Jo Graham - [Numinous World 05]

by The Emperor's Agent (epub)

  "Why? What happened? Whose fault was it?"

  I sighed. "I suppose in the beginning it was Moreau's."

  "What did he do?" Jean-Baptiste asked, refilling my glass for me. "I know you were worried he'd find out and have his revenge on Michel."

  "It wasn't that," I said. "It was that he gave him a lot of money."

  Jean-Baptiste Corbineau refilled my glass again. "What did the Emperor do?"

  I sighed and took another drink. The hanging lanterns swayed seductively in the breeze, and the crowd seemed quieter. "He didn't just double it. That would have been too easy."

  "Too easy?"

  I put my head on Corbineau's shoulder. "Too easy for Michel to refuse. No, he offered him everything he ever wanted, glory and beauty and the hand of a princess. And a place at his side. What have I ever had that could compare to that, Jean-Baptiste? What have I ever had that could compare to Alexander?"

  "You are quite drunk," Corbineau said, his arm around me. "Alexander who?"

  "Alexander the Great," I said, my mouth running on ahead of my mind. "Who else? I was fool enough compete this time. I should know better. I do know better. He is the perfect Companion. 'He too is Alexander.' I know better. And I held on, because I did not want to give him up. Because I did not want to lose him."

  "You and Michel?" Corbineau seemed to be having some trouble following this, which was silly as I was making perfect sense.

  "I tried to talk him out of it. I got him to ask to go on the Santo Domingo expedition instead when the Emperor offered him Inspector General of Cavalry. I got him to ask. But he wasn't assigned."

  "And a good thing too," Corbineau said, taking a long drink of brandy. "Almost everybody on the Santo Domingo expedition died."

  I held my glass out for more brandy, the room spinning in quite a comfortable way. "Do you remember Persia, Jean-Baptiste?"

  "I've never been to Persia," Corbineau said. He sounded unaccountably baffled.

  "The wedding." I waved my glass around. "The princesses. Stateira and Drypetis. Hephaistion married Drypetis, so that their children would be kin. His and Alexander's."

  "That was a really long time ago," Corbineau said carefully. "And I'm not sure what it has to do with anything."

  "I watched them get married," I said, my voice choking. "My wife was already dead, dead in Gedrosia. I watched Hephaistion marry her. And why not? Why shouldn't he? He was grave and beautiful and he would make her very happy."

  "What in the world does this have to do with Michel and the Emperor?" Corbineau asked. "Elza, you have completely lost me."

  "He offered him Drypetis, don't you see? The hand of Joséphine's goddaughter, Aglae Auguié. Inspector General of Cavalry, his son-in-law for all practical purposes -- the money and the title and the honor and the princess -- everything he could possibly want. Perhaps he knew the way to buy him. Or perhaps he caught that fire too. Michel came back from every meeting ablaze. The ideas, the conversation, the fire that leaps from mind to mind -- they would build a new world together, a new world to be won! Do you see that, Jean-Baptiste?"

  "Do we not all blaze from that fire?" Jean-Baptiste said quietly. "Do we not all see that new world to be won? Isn't that why we're here? That we may not return into the night of centuries past, but keep the best of the Revolution, tempering the white horse with the black? That we may move forward without the madness, without the blood of thousands running in the streets from the guillotine, the downtrodden paying back their oppressors a thousandfold? And yet that we may harness this lightning, schools and national law courts, freedom of religion and of conscience? Are we not all afire?"

  I turned about and looked at him muzzily. "I've never heard you talk like that before," I said.

  "I'm not really a lightweight, Elza."

  "I never thought you were," I said drunkenly. "I knew you were a Companion too." I put my head on his shoulder, breathing in the smell of his sweat, the stale smoke of hours in a tavern. "My dear, true friend."

  He patted my back. "Tell me about Mademoiselle Auguié, Elza. You can tell me it all."

  Fortune's Favorites

  All happiness, all idylls, have an end. The end of ours was due to Moreau, of course.

  After the Battle of Hohenlinden, we stayed in a fine house in Munich all through the winter and into the spring, waiting for the final peace treaty to be signed, though Moreau had left for Paris as soon as the armistice was concluded. After four and a half months in his house, the doctor who owned it had more or less abandoned acting as a host, and treated us as the family we weren’t. For our part, Michel behaved like some distant cousin imposing on a relative’s hospitality, a little deferential and eternally polite, always at his host’s disposal for a game of cards. It helped that Michel lost perpetually at cards. He was incapable of concealing the contents of his hand, and every thought was written on his face. Sometimes he lost rather more than I thought we could afford.

  "Consider it the price of lodging," he said to me with a grin. "We’re quartered on him, eating his food. If I lose half my pay at cards, surely that’s no more than it’s worth."

  I rolled my eyes but agreed. I thought that I could win it back if I needed to. My father had taught me a number of ingenious ways of cheating at cards, but I forbore to use them. I wasn’t sure it would help Michel with the Munichers to send to the table a female card sharp.

  It was the middle of April, and Michel and I were eating breakfast companionably in the dining room, the windows open to the stable yard behind in hopes of catching the warm spring breeze. Michel had the newspaper and was frowning over it. I put more cream in my coffee and looked out the window at the branches of a blooming cherry tree over the wall. My German was considerably improved, but I spoke much better than I read, and the newspaper was beyond me.

  The door opened and one of the footmen announced a dispatch rider, dusty and tired from the last leg of his journey. He came up and saluted Michel smartly.

  "Citizen General Ney, I have dispatches for you from Paris, from Citizen General Moreau."

  "Thank you." Michel took the packet and dismissed the rider. There were half a dozen small letters sealed with wax, addressed variously, and one large one for Michel. He broke the seal with his fingers and opened it.

  "Oh my God." The paper dropped from his hand.

  "What?" I got up and came around the table, alarmed.

  He picked the letter up again, a piece of paper fluttering out of the fold.

  I bent over his shoulder, reading.

  …in recognition of your services to the French Republic, it is my distinct honor and pleasure to convey to you this small token of the Republic’s esteem, an honor well-earned by your martial prowess and your distinguished service at the Field of Hohenlinden. I have also enclosed some lesser awards for Captain Ruffin and those other officers that you recommended to me.

  It is with the greatest pleasure that I convey these regards to you,

  Your servant,

  Citizen General Victor Moreau,

  Commander in Chief, Army of the Rhine

  I picked up the paper that had fallen. It was a draft on the Bank of France for 10,000 francs.

  "Oh my God," I said. I had never seen so much money in one place before in my life.

  "Surely…" Michel said. "Surely it’s a mistake. Too many zeroes."

  "No, Michel," I said. "It says ten thousand francs."

  "I could pay off the farm," Michel said. "I could keep a carriage. I could buy you diamond something or others." His imagination failed him at that point and we stood there stupidly, holding the draft between us.

  "I like diamond something or others," I said. "We could rent a bigger apartment. And hire a servant to clean it."

  "I can’t imagine what to do with ten thousand francs." Michel looked at me, his blue eyes honestly perplexed. His father had been the cooper at a vineyard in the Saar, making barrels for his betters all his life. Ten thousand francs would go a long way toward buying the vineyard a
nd everything in it.

  Something disturbed me about this windfall. "Michel," I said, slowly, my eyes on the draft, "Moreau doesn’t even like you. I’m not saying you don’t deserve this, but Moreau wouldn’t just do this out of gratitude. He has a political reason. He always has a political reason."

  Michel sighed. "I can’t imagine what. I don’t have any influence in Paris. I don’t have any money, or didn’t. I serve under him – he can take my troops away and assign them where he wants. What does he need me for?"

  The pieces fell into place for me, the memory of the First Consul in Milan, talking about Moreau. "Bonaparte," I said.

  "Bonaparte?" Michel raised an eyebrow. "I’ve never met the man. We’ve never been in the same command. I don’t know what he has to do with me."

  "Nothing," I said. "Or everything. Moreau thinks himself Bonaparte’s one true rival for supremacy in France. Bonaparte has generals like Lannes and Massena in his train. Moreau wants to buy some generals of his own."

  "Shit," Michel said. He sat down at the table again, his breakfast still getting cold on his plate.

  I put my hand on his shoulder, brushing out the tangles in his long red hair with my fingers, a chill running down my back for reasons I couldn’t put a name to.

  "I’m not for sale," Michel said at last.

  "Aren’t you? Everyone is, for the right price." I sat down across from him, taking his hand in mine. "Money may not be your price. But what about glory? What would you do to have the supreme command on the Rhine? What would you do to command an army, not a division? What would you do to be a Marshal of France?"

  Michel almost laughed. "Me? A cooper’s son? Even if the Revolution hadn’t abolished the title, Marshal is a title for heroes of the blood, for princes. I’m as likely to be a Marshal as I am a prince." He squeezed my hand as though I told him fairy tales. "Elza, you worry too much. Moreau wants to buy me with a big bonus. Fine. I’ll take the money, but my loyalty isn’t for sale. I’m not about to support him in some coup d'état. I’m not going to join some plot against the Consulate. As far as I can see, the government is working better than it has at any point in the last ten years, and the Austrians have finally sued for peace. I’m perfectly happy to thank God that Bonaparte was spared in the assassination attempt last winter."

  On Christmas Eve, the same night that Michel and I had been rejoicing in Munich, Royalist agents loyal to the deposed Bourbons had set off a bomb in the streets of Paris, intending to kill the First Consul on his way to a performance at the Opera. Fortunately for him, the bomb had detonated seconds late, and the second carriage in the cavalcade had taken the brunt of it rather than the first. Among the wounded was Joséphine’s sixteen-year-old daughter Hortense, who had been badly cut by flying glass. Fifty-two people had been killed or wounded, including a number of children in the crowds of late revelers on the crowded street.

  There had been arrests, but no one knew for certain that the ringleaders were not still free, that there would not be more bombs.

  "Moreau had nothing to do with that," I said, feeling certain. Moreau had been in Munich too, in the aftermath of Hohenlinden. There had been no time. And while I could imagine Moreau scheming with his former Jacobin associates, I couldn’t imagine him joining a Royalist plot.

  "I’m not having anything to do with any plot," Michel said, his stubborn chin rising. "I’m here to serve France, and her legitimate government, whoever that may be. I don’t make policy. I’m a soldier."

  "Michel, right now soldiers make policy," I said. "I don’t think you can stay apolitical forever. Especially not if you rise any higher." I looked down at the draft, the zeroes stretching out to infinity. "That makes you a man of consequence. You are not going to be able to ignore politics. And Bonaparte is not going to be able to ignore you."

  Michel picked up the draft, turning it over and over in his hands. "And if I burned it?"

  "You’d be a stupid ass, " I said, taking it from him and putting it on the table. "Do you want to go back to the Saar and raise fruit trees? You could do that. Resign your commission and go home, marry some nice girl and wait for events to roll over you. Is that what you want?"

  "No." Michel picked up his cold cup of coffee and took a sip, grimacing. "I decided long ago that I didn’t want that. I wanted glory and war instead. I just never imagined rising so high." He looked at me and shrugged. "Perhaps that’s being a stupid ass. I dreamed of being an officer, of earning some rare battlefield commission for gallantry. Because of the Revolution, I got that at twenty-two, an officer and a gentleman, something no one in Saar Louis could ever have imagined. And then I dreamed of being a general. I got that at twenty-seven. I’m thirty-two. What should I dream of next? A title? To be the founder of a noble house?" He put the cup down. "Or the guillotine. Fortune’s favor is very, very fickle."

  "I know," I said, having been up and down more times than I liked in twenty-four years. A chill ran through me, thinking of the engraving on the Tarot card, noble men rising and falling, lying at last beneath the turning wheel as a skeleton. "It’s dangerous."

  Michel reached for the coffeepot and refilled his cup. "What do you think Bonaparte will do when he hears what Moreau has given me?"

  I looked down at the draft, lying between the solid silver plate, remembering gold coins spilling out onto the bed in Milan, a fortune for a bad actress. "Double it, possibly."

  He didn’t. Instead, Bonaparte sent a letter, very cordially inviting General Ney to visit him in Paris, saying that he had heard the most glowing reports of the General and was consumed with the desire to meet him in person.

  I started packing.

  Michel came into the celadon bedroom of the doctor’s house while I had the cases open on the bed. I had also bought a trunk. We had both needed new clothes in Munich, and they wouldn’t fit in the cases and saddlebags. In a way, I hated to leave. We had been five months in this room, and it was starting to feel like home.

  Michel clearly felt the same way. He paced around, opening the curtains and looking out, poking behind the screen, wandering into the dressing room and back out.

  "What’s the matter?" I said, folding one of my men’s shirts.

  He shrugged and made another circuit.

  I went up to him and wrapped my arms around him, my cheek against the gold oak leaves on his shoulders. He sighed and rested his chin on the top of my head.

  "It will all be different," he said.

  "I know," I said.

  We arrived in Paris on a gorgeous day in May. I rode beside him on Nestor, cutting a fine figure in Charles’ best clothes. The apartment was just as we’d left it, opened only for the maid to sweep occasionally. It seemed very small and cheerless after the fine house in Munich, and my gold curtains seemed gaudy and tawdry compared to the understatement of fine fabrics. Michel left the intricacies of moving to me.

  The third day I went to look at apartments while Michel presented himself at the Tuileries. He wore his best dress uniform, dark blue coat crusted with gold, tricolor sash tied at his waist, his long hair tied back neatly and his hat ornamented with a black ostrich plume. And his tightest white pants. He looked like he could hardly breathe.

  I giggled as I made a final inspection. "Planning to impress Madame Bonaparte again?" His first impression on the lady had been made in the nude, through a series of comic misadventures.

  "She probably won’t be there," he said, twitching under my ministrations. "My appointment is with the First Consul in his office."

  "But just in case…." I laughed.

  He shrugged a little sheepishly. "It never hurts to be well turned out."

  "No," I said, "It never does." He had his vanity too, my beloved peasant general.

  I saw him off with a kiss, and went to look at apartments.

  I returned before he did, though not by much. He came up the street as I was going in, so I waited while he paid the hired carriage and climbed the steps. He still looked splendid, but his step was somewhat de
flated. I waited until we were upstairs to ask.

  "What happened? Didn’t it go well with Bonaparte?"

  Michel began undoing his cravat. "Not really," he said. "Nothing awful happened. But it wasn’t good."

  "Why?” Having met the First Consul in Milan, I had trouble imagining how Michel could have failed to be impressed. "What happened?"

  Michel flung the offending cravat over a chair. "I don’t know. It just seemed that everything was wrong-footed. I had to wait half an hour because someone was already with him, and the reception room was all done up like a palace."

  "The Tuileries is a palace," I said reasonably. "It was the primary residence of the Bourbon kings in Paris. You know that."

  "He had a bunch of busts," Michel said. "Mirabeau and Washington and the rest, which are fine. I have nothing against the Americans. Why should I? But right by the door he had a massive marble bust of Alexander, that one with the dreamy eyes."

  "The one by Praxiteles," I said. "I’ve seen engravings. Go on."

  "And another big one on the other side of the door of Julius Caesar. It was disturbing." Michel took off his had and threw it on a chair. The plume bent, so he picked it up and put it on the top of the cold stove. "So when he opened the door he was standing right between them, all three in a row, and all three heads on exactly the same level. Who does he think he is?"

  "Lots of people have statues of Alexander and Caesar," I said. "They’re famous works of art. And perfectly suitable to a public place. Martial success and all that."

  "That’s not it, " Michel said. "I can’t explain it, Elza. It doesn’t make any sense. But I was off on the wrong foot and I couldn’t seem to say anything right. He congratulated me on Hohenlinden like he’d never heard of Moreau, so I said thank you very much but that the plan was Moreau’s and not mine."

  I rolled my eyes. "And sounded like a Moreau loyalist. Michel!"

  "Maybe so." He shrugged. "I’m not good at politics like you are. But it’s true. The plan was Moreau’s."

  "You didn’t have to bring him up in the first two minutes," I said.