you have a knack for strange success.” He rubbed his hands. “Now, your royalist conspirator, Catherine Marceau, must also work for me if she wishes to live. She doesn’t have to betray her friends, but I want her to advise on my coronation to give it royalist endorsement. The whole point is to demonstrate that my ascension can never be reversed, and so its symbolism must include the reintegration of royalist émigrés like her. I understand Marceau is a student of fashion, so she can confer on gowns and protocol. Do you think she’ll be willing?”
“She loves opulence. As long as you can persuade her that she has no choice but to work on your coronation, what you’re proposing will entirely seduce her.”
“Good. Now, the most important member of your triad is your wife. And how do you regard me, my dear?”
“Competent, but too quick to risk your men.” She glanced at the shore. The girl is honest to a fault, as I’ve said.
He colored. “You began our relationship by shooting at me in Egypt.”
“And you killed my Alexandrian master with a cannon blast.”
“You and I are not so different, madame; we are both fond of the desert. If the entire world was land, not water, I couldn’t be stopped. But the sea frustrates me.”
“Controlled by gods instead of men.”
“Controlled by weather: we’re not in the Dark Ages. Yet from our blustery beginnings, Astiza, things can only improve, no? Was I really so bad for Egypt?”
“A better question is whether Egypt was bad for you. You fled when you could.”
“I didn’t flee, I was called to duty by the plight of France. And you ask that of me, a Corsican? I’m not a man confined by borders. Perhaps I’ll return to Egypt someday. In any event, my invasion there is history, and it is because of history that I’ve asked you here.” He straightened to emphasize he was brisk and commanding, but he was still only her height. “You’re a historian. I understand you’ve been frustrated in getting access to archives in Paris.”
She was surprised. “You know about that?”
“My agents haven’t just followed you, they’ve thwarted you, because I was wary of what you were searching for. I remember the Book of Thoth and your skills as a scholar.” He glanced at me. “Yes, Ethan, I learn everything, and forget nothing.” Then, to her. “But now I promise unlimited access to the records of church, state, and university—if you do something for me in return.”
“Sire?” She used the word before thinking about it.
“Have you heard of the Brazen Head of Albertus Magnus?”
Astiza was cautious, but not surprised. “A very odd legend. The machine was destroyed by Saint Thomas Aquinas, according to the same stories.”
“Perhaps.” He began to pace in front of the bank of windows, lines of troops marching far below like blue centipedes.
“The Brazen Head?” I interrupted. “What the devil is that?”
“Tell your husband, madame.”
She was looking at Napoleon warily, and replied slowly. “Albertus was a Dominican friar who lived in the thirteenth century,” she began.
“About 1200 to 1280,” Napoleon put in, pacing back and forth.
“He was a German, educated in Italy, who came from Cologne to Paris, and became the foremost scholar of his age. Albert was appointed chair of theology at Saint James. Like many learned men he sought the Philosopher’s Stone, that alchemist’s grail with the reputed power to turn lead into gold and grant immortality. He never found it. But unlike others, he didn’t just yearn, he built. Legend says he spent thirty years constructing a manlike figure that could speak.”
“The Brazen Head,” Napoleon said. “A mechanical head made of brass. Not so different from the clever automatons craftsmen make today, which seem to talk, eat, or play chess. Except those are toys, and this was not.”
“Some say Albertus Magnus built an entire body,” Astiza went on, “and one account holds that it was made of iron, not brass, and was called the Iron Man. Still others contend it was wood. About eighty years ago, a new name was suggested for this being: An ‘android.’”
“By Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, what does that mean?” I asked.
“It’s coined from Greek, meaning ‘in the likeness of man,’” she said.
“How do you know all this?”
“Ethan, it’s what I do.” She addressed Napoleon. “Your agents told you I was attempting to research that subject.”
“Yes, and I became intrigued,” the emperor replied.
“The Brazen Head was designed not just to talk and possibly walk, but—according to legend—to answer peculiar questions.”