The Barbed Crown

Chapter 6





Of course I’m dead,” Catherine told us later that day. “I have to be.”

“Do you mean you’re not really Catherine Marceau?”

“I mean my coffin was as empty then as my purse is now, but I depended on evil men thinking it full. Ethan, the only way to escape was to erase all record of myself. I used my beauty in ways I’m embarrassed to remember in order to persuade my captors to slip me across the Channel. It was planned so that I could return to Paris to conspire without family and friends seeking me out.”

“You faked your own death?”

“I faked my burial. It’s a shame the gravesite is gone. I heard strangers wept and left flowers.” Catherine turned to Astiza. “I assure you, madame, that my untimely death a dozen years ago protects your family today. I’d never insert myself into your home if old enemies could bring risk. The police won’t look for me because I don’t exist.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

She blushed, which was most uncharacteristic. “I admit to vanity. My titles were erased since I was believed dead, and so regaining them will be more complicated than I’ve admitted. I am truly a comtesse, but will have to prove it eventually.”

“Then you’re not really gossiping with royalist conspirators?” I asked.

“But I am, under any number of names. I’ve lost my outward identity but not my inner character and training. Please, life has been a struggle.”

I felt sorry for the girl, though I’m not sure my wife did. “I think it’s rather clever,” I said to encourage her. “Brave, too.”

“Don’t betray my secret. As long as I’m safely dead, I can move about the city before returning to shiver here.”

That was another complaint. Like all French apartments, ours was drafty, poorly heated, and ill designed, since builders refused to learn the superior carpentry of the Dutch and Germans. Our antechamber had to serve as our dining room, and it was so tight that the front door scraped our table. Our drawing room had a largely heatless fireplace that smoked—on chilly spring nights we drew chairs around like a campfire until our eyes watered—and our kitchen was little more than a cubby with a brick oven, a bowl for washing, and a tin bathtub shaped like a sabot shoe. We usually ate out, with a meal costing thirty sous.

On the other side of the antechamber were three bedrooms, each leading into the other since only palaces have that expensive waste of space called a hallway. The comtesse demanded the front sleeping chamber, Harry we put in the middle, and Astiza and I took the rear. There we reconsummated our marriage while trying to muffle the noise as much as possible, though I suspect Astiza didn’t mind if an audible cry or two escaped to annoy Catherine.

I prudently bought some sheaths at a barber since it would be reckless to impregnate my wife while spying. I blew into the intestines to make sure the condoms didn’t have holes. “Once we’re done with Bonaparte we’ll have a bigger family,” I said.

“When we’re done with him? Or he’s done with us? With peace we’ll add a daughter.”

“And little Harry?”

“He fits into tight places, like you said he did in Syracuse. So he remains a partner in adventure until we’re finished here.”

“It’s a curious occupation we have, Astiza.”

“True. We’re qualified for not much besides spying, treasure hunting, war, and sacred mysteries. Yet somehow we make a living. It makes you enviable to men who don’t know better. You’re a hero, Ethan.”

Some hero. It was my job to empty the chamber pot in the cesspool that led to the sewers. I also pitched our dirty wash water out a small rear window into the courtyard below, and then closed the glass against the smell. Water, at three sous per bucket, was delivered twice a day, but I had to carry it from our stoop up the stairs. We bought from a waterman who drew only from fountains, not the polluted river, so each bucket cost an extra sou.

With forests cut back for centuries, firewood cost thirty-eight francs a cart, and there were stories that cold snaps forced veterans of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign to burn the mummies they’d brought home as souvenirs. Astiza pronounced such sacrilege mad with magical risk, but I thought it eminently sensible since the market for powdered corpse tissue as an aphrodisiac had collapsed, given the disappointing results. The newest enhancement for lovemaking was asparagus. Men ate it manfully when fed by their wives, but it accomplished little but to change the color of pee. In any event, we nursed our fuel, donned nightcaps, and argued over candles, which cost four francs a pound.

“Our domestic situation is entirely too cramped,” Catherine would complain. “I’m embarrassed to be governess in such a frugal household.”

“Franklin said it’s easier to build two chimneys than keep one in fuel.”

“He also said wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.”

I was surprised. “You’re a student of the sage of Philadelphia?”

“No, but I bought his almanac so I could counter your tedious quotations with my own. He also said to lengthen life, lessen meals, but he looks quite well fed in every portrait I’ve seen. Your philosopher is inconsistent.”

“True, old Ben flirted and fed too much, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right. When I reform, I’m going to write my own book.”

“Eagerly awaited, I am sure.”

“It’s the sinner who knows what it means to be holy. That one I made up myself.”

“Birth makes character. That one is mine.”

So we lived as a den of spies. Harry was thrilled to have both parents again, and we began teaching him numbers and letters. He was fascinated by carriages, wary of dogs, and delighted by pigeons. On June 6 we celebrated his fourth birthday, buying a cake in the shape of a horse and giving him new shoes and a wooden sword. I also made a toy boat we sailed at Luxembourg Gardens. Out of boredom, Catherine instructed him on the ranks and proper greetings of the aristocracy. When our son wasn’t drilling imaginary troops he would sweep off his cap and bow gravely, pretending we were kings and queens.

Our in-house aristocrat also made lists of how she’d furnish her own salons, once the counterrevolution triumphed. She wheedled as much money from me as she could to update her wardrobe.

“Our stipend is melting like snow, Comtesse.”

“Contemporary dress means we can circulate without suspicion,” she argued. “Do you want us to look like bumpkins?”

“You mean clothes from one season ago?”

“Exactly.”

With espionage difficult, both women became addicted to the new romance novels that had exploded in popularity. The chief duty of the protagonists in these stories was to tragically die, preferably by killing themselves. Long lines of females waited at bookstalls to buy the latest title.

“If real love went the way of novelist imagination, the species would have vanished aeons ago,” I pointed out. “Suicide seems extreme, not to mention selfish and cowardly.”

“And if men understood that the heart weighs more than a purse or a sword, they’d have more success with women,” Catherine replied, leaning against a window to read by its light.

“Soldiers say that the danger of combat makes survival sweet,” Astiza added. “For women, the prospect of tragedy makes love more exquisite.”

“But it’s a jolly wedding that makes the story work, right? Just in case our money runs out and I need to write one myself.”

“Nobody wants to read about happy people,” Catherine said.

Their fascination made me so curious that I took to reading the romances myself when no one was looking. It was purely for research, you see, so that I could better understand

the fairer sex. I doubted any damsels had killed themselves over me.

While we idled in conspiracy, Paris meanwhile cast its usual spell, smelling like bread, tasting like chocolate, and moving like a dance. Trees leafed along the Seine. Fresh oysters dripped from baskets on the walls. Dice rattled and billiards clicked in shadowy gambling salons I avoided to preserve anonymity. There’s nothing like winning to make strangers wonder who you are.

The French capital, the British complained, had “the conceit of being Athenian,” but its pride was justified. Conversation was sharp and gay, history palpable, ideas in ferment, glamour revered. I slipped into a reception at the salon of the famed beauty Juliette Récaimer, the crowd so thick that musicians had to pin their scores to the backs of listeners because there wasn’t room to erect their music stands. Juliette had the face of an angel and the neck of a swan, and if she stood in a garden with Astiza and Catherine you’d have the Three Graces come to life. Her fame was heightened by her reputation as a virgin, an illegitimate child who during the Terror had dutifully married her own father—thirty years her senior—so she could inherit should he be executed. Scandal made her tragic.

The city never slept. The day began as the salons and taverns emptied, when the gates opened at one A.M. to allow carts to resupply the markets of Les Halles. Sometimes we’d hear the clatter and lowing of cattle and sheep being driven down the dark streets for slaughter. The bells for first Mass for the reinstated Catholic Church would ring at five (reminding the empire’s late-sleeping atheists why they’d been glad to be done with religion in the first place), and by six o’clock laborers and craftsmen, including our coppersmith neighbor, were clomping noisily downstairs to work. Flower markets blossomed on both banks of the Seine with the rise of the sun—Astiza bought a fresh bouquet for our apartment every three days, despite my scolding about the expense—and stalls and carts jostled for the best places to begin selling tobacco, brandy, ribbons, and crucifixes. You could get your portrait painted, a sonnet composed, or a uniform ordered, in minutes. Laundry would be unreeled across streets and courtyards like signal flags, and crepes would sizzle on irons. By nine the wineshops were open, and by ten the Palais de Justice on Île de la Cité dispensed decisions. Workboats swept up and down the Seine and, as the weather warmed, youths dove naked into the Seine. Mothers hid their daughters’ eyes while peering themselves.

“Invitations must be interpreted,” Catherine explained to us. “To be asked to a dinner at five o’clock means it is perilous to arrive before six.”

“Then why not say six?”

“That is just the kind of question an American male would ask, which is precisely why you require my instruction.” She turned to Astiza. “‘Five precisely’ allows you to appear at five thirty. Only ‘Five very precisely,’ which you are unlikely to hear from anyone except ministers and police, means five. Even then, a quarter past will not provoke comment, even from a prosecutor.”

“It is humiliating to arrive too early,” Astiza noted.

“This is just the kind of irrationality supposedly eliminated by the scientific precision of the revolution,” I said.

“It requires a minimum of sixteen dinner courses to impress,” Catherine went on, “and something more to be talked about. The new grand chamberlain searched days for the biggest and most spectacular salmon available, had it baked to perfection, flanked it by vegetables carved like rosettes, sprinkled the fringe with silver, and had it presented on a golden plate. Guests gasped; such a fish had not been served since the fall of the king. Then the servant carrying it tripped, and the glorious meal crashed onto the Oriental carpet, ruined for all time.”

“I suppose the poor man was whipped,” I said.

“Such a supposition shows how naive you truly are, Monsieur Gage. All was staged. Talleyrand waited several seconds of dread silence, timing it like an actor, and then said, ‘Bring the other one.’ And that is how you become talked about in Paris.”

By day the narrow streets were so jammed that we went almost everywhere on foot. At night it was so dark that a cabriolet at twenty sous was justifiable, even on our budget. I read with considerable interest about experimental gas lamps by Philippe Lebon, mirrored lamps by Sauer, and “parabolic reflectors” by Bordier the engineer, but never saw any on an actual street. In my experience the French are the cleverest, the English quicker to put ideas to use, and the Americans the likeliest to steal from both and sell it cheaper.

Progress threatened jobs. Streetlamps jeopardized the employment of lantern bearers, who waited outside theaters to escort patrons home. Road repair ended the livelihood of men who rented levers to pry wheels out of potholes and planks to bridge puddles. Entire industries were built on inefficiency, and Napoleon had to pound for reform as patiently as attacking a fort with siege artillery.

Another modern oddity was the abandoned steamboat built by my friend Robert Fulton and demonstrated the year before on the Seine. At sixty-six feet long and eight feet wide, the Vulcan had hips made of two enormous paddle wheels connected to iron machinery. It had no deck, and no cover for the wheels, so one had to walk a plank over its exposed skeleton of rods and gears to get from stern to bow. While the boat had managed a brisk walking speed when demonstrated, that meant it barely made headway when going upstream against a strong current. Gaudily painted, it floated forlornly next to the downstream corner of the Louvre after its dismissal by French authorities drove Fulton to the English side. I jumped aboard without challenge, curious about its engine since I remembered how hard it was to hand-crank the propeller of Fulton’s plunging boat, the Nautilus.

This craft was steered by a tiller and, despite some rust and pooled water, looked capable of running again. A canvas tarp concealed enough coal to burn for hours. There was also a set of instructions wrapped in oilskin against the damp. I carefully refastened the tarp and went home to read.

With our conspiracy in disarray, I had time to practice being a father. I took Harry to the Promenade de Longchamp at Easter, where we watched helmeted cavalry clatter in parade between wagons holding images of the pacifist Jesus. Gas balloons hung above the city, and fireworks exploded at dusk. At a toy booth I bought him a leather sack of marbles that he enjoyed rolling on the sloping floors of our apartment. Catherine grumbled after slipping on them twice.

Other days we’d wander through the entertainers on the Boulevard du Temple. We watched Indian sword swallowers, the famed tightrope walker Mademoiselle Saqui, jugglers, tumblers, dwarves, and a bearded girl who let Harry tug her whiskers. Munito the Wise Dog told fortunes by cards, pawing them one by one after payment of a franc.

Mine was a watery trip, and Harry’s a secret prize.

Carnival booths displayed five-legged sheep, two-headed calves, and races in which tiny chariots were drawn by fleas. Pug dogs fought across a pie baked in the shape of a fortress. We’d watch the rich parade in the Tuileries, the aged relax in the Luxembourg Gardens, and African animals pace morosely in the Jardin des Plantes. I wouldn’t take Harry to the notorious Palais Royale after dark, but he pleaded relentlessly for the cannon clock that was fired by sunbeams. At noon the sun focused through a glass, ignited its powder, and set off the gun.

“Boom!” he shouted as we walked back home. “Boom, boom, boom!”

I had him promise not to tell his mother.