At length the prince saluted and we swung up onto our horses and started back for our own lines, this time escorted by a troop of Russian orderlies. A French lieutenant galloped ahead to find Bonaparte. By now it was morning. I was exhausted from a sleepless night and relieved that this mission hadn’t resulted in my being run through by an Austrian madman.
Empty countryside separated the two armies, the coming battlefield exhibiting the stillness of winter.
Entering a deployed army is like sinking into thicker and thicker atmosphere. The first French pickets and skirmishers gave challenge from trees and ditches. Then outlying screens of cavalry were spied, waiting to dash and give warning. Next came light infantry, thick as wasps, and finally the heavy line infantry and artillery beyond, cannons parked and campfires smoking. The Russian prince, who had spent several miles detailing for us the superiority of St. Petersburg over Paris and London—although he had been to neither—absorbed every detail with a soldier’s eye. Napoleon was allowing him to observe what he wanted the prince to see.
We came to Rausnitz Brook. Across it, drawn up on the Pratzen Heights, were the two corps of Lannes and Soult. Twenty thousand men stood as if on parade, three hundred feet above the surrounding plains. Winter sun stage-lit the demonstration, the sky pale blue and the rolling farmland brown and yellow. Bugles sounded, drums rolled, and the regiments expertly formed into thirty alternating infantry squares, like a toy-soldier chessboard of blue and white. It stretched for two miles. Bayonets glinted, bands played, and a hundred battle flags lofted in a light breeze. War is pretty, at the start. And then the formations wheeled and the French abandoned a commanding geographic position and retreated west, sinking from sight on the far side of the hill.
Was Napoleon taking the first steps back to Paris?
I glanced at Dolgoruki. He kept a gambler’s face, but his eyes betrayed a gleam. That the French were abandoning a commanding position like the Pratzen Heights had to mean that they were weak, uncertain, outnumbered, exhausted, and trying to withdraw. The tide had turned. The Russian bear and the Austrian eagle must charge and swoop to claw before the French got away. I could sense his anxiousness to relay this news.
It was brelan all over again. Napoleon was showing false cards. He would hide some of his soldiers until it was time to spring his trap.
The Russian, convinced that French morale was collapsing, did not suspect this. “Have your commanders lost their compass, Savary?” Dolgoruki gibed.
The aide was almost as good an actor as me. “I don’t know what the devil we’re doing. I’m only a messenger, Prince, saddled with a petition for truce and an American imbecile as an aide.”
“It’s probably cold up on that hill,” I suggested aimlessly, to reinforce my apparently notorious stupidity. “Marching to get warm, I’d guess.”
“We know we outnumber you,” the prince pressed. “We know you’re stretched thin.” It was a boast, but also a clumsy attempt to get information. “We know you hope to fall back on Vienna.” He wanted to provoke us into betraying something useful.
“I’ve seen the French at war in Italy and Egypt,” I told Dolgoruki with perfect honesty. “They’re demon fighters. Bonaparte can be a lion. As a man who has watched too many wars from all sides, permit me to say that a truce is a chance to save everyone. Just to give friendly warning.”
“Now you’re a strategist, American?”
“A Franklin man. An electrician. Do you know I broke a French attack once with a jolt from electrical batteries? Franklin learned how to store energy in jars like pickles. It’s the damnedest thing.”
“He exaggerates,” said Savary, who had no idea what I was talking about.
“I’m just saying this is your last chance to parley.”
Yes, we were quite the dissemblers, Savary and I. The French army seemingly going backward, Napoleon begging for twenty-four hours, and the full might of Russia finally assembled. I’d have been eager to attack, too.
“Let’s hear what your emperor replies,” the Russian said. He stretched in his stirrups, obviously excited and impatient to report back.
Napoleon deliberately kept us waiting, and as the three armies shuffled, I had the common sense to take a nap. Soldiers and diplomats learn to snooze when they can. Finally, well after dark, Bonaparte galloped up with an entourage of fifty officers, ready to receive the written reply of Francis and Alexander. He opened the letter, read by lantern light, frowned—pretending again—and walked apart from us to confer with Prince Dolgoruki alone.
We couldn’t hear what was said, but their voices rose higher. After fifteen minutes, too brief for any real negotiation, the French emperor waved his hand dismissively and the prince bowed and strode back, stiff as a stick. He mounted his horse and called his orderlies.
“The Russian and Austrian emperors have not agreed to a truce, and yours insists he is not retreating,” the prince said. “It seems you are bent for war.”
“As are you,” Savary replied.
“We will meet battle like brave men.”
“Courage on all sides, I suspect.”
“Those who have to fight.” The Russian glanced at me, and I shrugged. Then he yanked his reins tall, proud, and eager, and galloped. Good riddance.
Napoleon mounted his own white mare, a splendid Arabian named Marengo, and trotted over. The Mameluke bodyguard Roustan hovered protectively behind.
“You provoked them as I hoped, Ethan,” he said with easy familiarity.
“I’m happy to help, Your Majesty,” I said diplomatically. “I will now leave your service to proceed to Prague. Best of luck, mission accomplished, give my regards to the empress.”
“Have a silver snuff box.” It was the emperor’s standard gift. “I’m pleased with your duplicity. I think Dolgoruki will urge his army to plunge into our plan.”
I don’t sniff tobacco, but a box to hold it was worth hocking. “Thank you. I’m actually the most honest of men, which is why no one believes me.”
“Come,” Napoleon said. “Just one more inquiry before you go.” Our assembly rode back west on the road toward Brunn, passed the Pratzen Heights in the dark, to our left, and came to the main army, hidden behind the hill. Generals fell in with his entourage as if joining a posse, their bicornes and bouncing plumes reminding me of the soldiers’ nickname, “the Big Hats.”
We slowed to a walk when we entered the camp of the emperor’s guard, tall men with proven battlefield courage who boasted the privilege of growing mustaches. Napoleon called them his grognards, the veteran grumblers. Fires flickered ahead, illuminating the emperor’s tent. Napoleon spoke in a low voice. “I want to show you a bauble, Gage. You know how I believe in signs and portents.”
“I know you believe in destiny.”
“The day after tomorrow is the first anniversary of my crowning as emperor. An interesting opportunity, no? I want to fight on a lucky day.”
“Some of my savant friends say fortune is just coincidence.”
“Yet I am emperor, and they are not. How else but destiny to explain where I am? Remember landing on the beach with me at Alexandria and finding the woman who became your wife? How else can we explain my rise, and your survival?”
“We’re both clever opportunists, mon empereur. You more than me.”
“And both fascinated by powers beyond the material world. I remember the power of the Great Pyramid, and your quest for mystical objects. Come, inside my tent.”
We entered alone, a sign of favor that startled Napoleon’s officers and guards. Roustan and Constant tried to follow, but Napoleon waved them off. “Gage is a rogue, but a rogue I trust.”
I suppose I could have stabbed the man, but the opportunity didn’t even occur to me. Despite my impatience, I felt proud at consorting with emperors. They’re dangerous as adders, but seductive as succubi.
He went to a jewelry box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. “I don’t really trust you,” he said to me alone, “just as I trust no man completely. Trust is for fools. A few men would die for me, like Roustan and Mustapha, but that doesn’t make them friends, and certainly not advisers. I control men with honors, power, money, fear, and praise. You’re more honest than most in admitting self-interest, and it’s your self-interest I trust.”
“I suppose I’m flattered, but I really must be on my way.”
“Yes, yes. Here is my charm.” He withdrew a curious object slightly shorter than my forefinger. A crystal lion with a human head reposed on a brightly jeweled silver base dotted with rubies and emeralds. The talisman had two jeweled arms curving down like the inverted beak of a long ship, so that if you flipped the object upside down, the base could look something like a boat. Hinged shields hung on either side. I estimated the knickknack was worth more than I’d ever earned or stolen.
“It’s beautiful, Your Majesty. Odd. Impractical. Costly.”
“It’s the Sphinx, but the Sphinx with the face of Joséphine. Don’t you see? Canova carved it from rock crystal, a magical substance between the visible and invisible worlds, life and the afterlife. Seers use such crystal.”
“My wife would be impressed. A hundred gems, I reckon.”
“Precisely 114. They’re arranged in a pattern that encodes important dates in my life. In these places”—he pointed to the ruby flaps—“there are twenty-one, corresponding to the twenty-one cards of the tarot. The emeralds are Corsican green. Red rubies represent rose, the name my wife used before I married her. The rose is mystical, Gage.”
“So Astiza tells me.”
“The artistry is inspired by the mysteries we learned in Egypt. The Sphinx has a lion’s body, and Leo is my astrological symbol. Its breasts symbolize my hope that my wife will suckle an heir. The silver cone on the base holds a lock of her hair.”
“You’re a romantic, general.” His marriage was actually turbulent. I’d been present when he almost divorced Joséphine because of her unfaithfulness, and he’d used her infidelity to justify a string of mistresses. Yet, since he crowned her empress, his anxious fondness had grown. He desperately wanted a son.
Napoleon watched me with that intensity that makes every courtier uncomfortable, and every soldier brave. His fingers worked the piece. “This is what I want you to see.”
He flipped the ruby flaps upward and held the object so I was looking down on it. “What pattern?”
I thought a moment. “A cross.”
“Exactly. The rosy cross of the Rosicrucians, that mystic sect in search of ancient knowledge. I think that order had the power to foretell the future. So my question to you is: Where is the Brazen Head?”
I was startled he’d remember to bring this old quest up on the eve of a great battle, but then, Napoleon forgot nothing. He’d set Astiza and me on our mission to find the mechanical oracle, and could open and close the memories of his brain like drawers in a cabinet. “I presume my wife is looking for it.”
“You remember the Little Red Man.”
I felt chilled. I didn’t want that devilish imp appearing here. “Yes. The gnome serves as your fortune-teller.” By legend the creature had appeared to French kings and queens for generations, and lived in the attics of palaces.
“At his convenience, not mine. The creature gives enigmatic hints, but never the full answers I plead for. I need a prophet I can control, Ethan. I need one as reliable as a clock. I need the Brazen Head.”
Here was an opportunity. “Which is precisely why I’m hurrying to find Astiza, mon empereur. Your diplomatic mission sending me to Lord Nelson delayed our reunion, but I’m desperate to get on with the hunt. You and I are in complete agreement. Send me to Prague. With a stipend for expenses, and maybe a medal for my services.” It never hurts to ask.
“And you’ll report only to me, not my ministers?”
He must mean Talleyrand. Why everybody was in such a bother to learn the future baffled me, since news is usually bad and death inevitable, but I had to be careful not to be caught between the powerful. “Of course.” It wasn’t much of a lie, since I didn’t believe this “android” really existed. “You can trust Ethan Gage.”
“I already told you I trust only your self-interest. So yes, I’ll send you to Prague, but in the company of your old cabal of conspirators. They’re instructed to keep the closest possible eye on you and, if you find her, Astiza.”
“Cabal?” I’d none that I knew of.
“A woman.”
“Here? In an army camp?”
“Your former governess, Catherine Marceau. A beauty, as you know, and a spy of unusual drive and persistence. She was a great help at my coronation.” He looked at me sternly. “As were you.”
My attempt to sabotage his ceremony had been turned into a self-crowning triumph that made Napoleon the talk of Europe—and me overlord of a fiasco. Catherine was a spider who patrolled his webs. Now she’d followed me from Vienna? Catherine was as trustworthy as Delilah with scissors, and I regarded her like the plague. How to put it nicely? “Her combination with my wife would make our mission awkward,” I said. “Too much beauty all around.”
“The policeman Pasques is here to keep peace between all of you.”
I had to clear my throat. “The devil you say. Pasques has come, too?”
“You will find this fabulous automaton, Ethan, and bring it to me. You will be loyal to me and me alone. Is that understood?”
So Baron Richter was looking for the Brazen Head with some kind of Invisible College, Talleyrand yearned for it as well, and Catherine Marceau was employed directly by Napoleon. Working for any one of them was like jumping into a dog pit. I was sweating in the cold. “Of course, mon empereur.”
“Marceau said she’s looking forward to reunion. She’s lovely enough to test your wedding vows. I’d like to tup her myself. Look, there she is.” He lifted the tent flap and pointed.
A woman with a great mane of golden hair sat fifty yards away by a campfire, facing away, knees pressed primly together, a riding cloak pulled tight against the cold, her slim hands holding a parasol. Next to her was a man as big as a bear. Pasques was leaning close and murmuring something. She was looking into the fire. “She does catch the eye,” I managed.
“The pair is thrilled that fate brought you to my headquarters.”
“I suppose they are.” I’d kicked and shot at Pasques, sabotaged Catherine’s pistol, and shoved her across an altar, but not before I’d seen her in the bath.
Napoleon smiled wolfishly. “Always you find attractive companions. You’re as bad as Murat. Shall I summon her?”
I had to think quickly. “I ate unwisely.” My face had conveniently turned gray at his news, but now I could use that to my advantage. “Before I say hello to a pretty lady, I’m afraid I must visit the latrine.” Not the most dignified of escapes, but the only one I could think of.
“Now?”
“Unless you’d lend your chamber pot.”
“I think not.” His tone was dry.
“Can your guards point the way? I remember at Boulogne you said how hard it was to hold your piss during ceremonies.”
He tapped his foot and gestured with his head. “In the ravine behind. Leave by the back of my tent, but be quick. Catherine Marceau is impatient, and I am busy.”
“I will run.”
And I did.