The Barbed Crown

by William Dietrich

  “We got one!” the enemy cried.

  “Charge!” Captain Butron shouted.

  I skittered, bumping and filthy, all the way back to where I’d started. Upslope I could hear shouts, curses, and gunfire as my escort collided with the blocking soldiers. Then a cheer, but from which side I knew not.

  Well, it wasn’t as if I had a choice. I stood, wincing from a twisted ankle, and ascended the trail with my arms full of coats and staffs, like a limping laundress. Along the way I came upon Comtesse Marceau, sitting in the mud because she was weaponless. “Come, the fight’s over,” I said, freeing an arm to haul her up.

  She didn’t volunteer to carry anything. “Is it safe?”

  “I don’t know if we won or lost, but it’s settled in either event.”

  “Are you shot, monsieur?” Was there at least a hint of concern?

  “A sprain from hurrying to reinforce you and our companions.”

  “You are indeed a gambler.”

  “When the winnings are enticing.” I winked, which she couldn’t see it in the dark.

  We awkwardly climbed the last slippery yards and emerged on farmland. Butron’s smile was a reassuring crescent in the night. Some bodies lay in high grass, but the other surviving soldiers had fled. The comtesse and I were soaked and smeared, the hood of her cloak fallen back to reveal her sodden mass of curls. I put an arm around her waist and gave her a squeeze, hip to hip, figuring I deserved it.

  “Well done, Captain,” I said.

  “And the same to you, Monsieur Gage. You make a splendid scarecrow.”

  “Did we fight the army?”

  “The Gendarmerie Nationale. And the Customs Service.”

  “I’m afraid your greatcoats have a few bullet holes. Save them to show your grandchildren and embroider the story.”

  “No embroidery is necessary. But we had some help with this adventure. The Coastal Patrol was assaulted from two sides.”

  He pointed, and more figures came out of the gloom. Waiting allies! Perhaps the royalist conspiracy wasn’t so desperate after all.

  And then my world reeled. One of our rescuers had the slimness of a woman and moved with astonishingly familiar grace, and she carried a small child in her arms. The sky was black as Hades, dripping with rain, and she was bundled like a czarina, and yet I’d recognize her form anywhere.

  I was looking at a ghost.

  CHAPTER 3

  I learned on a Caribbean-bound frigate that the Royal Navy has a toast for each night of the week. Saturday’s is: “To sweethearts and wives—may they never meet.”

  Now they had.

  My arm dropped from the waist of Catherine Marceau as if chopped.

  “You didn’t lose time finding a female companion, Ethan,” my deceased wife said. Except that Astiza wasn’t dead, apparently, and in fact had accomplished the impossible by waiting for me in France with the son I’d left behind in England. I’ve always enjoyed interesting women, but the one I married is eight degrees more interesting than I can ever keep up with. Somehow she’d achieved resurrection, reunion with her child, magical transport, and then helped in my rescue by attacking the French from the other side.

  By the geraniums of Thomas Jefferson, I hadn’t even managed dry clothing.

  My heart lurched from bereavement to embarrassment, my guilt at Astiza’s drowning replaced with guilt at flirting with Catherine Marceau. I was astonished, reprieved, and defensive, all in an instant. “She’s not a woman, she’s a spy,” I stuttered, my mouth running ahead of my confusion. “Not much of a swimmer, but a genuine comtesse.”

  “You couldn’t find a male confederate?”

  “Sidney Smith thought we’d make a team. And we didn’t know you were alive.” How had this miracle happened? I’ve yet to summon clever phrasing for momentous occasions and keep a notebook full of things I should have said, had I the wit to think of them. I mentally vowed to jot down a few more for this surprise, once I had the leisure to think of something intelligent.

  “I’m not about to let you run off by yourself again,” Astiza said. “You get in trouble every time you do. If we’re going to be married, we need to have the habit of staying together, Ethan, and devoting our attentions to each other, not highborn espionage agents.” She looked at the comtesse with a mixture of skepticism, amusement, and pity. “He would exasperate you, I promise.”

  “This is your wife?” Catherine asked me.

  “Apparently so.” I gave Astiza a good squint, just in case I was faced with an imposter, but she has a Greek Egyptian beauty not commonly found in Normandy. “My bride has a habit of surprising me.”

  Catherine drew herself up. “I can assure you, madame, that I was doing my best to deflect his attention. Our partnership was one of temporary expedience. His manners, after all, are American.”

  “I entirely believe you, and apologize for any forwardness my husband has exhibited,” Astiza replied like a diplomat.

  “He has the enthusiasm of a billy goat, though his heart means well.”

  “The shamelessness of a politician,” the comtesse judged.

  “The anxiety of a treasure hunter,” Astiza countered.

  “The longing of a lottery player.”

  “The wanderlust of a minstrel.”

  “The grace of a plowman.”

  “Naughty and opportunistic, but with the earnestness of a schoolboy.”

  I tried to interrupt but couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

  “Thus I am relieved to deliver him to you, madame,” Catherine summed up. “He has élan, but like most men he is in need of great reform.”

  “I have returned to do just that, and in my trying to do so, he is teaching me patience.” Astiza turned to me. “And exactly why are we in France again, Ethan?”

  I was flustered, not to mention muddy, hungry, cold, and tired. I cleared my throat. “To avenge your death. Didn’t I see you drown in a hurricane?” I had a distinct recollection of watching her be carried off in a great green wave, a memory that had given me nightmares ever since. I’d hoped she hadn’t succumbed to the tide, but as weeks turned to months, my yearning had become thin fog.

  “I almost drowned, but I struck and caught your diving bell. It must have been washed off the wrecked ship and floated because it trapped air when falling into the Caribbean. I swam into it, caught my breath, and suspended myself by its straps.”

  “The devil you did! How smart of me to build it.”

  “By the time the atmosphere was stale, I’d recovered enough to swim. I spied a wreckage of hatch and mast, dragged myself aboard, tied myself on with its tangle of rope, and drifted for three days. I eventually was rescued by a French merchantman and spent weeks recovering on Saint-Lucia.”

  “Harry and I were already on our way back across the Atlantic.”

  “The French authorities made inquiries, and when reports came that you’d sailed for England with our son, they released me to follow. By the time I arrived, you’d gone with this woman to wait for smugglers’ weather on a Channel isle.”

  “I am the Comtesse Marceau, madame.”

  “Interception seemed the best strategy, because I’ve been puzzling over something I read when held captive in Martinique by Leon Martel,” Astiza carried on. “The Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris is the best place to research.” She shrugged. “So I have joined your conspiracy.”

  “You rescued me to go to a library?”

  “To read about medieval attempts to divine the future.”

  Being widowed is bad enough, but learning that all the grieving was for nothing is disorienting. Not to mention that my resurrected wife chatted about medieval lore with my archenemy, kept strict tabs on my movements, and got to France faster than I did. I was uncharacteristically incoherent. I was the recipient of a miracle? Who now stood before me like a visiting saint? By thunde
r, marriage is complicated enough without being confused as to whether your spouse even exists or not. I suppose I should have . . .

  What?

  “Monsieur, it is your wife who has saved us?” a puzzled Captain Butron finally asked, snapping me back to the present.

  “Yes, she turns up like a penny and has a knack for rescuing me from myself. I think my boy is here as well. Harry, is that you?”

  Horus, a real armful at nearly four, clung to my bride as if worried I’d leave him with the Chiswicks again. “Mama came for me,” he said with reproach in his voice. I’d first given him hope after the hurricane that his mother might live, and then told him she apparently was dead. “After you left me,” he added. Hell’s fire, now I looked like the world’s worst father.

  There was an awkward silence that the kindly captain finally broke. “I think, American, that you should take a moment to kiss your reappearing wife.”

  Of course! I limped forward, with all the grace of a plowman—I hate accurate assessments of myself—took the woman in my arms, Harry mashed between us, and gave her a buss on the lips. Astiza was real all right, warm and ripe, and familiar as a favorite shoe, the mash of mouth and teeth and tongue a brand that brought back sweet memory. I kissed her with relief, exaltation, and near disbelief, positively poleaxed by fate. For all my luck at cards, this was the biggest pot I’d ever won. I thought myself cursed by any number of voodoo, Egyptian, and Greek gods, and yet here was my bride, as beautiful as I remembered and little worse for wear. Her face was cold—it was stormy, after all—but her breath was as invigorating as brandy.

  We broke for air, gasping. Catherine gave us a little clap of approval, looking at me with new interest, and Butron raised his sword in salute.

  I kissed my boy, too.

  “I don’t like the Chiswicks, Papa.”

  “Well, then, you’d better stay with me. Frankly, I didn’t like them, either; I should have shopped around. In any event, I’m eager to play with you again, Harry.”

  His eyes were wide in the dark. “We shot the bad men.” My boy had already been in as many scrapes as a Guard grenadier. “And I’m wet. It’s raining.”

  “We’ll look for puddles to splash in.” I addressed Astiza. “How did you find Harry?”

  “I went to Sidney Smith, asking where he’d sent you. He explained that you’d joined his cabal of spies and conspirators and that Horus had been deposited for safekeeping. The Chiswicks wouldn’t believe I was his mother, even though he ran to me, because you told them I was dead. So I kidnapped my own son in the night. I hope you haven’t paid them yet.”

  “I gave half in advance. I finally sold the emerald.”

  “I’m hungry,” Harry interrupted.

  “The emerald!” Astiza exclaimed. “I thought we’d lost it.”

  “I swallowed it in the Caribbean for safekeeping. We’re rich, Astiza. We can retire because I’ve invested our fortune with brilliant London advisers who are going to double our money in less than a year. Once we figure out how to return you to England, you can retrieve the fortune and hunt for an estate. Look for something with modern fireplaces and a stable to keep the horses I intend to buy. And you must return, of course. I can’t risk the two of you here.”

  “But I will not risk you here, either.” She glanced at Catherine, who’d wrapped her arms around herself and was studying us with speculation. “Not without me.”

  I looked at the bodies. “Our entire situation is dangerous.”

  “Then why did you come back to France at all?”

  “To avenge you by killing Napoleon. I suppose my quest is somewhat obsolete, since you don’t seem to need avenging.” I struggled for a plan. “Maybe we’ll explain the misunderstanding to the authorities and take a holiday in Italy. I’ll tell them the reason I helped wreck a coastal cutter and shoot through a gendarmerie patrol was love. The French understand these things.”

  “No, they don’t,” Butron said.

  Astiza looked at me fondly. “I’m flattered you wanted revenge.”

  “None less than bringing down their government and that Corsican schemer.”

  “Mama helped shoot the bad people,” Harry said. He’d encountered more bad people in four years than most of us do in forty, and each of my attempts to shelter him had completely come to naught.

  “Your mother can be quite determined,” I confirmed.

  “But I think they’ll likely guillotine us, Ethan, not send us to Italy,” Astiza warned. “You’ve been as foolish as you’ve been brave.”

  She had a point.

  “Nor has my survival changed the strategic peril,” she went on. “We’ve allied with both France and Britain at times in the past, as was expedient for love and family, but this time you can’t abandon your mission. The French still want to cross the Channel and, by conquering England, conquer the world. Our fortune waiting in England may become a French spoil of war. Napoleon needs to be thwarted.”

  “Your grasp of the stakes involved is exemplary, madame,” Catherine approved. “As is your grasp of both politics and men.” The two women seemed to be bonding over my failings.

  “Moreover, I see the hand of fate,” Astiza said. “I’ll search out medieval archives in Paris while you spy.” She liked nothing better than a great library with half-forgotten cellars of dusty tomes, spotted with mouse droppings and improperly filed, so she could organize things.

  “But apparently, some of our intended allies are already in prison,” I said. “Captain Butron here reports there have been arrests.”

  “This is true, madame.” He cocked his head, clearly fascinated by my wife and taken with her beauty. I’m used to men paying her such attention, accepting it with a mixture of pride and annoyance. “Can I ask how you arrived in France ahead of your husband?”

  “Smith arranged for the daring Captain John Wesley Wright to bring me with a shipload of rebel arms.”

  I’d heard of Wright. He’d escaped years ago from a Paris prison with Sidney Smith, making them both famous. He sneaked about like Tom Johnstone, but with a naval commission.

  “Wright found fog to hide in and told the rebels receiving the weapons that I needed to meet you here. We’ve been waiting three days for the storm we knew would blow you in.”

  “Yet the French coastal guards were waiting, too,” Butron said.

  “Somewhere there’s a traitor,” concluded Catherine. “The danger is grave. But now we have new opportunity, too.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It would have been hard to convince Parisians I’m in company with a lowborn opportunist like you. Our habits are too different. But now I’ve lost my money. To return with your bride is perfect. After this skirmish and betrayal, we must creep into Paris and determine where our conspiracy stands. Having a family makes you less suspicious.” She was as brisk as Bonaparte.

  “Certainly not. I won’t risk Astiza and Harry again. Good heavens, I just got them back.”

  “Ethan, we have no choice,” Astiza said. “We watched Napoleon try to suppress the slaves of Saint-Domingue. He wants to conquer England. His goal is mastery of the world, and he needs to be checked. If we keep our wits, we’re in a unique position to infiltrate French society and report what we learn. Let’s upset his invasion, win a peace, finish my research, and then retire.”

  “You’re a little more martial than I remember.”

  “The word is payback, is it not?” She looked lovely when vengeful.

  “We conspire with Harry?”

  “Let’s put an end to things and keep together as a family while we do. Napoleon can’t last. Meanwhile, we start teaching Harry to read.”

  “And to spy,” I mused. “I suppose it could be a lucrative profession for him someday.”

  “I think he’ll learn to be anything but a spy.”

  “I want to go to
sleep,” Harry protested. I took him, and he nestled into my shoulder. Good heavens, he weighed as much as a keg of powder.

  “All right.” I began to cheer up. “And maybe we can make another one or two just like him in Paris. The city is quite romantic, after all.” The thought of my wife’s flank in bed gave me something to look forward to. And while she’d never admit it, she’d acquired a taste for adventuring. I knew I’d found a keeper when the woman began our relationship by taking a shot at me. Pretty, brave, smart as Franklin, and just as corrective.

  “We can practice, but you’re not to impregnate me until our conspiracy has succeeded. The last thing I need is to be heavy with child.”

  I shrugged. Practicing was good enough for me.

  “Then we’re allied,” said Catherine. “I will play your governess, and we will live, all of us, under one roof.”

  CHAPTER 4

  We crept toward Paris like the spies we were, taking boggy back roads and sleeping on floors and in stables. There’s a good toll road that speeds travelers from Calais to the capital in twenty-four hours, each of the privately maintained sections between tollgates called a stage and its vehicles stagecoaches, a briskly modern word like cabriolet. But this technological progress did us no good because our lack of proper papers and rough-looking escorts would raise questions.

  “The telegraph will send word of our skirmish,” Butron warned. This insidious invention relayed messages by moving fifteen-foot-long paddles on spaced towers in the same way a navy uses signal flags. It seems invasive to me that authorities can waggle information at a hundred miles an hour, speeding up life yet again, but such are modern times. Careers uncertain, privacy under assault, and police proliferating as the nineteenth-century dawns: how grim the future! So we moved cautiously on horseback from one safe house to another.

  Harry rode in front of me, hugging my saddle pommel and asking questions about the color of the sky or why horse droppings look different than ours. Astiza mounted sidesaddle at the insistence of Comtesse Catherine, who announced she would prove herself useful by training us to function in society once restoration occurred. I wondered at how swiftly she had migrated from treating me as inferior to treating the pair of us as useful companions who could be trained, but maybe word of the arrests in Paris and the loss of her money had convinced her to be more companionable and expedient. Or, maybe she was warming to my charm.