Bad house; how like Josephine not to change the derisive name given the estate by a disenchanted former owner, while transforming it into its precise opposite. She was as ironic as her husband was sincere. Sincerity was a quality common to all the great pirates, irony to the women who put up with them.
Malmaison’s extensive gardens slumbered under frost, but the effect was anything but dismal. Moonlight reflected off the silvery surface, gleaming calm and pale on the walls and slate roofs of the rambling chateau.
The carriage rattled through the open gates and came to rest before the front door. As his passengers alighted, the driver doffed his hat, set a tinder pistol to his pipe, and huddled into his fur blanket to await their return.
Inside, marbles and porcelains stood at every turn in the corridors, paintings on every wall. Dubois paused to admire a portrait by a sixteenth-century Florentine of a titled lady with an enigmatic smile.
The gardens were the talk of Paris. Three hundred francs were said to have changed hands over a single tulip bulb. The Prefect of Police regretted visiting in winter. He should like to see this magnificent blossom, whose price would feed a family in Chartres for a year.
“Get a move on, Dubois. We’re not here for the tour.”
Fouché was already at the end of the corridor leading to the library. The Prefect trotted to catch up.
First Consul Bonaparte was expecting them. He met them at the door, wearing a swansdown dressing gown over a linen nightshirt, silken slippers on his feet. Dubois, who missed nothing, observed patches of high color on that alabaster face. Every day, it seemed, the man resembled more and more one of Josephine’s stone pagan gods. He wrung Dubois’ hand while Fouché stood awaiting a greeting.
Born barracks-mates, this pair, Fouché thought. The Minister envied their easy companionship. He himself was incapable of such intimacy outside his own family.
Plainly, abolishing the Prefect’s office would require something less overt than driving a wedge between him and Bonaparte. The mission called for nuance, patience, and possibly years of undermining; arduous work.
Unless—stimulating thought—the Christmas Eve Plot could be turned to advantage.
Yes. Fouché would modernize intrigue the way Bonaparte had thrown away the traditional rules of war and brought Europe to its knees.
The First Consul clasped Fouché’s hand briefly.
“Punctual as always. Madame Bonaparte regrets her absence. She has a headache.”
A quarrel, no doubt. Aloud, the Minister said: “Believe me when I say we find it more regrettable than she.”
They entered the library; curtained, papered, and carpeted Corsican green. Large-scale military maps draped scattered tables and desks like tablecloths.
The maps were not intended for decoration. Clearly the First Consul was preparing a new campaign; to spread the ideals of the Rights of Man farther across the Old World.
But where? Fouché wondered. Someplace with a treasure chamber, that much was assured.
On every surface, the carpet included, lay sheets of foolscap scribbled with Bonaparte’s jagged, impatient script, mutilated into indecipherable shorthand by a brain racing perpetually beyond the physical: the proposed new Civil Code that would revolutionize law the way its author had revolutionized warfare. The project had occupied his every waking moment for months. War was his profession, but at present it amused him to toy with the law of the land.
War, plots, law, marriage. Dubois, a man wedded to his own work, feared the First Consul would explode under the pressure from so many fronts.
But then the Prefect had been obsessed lately with explosions.
Bonaparte dropped into a chair behind the largest desk and folded his well-kept hands across his middle. (Not so spare as in the heroic engravings from the battlefield, Dubois considered; seven courses eaten in twenty minutes were still seven courses.)
“Report.”
Fouché untied the portfolio and placed that evening’s edition of the Bulletin on the border of Luxembourg. The First Consul read swiftly, then sailed it across the Zuyder Zee. The Netherlands? Fouché thought. More tulips for the first lady’s gardens?
“Satisfactory, Monsieur le Ministre. So far as it goes.”
“I was certain your excellency would notice something was left out. The Bulletin is no place for speculation, only facts.”
“Speculate.”
“Undoubtedly Brunet is Pierre Saint-Réjant.”
“Arguably. What else?”
“This man Beaumont. The name appears again and again in Ministry files. Major General Limoëlan uses it whenever he’s in the country. It’s a badge of honor, as he sees it; a signature. He never departs from it.”
The First Consul’s eyes, smoky gray under most circumstances, became gray steel.
“Limoëlan is no more a general than the underground army is an army. Where are their regiments, their colors?”
“Hidden beneath haystacks and in country houses in England. When we unearth Limoëlan, can Georges Cadoudal be far behind?”
This, Dubois noted, was the morsel the Minister had kept from the Paris Prefect. He wouldn’t trust an underling not to run to the Tuileries with it and upstage the master magician. How tiring, these intrigues; yet they seemed to energize his superior.
“Cadoudal! Incroyable!” Bonaparte sprang to his feet and began to pace. He stopped and spun on his heel, facing Dubois. “Are you in agreement, Monsieur le Prefect?”
“All the evidence points to the fact, Citizen.” How else to respond, not having known of the business until this moment? In any event, one did not contradict a brother officer before the brass.
Fouché played his courtier’s card. “Your excellency will remember that we discussed the prospect that the affair of the fourth Nivose may as well have been the work of Royalists as Jacobins.”
“Cadoudal must be arrested.”
“First he must be found.”
“Start in Brittany. He is a Breton, is he not?”
“As am I, but I am here as you see.”
“When last I checked, Brittany still belonged to the Republic. Send a battalion if necessary, but fetch him back. He’ll have a fair trial and the dignity of a squad of able marksmen. Some of them served under him, and will be sure to aim for the heart.”
Fouché maintained his repose. “Forgive me, but I don’t consider the plan practical.”
“Make your case.”
“Our latest intelligence places Cadoudal in England, enjoying the hospitality of Lord Rexborough in the country. My people there have orders to report to me immediately should he leave the estate.”
Bonaparte looked down at the map on the desk, his gaze straying across the Channel.
“Always meddling over their mutton, these fellows,” he said. “God save the king from Republicans in their precious empire. And so narrow a strip of water.” Making laws and meeting treason could not distract him from his favorite pursuit.
“Short of an invasion, your excellency, I suggest we bottle up Cadoudal’s remaining two associates, obtain additional evidence from them, and file it away until their commander makes the blunder of returning to France. Then we shall reunite them all in Traitors’ Field.”
“What makes you certain they’re still here?”
Here the Minister was on firm ground.
“Carbon went into hiding, hoping to outlast our patience. We must assume the others did the same. We will continue to hold Carbon’s sister and nieces, to prevent them from communicating the information of his arrest. Meanwhile we will announce that Jacobins were responsible for the fourth Nivose beyond doubt, as you were so wise to suggest from the beginning. They will think themselves safe, and when they resurface, my spies will report.”
Was the Great Man flattered by so palpable a shift away from his own impulsive assumption? Could he be, at all? Dubois had never known a man who could not. But who had ever known a man such as this?
“You place great faith in your spies.”
“I trained those who trained the rest.”
“You place even greater faith in your abilities.”
“A brilliant man once said the principal object of a general is to secure the flanks of his army. I remind myself of it every day.”
“Sound tactics.”
“Thank you, your excellency.”
A touch! The Great Man could be flattered. Shakespeare was right.
Bonaparte looked at a framed engraving of Frederick II at Breslau, at the bust of Alexander: his cabinet.
“Refresh my memory, Fouché. Who is next in line to the Bourbon throne, were it still to exist?”
The Minister was caught off guard for once. “I—can’t say. It isn’t my province.”
“Dubois?”
“Nor mine, Citizen.” What was he getting at? Deciphering the complex business of royal succession had stumped men far more learned in such things.
“Find out. You’re policemen, are you not?”
“I shall look into it.” Fouché bowed. The man knew how to retreat without surrendering.
“Tactics are worthless without a solid strategy in place.” Bonaparte might have been delivering one of his famous addresses to the troops. “The head of a Republic, elected by a majority of the people, can be removed from office by a single ball of lead. These cream puffs seek to replace me with a man who is guaranteed a line of succession.”
Fouché acknowledged this to be true.
“Well, we cannot have that under a Republic.”
He smiled then, showing the polished teeth that never appeared in official portraits. “And you, Dubois. What news from the brothels?” He rubbed his hands.
The Prefect concealed his discomfort; he could feel the Minister’s envy. Prodigious as they were, his political skills lacked the spice of gossip from the slums of Paris, and that was a sore point that would never heal. Whatever one gained in the estimation of a Bonaparte, he lost in the eyes of a Fouché. The man of strength, and the man of intrigue: Which was more dangerous?