The Black Hawk

Thirty-six

THE LOUVRE WAS HALF ART MUSEUM, HALF CHAOS. In one gallery, scaffolding and ladders, paint buckets and sheets over the statues. In the next, the bourgeois inspected art.

Nobody knew anything about Napoleon’s visit or Egyptian antiquities or La Dame du Nil or a ceremony. Museum caretakers, guides, guards, passing artists carrying easels—none of them knew a thing. All stupid as mice.

In the courtyard between the buildings of the Louvre a dozen families strolled under the wide, serene sky. She stood with Hawker, both of them out of breath, surrounded by the peaceful and ordinary. Disaster was about to strike France. It would happen here, somewhere within a few hundred yards of her, and she could not find it.

“It hasn’t happened yet.” Hawker searched door to door, window to window, with cold, impatient eyes.

She’d sent one of the guides running to the post of the Imperial Guard, another to the offices of the Police Secrète in the Tuileries, to Fouché. But they would not be in time. She knew it in her bones.

One minute too late, or a century too late, it was all the same.

Think. She must think. “He is not in the public galleries. Not here, in the main buildings. If Napoleon had come to the open, public rooms, all these people would be trying to get a glimpse of him. They would be full of chatter, pointing, hurrying, watching.”

“Big place.” Hawker studied one flank of the buildings, dismissed it, moved on to the next.

“The Louvre is immense. A city in itself.” If she planned such a ceremony, where would she hold it? Where?

On both sides of the courtyard, carved gray stone and tall window stretched to the Tuileries Palace. The Louvre was filled with the offices of government, workshops, lecture halls, apartments. “This is an endless labyrinth with a thousand obscure corners.”

“They’re not holding this donnybrook in some dark corner. What’s substantial?” He made one of his complex gestures. “What’s fancy?”

“He will not be far from the Tuileries. He will review the troops at ten.”

“Where?”

“In the courtyard of the Tuileries Palace.” She pointed south. “I think . . . I think he will not go to the Louvre, with its long delay of meeting so many people. He will stay in the palace itself. On the ground floor there are a dozen salons and reception rooms, all of them famous. The king of France lived there once.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “We have to guess. You take the left side, I’ll head down—”

“No. Look. There is a guard. Standing there, doing nothing. That is the only door with a guard. That’s it. That door.”

She ran. Hawker stayed an instant to mark another arrow in charcoal on the paving stones.

A hundred yards away, where the Pavillon de Marsan connected to the Louvre, the door was open. The guard eyed her suspiciously. “Entrance for the public is at the front. Go back the way you came. Turn, and go through the big door on the left. Walk around.”

Hawker came up beside her and slashed a huge, black arrow in charcoal on the stone wall.

“Here now. You can’t do that. It’s against the law to deface public buildings. There’s a fine for—”

Overlooked, she slipped through the door. Sometimes, it was an advantage to be dressed like no one in particular. To be so obviously of no importance.

The Pavillon de Marsan, here in the Tuileries Palace. It would be here. Yes.

Ancient halls covered with gilt and mirrors. A dozen years ago the sister of the king of France had lived in the apartments here. Where else was so secure, private, and close to Napoleon’s quarters? She could even name the room. Any such ceremony would be held in the Green Salon. That was worthy of a presentation to Napoleon.

Not far.

Hawker caught up to her in the long corridor. She did not ask him how he had dealt with the guard.

One soldier guarded the door of the Green Salon, stiff and proud, gun on his shoulder, very serious, but so young he scarcely merited his mustache. Did the First Consul of France deserve only one infant to guard him?

It took two breaths before she could speak. “Is he inside? Napoleon? The presentation from Egypt?”

“This is a private meeting. See the secretary at—”

“I am policière. I have a message for the chief of your guard. I will enter immediately.” And damn it that she looked untidy and unimportant when she must impress this unimaginative dolt. She fumbled for her lettre d’autorité with its seals and impressive signatures that would get her through any door in Paris.

“My orders are to—” He swung the gun down in front of her, blocking her from the door. Frowned past her to Hawker who was ready to mark the wallpaper with one of his arrows. “What are you doing! This palace belongs to the people of France. It is a treasure of the nation. Give that to me!”

Hawker, bland as a sheep, innocent as a child, held out the charcoal. When the guard reached for it, Hawker grabbed him by the ears, slammed the man’s head down, and cracked it against his knee, The guard fell noiselessly.

Hawker stepped over him and pushed the double door open. She did not need identification papers.

He said, “You get Napoleon out. I’ll find the Englishman.”

A year ago, when she had walked through this room, the walls were painted with hunting scenes. Gods and cherubs looked down from a high, domed ceiling.

The Green Salon was transformed. White gauze, in thin layers, hung from the ceiling and tented out over four huge wood obelisks at the corners of the room. More white gauze curtained the walls, floor to ceiling, hiding the windows, making everything dim and stuffy. Placards, painted with Egyptian gods, had been set up every few feet between huge, upright mummy cases. Everything smelled strongly of linseed oil.

Napoleon stood with his back to her, but he was unmistakable. He was bareheaded, in a dark blue coat, his arms crossed. He was no taller than the men around him. Shorter, in fact. But the compact energy of him could be felt all the way across the room. He turned to talk to the man next to him. Pale skin and a hooked nose. Slashed, dark eyebrows. In this crowded salon he stood out like an eagle in the midst of chickens.

The man at the front, speaking, was Julien Latour, chief of antiquities at the Louvre. She had heard Latour lecture once. Beside him was a thick beef of a man, middle-aged and florid, with a thick, loose lower lip, the very model of an English hunting squire. That was most likely the Englishman they sought. A glance to the side showed Hawker, sliding forward through the crowd, intent upon him.

Between Latour and the Englishman, on a table covered with more of this wispy gauze, lit by torches, was La Dame du Nil, the Lady of the Nile, the carved, painted figure of a woman, a foot tall. It stood on a decorated box, arms outstretched like a bird about to take flight.

La dame. Brought to la tour. Latour.

This was the moment. This was the assassination she must stop.

Thirty or forty men, a dozen women, and a few children jammed together into the room, breathing on one another, leaving only a respectful space around Napoleon. Two guards, bored as cows, had their backs against the drapery that lined the walls. Vezier, the garde sergeant, a man she knew, had put himself to the right of Napoleon.

He was alert. He saw her and came to attention.

She started toward him. In a moment someone in this room would try to kill Napoleon. By pistol shot most likely. She must do nothing, nothing to precipitate that.

She elbowed forward through the pack, rammed her shoulder into someone’s back, tromped hard on the toes of men who would not move out of her way. Through the slit in the side of her skirt, she found the pouch that held her pistol and put her hand on it.

The room was stifling. The torches in their stands on the presentation table burned with tiny, upright flames. Women fanned themselves with informative pamphlets. The flicker and flitter would be a cover and a distraction for someone pointing a gun. She could not look everywhere at once.

At the front, the Englishman kept his hands possessively on the painted box and the statue. Latour droned, “In Fifteenth Dynasty funerary rites, Isis represents the feminine aspect of rejuvenation . . .”

Latour had been boring when she’d listened to him before.

She reached Vezier. She blessed, blessed a thousand times, the habit and training that taught her to know the best men who did useful work at every level. Not only the captain of the Imperial Guard, but the most responsible sergeants. Vezier was one of the men she’d warned yesterday. He knew everything she knew. She could say to him, “It’s here. It’s now. Get him out,” and waste no time in explanation.

Vezier acted at once, all soldier in this. Decision and deed were close as two sides of a coin. He gathered in the other two guards with a lift of the hand and took the step that brought him to Napoleon’s side. Tapped the First Consul’s arm to get his attention. Leaned to speak to him.

Napoleon blinked once. The line of his mouth hardened. He said ten words, then looked directly at her. Nodded. He turned to give orders to the men behind him.

She had become a woman whose word would stop this ceremony. Her warning would interrupt the ruler of France. She was proud of that and suddenly terrified, in case she was wrong. If she had made a mistake, she would be disgraced.

She did not think this was a mistake.

Now to get the First Consul away from the room, to safety. In the crowd around her, no one reached into a coat pocket. No woman opened her small bag and removed a pretty pistol. Puzzled looks began, but that was all.

Hawker slid like a shadow along the great swathes of curtains, brushing them to sway as he went by, his left hand down, poised to retrieve a knife from under his coat sleeve. He searched faces as if he were trying to locate some friend, misplaced. He’d recognize murder in a man’s eyes. He’d see the first twitch to a weapon. He’d smell intent like a cat smells fish.

He advanced toward the Englishman, coming from behind.

Latour, splendidly oblivious, went on, “. . . to an era of peace and cooperation between our nations, symbolized by this artifact, returned to French hands.”

There was a pause. Men began to clap lightly.

The Englishman reached out. She took a step closer. Began to draw her gun. But the Englishman only took up a torch from its holder. Part of the ceremony then.

Then he lowered the torch to the painted box, to the lid beneath the serene figure in white. Flames licked and spread across the patterned box like liquid till it was wrapped in writhing blue fire.

White flames shot upward, four feet high, in a whoosh and a sudden thin column. Sparks flew off in every direction.

Women screamed. The Englishman slipped away behind the curtain of draperies.

She leaped after him, past the fire, around the end of the table, pushing Latour, shocked and openmouthed, aside.

She was in time to see the door close behind the Englishman. Hear it lock.

There were two doors to this room. If this one was locked, the other would be as well.

The door was painted, gilded, ornate, harmless-looking. Solid wood. Locked tight. She grabbed the handle. It didn’t turn. Not with all her strength. She slammed herself against it.

“Get out of the way.” Hawker pushed her aside and knelt. Pulled his picklocks out, rattling them loose from the black velvet wrapping. Set his forehead to the door and began to work, his hands hard and steady as his picklocks.

They were screaming behind her in the room. Men tried to get past her to claw at the door. She braced herself, hands flat on the door panels, arched over Hawker. Protecting him and what he was doing with her body. She spread her legs wide and put her head down and held in place against fists that pounded at her and tried to batter her aside.

Brilliant light behind her. Stark white. The cloth was on fire everywhere. Heat like she’d been pushed, face-first, into a stove. Three breaths, and she was already choking.

Too hot to see. Her eyeballs hurt.

She was going to die.

Hawker’s head pressed under her belly. He was seeing nothing but his work. Not a move out of him but the dance of his hands.

In the room behind her the fire growled like an animal.

She heard the tiny click when the lock turned. Hawker jerked the handle, freed the door, and pushed. The door moved an inch. Stopped. There was a barrier outside the door. Heavy. Immovable.

“It’s blocked from outside.” Hawker was calm, even as he choked.

He turned. Light rippled grim and red on his face. He said, “Owl. I’m sorry.”

Then he set his back to the door. Braced his feet. “You and you. Here. Back to the door. Push.

Four men pushed now, using all their strength. She stepped away and covered her face with her skirt. Bowed her head against the heat.

The door didn’t budge. Not much longer for any of them. Across the room she heard screams and banging. The other door—yes—the other door was locked too, and no one to get it open.

Then Hawker and the desperate, heaving men beside him fell backwards. The door opened outward, abruptly, five inches. Yelling, they pushed again and the door screeched and shuddered an inch more. Then opened enough for the men to edge sideways and through.

She heard the rumble of something being dragged aside. The door flung wide.

The rush of panic and shoving carried her past Hawker and down the hall. Paxton and the first men out of the burning room struggled to shove a heavy bureau out of the way. The guard was limp on the ground next to the wall.

The crowd tumbled out of the room, pushing and choking. Staggering to safety.

She tripped a madman who yammered and tried to run into the blaze. Elbowed him in the belly when he got up and tried again. Saw him held and dragged off by others. She beat at the dress of a woman whose light printed cotton had caught fire. A man—brother or lover or passing stranger—pulled his jacket off and closed it around the girl, smothering the flames.

She yelled at him, over the shouting and the howl of the fire, “Get her out of here. To the fountain outside. Soak her with water.”

Those who had escaped were blocking the path of those still in the room. She pushed one man and another. “Go. Get out of the way.” Sent them down the hall. And still Napoleon did not come.

It was bright as fireworks inside. Men and women ran for the door through a corridor of the fire. Through flames that poured like rivers, going upward.

The First Consul was the last man out. His guard pushed two women, a gasping man, and a boy carrying a baby ahead of them. Then Napoleon emerged, even after his guard, covering his face with his arms.

Behind him, in the open doorway, smoke descended like a slow curtain. A hollow roaring built. The fire became solid, flames fingering the doorway. Wind blew from the hall behind her toward the fire.

An inferno of heat. Such heat that she retreated from it. Anyone left inside that room was dead.

Men ran past her, toward the fire. Soldiers carrying buckets of water and sand. Down the hall, outside in the courtyard, men yelled, “Fire,” and “Get the pumps,” and “This way.”

She followed the black, ash-smeared figure of Napoleon. He strode, upright and rigidly controlled, his square, pale countenance set. Men gave way before him. Anyone with clear eyes looked around for orders now. They trailed in his wake or stopped to help the survivors of the Green Salon who coughed and cried out, faces covered with soot.

Smoke snaked over her head, down the corridor, filling the space beneath the ceiling, covering the nymphs and gods.

“Owl.” Hawker was in her path. “Your hair’s on fire. Hold still.” He slapped around her face. Pulled her fichu out from around her neck and pressed it to her head. “You’re burned.”

Now she felt stinging points of pain. Pieces of falling fire had burned through her clothes. The damage was on her back where she couldn’t see. It didn’t matter.

“It’s nothing.” Her throat was raw from breathing in the smoke. She swallowed and tasted ash. “At the other door. There will be a soldier. Go.”

“There are men headed that way.” Hawker pulled out a handkerchief, spit on it, and swiped across her eyes. “I’ve got to find the Englishman. For God’s sake, get away from the fire. And move these damn idiots along.” He was gone, dodging through the crowd, his friend Paxton at his back.

She ran to catch up with Napoleon. He strode through this tumult alone, sending his soldiers to help others. It would be easy, easy, for someone to slip toward him and shoot. That might be their plan all along. In the madness of the fire, to kill him and escape.

Napoleon took his place in the center of the marble entry hall under the great chandelier. Men rushed by in this direction and that, shouting. Then they saw him, and chaos ceased.

Suddenly, officers’ voices could be heard. Men formed quickly moving lines, passing buckets. The injured and grimy survivors of the fire were helped outside. The doors cleared.

Napoleon treated this as he would a battlefield. He stayed where he could be seen and consulted. He issued orders to one man and sent him on his way. Spotted another and motioned him forward. Gave more orders. Men came to him in panic and departed with purpose.

She set herself four feet from his back and drew her gun from her pocket, cocked it, and held it at her side, pointed to the floor, hidden by the folds of her skirt. Ready. She studied the eyes of every man who approached him, watched the hands of every man and woman who hesitated in the corridor and stared.

The First Consul had escaped one threat. He must be guarded from the next. That was her job, in this confusion, to guard his back.

Leblanc came from the courtyard outside. He’d washed his face somewhere, but his hair was still full of black ash. He breathed raggedly as he approached the First Consul, whether from exertion or fear, she did not know. “The Englishman got away. We’re searching the building for him. I will send—”

“It is not the English.” Napoleon commanded armies in the field. Now he raised his voice so it could be heard above the shouting, over the weeping of women who had collapsed on benches in the corridor, over the tromp of soldiers. “This is an unfortunate accident. The fire has been controlled.” In a lower voice, he said to Leblanc, “See that nothing else reaches the papers. This is a small fire that accidentally broke out.”

“The Englishman lit the—”

“There is no Englishman. This is a plot of the Jacobins. There are a number already under suspicion of treasonous activities. I want them arrested. Find Fouché. I must talk to him.”

“Of course, First Consul, I—”

The First Consul would naturally blame the Jacobins. He would take any excuse to harass them. And he did not wish to go to war with England. Not at this minute. Not before he prepared.

Leblanc tried to say more, but Napoleon had already turned away to listen to a sergeant who spoke of pumps. Then he called over to him a man in the clothing of a clerk, saying again that this was an accident only. Not the first fire in these old buildings. This information must appear, just so, in the press.

Vezier came from the direction of the fire, his face smeared, his eyes tearing tracks down to his mustache. He saw the gun she held ready, and at once understood the danger to the First Consul. He gestured three men from the work of carrying buckets to set them in a phalanx around Napoleon. They were ordinary soldiers, but they took up positions, as if by instinct, putting their own bodies between the threat of an assassin and the future of Europe.

Leblanc stalked toward her, determined and furious, and closed his fist around her arm. “We will find the Englishman who did this. Come with me.”