The Barbed Crown

by William Dietrich

  Another gasp rotated round the cathedral. I had lost the ability to breathe. All my mad risk, with wife and son, had served only to elevate the Corsican devil higher than ever! All that I had assumed was a lie.

  Pius hurriedly slid the box with the Crown of Thorns under his chair, cast an angry, puzzled glance at Cardinal Belloy, and sat. He looked mortified. Belloy looked bewildered.

  Choir and orchestra burst into song.

  And I, Ethan Gage, who’d conspired with my family to humiliate this new Caesar, had instead been tricked into elevating his coronation into an assertion of secular state power.

  Astiza and Harry had disappeared.

  The gendarmes were closing from both sides, spectators objecting as the policemen temporarily blocked their view.

  Disaster!

  Napoleon was mounting the steep steps up to his new throne. He jerked to a halt at the beginning, the weight of his robes pulling him backward. Leaning into it, he trudged up the stairs to his imperial perch, dragging his mantle like a tarp.

  Josephine’s experience was even worse. Just as she reached the stairs the heavy train carried by Napoleon’s sisters was abruptly dropped. I couldn’t tell if the princesses did so out of jealousy or rehearsal, but the fabric weighed half as much as Josephine herself, and it almost toppled her. Napoleon gestured for her to keep going. She bent, surged, and staggered to the top, the clumsiness partly masked by the acreage of her mantle. A sail that big makes anything seem to ripple and flow.

  A shaken Pius mounted the stairs after them, completely outmaneuvered, but, following rehearsal, he still kissed the emperor on the cheek. “Vivat Imperator in aeternum,” he proclaimed. A parade of beautiful maidens appeared to carry the Bible and sacramental objects from the altar up to the throne, everyone bowing, holding, thrusting, kissing, and twenty thousand viewers coming to their feet. The presidents of the Senate, Tribunate, and Corps Legislatif came forward to administer the oath. Bonaparte put his hand on the Book of Gospels and recited: “To govern only in accordance with the interests, the happiness, and the glory of the French people.”

  “Excusez-moi,” the surrounding gendarmes said as they struggled to reach me. “Ethan Gage, remain where you are!”

  Senators, princes, and soldiers roared. Music swelled, the Gothic arches making it sound as if it came from heaven. Outside, a hundred cannons bellowed, and the concussion of the report punched through the air of Notre Dame, the roosting pigeons erupting as if their wings were joining the applause.

  I was trapped from the press of people around me. Nitot clasped my arm, excited as a child. “Did you see, did you see? He crowned himself!”

  I knocked his hand aside. Where was my family? Catherine had played me from the very beginning. She was an imposter, taking the place of a lovely young aristocrat who had probably been strangled in her cell and truly buried. She had escaped to England with a new biography to pose as a comtesse and work as a French spy. Was the mysterious Palatine part of the plot, too? Was everyone false? I was a puppet with a block of wood for a head.

  All we could do is run for the borders.

  With exit through the crowd impossible, I crouched and rolled under the curtain at the base of our bench and into the timber framework that held up the viewing stands.

  “Monsieur Gage, not that way!” the idiot Nitot cried.

  “Halt!” policemen shouted.

  It was dark, the music and cheers reverberating as if I were in a drum. People were stamping in celebration. I dropped down through the framing, hit the cathedral floor backstage, and sprinted down the side aisles to the rear of the church, looking for my family.

  We must escape before our arrest for the theft of the Crown of Thorns.

  We must salvage something, such as the Brazen Head.

  Unless that was a lie, too.

  CHAPTER 20

  I kept to the edges of the cathedral, seeking shadows as I frantically looked for my wife and child. Had they already fled to our agreed rendezvous? Dignitaries were filing into the choir behind the temporary arched throne as the ceremony drew to a close. Pages and altar boys were scurrying on errands, soldiers were being organized to line the departure, and bishops and priests assembled in clusters under stained-glass windows. I wanted to shout Astiza’s name, but remaining furtive was my only chance to get out of this trap.

  How deep did the betrayals go? Had Catherine tipped the French as early as our Channel crossing? But why had she bothered with a wastrel like me? Had the gnomish Palatine wanted to sabotage the coronation, or been in on a clever scheme to make it even more spectacular? Did this Brazen Head really exist, or was it an invented goose chase? If Catherine were a traitor, why not murder me at the beginning?

  Were we still being maneuvered? Marceau, whoever she really was, had neatly separated me from my family, betrayed our plot with the crown to Napoleon, allowed him to use it to his own advantage, and allowed Pasques to drag off my wife and son.

  I really should study insects, or take up falconry.

  I couldn’t depart by the main entry because I’d surely be stopped. So a quick circuit of the rear to look for my family, and then a hunt for a side door. I turned . . .

  And Pasques blocked me like an obstinate bull. He was dressed in his habitual black and was homelier than usual from swelling on one side of his face. His eye was discolored and cheek bleeding.

  “Your wife is a treacherous harridan, American.” So at least I had the satisfaction that Astiza had slugged him and perhaps gotten away. In retaliation, he cocked his arm, his fist as big as a cannonball and signaling like a semaphore.

  “Ethan, a word!” came a shout from behind. “I want to know how you did it!” It was Talleyrand, coming from the other direction. “Even if futile, it was clever!” So the foreign minister had known as well that my attempt to sabotage the coronation would become a fiasco, and yet still he had wanted the Brazen Head. So it did exist!

  Time for payback.

  I prefer to reason with people, but sometimes it’s more effective to emphasize your own opinion. So I slammed my boot into Pasques’s instep, making him howl, and ducked when he swung.

  The wind of the blow grazed my scalp, and I heard a crack as it connected behind with Talleyrand’s chin. The grand chamberlain of France went flying, skidding on the stone floor. The policeman staggered, carried by the force of his own blow.

  I kicked the side of Pasques’s knee. He almost buckled. “Merde!”

  Now the man was angry as a provoked bear. He wrenched around to grapple with me, face tight with pain, and made a stumbling charge, arms out to envelop. I remembered what Talleyrand had entrusted me with and hauled out the hilt of the ancient sword with its stub of a blade. Pasques’s throat ran right onto it.

  The policeman’s eyes went wide with shock and fear. I couldn’t thrust deep enough to cut vital arteries, but iron stung and blood flooded. When he lurched back, startled, I yanked the weapon out and kicked him as hard as I could in his cockles. “I really don’t need a police escort.” He toppled like an oak.

  I whirled, bent, and yanked at the stunned grand chamberlain, snapping the chain holding his coronation robe and tumbling him out of it like a log. I was stealing a bundle of fabric that probably cost more than I’d earn my entire life.

  “We’ll still be friends, I hope,” I told the dazed diplomat without irony. I hate powerful enemies. Then I ran.

  The sentries by the doors were shouting, and everyone in the rear of the church had turned to witness our scuffle. I dashed for an alcove at the rear of the cathedral, my goal a rainbow-glazed window that dappled massive pillars with squares of light. Pasques was crawling in pained pursuit, his look murderous.

  “Ethan, wait!”

  Running to intercept me was Catherine Marceau. Her arms were wide and breasts high, as fetching as she was dangerous. “You don’t understand! This is our cha
nce to work together! All must be with Bonaparte!”

  I stopped, the cloak in front of me like a shield. “You work for men who strangled the comtesse you pretend to be? Betray my family? Make me a fool?”

  “I work for men who will bring reform to Europe. I work so revolution need never happen again. We’re idealists, you and me.” Her eyes pleaded, their seduction calculated.

  “Where’s my wife?” Soldiers were running toward us.

  “I’ll help you hunt her down.”

  “Then escape with me, instead of my coming with you.”

  Her eyes looked past my shoulder, and I could hear thudding boots and the clattering belts of the sentries. She sadly shook her head and lifted the pistol I’d given her when we entered Notre Dame, pointing it at my belly. “You’ll see reason from Temple Prison.”

  “You won’t shoot me. You’re in love with me.” Even I knew this was ridiculous; she’d never love anyone but herself. But I was curious to see if she’d hesitate.

  She pulled the trigger.

  It snapped uselessly, as I knew it would.

  I’m an idiot about women, but I had enough experience to never entirely trust the charms of the Comtesse Marceau, and certainly not with a loaded pistol in a crowded church. I’d substituted its powder with pepper.

  Catherine sneezed.

  Talleyrand’s robe became a club to clout my would-be assassin out of my way, my taking satisfaction from the way she shrieked as she tumbled across an altar and fell hard on the space behind. Not gentlemanly, but then she was no lady. I leaped on top of the marble.

  Muskets went off, bullets pinging off stone. One punched through a shepherd made of stained glass.

  “You don’t know what you truly believe!” she cried from beneath me.

  “I believe in family.” I held the cloak in front of me, lowered my head, and dove. Fragments flew like hurled jewels.

  I tumbled down to the ground outside the cathedral and rolled to my feet. I was in the archbishop’s gardens. The crowds for the coronation were to my left, escape to the right. I ran into the alley I’d vaulted across with Harry.

  “Sacrilege! Blasphemer! Thief! Traitor!”

  I’ve been called worse.

  I threw on Talleyrand’s robe and trotted to the gate at the alley entrance. A sentry was facing the crowd in the plaza beyond. “Quickly, you fool,” I snapped in imitation of the arrogant. He swung the gate out of habit, and I was through before he had a chance to think. Beyond was a flicker at the edge of a milling mob hoping to catch a glimpse of the crowned emperor. A man had stuffed his hat in a greatcoat pocket in order to lift his daughter to his shoulders. I snatched it.

  I jammed on the hat, ducked my head, and felt Talleyrand’s secret papers rustle against my ribs. When I jumped into a waiting dignitary coach, where I found its driver asleep, I kicked him.

  “The Tuileries, you snorer! Take the Left Bank to avoid the crowds!”

  He fell out the other open door in fearful shock, glimpsing my robe more than me, and scrambled into the teamster’s seat. A great shout at the horses and with a jerk we were off, spectators yelling as they jumped out of the way. I looked out the window for Astiza and Harry but saw nothing. We crossed the Petit Pont and swung downriver. At Napoleon’s new iron pedestrian bridge that crossed to the Louvre I leaped without announcing my departure, leaving Talleyrand’s robe inside but keeping a bundle of his papers and the hilt of the broken sword. The documents might be useful for either bargaining or fire starter. The coach rolled blithely on, the coachman hunched as if braced for his whipping.

  I trotted back across the Seine and followed the Louvre downstream, out of sight of coronation audiences, coming to where the palace museum gives way to the carousel. It’s a varied neighborhood with a house facing the Tuileries Palace that is entirely occupied by prostitutes. There were none in the windows to spy me because they were all working the crowds.

  Floating faithfully on the river was Robert Fulton’s steamboat. It was a curious craft. Jutting from its center was a cylinder two feet in diameter that rose to about the height of a man and held a piston. A box and boiler beneath made steam, a stack spewed smoke, and the piston cranked the paddlewheels with pumping arms.

  Astiza and Harry weren’t at this planned rendezvous.

  With the gates of Paris certain to be closed against us, I’d planned another means of escape. A steamboat could chug down the open river to avoid the city walls and might even get us all the way to England.

  At the very least, I bet that Fulton’s contraption was so odd that it would be the last conveyance anyone thought to check.

  The day before, I’d hidden rifle, firewood, and food in preparation for escape after we sabotaged the coronation. I opened the little door of its stove, started a wood blaze, and fed it coal. It would take at least half an hour to work up steam, but hopefully my enemies wouldn’t connect me with one more plume of smoke among the thousands in Paris this wintry day. The coronation route on rue Saint-Honoré was on the other side of the Louvre.

  Where was Astiza? Pasques’s surly comment made me hopeful that she was alive and at large after striking him; the oaf was clearly having a bad day with the Ethan Gage family. Yet with authorities in pursuit I knew my bride had the kind of defiant courage to head the opposite direction to draw them off. Were we separated once more, Napoleon triumphant and I bereft? I’d also probably forsaken my ten thousand francs by stealing the coronation robe of the grand chamberlain. I needed a more lucrative career.

  Best to focus on the task at hand. The fire in the boiler provided welcome heat while I studied again the instructions Fulton had left. The tedium of waiting for a fire makes steamboating an exercise in patience, but then wind doesn’t always blow, either. I read which lever to thumb to check the pressure. Finally, the boiler whistled like a kettle.

  Astiza, Astiza! We needed to escape, I’d been on board nearly an hour, dusk approached, and my wife and son had yet to appear at this planned rendezvous. What to do? Pulling a pin and releasing a lever would mean abandoning my family.

  So I’d wait.

  But then there was a shout, a stampede of soldiers on the river quay, and approaching bayonets danced up and down. A huge figure in black was leading their charge.

  Pasques looked in no better mood than when I’d left him. Time to go after all. So long as I remained free there was a chance for rescue and reunification. I threw off the lines, hauled in the gangplank, swung the tiller, and let the current drift Fulton’s invention out onto the Seine. More shouts as people saw the novelty move.

  With pulled levers and cranked valves, the vertical rod at the top of Fulton’s huge piston began pumping up and down. Smoke puffed. A crank turned gears, and the wooden blades of the paddlewheels bit water.

  I looked shoreward. Pasques was running parallel to my progress, a mix of soldiers and gendarmes jogging after him. A couple of them stopped to shoot at me, one bullet hitting the hull and another kicking up a spout of water.

  “No! To the bridge!” Pasques redoubled his speed to cut me off.

  Ahead was the Pont Royal. If he and his men could line up before I passed, their volley would sweep the boat.

  I picked up my Jaeger rifle. I had one shot for twenty men.

  The bridge was only a quarter mile from where the boat had been docked, and even a battered Pasques managed to beat the slow steamboat to its span. I wouldn’t have guessed such a big man to be so sprightly, but anger can do wonders. His soldiers were still running on the bank in a long string behind when he stood up on the stone balustrade of the bridge to pose astride my path like the Colossus of Rhodes, a red-stained neckerchief tied around his wounded throat. He was shouting like a madman and gesturing angrily downward as if I could somehow stop. Seeing me headed straight toward him, the giant put his arms out and crouched, prepared to spring. The idiot was twenty feet above the ri
ver. If he leaped into my steamboat, he’d go straight through and sink us both.

  Maybe that was his plan.

  So when I was thirty seconds from the bridge, paddlewheels churning, I fired at his foot.

  The rifle was blessedly accurate, chipping the bridge at the toe of his boot. Instinctively, he jerked his leg up, giving me that disbelieving stare of affront that victims must give to murderers, and then lost balance and toppled into the river with a gigantic splash.

  Pasques came up with the grace of a pregnant hippopotamus. I steered for a gap between the bridge piers, quickly lashed the tiller in position, and leaped over the gearing to grab the buffalo before he was hit with the churning paddles. “Stop kicking!” Getting him aboard was like handling a whale, but I needed him for protection. I hauled him in as we passed under the bridge and trussed him with a mooring line, soldiers shouting in confusion above us. Then I slid under his squirming, cursing bulk.

  We chugged out on the downstream side. A score of muskets pointed from the bridge balustrade, but if the soldiers shot they’d kill their policeman. A captain shouted to hold their fire.

  “We’re both lucky they care for you,” I told Pasques.

  Slowly, we drew out of range. Fulton had written that his engine boasted the energy of eight horses, but I couldn’t see it, given the plodding of the paddles. On the other hand, the engine never slackened. Maybe there’s something to steamboats after all.

  The soldiers on the bridge ran left and right, presumably scattering for horses to chase us.

  I pushed out from under Pasques, reloaded the Jaeger, and manned the tiller. We slipped past the Champ de Mars, the city walls, and then as the day grew truly dim, Napoleon’s suburban palace at Saint-Cloud. People stared, but nobody shot, thank goodness, since word of my escape had yet to spread. I began leafing through the papers I’d lifted from Talleyrand’s coat.