for pluck and genius. It’s splendid how things work out.”
“That’s exactly what Sidney Smith said. They don’t work out at all.”
“Just try not to jostle the cylinder on your back, Ethan. I’d hate to see you explode.”
The cylinder contained some witches’ brew invented by an English chemist named Priestly. I was also carrying two hundred feet of fine-stranded climbing rope, a grappling hook, a five-pound sledge, a cold chisel, two naval pistols, a frontier hunting knife, coat and boots for the man I was rescuing, and winter dress for myself. I’d had to sign a receipt for all of it, and buy my own leather gloves besides.
Yes, it was a ridiculous assignment, but I kept my mind on my goal. Get my jewel and family back, learn of Aztec treasure, and leave these lunatics behind.
“What if they don’t let my wife out?”
“That’s exactly why your scheme must succeed. When a medieval knight returned from the Crusades to this fort and suspected his seventeen-year-old bride Berthe of infidelity, he locked her in a three-by-four-foot cavity for ten years. She couldn’t stand or stretch, and her only view was of the skeletal corpse of her alleged lover, hanging from a cliff opposite. All the evidence attested to her innocence, but the old warlord wouldn’t listen.”
“This is supposed to reassure me?”
“Inspire you. Astiza is only pretending to be a mistress, and we don’t lock adulterers in cages anymore. Modern times! Still, it’s reason not to tarry on your way up the cliff. When you jump back off, remember to take her with you.”
I recalled this conversation as I picked a route away from the village of La Cluse-et-Mijoux, following a concealing line of pine up a steep slope on which the madman George Cayley, my other English confederate, lugged his contraption. That put me at the foot of a limestone cliff, which I ascended to the base of a limestone wall. The top of that wall was the highest tower of the castle. In other words, to stay out of sight I’d chosen the very hardest place to climb.
“You’re sure your glider will work?” I again asked Cayley, who had nagged the entire way, reminding me not to tear fabric or fray a wire. The English like nothing better than a disagreeable journey with scant chance of success. Their occasional luck accomplishing the impossible only encourages them.
“Perfectly,” he replied. “In theory.”
I am neither monkey nor fly, but I did have factors in my favor. The fortress wall was not absolutely sheer, instead having a slight inward tilt to add stability. It was also so inaccessible that it was in modest disrepair. Frost heave or tremors had opened cracks and twisted stones, giving me handholds that would have been absent in a newer wall. If only I could stop the shake of my limbs! I clawed my way up while not daring to look down, until I could jam my left elbow in a yawning crack, plant each boot on a canted stone, and swing my climbing rope up with my free right arm. I’d used a bowline to tie on the grapple, and now I swung line and hook until it began to rotate in great circles, whistling as it cut through the night.
Finally I leaned out as far as I dared to give myself the best angle and let the line fly. The hook sailed upward, snagged the stone gutter of a conical tower roof, and yanked taut. The other end of the rope dropped to where Cayley was waiting. He began tying on his machine.
I began hauling myself up, eyes blinking against sleet, the extra coat for L’Ouverture flapping like a loose sail. I came near the top, a parapet to my right, and crab-walked across the face of the tower, my boot toes teetering as the angle of the rope steepened.
Almost there!
Unfortunately, I had angled my way in front of a grilled tower window. A candle was burning low inside, almost guttering. A figure rose from bed. Had I made a shadow or sound? Tousling her long hair, a woman peered out.
My face was like a full moon outside the slit of her window.
She was young, pretty, and her nightdress hung temptingly on her form. Lovely breasts and belly, as near as I could discern, and the face of an angel. I paused for a moment, instinctively enchanted.
Then she opened her mouth to scream.
Chapter 2
A stiza and I had been married less than a year, joined in wedlock the summer of 1802 by Lieutenant Andrew Sterett on board the American navy schooner Enterprise. That dashing officer had plucked us out of the sea near Tripoli after we escaped the Barbary pirates.
I suppose our shipboard union wasn’t exactly a woman’s ceremony, given that there could be no flowers, bunting, or bridesmaid. But we did have three redoubtable savants as witnesses (my companions Robert Fulton, zoologist Georges Cuvier, and geologist William Smith) plus my little friend Pierre Radisson to warn my lover that she was crazy to marry a man as senseless as me. Fortunately, I’d met Astiza during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, and she’d had ample opportunity to judge my merits and shortcomings. Cupid had seen fit to reunite us.
The crew did make the ceremony festive by stringing signal flags from the rigging, crafting a temporary bridal train from a scrap of old sail, and organizing an orchestra consisting of fife, drum, bell, and horn that managed barely recognizable versions of “Yankee Doodle” and “Heart of Oak.” A wedding march was beyond their repertoire. After Sterett pronounced us man and wife, I kissed the girl with gusto, danced a jig with little Harry, fondled the emerald I’d stolen from the pasha of Tripoli, and looked forward to a life of ease.
Pierre also gave us a locket he’d lifted in our headlong flight from Tripoli, set with diamonds and worth a gentleman’s yearly income.
“For your honeymoon, donkey,” he told me.
“But you need a reward, too!”
“There’s nothing to buy where a Canadian voyageur goes. Spend this gift on your wife and son.”
Certainly our marriage began as an idyll. Sterett put my family ashore in Naples, and we visited the newly excavated pits at Pompeii dug by antiquarian William Hamilton, who seemed to have permanently lent his wife, Emma, to my old acquaintance Admiral Horatio Nelson. Ruins fascinate Astiza, and even I was intrigued, given that I’d seen Pompeii artifacts in the mansion of Malmaison outside Paris, bought by Napoleon’s wife, Josephine. We congratulated Hamilton on his industry and saw gratitude that we were interested in something other than his straying wife. I judged him happier without the tart, who was too young for him anyway and a parvenu as shameless as me.
From Naples, Astiza, Harry, and I made our way to Rome and its overgrown Forum, and so northward, enjoying the European peace between Britain and France. We had a sunny Christmas on the island of Elba and then, after New Year, 1803, made the quick crossing to France, which was visibly prospering since Napoleon had seized power. We drifted toward Paris, busy learning to be husband and wife.
Astiza was the kind of bright, independent woman whom some men would run from, but who fascinated me. She was seductive as a siren, poised as a goddess, and as commonsensical as a midwife. What she saw in me I can’t say, unless I represented a challenging remodeling project. I simply knew I was lucky to have her, and hauled in my winnings.
I first met her after she helped her Alexandrian master take potshots at Napoleon, and she’s proved a scrapper ever since. She’d been a brilliant slave-highly educated, with a scholar’s curiosity about ancient mystery and a wizard’s determination to make sense out of existence. We’d fallen in love on the Nile, just like Antony and Cleopatra, except with a lot less money.
Despite my infatuation, I daresay there’s more work to a marriage than poets let on. Negotiations are worthy of a Talleyrand. What time to bed and which side do you sleep on? (Left, for me.) Who tracks the money (her) and suggests ways to spend it? (Me.) What rules govern our child (hers) and who works off the boy’s energy with romping play? (Me.) Do we sup in candlelit cellars with hearty portions of ale (my preference) or sunlit terraces with vegetables, fruit, and wine? (Hers.) Who decides on a route, deals with innkeepers, sees to the laundry, drags along souvenirs, initiates lovemaking, rises first, reads late, sets the pace of travel, decides appropriate attire, sketches out an ideal home, lingers in a library, contemplates ancient temples, pays extra for a bath, burns incense, rolls dice, or takes coach seats facing backward or forward?
More seriously, I was set on finding us a home in America, while my wife longed for the sunlit mysteries of
