The Barbed Crown Page 6

  “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.

  CHAPTER 7

  In sum, I rather enjoyed being a conspirator, since there no longer was much of a conspiracy to attend to. Yet our idyll grew grim as the execution of the royalist plotters approached, and our claustrophobic lives complicated my relationship with Catherine, who became evermore familiar and imperious.

  “Ethan, I don’t understand your choice in marrying a slave,” she challenged once when we were alone together. “Your wife is intelligent, yes, but wholly unpresentable.”

  “That’s as silly as it is ungrateful. Napoleon and I captured Astiza to be a translator, and she helped get me inside the Great Pyramid. Good swimmer, too.”

  “It may be too late for annulment, but certainly you should explore divorce. The revolutionaries have made changing wives as easy as changing shoes.” The cheapening of marriage was another royalist lament, although they took advantage of the laxity as quickly as anyone. Since the revolution, a couple living together was as likely to be unmarried as wed, and few brides came to the altar as virgins. Census takers estimated that up to a third of the children in Paris were illegitimate.

  “On the contrary, Comtesse, I’m desperately in love with my wife. You may recall I came to avenge her.”

  “That was for honor. I’m talking about standing. Your faithfulness is entirely out of step with the times.”

  Certainly the era was licentious. A former priest named Banjoir had organized saturnalias under the guise of his newly invented religion. Audiences wore masks to watch naked actors in the play Messalina. Police confiscated pornography from the Barabbas Bookshop to share with their own dinner guests. Even with a swelling police force, Paris still had ten thousand prostitutes. It also claimed six thousand writers, the consensus being that the scribblers were considerably less useful than the trollops.

  “Bonaparte is trying to reestablish propriety.”

  “Bah. He fornicates like a sultan. And love has nothing to do with marriage. A wedding is a contract of rights, property, and reproduction. Sleep with whomever you want, but marriage requires a strategy as careful as a military campaign or the seeking of court favor. It’s true you had limited prospects, but an Egyptian serving girl? My poor American, I shudder at the advice you were given.”

  “I didn’t have advice at all. She’s gorgeous.” Why did the comtesse obsess about my marriage? Ladies do find my company irresistible (given enough time, and convincing) but I was not about to swap wives. Catherine seemed to be prying us apart when we should all be pulling together. But then the female heart could stampede heedlessly, I’d learned from the romance novels, so maybe the girl simply couldn’t help herself.

  “Beauty can be rented,” Catherine said.

  “And she’s wise,” I defended doggedly. “Astiza knows more than any royalist I’ve ever met.”

  Catherine was oblivious to my comparison. “Hire expertise. Blood, you must marry.”

  “You’re living on our charity while insulting my wife?”

  “I’m helping you face the truth. She is wise, since she married a handsome rogue who also claims to be an electrician, a Franklin man, an explorer, and a soldier. You’re common, but a commoner of an interesting sort. It’s only your judgment that is faulty. A proper comte would make Astiza a courtesan, deny paternity of any offspring, and cast her off before she begins sagging. I entirely understand her determination to follow her husband to France; it’s unlikely she’ll do better. But you need to marry breeding if you’re ever to rise.”

  “Which you could supply,” I said dryly.

  “Certainly not.” The comtesse sniffed. “It would be as foolish for me to marry down as it was unwise for you not to marry up. Only in an exigency do we cooperate in this hovel. We’re pretending to be democrats until natural order is restored. You cannot aspire to me, but you need a powerful father-in-law. I’m saying all of this to be helpful.”

  “It’s you who doesn’t understand marriage,” I countered, truly annoyed now. “It didn’t matter that Astiza had no property, and I n
o title. Have you ever looked at the half moon and seen the dark wedge that blocks out the stars and completes the sphere?”

  “We’re talking astronomy now?”

  “That was me before my wife. Astiza came in and began to lighten my dark half, day by growing day, as I came to love her, until the moon was full—representing not one of us, mind, but both of us combined. I fear that’s a completion you’ve yet to understand.”

  A shadow passed then; she looked stricken for just an instant at my jab, and even vengeful. There was some wound on her that I didn’t know. Then she gave a short laugh, forced gaiety. “And you’ve yet to understand how big your moon could be with the right person. Or listen to realism.”

  The odd thing was that Catherine could be as charming as she was maddening. She actually warmed to her governess role, playing with Harry when we went on errands. “He listens to me better than you do.” She also confessed that she regretted that her crusade to restore the monarchy and avenge her parents was postponing her own marriage, household, and children. I’d actually catch her with a look of pensive sadness at times.

  The comtesse could also be a witty dinner companion, sharing gossip of fallen aristocrats struggling desperately for new positions. She’d compliment as deftly as insult, and sought my wife’s suggestions of classic books to buy besides romances. Not that Catherine actually read such books; she simply enjoyed dropping the imposing-sounding titles into conversations.

  She was mercurial toward me, disdainful at one moment and flirtatious the next. Catherine found an excuse to touch me when my wife wasn’t around. She’d propose that we go together to the arcades of the Palais Royale to listen to Parisian gossip and street speeches. Even when I kept saying no, she somehow appeared on my arm. When I was a widower, she’d treated me like the plague; when convinced I was married, she found it amusing to tease me.

  An example is a time I came home when Astiza and Harry were at the fruit market and Catherine called for help from the kitchen. I found her bathing in the tub in a linen shift, as is the female custom. The fabric was transparent from the water, however, one arm only half concealing her breasts.