Gaelen Foley - Ascension 02

by Princess

  Serafina turned dazedly to Els. “Where can he be? We must find Alec. He’ll know.”

  Els bit her lip. “I don’t want to say this, but . . . perhaps he left, Cricket. If his feelings for you are as deep as he led you to believe, you have to admit it would be hard for him to stand by and watch you marry another man.”

  “He wouldn’t leave me—not yet! Not when he knows how much I need him to be there during the wedding. Oh, God, Els.” She gripped Els’s arm as her face drained. “What if Tyurinov has done something terrible to him? They had that awful fight yesterday. You saw all those giant soldiers Anatole has—”

  “Calm down.” Els laid a hand on her arm. “We’ll find him. Don’t jump to any conclusions until we know more. It is very like Santiago to disappear without warning.”

  She pressed both hands to her stomach. “Oh, God, I shall be sick.”

  “Perhaps your father sent him on some mysterious new errand.”

  Serafina gasped. “Oh! Els, you’re brilliant! Yes, that must be it!” She gripped her hand and began marching swiftly down the main corridor. “Come on. Papa will know where he is.”

  Els hurried to keep up with her. Serafina’s heart pounded with every step. She clutched at the glimmer of hope, unwilling to heed her darkest fears.

  “It’s so like Papa to push him too hard. Why doesn’t he give another man the dirty work for a change? His poor shoulder isn’t even healed enough for the stitches to be removed yet!” she rattled on nervously. Perhaps if she could keep herself talking, she could ignore the terrible lump—the knowing— deep in the pit of her stomach.

  At last, she flung the door to her father’s office wide, bursting in on him, ready for a fight.

  “Papa, where have you sent—” She stopped abruptly.

  Everything inside her went cold and deadly.

  Alec was standing between the two leather chairs before her father’s desk. He turned at her entrance, his face greenish pale as he twisted his hat in his hands. He looked like he wanted to puke.

  Staring out the window, her father didn’t even turn to her.

  Els crept up close behind her, nervous at being in the king’s council chambers.

  “What’s going on?” Serafina forced out in a choked voice. “Papa, where’s Darius?”

  Her father didn’t answer, didn’t turn around, didn’t move from staring out the window.

  She took another step into the office. “Papa?” Behind her, Els closed the door quietly. Serafina’s chest began heaving with fright. She swallowed hard. “Alec?” she demanded.

  The young lieutenant glanced at the king’s impassive figure uncertainly. He looked at Serafina again. “I’m sorry, Your Highness.”

  “Where is he?” she forced out. “Where is Darius?”

  At last, the king turned around, his weathered face pale, his jaw taut. “Alec suspects . . . We have pieced it together just moments ago. What I will tell you must not leave this room.”

  “Yes, Papa. What is it?” she asked in dread.

  “Darius has gone,” he said heavily, “to assassinate Napoleon.”

  She stared at him, lifting both hands over her mouth in horror.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Els breathed.

  Serafina’s mind flew to his purpose in such a mad scheme. No Napoleon—no war—no need for Tyurinov.

  He could come back to her. Marry her. They could be together forever.

  “Can he succeed?” Serafina choked out.

  “Perhaps he can kill him,” her father said, “but he’ll never make it out alive.”

  She stared. “But—he’s Darius, Papa. Of course he can. He can do anything.”

  “Your Highness,” Alec said gently, shaking his head, “do not hope falsely. If the colonel is captured, it is customary . . . that is, there is a common practice . . .” Alec stopped, closing his eyes briefly, as though he could not bear to say it.

  “Tell me!” she cried in dread.

  “He will not allow the French to take him alive. He will not allow himself to be used as a pawn. He cannot possibly escape,” her father ground out angrily. “If Darius sees that capture is imminent, he will swallow arsenic.”

  After caring for the dapple gray after the long day’s ride, Darius refilled his canteens for tomorrow at the pump and went back to the grubby inn, where the innkeeper offered him dinner.

  Returning to his dark, tiny cubicle, he washed his hands, splashed his face and neck, then examined his rifle once more. He glanced over the rest of his equipment, checked the arsenic powder folded into a tiny envelope, then lay down and tried to sleep, fully dressed, his dagger under his pillow.

  Sleep was elusive.

  It was earlier than he was accustomed to going to bed and he was aware with every inch of his body that he was alone tonight, but he intended to be on his way at first light. The sense of his own death, like a second presence in the room, made him uneasy about closing his eyes. He fought his resistance; it was a struggle to embrace death, as he must. Hope would only distract him now. His mission required a perfectly clear mind, one uncluttered with dreams and futile wishes.

  He willed himself to pull together that same, numb resignation he had felt on the way back from Russia, before he had seen Serafina again on the night of the maze. It was slow in coming.

  It had been easy then to welcome death, for it had meant only an end to his suffering: His had been the courage of despair. Now he had seen a side of life he had never known existed, a side worth holding on to. It left him battling his own survival instincts, great, powerful forces inside him, tearing him apart, love and hate, death and life.

  He strove to blank his mind.

  He didn’t want to sleep, but he knew if he got an early enough start, he could make it all the way to Pavia by tomorrow night. The flatter terrain would allow a swifter pace.

  Darius folded his arms under his head, idly crossed his heels, and shut his eyes with a faint smile. I wonder what my Serafina is doing right now.

  She stood there for a long moment, utterly frozen with horror. Then something inside of her snapped.

  “No!”

  With an anguished cry, she swept everything off her father’s desk in a blind rage, smashing the half-hull model of the royal flagship. She threw the broken pieces at her father when he tried to come near her. She punched him when he tried to comfort her.

  “This is your fault! How could you do this? How could you do this?” she screamed at him, at no one, at Darius, at herself. “This is all your fault!”

  “That’s enough!” her father roared at her at last, gripping her by the shoulders. “Get control of yourself!”

  He stared down wretchedly at her.

  “He can’t die. Papa, he can’t, he can’t. You’ve got to save him. Send men to stop him.”

  “Oh, Cricket, he’s got too far a lead. He planned it all to a tee.” When tears rushed into his eyes, she crumbled into his arms and wept.

  She realized Darius had known all along what he was going to do. Too many of the seemingly innocent things he had said to her at the villa made perfect sense now, though she had not realized at the time that his meaning was dual.

  What if I can’t always be there to protect you? You’ve got to be able to survive without me.

  “That bastard, he knew all along.” Sobbing, she clung weakly to her father while he held her in his arms. “He didn’t even give me a chance to stop him! How could he do this to me?” she said over and over.

  At some point, her father passed her over to Els.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said gruffly.

  Both of them crying, Els led Serafina back to her rooms, for she could barely walk under her own power. Insensate, she didn’t even hear what Els was saying to her. Only one thing pierced the totality of her outrage and her grief.

  When she walked into her bedroom, she found Darius’s guitar resting on her bed.

  Through its strings was woven the stem of a white daisy and a folded lette
r.

  With shaking hands, she pulled out the folded sheet of fine linen paper and unfolded it, trying to make out the words in his careful, late-taught script through her blinding tears.

  My Love,

  Accept my gift, for it is freely given. A thousand kisses everywhere. My butterfly, be free. I will be watching over you always.

  Yours,

  Darius

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The people below looked like ants from where he sat, idly smoking what he supposed might well be his last cheroot. Behind three rows of troops guarding the route Napoleon would take through the city, the spectators lined the streets and thronged the piazza below.

  Darius had been ensconced for nearly twenty-four hours on the roof of Milan’s mighty Duomo. It had been nine in the morning when the tiny people began dropping to their knees in a wave that came closer as the pope’s gilded coach drew near.

  Peering through his compact folding telescope, Darius had seen the frail white hand emerge from the curtained coach, blessing the people. In the hours that followed, six carriages of cardinals, bishops, and priests came next, while all the church bells in the city began tolling.

  He watched and waited with the patience of a cat stalking its prey as the coaches of state arrived next, each pulled by six horses with golden plumes. Everything was gilded, even the harnesses and reins, his telescope showed him. As time dragged, he watched the coaches disgorge velvet-clad ministers, diplomats, local nobility.

  He shook his head wryly to see the Bonaparte so-called princesses emerge, two blushing, one preening. That would be Pauline, he supposed, the one who was always making catty remarks about Serafina.

  Bitch.

  Napoleon’s sisters were followed by their maids of honor and the grenadiers of the guard.

  Each group of new arrivals was assisted out of the carriages and escorted slowly through the huge iron doors of the cathedral. Darius knew his window of opportunity to get a clear shot at Napoleon would last only seconds.

  He did not check his gun again. Everything was in order.

  Yesterday he had discovered the roof of the Duomo as the ideal perch for the assassination. Knowing he would be faced with the problem of getting past the heavy security and into the walled city, Darius had discovered a group of monks from Pavia on the way to the coronation. It was just the solution he needed. He stabled the horse at a local livery and disguised himself as a friar, concealing his weapons under a baggy brown robe, then he joined the group of monks on the road.

  Listening to the chatter of the holy men, he was unsurprised to find they were more excited about seeing Pope Pius VII than their new emperor. Once they reached their lodgings in Milan, the group was invited to tour the gigantic Duomo, the largest gothic cathedral in the world, according to the deacon who had so proudly offered them an unauthorized tour. Brother Santiago had tagged along through a city that was bursting with pride and excitement.

  While preparations for the coronation were in full swing, workers adorning the altar and the nave with mounds of flowers, the deacon showed the group of monks the baptistry, where Saint Augustine himself had been baptized, then the deacon whispered to the group that, though it really wasn’t allowed, he would show them the roof. He promised fine views of the city. On clear days, he said, one could even see the Maritime Alps.

  Darius could see them right now.

  The monks had moved on, but Darius had silently slipped away, left alone in the forest of well over a hundred spires, hordes of gargoyles, countless statues on the Duomo’s roof. He had known it was the perfect place for his mission the moment he looked up at the central spire and saw the statue crowning it—the gilded Virgin gazing out serenely over the city.

  Now, in the shadow of the Virgin, he shifted himself more securely between the sweeping curlicues of carved marble, squinting against the sun. The breeze was high, the day fine, and unsurprisingly, Napoleon was late.

  Just when he checked his fob watch and read the time, three o’clock, amid the deafening clamor of the city’s church bells, suddenly celebratory cannon fire boomed, vibrating in his chest.

  Darius narrowed his eyes, put his fob away, took a last pull from the cheroot, then crushed it out. Calmly, he reached for the loaded flintlock rifle.

  He wet his lips, chapped slightly by the constant breeze so far above the ground. Bringing the rifle up, he rested the muzzle on a convenient bit of tracery to secure his shot.

  He might only get one shot, he realized, but as long as Napoleon was in the open, he planned to fire as many times as possible before they realized his location.

  His objectives were very simple.

  Kill Napoleon.

  Don’t be taken alive.

  Next to his guitar case on the ground lay the brown robe of a friar. With the robe’s cowl to hide his face and the sheer number of clergy in the city, he believed he might be able to escape the roof and blend in somewhere below in the church.

  If that proved impossible, he had the arsenic.

  In total concentration, Darius coolly watched the shimmering imperial coach, which was covered in mirrors and gilded honeybees. The afternoon sun glinted off the gaudy vehicle, momentarily dazzling him. He squinted.

  Drawn by eight bay horses with golden plumes on their heads, the immense coach rolled majestically into the square below.

  He felt increasingly aware of everything, the sun’s warmth on his skin, the sprawling crowd’s unenthusiastic welcome below; in the corner of his eye, the fluttering of some pigeons.

  With one hand, he snapped the tiny spyglass into place on the rifle. Staring through it, his finger on the trigger, all his focus homed in on the shimmering golden coach below.

  Everything seemed to move very slowly.

  First Joseph Bonaparte, then the younger one, Lucien, stepped out of the coach onto the ground. Both clad in white satin, together they waited at the coach door as the weak-chinned Empress Josephine emerged, dressed also in white, her imperial diadem on her head, her neck laden with jewels.

  Darius watched her place her hands gracefully, one in each of her brothers-in-law’s hands, and she stepped down.

  He licked his lips. His fingertip caressed the trigger.

  Napoleon Bonaparte appeared in the open door of the coach.

  Darius aimed.

  He fired just as the sun glinted off the mirrored carriage into his eyes, blinding him.

  He stared in shock—utter disbelief.

  I missed.

  He cursed, loaded again relentlessly, saw that there was only confusion among those standing nearest the emperor. With all the church bells and cannon fire, it had been too loud to hear his shot. He didn’t know who or what he had hit, he only knew he had missed Napoleon. As he brought up the rifle again swiftly, he saw through the telescope that the dragoon who had been standing next to Lucien was on the ground. Napoleon had stepped down from the coach.

  He fired again but he was shaken by his miss and the shot merely shattered one of the mirrors of the coach behind Napoleon, just over his shoulder. Then it was too late.

  Below, the dragoons piled around Napoleon and the other three Bonapartes, rushing them into the cathedral.

  Darius cast off the rifle. Moving swiftly and methodically, while his heart pounded as if it would burst, he jumped down from his stone perch and threw on the brown robe of his disguise. He was wearing a six-pistol chest holster, a sword, and his ebony-handled dagger. Drawing two of the six pistols, he ran for the roof’s exit, the brown robe trailing out behind him, billowing in the high wind, catching on his sword.

  Shouldn’t have taken that second shot. Wasted time, he thought, too late, for even now the first guard appeared in the doorway of the roof’s only exit.

  He knew troops had been stationed inside the cathedral. They came up quickly. Following the first man, a squadron swarmed through the door to the roof. Darius stopped just long enough to consider trying to fight his way past them.

  “Over there!” a man
shouted, pointing at him.

  Darius ran through the forest of spires shooting up out of the roof.

  If he could elude them and double back around them to the door . . . But more kept coming, twenty men holding their post at the exit. He shrugged off the brown cloak and dodged behind a pair of large, fanged gargoyles.

  “There he is!”

  He whirled around the statue and fired the pistols, one then the other. Two men dropped.

  “After him!”

  He bolted, heart pounding. Again he ensconced himself behind a statue but he was not much nearer the door. He could feel them creeping closer. He drew two more of his guns.

  “Come out with your hands up!” they shouted.

  He stepped out and dropped two more of them, then threw the empty pistols. With two shots left, his sword and dagger remained.

  More French soldiers piled up onto the roof.

  “Give yourself up!” they screamed at him.

  Gunshots careened off the stone, shattering one of the gargoyle’s pointed ears. Darius ducked his head away from the flying, dusty fragments of stone.

  “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” some of the Frenchmen shouted at the others.

  Shaken up, boys? he thought insolently. Chest heaving, he looked to the right and the left, trying to decide which way to run. He was beginning to think it didn’t matter. He knew he could only play hide-and-seek with them for so long. There were too many. The sweeping glance he stole from behind the maimed gargoyle numbered at least thirty soldiers hunting him.

  No problem, he told himself, dry-mouthed.

  The exit was to his left but there had to be a dozen men blocking it. He ran for it, firing his last two guns, dodging a wave of bullets as he dove behind some saint’s statue. Cursing under his breath, he jumped to his feet and unsheathed his dagger and his sword.

  What bloody good’s a sword going to do? They’re going to make Swiss cheese of me.

  Missing Napoleon once had been back luck—missing twice unthinkable—this sudden, ferocious hope, this will to live had not been part of his plan.