The Barbed Crown

by William Dietrich

  Napoleon rubbed the ornament with his fingers. “A pretty toy.”

  “Maybe they did fly, but I think you’d have to find the actual machine to copy them, not this representation. To learn from this is like trying to build a Napoleon from the image on a Legion of Honor medal.”

  He smiled at the analogy. “Is there a different place we should search?”

  “This came from an underwater cave, but there were no other clues. Maybe the Spanish know more in Mexico.”

  “Perhaps I should ally with Spain.” He handed it back. “Men are beginning to dream of flight. Have you heard of an English inventor named Cayley?”

  I was sweating again. Did he know of our insane escape from Fort de Joux? “Never heard of him,” I lied.

  “He’s trying to emulate birds. Well.” Napoleon looked at me skeptically. “Show this to my savants; maybe it will inspire them to leap the Channel. In the meantime, I want to put you all to more immediate work.”

  “All?”

  “Confer with Duhèsme this summer on skirmishing tactics. I know you’re not an officer, but you’ve observed fighting prowess from the Mamelukes to Red Indians. You’re worldly, and you can share some of that wisdom with my officers.”

  “Betraying England.” It’s damn hard feeling noble about yourself while working for both sides, and I felt like a fly in a European web, trying to negotiate my way under constantly changing circumstances. I admired Napoleon, and feared him. Smith was my ally, but England was America’s frequent foe. I needed a chart to sort my sentiments out.

  “Hardly. Send them coded letters from inside our camp about exactly what we’re doing. Emphasize the quality of our regiments, which I’m certain you’ll find impressive. Confirm my popularity, which will be repaired from the recent gale. We simply ask to read your letters first, and suggest amendments that might make Britain sue for peace.”

  Napoleon took pride in finding the special utility of each man, and each man’s weakness. He took comfort in judging me an opportunistic scoundrel because he was one himself. Napoleon liked me because he thought I was so incorrigible that I couldn’t judge him.

  But I’d changed. Mostly.

  I cleared my throat. “Advise Duhèsme for how long?”

  “A month or two, and then back to Paris to confer with my savants. Monge, you know; he continues to improve my artillery. I fired a monster mortar myself the other day.”

  “Your hearing has recovered?”

  He ignored this. “The mining engineer Mathieu has proposed we dig a tunnel to England. My adjutant Quatremère Disjonual has proposed we train dolphins to carry sharpshooters across the Channel, or infiltrate saboteurs by diving bells.”

  I didn’t say anything of my own diving bell experience.

  “Jean-Charles Thilorier,” he went on, “has an idea for gigantic balloons.”

  “Franklin had the same notion.”

  “All I want is your habitual skepticism, married to your considerable imagination. Your mind works in strange ways. The notion that men flew in ancient times makes it possible we’ll fly again. Share your bauble with my scientists.”

  Since I constantly question my own worth, I am susceptible to flattery. We all wish to be useful. I glanced at Astiza, who had an expression of careful neutrality. She was more suspicious of the Corsican and yet said nothing, because she was still wondering why she was here at all.

  “I’m hard-pressed,” I said, to say something. “Réal mentioned a salary?”

  He waved his hand. “Yes, yes, you’re on his payroll—take up the details with him. I’ll give you a letter testifying to your mission.”

  “I appreciate your confidence, Your . . . Majesty.”

  “I’m not confident in you at all, Gage, but you have a knack for strange success.” He rubbed his hands. “Now, your royalist conspirator, Catherine Marceau, must also work for me if she wishes to live. She doesn’t have to betray her friends, but I want her to advise on my coronation to give it royalist endorsement. The whole point is to demonstrate that my ascension can never be reversed, and so its symbolism must include the reintegration of royalist émigrés like her. I understand Marceau is a student of fashion, so she can confer on gowns and protocol. Do you think she’ll be willing?”

  “She loves opulence. As long as you can persuade her that she has no choice but to work on your coronation, what you’re proposing will entirely seduce her.”

  “Good. Now, the most important member of your triad is your wife. And how do you regard me, my dear?”

  “Competent, but too quick to risk your men.” She glanced at the shore. The girl is honest to a fault, as I’ve said.

  He colored. “You began our relationship by shooting at me in Egypt.”

  “And you killed my Alexandrian master with a cannon blast.”

  “You and I are not so different, madame; we are both fond of the desert. If the entire world was land, not water, I couldn’t be stopped. But the sea frustrates me.”

  “Controlled by gods instead of men.”

  “Controlled by weather: we’re not in the Dark Ages. Yet from our blustery beginnings, Astiza, things can only improve, no? Was I really so bad for Egypt?”

  “A better question is whether Egypt was bad for you. You fled when you could.”

  “I didn’t flee, I was called to duty by the plight of France. And you ask that of me, a Corsican? I’m not a man confined by borders. Perhaps I’ll return to Egypt someday. In any event, my invasion there is history, and it is because of history that I’ve asked you here.” He straightened to emphasize he was brisk and commanding, but he was still only her height. “You’re a historian. I understand you’ve been frustrated in getting access to archives in Paris.”

  She was surprised. “You know about that?”

  “My agents haven’t just followed you, they’ve thwarted you, because I was wary of what you were searching for. I remember the Book of Thoth and your skills as a scholar.” He glanced at me. “Yes, Ethan, I learn everything, and forget nothing.” Then, to her. “But now I promise unlimited access to the records of church, state, and university—if you do something for me in return.”

  “Sire?” She used the word before thinking about it.

  “Have you heard of the Brazen Head of Albertus Magnus?”

  Astiza was cautious, but not surprised. “A very odd legend. The machine was destroyed by Saint Thomas Aquinas, according to the same stories.”

  “Perhaps.” He began to pace in front of the bank of windows, lines of troops marching far below like blue centipedes.

  “The Brazen Head?” I interrupted. “What the devil is that?”

  “Tell your husband, madame.”

  She was looking at Napoleon warily, and replied slowly. “Albertus was a Dominican friar who lived in the thirteenth century,” she began.

  “About 1200 to 1280,” Napoleon put in, pacing back and forth.

  “He was a German, educated in Italy, who came from Cologne to Paris, and became the foremost scholar of his age. Albert was appointed chair of theology at Saint James. Like many learned men he sought the Philosopher’s Stone, that alchemist’s grail with the reputed power to turn lead into gold and grant immortality. He never found it. But unlike others, he didn’t just yearn, he built. Legend says he spent thirty years constructing a manlike figure that could speak.”

  “The Brazen Head,” Napoleon said. “A mechanical head made of brass. Not so different from the clever automatons craftsmen make today, which seem to talk, eat, or play chess. Except those are toys, and this was not.”

  “Some say Albertus Magnus built an entire body,” Astiza went on, “and one account holds that it was made of iron, not brass, and was called the Iron Man. Still others contend it was wood. About eighty years ago, a new name was suggested for this being: An ‘android.’”

  “By Samuel Joh
nson’s dictionary, what does that mean?” I asked.

  “It’s coined from Greek, meaning ‘in the likeness of man,’” she said.

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Ethan, it’s what I do.” She addressed Napoleon. “Your agents told you I was attempting to research that subject.”

  “Yes, and I became intrigued,” the emperor replied.

  “The Brazen Head was designed not just to talk and possibly walk, but—according to legend—to answer peculiar questions.”

  “Questions about the future. It could forecast events.”

  She cocked her head, as intrigued by the emperor’s curiosity as he was by hers. I have a bad habit of being jealous, and that prickly emotion stabbed again. “But legend says Albert’s protégé, Thomas Aquinas, was horrified and destroyed the android,” she said. “He thought the machine infused with Satan. No one can truly know the future, he said, or should know.”

  “But wait,” I objected. “You try to see the future all the time.”

  Napoleon smiled. “As do I. Predicting the future is what makes us human. No other creature records its history, tries to learn from it, and anticipates what might come next. I want a reliable fortune-teller of my own: not a sideshow charlatan but a real machine of uncanny accuracy. Can you imagine knowing disaster before it occurs, and avoiding it? Or knowing of fortune before it occurs, and investing?”

  I agreed with Thomas Aquinas: this was wicked. “Surely no such thing ever existed.”

  “Just like the Mirror of Archimedes or the Book of Thoth never existed.” He watched me.

  Since I’d found both those things, and Thor’s Hammer besides, I understood Napoleon’s real reason for offering alliance. He didn’t want sharpshooting tips. He wanted my expertise, or luck, as a treasure hunter. He wanted us to find this Brazen Head, just as he’d wanted an Aztec flying machine. My wife said the head had been destroyed. But she clearly didn’t believe so, or she’d never have researched it to begin with.

  “We’re hundreds of years too late, aren’t we?” I tried.

  “Perhaps,” Napoleon said mildly. “Or perhaps it wasn’t burned but instead secreted in a castle deep in Austrian territory.”

  “And you want us to get this devil’s tool for you.”

  “Just locate it, my armies will do the rest.”

  “In the Austrian Empire?”

  “Looking into the future, again.”

  His army was pointed west, not east. Had I learned something of importance for Smith? Or, knowing me a spy, was Napoleon misdirecting me? “But a machine that predicts the future would give you unprecedented advantage.”

  “Put to unprecedented good use.” A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle, Franklin had remarked.

  “No, this is another of your goose chases,” I said. “You’re as mad as Sidney Smith. The Brazen Head? How could Albertus construct such a thing? And even if he did, why would we find it for you?”

  “To avoid the massacre of your own family.” He walked to plop down in the sole chair, a portable wooden one with a green cushion. His threat was given plainly, without drama, as something so obvious as not to require repeating. His level tone emphasized his power more than a shout would have done, and his lack of emotion was as cold as a bayonet. “To solve a scholarly puzzle, which your wife loves to do. But most important, Gage, to cement your own place in history.”

  “I don’t want a place in history. People who do have a tendency to be dead.”

  “If I know the future I can outmaneuver my enemies and defeat them without war. You will end this conflict by helping me checkmate the British and their European allies with perfect foresight and, by so doing, save thousands and thousands of lives.” He set his fists on the green table. “If the android of Albert the Great still exists, we’re going to find it, harness it, and usher in a glorious new age of unity in Europe. Under my leadership.” His look was commanding. “Tell Sidney Smith anything you like about my army in Boulogne, but this is a mission you will keep from him, on pain of death.” He stood again, restless as a rabbit, and addressed my wife. “I was defeated by the sea, but the response to any defeat is a different attack. Come see my legion ceremony if you doubt my future, Ethan. And then attend my coronation, both of you. Your governess should make it quite a show.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Three weeks after his disastrous swamping of boats in the summer storm, Napoleon restored morale with a gigantic Presentation of the Crosses, a larger repeat of the ceremony I’d witnessed in Paris. This time expansion of the Legion of Honor would occur outdoors so that England could watch as well as France.

  The rest of my household had already returned to Paris. Astiza left with letters of recommendation to begin researching in earnest. Catherine departed to excitedly consult on the coronation even while protesting that she did so under duress, “to protect little Horus.” My son said good-bye with tears in his eyes. He cried not so much from leaving me as for having to trade the excitement of tramping soldiers for the company of women. I presented him with a miniature drum, and he rattled it mournfully as Pasques boarded the coach to escort my family out of camp. Harry had the instincts of an adventurer, and I was pleased and appalled that at age four he was taking after his father.

  Lingering in the Boulogne camp, I consulted with Duhèsme on skirmish tactics and had fun with an antique crossbow he conjured, “So you can play Red Indian.” I decided it could theoretically work from ambush to slay an enemy scout silently, but was otherwise too cumbersome, slow, and short-ranged. David’s sling could still slay Goliath, too, but I wouldn’t equip a regiment with that weapon.

  I also toured the shipyards. Napoleon said crossing the Channel was but a jump, and yet without naval superiority the task was impossible. Even if the French controlled the water for a week or two, they had to transport not only a huge army, but all its powder, shot, food, and horses. England’s beaches were fronted by shoals, fringed by cliffs, and pounded by waves, and reports came back that its government had enlisted tens of thousands of militia to defend its shores. British authorities were constructing a string of Martello towers to give warning, and laid plans to drive away all the livestock and burn all grain.

  French generals were confident of the outcome of any battle, but skeptical of the chances of getting one. La Manche might be tantalizingly narrow, but it was still a tide-wracked, stormy moat.

  The soldiers were drilled incessantly to avoid boredom, and found the usual ways of amusing themselves between marches. Besides making visits to tent brothels and gambling dens, they scavenged for food, forcing Bonaparte to distribute a steady stream of gold to complaining farmers. His troops also did their best to seduce farmers’ daughters, dueled illegally in copses of trees, and had rowdy rowing competitions in which the chief object was hurling buckets of water at one another.

  The troops were frequently entertained by troupes of actors imported from the Comédie-Francaise. The men also put on their own productions, playing female parts as well as male. At frequent dances, the soldiers took turns in the woman’s role, a handkerchief tied to their heads identifying them as “ladies.”

  Their most popular game was loto, a simple contest of matching announced numbers on a card that even near illiterates could play. Bouts were made more competitive by giving each number a colorful name such as “the little chicken” for number two and “the gallows” for number seven, all the way up to eighty-nine. Players with faulty memory who called out the wrong name were penalized with great hilarity.

  Regiments formed choirs and bands that sang and played in noisy competition. The faithful marched to the local fisherman’s chapels on Sunday. While some soldiers plagued civilians, others repaired churches, schools, and roads. England’s small army was a criminal depository kept in line with the lash. France’s conscripted force boasted educated men of the middle class. Officers had chess clu
bs, philosophic societies, and astronomy lectures. There is always more song and laughter in French camps than English or Prussian ones.

  I enjoy this masculine company but periodically sought solitude. I was flattered one day while out on a picnic and saw a young redheaded woman on a horse picking her way toward me on a bluff trail overlooking the Channel. I was seated with bread and cheese and guessed even at a quarter mile that the approaching rider was pretty.

  She rode to me and reined up: a Norman fille with hair like flame, a dusting of freckles, and a saucy look. She wore riding boots, gloves, and had a small pistol tucked in her waistband.

  I stood. “Bonjour, mademoiselle.”

  “Good King Louis,” she replied in English.

  I was startled, accustomed as I was to speaking French. Then I remembered the password on the beach where we landed. “By the grace of God may he reign.” An English spy?

  She slid from her horse and reverted to French. “My name is Rose, monsieur, and I’ve deliberately followed you here.”

  “Mademoiselle, it’s dangerous to talk to me.”

  “Yes, the famed Ethan Gage, collaborator with generals and emperors. I’ve been admiring your ability to insert yourself into high places. No one understands how you do it.”

  “It would be more correct to say I’m inserted, sometimes against my will. They think me useful.” Sometimes modesty works with women, not that I had anything to work, being married and all. “And you are . . .”

  “A rare survivor in a conspiracy gone to ruin. I provide help for agents traveling between Paris and the coast, and socialize with the officers here. Sometimes men tell a woman things they’d withhold from a man.”

  “I can see why.”

  “I’ve taken the risk to tell you two things, Ethan Gage.”

  “Would you share some wine first?”

  She shook her head. “First, you may encounter an opportunity to affect history more than you think possible. Many people are watching you.”