We were led upstairs. The maid tapped and Josephine’s voice replied “Come in” with a lightness I hadn’t heard before.
We entered, and there the victor of Abukir and his newly faithful wife lay side by side in bed, covers to their chin, both looking as satisfied as cats with cream.
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“Good God, Gage,” Napoleon greeted. “You’re still not dead? If my soldiers could survive like you, I could conquer the world.”
“We’re only trying to save it, General.”
“Silano said he left you buried! And my wife has been telling your stories.”
“We only want to do what is best for you and France, General.”
“You want the book. Everyone does. Yet no one can read it.”
“We can.”
“So she says, with a record of what you helped destroy. I admire your cleverness. Well, rest assured one thing good has come from your long night. You’ve helped reconcile me to Josephine, and for that I am in a generous mood.”
I brightened. Maybe this would work. I began glancing around for the book.
Then there were heavy steps behind and I turned. A troop of gen-darmes was mounting the stairs. When I looked back, Napoleon was holding a pistol.
“She’s convinced me that instead of simply shooting you, I should lock you in Temple Prison. Your execution can wait until you stand trial for that whore’s murder.” He smiled. “I must say, my Josephine has been tireless on your behalf.” He pointed to Astiza. “As for you, you will disrobe in my wife’s dressing room with her and my maids watching. I’ve summoned secretaries to copy your secret.”
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There was irony in being imprisoned in a
“temple” first built as headquarters for the Knight Templars, then used as a dungeon to hold King Louis and Marie Antoinette before they were beheaded, and finally serving as an unsuccessful jail for Sidney Smith. The English captain had escaped in part by signaling a lady he’d bedded through the prison windows, which was resourcefulness after my own heart. Now, eighteen months later, Astiza and I got to experience the accommodations ourselves, our lodgekeeper the portly, greasy, obsequious, officious, dim, but curious jailer Jacques Boniface, who’d entertained Sir Sidney with legends of the Knights.
We were driven there in the jail’s iron wagon, watching Paris through iron bars. The city seemed drab in November, the people apprehensive, the skies gray. We were watched in turn, like animals, and it was a depressing way to introduce Astiza to a great city. All was foreign to her: the great cathedral steeples, the clamor of the leather and linen and fruit markets, the cacophony of neighing horse traffic and sidewalk merchants, and the boldness of women wrapped in fur and velvet strategically opened to give a glimpse of breast and ankle.
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Astiza had been humiliated by her stripping to copy the key, and didn’t speak. When we alighted alongside the outer keep, in a cold and treeless courtyard, something caught my eye at the compound gate. There were people staring through the grillwork, always glad to see wretches even less fortunate than they, and I was startled to spy one head of bright red, wiry hair, as familiar as a bill of rent and as pesky as an unwanted memory. Could it be? No, of course not.
Temple Prison, which dated from the thirteenth century, was a narrow, ugly castle that rose two hundred feet to the peak of its pyramidal roof, its tower cells lit by narrow barred windows. They opened on the inside to galleries around a central atrium, climbed by a spiral staircase. It says something for the efficiency of the Terror that the prison was largely empty. Its royalist inmates had all been guillotined.
As prisons go, I’ve seen worse. Astiza and I were allowed to stroll the parapet around the roof—it was much too high to try to jump or climb from—and the food was better than in some of the
But the Book of Thoth pulled on us, and Boniface was a gossip who enjoyed relating the machinations of a city at war and under strain.
Plots and conspiracies were fried quick as a crepe, each cabal looking for “a sword” to provide the necessary military muscle to take over the government. The Directory of five leading politicians was constantly reshuffled by the two legislative chambers. And the Council of the Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred were raucous, pompous assemblies who wore Roman mantles, indulged in shameless graft, and kept an orchestra on hand to punctuate legislation with patriotic songs. The economy was a wreck, the army was beggared for supplies, half of western France was in a revolt fueled by British gold, and most generals had one eye on the battlefield and the other on Paris.
“We need a leader,” our jailer said. “Everyone is sick of democracy.
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You’re lucky to be here, Gage, away from the turmoil. When I go into the city I never feel safe.”
“Pity.”
“Yet people don’t want a dictator. Few seek the return of the king.
We must preserve the republic, but how can anyone take the reins of our fractious assembly? It’s like
