The Barbed Crown

by William Dietrich

  “Which is?” I finally prompted.

  “The Crown of Thorns, allegedly worn by Jesus Christ at his crucifixion. It came to Paris in 1239 when Saint Louis paid the Venetians for twenty-nine relics that the Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople had pawned to raise money to fight the Turks. Can you imagine pawning eternal salvation for a war nobody remembers? Among the objects were a nail from the crucifixion, a fragment of the True Cross, and the crown, all traced back to the Holy Land in the centuries after Christ. They’d been moved west to Byzantium to keep them safe after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem. Our glorious Parisian cathedral of Saint-Chapelle was built as a reliquary for these objects, and later the Crown of Thorns was displayed for years in the church treasury at Notre Dame. Its seventy thorns were gradually removed and shared among the royals of Europe, a prick of Christ’s agony for each. But the vines the thorns were attached to remain and are instantly recognizable by the faithful.”

  “What’s left is a wreath of old brambles?”

  “A crude and irreverent description, but yes. My proposal is that when the coronation occurs, Napoleon be crowned with that relic.” He said it as casually as if suggesting we meet for a drink.

  Astiza gasped. “But that’s blasphemy! To put the crown of Jesus on your own head? Even atheists would riot. Bonaparte would be condemned as a sacrilegious usurper by every Christian in Europe.”

  “Exactly.” He smiled. “His rule would be wrecked before it properly began, his assertion of regal power would be destroyed, the pope would be furious, and excommunication might follow. The coronation would not be confirmation of Napoleon’s power, it would be a mockery. It would make him impotent, and it would likely end any chance he could ever seize the Brazen Head.”

  “So why would he select this Crown of Thorns?” I asked.

  “You will pick it for him.”

  “Let me review. You want us to somehow put this instrument of Jesus’s torture on the head of Napoleon Bonaparte?”

  “I want Pope Pius to do it, and upend the Corsican’s entire regime.” He nodded, already seeing the tumult in his head.

  “But the pope would never do that. Would he?”

  “He would if the Crown of Thorns was substituted for Napoleon’s coronation crown without anyone’s knowledge. Even if the pope dropped the Crown of Thorns in shock before actually lifting it to the dictator’s head, the effect would be the same. Napoleon would be accused of insane hubris.”

  I tried to imagine the scene. “Perhaps. It could certainly confound the coronation, but why would Cardinal Belloy do such a thing?”

  “He wouldn’t. Catholics are grateful to Napoleon for inviting the Church back. Someone else must steal the crown from the cardinal, substitute it for the intended one, and take everyone by surprise.”

  I had a sinking feeling. “Someone?” The plan sounded blasphemous even to me.

  “A man with access to Napoleon and his coronation preparations, allied with a comtesse advising Josephine on fashion, and with an Egyptian bride who can research the object and speculate where it might be hidden. A man, Monsieur Gage, with a reputation as one of the greatest thieves of France and America. You.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The Archbishop’s Palace is a venerable medieval heap of a chateau adjacent to the rear quarter of Notre Dame, with tower, steep roof, and stacks. Therein was our opportunity. I strategized to send Harry down the cardinal’s chimney.

  Astiza wasn’t happy with my idea, given that our mission was sacrilege, government sabotage, trespass, and theft. But I thought my son’s small size represented the only feasible way to break into the guarded clerical palace an alley’s width from the church, and that the adventure could be fun besides.

  Harry was enthusiastic. “Like Sinterklaas!”

  “Yes, like Sinterklaas.” From my time in New York I was familiar with the Dutch version of the Father Christmas fable, and had promised Harry that if he was good, some version of Saint Nicholas in a green coat would creep down our Paris chimney and bring him presents in the depth of winter. “You’re small, like an elf. Out you’ll pop to open a window for Mama and Papa. We’ll have a treasure hunt.”

  “What if there’s a fire?” My four-year-old thought seriously ahead, which is more than I can say for myself sometimes.

  “We’ll be sure to pick a chimney with no blaze burning. Even with autumn advancing they don’t keep all of them lit the entire night.” Wood was expensive for cardinals, too.

  “No doggie?” Harry had been afraid of dogs since his introduction to the beast of Aurora Somerset. When we retired to an estate, I was going to get him a puppy, but meanwhile, he was fearful of the mutts that barked from farmsteads, snarled from alleys, and snapped at wagon wheels.

  “No dogs.” Why would there be a dog in an upstairs clerical council room, which was the intended landing place for my son?

  “Ethan, it’s a filthy idea,” my wife said. “Chimneys are foul, and the boys who sweep them are guttersnipes.” She could be snobbish about who befriended her son.

  “Boys love to get dirty.”

  “It’s terribly dangerous.”

  “Not really. I’d try it myself if I were small. Rather a clever way to gain entry.”

  She sighed. “In Egypt we didn’t need chimneys. The water was warm, and everyone was cleaner.”

  “Yes, and in Egypt there’s so much religious bric-a-brac lying about that we could just scoop some off the sand, instead of having to creep into an archbishop’s palace and tiptoe around a snoring cardinal. You’re the one who confirmed by research and queries that the Crown of Thorns is almost certainly in his private chambers. We’re in France, there’s a precious circlet of brambles to be snatched, and once more we’re on a mad errand.”

  “What if Horus gets stuck?”

  “I’m going to lower some crossed sticks to confirm the dimensions before sending him down.”

  She bit her lip. “He’s my only child.”

  “Harry did a fine job crawling inside the Syracuse cathedral, and he speared a rat. Didn’t you, son?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Well, he had been only two. From necessity I’d been exposing him to adventure from a very young age, after getting embroiled with a temptress and pirates. “If we spoil Napoleon’s coronation and royal ambitions,” I reminded patiently, “maybe the Corsican will have to trim back and avoid a monstrous war. We’ll be heroes, even though we never get a sou of credit. We’re thieving for world peace.”

  My wife is more intrigued by religious relics than I am, so her objections were halfhearted. She finally agreed that she herself would assault the Archbishop’s Palace from the Seine side, helping to establish our escape by shooting up a rope with my crossbow. That was after she used her womanly charms to lure away guards, priests, or gendarmes.

  “If we’re guillotined, at least we’ll all be guillotined together,” she said.

  Is it any wonder we married?

  I picked a moonless November night since we’d be crawling on the clerical palace roof in full view of central Paris. We kept this business of Brazen Heads and thorny crowns secret from Catherine, telling her the family was going to a comedy and not to wait up. She looked disbelieving, but I told her it was a good evening to stay longer at the Tuileries to work on coronation preparations. She had stopped her flirting since our arrest by Pasques, and had been happier and preoccupied working on the coronation. What had seemed mysterious about her was apparently a temporary lack of purpose after the collapse of the royalist conspiracy. Now she was employed and less quarrelsome because of it.

  It never occurred to me that in fooling everybody, we risked being fools.

  The coronation was near. Pope Pius VII had arrived from Rome to stay in one wing of the Tuileries after a carefully calibrated, first comic meeting with Bonaparte. The collaboration between general and pontiff w
as a calculation between Paris and the Vatican, the pope wanting to play a role in European politics and Napoleon craving legitimacy. Every detail was a ticklish dance. It took months of negotiation to make Pius agree to the arduous journey to crown a man with a cynic’s view of religion. Nor could their meeting be simple. The egotistical emperor didn’t want to appear to be obsequious by waiting for the pope like a petitioner, and the pontiff didn’t want to have to knock on one of Napoleon’s palaces like a supplicant. Accordingly, Napoleon pretended to be out hunting—an activity that usually bored him—when the papal coach approached the palace at Fontainebleau. The two “accidentally” met on a country lane that avoided either waiting for the other. The French general timed his dismount to match the pope’s exit from his coach, they greeted one another as equals, and then went to either side of the vehicle so they could step back inside at exactly the same time.

  So is status shared and measured.

  I encouraged Harry by promising that we might find some candy on our expedition, and brought some for him to discover later. Astiza and I practiced by cranking, aiming, and firing the crossbow at one of the cemeteries being excavated, since the grim task of transferring bones kept the superstitious away at night. She proved a good shot.

  On the evening of our attempt, Astiza put a length of rope, a crossbow bolt tied to thin line, and the weapon itself in a shallow wicker basket, disguising her load with baguettes and bread cloth. She temporarily hid the basket near the Seine and waited to play alluring decoy.

  Horus and I didn’t dare take ropes on our mission lest we arouse suspicion. Since we were already breaking a commandment or two, we’d steal the lines we needed from the cathedral. We crossed to the Île de la Cité as if we were religious sightseers and ate supper at a small café, my treating us to pastry at the end.

  “I get to stay up late,” Harry boasted.

  “And eat sugar and get dirty in a chimney. It’s fun to hunt for treasure.”

  Our problem was this. The Archbishop’s Palace was set between Notre Dame Cathedral and the Seine, security was tightening as the coronation neared, and it was easy to be conspicuous. A large number of houses had been torn down around the church to heighten its grandeur and accommodate crowds expected to total half a million. A temporary gallery and tent were being built alongside the transept doors as a private way for dignitaries to enter and dress: the coronation robes were so heavy that no one wanted to bear them more than a few hundred feet. Accordingly, hammering went on day and night. Torches burned. Guards strutted across the new plaza

  Harry and I entered the soaring cavern of Notre Dame at sunset, its western rose window on fire atop a nave of shadows, and the church strewn with heaps of lumber for the coronation stands being built for spectators. The church was a cavern of Gothic gloom, smelling like a cave. There were just a scattering of old women worshippers in a monument in sad disrepair since the revolution, and one desultory priest shuffling toward the confessionals. He looked bored. In Astiza’s novels, beautiful young women whisper of stolen hearts and sexual indiscretions to wise parish counselors. In real life it seems to be women of sixty relating that they’re tired of their husbands and cross with their grandchildren.

  We hid in the shadows by a chapel altar until the cathedral was shut for the night. Then, using skills my British spymasters had taught me, I picked the medieval lock on a heavy wooden door and entered the north bell tower. The trick impressed my son.

  Circular stone steps worn by centuries of sandals ascended. Harry led as we steeply climbed to where the bells were hung, a timber framework inside the outer stone of the tower. Just two bells remained; the others had been melted down to make cannon.

  We caught our breath as we took in a grand view of Paris. Then we settled in. A ghost of twilight came through the apertures, enough that Harry could use chalk I’d brought to draw pictures on the plank floor while we waited. Once it became completely dark he began squirming, so I whispered to be patient and told him stories, half true, about Red Indians and Nordic treasures. He finally nodded off, while I waited impatiently for midnight.

  When it was time to finally assault the Archbishop’s Palace, I lit a candle with my tinderbox and used a knife to saw rope from the bellpulls. I made two coils, one for each shoulder. I tied off the remainder to be discovered by puzzled priests at dawn when they found that there was no way to signal for Mass. Then I woke Harry, and we stole partway downstairs to a child-size door giving access to a narrow balcony. It led across the front of the church, around the south tower, and to the eave of the steep slate roof. There was a wide gutter we could follow.

  The height made me dizzy. Below, jutting out into space, were flying buttresses that arched down into the dark.

  “Cling like a squirrel, son.”

  “This is fun, Papa.”

  I looked down the precipitous drop. “Yes, it is.”

  Harry again led, me watchful to catch him if he should start to go over. But instead of looking at the gulf of gloom, my boy was more intrigued by the gargoyles that jutted over each buttress. “Monsters, Papa.”

  “Gargoyles. They catch the rain and spit it from their mouths.”

  “I want to see them chase it.”

  Children are like monkeys, and the entire expedition was the type of naughty thing mothers never allow. The gutter walkway was wide as a ship’s plank.

  “We should do this at our house.”

  “Quiet like a gargoyle.”

  The floor plan of Notre Dame is like a cross, and now we had to negotiate our way around its western arm on a narrow balcony. We crept on all fours so as not to be spotted, passing under the cathedral’s enormous rose-shaped window.

  Rose. The rosy cross.

  Then we were creeping the gutter along the rear third of the church, above what was called the choir. Once again the buttresses fell away and gargoyles spat.

  “I’m getting tired,” Harry whined.

  “We’re almost there.”

  Each buttress was a pitched beam that rested on a column, giving the high walls a sturdier stance. Gargoyles spat rain into a channel grooved into each one, and at the lower end a companion gargoyle collected this stream and spat toward the river. Atop this lower junction jutted a decorative stone tower like a little chapel, spiked with a cross, Gothic gables, and studded with gewgaws, knobs, and fantasy creatures from the imagination of the masons.

  “Now we’re going to swing,” I whispered to Harry. I peered into the pit between cathedral and Archbishop’s Palace and caught the glow of a pipe. Yes, a sentry was down there.

  So I briefly lit my candle again, letting it signal.

  On cue, Astiza called from the dark. The sentry hesitated, the ember of his pipe lowered a moment in perplexity, and then he walked toward the feminine voice.

  “Now, comes the tricky part. You’ll mind Papa, yes?”

  He looked down. “I don’t want to fall.”

  “Which means you must sit still as stone while I rig a rope. Then we’re going to have very great fun indeed.”

  I slid down the buttress gutter as if it were a leaning log, climbed its decorative tower at the lower end, and tied off my rope on the neck of a snarling gargoyle that pointed sideways. This would give us swinging room.

  I quickly looked around.

  Across a yawning gap was the steep slate roof of the cardinal’s quarters. A tower and steeple jutted from one corner. Beyond the palace were the river and the roofs of the sleepy city. I spied the spark of the sentry’s pipe at the gate to the archbishop’s gardens, where my wife was presumably flirting. A few candles shone in the bishop’s house, but the rooms looked quiet. As soon as I crossed and gave another signal, Astiza would break off her conversation, walk to the Seine, fetch her basket with crossbow, and find a target to shoot at with her bolt.

  We are, as I’ve said, a peculiar family.

  Ho
lding my newly tied rope in my teeth, I crab-walked back up the cathedral’s buttress to where Harry obediently waited. “Now comes the fun part,” I whispered. He held his hands out and I gathered him to me. Beneath my coat I’d put on the military cross belts that soldiers wear to carry their gear. They’re a harness for humans, and now I tucked his little arms and legs inside so he was pressed with face to my chest, like a little monkey. “Hang tight.” I pulled the rope until it was taut, fixed like a pendulum above a child’s swimming hole. The arc, I judged, would just bridge the gap between church and palace.

  I had one chance to get it right.

  I gripped, pulled tight, and sprang.

  We fell, swinging past the little chapel, and soared into space, Harry clutching like a kit. He gasped, making a kind of mewing sound. Momentum carried us above the canyon of air, and at the top of our arc we were weightless.

  I heard a crack. The neck of the gargoyle had snapped.

  We fell, me still holding the rope. There was the gray slate of the bishop’s roof below. We hit and I slid, scrabbling for purchase. My legs shot out into emptiness, while the head of the broken gargoyle banged into the alley below.

  There was another gutter to arrest our fall. I slammed my arms into it and stopped, trembling from strain, my legs extending into space. The rope slapped against the archbishop’s balance. I heard the thud of boots as the sentry hurried back, shouting a challenge. I hastily got my legs into the gutter, hurriedly pulled up the rope, and leaned back from the edge so we couldn’t be seen. The broken demon I’d hauled in looked accusatory.

  Below, the sentry stopped, peering about. Nothing amiss.

  I waited an eternity. Astiza called again. The man stalked away, muttering. So I dipped my head to address my boy.