The Barbed Crown

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 chance 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 river. 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.

Eureka! There was French strategy there, a naval plan I’d not heard before. Perhaps my luck was not entirely abominable. I’d stolen a ticket back to my spymasters in Britain.

“Don’t think I won’t have my revenge, Gage!” Pasques shouted from where he was trussed in the bow, on the other side of the steam engine in the boat’s center. “They’ll be sharpening the guillotine!”

“I saved your life,” I called over the racket of the machine. “You can thank me by shutting up.”

“Saved it after kicking my privates, damaging my legs, and toppling me into the freezing river! The blade is too swift for you!”

Sighing, I lashed the tiller again, grabbed my rifle, stepped over the churning gearing, and came up to him. Villains can be slow in realizing when advantage has turned. “If you’re so insistent at threatening me, perhaps I should drop you back in the Seine,” I said quietly. “Or simply shoot you for your foul temper and terrible manners.”

“You offended God, tried to sabotage the coronation, pummeled me, disrobed the grand chamberlain, and clouted Catherine Marceau.”

“It was you who assaulted me in Notre Dame. Have you no respect for a church, Inspector? And where have you put my wife and child? A simple expatriate family tries to enjoy French ceremony, and suddenly you’re kidnapping, grabbing, and shooting. Guillotine, indeed.”

“It was you who shot at me!”

“So you wouldn’t plunge through my steamboat. No one is more peace loving than me, Ethan Gage.”

He scowled, face swollen, throat red, clothes dripping. “Why do you even talk? Nothing useful comes out of that hole in your face.”

“If we’d remained friends you’d be dry and happy right now.” I shook my head. “Your judgment, Pasques, needs work.”

He writhed in his bonds. “They’ll send cavalry, Gage. The Seine winds like a serpent, and this smoking monster is slow as a nag. Your capture is inevitable.”

He had a point. Far from traveling in a straight line toward the sea, we were making long, looping twists through French farmland, issuing a plume of smoke to pinpoint our position. Despite my earlier optimism, I revised my opinion again and decided Fulton’s steamboat was a bad idea, at least for escaping spies. “True. So listen, Pasques: I’ve nothing to lose by murdering you. I’ll let you live only if you tell me what’s happened to my family.”

“How do I know? That bitch of yours struck me with a bag that had something hard inside and ran. Your little tramp rolled marbles on the church floor, and two grenadiers and a priest went sprawling. Talleyrand told us not to pursue.”

I sighed and aimed my rifle at his face. “Say that again.”

He looked sullen. “What?”

“Call my wife and child names, so I can squeeze my trigger without regret.”

From bitter experience I know gun barrels look enormous when pointed, and Pasques looked chastened. “I don’t always choose words carefully when I’m angry.”

“What was that? What did you call her?”

He was truculent but wary, since I looked like a madman. “We both know your wife is beautiful and wise. My apologies, monsieur.”

I shifted my aim away. “You actually have manners when you need them, Policeman. And Harry rolled his marbles? He does take after his father, doesn’t he?”

The Frenchman scowled. “Pity if he does.”

“Why would Talleyrand tell you not to pursue my wife?”

“Because she’s the one of real value.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Surely you don’t think all this fuss is about you, Ethan Gage.”

Again I felt off-balance. “But I do. I’ve consulted with Napoleon and Talleyrand. I’ve given advice to your army. I’ve written reports to England. I’m the celebrity all this has revolved around.”

“Your stupidity and vanity are impenetrable!”

“What the devil are you talking about?”

He shook his head, amused that even when tied like a hog he was in a position to lecture me. “You know that the comtesse was never a comtesse?”

“I guessed that, yes.” I paused before admitting it. “Today.”

“It was evil to strangle the real comtesse in her cell, but at least the revolutionaries recognized an opportunity to place a young agent in England. Your ‘governess’ was a rising intellectual, a firebrand of reform, and she volunteered to infiltrate the corruption that is called Britain to further our great cause. There she waited for more than a decade until proper use. And now, with the invasion of England ready, it was time to bring her home and put her spying talents to new uses. Meaning, Astiza.”

“Astiza? But my wife’s presence on the Channel coast was a complete accident.” Why did I always feel the fool?

“Word of her rescue came from the French islands in the Caribbean. Her research in Martinique was reported to the government. Here was a woman exploring the very subjects our leaders were interested in. We wanted her in France to harness her talents, but how to lure her after the tropical nightmare you conjured? Only one bait came to mind: you, hard as that was for us to believe.”

I stared at him. “I’m mere bait to attract my wife?”

“And to keep Catherine informed of any secrets you held, since you will tell attractive women anything. You’d draw Astiza to France with you, and through you we’d manipulate her. It was all planned from the beginning, including allowing you to invade the cardinal’s palace. Palatine we recruited, and when your wife didn’t seek him at a florist we planned, we moved him to a chemist shop with a new sign decorated with a rose. It’s been amusing to wind you up like mechanical toys and set you marching.”

I didn’t believe him, except I did. Even the gunfight in the ravine had been staged, I suspected. What was the loss of a few sentries to a man like Napoleon? The emperor had probably been briefed on the plan from the beginning, and his conversation with us at Boulogne was a nice piece of acting. Maybe the gendarmerie at the ravine hadn’t even been killed. Maybe they were playing dead.

I slumped. The interview with Réal, the consultation with General Duhèsme, the balloon experiments with Thilorier, had it all been to keep my wife in place and researching? Why had they thwarted her in the first place? To make her later permission seem real, and to put her on their side.

Now she’d escaped. Or had she? The grand chamberlain wanted her traveling east to search for the Brazen Head of Albertus Magnus. And she’d ultimately be more pliable, he’d assume, without her doughty American husband at her side. If they could capture me, I’d be hostage to ensure further cooperation. Astiza was quite capable of playing the wildcat all by herself, the French would discover, but in the meantime Catherine’s betrayal had once more broken up my family.

What a bollocks. It turns out I’m a terrible spy, trusting and honest to a fault. Living up to the maxims of Franklin makes me a better man, but a terrible espionage agent.

“Everyone plays me the fool, don’t they, Pasques?”

He nodded.

“Except you are tied up, and I am not.”

He scowled.

Time to ponder. I could fight through all of eastern France in hoping of catching up to Astiza and Harry. But the British were allies of the Austrian Empire, where Christian Rosenkreutz and Ruldolf II had done alchemical experiments. Why not get English help? I’d make a quick sea journey from London to Venice, Vienna’s backdoor, and dash from the Adriatic to Bohemia and Prague. There I could rendezvous with Astiza when she came by land from the other direction.

Maybe my old acquaintance Admiral Horatio Nelson would give me a ride. I contemplated Pasques. It was time to play this policeman as I’d been played.

“Yes, you French have been very clever. Yet before you struck Grand Chamberlain Talleyrand with your own colossal fist, he wasn’t approaching to seize me, was he? Now you must wonder: What was he trying to ask me? What did we talk about in the tower of Notre Dame? And what, exactly, does everyone want my wife to look for?”

“Monsieur Talleyrand does not confide in me.”

“He wants something he offered to pay me a great deal for.”

“What?”

“A secret that only I can decipher.”

“You’re lying.”

“He thinks Astiza and I might lead him to a treasure. So why not get it for myself now, and get my wife back in the process?”

“Because you’re a desperate fugitive headed in exactly the wrong direction.”

“Am I? My idea is to sail around to the backdoor of the Austrian Empire via the Mediterranean and Adriatic. So yes, maybe your cavalry will catch me, and you can watch the blade drop. Or maybe you will watch as the grand chamberlain inexplicably pardons me after my arrest, while dismissing you for striking him.”

“That was an accident.”

“You can stake your life and career on explaining that to one of the most ruthless men in Europe. Or—and this is where you have to use your imagination, Pasques—perhaps you and I can become partners and pull the puppet strings instead of dancing to them. We can become rich together.”

“Rich?”

“Think about it, Policeman. I’ve made you look like an incompetent by escaping the cathedral, toppling you from a bridge, and trussing you like a chicken. Your career is ruined. But I’m on the trail of something that Napoleon and Talleyrand are rivals for. So, I can kill you now; or drop you overboard; or leave you to be arrested, dismissed, and imprisoned . . . or you can help me get to England.”

“You’re insane!”

“Help get me to England and I’ll cut you in on the deal. If Talleyrand offers me ten thousand francs of his own free will, what will he pay when we’ve found the prize and are holding out for real ransom?”

“Ten thousand?”

“Your career is finished; instead of capturing me, you’ve allowed me to capture you. Réal will laugh before he sacks you and Talleyrand will sneer before he has you assassinated as an embarrassment.”

The giant glowered but knew I had a point.

“On the other hand, get me to England by telling me where police and patrols won’t be, and we’ll be rich as pirates, with no more answering to Réal, Talleyrand, or Napoleon. Get me to England, and you become not an agent of great men but a great man yourself. Help me find my wife, and you can enjoy the riches of a sultan.”

Anger had softened to doubt, and doubt had given way to curiosity. We were a long way from trust, but I’d intrigued him. “You have to tell me what you’re after.”

I winked. “The means to control the world.”

“How?”

“You’ll learn only by throwing in with me.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“Trust me? You’re the one who’s been arresting and pursuing and threatening.”

“There’s no way we can steam all the way to the Channel.”

“So go back to Réal and explain how I made a fool of you.”

He stared out over the dark water. “How many francs again?”

“Don’t think small, Pasques. How much of the world?”

“But how do you plan to get to England? They’ll block this boat at Honfleur.”

“I have a confederate. But first, do you want to partner with me? I can’t say it’s not dangerous, but I can say I offer riches instead of demotion and arrest.”

He sighed. “You’re a fool, American. But you have odd luck.”

“Yes.”

“The British will not put me in prison?”

“Not if you’re my ally. They think me clever.”

“You’ll treat me fairly?”

“I’ll proclaim you a hero.”

He shook his head, wriggling in his bonds. “Very well. I’ll betray my country to join a pirate American on an insane mission that will probably get us killed.”

“A wise choice. Otherwise, I’d just shoot and drown you.”

He looked at me slyly. “And your secret?”

“I’ll confide when we’re on our way to Bohemia. First we must reach England. We’ll put ashore near Argenteuil, aim the steamer downstream, tie the tiller, and let her go. Then we need to use a rose to find a redheaded Rose. And more roses, where we need to go.”