by Iain Gale
The shops of the Palais-Royal contained boutiques with glass show windows displaying jewellery, fabrics, hats, perfumes, boots, dresses, paintings, porcelain, watches, toys, lingerie and every type of luxury. Between these were grand offices. Keane read the nameplates of lawyers, doctors, dentists and opticians, offices for changing money. Then every so often there would be a salon for dancing, or a bar for playing billiards and cards. Men wandered in and out of these less highlighted doors and more than once he was tempted to enter.
There were countless cafés too, as well as street vendors’ stalls in the gardens themselves, selling waffles fresh from the oven, sweets, cider and beer. The smell was as overpowering as the noise.
*
Keane walked around the arcades for a good two hours, taking a coffee at one of the cafés and observing the passing Parisians. It was a million miles, he thought, from where he had been so recently – the Peninsula with its stretches of arid plain and mountain, its olive groves and its vineyards. He thought of the rolling fields of crops which Wellington had ordered to be destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of the advancing French armies. And of the bloody battlefields, the charnel houses of mangled bodies and dead flesh.
One thing was clear. Napoleon might be hard pressed in the front line in Spain. But here in his rejuvenated capital there seemed to Keane to be no shortage of anything. You could obviously get whatever you wanted, from Indian silks and spices to fine cuisine and even finer women. The wealth of Bonaparte’s Paris was conspicuously vulgar. And for more than a moment, although it went horribly against everything he believed that he stood for, Keane began to wonder whether the emperor might not actually have got it right. And the thought worried him more than he had expected it might.
*
At shortly after five in the afternoon, he left the café and walked slowly through the arcades back to the main salon of the palais, where the reception was due to take place. As he approached the sixteen-paned glass garden doors, it was abundantly clear from the noise of music and chatter that the soirée was already in full swing. Keane entered the room and was instantly aware that he had walked into something quite special. As the flunky at the door asked his name and took the engraved invitation card which had been delivered earlier that day, Keane paused in the doorway and took it all in.
Even though it was still daylight outside, on an early summer’s afternoon, the room was lit from above by three huge crystal chandeliers, each set with over a hundred candles. Mirrors on two facing walls amplified the numbers present, but there seemed to Keane to be some three hundred people in the place. While a dance was taking place in one corner, scattered groups of men and women stood in conversation while in another corner a group of men stood watching some spectacle. Keane walked across to them and discovered it to be a woman, a pretty girl in her early twenties with long blonde hair and emerald eyes. She was clad in a spangled leotard that barely covered her torso and allowed her breasts to protrude, and the crowd around her were marvelling at her feats of acrobatics, some of which bordered on the lewd. It was hardly the sort of thing Keane had thought that he might find at a ball in Napoleon’s capital. But he stayed and watched for a while until she caught his eye. Then he turned and left. Clearly this was going to be far from any ordinary ball.
He had not gone more than forty paces when a man walked up to him. He had short hair and wore a fashionable olive-green coat, purple-striped waistcoat and dark brown trousers. His shirt was trimmed with ornate lace, which protruded from his cuffs, and was finished at the neck with a silk cravat kept in place with a diamond stick pin. His hair was a long jet-black mane of cascading curls and his face was curiously pale with heavy black eyebrows and bright red lips and it was only as he approached that Keane realized that it was make-up.
The man spoke. ‘Hello, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.’
‘Captain James Williams, Légion Irlandaise.’
The man smiled. ‘One of our brave Irish volunteers. My name is Choiseul. Baron Francis de Choiseul. How wonderful to meet you. What brings you here? I had thought that your regiment was in Holland.’
Keane wondered how on earth such a man – clearly a fop, and what his contemporaries in the army would, if being polite, call a ‘beau’ or a ‘dandy’ – knew such a thing.
‘I have just returned from Spain. I was left behind at Marshal Marmont’s headquarters – on special business.’
‘Special business? That does sound dangerous. I suppose you can’t tell me any more?’
‘No, I’m afraid that I can’t.’
‘So, captain, tell me, what do you think of our little soirée?’
‘It’s wonderful. I haven’t been in the capital for some time.’
‘Really? And do you find it changed? How does it look to you, fresh from the battlefields of Spain?’
‘It looks very well. The emperor has accomplished a great deal in a very short time.’
‘Yes, hasn’t he? And not just in Paris. Think, captain, about what we have. What the emperor has done. He is truly enlightened. He works in the great tradition of Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa. Before we had petty officials in local districts. Now we have unity. We have the Code Napoléon.
‘The Grande Armée is the greatest agent of political change the world has ever seen. We have religious toleration, equality in the face of the law, a system of uniform weights and measures and even currency. Not far from here, just across the Channel, our enemies in England still have peasants with a duty to their landlords who pay taxes and swear feudal allegiance. The same in your own home country of Ireland.
‘That is gone from France. Gone forever. We are not a medieval society. Everything is done by merit. Not birth. It’s as if all the dreams of the thinkers came true. All the ideals of the Enlightenment have been channelled into this one man.’ The man beamed a smile.
Grand ideas, thought Keane, but had this man ever seen the other side of the Grande Armée’s enlightened spread of Napoleon’s doctrine? Had he seen the burnt-out Spanish villages, the women and girls raped and then butchered beside their tortured and mutilated husbands and children? Where, Keane wondered, did that fit into this golden vision of Napoleonic Europe?
‘Of course it is a wonder. But it does not come without a cost.’
‘No indeed, captain. As you and I well know. I’m sure that you have seen your fair share of war, of horror. And as for me, do you think I choose to paint my face this way and look like a freak? I lost my face, most of it, at Wagram. And so I cover up the scars with this.’
He put his finger to his cheek and some of the white make-up came away. Beneath it Keane could see raw red flesh. Scar tissue. It obviously covered most of the man’s face. And it was then that he noticed two more things. One of his eyes, the left one, did not move, and his hairline stopped with curious abruptness. The man spoke again. ‘Yes, I have one glass eye and no hair. This is a wig. Without any of these things, I would look like a monster. With them I can pass for a clown. It is the price we pay for all of this and for my title. A gift from the emperor. He is most gracious with his gifts.’
Keane nodded. ‘Sir, it is an honour to have met you and I admire everything you have given for your country.’
‘A pleasure to have met you too, captain . . . ?’
‘Williams,’ Keane managed just in time. ‘And now, baron, if you will excuse me.’
The man nodded and smiled and Keane turned away, attempting to make it look as if he had seen someone on the other side of the room. As he strode away there was a tap on his shoulder and he turned, fully expecting to see again the white-painted face of the baron, with another, more penetrating question, perhaps to catch him out. Instead though he was met with the face of a different man. A stranger.
‘Captain Williams?’
‘Yes, I’m Williams, and you are?’
‘Chef-Inspecteur Jadot.�
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‘Do we know each other?’
‘No, but I believe you are acquainted with a friend of mine. He goes by the name of Zenobius.’
‘Yes, how extraordinary. I do know of him, chef-inspecteur.’
‘Can we talk? In private?’
Keane nodded and Jadot led the way across the room and into the entrance hall. Leaving the palace, they walked into the gardens and across to the less busy of the two colonnades that flanked it. There was a darkened shop in the arcade and Jadot turned the handle and the two men walked inside and straight through to the rear, where another door led into a small courtyard, enclosed on all sides. Jadot shut the door behind them and began to speak. ‘I see that you have met the baron. It’s his soirée this evening. He is most generous with his hospitality.’
‘And also most inquisitive. How does he know that my regiment, that is the Légion Irlandaise, is in Holland?’
‘He makes it his business. He knows much. After all, as Fouché’s sidekick, wouldn’t you expect it?’
‘That man is Fouché’s second in command?’
Jadot nodded. ‘Yes. What better man to have as your deputy than someone who has lost everything in the service of France?’
‘Yes, you’re right. Good God. He was fast off the mark. He saw me as soon as I entered the room.’
‘No less than I would have expected. He has an eye for spotting any newcomer. That man knows everyone in that room. And he knows much of the detail about them. Before the evening is finished he will know much more about you, captain. You are ready for that?’
‘Yes, your friend has done a good job on me and my friends.’
Jadot nodded. ‘He is most thorough. It is good that you should have been spotted by Choiseul. It will make my task of getting you to Fouché himself much easier. We must seize the moment. You should contrive to find Choiseul again. Bump into him at the buffet perhaps. Answer his questions and give him some hint as to why you remained in Spain. Intrigue him, make him curious. That way he’s bound to introduce you to Fouché. He likes to show his master that he’s on top of things. How much he knows.’
They left the room and the building separately with an interval of fifteen minutes and Keane walked as directed by a different route to that which they had used before. He crossed the gardens and entering one of the shops in the arcade pretended to browse through some pieces of silk until the shopkeeper began to pester him. Then leaving abruptly, he moved across to the palace and entered the ballroom. The place was as it had been before, although the guests seemed to Keane to have become less inhibited and some of them were clearly drunk. The men gathered around the acrobat girl, who had been joined in the audience by several women, were more animated now, and were shouting suggestions as to what positions she might adopt. Obligingly, quite naked now, she went into further contortions, indulging their requests. Again Keane watched, but this time when she caught his eye he did not look away but kept her fixed in his gaze as she moved her hands over her body and drew the crowd to new raptures. At length she looked away and Keane turned back to the room. He was sweating and needed another drink.
The dancing in the centre of the room was more frenetic and the buffet had become a sea of revellers, pushing and shoving to get at the food. Keane saw Choiseul among them. He moved quietly through the guests and insinuated himself into the crowd at the buffet until he was standing shoulder to shoulder with the baron.
Sensing Keane’s presence, the man turned. ‘Captain, hello again. Are you having fun? What a splendid evening, isn’t it?’
‘Absolutely captivating. And such a wonderful range of guests. It’s a wonder they are all friends of your ex-superior.’
Choiseul froze, but only for an instant. ‘Oh really? So you are aware that Monsieur Fouché is sponsoring this ball?’
‘Isn’t that what you told me?’
‘Did I say that? Well, yes, of course, that’s right. But I did have a little to do with it. You know, the boss would never have a clue about where to get her.’ He gesticulated towards the acrobat, who was now lying on the floor, naked, in a somewhat more than revealing ‘splits’ position.
Keane grinned. ‘No, quite, I did wonder. I had heard that Monsieur Fouché was a family man.’
Choiseul grinned. ‘Of course he is. But do you think that his wife would ever come to an evening like this?’
‘Quite frankly I have no idea.’
‘I can tell you, captain, she most certainly would not. We live in a fascinating society, do we not? A society of two worlds, in effect. You might say that as the emperor’s men we have built a new world. Think about it. It is far from uncommon for our new aristocracy to form alliances by marriage with old families, who undoubtedly after the Revolution need money. Only last year I overheard that stalwart of the old noblesse the Duke of Montmorency in conversation with Marshal Soult, of all people. Soult, who had been made a duke by Napoleon.
‘Montmorency says with a grin, “Well, marshal, how’s this to be? You are a duke, but you have no ancestors!” To which Soult replies, “It’s true. But today we are the ancestors.”’
Keane laughed and felt that he might have been accepted. But Choiseul’s next question was worryingly to the point.
‘Captain, you seem extraordinarily interested in what is going on in Paris. May I ask why that might be?’
‘Oh, I suppose it comes from having just returned after so many years. I find it fascinating.’
‘And tell me about Spain. How was it? What about the emperor’s decision to replace Marshal Massena with Marshal Marmont?’
Keane realized that this was it. He was being put on the spot and everything depended upon his answers. ‘Well, you know Marshal Massena was a great commander. We all had respect for him and he led us well, I believe. I truly do. But it was the right decision. It was the emperor’s decision. It was most certainly right. Marshal Marmont is at present carrying out a fine job. And I believe he might manage it. He might even throw Wellington out of Spain and Portugal and destroy him and his armies completely.’
‘You think so? I had always thought that he was not the one for the job. You know, I think that Marshal Ney is the man who can meet Wellington on his own terms and defeat him utterly.’
Keane nodded sagely. ‘Oh, of course, Ney is unquestionably the man. But what about the politics? If we can get him then the army would profit by his appointment. But do you really think that the emperor will ever give him a position of serious power?’
‘Well, I had hoped so. I really do. Michel is such a wonderful man. But you know, he is so very temperamental. I told him so only recently. Have you met him?’
Keane paused but only for a moment. ‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t.’
‘It’s rather a shame that he’s in Dresden at the moment with the emperor. Well, you knew that of course. But what a pity. You know, I’m sure that you two would get along famously. After all you both have Irish blood.’
Keane laughed. ‘Yes, that would have been wonderful. I have always wanted to meet the marshal. I am full of admiration for him.’
‘You know we almost grew up together? He was from Alsace as I was. We were both hussars. There are an extraordinary number of cross-overs.’
For the first time Keane detected an air of jealousy in Choiseul’s voice and slightly trembling tone. It wasn’t difficult to work out the cause. Ney was the emperor’s favourite. His blue-eyed boy. A marshal of France and destined in effect to inherit the world. And Choiseul. Well, thought Keane, perhaps he had grown up alongside Ney, but the man had lost out in the lottery of life. He had lost his face in the horror of battle and with it his command. Certainly he had gained a position and the emperor’s trust. But what did that amount to when you were effectively cast out from the system of advancement of the army? The man was no more than a glorified policeman. For the first time Keane felt real pity for him.
> Choiseul paused. ‘Captain, may I say you seem remarkably quick on the uptake? It is scarcely an hour since we met and yet you appear to have the measure of me.’ He fixed him with his stare and laughed. ‘Indulge me for a moment. I wonder, are you perhaps a spy?’
Keane’s blood ran cold. ‘A spy? Sir, what do you take me for? I am an officer in the Légion Irlandaise. Nothing more.’
‘I apologize of course. It’s merely that you seem to me to range widely and know a great deal more perhaps than you should, certainly more than you at first evince.’
‘My apologies, my fault. It is my manner. But one thing I will say to you Monsieur Choiseul: I would count it a great privilege were I ever to be able to meet with your superior officer.’
Choiseul laughed. ‘Oh, you take me back. Superior officer? Of course I can introduce you to Monsieur Fouché. Leave it to me. You will amuse him.’
Choiseul led Keane away from the buffet and towards the doors into the garden and for a moment he thought they might be about to leave the room. But just then the baron glimpsed something in one of the huge mirrors and, grabbing Keane by the arm, dragged him back across the room.
At the same time from across the room a man advanced towards them. He was tall and imposing with a square set jaw and a steely-eyed stare. Instinctively Keane knew that he was going to bring trouble.
Choiseul moved to greet him. ‘Colonel Harrison, what a great honour. I had no idea that you were here tonight. Of course I knew that we had invited you, but to have your presence here. How good it is to see you.’
It was, thought Keane, obsequious in the extreme. Harrison – he could only presume that the man was American or, at the worst extreme, Irish. When the man spoke he was at least relieved.