The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) (2 page)

“You have a dangerous flair for insult, husband.”

“I’ve had much practice.”

Dire circumstance has made me a periodic spy for both the French and British, with and against the French army in war, and tangled up with Red Indians, pirates, slave revolutionaries, gypsies, savants, secret societies, and seductresses. None of this has proven very profitable, but it has taught me a great deal about human nature. People will go on scheming and shooting no matter which nation hires me.

“I understand you’re willing to betray all sides, Monsieur Gage,” said someone with a Prussian accent, as if reading my mind.

A ruddy German as sturdy as a stump barred our way, his boots planted apart. He had blond hair, a crimson eye patch, a Teutonic cross at his throat, and enough other medals to bedeck the coin belt of a belly dancer. “You’ve served France, America, and Britain in turn.”

“Which simply means I’m a diplomat. And you are?”

“Count Lothar Von Bonin. I’m here to foster friendship between Berlin and St. Petersburg. I couldn’t help noticing you conversing with Minister Czartoryski.”

“I’m his advisor. A confidant of President Jefferson. And did you hear that I’m a Franklin man?”

“I’m a Freemason myself, and understand Franklin was a member. You as well?”

“Missed a few meetings.” It was disquieting that odd strangers felt enough familiarity to strike up unwanted conversations. I don’t recommend having a reputation; you never know whom it will attract. “I’d have assumed Prussians too hard-headed for Masonry.”

“Not at all. The Illuminati and Rosicrucians have their roots in Germany. Our King Frederick-Wilhelm is one of the latter. The Russians are enthusiastic Masons too, ever since the Scot James Keith introduced it. All of us mad for the occult, I suppose, to balance the tyranny of rationalism. Remarkable adventures you’ve had.”

I tried self-deprecation. “Misadventure.”

“And now both of us are in a place that combines science and mysticism. St. Petersburg is the head and Moscow the heart, the saying goes. The Enlightenment and Old Russia. Savants and saints.”

“The marriage of our times,” said Astiza, who’d make a far better Mason than me. Don’t know why the fraternity won’t permit women since her gender improves any gathering. I’d add them to an infantry regiment if it were up to me. They’d lend some sense, temper the language, and clean up the camp.

“Indeed, Madame, indeed!” His smile, however, was tightly sewn. “Something Czartoryski doesn’t entirely understand; he urges the tsar to modernize too quickly. But Slavs are different than the West. Russia is moralistic without morals, and powerful without purpose. Alexander employs liberal advisors and yet recently imposed press censorship and a secret police. So I take lesson, and adjust my advice.” He extended his arm. “I actually admire the flexibility of your allegiances. It means we might be friends.”

I reluctantly reached to take his hand, and was startled when I was met with an upraised ivory stump. I paused in confusion.

There was a click, a snap, and a wicked blade a foot in length popped from the prosthesis, the candlelight catching the blade’s edge. I started. The stump had a muzzle hole as well.

Von Bonin laughed. “Or enemies. It is your choice.”

CHAPTER 2

I
was saved from this display of bad taste by a blare of trumpets that announced the royal family. This custom is not as pompous as Americans might assume, since a buzzing crowd needs to know to quiet down, brush off crumbs, and turn the right direction. The French had told me that elaborate etiquette was invented to avoid embarrassment, not be the cause of it.

Certainly one needs skill for a palace soiree. The trick is to be seen, to meet useful people, and to avoid unpleasant ones like this one-handed, one-eyed Prussian. A dash of cleverness doesn’t hurt, but flippancy is frowned upon. One must never arrive too early or too late, never laugh too much or not enough, never refuse a toast, and never drink past one’s capacity.

The source of all favor stepped into the room with his imperious mother on one arm, his unhappy wife two steps behind, and his saucy mistress right behind her. Tsar Alexander is not just a king but god on earth, his empire stretching from the Baltic to Alaska. Its mongrel-mix of more than forty million is Europe’s largest, twice that of France and eight times that of my own United States. The tsar owns everything and a system of
chin,
or rank, has kept the aristocracy in harness since 1649. ‘The tsar will give’ is recited with hope and resignation.

Von Bonin watched me watching Russia’s ruler. “Alexander could lose a hundred battles and still be the planet’s most powerful counterweight to Bonaparte,” he whispered as we straightened, his blade snicking back into concealment like a naughty trick. “Limitless manpower. Just as England rules the seas, soil is the Russian ocean. And St. Petersburg is a European outpost in what is really an Asian nation. The Mongols dominated Russia for two hundred and forty years.”

“And Prussia is squeezed between Russia and France.” I put my arm around Astiza’s waist. “A sausage in a vise.”

“I would call us a walnut, because of our discipline.”

“Nuts crack.”

“Forgive my joke with my arm, Ethan Gage. I lost my hand to the French revolutionary armies at Hohenlinden and have experimented with utensils ever since. Some men are tempted to bully a cripple so I give sting to my stump. It makes a statement, does it not?”

“Was I bullying you, sir?”

“I merely sought your attention. I’d hate for an American innocent to be caught on the wrong side.”

“You mean the French and Polish party of Czartoryski, as opposed to the Prussian and English party of Dolgoruki.”

“The dowager empress favors Prussia,” Von Bonin noted.

“And the tsarina favors France.”

“And which, mother or wife, influences Alexander more? It’s only in friendship that I warn you not to get over your head in this Russian ocean.”

“Unless the tsar looks my way, and not yours.” And I gently pulled Astiza to stand where she’d catch the royal eye.

“Ethan,” my wife protested quietly.

“Hush and smile, my brilliant beauty.”

Alexander was as I remembered him from Austerlitz, a handsome autocrat as stiff as a wedding groom. He wore a snow-white military uniform, boots as glossy as a Chinese lacquer box, his sash blood red, his epaulettes golden, and his collar stiff. Muttonchop whiskers balanced his receding hair. He was by instinct an intellectual who’d translated Smith’s
Wealth of Nations
and founded five universities. Alexander’s head was usually cocked because he was partially deaf in one ear, and he moved diffidently, looking to the throng for redemption after his defeat at Austerlitz.

Which he got. After the lunacies of his father Paul, this tsar seemed normal. The nobility genuflected and rose as he advanced like the rolling swells of a sea.

Far grimmer and more forbidding was Alexander’s mother Maria Feodorovna, the dowager empress. She was not so much plump as hard as a ham, mother of nine, her own hair a jeweled tower, her necklace twice the weight of Alexander’s medals, her sash sky blue and her train bigger than a blanket. She steered her son by using his arm as a tiller, and peered shortsightedly but sternly to ensure we displayed respect.

The habit of putting the tsar’s mother ahead of Tsarina Elizabeth had shocked the court at first, but was the result of brutal political bargain. After Alexander guiltily acceded to the military murder of his balmy father Paul, his mother had tried to claim succession for herself. She agreed to her son’s coronation only if she was retained as the highest-ranking female in Russia.

Nor would Mama forgive. As a reproach for the assassination she granted her son rare audiences with a coffin placed between them, the box containing her husband’s bloody shirt. She referred to her son’s friend Czartoryski as, “That Pole.”

So Tsarina Elizabeth not only followed mother and son, but also was sandwiched behind by Princess Maria Naryshkina of Poland, Alexander’s beautiful mistress. This minx leaned on the arm of her openly cuckolded husband, Prince Dmitri, as if he was a convenient mantelpiece. He looked hollowed by humiliation. Maria meanwhile was all smoky eyes and swaying gait, her gown displaying as much of her shoulders and breasts as physically possible without the assemblage plunging to the floor. Male heads pivoted toward her like weathervanes. I confess I took a good long gander myself.

The tsar’s wife was as pretty as his mistress but in a very different, doll-like way, with pursed mouth, delicate chin, and downcast eyes. She had a fine figure but a more modest gown, and her pose was demure. The mother commanded attention, the mistress compelled it, while Elizabeth wished to escape it. I felt sympathy, but then her former lover Adam was my friend.

I was waiting to tell Alexander that the weakness of the Russian army was not its generals but its lack of sergeants. Russian soldiers are brave, but without initiative. Their noble officers are eager, but remote. Lacking is a bridge between. So I stood tall, heels lifting, hoping for a glance, but mother and son passed by without acknowledgement. A royal reception has something in common with The Last Judgment.

Alexander’s pretty wife, however, let her shy eyes find Astiza. I beamed as the tsarina fell out of line to address my curtseying partner. “You’re the Egyptian seer, Madame?”

Astiza’s knees went almost to the floor, and she jerked at me so I bent like a marionette.

“A student of the Tarot, tsarina, but far from an oracle.”

“Yet you’ve studied the ancient arts of Egypt and did alchemy in Bohemia, I’ve heard.”

“You are well informed.” Astiza slowly straightened.

“St. Petersburg is a very small village.” She looked at me. “I’ve heard of your ingenious husband as well. An electrician and an explorer, no?”

I stood as close to attention as I ever get. “You flatter me, tsarina. I hope to be a friend and consultant to your husband.”

“The tsar has more advice than is good for him. And more friends.” Her eye strayed a moment to his mistress, and then turned back to Astiza. “I sometimes wonder if Bonaparte discovered secrets in Egypt that would explain the Corsican’s rapid rise.”

“He—we—did find a book of ancient wisdom, but Napoleon is more a creature of action than learning.”

Now Alexander’s eye did find us, as he looked back for his wife like a straying dog. It was too late to wait for her, however, because a herd of courtiers swarmed between, Dolgoruki and Von Bonin among them. Czartoryski, meanwhile, hung back to watch Astiza converse with his former lover.

Elizabeth kept her eyes on my wife. “I’d be curious to learn more about what you think of Napoleon and the great events of our time.” She gave me a cool glance. “Your husband’s views too, of course. But first we ladies, together.”

“I’m flattered,” Astiza said uncertainly.

“It would amuse me to have you tell my fortune.”

“If it‘s truly for amusement, tsarina. I don’t want to exaggerate my ability. I was recently held prisoner for it by criminals, and barely escaped with my life. Men sometimes use knowledge for evil.”

“So true! Which proves you have wisdom. I won’t hold you prisoner, priestess, but if you cast my fortune I’ll show you a key to your own future.” And now her gaze did swing to her old lover Czartoryski, who still looked smitten as a schoolboy. What torture is love! She aggravated his longing with a glance, and then looked once more at us. “I saw you talking to the Prussian,” Elizabeth went on. “There’s something you should know about his mission here. He’s a dangerous man.”

“With a wicked arm,” my wife said.

“Your husband’s resourcefulness might be just the counterweight we need.” She turned to me. “Should Monsieur Gage dare?”

“I’m but an amateur savant.” Modesty doesn’t come naturally, but it’s something of a requirement around royals.

The tsarina lowered her voice. “I believe Ethan must commit a daring deed to save Mother Russia. A noble crime.”

“Must I?” Blazes, what now? I was just becoming respectable. By thunder, had the girl even winked?

“First let us spend time as spies together,” she said brightly to my wife. “Shall we say tomorrow at ten? I’ll have an officer call at your apartment. We’ll make it a picnic.”

“Certainly, tsarina,” said Astiza, who was not certain at all.

“Elizabeth!” boomed the cello-deep voice of Alexander’s mother. “We’re neglecting our other guests!” The royal party pushed deeper into the crowd. Elizabeth’s silken gown swirled as she moved to rejoin them, her husband’s mistress now closer to the tsar than she was. Nobles parted to let the tsarina through and then closed around her like water.

Prince Dolgoruki and the Prussian Von Bonin, meanwhile, were in deep conversation. Then they fixed their decidedly unfriendly gaze upon me.

CHAPTER 3

I
received my own unexpected invitation to rendezvous with Czartoryski that midnight in his study at the Winter Palace. This vast edifice is on the embankment of the Neva River in the middle of St. Petersburg, and, as the name implies, the windows are smaller and the fireplaces more numerous than at Catherine’s summer place. It’s so vast that different wings are painted rose, green, and pale blue, as if a single color were insufficient to cover it all. The plaza on the palace’s landward side is big enough to muster an army, and in all directions in this government town of two hundred thousand are monuments such as the Admiralty, the War Ministry, and bulbous cathedrals as intricately painted as Easter eggs.

I walked in the hushed dark to our meeting, the streets frozen, and presented my written invitation to silver-helmeted dragoons. A chamberlain led me up a cavernous marble staircase and down vast paneled corridors, life-sized paintings of stern ancestors giving me the eye. The magnificence was intimidating, and yet I was also proud to have a foothold in this sumptuous world. Apparently I was important. Apparently I was necessary. And the foreign minister was a man who trusted me. Did that mean I could finally trust?

Czartoryski’s office was an imposing but impractical twenty feet high, its fire giving a cone of heat against relentless cold that frosted the windows. Beyond the glass I could see the lanterns of sledges loaded with firewood that skidded on the frozen Neva. St. Petersburg is an arctic Venice built on forty-five islands with three hundred bridges. I turned back toward the fire and Czartoryski offered me a chair, some port, and conspiratorial intimacy as a clock gonged twelve.

“I’ve been a soldier,” the prince began, “a prisoner, an exile, a public servant to the royal family which confiscated my family estates, an ambassador to a Sardinian king without a kingdom, an antiquarian, an art collector, and now foreign minister for the nation that dismembered my own. Our peripatetic careers have something in common, Ethan Gage.”

You’ve also been the Tsarina’s lover,
I silently amended, and it was no wonder the empress had succumbed to his charm. Czartoryski’s face was chiseled like a classical statue, with strong chin, regal nose, and gently slanted, liquid dark eyes that could seduce a diplomat or woman in turn. His hair curled magnificently to his shoulders and his body was lithe, just the type to scale Vesuvius or the royal bed. “We’re both curious, too,” I said. “You about America and France, and me about Poland and Russia.”

“Our cozy cabal.”

I glanced about. Czartoryski’s office welcomed visitors like the den of an explorer. There was an enormous globe on which fingers had rubbed Eastern Europe almost bare. More maps were pinned over bookcases, and a long birch table was covered with treaties, reports, newspapers, and pamphlets in several languages. Leather-bound books, wool oriental carpets, and gleaming wood expressed confidence that our planet can be measured and understood.

“Nations are peculiar things,” the minister went on. “Each a distinct individual, with not only a language but a culture. No one would mistake a Prussian for a Frenchman, or a Russian for a Roman.” He gestured to his maps. “You can draw nations out of existence, like my native Poland, and yet the underlying country is as persistent as bedrock. Do you know that Poland was Europe’s largest nation in the 16th Century, when it combined with Lithuania? Tsar Alexander knows how rooted my people are, and yet he needs Prussia against the French, and Prussia will not allow Poland to be reconstituted.”

“I thought Alexander dislikes Prussia as much as his mother favors it.”

“He fears Napoleon more, and German alliance has a long tradition. Alexander’s father Paul was fascinated by Frederick the Great and trained the Russian army like Prussian marionettes. He even put metal braces on soldier’s knees so they’d be forced to goosestep. Paul was his wife’s creature, and thus quite mad.” Such candor was risky, but the foreign minister found release by confiding.

“That’s why America and France got rid of our kings,” I said. “Although now the French have an emperor, which shows how inconsistent people can be. First they cut off the head of Louis, and then they crown Napoleon.”

“He crowned himself, I hear.”

I was sensible enough not to mention my own role in that affair.

“But people swing to emotion as much as reason, and no mob is rational. Napoleon promises order. Strength. Pride. Glory. For the mere price of servitude! Here in St. Petersburg, Alexander’s dislike of Prussia ended at Austerlitz. He needs the Germans. King Frederick-Wilhelm hesitates, but his wife Louisa badgers him for war. Wags call her ‘the only man in Prussia.’”

“But you think resurrecting Poland is a better strategy?”

“With French guarantees. The name of my country is our Slavic word for prairie, and Poland’s rich plains always tempt invaders. My country is a beach, awash with barbarians from the east and tyrants from the west. Yet every handicap has its benefit. Poland is the link, and our learning has made us the Greece that informs Russia’s Rome. We gave the world the astronomer Copernicus, the mathematician Brozek, and the geologist Staszik. Bonaparte views us as civilizers.”

“So Poland is eternally vulnerable, and eternally necessary.”

“Well said! Nothing is simple, including my own birth. Poles have complicated identities.”

“Yes. You have the name of Prince Adam Czartoryski, but—”

“But Stanislaw Poniatowski was made king of Poland after sleeping with Catherine the Great, and so knew the power of the bed. My mother was a sexually adventurous Polish beauty, and Stanislaw persuaded her to sleep with Russian ambassador Nikolai Repnin as a patriotic act. The side result was me.” His expression was wry. “My mother’s husband, the man I am named for, was rewarded for her infidelity with command of Poland’s military academy. This is how things work. Sometimes we sleep with the Russians. Sometimes we fight them. Those same Russians burned my own home palace of Pulawy during Kosciuszko’s Rebellion. So I joined Russian service to recoup our losses.”

“And that was Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who fought with George Washington?”

“Exactly. He helped win your Battle of Saratoga and build the fort at West Point. I’m told Washington so struggled with Polish names that he spelled Kosciuszko eleven different ways, but he loved the general’s reliability.”

“Another Lafayette.”

“Kosciuszko also met your mentor Franklin, as did my mother. Circles within circles.”

“Old Ben seems to have met half the people on the planet.” Which slightly tarnishes my own claim to him.

“And then Kosciuszko,” Czartoryski went on, “brought the revolutionary ideas of the New World back to the Old. He led a ragtag army of Jewish cavalry, burgher gunners, and illiterate peasants against battle-hardened Russians.”

“The Polish Spartacus.”

“But no foreign armies came to his aid. Now Kosciuszko is a crippled old man in Paris, still petitioning Napoleon to liberate Warsaw.”

“Do you trust Napoleon?”

“Of course not. Five thousand Poles fought for Napoleon in Italy in hopes he’d become Poland’s champion, and instead he shipped them to suppress the slave revolution in Haiti. All died or deserted. Napoleon the liberator has always been Napoleon the oppressor. But who is surprised? I don’t trust Napoleon, but Franklin said that if you want to persuade, appeal to interest rather than intellect. Napoleon’s interest and mine coincide.”

“Do you trust me?”

“No, I just told you—we’ve the same interests. You want a title. I want a country. Your advice to Alexander might serve to get both. So I conspire to use you and you conspire to use me, and we Poles conspire to use Bonaparte, as he will conspire to use us. Vesuvius, I warned.”

I like cynics. It seems honest, somehow. “And I’m an American who knows Napoleon, Jefferson, Red Indians, and Haitian slave generals, and is now working with a Pole.”

He smiled. “Exactly.”

“Which means I accumulate enemies the way a dog attracts fleas.”

“Sometimes enemies testify to character. Your shifting alliances make you judicious. Most men assume, but you consider.”

“You want me for my wisdom! I thought it was my looks.”

He laughed. “Our friendship does give me a chance to admire your pretty wife and yes, I’ve seen the ladies give you glances. But no, I’m intrigued first because you’re American, and thus have a natural affinity for liberty. Yet that’s not your utility either. There are many freethinkers in Alexander’s court.”

“St. Petersburg has as much heated idealism as the salons of Paris.”

“As much hot air, at least.” Czartoryski’s sense of humor was much like my own. “Russians love to talk of life and death, love and fate. In many ways they’re medieval. Their onion domes represent the shape of divine flames. They believe in religious miracles and the devil. Do you believe in evil, Ethan?”

The question surprised me, since Adam Czartoryski didn’t seem very religious. I was cautious. “Most men are complicated. Greedy, and even cruel, but they justify it to themselves. What’s common is temptation and betrayal. True evil, unfeeling evil, is rare.”

“One hopes so. Yet it still exists in the dark places of the world and emerges at times to seize men’s minds. It abides in foggy mountains, old castles, and deep caves. The Russian peasant knows this and prays. Russia’s mystics and hermits practice self-flagellation, self-castration, and self-burning. Mary is their God-bearer, a goddess herself, and
their
holy trinity isn’t Rome’s, it’s reason, feeling, and revelation. The haughtiest intellectual believes the witch Baba Yaga, Old Mother Boney Shanks, might live in the dell next-door. It’s night in Russia for half the year. Morana, the ancient goddess of darkness, reigns here.”

I felt a chill. “You don’t sound like a man of the Enlightenment.”

“I am. But I’m also a man of Eastern Europe, where Chernobog is the god of evil and the dead.”

Odd to have this educated minister—a student in inquisitive England, and an ambassador in sunny Italy—talk like this. There was hope in him but sadness too, and his idealism was tempered by disillusion. “Russia is beautiful in its own way,” I offered, warding off his somberness as if making the sign of the cross. “All this snow. And endless light in summer, I’m told.”

“Have you heard of the
upyr
?”

“The what?”

“A Tartar word for a malevolent spirit—a witch, or a vampire. Even today, graves are opened after seven years to make sure the dead are truly dead.”

That sounded ghoulish, but I went along. “In the West, many fear being buried alive because doctors can diagnose death too eagerly. Corpses have woken from a coma and pounded to get out of their coffins. Sometimes the dying insist they be buried with picks so they can dig their way back to the surface.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. Here, people sometimes don’t die at all. Possessed people. Evil people. Heads are severed from corpses and their mouths stuffed with rocks or garlic to ensure they don’t arise. By lore the
upyr
still exist, and retain strange powers and ancient possessions. My Polish mother told me many tales when thunder rolled.”

“Which surely you didn’t believe.”

“You haven’t wandered the trackless taiga, Ethan, or the crags of the Carpathian Mountains. The Russian serf believes the forest is both haunted and blessed, and healers are called tree-teachers. Morana is a seductress who captivates men to lead them astray. Wolves are the devil incarnate, and saintly relics are a shield. Do you know the story behind the great church being built near your apartment?”

“The Cathedral of Kazan?”

“Its central icon is a religious painting claimed to have repelled a Mongol army at the city of Kazan in eastern Russia. It hardly mattered if the assertion by a possessed child was true. Russian troops believed it true, and victory resulted, just like Joan of Arc. Franklin sought to link lightning to electricity to explain the world. Russians observe lightning to experience the
next
world, because fire is a window to the divine. And tonight you straddle those worlds, Ethan, the West and East, the rational and the mystical, and in that way too we’re alike.”

“So that’s why we’ve formed our cozy cabal?”

“Not exactly.” He took a heavy book down from a shelf. “Yes. And no. My motive is very practical. I know you’re a thief of the sacred, Ethan. Don’t deny it, I’ve heard too many stories of the wayward American prying into tombs and seeking lost oracles. You’re the perfect man for Poland, and the perfect man for our times. You’ll advise the tsar, who is well meaning but inconsistent. We’ll make peace with Napoleon, reconstitute Poland, and I’ll persuade Alexander to make you a prince as a reward.”

“A prince!” I couldn’t help grinning. I’d denigrated Dolgoruki’s title to my wife but I too would puff if someone gave me that name. Prince Gage! It was absurd, but then wasn’t life? Hadn’t I met men and women in ridiculous positions of wealth and power because of wild twists of fate? Why not me?

“Or a count, at least.” Everyone hedges.

“But you want me to commit a crime?” I remembered Elizabeth’s word.

“Not a crime, but a recovery. Not a theft, but a liberation.”

“The rightful owner is you?”

“Poland. When Catherine the Great dismembered my country she tried to take our soul. Prussia and Russia agreed in 1797 to even remove the name ‘Poland’ from common usage. They also took our symbols of nationhood. Berlin stole our Six Sacred Crowns. Even more precious relics were spirited away to St. Petersburg. Now they’re about to be even further lost.”

“Destroyed?”

“Given away to German brutes in return for alliance against Napoleon. Lothar Von Bonin was sent from Prussia to bring my Polish heritage back to Berlin as trophies, to seal Prussia’s pact with the tsar. The man is a lizard, and you and I must stop him.” He gripped my shoulders. “A night of daring can change history, rescue Poland, ensure peace, and make us both rich.” He leaned forward as if to share a great confidence. “All you have to do, my American friend, is risk life, freedom, and your eternal soul.”