lacks a certain . . . subtlety. That’s what I provide. I have my own spies. So I know that your mission will take you to Bohemia and other parts of the Austrian Empire. And if you find the android that men are seeking, you must not drag it back to Paris.”
I felt uneasy. Did his political omniscience make him friend or foe? “I’m ordered to bring the Brazen Head to the emperor.”
“No, you’re not. His armies will come to you.”
“But Napoleon is marching on London.” Once more I was playing the spy for the British, worming out strategic clues. But who was I, really? Why was I standing with the French Machiavelli when I should be sitting with my family? Each time I tried to provide for or avenge my wife, it seemed to result in separation.
My only salvation was my secret belief that somehow, at some time, I’d win the chance to do something truly good and make up for all my sins.
“Napoleon will march in many directions before he’s finished. And he will be finished someday, as will we all. So look ahead, Gage, look ahead.”
“I’m better at looking into the past. Old tombs and ancient rubbish. Often what we seek doesn’t exist at all.”
“This automaton does.” Talleyrand still watched the golden carriages, crossing the Seine now onto the Île de la Cité, crowds roaring and rippling. “You must find the android first. At the end of the sixteenth century Rudolf II, Holy Roman emperor, established his capital in Prague. It’s a learned city and a mysterious one, tucked away from the main avenues of armies and attracting alchemists, wizards, astronomers, and numerologists. Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler mapped the planets while at his court. Composers performed. Artists painted. Necromancers drew magic circles on cellar floors. Rudolf was mad, but he was also brilliant, and he built a wing at Prague Castle that had cabinets full of strange curiosities. They included a bowl of
agate he believed to be the Holy Grail, a unicorn horn, gemstones, magical swords, clocks, astrolabes, telescopes, and stuffed exotic animals. His gardens had plants from around the world.”
“My boy would like to see that.” It never hurts to remind the powerful that you have a family, in order to encourage mercy should you need it.
“The cabinets have been lost, as have the laboratories where Rudolf’s alchemists such as Edward Kelly and John Dee sought the Philosopher’s Stone. There was parchment of indecipherable writing, peculiar art, intricate mazes, and religious trinkets from lost kingdoms.”
“Now that my wife would like to see.”
“Rudolf never married but had lovers, male and female, who held power over him. They ranged from Ottoman temptresses to a prince of Transylvania. But more than anything he was seduced by knowledge.”
The wind was cold, the sky that lovely robin’s-egg blue of winter, and the procession dazzling as it approached. Napoleon’s golden coach had reportedly cost a million francs. It was paneled in glass to allow people to glimpse him, and was festooned with medallions, coats of arms, allegorical figurines, and enough sculpted eagles to stuff a nest. The coachman was César, who’d saved Bonaparte’s life from the Infernal Machine. Roustan the Mameluke rode protectively behind. The team was eight gray horses decorated with braided manes, bronze-colored reins, and red Moroccan harnesses.
Facing the emperor in the coach were the only two brothers who consented to attend, Joseph and Louis. Brother Lucien, the hapless politician who’d helped Napoleon seize power in 1799, was sulking in Rome because the emperor found him incompetent. Brother Jerome had joined him, smarting from Napoleon’s insistence that he annul his marriage to the American beauty Betsy Patterson and disown his child by her. With them was Napoleon’s shrewish mother Letizia, who’d chosen needy Lucien over hardheaded Napoleon.
How far we’d both climbed—Napoleon to royalty, which made him resented by a dependent family; me to games I wasn’t prepared to play. Instinct suddenly told me to be anywhere than where I was standing.
“I always enjoy a history lesson, Grand Chamberlain, but again am surprised you’ve time to share it. Why are you telling me all this?”
“To guide you, because it’s imperative you succeed. I’m going to suggest you look for the Brazen Head that Napoleon wants you to find amid the castles and caves of central Europe. You want to head east. I’m going to give you the hilt of a broken sword that may prove a clue. I’m doing so because I want to examine this marvel myself. Napoleon would