by E. M. DAVEY
“You’re forgetting something,” said Jenny. “Waterloo. The forces in Napoleon’s final battle were broadly equal, right? Yet he lost, badly. How come?”
They read of the build-up to Napoleon’s final defeat.
1814. After the Allies invaded France, Napoleon surrendered and was banished to the island of Elba. It was a luxurious imprisonment. In return for going quietly, Bonaparte was crowned king of that pleasant Mediterranean island and gifted an annual income of two million Francs from the French state.
But this did not slake his thirst for glory.
1815. Napoleon escaped his gilded cage and landed in France with a few hundred supporters. Soldiers sent to arrest him instead embraced him, with cries of “Vive l’Empereur”. Bonaparte was restored to the throne – the Allies had to vanquish him all over again. The so-called ‘Hundred Days’ was under way. Endgame.
Waterloo was Napoleon’s last throw of the dice. Yet when battle was joined in Belgium, the Emperor made some extraordinary mistakes.
1. He did not think the Prussians would reach the battlefield in time. They did.
2. A division that was marching in the opposite direction was not recalled; it would be badly needed.
3. He fought the battle on a wet day, where the soggy ground helped Wellington’s defence. The weather was no longer an ally.
4. He delayed his attack until 11 am, hoping the ground would dry out. This gave the Prussians the time they needed to arrive.
5. Napoleon’s strategy was another frontal sledgehammer. It was Borodino, not Austerlitz.
At the deciding moment, a suicidally brave cavalry charge led by Napoleon’s general Ney captured a walled farmhouse that was the keystone to the battle. Ney begged for reinforcements to take full advantage. Uncharacteristically, Napoleon dithered. By the time he launched his last reserves into the fray, Wellington had plugged the gap. The emperor’s last, best chance to win the battle had gone. The Imperial Guard broke for the first time in its history. The tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte was over.
Napoleon was later to admit he “did not fully understand the battle”, blaming it on “extraordinary Fates”.
Historians find his decisions on the day incomprehensible.
There ended Beloff’s notes.
“At Waterloo Napoleon didn’t have the Disciplina,” said Jake. “He couldn’t have. He must have parted with it – at some point between the campaigns of 1814 that wowed the Duke of Wellington and his escape from Elba.”
“Maybe he destroyed it?” suggested Jenny. “When he knew he was beaten, when France didn’t have enough men to hold back the deluge.”
“Or gave it away, even?”
“That doesn’t sound much like Napoleon,” she said.
Jake stared at Beloff’s notes; a peculiar light had come into his eyes.
“When Napoleon was deposed and sent to Elba – he got off pretty lightly, didn’t he? This guy was responsible for millions of deaths, yet he’s rewarded with a cushy island and an income for life. You didn’t see the leading Nazis getting enthroned after the Nuremberg trials. They got hanged, every man-jack of them. Except …”
“Except Rudolf Hess.” That tinge of yellow was in Jenny’s cheeks again. “Who was kept alive.”
“Because he had something to bargain with.”
“But if Napoleon haggled his way to Elba with the Disciplina Etrusca, who was the recipient?”
“Let’s look at this logically,” said Jake. “Which country went on to dominate the nineteenth century?”
A silence filled the room, full of foreboding. As one, they turned to the painting of Trafalgar. To the warship in the foreground; to its flag. A flag that once flew over the biggest empire the world has ever seen.
It was the Union Jack.
Part Two
Grandiloquence
(THE PRIME MINISTER)
I have no way of judging the future but by the past.
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
27
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEEEEEP.
PRESENTER 1: Good morning. This is the Today programme, and these are the headlines from the BBC. Britain will provide the caretaker government of Sierra Leone for the rest of the year, the Prime Minister has announced.
CLIP (Victor Milne): “It’s just not good enough for us to stomp on the militias and clear off, only for all this mayhem to start again in six months’ time. We need to rebuild Sierra Leone’s economy so it can provide its own security in the future. The Sierra Leonean president’s asked us to stay, the people want us to stay, and we jolly well will stay until the job’s done.”
PRES 1: The Foreign Secretary Nigel Edmonds joins me shortly. I’ll be asking him – is it really Britain’s place to play the world’s policeman? And how does he respond to accusations from some in the Opposition that Britain’s embarking on a neo-colonialist adventure?
PRES 2: Staying in West Africa, and the first cases of Ebola have been confirmed in Nigeria. The World Health Organisation reports a spate of infections in the north of the country. It comes amid increasing concern about the oil-rich state’s ability to fend off the Islamist group Boko Haram. We’ll have analysis on whether Africa’s biggest economy is becoming the world’s biggest failed state.
PRES 1: And the US president’s vowed to do anything it takes to bring to justice a group of gunmen who shot dead two CIA agents in Jerusalem yesterday afternoon. A third American’s been kidnapped – there’s speculation Iranian intelligence was behind the assault.
Victor Milne turned off the radio. “I can’t bear to hear Nigel get savaged again.”
“Surely the small matter of being on the right side of the argument must help?” said C.
“Not when it’s a cretin versus The Rottweiler.”
“At least he’s not facing that chap.” C nodded to Jeremy Paxman’s Empire, which lay open on the coffee table of the flat above Number 10.
The dissolution of empire was as much a product of what was militarily feasible as its acquisition had been.
“Dear old Paxo,” said Milne. “Glad I don’t have to lock horns with him any longer.”
A clutch of other tomes on Britain’s golden age were strewn about the flat and C glanced at the nearest.
By 1909, some 444 million people lived under British rule. The empire included one continent, one sub-continent, 100 peninsulas, 500 promontories, 1,000 lakes, 2,000 rivers and 10,000 islands. Today, that same empire has shrunk to fourteen territories with a combined population not much higher than 200,000.
“A bit of light reading, Prime Minister?”
“Shall we say, research for my next book?”
C peered at another volume.
The post-war Labour Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison compared independence for African countries to giving a child of ten a latch-key, a bank account and a shotgun.
“How prescient he was,” he said.
“Talking of prescience …” began Milne. “The CIA. Your boys didn’t exactly see that one coming, eh? An intelligence failure par excellence.”
“We left no evidence.”
“It’s blooming obvious we did it! Crikey, a row with the Yanks is all I need.”
“Respectfully, they started it,” said C. “Besides, Washington won’t let it be known we’re having a falling out.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Because the world and its dog would try to discover what the spat’s about. If the Americans do know what we’re looking for – well, that’s the last thing they’d want. Hence Washington briefing against the Iranians, who’ve got no reputation left to defend.”
“I see.”
“These tiffs do happen from time to time, Prime Minister. It’ll go under the radar, I promise you.”
“Apart from all the bodies,” snapped Milne. “Not to mention a starring role on Radio 4 this morning. What about our injured man? Mc-something-or-other.”
“McCabe. He’s going to survive, but the doctors
say he’ll need a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.”
“Poor chap,” said Milne. “And Wolsey? Frobisher?”
“We’ve picked up their trail again. If you want we can snatch them right away.”
“No, I don’t want.”
C frowned. “Why not?”
“Now Wolsey and Frobisher are back together, they’ll be trying to find out what happened to Napoleon’s Disciplina Etrusca – correct?”
C nodded.
“And over the years those lovebirds have proved rather more capable than our own serried ranks of spies and academics when it comes to historical detective work – also correct?”
C’s face was grim.
“Then I say, let them get on with it!” said Milne. “If they actually discover anything, we swoop.”
“Actually, that’s rather a wise plan.”
“So do make sure nothing bad happens to them,” said Milne. “And let’s get to work on this fellow who Wolsey bashed on the head. I want to find out just how well the Americans know their history.”
A skin-deep smile. “We have just the man for the job, Prime Minister.”
*
Damien di Angelo was tied to a chair at a British military base in Cyprus.
“The worm has turned has it not, fella?” As Davis loomed from the darkness his shoulders were like mountains of shadow, lurching across the wall.
The American jerked against his cords, realised it was futile and relaxed. “Where am I?”
“Where are you?” The fillings in Davis’s teeth glinted dully. “You are in a spot of bother, my son.”
28
Jake stirred Beloff’s notes, wondering what else might be plucked from the devil’s cauldron.
Here was a line on Etruscan spirituality:
They believed in mighty spheres of religion, where reason cannot penetrate. The fulfilment and interpretation of omens was devoid of ethical content.
Something else caught his eye:
The fasces, a bundle of sticks symbolic of Roman imperium, is of Etruscan origin. It is the source of our word, ‘fascism’.
Then it happened.
Not so much a click or a pop as a reverse noise – a vacuum where the sound should have been. Jake was gliding silently through points of light set on a hexagonal grid, marching onwards for eternity.
I’m inside it.
Jake could hear a high-pitched chatter as the singularities communicated with each other and the entire formation trembled as though it had been disturbed, before returning to stillness.
Or it’s inside me.
He had no idea how long he had been gliding. It could have been seconds or a month; microns or light years. Maybe he was dead? (Heart attack or stroke.) He heard the beat of the drum, the tramp of jackboots. The blast of the war horn, the rumble of Napoleon’s grand battery which was also that of thunder. And behind it all, the hiss and the thrum of creation itself: the background residue of the big bang.
Not a click, not a pop, but a nothing.
Suddenly Jake was back, reality rushing in his ears. He was lying on the floor, rigid as a seizure victim and unable to move, eyes wide open as foam gathered in the corners of his mouth.
Jenny was in full panic mode. “Jake? Jake? Speak to me …”
“It’s evil,” he managed.
She pressed a glass of water on him and he struggled up. Concern and reserve did battle in her eyes. And there was something else there, something occluded by a cloudiness he could not penetrate. When they were lovers Jake had been in the company of this person constantly; he had understood intuitively her every emotion and desire.
I don’t know what’s going on inside your head any more.
Some tea had spilled and he watched two droplets become one in a curious blobbing motion, their surface tension now shared. Foretold, as all things were. Now he tore through the pile anew, desperate for a lead, for anything that might suggest how Napoleon disposed of his history of the future or where it came from.
An envelope.
Jake tore it open, withdrew a yellowed letter. It was signed by the father of the greatest Briton.
Randolph Churchill.
The ancient Etruscan matter.
29
Blenheim Palace: December 31, 1883.
My dear Wolff,
I have had a very curious letter from the Queen.
Yours ever,
Randolph S.C.
“Lord Randolph Churchill was a failure as a politician, right?” asked Jenny.
“That’s a bit harsh,” said Jake. “He was seen as a rising star in the late-Victorian age. A socialite, bon viveur and witheringly good speaker – with an impressive moustache to boot. But he was a risk-taker, prone to picking fights he couldn’t win. Poor health and reckless decisions ended his career early.”
“And who’s this Wolff?”
“Sir Henry Drummond Wolff would be my guess,” said Jake. “He was another member of Churchill’s clique, along with Lord Salisbury and WH Smith – yes, the newsagent. They were the leading Conservatives of the era.”
“Beloff must have thought Queen Victoria’s ‘curious letter’ was significant,” said Jenny. “Is it in the envelope?”
“No, but there’s something else.”
He withdrew a folded page, torn from Winston Churchill’s biography of his own father.
Perhaps someday it may be possible to publish in complete form the letters which passed between Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph Churchill during their eventful association. When we consider the profound and secret knowledge of forces at work which both possessed, one cannot imagine any compilation which would more truthfully illuminate the dark and stormy history of those times. All that, however, is a matter for the future.
“Stormy history,” whispered Jenny. “A matter for the future.”
“If Britain got hold of Napoleon’s copy of the Disciplina Etrusca at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, did Randolph Churchill learn about it seventy years later? Maybe that was the content of Queen Victoria’s ‘curious letter’ …”
“The High Court test,” Jenny chided him. “You’re being grilled by a QC and your job’s on the line. Can you defend this theory?”
“Not a chance,” Jake admitted. “But imagine for the sake of argument Randolph Churchill did know about the Book of Thunder. Instantly half the jigsaw falls into place – because he would have told his son too. And that’s why Winston Churchill took an interest in 1941, when Rudolf Hess began wittering to MI6 about the ancient Etruscans. That’s why he gave it the time of day. And it explains something else. Have you ever heard of the famous prediction Winston Churchill made at Harrow when he was seventeen?”
Jenny shook her head.
“Read this,” he said, showing her a quotation on his phone that has astonished historians for decades.
I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world; great upheavals, terrible struggles; wars such as one cannot imagine; and I tell you London will be in danger – London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defence. I see further ahead than you do. I see into the future. This country will be subjected to a tremendous invasion, by what means I do not know, but I tell you I shall be in command of the defences and I shall save London and England from disaster. Dreams of the future are blurred but the main objective is clear. It will fall to me to save the capital and save the Empire.
Jake’s finger traced an invisible line in the air, meandering through space: as the Disciplina Etrusca had wormed its way through history, spreading havoc in its wake.
“That’s why Winnie spent the thirties warning about Hitler and appeasement,” he said. “While the press denounced him as a warmonger. Because he knew what was coming. Churchill, who stood alone. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.”
Jake felt his cheeks bloom with an unexpected glow of pride. Then he recalled a line from Winston Churchill’s Finest Hour speech and the emotion was replaced with unease.
But if we fai
l, then the whole world will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
“But this is all speculation,” said Jenny. “We’ve got no evidence whatsoever that Britain got hold of Napoleon’s copy of the Disciplina. It’s just a hunch, based on nothing more than the fact that we had a good century. And besides, we know Britain doesn’t possess it to this day.”
Jake wheeled to face her. “How do we know that?”
“Because if Britain’s had the Book of Thunder since the fall of Napoleon, why let two World Wars bankrupt us? How come we regressed from the global superpower to the sick man of Europe by the seventies? Why will MI6 stop at nothing to get it now?”
The stirrings of a blush were discernible on Jake’s face.
“The sun set on the British Empire,” Jenny pressed. “Britain’s place at the top table is based on past glories, not hard power. If Britain did obtain Napoleon’s copy of the Disciplina, somehow we lost it too, Jake.”
“What about Churchill’s prediction?”
“It’s strange, certainly it’s strange. But strange things happen, Jake – coincidences occur. Not everything is meaningful, not everything is foretold.”
The blobs of water on the table top had parted again.
“Dreams of the future are blurred,” read Jake from Winston Churchill’s schoolboy prediction. “As in, not clear. Not like Napoleon’s pinpoint predictions, anyway. So Britain didn’t have the Disciplina by the Churchills’ day – this was more like a … a long-term forecast, possibly augured before Winston was even born. Randolph Churchill got wind of it though, either from Queen Victoria or in some smoke-filled drawing room. He told the little boy who would one day be Prime Minister, who was destined to save Britain from disaster. The prodigal son.”