I relaxed. All was in place, and I assumed my wife and son would join me shortly. I practiced looking innocent.
The final high plenipotentiaries marched into the cathedral, the pace stately as a wedding. Cardinal Belloy looked serene for a man who has just been robbed in his own chambers, but perhaps nothing much rattles you at ninety-five. Then five long minutes of pregnant silence, except for the rustling and coughs of a huge assembly in a vast cathedral. Finally, a relieved stir when Napoleon paced into view, looking swallowed by his robes. He wore an embroidered classical tunic that fell to his ankles like a nightgown, a sash with enough fabric for a tablecloth, and a red fur-trimmed robe so heavy, and so intricately inlaid with embroidery, that he looked like he was caped in a carpet. It dragged like a cross. I knew Napoleon had battlefield courage, but it took courage of another kind for this kind of performance, where even a misstep would become the merciless gossip of Paris.
Yet Josephine was the one who entranced the crowd.
Women glow when they’re in love, when they’ve made love, or when they are pregnant. The empress had a flush of utter triumph this day. Her smile was closed to hide her poor teeth, but what a wide smile it was, eyes damp, head high, her expression joyous from the religious recognition of her marriage the night before. And now the political legitimization of her role as empress, an opulent crowning that Marie Antoinette never enjoyed!
The Creole from Martinique was the most beautiful I ever saw her, exquisitely made up, and at forty-one—six years older than Napoleon—she looked twenty. Her gown was a spotless white and her scarlet mantle a sumptuous ten yards long, all of it embroidered, bejeweled, and lined with enough white ermine to depopulate the fur farms of Russia. Despite her mantle’s size and weight, it was kept off her shoulders so that she could display elegantly puffed sleeves and a shapely bust; one end of the train was attached near her neck and the other with a strap to her waist. She seemed to be emerging from a pool of velvet and fur.
Women sighed at the sight of her.
Napoleon’s sulking sisters carried Josephine’s train. Yet even in their foul mood they shone from being gowned like goddesses. Each had a tiara, a long dress off the shoulders, and a necklace costly enough to buy a gun battery.
The choreography was intricate as a minuet, the panoply riotously over the top, and the drama absolutely unforgettable, as it was meant to be. Royalists might plot to assassinate a mere first consul and upstart general, but a blessed and crowned emperor? Despite what slaves once whispered into the ears of the Caesars, Napoleon was no longer a mere man. He was a political demigod.
We were transfixed, the women in the audience murmuring with envy and the men muttering excitedly about future opportunities. Napoleon’s ambition fused with that of everyone in the cathedral. They would rise, and risk, with him.
And then there was a jostling of bodies, apologies of excusez-moi, and a man plopped exhaustedly down next to me, taking Astiza’s seat.
“My pardon, monsieur, but I was told this space has become available. What a grand view we share!” I recognized the voice immediately but had trouble placing it, and then realized that by astonishing coincidence I was seated next to Marie-Etienne Nitot, the jeweler who’d first told us last year that my stolen emerald was from a legendary Aztec hoard. Before I could sell it to him, scoundrels attacked us. I’d assumed they learned of the jewel from his boasting.
“Nitot, you devil,” I growled.
“Monsieur Gage, my old friend! Ah, what happenstance! I’d feared you’d come to harm, and yet here we both are, at the center of the new Europe.”
If he felt guilt for the way my family was handled in his shop, he hid it well. I scowled. “You mean the harm that came our way last year?”
“But of course! We were investigating your remarkable gem, the Green Apple of the Sun, and then these rogues accost me! I found my workshop in shambles and you disappeared. I didn’t know what was going on and feared scandal would damage my reputation. Then I was told you have a habit of getting mixed up with unsavory villains.” He was genuinely curious. “Did you get the emerald back?”