Ethan Gage Collection # 1

by William Dietrich

  “Have your studies helped your gambling, Mr. Gage?” Bloodhammer’s voice had a slight aggression to it, as if he were testing me. Instinct told me he was trouble.

  “Mathematics has helped, thanks to the advice of the French savants I traveled with. But as I was explaining to Davie, true understanding of the odds only persuades that one must eventually lose.”

  “Indeed. Do you know what the thirty-six numbers of a roulette wheel add up to, sir?”

  “Haven’t thought about it, really.”

  The Norwegian looked at us intently, as if revealing a dark secret. “Six hundred and sixty-six. Or 666, the Number of the Beast, from Revelations.” He waited portentously for a reaction, but we all just blinked.

  “Oh, dear,” I finally said. “But you’re not the first to suggest gambling is the devil’s tool. I don’t entirely disagree.”

  “As a Freemason, you know numbers and symbols have meaning.”

  “I’m not much of a Mason, I’m afraid.”

  “And perhaps entire nations have meaning, as well.” He looked at my companions with disquieting intensity. “Is it coincidence, my American friends, that nearly half of your revolution’s generals and signers of your Constitution were Masons? That so many French revolutionaries were members as well? That Bavaria’s secret Illuminati were founded in 1776, the same year as your Declaration of Independence? That the first boundary marker of the American capital city was laid in a Masonic ceremony, as well as the cornerstones for your capitol building and president’s house? That’s why I find your two nations so fascinating. There is a secret thread behind your revolutions.”

  I looked at the others. None seemed to concur. “I frankly don’t know,” I said. “Napoleon’s not a Mason. You’re one yourself, Bloodhammer?”

  “I’m an investigator, like you, interested in my own nation’s independence. The Scandinavian kingdoms united in 1363, a curious time in our region’s history. Norway has been in Denmark’s shadow since. As a patriot, I hope for independence. You and I have things to teach each other, I suspect.”

  “Do we, now?” This Viking seemed rather forward. “What do you have to teach me?”

  “More about your nation’s beginnings, perhaps. And something even more intriguing and powerful. Something of incalculable value.”

  I waited.

  “But what I wish to share is not for all ears.”

  “The usual caveat.” People have a habit of talking grand, but what they really want is to milk me for what I know. It’s become a game.

  “So I ask for a word with you in private, Gage, later this evening.”

  “Well.” I glanced at Pauline. If I wanted a private word, it was with her. “When I complete my other engagements, then of course!” I grinned at the girl and she returned the volley.

  “But first the American must tell us his adventures!” she prompted.

  “Yes, I’m curious how you found yourself in Italy,” Ellsworth added.

  So I played up my deeds in the season just past, more anxious to explore Napoleon’s randy sister than my nation’s beginnings. “France this spring was beset by enemies on all sides, you’ll recall,” I began with a storyteller’s flair. “Napoleon had to win a European peace before he had the strength to negotiate an American one. Despite his skepticism of my loyalties and motives, I was called to the Tuileries to answer some questions about America. I wound up making a casual remark about Switzerland.” I smiled at Pauline. “Without exaggerating too much, I think I played a critical role in the French victory that followed.”

  She fanned herself, the crowd and candles making all of us too warm. A little moisture glistened in the vale between her enchanting orbs. “I think it grand you could aid Napoleon as Lafayette helped Washington,” she cooed.

  I laughed. “I’m no Lafayette! But I did have to kill a double agent…”

  Chapter 3

  THE TUILERIES PALACE, NEGLECTED AFTER THE CONSTRUCTION of Versailles and then damaged by Paris mobs during the Revolution, still smelled of wallpaper paste and enamel when I was summoned to visit Napoleon the previous spring.

  Since my stay of execution and unexpected employment by Bonaparte in November of 1799, I’d conferred with his ministers about the slow negotiations with America. But beyond offering ignorant opinions—I was badly out of date with events in my own homeland—I really hadn’t done much for my French stipend besides renew acquaintances and read months-old American newspapers. Apparently, Jefferson’s Republicans were gaining on Adams’s Federalists, as if I cared. I gambled, flirted, and recovered from the injuries of my latest adventures. So I could hardly complain when I was finally ordered, in March of 1800, to report to the first consul. It was time to earn my keep.

  Napoleon’s secretary, Bourrienne, greeted me at eight in the morning and led me down the corridors I remembered from my duel with Silano the autumn before. Now they were bright and refurbished, floors gleaming and windows repaired and bright. As we neared Bonaparte’s chambers I saw a line of busts carefully selected to show his historical sensibility. There was a marble Alexander (his boyhood hero) and stalwarts like Cicero and Scipio. When the cavalryman Lasalle was asked by his captors how old his youthful commander was during Napoleon’s first Italian campaign, he had wittily replied, “As old as Scipio when he defeated Hannibal!” Also frozen in marble was the late George Washington to show Napoleon’s love of democracy, Caesar to suggest his command of government, and Brutus for his act of stabbing Caesar. Bonaparte covered all his bets.

  “He begins his day in the bath and will receive you there,” Bourrienne said. The novel idea of bathing every day was a new fad among French revolutionaries. “He can spend two hours in the tub reading correspondence.”

  “I don’t remember him as so fastidious.”

  “He has a rigorous regimen of cleanliness and exercise. He keeps telling me he fears growing plump, though I can’t imagine why. His energy leaves him meatless, and us exhausted. He’s still lean as a boy. It’s odd for a man in his prime to have a picture of himself heavier and more torpid in the future.”

  Odd unless you’ve lain in the sarcophagus of the Great Pyramid as Napoleon did, and possibly saw visions of your own coming life. But I didn’t say that, and instead pointed at one of the busts. “Who’s this bearded fellow, then?”

  “Hannibal. Bonaparte calls him the greatest tactician, and worst strategist, of all time. He won almost every battle and lost the war.”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding as if we shared the military assessment. “Hannibal and his elephants! Now that must have been something.”

  “I’ve seen one of the animals at the menagerie the savants have founded at the Jardin des Plantes,” Bourrienne replied. “God has an imagination.”

  “Franklin told me they’ve found bones of ancient elephants in America.”

  “Your famous mentor! We should have his bust here too! I will make a note of it.” And with that I was ushered into the bathroom, the door clicking shut to hold the heat. There was such a fog of steam that I could barely see Napoleon, or anything else.

  “Gage, is that you? Come forward, man, don’t be shy. We’ve all been in camp.”

  I groped forward. “You seem to like your bath hot, General.”

  “Four years ago I could barely afford my uniform. Now I can have all the water I want!” He laughed, and splashed at a servant waiting with a towel in the murk, spattering the poor man with suds. “It wilts some of my correspondence, but most is moldy in thought and soggy in prose anyway.” As I came up to the tub I saw him in a convivial mood, dark hair plastered, gray eyes bright, the fine hands he was so vain of shuffling missives from across Europe. The brass basin had a relief of mermaids and dolphins.

  “You seem more relaxed than when we last met, when you seized power,” I remarked. He’d been quite anxious to shoot me.

  “A pose, Gage, a pose. The Directory has left me at war with half of Europe! Italy, which I conquered just four years ago, is being taken bac
k by the Austrians. In Germany, our troops have fallen back to the Rhine. In Egypt, General Desaix would have surrendered to Sidney Smith in January except an idiot English admiral wouldn’t accept the terms, giving our General Kléber the chance to beat them again at Heliopolis. Still, without a navy, how long can my poor colleagues hold out? And how can I deal with the Austrians? They’re pushing Massena back toward Genoa. I have to win or expire, Gage. Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest alone can sustain me.”

  “Surely you don’t want my military advice.”

  He stood in the tub, water pouring off as a servant wrapped him. “I want to know how I can settle with the Americans. I’m wasting ships fighting your country when our two nations should be deep friends. Don’t think the British don’t want you back! Mark my words; you’ll have to fight them again one day! France is your greatest bulwark. And lack of a proper navy is my curse. I can’t waste frigates clashing with your republic.” Servants ushered him to a dressing room. “Tell me how to deal with your Anglophile president, Gage. The man distrusts us French and flirts with the perfidious English. President Adams would move to London if he could!” Adams had been a reluctant diplomat in France who found Paris effete and untidy. He’d spent his days cranky and homesick.

  I waited awkwardly as Napoleon began to be dressed. Hair was combed, nails filed, and unguents rubbed into his shoulders. The general had come a long way.

  “John Adams?” I opined. “He’s a prickly sort, to tell the truth. My understanding is that it’s become a test of national pride. Adams’s Federalists, who favor a stronger central government, are using the conflict with France as an excuse to build a bigger navy and levy larger taxes. Jefferson’s Republicans say we’ve picked the wrong enemy, that Britain is the real threat. He and Burr are vying to take the next election. If you offer Adams a way out, I think he’ll take it.”

  “I have agreed to new peace commissioners. You are to work with them and Talleyrand, Gage, and make everyone see reason. I need trade and money from America, not gunfire.” He looked down. “By God, will you finish with those buttons!” Then, dressed at last, off he rushed to the next room where a map of Europe, stuck with little pins, was spread like a carpet on the floor. “Look at the ring my enemies have me in!”

  I peered. Little of it made sense to me.

  “If I march to relieve Massena in Genoa,” Napoleon complained, “the Riviera becomes a narrow Thermopylae where Melas and his Austrians can block me. Yet Italy is the key to outflanking Vienna!” He threw himself down on the map as if it were a familiar bed. “I’m outnumbered, my veterans trapped in Egypt, raw conscripts my only recruits. All revolutionary enthusiasm has been lost, thanks to incompetence by the Directory. Yet I need victory, Gage! Victory restores spirit, and only victory will restore me!”

  He looked restored enough, but I tried to think of something encouraging. “I know the siege of Acre went badly, but I’m sure you can do better.”

  “Don’t talk to me of Acre! You and that damned Smith only won because you captured my siege artillery! If I ever find out who told the British about my flotilla, I’ll hang him from Notre Dame!”

  Since it was I who told the British—I’d been a little peeved after Napoleon’s riffraff had dangled me above a snake pit and then tried to include me in a massacre—I decided to change the subject. “It’s too bad you don’t have any elephants,” I tried.

  “Elephants?” He looked annoyed. “Are you once more employed to waste my time?” Clearly, the memory of Acre and my ignorance at the pyramids still rankled.

  “Like Hannibal, out in the corridor. If you could cross the Alps with elephants, that would get their attention, wouldn’t it?”

  “Elephants!” He finally laughed. “What nonsense you spout! Like that silly medallion you carried around in Egypt!”

  “But Hannibal used them to invade Italy, did he not?”

  “He did indeed.” He thought, and shook his head. But then he crawled and peered about on the map. “Elephants? From the mouths of imbeciles. I would come down into their rear. And while I lack pachyderms, I have cannons.” He looked at me as if I’d said something interesting. “Crossing the Alps! That would make my reputation, wouldn’t it? The new Hannibal?”

  “Except you’ll win instead of lose, I’m sure of it.” I hadn’t dreamed he’d take me seriously.

  He nodded. “But where? The accessible passes are too near Melas and his Austrians. He’d bottle me up just as he would on the Riviera.”

  I looked, pretending I knew something about Switzerland. I saw a name I recognized and a chill went through me, since I’d heard it bandied about in Egypt and Israel. Do certain names echo through our lives? “What about the Saint Bernard Pass?” This was farther north, away from the little pins. French mathematicians had told me about Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who’d seen God in width, height and depth.

  “Saint Bernard! No army would attempt that! It’s twenty-five-hundred meters high, or more than eight thousand feet! No wider than a towpath! Really, Gage, you’re no logistician. You can’t move armies like a goat.” He shook his head, peering. “Although if we did come down from there we could strike their rear in Milan and capture their supplies.” He was thinking aloud. “We wouldn’t have to bring everything, we’d take it from the Austrians. General Melas would never dream we’d dare it! It would be insane! Audacious!” He looked up at me. “Just the kind of thing an adventurer like you would suggest, I suppose.”

  I’m the world’s most reluctant adventurer, but I smiled encouragingly. The way to deal with superiors is to give them a harebrained idea that suits your purposes and let them conclude it’s their own. If I could pack Napoleon off to Italy again, I’d be able to relax in Paris unmolested.

  “Saint Bernard!” he went on. “What general could do it? Only one…” He rose to his knees. “Gage, perhaps boldness is our salvation. I’m going to take the world by surprise by crossing the Alps like a modern Hannibal. It’s a ridiculous idea you’ve had, so ridiculous that it makes a perverse kind of sense. You are an idiot savant!”

  “Thank you. I think.”

  “Yes, I’m going to try it and you, American, are going to share the glory by scouting the pass for us!”

  “Me?” I was appalled. “But I know nothing of mountains. Or Italians. Or elephants. You just said I’m to help with the American negotiations.”

  “Gage, as always, you are too modest! The advantage is that you’ve proved your pluck on both sides, so no one will be certain who you’re sleeping with now! It will take months to get the new American commissioners here. Haven’t you wanted to see Italy?”

  “Not really.” I thought of it as poor, hot, and superstitious.

  “Your help with the American negotiations can wait until their delegation arrives. Gage, thanks to your elephants, you are going to once more share my fame!”

  Chapter 4

  SOME FAME. THE ALPS IN SPRING, I LEARNED, ARE COLD, windy, and wet, with snow the color of snot. The Saint Bernard of Switzerland was not even the Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: there are too many saints in the world, apparently, including two Bernards within a few hundred miles of each other. And no one believed I was hiking to the pass out of idle American curiosity, carrying my Pennsylvania longrifle like a walking stick. Everyone assumed I was exactly what I kept denying, an early scout for Bonaparte, since the first consul was visiting the encampments near Geneva and taking the unprecedented step of actually explaining to the common soldiers what it was he wanted them to do—to emulate the Carthaginians who’d stormed Rome. I was so obviously an agent that I found myself bargaining with the monks at the summit hospice to supply Napoleon’s troops with food. Indeed, the first consul ran up a bill of forty thousand francs from wine, cheese, and bread sold from trestle tables the enterprising friars put out in the snow. What the holy men didn’t grasp is that Napoleon always bought on credit, and was a master of evading bills at the same time he was extorting tribute from provinces he’d overrun. �
��Let war pay for war,” his ministers said.

  The painter David gave us a portrait of Bonaparte at the crest on a rearing charger, and it’s as inspiring a piece of nonsense as I’ve ever seen. The truth is that Napoleon ascended the Alps on a sure-footed mule and slid down the far side on his own ass, he and his officers whooping with delight. Most of his sixty thousand soldiers walked, or rather trudged, up steadily worsening roads until, for the last seven miles, they were on a trail of ice and mud, potential avalanches poised above and yawning gorges below. Each hour they’d rest for a five-minute “pipe,” or smoke, which was one of the two pleasures of army life—the other being to curse the stupidity of their superiors. Then on again! It was a hard, dangerous ascent that had them sweating in the cold. The soldiers slept at the summit, two to a blanket, great heaps of them huddled together like wolves, and by morning half had fevers and raw throats. Ice cut shoes to pieces, lungs gasped at thin air, and gaiters couldn’t keep cold mud out of socks. Extremities went numb.

  Yet they were proud. It was one of the boldest maneuvers of its age, made more so when the French snuck by a stubborn Austrian fort on the far side of the pass by muffling the hooves of their animals with straw. They hauled their artillery muzzles across the Alps in hollowed-out pine trees. Sixty thousand men crossed that pass, and every powder keg, cannon ball, and box of biscuit was packed or pulled by men with tumplines to their foreheads.

  They sang revolutionary tunes. I handed out cups of wine in encouragement as they passed the summit. A friar kept tally.

  Once over the pass, Bonaparte was everywhere, as usual. He studied the mountain fortress of Bard from concealing bushes, ordered different placement of his siege guns, and got it to capitulate in two days. We entered Milan on June 2. In a masterstroke he’d occupied the Austrian rear and made the French surrender of Genoa suddenly irrelevant. (The siege had been so horrific that Massena’s hair had turned white.) The Austrians had driven their enemy out one side of Italy, only to have Napoleon’s army show up on the other! Of course there was nothing to prevent General Melas from doing what Napoleon had done. He could have marched the opposite way across a different Alpine pass, left the French stranded in Italy, captured Lyon without a shot, and probably forced Bonaparte’s abdication. Except that the Austrian was forty years older and didn’t think in such sweeping terms. He was a superb tactician who saw a few leagues at a time. Napoleon could see the world.