Papa?”
“A mount is useless if panicked by battle, and so horses have to be trained not to bolt when the noise starts. They have more sense than people and want to run away.”
“Aren’t the horses brave?”
“Nobler than their masters.”
We settled in Boulogne, a small port with cobbled quays and a new stone basin shaped like a half-moon. This was filled with the moored invasion fleet. Larger warships, floating batteries, and underwater chains formed a protective hedge beyond to deter British attack. Four gigantic army camps squatted upslope, three north of the city and one south. A letter from Réal directed me to seek out General Phillipe-Guillaume Duhèsme, to whom I was to offer my eccentric expertise. While the women and Harry explored, I went looking for him.
The scale was imposing. Men of an ordinaire, or squad, were housed fifteen to a hut in rows more than two miles long. Soldiers did their best to make these hovels a home. Some were whitewashed, had wooden floors, and some even had secondhand carpets. Next to each were plots for vegetables, flower gardens, and chicken coops. Officer villas were in a row beyond, and kitchens and latrines beyond that.
There were street signs with the names of French victories, such as Valmy, Fleurus, or Marengo. Veterans of the Egyptian campaign set up miniature pyramids or obelisks made of clay and seashells. Pet cats that helped keep away the vermin prowled longingly beneath the birds in the officers’ aviaries.
There were cheerful oddities everywhere. One hut I passed had a pilfered chandelier, another a pair of Spanish bull horns, and a third chairs fashioned from driftwood. Two veteran sergeants occupied these seats, smoking clay pipes and calling out advice and insults to all who wandered past. A garden statue of Venus was festooned with bawdy notes, and another hut had a mast and boom on the roof, with a rotating sail like a weathercock.
Duhèsme was a tall, thin, and restless officer with an anxiously friendly face; his head tended to bob when talking, like a rooster. He wore his bicorn hat at a jaunty angle, and muttonchops held his chin like calipers. His headquarters were in a requisitioned stone farmhouse, staff offices on the ground floor and sleeping quarters above. Three farmwives had been hired to keep house, and two hunting hounds lay like lazy sentries.
“Ah, the American. Did you bring the Jaeger?”
I’d wrapped the rifle in oilcloth to discourage thieves from its gleam of gold. It was opulent enough to be embarrassing. “I haven’t had an opportunity to use it, General.” I untied the bundle.
His eyes gleamed at its craftsmanship as he reached out.
“May I?”
“Of course.”
He turned it and sighted. “Pretty as a woman. And worth a small fortune.”
“A present from the emperor.” The rifle gave me more credential than a satchel of medals.
“An impressive patron to have in imperial France, though exactly where our empire is—a grand claim for a nation ringed by enemies—has eluded my discovery. I suppose the emperor is an optimist.” He grabbed a tin plate from the table by the house’s kitchen. “And you’re curious about your pretty gun, no? I certainly am. Do you have powder? No? We’ll requisition some. Come, come, let’s give it a try.”
We trudged up a long sweeping hill with the general pointing out Napoleon’s pavilion. “He has an iron bed with a horsehair mattress there, but usually sleeps on feathers on the other side of town, in a mansion called Pont-de-Briques. That’s when he sleeps at all. Mostly he prowls from six in the morning until five in the afternoon, at which time he returns to headquarters to do paperwork, dashing off a hundred orders to all corners of France until midnight. It keeps men at their jobs, I can tell you. He’ll pinch your ear if you displease him, and give you a silver snuff box if he approves.”
“I’m not sure why he brought me here. Perhaps to meet with him?”
“Not today!” He laughed. “Our petit caporal took it in his head to be the first to shoot the mighty mortars we’ve installed to hold off the British ships. The monsters fire sixty-pound shells, and a single hit would be enough to sink a frigate. But as a
former gunner Napoleon was too confident, and he stood so close that the roar and concussion deafened him. He’s had cotton in his bleeding ears the past two days and is sour as bad milk.”
An injury report from famed spy Ethan Gage was something Smith could