And then I saved the day.
I got no official credit in the campaign histories, of course; I was an agent of no official standing. I was simply one of the ‘couriers’ sent to fetch Desaix. But I got to the little general a full eight hours before any messengers Napoleon sent, and Desaix finally came in time. He reined up near Napoleon late afternoon, his division filing into line, and listened patiently to his commander’s glum recitation of the day’s reverses.
‘The battle is certainly lost,’ the divisional commander agreed. ‘But there is still time to win another.’ And then Desaix counterattacked.
After eight hours of brutal fighting, the Austrians thought victory was theirs. The aged Melas, badly bruised after being thrown from his horse two times, had left the mopping-up to his subordinates and retired from the field. Napoleon’s columns were wrecked, and his exhausted opponents assumed they’d sleep in San Guiliano.
But Desaix’s fresh division hit them like a shock, an Austrian ammunition wagon blew up, and then General François Etienne de Kellermann saw an opening and led four hundred French dragoons into the side of the enemy. It was a brilliant charge of the kind they put into paintings, a rumble like an earthquake, green clods flying from the pounding hooves, sabres bright, plumes waving above the dragoons’ towering bearskin hats – an equine avalanche that took the Austrians when they were weariest. The enemy, victorious one minute, were in headlong retreat the next, hundreds captured by the hurtling horsemen. I hadn’t seen anything so astounding since Napoleon’s own timely arrival at Mount Tabor in the Holy Land, converting a certain Turkish victory into a Turkish rout with a cannon shot.
Bonaparte was less surprised. ‘The fate of a battle is a single moment,’ he remarked.
Brave little Desaix was shot dead at Marengo at the moment of his greatest triumph, and there has been as much romantic nonsense over this tragedy as Napoleon’s crossing of the Alps. ‘Why am I not allowed to weep?’ the conqueror was later recorded as saying, suggesting a tenderness I never saw him display towards any man, or any woman, either. Napoleon weep? To him, life was war and people were soldiers to be used. He was sad, yes – Desaix was as valuable as a good horse – but hardly morose about one more corpse in a square mile of carnage. The truth is that the bullet entered through Desaix’s back, either from Austrian fire as he swung around to exhort his men or, just as likely, from an errant bullet from his own side. The number of men accidentally killed or wounded by their excited, confused, and frightened comrades is one of the dirty secrets of war.
We’d learn later that General Kleber, whom I’d soldiered with on the beaches of Alexandria and the battlefield of Mount Tabor – and who Napoleon had left in command in Egypt – was assassinated by a Muslim fanatic at almost the same moment Desaix fell. So go the people who have been chapters in our lives. Generals are spent like coins.
By day’s end there were twelve thousand Austrian and French dead or wounded, dead and dying horses, shattered caissons, and dismounted artillery. The Austrians had lost another six thousand prisoners and forty cannon.
‘I have just put the crown on your head,’ Kellermann remarked, an impolitic truth he wouldn’t be forgiven for. Let honour be bestowed; don’t grasp for it.
I made no such boast, but could have. At 4 p.m. at Marengo, Napoleon’s rule was finished; by 7 p.m. it had been confirmed. Instead, wisely keeping my mouth shut for once, I wangled my way onto Bonaparte’s swift carriage back to Paris after the Austrians agreed to armistice.
On our journey Napoleon confided that his ambition had merely been whetted. ‘Yes, I have done enough, it’s true,’ he told me. ‘In less than two years I have won Cairo, Paris, and Milan, but for all that, were I to die tomorrow I should not at the end of ten centuries occupy half a page of general history!’
Who else counted their history pages a thousand years hence?
Back in Paris, I was put to work helping negotiations with the newly arrived American commissioners. The confidence I’d won from Bonaparte eased the way for the Franco-American treaty. And so I concluded my tale of derring-do at Mortefontaine where we’d gathered to celebrate peace. We toasted, Pauline Bonaparte’s eyes sparkling at my tale, and even grim Magnus Bloodhammer looking at me with grudging respect.
I downed another glass and smiled modestly. It’s good to be the hero.
‘Monsieur Gage,’ Pauline invited, ‘would you like to see my brother’s cellar?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
One of the promises of our new nineteenth century is the practical simplicity of women’s clothing. In the old days, getting past the skirts, corsets, and garters of a noblewoman was as complicated as reefing a barkentine in a gale. A man might be so wearied by ribbons, stays, laces, and layers that by the time he got to squeezable flesh he’d forgotten what all the effort was for. The new Revolutionary fashions, I’m happy to report, are less complicated, and getting at Pauline, nestled between two wine kegs, was not much more complicated than lowering the gallant at top and hoisting the mainsail at bottom, noting she had dispensed with chemise and bunching what little there was at her waist while she sang like a choir. Lord, the girl had enthusiasm! Her breasts were even better than what portraiture has recorded, and her thighs nimble as scissors. We bucked and plunged like a Sicilian stagecoach, Pauline as hot as a Franklin stove, and I could happily have had her in a few more cellar nooks and crannies, sampling the vintages this way and that, if rough hands had not suddenly seized me and jerked me back like a cork popping out of a bottle.
The indignity!
It’s hard to fight back with your trousers about your ankles, and I was too surprised in any event to react. Damnation! Had General Leclerc come back from his cantonment after all? I could try to explain we were merely dusting the bottles, but I didn’t think he’d believe me, given that both Pauline and I were both more exposed than a Maine lighthouse in a howling nor’easter.
‘He assaulted me!’ she shrieked, which was no more likely to be believed, given her amorous reputation.
‘You shouldn’t thrust yourself in where you do not belong,’ one of my assailants said with an accent I couldn’t place, just before a clout to the head blurred my vision and buckled my knees. My manhood was wilting and my longrifle and tomahawk had been checked with my greatcoat in the anteroom upstairs. I have an all too fervent imagination of what various enemies might do to me and woozily tried to cross my legs.
‘I know what this looks like …’ I began.
A gag went into my mouth.
Instead of having my throat or something even more valuable cut, they seemed determined to truss me like a sausage. Ropes were thrown around me as they pummelled and kicked, and in my daze I had the wit to do only one thing: fetch a handful of the chocolates I’d filched from my waistcoat pocket and slip them into my shirtsleeve just as my wrists were being bound. Having been tied before, I’d spent time giving the problem some thought.
I dimly saw Pauline was allowed to flee, pulling up and pushing down her filmy garment. One does not tie up Napoleon’s sister! Then, my own pants hauled up as well, I was dragged down a dark corridor to a cellar door that led to the gardens beyond. Given the situation, I didn’t expect her to call for my rescue.
So I tried to reason my way out. Unfortunately, my gag reduced my logic to muffled mumphs and growls.
‘Save your breath, American. You don’t even understand what you’re involved in.’
Hadn’t I been in the first consul’s sister? Or was this about something else entirely? I’d assumed I was being manhandled by the vengeful minions of Pauline’s husband or brothers, but perhaps some other retribution was going on. I tried to review who else might want me dead. Had someone really seen me leave that ruined Italian farmhouse, and was Renato just the first attempt at Egyptian Rite retribution, given that I’d incinerated Count Alessandro Silano? Had the Apophis snake cult from Egypt somehow trailed me to Paris? The British might be annoyed that I was once more with the French, like a shuttlecock in the wind. Then there were a few young ladies less than satisfied with the circumstances of our parting, a gambling victim or two, the occasional creditor, the entire Austrian army, the English sailors from HMS Dangerous whose pay I had taken in cards, the angry Muslims from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem …