The Barbed Crown - By William Dietrich Page 0,127

great ceremony in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Horatio and Emma never married, but did exchange rings before his departure for Trafalgar. Their secret ceremony was never recognized. His wife, Fanny, and Nelson’s relatives received pensions from the British government eventually totaling £200,000, but Emma was ignored, and she squandered what Nelson had left her. She died a lonely alcoholic at the port of Calais in France in January of 1815, between Napoleon’s first abdication and his final defeat at Waterloo. Horatia, increasingly estranged from her mother, married a vicar, gave birth to ten children, and lived to age eighty.

Because this novel follows carefully recorded historical events, I’m in debt to contemporary accounts and modern historians. At the necessity of leaving many out, I must acknowledge my regular reference to such scholars as Mark Adkin, Roy Adkins, John Elting, Christopher Hibbert, Christopher Lee, Tom Pocock, Jean Robiquet, and Napoleonic biographers such as Robert Asprey, Proctor Patterson Jones, Frank McLynn, and Alan Schom, all of whom help bring Bonaparte to life. Two valuable works from the early twentieth century are the 1906 The Enemy at Trafalgar by Edward Fraser, which assembles narratives from the French and Spanish participants, and John Masefield’s Sea Life in Nelson’s Time, published in 1905. A number of even earlier historical works on such subjects as the Boulogne Camp, the royalist conspiracy, the French police, and Napoleon’s coronation have become more readily available as reprints in recent years. We even have Indiscretions of a Prefect of Police by Réal himself, though it is more a compilation of period gossip than a confession by the inspector. Recognizing what an extraordinary period they had lived through, many participants wrote memoirs, including Napoleon. All must be taken with a grain of salt. Memories are selective and calculating, and psychologists have found the more we remember something, the more we embroider it. But what tumultuous times their recollections record!

Acknowledgments

The continuation of the Ethan Gage series is made possible by the enthusiasm and support of my editor, Maya Ziv; publisher Jonathan Burnham of HarperCollins; and agent Andrew Stuart. Maya is my new muse in guiding Astiza and pondering the ways of women of the early nineteenth century, Jonathan has a native Brit’s enthusiasm for an American rascal, and Andrew keeps the contracts coming. What a team! Others at HarperCollins I’m indebted to include publicist Heather Drucker; production editor David Koral; designer Richard Ljoenes, who gave a new look to the Ethan books; artist Seb Jarnot, who decided what he might look like; foreign rights marketer Carolyn Bodkin; online marketing manager Mark Ferguson; and many more. HarperCollins is not just a conglomerate, it’s a home.

I benefited from many museums, both French and English, but am particularly thankful for the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth, England. It is remarkable that you can tour Victory as Nelson sailed her, and see where he died. There’s even a shot-torn sail on display that survived the battle.

My wife, Holly, was once more navigator and helpmate in researching this novel, my muse for Ethan’s relationships, and first reader. She endured the tedious line to visit the Paris Catacombs, spending part of our visit with the dead. She enjoyed it, just as balmy Astiza would.

About the Author

WILLIAM DIETRICH is the author of twelve novels, including five previous Ethan Gage titles—Napoleon’s Pyramids, The Rosetta Key, The Dakota Cipher, The Barbary Pirates, and The Emerald Storm. Dietrich is also a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, historian, and naturalist. A winner of the PNBA Award for Nonfiction, he lives in Washington State.

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Also by William Dietrich

FICTION

The Emerald Storm

Blood of the Reich

The Barbary Pirates

The Dakota Cipher

The Rosetta Key

Napoleon’s Pyramids

The Scourge of God

Hadrian’s Wall

Dark Winter

Getting Back

Ice Reich

NONFICTION

Green Fire

On Puget Sound

Natural Grace

Northwest Passage

The Final Forest

Credits

Cover design by Richard Ljoenes

Ethan Gage Portrait by Seb Jarnot

Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris, 1893 (oil on canvas), Edwin Deakin (1838–1923)/The Bridgeman Art Library

Coronation of the Emperor Napoleon I and the Crowning of the Empress Josephine in Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris, December 2, 1804, by Jacques-Louis David and Georges Rouget

Map © David Rumsey Map Collection, www.davidrumsey.com

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE BARBED CROWN. Copyright © 2013 by William Dietrich. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-219407-7

EPUB Edition © May 2013 ISBN: 9780062194114

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

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