Napoleon wheeled to meet this precisely timed flanking maneuver. While Pius stood paralyzed, staring stupidly at the holiest relic in Christendom, the new French emperor calmly turned his back on the prelate, plucked the crown off Murat’s pillow, and put the golden wreath on his own head, cocky as Caesar. He looked defiantly out into the crowd, ignoring the pope and daring anyone to object to his boldness.
There was an excited murmur, rising to a roar as people whispered. “Did you see? He’s crowned himself!” Astonishment rushed through the cathedral like wind and wildfire.
There was a snap as the lid of the golden box that held the Crown of Thorns snapped shut. Pius stood in shock, goggle-eyed and confused.
Napoleon, meanwhile, was erect as a guardsman and as pleased as a triumphant actor. His self-crowning was audacious, unprecedented, and brilliant. The pope was on hand to provide endorsement, but he’d been adroitly prevented by the emperor’s circle, including Catherine Marceau, from doing the act himself. Napoleon’s new stature came not from the Catholic Church, but from the will of the French people. He’d honored a thousand years of tradition, yet surmounted it with his own. He’d maneuvered Christianity into alliance, yet owed the pope nothing. He’d been blessed, but was not a penitent to Rome.
Josephine was still kneeling, hands clasped in prayer, head humbly bowed. A second, more spectacular crown was presented. Instead of mimicking the Roman emperors, this was the medieval style with velvet, gold, and jewels, as big as a helmet. Napoleon lifted it from its pillow, smiled with his mouth but not his eyes, and crowned his own wife empress.
Another gasp rotated round the cathedral. I had lost the ability to breathe. All my mad risk, with wife and son, had served only to elevate the Corsican devil higher than ever! All that I had assumed was a lie.
Pius hurriedly slid the box with the Crown of Thorns under his chair, cast an angry, puzzled glance at Cardinal Belloy, and sat. He looked mortified. Belloy looked bewildered.
Choir and orchestra burst into song.
And I, Ethan Gage, who’d conspired with my family to humiliate this new Caesar, had instead been tricked into elevating his coronation into an assertion of secular state power.
Astiza and Harry had disappeared.
The gendarmes were closing from both sides, spectators objecting as the policemen temporarily blocked their view.
Disaster!
Napoleon was mounting the steep steps up to his new throne. He jerked to a halt at the beginning, the weight of his robes pulling him backward. Leaning into it, he trudged up the stairs to his imperial perch, dragging his mantle like a tarp.
Josephine’s experience was even worse. Just as she reached the stairs the heavy train carried by Napoleon’s sisters was abruptly dropped. I couldn’t tell if the princesses did so out of jealousy or rehearsal, but the fabric weighed half as much as Josephine herself, and it almost toppled her. Napoleon gestured for her to keep going. She bent, surged, and staggered to the top, the clumsiness partly masked by the acreage of her mantle. A sail that big makes anything seem to ripple and flow.
A shaken Pius mounted the stairs after them, completely outmaneuvered, but, following rehearsal, he still kissed the emperor on the cheek. “Vivat Imperator in aeternum,” he proclaimed. A parade of beautiful maidens appeared to carry the Bible and sacramental objects from the altar up to the throne, everyone bowing, holding, thrusting, kissing, and twenty thousand viewers coming to their feet. The presidents of the Senate, Tribunate, and Corps Legislatif came forward to administer the oath. Bonaparte put his hand on the Book of Gospels and recited: “To govern only in accordance with the interests, the happiness, and the glory of the French people.”
“Excusez-moi,” the surrounding gendarmes said as they struggled to reach me. “Ethan Gage, remain where you are!”
Senators, princes, and soldiers roared. Music swelled, the Gothic arches making it sound as if it came from heaven. Outside, a hundred cannons bellowed, and the concussion of the report punched through the air of Notre Dame, the roosting pigeons erupting as if their wings were joining the applause.
I was trapped from the press of people around me. Nitot clasped my arm, excited as a child. “Did you see, did you see? He crowned himself!”
I knocked his hand aside. Where was my family? Catherine had played me from the very beginning. She was an imposter, taking the place of a lovely young aristocrat who had probably been strangled in her cell and