The Barbed Crown

by William Dietrich

  I picked at some lice I’d acquired in our cell. “Certainly not. I just find myself working for everyone because I’m so popular.” I sat straight to feign dignity. “We can test me, can’t we?”

  “How? Hot coals?” He looked sourly at Pasques, who looked sourly back.

  “I’ve brought you a report I snatched from Talleyrand himself. It details plans to lure the British navy away from the Channel with a complex attack on Senegal, Surinam, and Saint Helena, involving dozens of ships crisscrossing the Atlantic. It’s impossibly ambitious, which means it came from Napoleon instead of his admirals. He thinks you can move sailing ships like chess pieces. The British Admiralty can judge whether it reflects real French movements, and thwart it by responding prudently.”

  “Talleyrand? How the devil did you get that?”

  “I work for him, too, or would have if Pasques here hadn’t floored him with a punch. I fled Paris on a new American invention called a steamboat, enlisted this heroic if hungry Frenchman here, and avoided pursuing patrols with the aid of a beautiful redheaded spy named Rose. I assume she’s yours?”

  Smith blinked, skeptical but always seduced by derring-do. He longed to win wars with cleverness. “This Frenchman is heroic?”

  “I struck the grand chamberlain only after I swung at you and missed,” my new companion spoke up, which I had coached him not to do.

  “Yes, we make quite a team,” I put in.

  Smith drummed his fingers, considering us. “Rose has helped us smuggle countless agents in and out of France, and I instructed her to contact you. An interesting woman with odd beliefs, she’s the follower of the rosy cross, if you’d heard of that bunch. Medieval mystics, mostly, but she thinks there’s something to it.”

  I filed this assessment away for my own future use. “It’s not my fault the courier system you instructed me to use in Paris has been compromised.” I looked stern. “Nor that I never received a word of instruction from England. Now my wife and son have fled to central Europe and I need a ship to catch up with them.”

  “A ship? You do have gall, Gage.”

  “Passage to Venice. From there I’ll ride north to Bohemia. A fast frigate will do,” I demanded with more confidence than I felt.

  “We’re going to win a huge fortune from Talleyrand and win the war single-handed,” Pasques put in, with the logic of a lunatic.

  Smith looked from one to the other of us. “No one is sailing anywhere until I determine what side everybody is on. We’ll put this purported plan carried by Talleyrand to the test, as you’ve said.”

  “Then I must be given leave to buy my own passage. My family is in peril, and time is critical. Let me play the spy in Prague.”

  “Buy passage how?”

  “With money. I believe that’s the conventional way.”

  “But Ethan, you’re a debtor.”

  “To the contrary, I’ve invested ambitiously and by now should have doubled my fortune,” I said without any conviction.

  “I’m afraid you’d better consult with your financial advisers. Since you were in our employ as a spy, I ordered an audit of your affairs and was alarmed at what we learned. It was the collapse of your fortune that made us think you’d thrown in with Bonaparte.”

  “But it can’t have collapsed. Can it?” My voice was strained.

  “Your financial advisers can explain it in some detail. You’re a pauper, Gage. Our cell at Walmer here is the only thing that has kept you out of debtor’s prison. The only thing you possess is the hilt of a medieval sword.” He squinted. “You’re a very odd man.”

  “I’m a collector of antiquities.”

  He looked at me with pity. “I’m going to provide the necessary passes for you to consult with your bankers in London while we study these naval plans, holding the Frenchman here as guarantee of your return. Get a realistic appraisal of your financial situation, and then we’ll see where you stand. If you’re telling the truth, maybe we can salvage a crumb of career.”

  A visit to London confirmed the worst. Hiram Tudwell received me in his counting house on Cornwall Street after a two-hour wait, timing it so he could plead office closing if our interview became too difficult. His bald head sprouted like a cabbage from a stiff cravat, his skin was the color of suet, and his suit was dark enough for a mortician.

  “I’m afraid your holdings have become inaccessible, Mr. Gage,” the senior partner of Tudwell, Rawlings, and Spence announced. He regarded me like an unwanted relative.

  “You mean my money is in a particularly remote and formidable vault?” I seize every opportunity to hear the bright side.

  “I mean that your account has not generated the returns expected. It was ambitiously invested as you instructed, but dogged by events. A great deal of it has been captured in the Indian Ocean and auctioned off by the perfidious French.”

  “Captured by the French? How could they capture ten thousand pounds from a London bank?” News of my calamity was being given in a high-ceilinged, mahogany-paneled room designed to enforce calm, but it wasn’t working. I’d been offered a cup of lukewarm tea and a stale biscuit, but that didn’t help, either.

  “If you’ll recall, you gave our firm permission to invest your holdings in aggressive vehicles to maximize potential profits while you disappeared on the Continent. I believe you said you were comfortable with calibrated risk.”

  “Not betting the whole table!”

  “In your lengthy absence and complete lack of correspondence we diversified into coal mines, steam engines, a horse-drawn rail-wagon line to Portsmouth, and tea futures. The latter was based on delivery of a cargo on an East Indiaman, following recent victories by General Arthur Wellesley on the Indian subcontinent. We sought investments that were innovative and inclined to quick profit, our aggressiveness being the very model of bold financial stewardship. You had the potential to double your money in months. Astonishing opportunities these days, astonishing.”

  “And?”

  “The war has caused disruption. The East Indiaman was captured, the steam engines have yet to find a market, the coal works went bankrupt, and the horses all died. It was an excellent strategy, had it worked.” He pushed over a balance sheet to show me where my money went.

  I struggled to understand it. “What’s this one thousand, one hundred twenty-seven pounds here, then?”

  “Insurance premiums. Policy not payable, alas, for acts of war. A French battleship has been prowling off Africa. Can’t insure against that.”

  “And this fifteen hundred pounds?”

  “Our management fee.”

  “Fifteen percent? That’s usury!”

  “Our fee was in the fine print of your contract.”

  I couldn’t be bothered to read such tedious documents. “What then is the five hundred thirty-two pounds for?”

  “Incidental management expenses. Postage, correspondence, resolving of claims, business meals, refreshments, stationary, and office incidentals.”

  “That’s not included in the fifteen hundred pounds?”

  “Mr. Gage, our standard fee cannot cover the unanticipated exigencies of a complex and variable portfolio like yours.”

  The Tripoli pirates were amateurs compared to this bunch. “And this two hundred seventy-one pounds?”

  “Your losses were so severe that nothing remained in your accessible account to cover your final billing. That’s how much you still owe us. You still have a balance of nearly two thousand pounds on credit, but there’s a lien against it from a family called Chiswick, which claims you contracted with them to educate your son and then stole the boy away without paying in full.”

  “My wife didn’t steal our own son!”

  “They are seeking damages. I must say, your domestic affairs strike me as extremely untidy. Is that an American habit? I hope you’ll settle with your litigants so we can get our mo
ney.”

  “My God. Are you monumentally incompetent, or simple thieves?”

  “Insults will not help your situation. The decline of your portfolio results from political, financial, and competitive circumstances beyond our control. I can understand your disappointment, but I can assure you that, had we succeeded, you would have been a very wealthy man.” His expression was as animated as a corpse.

  I instinctively reached for my tomahawk and regretted leaving it at home. “I risked my life and that of my family for that ten thousand pounds! This is the most outrageous financial burglary I’ve ever heard of!”

  He winced as if I’d let wind at a recital. “It’s clear you don’t understand the financial-services industry, Mr. Gage. I sympathize that things did not progress as you’d hoped, but I can assure you we tried our very best. Your success would have been ours, too. And should you employ Tudwell, Rawlings, and Spence in the future, we’ll strive to do even better.”

  “I’ll ruin you in the newspapers! I’ll bring suit! I’ll fetch my Jaeger rifle!”

  Tudwell folded his hands. “Military barbarism may work on the American frontier or a Barbary pirate ship, Mr. Gage, but it has no place in the banks and courts of England. Should you seek bad publicity or legal complaint, you can rest assured of counter-litigation for defamation, late payment, and failure to respond to management inquiries while abroad in France. I could see legal proceedings extending years into the future, at a cost of several thousand pounds to us both. You will wait in a debtor’s cell for final resolution. Nor does it help that you’re a foreign American, with ties to the French, filing suit in England.”

  I calculated the odds. “Money slips from me as if oiled.”

  “It’s often more difficult to retain a fortune than make it in the first place. Have another biscuit.” His serenity was remarkable, but then he wasn’t the one being robbed. Lesser thieves get carted to Fleet Prison, but the biggest bastards get a peerage. I’d trusted him with my life savings, and it had vanished like smoke.

  So why didn’t I throttle him? Because I feared, in my heart of hearts, that the Green Apple of the Sun had indeed been an emerald cursed by the ghost of Montezuma. Hadn’t Pasha Karamanli been cursed by me, Ethan Gage, while he wore it in his turban? Hadn’t Leon Martel died in pursuit of the stone? Hadn’t my own wife been carried away in a storm? Hadn’t it led to the kidnapping of my son? And hadn’t it set in motion a chain of events that now made me spy, turncoat, and a husband who’d once more lost his family?

  Why is fate cruel? Because we’re meant never to get the things we think we want so we’ll pursue the things we truly need, like love and responsibility. That’s what I told myself, anyway. I’d always be Sisyphus on quixotic missions, trying to roll boulders uphill that cascaded endlessly down. Eve didn’t sin by eating a tempting apple. She sinned because she moved the fruit out of its rightful place, as I’d moved the emerald. It’s not the bite, it’s the disruption of harmony.

  I could escape poverty only when I finished doing whatever it was that I was supposed to do. Which was entirely unclear, of course.

  Back on the London streets, I consulted solicitors about suing. They in turn talked with barristers. Was there not some legal stratagem around Fate and God? They charged money I didn’t have to tell me that while I should certainly litigate, such an effort would occupy a good part of my remaining life.

  “How much time again?”

  “Several years. Before appeals.”

  “And our chances?”

  “We are optimistic yet realistic, hope leavened by caution.”

  I forwarded their billing to Tudwell.

  So I was desperate once more. I was a likely outlaw in France, separated from my fugitive wife and child by hundreds of miles, and a suspect debtor in Britain.

  Fortunately, the admiralty deduced that the naval plans I’d stumbled on were confirmed by early French fleet movements, and countered accordingly. My captured information frustrated Napoleon’s desire to divert the English navy long enough to stage his invasion, so the stalemate of elephant and whale continued. I’d just saved England, not that anyone gave me credit.

  So Sidney Smith came to Walmer Castle to see Pasques and me once more. “Good news. We didn’t take the bait, Ethan, thanks to Talleyrand’s papers.”

  “A grateful nation might give me my fortune back.”

  “I’ve a better bargain for you and your fat French friend. You’re a man of science, a Franklin protégé, and an electrician. I want you to help us pay back the frogs who outsmarted you with secret weapons.”

  “Secret weapons?”

  “I believe you know the American inventor Robert Fulton? Like you, he’s on England’s side now. We’re going to have the pair of you earn passage to your family by assaulting Bonaparte’s Army of England and sinking his entire fleet. You’ll win back our confidence by paddling into the teeth of the enemy, pledged to victory or death. You won’t even miss your money when you make yourself a hero.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Walmer Castle was the spy headquarters for Britain’s secret struggle against Napoleon. If the French were inventing a modern national police under Napoleon, the British were inventing a modern espionage service under William Pitt, the sickly, alcoholic, and valiant prime minister. Walmer was one of his personal homes, through his family title as lord warden of the Cinque Ports. His castle looked strategically across a rocky beach at France, and so had become the wartime workplace of General Edward Smith, director of spies. This Smith was the uncle of Sir Sidney, who in turn happened to be a cousin of Pitt. On a rainy April 8, 1805, I was seated at a massive oak table in a low-ceilinged room facing not just that cozy trio but Spencer Smith, Sidney’s brother who’d gathered intelligence in Germany, and Colonel Charles Smith, another brother who led a garrison nearby.

  Catherine would call it breeding; Franklin, nepotism.

  Sidney Smith, as was his flamboyant custom, was wearing Turkish robes and a turban he’d been given while advising the Ottomans against the French. An ostrich plume floated above, a curved dagger jutted from his waist sash, and his cavalry boots had been replaced with pointed slippers. None but Pasques and I paid this bizarre getup the slightest attention.

  Joining the Smith cabal was Admiral Home Riggs Popham, another ambitious Englishman who’d organized coastal militia and a new signal system for the navy. Slim, lithe, and restless, he had the insouciant flair of an aristocrat, treating espionage as a grand game.

  Smuggler Tom Johnstone was there, too, matching in height, if not in bulk, my companion Pasques. All were turned to hear three inventors, however.

  One was Colonel William Congreve, who was adopting the rockets of the Maharajal armies in India as a possible new sea weapon in Europe. Like all inventors, he was happy as a hound to have a receptive audience.

  A second was my old friend Fulton. Unable to win French financial backing to complete his work, he’d come to Britain to sell his ideas to the other side.

  I was the third.

  Fulton had greeted me warmly. We’d gone adventuring amid the Barbary pirates and used his plunging boat to rescue Astiza and Harry. “Ethan, you disappeared from France two years ago. I feared you dead!”

  “I had to look for my son again, Robert. After a sojourn in the West Indies I was returning to France just as you were departing. We didn’t meet because I had to sneak about. Now here we are on the same side.”

  “All roads lead to Walmer Castle. Tell me, did you see my boat Vulcan in Paris? Sweet little craft with paint-box colors that chugs on steam. I think the idea holds great promise, but the French let me try her just once before concluding she wasn’t fast enough upstream. By thunder she’s faster than a sailboat when wind and current are adverse!”

  “I poked about.”

  “Is she still steamable?”

  “With a little work.” I kicked Pasques
so he didn’t reveal we’d sent Fulton’s toy thrashing into a Seine riverbank. Robert might forgive me for the loss of one of his boats, but I doubt he’d be happy with two.

  Congreve I didn’t know. Balding and muscular, he had the rugged build of a day laborer and the peddler fire of the missionary. Like Fulton, he was a tinkerer who wanted to revolutionize warfare.

  We stood when Pitt arrived.

  “Sit, sit.” At least there wasn’t just Napoleon’s one chair.

  The prime minister, a decade older than Napoleon, was nonetheless “the younger” because his father had held office before him. This son had first led the nation at the astonishing age of twenty-four, a maturity at which my idea of governance didn’t extend much beyond keeping my mistresses from learning of each other. Being precocious grinds on you, however, and now, at forty-five, “honest Billy” looked worn out. Two international coalitions and a royalist conspiracy against Bonaparte had all failed. Having quit in 1801 after feuding with King George over Ireland, Pitt had been called back to power shortly after I landed in France. Now he was facing England’s greatest challenge since the Spanish Armada.

  His nation was hysterical at the possibility of invasion; erecting semaphores; stockpiling wood for signal bonfires; building small coastal forts called Martello towers; and digging canals, trenches, and ramparts. More than thirty miles of fortifications had been started around London. Plans had been made to evacuate the government. Troops of old men drilled with pitchforks.

  Nursemaids had a new ogre to frighten children with. The latest rhyme:

  Baby, baby, naughty baby,

  Hush you squalling thing I say;

  Hush your squalling or it may be,

  Bonaparte will pass this way.

  Baby, baby, he’s a giant,

  Tall and black as Rouen steeple,