influencing my nation’s future. I’ve heard of you, Mr Gage, and your own remarkable scholarship.’
‘Curiosity at best. I’m very much the amateur savant.’ Yes, I can be modest when women aren’t around. ‘I suspect the ancients knew something of electricity’s strange power, and we’ve forgotten what we once knew. Bonaparte almost had me shot in the garden outside the Tuileries, but decided to retain me on the chance I might be useful.’
‘And my brother spared a beautiful Egyptian woman at the same time, I heard,’ Pauline murmured. She’d come up behind us, smelling of violets.
‘Yes, my former companion Astiza, who decided to return to Egypt to continue her studies when Napoleon talked of sending me as an emissary to America. Parting was sweet sorrow, as they say.’ In truth I longed for her, yet also felt unshackled from her intensity. I was lonely and empty, but free.
‘But you’re not in America,’ Ellsworth said. ‘You’re here with us.’
‘Well, President Adams was sending you three here. It seemed best to wait in Paris to lend a hand. I
‘Have your studies helped your gambling, Mr Gage?’ Bloodhammer’s voice had a slight aggression to it, as if he were testing me. Instinct told me he was trouble.
‘Mathematics has helped, thanks to the advice of the French savants I travelled with. But as I was explaining to Davie, true understanding of the odds only persuades that one must eventually lose.’
‘Indeed. Do you know what the thirty-six numbers of a roulette wheel add up to, sir?’
‘Haven’t thought about it, really.’
The Norwegian looked at us intently, as if revealing a dark secret. ‘Six hundred and sixty-six. Or 666, the Number of the Beast, from Revelations.’ He waited portentously for a reaction, but we all just blinked.
‘Oh, dear,’ I finally said. ‘But you’re not the first to suggest gambling is the devil’s tool. I don’t entirely disagree.’
‘As a Freemason, you know numbers and symbols have meaning.’
‘I’m not much of a Mason, I’m afraid.’
‘And perhaps entire nations have meaning, as well.’ He looked at my companions with disquieting intensity. ‘Is it coincidence, my American friends, that nearly half of your revolution’s generals and signers of your Constitution were Masons? That so many French Revolutionaries were members as well? That Bavaria’s secret Illuminati were founded in 1776, the same year as your Declaration of Independence? That the first boundary marker of the American capital city was laid in a Masonic ceremony, as well as the cornerstones for your capitol building and president’s house? That’s why I find your two nations so fascinating. There is a secret thread behind your revolutions.’
I looked at the others. None seemed to concur. ‘I frankly don’t know,’ I said. ‘Napoleon’s not a Mason. You’re one yourself, Bloodhammer?’
‘I’m an investigator, like you, interested in my own nation’s independence. The Scandinavian kingdoms united in 1363, a curious time in our region’s history. Norway has been in Denmark’s shadow since. As a patriot, I hope for independence. You and I have things to teach each other, I suspect.’
‘Do we, now?’ This Viking seemed rather forward. ‘What do you have to teach me?’
‘More about your nation’s beginnings, perhaps. And something even more intriguing and powerful. Something of incalculable value.’
I waited.
‘But what I wish to share is not for all ears.’
‘The usual caveat.’ People have a habit of talking grand, but what they really want is to milk me for what I know. It’s become a game.
‘So I ask for a word with you in private, Gage, later this evening.’
‘Well.’ I glanced at Pauline. If I wanted a private word, it was with her. ‘When I complete my other engagements, then of course!’ I grinned at the girl and she returned the volley.
‘But first the American must tell us his adventures!’ she prompted.
‘Yes, I’m curious how you found yourself in Italy,’ Ellsworth added.
So I played up my deeds in the season just past, more anxious to explore Napoleon’s randy sister than my nation’s beginnings. ‘France this spring was beset by enemies on all sides, you’ll recall,’ I began with a storyteller’s flair. ‘Napoleon had to win a European peace before he had the strength to negotiate an American one. Despite his scepticism of my loyalties and motives, I was called to the Tuileries to answer some questions about America. I wound up making a casual remark about Switzerland.’ I smiled at Pauline. ‘Without exaggerating too much, I think I played a critical role in the French victory that followed.’
She fanned herself, the crowd and candles making all of us too warm. A little moisture glistened in the vale between her enchanting orbs. ‘I think it grand you could aid Napoleon as Lafayette helped Washington,’ she cooed.
I laughed. ‘I’m no Lafayette! But I did have to kill a double agent …’
CHAPTER THREE
The Tuileries Palace, neglected after the construction of Versailles and then damaged by Paris mobs during the Revolution, still smelt of wallpaper paste and enamel when I was summoned to visit Napoleon the previous spring.
Since my stay of execution and unexpected employment by Bonaparte in November of 1799, I’d conferred with his ministers about the slow negotiations with America. But beyond offering ignorant opinions – I was badly out of date with events in my own homeland – I really hadn’t done much for my French stipend besides renew acquaintances and read months-old American newspapers. Apparently, Jefferson’s Republicans were gaining on Adams’s Federalists, as if I cared. I gambled, flirted, and recovered from the injuries of my latest adventures. So I could hardly complain when I was finally ordered, in March of 1800, to report to the first consul. It was time to earn my keep.
Napoleon’s secretary, Bourrienne, greeted me at eight in the morning and led me down the corridors I remembered from my duel with Silano the autumn before. Now they were bright and refurbished, floors gleaming and windows repaired and bright. As we neared Bonaparte’s chambers I saw a line of busts carefully selected to show his historical sensibility. There was a marble Alexander (his boyhood hero) and stalwarts like Cicero and Scipio. When the cavalryman Lasalle was asked by his captors how old his youthful commander was during Napoleon’s first Italian campaign, he had wittily replied, ‘As old as Scipio when he defeated Hannibal!’ Also frozen in marble was the late George Washington to show Napoleon’s love of democracy, Caesar to suggest his command of government, and Brutus for his act of stabbing Caesar. Bonaparte covered all his bets.
‘He begins his day in the bath and will receive you there,’ Bourrienne said. The novel idea of bathing every day was a new fad among French Revolutionaries. ‘He can spend two hours in the tub reading correspondence.’
‘I don’t remember him as so fastidious.’
‘He has a rigorous regimen of cleanliness and exercise. He keeps telling me he fears growing plump, though I can’t imagine why. His energy leaves him meatless, and us exhausted. He’s still lean as a boy. It’s odd for a man in his prime to have a picture of himself heavier and more torpid in the future.’
Odd unless you’ve lain in the sarcophagus of the Great Pyramid as Napoleon did, and possibly saw visions of your own coming life. But I didn’t say that, and instead pointed at one of the busts. ‘Who’s this bearded fellow, then?’
‘Hannibal. Bonaparte calls him the greatest tactician, and worst strategist, of all time. He won almost every battle and lost the war.’
‘Yes,’ I said, nodding as if we shared the military assessment. ‘Hannibal and his elephants! Now that must have been something.’
‘I’ve seen one of the animals at the menagerie the savants have founded at the Jardin des Plantes,’ Bourrienne replied. ‘God has an imagination.’
‘Franklin told me they’ve found bones of ancient elephants in America.’
‘Your famous mentor! We should have his bust here too! I will make a note of it.’ And with that I was
