The man the Frontenacs knew as Marechal was alone in the parlor. He drank tepid chocolate, shaking his head over his Moniteur.
He hadn’t thought Cadoudal quite that much of a fool. The long silence and his own uncertainty had flushed him from his English sanctuary, straight into Fouché’s clutches.
News that the general and two of his co-conspirators had been arrested and dealt with had enraged the Viper nearly as much as Bonaparte’s no-show on Bastille Day. The upshot would be to reawaken the country to the plot, making it more difficult still for him to approach his target.
But it wasn’t all bad. Heightened security meant more armed men and more unfamiliar faces, and less suspicion when another stranger joined the rest.
Collecting the remainder of his fee once the thing was done would prove as much of a challenge as the thing itself. It would mean meeting with the Cutthroat Club in England and blackmailing them in person. By then, of course, he’d be hunted throughout Europe.
However, even that had its benefits. He’d be spared the emotional letdown that so often followed a completed mission. He’d dreaded that: after the exhilaration of the hunt and the triumph of the kill, naught but depression, deep and black. Despair almost to the point of suicide.
He reread the other item that had caught his interest: the latest details of a state celebration.
On 28 Messidor, the month of harvest (June 16 by the Gregorian), emissaries of Pope Pius VII had signed the Concordat of Rome, agreeing to re-establish the Catholic Church as the official faith of France.
With a single blow, Bonaparte had won the spiritual and political support of the Vatican and robbed the Royalists of their strongest argument for Restoration. They could no longer depend on the popularity of their cause.
The end of the so-called Age of Reason set bells ringing in all the reopened cathedrals and demanded a public celebration on 10 Thermidor, the first decadi, or official day of rest, in the month of heat. The announcement was made on Bastille Day. Government offices and all factories would be shut down and the gates of the Tuileries opened to the public.
The First Consul and his wife would be present, greeting their fellow citizens from the balcony.
Chaucer-Molière-Meuchel-Marechal folded the newspaper. He sensed a trap. But it was an opportunity he couldn’t afford to overlook.
The time had come for the snake to strike the eagle.
“Are you sure you won’t join us, Monsieur Marechal? It’s a great day for France.”
Jean-Baptiste snorted at his wife’s remark. “You mean it’s a great day for Rome. The next thing you know, the First Consul will name a priest to his cabinet.”
Their lodger postponed the inevitable argument. He was sitting on the edge of his bed with the door open and his arm in a boot, vigorously shining the leather with a horsehair brush. “Thank you, Madame. I overtaxed myself on the anniversary of the Day of Liberation. I’ll stay here and look to my things, if you don’t object.”
“You are our guest,” she said. “But promise me you’ll get some fresh air. It will speed your recovery.”
“You’re very kind. I’m feeling quite well, though a bit tired. I will take your advice later.”
After the street door closed behind the couple, he waited a full minute, then rose and shut his door, latching it and bracing it again with a chair. He opened the valise he’d commissioned in London and threw aside the clothing he hadn’t unpacked.
It was the work of a moment to cut through the leather stitching with his dagger and remove the false bottom. He lifted out the bundle he’d placed inside in the back of the luggage-maker’s shop in London.
He went to work with scissors, needle, and thread, items borrowed from his hostess (“You bachelors are so self-sufficient!”). When he finished, he dropped his empty courier’s belt into the valise, kicked it back under the bed, and returned to the bundle.
He’d folded everything with a soldier’s precision, but inevitably there were wrinkles. He shook out the worst of them and stripped. Moments later, he tucked the tails of a white shirt into white knee-breeches, buttoned on a waistcoat, white also, slipped into a swallow-tailed blue woolen tunic faced with red flannel, tugged on the freshly polished boots, and fastened a pair of white gaiters over them. Only the ordinary shirt and nondescript boots came from his usual wardrobe; everything else had been hidden under the panel in the valise, including the white ornamental belts he buckled in an X across his chest.
These items, once glimpsed, were what had led to the death of the luggage maker’s son in London.
Finally, he took the bearskin shako he’d ordered from the tailor in Paris out of its tall pasteboard box and inserted the scarlet plume in the tricolor cockade that held it in place. The hat added a full twelve inches to his stature when he put it on. He adjusted the chinstrap and studied his reflection in the cheval glass that stood in the corner.
He overlooked nothing: Front, profile, back, peering over his shoulder. Crown to heels, epaulets to buttons. The pound and franc notes he’d sewn into the linings betrayed no telltale bulges. He plucked a grain of lint from his collar, bit a stray thread off a sleeve. Bonaparte was a martinet and so were the officers who served him. It would be disaster to attract the attention of a puffed-up major and get himself put on post.
From thick sidewhiskers to neatly trimmed nails, he was the model of a grenadier of the Consular Guard, assigned to the protection of the First Consul.
The finishing touch, military decorations, came from a slim leather case he’d packed with the uniform. Why shouldn’t he wear them? They weren’t forgeries of paint and tin, or items procured from a pawnbroker. They were plated with fourteen-karat gold and glazed enamel.
And they’d been pinned on him the first time by none other than Napoleon Bonaparte.