The Barbed Crown

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.

I fastened her as well as I could. “Silliness is why you don’t like me, I suppose.”

“But I do like you.” She turned and grasped my hands. “I worry about you and your young family. You were gone the entire night recently, little Harry so exhausted that he fell asleep in your arms. Such labors that infant must have endured! He and I have become quite close, you know. I am like a second mother.”

“I wouldn’t call them labors, exactly. He got some candy.”

“But I could have helped.” She stepped close, breathing hard enough to have me following things up and down. “I want to help. We’re allies, no? Spies against the tyrant Bonaparte? A partnership for royalist restoration? And yet you’re slipping away on missions without my knowledge.”

“To protect your pretty neck.”

She cocked her head. “Do you think it is pretty?”

“Our missions are about the coronation, Catherine.”

“Then it’s about me! I’m the coronation! I mean, I’m laboring to help Josephine plan it. She cares more about the dress than the crown, and her sisters-in-law are even shallower, so all have benefitted from my advice. What jealousies I referee! Men have swords for their duels, and women, tongues.”

I hesitated. Did Catherine belong in our plan? And yet, how, exactly, were we to substitute the Crown of Thorns for the one Napoleon intended to be crowned under? Now a comtesse was running her hand up my sleeve and throwing off more warmth than a Franklin stove. How women manage that on demand I don’t know, but it’s the rare man who doesn’t want to cozy to the fire.

“I need to enlist you,” I allowed. “It’s terribly dangerous.”

“I landed in France to embrace danger.”

“We’ve an idea to spoil the entire coronation.”

Her eyes widened.

“To embarrass Napoleon, we’re considering slipping a substitute crown into whatever container the pope plans to use for the real one, meaning that someone has to risk her life by mixing things up.”

“Mon Dieu! So daring. A substitute crown?” She looked intrigued. I hesitated to let her share our scheme—Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead, Franklin had said—but she was lovely as the devil. Shouldn’t beauty imply character? She lifted on tiptoes, smelling of perfume, licking the air near my ear. “I love a secret.”

I struggled to remember that I am married, sensible, and reformed. She was a golden-haired angel, half dressed, ripe, and adoring as a doll. Men are so used to women swerving to avoid us that it’s captivating, and startling, to be paid attention by one. I swallowed. “I’ll discuss it with Astiza.”

“Ethan, we were partners before your wife appeared. These past months have only made us more intimate, and frankly I’ve trembled to resist temptation. You don’t realize your virile charm.”

Actually I do, and frequently overestimate it.

“Do you mind frankness?” she went on. “I confess to infatuation. Should we not consummate our alliance, just this once, while we’re alone?”

By Franklin’s kite, she had a charge like a battery. “We can do that with a handshake,” I said uncertainly.

She laughed and kissed me instead, lips warm, hands clutching, her body squirreling against mine. “How droll you are!” I groped to get her off me, but admit I took my time about it. She rubbed long enough to be positive I was truly interested, and gave a wicked grin. “So you like me as I like you.”

“Comtesse, this isn’t proper.”

She pouted, delectably. “You must call me Catherine. I’m only trying to be friends. Tell me our conspiracy, Ethan, and I’ll leave you alone.”

I didn’t entirely trust her. She had the morals of a minx and, despite her royalist pretensions, had signed on to help with the usurper’s coronation. But we also needed her. We were on the same side, I needed her help, and if I hesitated any more, we’d be thrashing on her bed. I took breath. “You must swear to hold the secret. We’ve risked our lives already to obtain the substitute, and if we’re caught with it, we’ll have police and priests arguing over who gets to draw and quarter us first.”

“It sounds so daring!”

I allowed a dramatic pause. Then, “We have the Crown of Thorns.”

She looked blank. “The what?”

“There aren’t any thorns left; those were shared out centuries ago. But it’s the crown forced on Jesus’s head by the Romans. We stole it from Cardinal Belloy. Harry helped.”

“Oh my.” She blanched.

“It’s been kept for centuries. Were the pope to lift that as Napoleon’s intended crown on coronation day, the blasphemy would be so profound as to make him a pariah in all Christendom. He’d be mocked and scorned by every head of state. People might start muttering for the return of the Bourbons.”

She blinked, shocked, and considered. Then she began to smile. “That’s a magnificent idea! How clever of you to think of it.”

“It was suggested by a scholar whom Astiza found. And it’s clever only if it works. Can you help insert the holy relic into the coronation and take everyone by surprise, while not endangering yourself or us?”

She stood straighter. “I pledge to try. You must trust me, Ethan.”

“I just have.”

“Let me think how to do so. Thanks to my wit and charm, they’ve taken my advice at the Tuileries. They’ll listen enough to make this possible, too.” She pondered. “However, I’m searched when entering and leaving the royal apartments. You must bring it to the coronation, and we’ll exchange it there.”

“Exchange?”

“Napoleon’s crown is a simple golden laurel wreath that will be kept in a ceremonial box until the critical moment so that it will evoke maximum awe when lifted and displayed. I’ll find a way to insert your crown of straw and take the gold one. Stealing it would be just payment for our troubles, don’t you think?”

“We’d be guillotined if we tried to sell it.”

“Not if we melt it.” Her face was lit with practical greed and vengeance, and I had to admire her ruthlessness. “You must bring me a loaded pistol, too. If things go awry, I may have to fight. A gun gives me a chance with a guard.”

“I’m sure guests will be searched.”

“Then put it in a bag with the crown. I’ll furnish an imperial seal.”

“The goal is to embarrass the emperor, not start a battle or make ourselves rich.”

She hugged me. “The goal is to let everyone get what they deserve. I’m so happy we’re partners.”

I limped from our conversation with relief and regret, happy I’d stayed vaguely faithful to my vows and worried that I’d let too much slip by enlisting Catherine. I had entrusted her not just with our mission but with the fate of my family. In this final test I needed her to be the steely royalist warrior, not a flighty and flirtatious socialite.

I sat down to ponder how much of this to tell my wife.



Astiza reluctantly agreed to the inclusion of the comtesse in our plot, since getting close to the crowns of the coronation seemed impossible without Catherine. “She can finally make herself useful,” my wife allowed, “though frankly I don’t rely on her to manage more than a table setting.”

“She’s risked her life to return to France for what she believes in,” I said with more hope than conviction.

“I just don’t want her to risk ours. I don’t trust her.”

“With the Crown of Thorns?”

“With you. But let’s finish what we’ve started and make a home far away.”

“Amen,” and I meant it. Astiza was justified in being suspicious. The French say one escapes temptation by succumbing to it.

And why did Napoleon, who didn’t seem to believe in anything but himself, want the pope’s consecration for a rule the people and Senate had already granted? Because to have Pius VII at the ceremony meant being anointed by God. It would mimic the crowning of Charlemagne. It would grant what Bonaparte craved most, legitimacy. It would reinforce his intention to pass his crown to his heir, should he father one. Thus far, Josephine had been barren since the birth of two children by her first husband. Yet Napoleon, who truly loved her, planned to crown her, too, a glory no French queen had been granted in two hundred years.

The Invalides, which had sufficed for the Legion of Honor, was too small for the coronation. Bonaparte wanted Notre Dame jammed with twenty thousand admirers. His spurs would be golden, his scepter made of unicorn horn, and his ushers would carry silver pikes. No French notable could resist such a show, and by Coronation Day, December 2, 1804, Paris was jammed with two million people—four times its normal population—and prices had soared. A simple meal cost a ridiculous three francs. I was thankful I’d been put on the French payroll, but my purse was still so light that I wondered if Catherine borrowed from it without telling me. I couldn’t ask her because she spent Coronation Eve with the ladies waiting on Josephine, assuring me that the substitution would be made once we were all in the cathedral.

“I’ll meet you at the pavilion entrance at nine that morning very precisely,” Catherine told me before she left our apartment for the last time.

“Which means what time, again?”

“Nine, very precisely.” She’d looked at me as if I were slow-witted.

So we hoped for the best. We’d arrive at Notre Dame as minor dignitaries, our rank with Napoleon gaining us modest tickets. With luck we’d watch chaos play out. Then we’d slip off in a plan I’d devised.

In considering the morrow, I took one other precaution, too.

Like all of Paris, Astiza, Harry, and I slept restlessly the night before the ceremony. The streets were noisy as carnival. Cannons thudded in celebratory salutes. Theaters had been made free and were jammed. Military bands and minstrels marched up and down the avenues, people dancing drunkenly in their wake. So many lanterns, candles, and bonfires were lit that the city glowed orange. Our coppersmith neighbors tramped home at four in the morning singing the “Marseillaise.”

My wife and I discovered each other awake and made restless, rather desperate love in the middle of the night, grateful that our royalist lodger was absent. The tension gave our congress sweet urgency, but afterward we snuggled, Astiza shivering slightly from anticipation. I’ve felt such tension only before battle, a crucial card game, shooting matches, or boyhood athletic contests.

We groggily rose before dawn, our apartment cold and our souls restless. I opened the kitchen window and held my palm outside. Snowflakes stuck.

“Be sure to dress warmly. Whether things go badly or well, we’ll likely flee Paris.”

“The streets will be choked,” Astiza said.

“All the easier to melt into the crowds, and why my proposed escape makes sense. I’ve hidden rifle, powder, food, and clothing, experienced adventurer that I am. I’m trying to think ahead for once.”

“What about Catherine?”

“What about her?”

“Will she also flee with us?”

I guiltily remembered our recent encounter. “If she’s willing. I don’t want her to lose her nerve by plotting escape, but if she succeeds, we owe her what help we can. It also means she won’t be captured and betray us under torture.”

“I’d prefer she seek shelter with royalists here in Paris. She’s been a trial.”

“Agreed. But if we do leave France together, she’ll go her own way in London.” I didn’t know if this was true, but it was my intention.

Astiza nodded curtly, the good soldier. “Then we should take a cloak for her, just in case. Boots as well.”

“We can leave a bundle stashed somewhere. Can you pick what a woman would take? I’ll finish dressing Harry.”

Ten minutes later my son was ready, but my wife was not. When Astiza emerged from Catherine’s chamber, she looked troubled.

“You have her things?”

“Most are missing.”

“She’d take some to the Tuileries if staying overnight. And maybe she has her own plan for fleeing. She’s smart in her own haughty way.”

“It would be helpful if she confided such smartness.”

“We didn’t tell her all our preparations, either.”

“We’re still not a company.” She bit her lip.

“Yet inextricable allies. Without Catherine, our scheme falls apart. And she can’t accomplish anything unless we deliver the Crown of Thorns.”

“I don’t trust her.”

“Women never trust women.”

She glanced at our grimy windows and the gray winter light, listening to thudding guns like heralding thunder. Napoleon, the new Prometheus. “A storm is coming.” She didn’t mean the weather, but something vast and far off.

It was the worst time to panic. “No, it’s getting light. We’re going to help France regain its sanity, Astiza, and be the heralds of a new dawn.”