The Barbed Crown

by William Dietrich

  “Swing the legs from one side of the horse to the other each hour to sustain the symmetry of the derriere,” our aristocrat advised my wife. “Don’t look backward because twisting your shoulders upsets the set of the cloak behind your saddle. Kid gloves to keep the palms smooth, and creams against the weather. I have egg white to lighten, or a paste of strawberries and fat for blush.”

  “You both look fine the way you are,” I ventured.

  “It is not a man’s opinion women value, Monsieur Gage. Do not get involved in subjects you know nothing about.”

  “You have a point,” I said agreeably. “‘Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others,’ my mentor Benjamin Franklin used to say.”

  “A proper lady eats to please others, too, with restraint and delicacy.”

  “You believe it’s by style that one succeeds in Paris?” Astiza asked. Most people are confused by new information, but my wife absorbs it.

  “It’s by style that one succeeds anywhere. Presentation implies competence, and manners fortify beauty. A moment’s wit can equal a year’s labor. Correct fashion can wring salvation from scandal.”

  Catherine’s confidence made us tolerate her pomposity. It’s human instinct to abide those who think they know what they’re doing, no matter how optimistic their opinion of themselves.

  Except for their shared beauty—Catherine’s pale glow a complement to Astiza’s warmer honey—I could scarcely conceive of two more different women. The comtesse was obsessed with position and power, Astiza with revelation and truth. Our “governess” was born to be a courtesan, my wife a priestess. Any partnership wasn’t natural, and yet they seemed to get on. The comtesse seemed relieved that Astiza’s presence ended any flirtation on my part, and in fact warmed to me in her presence, regarding marriage as proof I wasn’t entirely oafish. My wife recognized that Catherine had expertise in her own vapid way. Our countess was a window to the superficialities of the elite.

  “I apologize for bringing her,” I initially whispered to Astiza as we clopped along. “She’s somewhat imperious and probably unrealistic about getting her lands and titles back.”

  “How much do we know about her?”

  “She’s an heiress with a hatred of the revolution and its inheritor, Bonaparte. Catherine is mysterious, but in London she knew table place settings and spring fashion. We thought she could enlist other royalists and seduce a key informant or two.”

  “But not you.”

  “Apparently, she concluded more quickly than most that I have little information.” My tone was deliberately ironic.

  “I’ve no doubt she can operate in social circles we cannot,” Astiza said. “But if we leave her to her own devices by lodging her elsewhere, we’ll have no idea what she’s up to. So until we repair the conspiracy, we must pretend she’s our governess.” My wife is eminently practical. “I’d prefer her homelier, however.”

  “She’s a muddy wick next to your chandelier,” I lied with husbandly instinct. “It’s good you two are cooperating.”

  “Only because it’s obvious she’s not attracted to you, Ethan.” And she nudged her horse ahead to converse quietly with the comtesse, me brooding about unflattering observations the pair might be making about my character.

  France’s soil is the foundation of its power. In April, that means mud. We averaged five miles an hour on horseback, sometimes waiting until dusk before approaching the farmhouses of royalist sympathizers that Butron had arranged as safe houses. Then we’d dry out, dine, and plot fruitlessly about the future, each refuge offering a distinct French smell of hay, wine, manure, baking bread, and wood-smoke that is characteristic of rural shelter. We were dangerous to host but a respite from boredom. As firelight flickered and cows mooed, the Bourbon conspirators waxed nostalgic. The French love to argue, and I spiced the conversation by serving as philosophic foil.

  “Unlike some Americans, you seem to have escaped the seductions of the revolutionaries,” Butron told me.

  “They went too far with the guillotine. Tom Jefferson is a kindlier democrat, and good dinner company to boot. France needs moderation, is my advice. Extremism never works.”

  “The Jacobins governed with atheism, anarchy, and theft.”

  “The irony is that Napoleon has declared the revolution over, invited the church back, and even welcomed exiled nobles, if they swear allegiance. I want to defeat the bastard, yes, but he’s really one of you in believing in order and authority.” I’m nothing if not fair, even to tyrants. “Isn’t the choice one king against another, the exiled Bourbons or Napoleon?”

  “No. Bonaparte the usurper buys people, paying for them with cruel taxes and reckless borrowing. He purchases some with money, some with promotion, and some with promises, be they émigrés or bishops. Then he sets them against one another. He’s no right to rule. He doesn’t recognize high birth. The result is naked ambition and ruthless competition. Napoleon uncorks the worst in human nature.”

  “Which of us isn’t bought, my friends—with everything from social status to the promise of heaven?”

  “You’re too judicious, American. It’s a weakness.”

  “I just have the perspective of an outsider who’s met the man. Pompous and ambitious, yes, but clever as the devil.” My views were tolerated because I could turn a storied ogre into a comprehensible politician. “He succeeds by merit. Memory like a ledger. He understands soldiers, is a quick study of politics, and naturally commands.”

  “I hear he’s blunt, impatient, and lacks social grace,” said Catherine. “He spies on men and insults women.”

  “He outmaneuvers everyone,” I said. “When he first jumped ahead of other generals and was offered command of the army of Italy, disgruntled officers reporting to his tent decided they wouldn’t remove their hats, in order to put this Corsican upstart in his place. So Bonaparte studied them a moment and abruptly removed his own. His subordinates had to do the same, lest they display ridiculous rudeness. He then put his hat back on, point made, and proceeded to tell his generals what to do.”

  “But to follow a man who started from nothing?”

  “The fact he started from nothing shows how able he is.”

  The concept baffled the room. It’s really a minority who want to make their way in the world; most men are content with taking the place their father gives them, bowing to this and being bowed to by that, without having to strive too much or think things through. Everyone knows where he stands when stature comes from birth. Kings meant predictability, while military dictators meant reckless adventure, prying policemen, ceaseless taxes, and military conscription. Or so they told me.

  “People hate equality because it means they must be equal, too,” Catherine added with some perception.

  “Which is why Napoleon offers the illusion that everyone might rise,” I replied. “You were born into privilege you’ve lost, yes, but most were born into obscurity that Bonaparte offers escape from.”

  “Which means they’ll feel failure if they don’t escape.”

  “And triumph if they do.”

  I wasn’t defending the fellow, exactly, but for a would-be assassin, my views were definitely complicated. Napoleon and I had a complex history, because he had used me for conquest and I had used him for treasure. Circumstance had made us allies one moment and opponents the next. I envied and admired Bonaparte’s success while still believing the story of my enemy Leon Martel, that Napoleon had ruthlessly put my family at risk to manipulate me into hunting for Aztec secrets. The first consul was the architect of a world in which honor was hostage to ambition, and compromise suspended for war. Expediency trumped loyalty, and the kidnapping of my son was a sin too far.

  So would I still kill him, if I had him in my sights? The truth is that we were both rascals, and it was suicidal to play assassin. It would risk my wife and son. After reunion with Astiza my new scheme was to
redirect Napoleon toward peace or abdication, though just how I didn’t know. Maybe I could even persuade him to compensate us for all our troubles; I did have his pendant and the Aztec toy of a flying machine. Why not get paid by both powers? It’s always encouraging to get a public stipend for vague advice, and people contend I’m an opportunist.

  Or maybe I was just a coward, now that I had my family back.

  There was a further consideration: Napoleon gave me importance. British officials enlisted me because I’d been close to the first consul, and French farmwives listened to my opinions for the same reason. Proximity to power is heady, and vanity is the chink in my armor, or at least one of them. While I resented Bonaparte’s bidding, I was proud that great men paid me attention.

  So I dithered as we rode.

  I wanted time alone with my wife, but no opportunity for intimacy presented itself. We kissed without embarrassment, but Astiza was shy about going further where everyone could hear and see. So we were as pent up as if we’d taken holy orders, adding zeal to the goal of reaching Paris.

  “We’ll stay anonymous in the capital until we have a better gauge of its politics,” I whispered to Astiza as we lay one evening. “These arrests are catastrophic, and being the famous Ethan Gage carries its own baggage. Once I announce myself, a great deal of explaining becomes necessary. Why did I disappear from the negotiations over Louisiana? Did Martel report my presence in Haiti and Martinique? What am I doing back in Paris? We should skulk around first.”

  “Yes, all of France is waiting to hear the latest of Ethan Gage,” my wife said dryly. She keeps me from inflating.

  “Just policemen and scoundrels,” I said. “I know I’m not really important, but I am occasionally controversial. Or notorious, to unsavory people.”

  “The gods will give us a sign.” Astiza had been raised with Eastern fatalism.

  “But the hurricane proved that all wrong. You foresaw doom, and yet thanks to my diving bell here you are, saved from the sea.”

  “Don’t you see fortune brought us here for a reason, Ethan? If we hadn’t been separated by the hurricane, we’d have retired in America or England. Instead, we’re carried by history’s current to Paris and the French archives.”

  “Yes, your old books. What’s all this about telling the future?”

  “Just some references I stumbled across that piqued my curiosity. One spoke of a remarkable medieval machine that could answer questions about things to come. It’s only a legend, but a legend based on what?”

  I don’t mind philosophizing when you can cup a breast and wedge against a bottom. “You cite destiny only when it’s convenient. Though I will admit that fatalism takes the pressure off. Yet if we’re just carried along by fate, then our suffering is pointless, don’t you think? I think that if luck put us here, it’s so we can choose, not be directed.”

  “Yes, fate and free will are married. So choose how, treasure hunter?”

  “I’m thinking that having seen so much violence and heartbreak, perhaps my real mission is to make peace, either by thwarting Napoleon or calming him. Why were we saved, if not to save the world? And, perhaps, get paid for it.”

  “You manipulate, and submit an invoice. I’ll research.”

  As you can tell, ours was not the usual pillow talk. But we also kissed, my feeling again the fan of her silken hair and curve of hip, which meant I stayed rigid and sleepless for two hours after.

  Accordingly, I was groggy when our gang of conspirators departed each dawn, leaving generous payment. We’d also pay a full franc at ferries, double the usual rate, to purchase silence from the ferryman. We avoided inns, ate in the saddle, and took four long days to reach Paris.

  The capital announced itself with a horizon of smoke from the new ironworks and cotton mills of Chaillot, Saint-Lazare, and Saint-Laurent. Before crossing the Seine at Neuilly we transferred to a hay wagon as cleverly constructed as one of Tom Johnstone’s smuggling boats. Its heap of straw hid a chamber little bigger than a kennel. Astiza, Catherine, Harry, and I squeezed inside.

  “If they find us, we’re already caged,” I noted.

  “They won’t, monsieur,” Butron assured. “Slipping contraband through the gates of Paris is as essential as drawing water, and ten thousand men are employed to skirt tax collectors. The hiring of more policemen has meant only that there are more policemen to bribe.”

  “The French are as dishonest as the English? That’s hard to believe.”

  “No nationality likes paying taxes, and smugglers are a lubricant for commerce. Relax, soon you’ll be a nobody amid half a million Parisians.”

  “This is fun!” Harry said. And off we lurched.

  Hours later Butron knocked, and we crawled out at midnight inside a barn near the old walls. A hatch revealed an ancient stone tunnel that smelled like the grave, leading under the ramparts to the cellar of the Convent of the Filles Saint-Marie. I carried Harry past a skittering rat or two, our lanterns bubbles of light. He’s a brave lad, having stabbed one of the vermin in Sicily, so he watched their scurrying with more curiosity than fear.

  At a ladder, a limestone passage branched off. “Where does that go?” I pointed.

  “The new catacombs,” Butron replied. “The city’s cemeteries are so crammed that authorities have been moving bones to old limestone mines to make way for a frenzy of construction under Bonaparte.” He glanced at Harry. “Millions and millions of dead.”

  “Are we going to live down here, Papa?”

  “No, your mother wants a proper house, and this place requires too much dusting. Up you go, I’m right behind you.”

  We climbed to resurrection. A generous donation to Catholic charity, sorely needed after the privations of the revolution, meant the nuns wouldn’t do more than whisper and giggle at our emergence. Smuggling kept them solvent.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace,” I said companionably to the Abbess Marie, looking about for informants or sentries and seeing none.

  “You are Catholic, monsieur?”

  “My wife is religious.” Astiza is an ecumenical pagan, but spiritual as an abbey of friars.

  “You follow God, madame?” the abbess asked.

  “All of them.”

  “I believe in the True Church,” Catherine chimed in, fretfully beating her gown for dust. The abbess looked at her skeptically.

  “We seek the holy,” Astiza added.

  I suppose the nun could have called down a bolt of lightning on all of us, but the truly good see hope in the least likely. “Perhaps you’ll join us for prayers sometime?” she asked my wife.

  “I would enjoy that.”

  The abbess turned back to me. “We know that Napoleon has reinstated the church for his own cynical political purposes, but God works in mysterious ways, does he not? So I advise you, Ethan Gage, to go with God as well.”

  “Appreciated. Though it’s sometimes difficult to understand which way He’s pointing.”

  “She’s pointing,” Astiza corrected. “Isis and Athena.”

  It’s awkward being married to a heathen. “Mary, too,” I said quickly.

  The abbess regarded us uncertainly.

  So I gave her an extra gold piece and hoped she’d choose our side in her prayers, whichever side that was.

  Then I set out to enjoy Paris with my family.

  CHAPTER 5

  The sound of the guillotine chopping through a rebel neck is exactly that of a cleaver through cabbage, the vegetable in this instance being the head of Georges Cadoudal hitting its basket with an audible thump.

  The crowd rumbled as if a bull had been dispatched in the ring. The execution meant stability, finality, and tyranny, all at the same time. History would not reverse. It was June 25, 1804, nearly three months after my family and I had landed in France, and a royalist rebellion was as remote as the moon.

  The con
spiracy and assassination attempts encouraged by the British had reminded Frenchmen not of Bourbon would-be kings waiting to be welcomed but of the chaos of revolution. The opportunistic Napoleon seized on extracted confessions from Bourbon plotters to fortify his own position. He argued France needed a return to the stability of a monarchy, but a monarchy headed by him, not the ousted heirs of Louis XVI. And since the revolutionaries had pronounced inept Louis “the last king of France,” a new title was needed. Accordingly, just one month before Georges’s beheading, the French had voted 3,524,254 to 2,579 (by the eventual count of Napoleon’s minions, at least) in favor of making Bonaparte—a man who still spoke French with a Corsican accent—their emperor.

  As first consul he’d beaten the Austrians at Marengo (with my help, though I never got proper credit), revitalized the economy, reformed the military, restored public works, reworked the law, and kept public order. Three overlapping police services spied not just on Frenchmen and foreigners but on each other. Sixty newspapers had been shuttered, plays were censored, and martial music banged in the streets. By making Napoleon’s rule hereditary, the French had made it immensely harder to overthrow him by assassination or coup, since his heirs would fill his empty throne. So while in 1789 the French had risen to eradicate royalty, in 1804 they voted to establish a brand-new one, trading freedom for stability.

  I wasn’t surprised. We all balance liberty against risk, and are seduced by the safety promised by the strong. They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither and will lose both, Benjamin Franklin had warned. Like any youth, I ignored his advice while never quite forgetting it. The older I grew, the wiser the words became.