. He could feel them creeping closer. He drew two more of his guns.

“Come out with your hands up!” they shouted.

He stepped out and dropped two more of them, then threw the empty pistols. With two shots left, his sword and dagger remained.

More French soldiers piled up onto the roof.

“Give yourself up!” they screamed at him.

Gunshots careened off the stone, shattering one of the gargoyle’s pointed ears. Darius ducked his head away from the flying, dusty fragments of stone.

“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” some of the Frenchmen shouted at the others.

Shaken up, boys?
he thought insolently. Chest heaving, he looked to the right and the left, trying to decide which way to run. He was beginning to think it didn’t matter. He knew he could only play hide-and-seek with them for so long. There were too many. The sweeping glance he stole from behind the maimed gargoyle numbered at least thirty soldiers hunting him.

No problem, he told himself, dry-mouthed.

The exit was to his left but there had to be a dozen men blocking it. He ran for it, firing his last two guns, dodging a wave of bullets as he dove behind some saint’s statue. Cursing under his breath, he jumped to his feet and unsheathed his dagger and his sword.

What bloody good’s a sword going to do? They’re going to
make Swiss cheese of me.

Missing Napoleon once had been back luck—missing twice unthinkable—this sudden, ferocious hope, this will to live had not been part of his plan.

He stole a glance around the stone saint’s shoulder and ducked back as gunfire roared.

The exit was too heavily guarded even to try.

Oh, God, he thought. Arsenic.

Pressing his eyes closed for a second, he reached into his waistcoat and pulled out the tiny, folded envelope. He blessed himself rapidly with the sign of the cross, then tore the paper and poured the arsenic powder into his hand. Chest heaving, he struggled to raise it to his mouth.

Oh, God, oh, God, I don’t want to die,
he thought, raising his pleading stare to the blue sky.

He saw her then—the golden Virgin above him. Her expression was so sweet, so sure, the only mother he had ever known. He gazed helplessly at her and then, as if she had blown the air from her lips herself, the wind scattered the little white mound of arsenic right out of his hand.

Darius gasped, clutching uselessly as the powder slipped away.

He could hear the guards coming closer. French voices shouted at him.

“Give yourself up! In the name of the emperor, I command you to surrender!”

Heart hammering, his back pressed up against the stone saint’s back, Darius stared straight ahead at the edge of the roof.

It was the only way.

Shoving away from the base of the spire with all his strength, he charged the edge.
He would scream Serafina’s name when
he leaped
.

Half a dozen paces from the edge, the guardsmen tackled him to the ground.

He fought like a madman, cursed at them like a demoniac, willing one of them to kill him so his death might protect Lazar. There were ten men piled on him, kicking him, punching him. They wrested his sword away and whenever he struck one with his ebony-handled dagger, another soldier merely took his place.

They nearly broke his wrist to make him let go of the dagger. How many he wounded or killed, he did not know. He didn’t feel their blows—he was too enraged. Fury poured and seethed from him, possessing him. It was as though some terrible door inside him had been opened. He was someone he didn’t know, tasting his own blood in his mouth. He was frenzied, screaming threats at them even as they threw him down on his face and manacled his hands behind his back.

He was shoved and dragged down the many stairs, and thrown into a waiting carriage under heavy guard. He heard them say they were taking him to the ancient Castello Sforzesco, which served as the French troops’ barracks.

It was a swift ride, for the ancient fortress was situated only several blocks north.

While in the cathedral Napoleon grasped the Iron Crown of Charlemagne and placed it upon his own head, Darius was thrown into the dungeons beneath the castle.

Panting, bruised, he stared through the rusty bars at the soldiers.

Their captain sauntered into their midst, the dim lanterns illumining his harsh, narrow face and gray hair. He reminded Darius of his father. The old man must be laughing at him from hell.

“You will tell us your name,” the captain said.

“Come here and let me kill you,” Darius spat at him.

The captain smiled, a cruel smile. Darius glared back at him, gripping the bars, then shoved himself back and began pacing, barely containing his frenzied ire. He watched them as he paced, chains clanking from arms and ankles. He listened to them discussing him quietly. Apparently he had killed seven and wounded three.

He could hardly congratulate himself at the news when he had missed the one man he had come to kill.
Failed. Worthless.

A few minutes later, the captain ordered the warden to open his cell. With a large, beefy corporal in tow, the captain entered. He nodded from the corporal to Darius.

“Search him.”

With a cold sneer, Darius endured as the corporal slammed him up against the clammy wall. They removed his cravat to stop him from hanging himself, his spurs to keep him from slashing his wrists. They cut his waistcoat away, leaving him in his torn shirt. When this was done, the corporal jerked him around to face the captain again.

Darius looked down his nose at him masterfully.

The captain narrowed his eyes. “Bravado won’t save your life, my friend. What’s this?” The captain’s gaze fell to his chest. He stepped forward and lifted the medal of the Virgin in his hand.

Darius saw the captain’s fist tighten on the medal, felt the chain go taut against his skin.

“Take it and I swear to God I’ll rip your throat out,” he said softly through clenched teeth.

Debating with himself, the captain held his stare for a long moment, then smirked at him and stepped back, dropping the medal against his chest. “A worthless trinket.” The captain pivoted and left the cell.

The big corporal followed, sliding the rusty metal door shut and locking it securely.

Darius could only wonder how much worse he had just made things for himself.

Lying in bed on her side, staring at nothing, Serafina expected at any hour to hear news of Darius’s fate. She had waited for two days, and now, again, night was closing in. She had to wonder if she was going a little mad, for in some bizarre way she was convinced she could keep him alive by an unflinching, inward focus on her love for him.

She had her father’s solemn oath that he would send for her the moment he heard anything. The sound of her mother’s sobs upon learning the news, as well as the prime minister’s injunction to them all, still rang in her ears.
We must not give the Russians any cause for suspicion. Life must appear to go on as
normal. Word will come soon. Until then, we can do nothing
but wait.

She, too, could do nothing but wait. She couldn’t understand why she was the only one who believed that Darius could indeed succeed in killing Napoleon. Maybe she was mad, like him.

She held his carefully penned little note to her heart. Her gaze traveled over her tokens of him with which she had surrounded herself on the bed—his guitar and the Chinese kites and the countless other gifts he had given her over the years. There were treasures from all over the world to delight the little girl in her, satin dancing slippers from Constantinople with toes that curled upward, a headdress made of delicate chains hung with strange coins, a tiny piece of an ancient temple from Greece, a perfect ball of violet quartz from an African mine. But these exotic baubles were nothing compared to what Darius had given of himself—the tenderness and safety he had shown her.

Now he had given his life for her.

No.
She refused to believe he was dead. The Blessed Mother was taking care of him, just as she always had. If she concentrated very hard, deep down in the core of her being, she felt the bond between them, sure and alive, like a resplendent flame in the darkness. She closed her eyes.

My unicorn, my champion, my wolf. How I miss you.

Her blood ran cold as a knock sounded at the outer door.

It’s time.

She had thought herself ready for this moment, but now that it had come, she did not know how to face it.

A moment later, Pia appeared in the doorway to her bedroom. The maid’s timid voice brimmed with sorrow and worry. “Your Highness, His Majesty sends for you.”

As if outside herself, Serafina watched herself calmly get up from her bed. She watched herself smooth her hair and walk out of her apartments, hands steady at her sides.

She was a royal princess with a proud lineage seven hundred years old, she told herself with every step. In her veins was the blood of kings. She would bear the fatal blow with her chin high.

At her father’s office, she took a deep breath, then opened the door, at once taken aback to find that Anatole was already with him. The atmosphere was fraught with tension. At her entrance, both men looked over.

“Good, you’re here,” her father said sternly.

Anatole jolted with a half-remembered bow. He offered her one of the chairs in front of Papa’s desk. Warily, she glanced from one tense man to the other, then walked over and sat, folding her hands in her lap.