The Barbed Crown

by William Dietrich

  “Harry, are you all right?”

  “Are we there?” His voice was very small.

  “Almost.” I got my knees back up on the roof and scrabbled swiftly up its slippery slate to the ridge. There I let Harry loose and waited for my sweat to cool.

  Accomplishment Number One: I had not yet killed my son.

  Harry looked back at Notre Dame. “That was scary, Papa.”

  “It’s the next part that’s jolly. You get to be Sinterklaas.”

  “Will you come, too?”

  “Better. You’re going to open a window, and Mama and I are going to meet you there as part of our special game. You like games, don’t you?” Meanwhile, I hoped a lightning bolt wouldn’t strike me dead for blasphemy.

  At least it was quiet. Cardinal Belloy was an astonishingly thriving ninety-five years old who by all reports was an able administrator. I was betting the old man also needed his sleep.

  “Now, let’s creep along to the chimney.”

  Astiza had found plans for the palace in the library, and I’d picked a flue that appeared to have the necessary width and which led to the cardinal’s council chamber. We sidled to it. I took the other coil of rope I’d cut from the bells and quickly lowered some crossed sticks I’d brought to make sure the chimney had no odd obstructions. The sounding went straight down, slackened in the hearth, and came up with cold ashes.

  “Harry, this is the clever part. You must pretend you’re Father Christmas, bringing presents down the chimney like the Dutch story I told you, but instead, you get treasure. I’m going to lower you on this rope, and you’re going to get as dirty as you like.” I gave him a bottle with a soft glow. “This holds fox fire, to give you a little light on the way down. When you get to the bottom, the rope will go slack. Then you’re going to pull here to release the knot, step into the room, and look for Mama’s face in a window. If you open the window latch, we can climb inside.”

  “What’s the treasure?”

  “Candy. Here are a few pieces to keep your strength up and show you what we’re after.” I’m so practiced telling improbable fables to nubile wenches that I can do the same with four-year-old children.

  He nodded solemnly, thinking, I believe, that if such a path was good enough for Sinterklaas, it was good enough for him. He was a brave little lad, and he had his parents’ curiosity. So down he went.

  Harry slipped without jamming, dangling like a passive puppet as I’d instructed. The rope finally slackened and came loose. So far, so good.

  Then I heard a growl, rumbling up the chimney as if it were a speaking trumpet.

  Damnation! The cardinal had a dog after all. I braced for a scream and wail from my son, shouts from priests and guards, and maybe even gunshots. I froze on the roof ridge, as plain a target as the tin plate I’d used in Boulogne.

  Instead, silence.

  Heart hammering out of fear for my boy, I swiftly pulled the rope up, doubled it around the chimney, and dropped it down the roof to the Seine side of the palace. Then I slid along it over the side and looked for what I hoped would be there. Sure enough, a crossbow bolt was stuck in a beam on the underside of the roof eave, and from it a string led down to the ground. When I pulled on the string, I pulled up Astiza’s rope. I doubled it around the beam, braced myself, and hauled my wife up. She helped by walking up the wall with her feet.

  “Finally,” she gasped. “I’ve lived an eternity. Is Harry all right?”

  “I hope so. I heard a dog.”

  She moaned while I reeled in the rope from the chimney.

  She quickly swung to the window we hoped Harry could open, climbing onto its French balcony. I followed.

  “Nice that the crossbow worked,” I whispered.

  “I missed twice. Priests must sleep like the dead.”

  “Clear conscience. Women wouldn’t know what that’s like, would they?”

  “Not funny, husband.”

  “You have the substitute?”

  She patted a satchel at her side. “In my bag.”

  We tapped the window. A small face appeared on the other side and matter-of-factly climbed up on the window ledge and unfastened the leaded glass. It swung inward. That’s my boy.

  “You said there wouldn’t be a doggie.” He was accusatory.

  “Just friendly ones. Where is he?”

  “I gave him candy.”

  And indeed, a hound was snuffling at something on the carpet, growling a halfhearted warning as we dropped onto thick carpet. Some watchdog. I shook loose a curtain rope from its hook and gently approached, holding out my hand as if I had more food. The growl was a low rumble, but the beast looked warily hopeful. I gave it a pet, and then swiftly cinched its muzzle before it could do more than yelp. More rope around the thrashing legs, and I trussed the mutt like a calf.

  I stood, breathing heavily. “You’re a very clever boy, Harry.”

  “Papa said there’s more candy here, Mama.” Our son was covered in soot and seemed rather proud of it. I admired his mercenary instinct, which I consider common sense.

  “You’re a very good son and shall get some treats.”

  “And a bath,” his mother added.

  The council room had a long central table with armoires, cabinets, and bookshelves alongside. We emptied one of folded tablecloths and put the struggling dog inside, throwing the fabric on top of him to muffle any scratching. I felt sorry for the beast, but fortunes of war and all that.

  Now, where to look? It was a splendid home. Clergy work is steady, clean, and with good quarters; one could do worse except for the celibacy part. Gothic arches made a fine roof overhead, stone pillars coming down like trunks in a forest. The furnishings were a little bare, the place having been ransacked in the revolution, but what had been brought back in was Italian and finer than I could afford. There were wool carpets as thick as bear pelts, fine tapestries, gloomy portraits of popes, and bright ones of the Virgin. The latter seemed to be eyeing me with particular disfavor.

  Now we had to find something small enough to be cruelly jammed on our Savior’s head.

  I whispered to Harry to stay close and began creeping around, hating the way the board floors creaked and cabinet hinges squealed. Logically, I knew the sounds were barely audible, but when stealing Christendom’s most precious relic, every peep sounds like the boom of a cannon.

  I don’t know how professional thieves bear the nerves.

  We tried chests, armoires, shelves, mantles, and decorative boxes. Harry peered under furniture and behind curtains. Astiza had theorized that such a precious item might be hidden somewhere clever, such as a hollowed-out Bible, so she tugged open weighty-looking books. I tapped a globe, wondering if it might have a secret compartment in its hollow. We looked behind paintings in case there was a hiding spot in the walls. Each time we were disappointed. The Bishop’s Chapel next door had nothing unusual on its altar or in its tabernacle. We didn’t try the kitchen or cellars on the floor below, since I didn’t think a prelate would put a precious relic in a pantry. We also avoided the ground-floor antechamber out of concern it might hold guards or secretaries.

  “Maybe he moved it to another church for safekeeping,” Astiza whispered worriedly.

  “It has too much status. No churchman would willingly give it up.”

  “I’m tired, Papa.”

  “Here, I found more candy.”

  “Ethan, the only place left is his bedchamber.”

  “Our damnation if it is. What if Belloy wakes up?”

  “Please be careful with your language around our boy.”

  “Dammit, you’re right. I mean, sorry.”

  “Can we go home, Mama?”

  “Have another piece of candy.” It wasn’t good parenting, but most spies don’t have to bring the entire family along. He was black as a briquette and rapidly flagging.


  “All right, the bedchamber if we must, but quiet as a confessional,” I said. “If the cardinal suspects what we’ve done, the whole scheme comes to naught.”

  One stroke of luck was that the aged like to sleep warm. The prelate had drawn the heavy silk curtains on his sumptuous bed to make a cozy tent, and his snores were faint, which meant our burglary was also muffled. “Ethan, Harry and I are lighter and quieter,” Astiza whispered. “You walk like a moose. Stand watch by the door.”

  “A stag, perhaps. Or a stallion.”

  “We’ll be only a minute.” My wife and son disappeared into the gloom of the bedroom. I’d given her the vial of fox fire to provide meager light, but shadows swallowed them.

  I waited nervously, imagining a thousand disasters. And of course, one soon occurred. The palace was big enough to boast a corridor, and suddenly a shadow rose at its far end, where a stairway led to the ground floor.

  Someone was ascending the steps.

  “Astiza!” I hissed. “Hide!” But I dared not say it loud enough for her to hear. I stood in shadow by the bedroom door, trying to communicate with my family by will alone. That didn’t work. She’d passed into a dressing room.

  A lamp rose from the lip of the stairs like a rising sun, and with it a figure. A priest, thank goodness, not a soldier or gendarme.

  He bore a pitcher of water or wine and made straight for the cardinal’s room. Wash water, perhaps, for the morning? Need he bring it now? Then I remembered holy men rise at ungodly hours, as if the Almighty were on a tight schedule.

  A hand touched my arm, and I jumped. It was my wife.

  “All I found were miter hats and sacramental robes,” she whispered. “And I’ve lost Harry.”

  “Lost him?” I was getting panicked. “It’s just a bedchamber.”

  “He didn’t come back to you, did he?”

  “He’s hiding, I hope, as you were supposed to. A priest is coming.”

  “Now?”

  “Slide under the bed. I’ll take care of the servant.” I closed the door nearly shut and skipped to the library on the other side. When the priest came abreast of the bishop’s bedroom, I spilled some books to make a thud.

  “Excellency?” The priest stepped into the library, dark except for the gray rectangle that marked its window.

  I put out my leg.

  He tripped, grunting, and fell to the carpet, me catching the pitcher just before it shattered. Then I let it drop on his head, not enough to break but enough to stun, and taking care it didn’t tip and spill its liquid. I’m fastidious in my own way. Before he could react I dragged him square with the rug and started rolling him up. In moments he was encased in a wool sandwich, his dazed cries muffled by the carpeting. I yanked down more drapery holders, letting the curtains make it even darker, and tied the rug at either end, taking care to leave just enough of a gap so he could breathe. Smothering a priest would be sure to doom our quest with divine wrath. What a bollocks our adventure had become!

  I knelt and put my mouth to the hole at the end of the roll of carpet. “My apologies, Father, we’ll be on our way soon.” My captive shouted something, but I couldn’t make out what, since it came out as a muffled whisper. I glanced toward the bedchamber. When the priest didn’t return, a guard would come looking. It was past time to flee.

  I went back to the cardinal’s door and swung it open to look for my wife, but she was already there, holding Harry.

  “He was under the bed,” she explained.

  “Papa, I found a nest,” he said proudly.

  Astiza held out a wreath of ancient brambles, as unprepossessing a crown as can be imagined. Had this “nest” of reeds really topped Jesus? Medieval fragments of the crucifixion were as plentiful as homes in which George Washington reputedly slept, so except for the periodic mummified feet or heart of a saint, all but the most devout were skeptical that anything was real. Yet I felt a chill and an odd feeling of the sacred, as if the wisps of dry vines had supernatural power. Stealing the Crown of Thorns was our maddest act yet.

  If the pope lifted this Crown of Thorns in surprise as the hat for the new French emperor, the entire ceremony—and Bonaparte’s campaign to win respectability—would come apart. Claiming the crown of Jesus! The subterfuge wouldn’t kill Napoleon’s body, but it would destroy his pretensions to being a republican and make him a laughingstock among the nobles of Europe.

  “I slipped our substitute in its place,” Astiza said. “It’s kept in a lacquered and inlayed box. Hopefully, he won’t look and, if he does, won’t notice the switch.”

  We had chopped some brambles out of the graveyard and tied them into a circle.

  Behind the bed curtains the snoring stopped with a snort, there was a shift, and we feared our unwitting host was waking up.

  “Then let’s descend by the rope you doubled, take it with us, and melt into the dark. We’ll steal some plate and porcelain so our priest there will think we’re ordinary thieves.”

  “But we didn’t find all the candy!” Harry protested, instinctively copying our anxious whispers.

  “Yes we did.” I gave him another piece. “I’ve got it in my pocket. We’ll share it all when we get home.”

  The cathedral bells should have rung by the time the sky lightened and we made for the rue du Bac, but the priests of Notre Dame were no doubt looking for fresh rope.

  CHAPTER 17

  Ethan, can you help me with my petticoat?”

  Catherine was calling from her bedroom.

  It was a few days after our adventure in the Archbishop’s Palace, and the Crown of Thorns was stored in a hatbox under my own bed. No theft had been reported, and it was unlikely that Cardinal Belloy had noticed our substitution. He was busy working with Pope Pius on the coming coronation. What he thought of finding one of his priests tied up in a carpet, his dog trussed in a cabinet, and a theft of plate and porcelain, was anybody’s guess. Hopefully, he blamed the intrusion on thieves of admirable athleticism. I did notice more sentries posted when I strolled on the opposite side of the Seine the next day, no doubt instructed not to respond to the calls of passing women.

  Now the comtesse Marceau wanted my aid in dressing while Astiza and Harry were out shopping. She hadn’t played this game in some time.

  “I’m clumsy with buttons and ribbons,” I replied.

  “Please, I’m having the most difficult trial. It’s such a sacrifice spying without servants.”

  I entered her small bedchamber warily, remembering her seduction in the bath. Catherine became intimate when she was either bored or wanted something. Still, I responded. Should I be dressing a beautiful young woman who was not my wife? No. Was I flattered by this flirtation? Yes. Should I have minded my own business? Of course.

  Catherine was sitting on her bed, dressed in a plain white chemise hitched high on her thighs so she could pull up white silk stockings. This gave me a good look at her lovely legs and the pink garters she was fastening there, which was undoubtedly her intention.

  “I thought you wanted help with your petticoat.”

  “Which is beside me.” She pointed with her chin at the second layer of her ensemble draped on her rumpled covers, her bed still unmade. “I’m not going to let you tie my garters, Ethan. You’re a very bold fellow even to suggest it.”

  “I didn’t suggest it, and it’s inappropriate watching you do so.”

  She laughed. “This from a man who has seen me in my bath!”

  “I didn’t ask for that, either.”

  “That’s not how I remember it. Ethan, be adult. We know we’re living on top of each other like a little family, so it’s hardly surprising you’ve seen me dishabille. It’s not my fault you find the female form so troubling.”

  “Troubling is not the word I would use.”

  “I don’t pretend to understand men at all.” She twisted slightly,
giving me a peek of more of her inner thigh, and then stood abruptly, her chemise slipping down over her stockings to make herself the very picture of modesty, except that her nipples poked plain through the fabric, firm as nail heads. Most of the rest of her could be guessed at, too. Her breasts were high, small, and in no need yet of a short stay for support. My mind was not in the least tempted, but I’ll confess my body had a mind of its own. I believe she understood men all too well.

  She stuck out her arms. “The petticoat, please. I must become decent.”

  I hesitated, but damnation if I wasn’t already in her chamber. I lifted the sleeves onto her shoulders, turned her around to peek at the lovely nape of her neck beneath her piled hair, and studied the fastenings the way a sailor might examine the rigging of a new ship. A Parisian woman in late autumn comes in three wrappings. There’s a simple chemise next to the skin that is frequently washed, a petticoat hanging to the ankles with lace fringe that will be visible when a lady lifts her dress to avoid puddles, and the outer gown of thicker fabric, its waist just below the bust. The colors this season were rose and lilac, and the material of the layers can range from gauzy to opaque. Catherine was donning a day dress, which was less sumptuous and more modest than evening wear. If you’re wondering how I know all this, I am first instructed by marriage, and, second, experienced in reefing or unfurling past damsels. I also had consumed several of the romance novels when the women weren’t around to tease me, not liking them of course, but still being aroused by one passage and shedding a tear at the next. No wonder they sold so well.

  “There’s nothing that makes less sense than women’s clothing,” I said. “It’s buttoned, buckled, and lashed where a poor girl can’t reach it. The result drags in the dirt and yet it’s so trimmed on top that it leaves her freezing.”

  “Sense has nothing to do with it. Clothing is to decorate, elevate, and inspire. Impracticality is a small price to pay.”

  “Maybe women will wear trousers some day.”

  “What a silly thing to say!” She glanced back over the marble of her shoulder, eyes mischievous, lips curled saucily. My point is that the girl knew exactly what she was doing, and I did, too.