Three Emperors (9780062194138)

by Dietrich, William

  We endured three more attacks over the next half hour. By noon, the sun still low in the December sky, a third of the 14th Line was down. Wounded men observed their own blood with horrified curiosity, trying to tie off the leak. They curled in pain, or crawled, or groped. Sometimes friends helped. The dead sprawled in all kinds of improbable poses, dignity irrelevant. The blood was astonishingly bright, seeming to glow.

  Enemy dead far outnumbered our own. Each time a Russian or Austrian regiment engaged one of ours in a duel of musketry, French speed and accuracy wrecked their formation. Allied cavalry made a charge at the 10th Line, next to us, and accomplished little but the massacre of their own members. Saddles were swept clear by disciplined infantry fire, then terrified horses thundered between the armies, looking frantically for an exit.

  French artillery also gained a steady edge. Allied guns were systematically dismounted, broken, or abandoned. Others were captured and swung around to point the other way. As each minute ticked on, Napoleon’s advantage grew.

  Men fired at each other point-blank, fenced with the bayonet, and warded off hundreds of galloping horsemen. The contest for Pratzen Heights raged for a good two hours, entire battalions dissolving like spring snow. At times we could pause as observers, gulping breath, loading our muskets and waiting our turn, and minutes later we’d be in the thick of it again. None of us completely understood what was going on—battles are confusion when you’re in them—but the enemy kept advancing and backing like the surf of a receding tide, each time leaving more dead and wounded in its wake.

  Finally, along a hillside line two miles in extent, the Austrian and Russian lines broke toward the southwest. French cannonballs followed, skipping like stones on water. We watched a retreat become a route. The enemy was dissolving from army to panicked mob.

  “Now—after them!” Baron Thiébault cried, his voice hoarse.

  We stepped off in exhausted pursuit. We’d won. I’d survived. It was over. I was too weary to be joyous, but I was curiously proud. I stumbled on a clod of earth.

  And then an enormous blow hit my shoulder.

  I pitched forward into the crystallized ice of the dirt before fully realizing what had happened. My musket went flying, my hat tipped over my eyes, and my knapsack rode onto my neck. For long, anxious seconds I lay facedown, stunned. At first I couldn’t draw breath, and then I took in a hesitant, shuddering inhalation, wincing from pain.

  I’d been shot.

  The shock made me dizzy, and the strength had left my legs. My head was downhill from my feet, and I felt annoyingly helpless. I lifted my head to cry for help and managed a strangled “ack,” spitting dirt.

  Gideon was standing protectively over me, aiming his musket back uphill in the wrong direction. Had we been surprised from behind? He fired.

  I heard a grunt, and a thud.

  Then he turned to me. “Are you dead?” My new friend knelt, his face black as an African’s from powder burn. He probed my shoulder and I gasped in fear, fury, and outrage.

  I gritted my teeth to answer. “I don’t think actual death is this painful.”

  In heroic stories, characters fight through their wounds, excitement giving endless energy. I, alas, felt like I’d been kicked by a mule. A musket ball as wide as a kidney bean and heavy as a gold piece had torn through my body. I had the twin sensation of finding it agonizing even to take breath, on my right side, and shocked numbness on my left.

  “Be still, my friend.” Gideon took out his briquet, a large camp knife, and cut off my pack straps and empty canteen, casting them aside.

  “Please keep my civilian clothes,” I had the presence of mind to gasp.

  “You’re hoping to change?”

  “Exactly.”

  The Jew considered a moment, shrugged, and added my belongings to his own. “Now I have a double load,” he said. “Your left shoulder was hit from behind, cracking your shoulder blade. A few inches different and it would have hit your heart and spine. Murderous bastard.”

  “Behind?” I coughed, some of the spittle bloody. “I was facing forward.”

  He rolled me onto my right side while I roared. “Our battle is over. Come, can you walk? I see no promised flying ambulance, so let’s get you to a field station for vinegar and a bandage. I think the ball went clean through. You’re lucky at more than cards.”

  He had a strange definition of luck.

  He got an arm around my torso, braced the butt of his musket for leverage, and heaved me up. I almost blacked out. I swayed, my legs like pudding, and wanted nothing better than to pass out. After all, I’d already practiced being dead.

  But Gideon wouldn’t let me. “Stay awake, Digeon! Go to sleep and you die! Now walk, or you’ll kill both of us! Bullets are still flying!”

  “I’m not Digeon.”

  “Don’t babble! Save your strength!”

  “I’m an American named Ethan Gage.” If I died, I wanted him to get word to Astiza. He paid no attention.

  So it was with superhuman effort that I took a step, and then another. My legs were indeed unharmed, and as the advisability of getting treatment penetrated my brain, some strength returned. My vision began to clear. Survive, to see your wife and son.

  “Don’t trip on the shit.”

  I looked down. It was the bully Cheval, grimacing from being shot dead through the chest. He seemed to be giving us a last evil eye, despite no longer seeing anything. He clutched his musket, ramrod in the barrel—he had been killed while trying frantically to reload. I realized that when I was shot in the back, Cheval had been only a few paces behind.

  And that Gideon had then fired in his direction.

  These weren’t the first acts of revenge committed on a battlefield. Having waited all day for a Russian or Austrian to shoot me, Cheval had finally got to it himself.

  We went on. I tried to stick to stoic silence, but every step was a stab of flame, and my mutterings and curses were scalding. Some wounded do better, I suppose.

  At the summit was Napoleon. I assumed I remained safely unrecognizable from my smear of powder smoke, blood, and dirt. I was one of hundreds of wounded limping to the rear, my right arm around Gideon’s shoulders. But I still shrank while the emperor surveyed like a god, even as some of the maimed shouted in exultation. That’s how much you get your blood up in battle.

  I was conspicuous in my silence. My shoulder seemed loud enough.

  The emperor swept the battlefield with his spyglass, his expression one of grim satisfaction. He was surrounded by half a hundred officers and couriers poised to race off with orders. There was a rumble of hundreds of drums from the far side of the hill, and giant French grenadiers in bearskin hats rocked into view, rank after rank, cresting the bloody battlefield to march on down the eastern side. They were as precise as a chorus line and as unstoppable as a glacier. They stepped over the dead and wounded as primly as if on parade. It was the Imperial Guard, being sent to deliver the coup de grâce to a smashed and demoralized enemy. Gideon and I stopped to catch breath and look back at the carnage, like looking down on a map.

  The Allies seemed to have evaporated from the battle’s center. French blue stretched toward Austerlitz as far I could see. To the north, Murat’s cavalry was pushing back the enemy, and to the south the French were herding the fleeing armies toward a frozen stream and ponds. The ice on the ponds was beginning to shatter from French cannon fire and the weight of refugees, and I could see green-coated Russians disappearing into freezing water. They were drowning.

  “The enemy is routed, mon empereur,” said a general to Napoleon. “No victory has ever been more total. They will run all the way to Hungary.”

  “Easier to kill them here,” Bonaparte replied. “Get the cavalry forward before we lose the light.”

  Indeed, it would be dark in a few hours. I wondered how many wounded would die of cold.

  “Shall we take Olmütz?”

  “Francis and Alexander will plead for an armistice before then,” Na
poleon predicted. “The war is won, cousins.” He stood in the stirrups, stretched his frame as his white horse shifted under him, and proudly watched his Imperial Guard file into the smoke below. His face was radiant as a bride’s, his posture erect, his bicorne turned to emphasize the width of his shoulders. In a single day, Trafalgar had been avenged. The coalition Britain had assembled to fight Napoleon was shattered. He would redraw the map of Europe like a child with a pencil.

  I wondered if England would quit.

  “It’s a beautiful sun we have this day, is it not?”

  “Yes, mon empereur.”

  Napoleon slowly swept his arm along the view as if freezing it in his mind. He’d risen from nothing, proven unbeatable, and had a thousand plans and strategies. Since the dawn of civilization, governing had been granted through birth, justified by the theory that the leisure of the aristocracy separated the highborn from the muddled motives of lesser men, giving them time to learn and apply wisdom. Churchmen were sheltered for the same reason.

  Napoleon had replaced these privileged classes with tradesmen and strivers, elevated by cunning and courage. Europe was turned upside down. The future would be a frenzy of the ambitious and able, the ruthless rising and falling like flames. No man would relax. Any could triumph.

  And me? I was wounded, penniless, cut off from my family, a fugitive from all sides, and wary of the French spy Comtesse Marceau. I was a modern man like Napoleon—self-made, but a parody of success.

  “It was exactly a year ago that I crowned myself emperor,” Napoleon said to his companion. “That was a noble day, though a damned uncomfortable one in those coronation robes.” He laughed and turned to his other officers. “But this day, cousins, the day of Austerlitz, is the best of my life. The best day, after the best night. Our army is invincible, and these wounded will gladly return to it as soon as they are able.” He swept his arm again, taking us all in. “Your wounds are a badge of honor!” he called. “I salute your courage!” For just a moment I felt his gaze stop on me, and I braced for recognition. His eyes narrowed. But then a heartbeat later his eyes moved on, me a tick in his surveillance. He muttered something to one of his aides. Then he nudged his horse forward and passed us. “And now we look to the future.”

  Did he glance my way once more?

  I realized I was wet. I looked down. My torso was soaked from a blot of blood that had browned as it clotted. I’d been shot, I reminded myself, my breathing labored. I felt nauseated. The battlefield began to whirl.

  “We must get away from that man,” Gideon muttered of Napoleon.

  And then all went dark.

  Chapter 19

  Astiza

  In medieval times, the silver mines of Kutná Hora made Bohemia one of the richest provinces of the Holy Roman Empire. Sixty miles of tunnels wormed through veins of ore, and thousands of miners with picks and shovels crouched and crawled to their stations like doomed troglodytes. The mines have since played out and been abandoned. The city of Kutná Hora remains, half-forgotten, making it a discreet hideaway for occult alchemical experiments. Horus and I were bound by ropes in Prague and transported by sealed wagon. My muscles cramped and my son was feverish, moaning from burns to his hands. He’d been thrashed, starved, and threatened. I’d been told that only my abject cooperation could save him from worse. I’d fallen in with monsters, and waited to be raped. Yet Fulcanelli—no, Richter—was so mutilated and in such pain that he’d lost any immediate interest in possessing me. Auric painted him with ointment and swathed his lower head with bandages. While the dwarf drove, Richter would open a shutter from the driver’s bench and peer at us with dark, sharklike eyes, betraying no feeling at all. He didn’t speak on the journey.

  We traveled many hours—I lost all sense of time—and after an eternity stopped in the old mining town, none but ghosts awake. There were growling hounds at the wagon wheels to discourage escape, and Harry shrank against me, whimpering. I wept with him, furious at my own folly in trusting a “bishop” who was clearly not. Then we were carried into a tower tied to the old mines below. We were pushed down winding stairs hewn from solid rock. At the bottom we passed cells with iron bars and were shoved into a windowless underground apartment used for magical experiments.

  It was dim as a dungeon in our new prison. Richter took a seat on a stool in the alchemical laboratory, caped and bandaged, a rapier at his side. Despite his disfigurement, he posed erect as if sitting for a painting, watching us as we looked around. The primary chamber had stoves, distilleries, bookshelves, flasks, bowls, and crucibles. Beyond was a tiny cave for sleeping, with more books. There was a crude chimney, and the stink of fumes. The baron took some satisfaction from our sense of doom. Unless we escaped or were rescued, my son and I would eventually face far ghastlier pain than he had. The only question was when.

  My tongue was thick with thirst—we’d had no food or drink for a full day and night at least—but I managed a croak. “Where are we?”

  “The place where you will rejoin your husband.”

  Like a fool, I actually looked about. Ethan here? Or his body? But that wasn’t what Richter meant. Still, the words gave me wild hope. My heart stuttered.

  “You’ve dissolved my face, but not our partnership,” Richter said, his teeth clenched from pain. “In fact, your hellion has sealed our alchemical wedding. You’ve been enlisted in the Invisible College, madame—that mystic fraternity that follows the secrets of the rose. Congratulations, witch.”

  “But with me as master, and you as a slave,” hissed Auric.

  “Yes, as our slave, my little friend.” He stared hard at me. “You will obey my dwarf in all things. If you don’t, your boy will become supper.”

  My gaze darted. Two candles guttered in a chamber fifteen feet wide and thirty long. The door was made of stout and ancient wood. There were cauldrons, hanging hooks of iron, buckets, and vials. “So you are cannibals.” My guilt at trapping my son ground at me like a millstone, and the only thing that assuaged it was fury. How I longed to kill our two tormentors! But I needed a plan, not an impulse.

  “I don’t share my assistant’s peculiar tastes, which are for pleasure, not nutrition.”

  “I’ll do what I must to protect my son.” At this point I’d sacrifice my body. It is, after all, a temporary husk.

  “Trust me, I’ve lost any attraction I once had for you,” Richter said.

  “It’s me you have to placate.” Auric licked his lips again, enjoying my reaction. He cackled and jigged, dancing from foot to foot. What strategy to use on the insane?

  And then my son spoke up, in a brave little voice honed by far too many hardships. “If you touch Mama, I will burn you, too.”

  Auric was startled, and actually recoiled. “Goblin,” he hissed. But he was afraid.

  “You are a bad man like the other bad man, and I don’t like you and I don’t like it here.” Harry put on his best scowl, as if about to throw a tantrum. I moved closer to him and we grasped hands, our courage growing from it. To be defended by a child! My own strength and determination soared. I’d bring down these men. I’d destroy them, and their nest, and their ambitions.

  The dwarf had the confused look of all bullies faced with defiance.

  The baron interrupted. “You will touch neither of them unless I expressly allow it,” Richter mildly commanded the dwarf, in a manner that showed he expected total obedience. “We want answers, not screams.”

  “Then let us go,” I begged hopelessly. “Our meeting was a colossal mistake for both of us.”

  “On the contrary. You’ve studied in Egypt, home of great magic. You learned the African arts amid the slaves of the Caribbean. You’ve studied in the greatest libraries, and by some rumors have read the Book of Thoth itself.”

  I was shaking my head. “No, no, you give me too much credit. I exaggerated, to impress you. I led you on. I’m little more than a gypsy reader of the tarot.”

  “You seek the Brazen Head.”

  “As an am
usement for my husband.”

  “Whom I will enlist as well. Then I will bend all of you to our will.”

  Would these monsters really reunite us? With Ethan, escape seemed truly possible. Or would I suck him down into hell as well? My mind hopped like a bird, pecking at flitting hope. “You’ll find him?”

  “Perhaps. I believe you speculated he might come through Venice. I’ll seek him there. Meanwhile, do you wish for reunification?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you must earn it. And pay me back for my face.”

  “It was an accident. You were threatening me. My son was frightened.”

  “First, your husband is going to learn of your imprisonment.”

  Hope again. “How?”

  “News will be sent to Spain, where he is some kind of courier between the navies. You will be reported to be in dire peril. That should encourage him to come, and together we will find the Brazen Head. But without the French.”

  “We can’t lead you from down here.” I shuddered, looking at Auric. “Instead you brought us to this midget monster. Why, Baron—or Bishop—or whatever you are? Why this dwarf? Why bring us here?”

  “So you can serve the Invisible College while we wait for clues your husband will unwittingly bring. You will seek the Philosopher’s Stone by refining gold from base metals.”

  “No one has ever found the stone that provides immortality and salvation.”

  “Haven’t they? The Comte de Saint-Germain said he had lived for centuries. Other alchemists and magicians have made the same claims, going back to Merlin, Enoch, and Hermes Trismegistus. You will be my chemist, Astiza, and discover and deliver to me the transformation men have sought for ten thousand years.”

  “I can’t. Not in a hole like this. Where am I?”

  “The silver mines of Kutná Hora, sorceress,” Auric piped up. “A labyrinth of half-drowned tunnels no person has ever fully mapped. A kingdom of darkness. The pit of the underworld. The portal to Satan. The abyss of despair.”

  “A laboratory,” Richter corrected. “And you will succeed, because your whelp’s life is at stake. Isn’t that right, Auric?”