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
Map copyright © 2012 Nick Springer, Springer Cartographics LLC
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
Copyright
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
C HAPTER 1
C HAPTER 2
C HAPTER 3
C HAPTER 4
C HAPTER 5
C HAPTER 6
C HAPTER 7
C HAPTER 8
C HAPTER 9
C HAPTER 10
C HAPTER 11
C HAPTER 12
C HAPTER 13
C HAPTER 14
C HAPTER 15
C HAPTER 16
C HAPTER 17
C HAPTER 18
C HAPTER 19
C HAPTER 20
C HAPTER 21
C HAPTER 22
C HAPTER 23
C HAPTER 24
C HAPTER 25
C HAPTER 26
C HAPTER 27
C HAPTER 28
C HAPTER 29
C HAPTER 30
C HAPTER 31
C HAPTER 32
Historical Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by William Dietrich
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher