The Barbed Crown (18 page)
“This is power made manifest, is it not?” Talleyrand’s habitual tone was cynical, but even he sounded impressed.
“This many people never turn out to see me.”
“And yet you’ve attained a curious importance, consorting with the mighty and conferring with their ministers. Do you ever wonder at the oddness of life?”
“All the time.”
Then there was a lull in the conversation, dragging on forever, which I finally broke. Silence is a weapon, and Talleyrand used it to control dialogue. “I’m flattered by your company, Grand Chamberlain, but puzzled as well. Surely you should be in the procession. Or have more significant guests than me to attend to.”
“Grander, but none more important.” Talleyrand could caress with flattery or bite with harsh insight. “I’ve no interest in being displayed for public spectacle like a guillotine victim in a rolling tumbrel. I accomplish more by waiting here. I’ll talk to many important men this morning. All are rascals, highborn and low, and all potentially useful through banal self-interest.”
He did not exempt me from this assessment.
“My goal is to retire.”
“Yet once again you’ve been recruited to a mission for Bonaparte.”
“I wasn’t given any choice.” I felt vastly outnumbered, on the wrong side of history. “He uses us all.”
“Yes. Even his wife, to keep his own rapacious family at bay. Do you know the two were hurriedly remarried last night to satisfy the pope before blessings could be given at the coronation? Only a civil ceremony united them before. Josephine, the scheming widow, who by all accounts participated in orgies before fixing her talons on the rising Corsican. And Bonaparte, inexplicably in love, even while keeping a chain of mistresses he mounts like a relay of horses during his inspections of France. And simple Pius to sanction it all! No wonder a million have come to this comedy. Life is far more droll than the theater.”
“We’re all trying to reform.” I followed the line of the river. Though I couldn’t see it, I could judge where Fulton’s steamboat floated half a mile away. My Jaeger rifle was hidden there.
“I’d be mystified why the police tolerate you, Monsieur Gage, if I didn’t know it was on the orders of Bonaparte. Just what is your assignment again?”
“Ask him yourself.”
He looked annoyed. “But of course I have, and of course he’s not completely answered. He trusts no one, not me; not Fouché; not Réal; not Savary, who commands the city’s military guard; nor Moncey with the gendarmerie; nor Dubois, chief of police. A dozen people spy on you, Gage, but a dozen spy on each of them as well. In a modern state, all are watched, all are rewarded, and all can fall at any moment; birth is no longer a protection, and achievement buys reward only until tomorrow. Bonaparte has made manifest what has always been unstated: daily existence is a struggle for the high as well as the low.”
“Napoleon just finds me useful at times.”
“Yes.” He stared out over the crowds. “Suffice to say, Ethan, that I believe the mission you’ve been given is extraordinarily significant, and I thought I could help you.”
“Grand Chamberlain, despite your rank, you know I’m not at liberty to discuss my assignments from the emperor. Again, should you not ask him yourself?”
Talleyrand ignored this. “Men like you are dangerous to political stability, unless expertly guided. Bonaparte is brilliant but lacks a certain . . . subtlety. That’s what I provide. I have my own spies. So I know that your mission will take you to Bohemia and other parts of the Austrian Empire. And if you find the android that men are seeking, you must not drag it back to Paris.”
I felt uneasy. Did his political omniscience make him friend or foe? “I’m ordered to bring the Brazen Head to the emperor.”
“No, you’re not. His armies will come to you.”
“But Napoleon is marching on London.” Once more I was playing the spy for the British, worming out strategic clues. But who was I, really? Why was I standing with the French Machiavelli when I should be sitting with my family? Each time I tried to provide for or avenge my wife, it seemed to result in separation.
My only salvation was my secret belief that somehow, at some time, I’d win the chance to do something truly good and make up for all my sins.
“Napoleon will march in many directions before he’s finished. And he will be finished someday, as will we all. So look ahead, Gage, look ahead.”
“I’m better at looking into the past. Old tombs and ancient rubbish. Often what we seek doesn’t exist at all.”
“This automaton does.” Talleyrand still watched the golden carriages, crossing the Seine now onto the Île de la Cité, crowds roaring and rippling. “You must find the android first. At the end of the sixteenth century Rudolf II, Holy Roman emperor, established his capital in Prague. It’s a learned city and a mysterious one, tucked away from the main avenues of armies and attracting alchemists, wizards, astronomers, and numerologists. Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler mapped the planets while at his court. Composers performed. Artists painted. Necromancers drew magic circles on cellar floors. Rudolf was mad, but he was also brilliant, and he built a wing at Prague Castle that had cabinets full of strange curiosities. They included a bowl of
agate he believed to be the Holy Grail, a unicorn horn, gemstones, magical swords, clocks, astrolabes, telescopes, and stuffed exotic animals. His gardens had plants from around the world.”
“My boy would like to see that.” It never hurts to remind the powerful that you have a family, in order to encourage mercy should you need it.
“The cabinets have been lost, as have the laboratories where Rudolf’s alchemists such as Edward Kelly and John Dee sought the Philosopher’s Stone. There was parchment of indecipherable writing, peculiar art, intricate mazes, and religious trinkets from lost kingdoms.”
“Now
that
my wife would like to see.”
“Rudolf never married but had lovers, male and female, who held power over him. They ranged from Ottoman temptresses to a prince of Transylvania. But more than anything he was seduced by knowledge.”
The wind was cold, the sky that lovely robin’s-egg blue of winter, and the procession dazzling as it approached. Napoleon’s golden coach had reportedly cost a million francs. It was paneled in glass to allow people to glimpse him, and was festooned with medallions, coats of arms, allegorical figurines, and enough sculpted eagles to stuff a nest. The coachman was César, who’d saved Bonaparte’s life from the Infernal Machine. Roustan the Mameluke rode protectively behind. The team was eight gray horses decorated with braided manes, bronze-colored reins, and red Moroccan harnesses.
Facing the emperor in the coach were the only two brothers who consented to attend, Joseph and Louis. Brother Lucien, the hapless politician who’d helped Napoleon seize power in 1799, was sulking in Rome because the emperor found him incompetent. Brother Jerome had joined him, smarting from Napoleon’s insistence that he annul his marriage to the American beauty Betsy Patterson and disown his child by her. With them was Napoleon’s shrewish mother Letizia, who’d chosen needy Lucien over hardheaded Napoleon.
How far we’d both climbed—Napoleon to royalty, which made him resented by a dependent family; me to games I wasn’t prepared to play. Instinct suddenly told me to be anywhere than where I was standing.
“I always enjoy a history lesson, Grand Chamberlain, but again am surprised you’ve time to share it. Why are you telling me all this?”
“To guide you, because it’s imperative you succeed. I’m going to suggest you look for the Brazen Head that Napoleon wants you to find amid the castles and caves of central Europe. You want to head east. I’m going to give you the hilt of a broken sword that may prove a clue. I’m doing so because I want to examine this marvel myself. Napoleon would use it for conquest, but I for peace. So I brought you up here to propose a partnership.”
“East is away from England.”
“Exactly. It’s just as well that Sidney Smith begins to forget what you’re up to. Make more money working with me.”
“Money?”
“Ten thousand francs if you find a machine that foretells the future. A castle, if you want it. I suspect we’ll conquer dozens in the years ahead.”
Now my heart beat faster. Investments in England, a fortune from Paris, and a castle in Bohemia . . . my horizons were expanding as rapidly as Napoleon’s. What was my purpose? Payback for the trials my family had endured. I was a puppet, yes, but strings could pull both ways. Perhaps it was I who was in charge! I’d manipulate these greedy, grasping men as they manipulated me, and save the world in the process. I felt a flush of confidence. I didn’t need to flee, I was where destiny demanded.
“My quest seems improbable. A lost automaton?”
“That was my reaction. Napoleon meets a thousand people, of course, and more than a few get his attention by spouting nonsense. But then I remembered an old Jewish legend from my religious studies, a tale of an artificial man made from mud called a golem. It made me wonder if your quest might not have a grain of truth.”
The name had an eerie sound. “A mud man?”
“A monster, answerable to a rabbi master. This golem had the power to defend the Jews of Prague if properly instructed, or so the story goes. By legend it went out of control and had to be subdued and still rests, a clay shell, in a synagogue attic in Prague. Yet isn’t it intriguing how stories of Albertus Magnus, Christian Rosenkreutz, Rudolf II, and the golem of Prague all take us to the same places? If something extraordinary really exists, it’s imperative I see it first. Foretelling the future! So I’m offering letters of protection if you journey to the east, money to live on, and a fortune if you succeed. Your wife is being given the necessary documents as we speak.”
“And if I refuse?”
“I’ll send cutthroats in competition.”
So I was to be a tool of Talleyrand as well as Napoleon and Smith. If I delivered the automaton to him, he would take credit for delivering it to his own master, Napoleon. I am strangely popular. Getting caught between these men was risky, yet maybe I could use this hysteria over an android to get safely out of Paris. Ten thousand francs to find a mechanical man? If everyone in France thought I was their ally, maybe they’d leave me alone.
“I’m flattered by your confidence, Grand Chamberlain, and honored you’d share it on such a crucial day. But this could be a test, so let me say that my first loyalty is to the emperor.”
“As is mine. Our friendship is for the emperor’s good.”
“He wouldn’t be pleased if I gave this android to you instead of him.”
“Nor am I asking you to. Only that I question it first. It could make me a most valuable adviser. But only an adviser.”
“So valuable you can spare ten thousand francs?” I wanted to confirm this figure.
“We’re going to loot Europe. Such funds will be a beggar’s purse.” He said it matter-of-factly.
I swallowed. “You mentioned expenses?”
He opened his cloak. There were pockets sewn inside stuffed with important-looking papers, making him a walking credenza. He fished out some gold coins. “Enough to make inquiries. And here’s a stub of sword.”
“What’s its story?”
“Simply that its missing medieval blade might prove useful. Look for more legends in Bohemia and the lands east. So we’re partners?”
What choice did I have? I was locked in orbit around powerful puppeteers. “Partners.” Meanwhile, I’d entirely forgotten that I was about to corrupt the coronation and, with it, Napoleon’s rule.
“Good! Let’s go inside and witness the crowning. I have a feeling it will be something never quite seen before.”
A
n aide to Talleyrand replaced my yellow ticket with a gold one. I was escorted without my family to a balcony bench just to the left of the triumphal arch where Napoleon would take his throne. “Wait for your wife here.” Talleyrand would attend on the cathedral floor, in a cluster of the highest ministers.
The air in the cathedral had warmed from the crush. Damp cloaks gave a wet-dog smell, mixed with incense and candles. Pigeons fluttered at the arched ceiling near holes that hadn’t been repaired since the revolution.
I was lucky. Most spectators were placed so distant in the nave that they’d have to crane their necks to see. I had a direct view of the disaster I intended to cause, even while pondering this new alliance with Talleyrand. If Napoleon was confounded, would men still be bidding for the Brazen Head? Probably more so, in any scramble for power.
My ticket meant I was perched near the important, who glanced at my traveler clothing as if I’d stumbled into the wrong reception. To get to my seat I elbowed and stepped over tribunes, grand officers of the Legion, generals, admirals, procurators-general of the Imperial Courts, sea prefects, mayors of good towns, presidents of canton assemblies, and so on, each placed to make clear the Napoleonic pecking order. Across from me on another tier of benches, stacked like produce in a market stand, were princes, princesses, diplomats, famed savants, ranking police officials, and even the minister of sewers and wells. If only Ben Franklin could see me now.
I catalogued my alliances. I’d conspired with the British spymaster Sidney Smith to take revenge for the death of my wife who, as it turned out, was not dead. I’d partnered with Comtesse Catherine Marceau for a return of royalists who, as it turned out, were arrested, scattered, or repatriated. I’d allied with Réal to advise Napoleon’s army officers, allied with Napoleon to find a medieval automaton I was skeptical existed, allied with odd Palatine to disrupt Napoleon’s coronation with religious blasphemy, and been promised ten thousand francs by Talleyrand to let him try this “android” first. Now I was sitting in the center of an agitated porridge of two million excited Frenchmen who, if they knew what I was about, would rip me limb from limb.
For such a simple man, my life is surprisingly complicated.
Astiza’s and Harry’s place was empty. Their absence made me uneasy. Had she gotten the better tickets? Perhaps she was helping the comtesse make the substitution. Perhaps Talleyrand’s aides were giving her further instruction on where to travel east. If chaos ensued, we should escape west as planned, but perhaps there was opportunity eastward as well. I shifted restlessly. I needed to consult with my wife.
Also conspicuously empty was a seat opposite me, intended for the emperor’s domineering and ever-dissatisfied mother. The politically astute artist David would later paint her into the coronation, but the vacuum created by her absence reminded everyone that even absolute power is not absolute.
We waited, interminably. The pope had set off for the cathedral at nine, Napoleon at ten. The music began at half-past ten when the pope’s regiment of robed clergy paraded into Notre Dame with miter hats, swinging censors, and ornate candlesticks. Cardinals and bishops from across Western Europe marched to the music of what I read in the ceremony brochure was two orchestras, four choirs, five bands, and altar boys with communion bells: about five hundred noisemakers in all. Hymns alternated with anthems followed by bands crashing into hideous military music, and then altar boys would jingle into the echoing silences. We endured, stoically.
Pius entered in a scarlet robe and weighted with a papal crown Napoleon had ordered made with a precisely reported 4,209 diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, just in case the Vatican missed the value of the bribe. The pope wore it like a yoke. Cloak and headgear were so heavy that once seated he shed them for modest white dress and simple papal cap. He blessed us, even me, turning from one group to another with fingers uplifted.
At eleven we heard the roars of adulation as Napoleon and Josephine finally arrived outside and were escorted into the Archbishop’s Palace to re-dress. They required nearly an hour to exchange the morning’s velvet frippery for coronation robes as bulky as bear pelts. As time crawled, Pius ran out of blessings and prayers and finally just sat with his eyes shut, praying or napping. The rest of us yawned as orchestra and choir banged back and forth. Vendors sold meat rolls that were passed hand over hand. Lords and ladies sipped from smuggled flasks.
Where was my family?
I impatiently peered into the shadows at either side of the triumphal arch, looking for Astiza and Harry. Finally, there they were, scanning the crowd to look for me! I lifted my arm, but they gave no recognition. Catherine, radiant in white, her hair gloriously set, figure sublime, whispered to this aide or that. She did glance my way, but if she saw me, she didn’t share it with Astiza.
I relaxed. All was in place, and I assumed my wife and son would join me shortly. I practiced looking innocent.
The final high plenipotentiaries marched into the cathedral, the pace stately as a wedding. Cardinal Belloy looked serene for a man who has just been robbed in his own chambers, but perhaps nothing much rattles you at ninety-five. Then five long minutes of pregnant silence, except for the rustling and coughs of a huge assembly in a vast cathedral. Finally, a relieved stir when Napoleon paced into view, looking swallowed by his robes. He wore an embroidered classical tunic that fell to his ankles like a nightgown, a sash with enough fabric for a tablecloth, and a red fur-trimmed robe so heavy, and so intricately inlaid with embroidery, that he looked like he was caped in a carpet. It dragged like a cross. I knew Napoleon had battlefield courage, but it took courage of another kind for this kind of performance, where even a misstep would become the merciless gossip of Paris.
Yet Josephine was the one who entranced the crowd.
Women glow when they’re in love, when they’ve made love, or when they are pregnant. The empress had a flush of utter triumph this day. Her smile was closed to hide her poor teeth, but what a wide smile it was, eyes damp, head high, her expression joyous from the religious recognition of her marriage the night before. And now the political legitimization of her role as empress, an opulent crowning that Marie Antoinette never enjoyed!
The Creole from Martinique was the most beautiful I ever saw her, exquisitely made up, and at forty-one—six years older than Napoleon—she looked twenty. Her gown was a spotless white and her scarlet mantle a sumptuous ten yards long, all of it embroidered, bejeweled, and lined with enough white ermine to depopulate the fur farms of Russia. Despite her mantle’s size and weight, it was kept off her shoulders so that she could display elegantly puffed sleeves and a shapely bust; one end of the train was attached near her neck and the other with a strap to her waist. She seemed to be emerging from a pool of velvet and fur.
Women sighed at the sight of her.
Napoleon’s sulking sisters carried Josephine’s train. Yet even in their foul mood they shone from being gowned like goddesses. Each had a tiara, a long dress off the shoulders, and a necklace costly enough to buy a gun battery.
The choreography was intricate as a minuet, the panoply riotously over the top, and the drama absolutely unforgettable, as it was meant to be. Royalists might plot to assassinate a mere first consul and upstart general, but a blessed and crowned emperor? Despite what slaves once whispered into the ears of the Caesars, Napoleon was no longer a mere man. He was a political demigod.
We were transfixed, the women in the audience murmuring with envy and the men muttering excitedly about future opportunities. Napoleon’s ambition fused with that of everyone in the cathedral. They would rise, and risk, with him.
And then there was a jostling of bodies, apologies of
excusez-moi
, and a man plopped exhaustedly down next to me, taking Astiza’s seat.
“My pardon, monsieur, but I was told this space has become available. What a grand view we share!” I recognized the voice immediately but had trouble placing it, and then realized that by astonishing coincidence I was seated next to Marie-Etienne Nitot, the jeweler who’d first told us last year that my stolen emerald was from a legendary Aztec hoard. Before I could sell it to him, scoundrels attacked us. I’d assumed they learned of the jewel from his boasting.
“Nitot, you devil,” I growled.
“Monsieur Gage, my old friend! Ah, what happenstance! I’d feared you’d come to harm, and yet here we both are, at the center of the new Europe.”
If he felt guilt for the way my family was handled in his shop, he hid it well. I scowled. “You mean the harm that came our way last year?”
“But of course! We were investigating your remarkable gem, the Green Apple of the Sun, and then these rogues accost me! I found my workshop in shambles and you disappeared. I didn’t know what was going on and feared scandal would damage my reputation. Then I was told you have a habit of getting mixed up with unsavory villains.” He was genuinely curious. “Did you get the emerald back?”
“Eventually.”
“I’d still be interested in buying it.”
The gall of him to pretend innocence! But perhaps he
was
innocent, and, in any event, I’d no time for him now. “I sold it in London.”
“Alas, an opportunity lost. May I ask what you got for it?”
It was none of his business, but what was the harm? “Ten thousand pounds.”
“But you could have earned twice that, at least, in Paris!”
That possibility just made me grumpier, not to mention reminding me that by embroiling myself in conspiracy in France I was cut off from my funds in England. If we traveled to Bohemia, our poverty would continue. I was once again for all practical purposes poor, surrounded by rich men, and drawn in conflicting directions. “I’m impressed that you’re in the stands of the highest notables,” I said, implying that perhaps he didn’t deserve to be here, either. Where the devil was Astiza?
“Yes. I remain a favorite of Josephine, even if Marguerite did get the commission for the crowns. But my seating is actually due to your new companion, Inspector Catherine Marceau. Such beauties you accumulate!”
“Inspector?”
“Yes, the woman in white.” He pointed at my confederate, far below.
I was confused. “You know Catherine?”
“We’ve done business together. Rumor holds she took the place of a strangled comtesse during the Terror and has been valiantly spying on England. As brave as she is lovely! She gave me the ticket for this seat.”
“She told you she’s a spy?” I said stupidly. Had Catherine made up a story about herself to secure our safety?
“An agent of the police. Your wife tragically lost and this new beauty at your side: what a lucky rogue you are, American!”
He thought my wife was still lost?
“And you must be doing well the way your mistress spends your money as if plucked by the vine. What an eye for jewelry she has!”
“Spends my money?” My understanding was officially lost.
“The new French francs and old English gold sovereigns she said you brought from London! Gorgeous coins for uncertain times. Here, look at the minting.” He reached in a vest pocket and brought out one that shone like the sun. Several spectators looked curiously in our direction. I was confused. Catherine had no money. What was Nitot talking about?
Gasps brought my attention back to the stage. Now Napoleon was kneeling, the pope droning on with a blessing and the emperor replying with a pledge. Censers swung on cue, incense drifting over the tableau. The substitution of the crowns would be revealed in moments. I looked down in the shadows toward Catherine and my family.
The comtesse was looking up at me, smiling as triumphantly as Josephine but with her teeth on display, ice white and perfect. A huge, looming figure had joined the group. It was Pasques, who took Astiza’s arm in his firm grip and pulled her deeper into the unseen choir, Harry dragged with them.
Catherine had no money.
Unless she’d not really lost her money in the Channel surf as she claimed when we came ashore, and had been lying to me ever since.
I blinked. Without thinking of it, my hand closed over Nitot’s hand and coin. Why had Catherine lied about losing her money? To selfishly keep it? Had she really been stealing from my purse in Paris, as well?
She looked up at me as if I were a joke. Was nothing true? Had the comtesse really wormed her way into Josephine’s retinue? Or had she been invited there from the very beginning, as a double agent operating in London to foil the American adventurer, Ethan Gage?
Why was she watching me now, instead of the coronation?
There was a bustle at our tier of seats. Gendarmes had appeared at either end of my row, searching faces for my own.
The critical moment had come. The pope ceased speaking, and Cardinal Belloy handed him a golden box, presumably containing the imperial crown. Napoleon stood and ascended the steps to the Catholic altar. The pope turned, took the box from Belloy with slow gravity, and opened it.
Pius froze in shock. No one could see what was inside, but I knew what he was viewing: the vines that had tortured Jesus. Catherine had succeeded after all, the greedy spendthrift! My relief was intense, the world spinning, while the church was absolutely silent except for the rustlings of twenty thousand onlookers waiting impatiently for the crowning.
Now the pope would lift out the Crown of Thorns, sharing his outrage and consternation with the whole world.
Except he had no time to.
Army Marshal Joachim Murat strode forward bearing a simple crown of golden laurel leaves on an ornate pillow.
Napoleon wheeled to meet this precisely timed flanking maneuver. While Pius stood paralyzed, staring stupidly at the holiest relic in Christendom, the new French emperor calmly turned his back on the prelate, plucked the crown off Murat’s pillow, and put the golden wreath on his own head, cocky as Caesar. He looked defiantly out into the crowd, ignoring the pope and daring anyone to object to his boldness.
