The Barbed Crown Read online

  The few women present were just as glorious, hair pinned into towers roofed with slanting hats and colorful plumes. My wife, on the advice of Catherine, had parrot feathers. To revive the silk and velvet industries that had gone moribund in the revolution, Napoleon was encouraging a move away from gauze and muslin, meaning dresses had become more opaque, with higher necklines and longer trains.

  The air was rich with Catholic incense, tobacco, and perfume.

  The crowd clustered around the empire’s new nuclei, the eighteen marshals Napoleon had appointed on May 19. Some generals I remembered from the Egyptian campaign. There was the handsome and redoubtable Lannes, the gloriously black-curled Murat, the stern and balding Davout, and the severe Bessieres, who commanded the Guard Cavalry. Their uniforms were outrageous rainbows of blue, red, white, green, and yellow. Murat by rumor had spent one hundred thousand francs on his. There were buttons enough to require half a morning of fastening. Sabers clanked and rattled. Boots creaked from polished leather. Spurs jangled.

  “The French can be governed through their vanity,” Napoleon had reportedly said.

  The marshals also represented a new tangle of marriages, appointments, and opportunities as complex as a medieval court. Catherine recited this new order with envy. Murat was married to Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon’s sister, and rumor was that both thought the cavalryman would make a more able emperor—or at least a more dashing one—than his shorter brother-in-law. Lannes, the farmer’s son turned warrior, had returned from a profitable tenure as ambassador to Portugal with enough pocketed bribes to purchase a Paris mansion. Davout had married the sister of Charles Leclerc, and thus was brother-in-law to Leclerc’s widow Pauline, Napoleon’s sister. Massena had evolved from Italian smuggler to French military hero. Bernadotte was married to Desiree Clary, the beauty who had once been engaged to young Napoleon. Bernadotte’s sister-in-law Julie was married to Napoleon’s brother Joseph.

  Napoleon was building a clan worthy of Machiavelli. A study of the army lists and genealogical tables showed France boasted 240 generals in some way related to one another. Half a dozen were publicly known to have conspired against Napoleon, and their new emperor needed war to keep them campaigning instead of plotting. The French victories at Hohenlinden and Marengo were four years past, and there was hunger for new glory. They swaggered. If they could come to grips with England’s small army, they’d rip it apart.

  I was surprised to have been given gold tickets that admitted us to the main floor, since I’d little chance of being inducted into anybody’s legion of honor.

  I had a different kind of celebrity and was both flattered and frightened when the odious and limping Charles-Maurice Périgord—better known as simply Talleyrand, or the “lame devil,” and the foreign minister of France—approached. His narrow head was erect, as if braced, with the limpid stare of a fish, and lips tight as a virgin. It occurred to me that the towering policeman Pasques served as a useful lighthouse in this jammed church for any official trying to find the politically compromised Ethan Gage.

  I was wary. Prevented by his childhood limp from entering the military, Talleyrand was instead ordered by his family into the priesthood, where he rose to the position of Bishop of Autun despite his opinion that the entire Christian catechism was nonsense. His atheism, greed, and cynicism eventually resulted in his being defrocked. He’d also betrayed both the Bourbons he once served and the revolutionaries after by throwing in with reactionary Napoleon.

  Yet Talleyrand was also credited with being the slyest foreign minister since Cardinal Richelieu. He’d spent two years in American exile at the height of the French Revolution, living as a houseguest of future vice president Aaron Burr. Later he helped embroil France in an undeclared naval war with the United States that I’d played a small part in ending. Now he’d been named grand chamberlain of the empire. He studied the map like a chessboard and manipulated kings like pawns.

  His handshake was soft and without conviction. “The American electrician,” he greeted with the unction of the highborn. “You were honored for your service at our celebration at Mortefontaine.”

  “I’m flattered you remember, Grand Chamberlain. My role was brief.”

  He managed a thin but wooing smile, the effort seeming to pain him. “I don’t remember your being modest and, at age fifty, I remember far too much.” He turned and bowed slightly. “This is your intriguing wife?”

  “Astiza, from Egypt.”

  “I’m honored, madame. I understand you are an intellectual, a remarkable achievement for your sex.”

  “Someday men will recognize that gender has little to do with the mind,” she responded. “Just as stooping to help a child makes a woman stand tall as a man.”

  Now his smile widened, his eyebrows elevating. “Your reputation for wit and perception is deserved. And you study the ancients?”

  “Yes. You’re a student of history, Grand Chamberlain?”

  “Of power, for the good of mankind.” He looked about. “Ah, Monsieur Gage, how triumphant this all is, and how anxious! Napoleon is out to create a new court in order to be accepted as an equal by royal houses that despise and fear him. It’s a longing that will bring much blood, I predict. No new emperor can compete in stature with an ancient line of kings. I’m his servant, but I’m also nostalgic for the less complicated past. Before the revolution men knew their place, beauty was worshipped, and life was refined. Now everyone is sweaty and striving. Those who didn’t experience the security of a king will never know the full sweetness of living.”

  “Sweetness for a few,” Astiza said. “Most were starving.” My wife is disturbingly honest.

  “True, true.” His agreement was judicious, as if we were discussing insects. “Still, there was a civility that was lost forever. Ask your governess. She’ll tell you.”

  So he knew Comtesse Marceau’s background as well. A fine hive of spies we were. “She already has,” I said.

  His hand fluttered. “So many swords, so many uniforms! This is a masculine age, Madame Gage. The years of the king were a feminine era. Marie Antoinette was slandered, but the truth is she was kindly, sweet, and deserved veneration, not beheading. I believe ages come in cycles, the wise domesticity of women alternating with the heroic aggression of men, peace cycling with war, and grace followed by grandeur. Both, I believe, are necessary for human progress.”

  “You’re a philosopher, Grand Chamberlain,” my wife said. “And a believer in progress?”

  “Progress that always comes at a cost.”

  I felt rustic next to this worldly adviser, chaperoned by a giant, and surrounded by men who might kill me if they knew all my alliances. In a crush of five thousand people, I felt lonely, save for my wife. “This gathering sparkles,” I said without conviction. “And congratulations on your own elevation, Grand Chamberlain.” Compliments are never wasted.

  “Regimes fall, but I do not.” He said it lightly, and then regarded me more intently, suddenly all business. “I was disappointed not to have more correspondence from you on our strategy for the American frontier.”

  That hapless adventure had been three years before. “Again, I’m surprised you remember. In any event, I didn’t find a postal system among Red Indians. But as you’re no doubt aware, I came back to help with the sale of Louisiana to my own country. I was delighted it was successfully concluded last year.”

  “Yes, a bargain for both of us. I understand an exploration of it is under way by Jefferson’s secretary, a man named Lewis, with a frontiersman named Clark.”

  “Clark, too? I’ve met both. An able pair, but then Jefferson is a good judge of talent.” I implied we could include me in that roster.

  “A Frenchman joined them, my correspondents tell me. A voyageur you knew by the name of Pierre Radisson.”

  “You follow the travels of Pierre? You are remarkably well informed.” So my old friend was o
ff with Meriwether Lewis. The West was where he belonged.

  “It’s a small world,” Talleyrand said. “And will they succeed?”

  “They are very capable. But the United States has become very big.”

  “I’ll be interested to hear what they discover. We’ve little idea what we sold you.” That thin smile again.

  What was this about? We were spies, not ministers, and the business of police, not ambassadors. Why was Talleyrand bothering with us? “You’re working, I trust, for an end to the present war with Britain?” I said in order to say something. “The United States wishes to resume trade with both sides.” France was under British blockade.

  “The United States spent money for Louisiana, borrowed from a bank in Britain, that the emperor intends to use to conquer England. A small world, indeed. As for me, I’m always working for my country at great sacrifice to myself.” It was a sardonic lie, given that the man made a fortune from every office he touched, be it religious, revolutionary, or imperial.

  “Councillor Réal told me the tricolor will soon fly in London.”

  “I expect stalemate, Monsieur Gage. France is the elephant and England the whale, and each is struggling to come to grips with the other. Which is why Councillor Réal and I agreed that, rather than just jail and shoot you, we would ask you for advice. To help persuade you to truly help us, you’ve been brought here to see the future of Europe.”

  “I doubt the emperor really needs my advice. Nor, might I add, does he need to shoot me.”

  “Never forget that he could do so; the Jaeger rifle is to remind you how powerless you are to a man surrounded by an army. I’d hate for you to make a misstep. So tragic for your wife.” His glance at her was now cold. “She, too, must help us as we help you.”

  “Am I to speak to Napoleon?” I could barely see the new emperor. He had on a bicorn hat with cockade, pivoted so that the ends pointed toward his shoulders, as he preferred. But at five feet six and sitting, he did not tower like a Charlemagne. He’d lost some of his campaign leanness, too, and was thicker than I remembered. His coat was military blue, his stockings and breeches white, and he wore only a few simple medals. The simplicity marked him apart. A man is truly important when he doesn’t have to show it. “I’d have to tunnel or vault just to get to him.”

  “The meeting is not here, but at a later time and in a place of his choosing. Today is just to remind you of his power.”

  “I am reminded.”

  “Are you willing to contemplate what Réal suggested?”

  I had to be careful. “I’m doubtful of the utility of such a course, but I’m also trying to save my family. I become ever more confused as to which side I’m really on.”

  “That just means you’re able. Napoleon says all intelligent men are hypocrites.”

  “Half a compliment, I suppose.”

  “And I think Napoleon is not only intelligent, but a genius.”

  I was surprised. Talleyrand by reputation had a cynical view of the abilities of everyone, especially those he had to answer to. But he was serious.

  “Yes, I respect and fear him,” the chamberlain went on. “Like me, he has no friends, but he buys loyalty with reward and keeps his marshals off-balance by setting them against one another. His policemen spy on one another, don’t they, Pasques?”

  “No good policeman trusts another,” the giant grunted.

  “His ministers compete for favor to get their budget. Every decision goes across his desk. I’ve never seen a man work harder. Reward, divide, control. He understands power better than any politician I’ve met.”

  “But to what purpose, Grand Chamberlain?” Astiza asked.

  “That is a tremendously insightful question. Too few ask it.”

  “I hope you’re sharing your own wisdom with him.”

  “I share my experience. History will decide if it’s wisdom. Ah, it’s beginning.”

  The drama unfolded as scripted. There were hymns and patriotic songs. A parade of flags, including banners captured in battle and tricolors impressively shot through by bullet and shell. Octave-Henri Gabriel, Comte de Ségur, was master of ceremonies. The Comte de Lacepede was inducted as the Legion’s first grand chancellor. He gave a windy speech, a roll call of the Legion’s grand officers was read, and then the chosen legionnaires came forward to receive their medals. The first, a wounded and crippled veteran of the revolutionary wars a decade earlier, had to be helped up the stairs for Napoleon to tenderly pin on the medal. It was a touching sight, even to me.

  The requirement was service, the motto “Honor and Fatherland,” and the pay to Legion members ranged from 250 francs for an ordinary legionnaire to five thousand to Lacepede. As usual, the less a fellow needed the money, the more they gave him.

  The bauble itself had a noble look. A white radiating star had the head of Napoleon in the center, pinned on the breast as a mark of distinction. No one would accuse the Corsican of false modesty.

  “Civilization works through information, Monsieur Gage,” Talleyrand murmured as we watched. “That’s all we’re asking from you, that you convey what you see. As courier or go-between, you can make history.”

  “So long as it safeguards my family.”

  “Your family will safeguard itself. I’ll pay your new French stipend while you and your family attend Napoleon at the army camps on the Channel coast.” He turned to Astiza. “It was to be five hundred francs a month, but for your cooperation, let’s make it six.”

  “You can simply pay the money to my wife here in Paris,” I said.

  “But Napoleon wants her, too, along with the boy and the comtesse.”

  I was surprised. “For what?”

  “He’ll tell you in due time.”

  The oath was to both France and emperor, the roars of Vive l’empereur shook the church, and at last we were released, long lines of men lining up at temporary privies to pee.

  As the mob slowly carried us outside, I put a question to Talleyrand. “To a realist does such ceremony matter? I mean, a trinket and a ribbon? It’s like trade goods to the Indians, isn’t it?”

  “Napoleon heard the same doubt in his Council of State. To which he replied, ‘By such toys are men led.’”

  CHAPTER 10

  Napoleon watched England from a gray wooden gallery with glassed oval ends, nesting on a bluff above Boulogne. The pavilion was built near the legendary site of Caligula’s Lighthouse, erected when that mad Roman emperor dreamed of conquering Britain and fired catapults at the water when storms dashed his chances. Soldiers called the one-hundred-foot-long aerie “the Big Box.” When Channel squalls blew, the pavilion was a cozy refuge. On clearer days, a telescope gave a view of the white cliffs of Dover and the British navy between. A long table inside was strewn with maps of England and its shoaling shores.

  There was only one chair. Attending generals were required to stand in order to keep meetings short. When Napoleon launched into monologues, they leaned on the hilts of their sheathed swords to give their legs relief.

  The emperor’s panorama was like that of a giant child with an unlimited supply of toy soldiers. The Channel shore had been dubbed the Iron Coast for its menacing artillery batteries. On the sloping meadows around the French seaport was a vast military city of eighty thousand men, living in mud-and-wattle barracks with thatched roofs and smoking chimneys. It was no secret that there were thirty-five thousand more drilling in Saint-Omer, fourteen thousand at Dunkirk, twenty thousand at Ostend, and ten thousand at Bruges, along with ten thousand horses and hundreds of field guns. All of this I had duly put in coded messages with sympathetic ink and passed to Sir Sidney Smith, as Réal cheerfully suggested.

  Waiting to take this army across the Channel were thirteen hundred boats classed as prame, chaloupe, bateau, or péniche, with another thousand under construction.

  The quest was hung with histor
y. Napoleon had displayed the famed Bayeux Tapestry in Paris the previous winter, reminding the French of their success with the Norman conquest of England in 1066. And William the Conqueror had led a platoon compared to this lot.

  But patrolling offshore, like sentry dogs, were scores of English ships.

  Elephant and whale, indeed.

  My family and Catherine rode in a coach from Paris to Boulogne on the swift stage roads we’d avoided before, us chattering and our escort Pasques as mute as a mummy. Since the royalists had been crushed and I was supposedly working for both sides, I didn’t understand the need for a watchful policeman, but at least the giant was useful in getting men to slide out of the way at an inn table. He tended to get faster service and hotter food, too, with less need to check the arithmetic of the bill. I like large companions.

  It didn’t require a spy to know we were approaching military encampments. Even in summer the roads were churned to wallows from a constant stream of supply wagons. The outskirts of Boulogne had a new tent city of sutlers, prostitutes, moneylenders, horse traders, food wagons, and casinos. As we rode past we were offered pigs, chickens, pastries, bare breasts, campaign equipment, loans, and gypsy fortunes, Harry taking in more of life’s realities than I would have preferred. He was most mesmerized by the uniforms and guns. Cannons thudded in practice drills. Muskets crackled on the firing range. Newly purchased mares were commanded and spurred next to a deliberate cacophony of cannon blast, bugle call, gunshot, drum, and practiced screams from a chorus of village women hired expressly for the purpose, to mimic the cries of combat.

  “Why are they yelling at the horses, Papa?”

  “A mount is useless if panicked by battle, and so horses have to be trained not to bolt when the noise starts. They have more sense than people and want to run away.”

  “Aren’t the horses brave?”

  “Nobler than their masters.”