fingers. Why the doxies in these European paintings always have their clothes slipping off I don’t know, but I must say it’s a custom my own more staid America could emulate. Next to the mural were enough foliage, flowers, and folderol to start a forest fire.
The next two rooms had busts of my late mentor Benjamin Franklin and the recently deceased George Washington, respectively. Outside in the park was an obelisk with allegorical figures representing France and America, and the whole affair was frocked with tricolour bunting. Rose petals floated in pools and fountains, rented peacocks strutted on lawns, and artillery banged salutes. It seemed to me that Despeaux had earned his money, and that I, finally, was among friends.
At Joseph Bonaparte’s request, I’d brought along the longrifle I’d helped forge in Jerusalem. A nasty thief named Najac had knocked the piece about, but I’d disposed of him by pushing a ramrod through his heart and later paid twenty francs to restore the stock’s finish. Now I gave a demonstration of the gun’s accuracy. I broke a teacup at one hundred paces and struck a cavalry breastplate five times running at twice that distance, a perforation that impressed officers resigned to the stray aim of muskets. While more than one soldier remarked on the tedious time the rifle took to load, they also said it explained the feared accuracy of our frontiersmen in the North American wars. ‘A hunting piece,’ one colonel judged, not inaccurately. ‘Light to carry, wickedly accurate. But look at the narrow neck! A conscript would break this beauty like a piece of china.’
‘Or learn to take care of it.’ Yet I knew he was right, this was not practical for massed armies. Rifles clog with powder residue after half a dozen shots, while cruder muskets can be banged away by idiots – and are. A longrifle is a sniper’s gun. So I fired again, this time drilling a gold louis at fifty paces. Pretty ladies applauded and fanned themselves, uniformed men sighted down the barrel, and hunting dogs yelped and ran in furious circles.
Napoleon arrived in the September glow of late afternoon, his open carriage drawn by six white horses, gold-helmeted cavalry clopping in escort, and cannon thumping in salute. A hundred paces back, his wife followed in an ivory-coloured coach that gleamed like a pearl. They pulled up with a flourish, steeds snorting and pissing on pea gravel as liveried footmen swung doors open and grenadiers snapped to attention. Bonaparte stepped out in the uniform of his personal guard, a blue tunic with red and white collar, and a sword and scabbard with filigree of wrestling warriors and reclining goddesses. Far from haughty, he was gracious: the fame of the victor at the Pyramids and Marengo spoke for itself! You don’t rise to first consul without some measure of charm, and Napoleon could seduce grizzled sergeants, ladies of the salon, conniving politicians, and men of science in turn – or, if need be, all at once. His calculated sociability was on display this evening. He deferred to Lafayette, who’d helped my own country win independence, and toured the American peace commissioners through the gardens like a country squire. Finally, when the clocks chimed six, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, the minister of foreign affairs, called us to hear the text of the treaty read.
Josephine had popped out of her coach too, and it was all I could do not to scowl. Power became her, I must admit: though never quite beautiful (her nose a little too sharp, her teeth a little too discoloured), she was more charismatic than ever. She sported a string of pearls that had reportedly cost a quarter million francs, coaxing state finance ministers to cook the books so the strand would escape Bonaparte’s scrutiny. Yet no one else begrudged her the jewels. While her husband’s moods could be mercurial, she was consistently well-mannered in gatherings like this, her smile earnest as if the well-being of every guest were her personal concern. Thanks to my help, she’d staved off divorce after cheating on Napoleon and in a few years would find herself empress. But the ungrateful wench had betrayed me and my Egyptian love Astiza, sending us into Temple Prison as payment, and it was because I hadn’t forgiven her that the risk of rutting with Bonaparte’s sister Pauline was somehow more tempting. I wanted to tup a Bonaparte as I’d been tupped. I’d been made a fool of (not the first time), and Josephine’s inevitable presence as first lady, beaming as if she’d won the Revolution’s lottery, was to me a small cloud on an otherwise brilliant day. Widowed by the Terror, she’d bet on the young Corsican and improbably found herself in the Tuileries Palace.
If Josephine brought back pained memories of Astiza’s parting, I was flattered that the American commissioners who’d sought my counsel were generous enough to offer public thanks. Oliver Ellsworth had worked on my nation’s Constitution and served as chief justice of the Supreme Court before taking on this diplomatic task. The two Bills were almost equally renowned: William Richardson Davie, a hero of the Revolutionary War, and William Vans Murray, a Maryland congressman who was now ambassador to the Netherlands. All three had risked the diplomatic snubbing earlier envoys had received in hopes of salvaging John Adams’s sagging presidency. I, their adviser, was younger and rawer and a frustrated treasure hunter, gambler, sharpshooter, and adventurer who had somehow wound up on both the French and the British sides in the recent fighting in Egypt and the Holy Land. But I’d also served briefly as an assistant to the late, great Franklin, had a growing reputation as an ‘electrician’ myself, and – most importantly – had Bonaparte’s ear when he was inclined to listen. We were both rogues (Napoleon was simply better at it than me), and he trusted me as a fellow opportunist. Honorable men are hard to control, but those of us with self-interested common sense are more predictable. So after Marengo I was enlisted as go- between, shuttling from Talleyrand to the impatient Americans, and here we were, making peace.
‘What I like about you, Gage, is that you focus on what is practical, not what is consistent,’ Bonaparte whispered at one point.
‘And what I like about you, First Consul, is that you’re as happy to use an enemy as to destroy him,’ I cheerfully replied. ‘You tried to have me executed, what, three or four times? And here we are, partners in peace.’
‘Not partners. I am the sculptor, you are the tool. But I care about my tools.’
This was hardly flattering, but part of the man’s charm was his blunt, sometimes clumsy honesty. He’d tell women their dresses were too bright or their waists too thick, because he liked his females slim, demure, and dressed in white, apparently as part of some fantasy of virginal beauty. He got away with it because his power was an aphrodisiac. I, meanwhile, was learning to be a diplomat. ‘And I appreciate your toolbox, Paris.’
I can be obsequious when I’m in the mood, and Napoleon’s chambers at the Tuileries were littered with grand plans to make his city the most beautiful in the world. The theatre was flourishing from new government subsidies, the tax and civil codes were being overhauled, the economy was recovering, and the Austrians were beaten. Even the whores dressed better! The man was a brilliant rascal, and gambling salons were so crowded with newcomers that I’d been able to supplement my modest salary with winnings from drunks and fools. Things were going so well that I should have crawled into a hole and braced for the worst, but optimism is like wine. It makes us take chances.
So here I was at the French chateau of the first consul’s brother, semi-respectable to my American brethren, and with a certain cachet as a savant who had charged a chain to electrocute attacking soldiers at 1799’s siege of Acre in the Holy Land. The fact that I’d done this for the British side, not the French, seemed to bother no one, since I was presumed to have no real loyalties or convictions in the first place. Rumours that I had slain a prostitute (absolutely untrue) and burnt a sorcerer (accurate, but he had it coming) simply added to my allure. Between that, my longrifle, and my tomahawk, I was accorded the distinction of being a potentially dangerous man, and there is nothing more likely to raise a flush on the neck of a lady.
I sat smugly through the interminable speeches (my name was actually mentioned, twice) and ate energetically at the state dinner since the food was better than what I could normally afford. I pretended to modesty as I shared adventures that left me with a reputation as somewhat diabolical, or at least oddly durable. Many leading Americans were Freemasons, and theories of Knights Templar and ancient mysteries intrigued them.
‘There may be more to those old gods and ancient ways than we modern men of science have allowed,’ I said grandly as if I knew what I was talking about. ‘There are still secrets worth recovering, gentlemen. Mysteries yet veiled.’ Then we joined in toasts to martyrs for liberty and finally stood from the ceremony. My vanity satisfied, I looked forward to a night of gaming, dancing, and sexual conquest.
The music began and I wandered, gaping like the American I was, at the splendour of French architecture. Mortefontaine made the fancy houses I’d seen in my homeland seem like stables, and Joseph was sparing no expense – now that his brood had access to the French treasury – at making it even better.
‘Grand, but not entirely different from our new home for our president,’ a voice murmured at my side.
I turned. It was Davie, amiable after those champagne toasts. He was handsome, with thick hair, long muttonchops, and a strong, cleft chin. Being in his mid-forties, he was a good ten years older than me.
‘Really? If they produce
