The Emerald Storm (2 page)

“Quiet?” I responded. “Then won’t they notice whatever noise I make?”

“The guards hate the gloomy weather as much as you do, and stay indoors. Wretched place to play sentry. That’s to your advantage when you go up their blind side. A quick ramble across the rooftops to L’Ouverture’s chamber, a clever application of English science, a history-making escape, and off you’ll be to cozy London, toasted for pluck and genius. It’s splendid how things work out.”

“That’s exactly what Sidney Smith said. They don’t work out at all.”

“Just try not to jostle the cylinder on your back, Ethan. I’d hate to see you explode.”

The cylinder contained some witches’ brew invented by an English chemist named Priestly. I was also carrying two hundred feet of fine-stranded climbing rope, a grappling hook, a five-pound sledge, a cold chisel, two naval pistols, a frontier hunting knife, coat and boots for the man I was rescuing, and winter dress for myself. I’d had to sign a receipt for all of it, and buy my own leather gloves besides.

Yes, it was a ridiculous assignment, but I kept my mind on my goal. Get my jewel and family back, learn of Aztec treasure, and leave these lunatics behind.

“What if they don’t let my wife out?”

“That’s exactly why your scheme must succeed. When a medieval knight returned from the Crusades to this fort and suspected his seventeen-year-old bride Berthe of infidelity, he locked her in a three-by-four-foot cavity for ten years. She couldn’t stand or stretch, and her only view was of the skeletal corpse of her alleged lover, hanging from a cliff opposite. All the evidence attested to her innocence, but the old warlord wouldn’t listen.”

“This is supposed to reassure me?”

“Inspire you. Astiza is only pretending to be a mistress, and we don’t lock adulterers in cages anymore. Modern times! Still, it’s reason not to tarry on your way up the cliff. When you jump back off, remember to take her with you.”

I recalled this conversation as I picked a route away from the village of La Cluse-et-Mijoux, following a concealing line of pine up a steep slope on which the madman George Cayley, my other English confederate, lugged his contraption. That put me at the foot of a limestone cliff, which I ascended to the base of a limestone wall. The top of
that
wall was the highest tower of the castle. In other words, to stay out of sight I’d chosen the very hardest place to climb.

“You’re sure your glider will work?” I again asked Cayley, who had nagged the entire way, reminding me not to tear fabric or fray a wire. The English like nothing better than a disagreeable journey with scant chance of success. Their occasional luck accomplishing the impossible only encourages them.

“Perfectly,” he replied. “In theory.”

I am neither monkey nor fly, but I did have factors in my favor. The fortress wall was not absolutely sheer, instead having a slight inward tilt to add stability. It was also so inaccessible that it was in modest disrepair. Frost heave or tremors had opened cracks and twisted stones, giving me handholds that would have been absent in a newer wall. If only I could stop the shake of my limbs! I clawed my way up while not daring to look down, until I could jam my left elbow in a yawning crack, plant each boot on a canted stone, and swing my climbing rope up with my free right arm. I’d used a bowline to tie on the grapple, and now I swung line and hook until it began to rotate in great circles, whistling as it cut through the night.

Finally I leaned out as far as I dared to give myself the best angle and let the line fly. The hook sailed upward, snagged the stone gutter of a conical tower roof, and yanked taut. The other end of the rope dropped to where Cayley was waiting. He began tying on his machine.

I began hauling myself up, eyes blinking against sleet, the extra coat for L’Ouverture flapping like a loose sail. I came near the top, a parapet to my right, and crab-walked across the face of the tower, my boot toes teetering as the angle of the rope steepened.

Almost there!

Unfortunately, I had angled my way in front of a grilled tower window. A candle was burning low inside, almost guttering. A figure rose from bed. Had I made a shadow or sound? Tousling her long hair, a woman peered out.

My face was like a full moon outside the slit of her window.

She was young, pretty, and her nightdress hung temptingly on her form. Lovely breasts and belly, as near as I could discern, and the face of an angel. I paused for a moment, instinctively enchanted.

Then she opened her mouth to scream.

Chapter 2

A
stiza and I had been married less than a year, joined in wedlock the summer of 1802 by Lieutenant Andrew Sterett on board the American navy schooner
Enterprise
. That dashing officer had plucked us out of the sea near Tripoli after we escaped the Barbary pirates.

I suppose our shipboard union wasn’t exactly a woman’s ceremony, given that there could be no flowers, bunting, or bridesmaid. But we did have three redoubtable savants as witnesses (my companions Robert Fulton, zoologist Georges Cuvier, and geologist William Smith) plus my little friend Pierre Radisson to warn my lover that she was crazy to marry a man as senseless as me. Fortunately, I’d met Astiza during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, and she’d had ample opportunity to judge my merits and shortcomings. Cupid had seen fit to reunite us.

The crew did make the ceremony festive by stringing signal flags from the rigging, crafting a temporary bridal train from a scrap of old sail, and organizing an orchestra consisting of fife, drum, bell, and horn that managed barely recognizable versions of “Yankee Doodle” and “Heart of Oak.” A wedding march was beyond their repertoire. After Sterett pronounced us man and wife, I kissed the girl with gusto, danced a jig with little Harry, fondled the emerald I’d stolen from the pasha of Tripoli, and looked forward to a life of ease.

Pierre also gave us a locket he’d lifted in our headlong flight from Tripoli, set with diamonds and worth a gentleman’s yearly income.

“For your honeymoon, donkey,” he told me.

“But you need a reward, too!”

“There’s nothing to buy where a Canadian voyageur goes. Spend this gift on your wife and son.”

Certainly our marriage began as an idyll. Sterett put my family ashore in Naples, and we visited the newly excavated pits at Pompeii dug by antiquarian William Hamilton, who seemed to have permanently lent his wife, Emma, to my old acquaintance Admiral Horatio Nelson. Ruins fascinate Astiza, and even I was intrigued, given that I’d seen Pompeii artifacts in the mansion of Malmaison outside Paris, bought by Napoleon’s wife, Joséphine. We congratulated Hamilton on his industry and saw gratitude that we were interested in something other than his straying wife. I judged him happier without the tart, who was too young for him anyway and a parvenu as shameless as me.

From Naples, Astiza, Harry, and I made our way to Rome and its overgrown Forum, and so northward, enjoying the European peace between Britain and France. We had a sunny Christmas on the island of Elba and then, after New Year, 1803, made the quick crossing to France, which was visibly prospering since Napoleon had seized power. We drifted toward Paris, busy learning to be husband and wife.

Astiza was the kind of bright, independent woman whom some men would run from, but who fascinated me. She was seductive as a siren, poised as a goddess, and as commonsensical as a midwife. What she saw in me I can’t say, unless I represented a challenging remodeling project. I simply knew I was lucky to have her, and hauled in my winnings.

I first met her after she helped her Alexandrian master take potshots at Napoleon, and she’s proved a scrapper ever since. She’d been a brilliant slave—highly educated, with a scholar’s curiosity about ancient mystery and a wizard’s determination to make sense out of existence. We’d fallen in love on the Nile, just like Antony and Cleopatra, except with a lot less money.

Despite my infatuation, I daresay there’s more work to a marriage than poets let on. Negotiations are worthy of a Talleyrand. What time to bed and which side do you sleep on? (Left, for me.) Who tracks the money (her) and suggests ways to spend it? (Me.) What rules govern our child (hers) and who works off the boy’s energy with romping play? (Me.) Do we sup in candlelit cellars with hearty portions of ale (my preference) or sunlit terraces with vegetables, fruit, and wine? (Hers.) Who decides on a route, deals with innkeepers, sees to the laundry, drags along souvenirs, initiates lovemaking, rises first, reads late, sets the pace of travel, decides appropriate attire, sketches out an ideal home, lingers in a library, contemplates ancient temples, pays extra for a bath, burns incense, rolls dice, or takes coach seats facing backward or forward?

More seriously, I was set on finding us a home in America, while my wife longed for the sunlit mysteries of Egypt. Trees enclosed her soul while sheltering mine, and I was drawn to mountains while Astiza preferred the shore. She loved me, but I was a sacrifice. I loved her, but she pulled me in directions to which I was reluctant to return. When unmarried, the future was vague and full of endless possibility. With marriage, we began to make choices.

Wedded bliss is certainly more complicated than the rapture of falling in love, but once you share out the victories and defeats and come to compromise, there’s more contentment than I’d ever enjoyed. The growth of little Harry is a marvel, and the warmth of a nightly lover is a relief. We became comfortable with our intimacy, leading me to wonder why I hadn’t seriously considered marriage before.

“You’re actually a quite suitable father, Ethan,” Astiza remarked with mild surprise one day, watching me build a dam on a little rivulet near Nîmes with Harry, who would turn three in June.

“It helps to retain the mind of a twelve-year-old,” I said. “Most men do.”

“Do you ever miss your independence?” Women forget nothing, and worry forever.

“You mean the bullets? The hardship? The scheming temptresses? Not in the least.” I pointed out some more dam-building rocks to Harry, who was working like a beaver. “I’ve had more than enough adventure for any fellow. This is the life for me, my love. Dull, but comfortable.”

“So I’m dull, now?” Women pick at words like a barrister.

“You’re radiant. I just meant my new life is pleasantly placid, without the bullets and hardship.”

“And the temptresses?” See what I mean about women forgetting nothing?

“How can a man be tempted, when he has Isis and Venus, Helen and Roxanne?” Yes, I was becoming quite the husband. “Here’s some more stackable stones, Harry—let’s build a castle on the shoreline!”

“And blow it up!” he cried. I was teaching him to be a boy, even though my wife sometimes frowned at our games.

So my family came to Paris. My plan was this: A precious gem is more portable, and easily hidden, than a sack of money. Accordingly, we’d wait to sell the emerald where I judged I’d get the best price. Only then would we set off for some safe and sleepy place in America, my homeland.

I’m afraid there was vanity in this schedule. I had, after all, recently found and destroyed the mirror of Archimedes, rescuing Harry and Astiza from pirates in the process. I couldn’t resist the possibility of hobnobbing with the first consul again in hopes of being told how brilliantly I’d performed. There was also the lingering question of the vast Louisiana Territory that France had acquired and which I now considered myself expert on, having been dragged there by a Norwegian lunatic. I’d already advised Jefferson to buy and Napoleon to sell, but the negotiations had stalled while the president sent a new diplomat named James Monroe to Paris. I was just the man, I thought, to hurry things along before I retired as a gentleman.

That’s the trouble with success. It makes you feel indispensable, which is a delusion. Pride exacts more trouble than love.

Accordingly, when my family arrived in Paris in mid-January of 1803, I was asked by American envoy Robert Livingston to lobby Napoleon about the fate of the wasteland west of the Mississippi River. Since Livingston offered to put us up in a hotel and was working with my friend Fulton on a new contraption called a steamboat, I persuaded Astiza we should enjoy Paris while I sought another audience with Bonaparte. The city was buzzing with talk of renewed conflict with England, which is always entertaining: war is perennially exciting to society people with little chance of having to actually fight it. Astiza was curious to explore the city’s famed libraries for texts on mystery religions.

So we lingered like gentry. I was proud that while we’d once been imprisoned in Paris, now we were invited to its salons.

What we both wouldn’t dare admit is that we were still treasure hunters at heart.

Which set the stage for disaster.

Chapter 3

I
couldn’t resist auditioning for history when I finally obtained an audience with Napoleon. France’s first consul, who had replaced the incompetent Directory with his own dictatorship, had spent a million francs rehabilitating the dilapidated palace of Saint-Cloud outside Paris to serve as his latest home. It was a headquarters six miles from the stinking heart of the city, prudently distant from democratic mobs, and far bigger than Joséphine’s Malmaison. This new pile had the room to house the first consul’s growing retinue of aides, servants, supplicants, and schemers. It could also properly impress visiting ministers of state with wasteful opulence, the standard by which the powerful rank one another.

Having first met Bonaparte on the uncomfortably crowded warship
L’Orient
in 1798, I reflected how much grander and more beautiful his homes were each time I saw him. In the brief period since he’d ascended to power, he’d collected more palaces than I had shoes. I still had no house at all, and the contrast in our careers couldn’t have been plainer when I crossed the Pont de Saint-Cloud across the Seine and turned up the walled gravel avenue that led to the Court of Honor. The U-shaped palace is an imposing five floors tall and enclosed a graveled yard where messengers dismounted, diplomatic coaches reined up, ministers loitered, footmen smoked, dogs barked, tradesmen delivered, and servants scurried, the entire arena dotted with horse droppings and overlooked by Joséphine’s grand apartments. The gossip was that Napoleon’s long hours had prompted the couple to keep separate bedrooms, and that the new quarters were so confusing that when the first consul wanted to sleep with his wife, he’d change into his nightshirt and cap, ring for his secretary, and be led down the dark corridors by a single candle to her bed.