The Barbed Crown by William Dietrich Read Free Book Online

to make peace, either by thwarting Napoleon or calming him. Why were we saved, if not to save the world? And, perhaps, get paid for it.”
    “You manipulate, and submit an invoice. I’ll research.”
    As you can tell, ours was not the usual pillow talk. But we also kissed, my feeling again the fan of her silken hair and curve of hip, which meant I stayed rigid and sleepless for two hours after.
    Accordingly, I was groggy when our gang of conspirators departed each dawn, leaving generous payment. We’d also pay a full franc at ferries, double the usual rate, to purchase silence from the ferryman. We avoided inns, ate in the saddle, and took four long days to reach Paris.
    The capital announced itself with a horizon of smoke from the new ironworks and cotton mills of Chaillot, Saint-Lazare, and Saint-Laurent. Before crossing the Seine at Neuilly we transferred to a hay wagon as cleverly constructed as one of Tom Johnstone’s smuggling boats. Its heap of straw hid a chamber little bigger than a kennel. Astiza, Catherine, Harry, and I squeezed inside.
    “If they find us, we’re already caged,” I noted.
    “They won’t, monsieur,” Butron assured. “Slipping contraband through the gates of Paris is as essential as drawing water, and ten thousand men are employed to skirt tax collectors. The hiring of more policemen has meant only that there are more policemen to bribe.”
    “The French are as dishonest as the English? That’s hard to believe.”
    “No nationality likes paying taxes, and smugglers are a lubricant for commerce. Relax, soon you’ll be a nobody amid half a million Parisians.”
    “This is fun!” Harry said. And off we lurched.
    Hours later Butron knocked, and we crawled out at midnight inside a barn near the old walls. A hatch revealed an ancient stone tunnel that smelled like the grave, leading under the ramparts to the cellar of the Convent of the Filles Saint-Marie. I carried Harry past a skittering rat or two, our lanterns bubbles of light. He’s a brave lad, having stabbed one of the vermin in Sicily, so he watched their scurrying with more curiosity than fear.
    At a ladder, a limestone passage branched off. “Where does that go?” I pointed.
    “The new catacombs,” Butron replied. “The city’s cemeteries are so crammed that authorities have been moving bones to old limestone mines to make way for a frenzy of construction under Bonaparte.” He glanced at Harry. “Millions and millions of dead.”
    “Are we going to live down here, Papa?”
    “No, your mother wants a proper house, and this place requires too much dusting. Up you go, I’m right behind you.”
    We climbed to resurrection. A generous donation to Catholic charity, sorely needed after the privations of the revolution, meant the nuns wouldn’t do more than whisper and giggle at our emergence. Smuggling kept them solvent.
    “Hail Mary, full of grace,” I said companionably to the Abbess Marie, looking about for informants or sentries and seeing none.
    “You are Catholic, monsieur?”
    “My wife is religious.” Astiza is an ecumenical pagan, but spiritual as an abbey of friars.
    “You follow God, madame?” the abbess asked.
    “All of them.”
    “I believe in the True Church,” Catherine chimed in, fretfully beating her gown for dust. The abbess looked at her skeptically.
    “We seek the holy,” Astiza added.
    I suppose the nun could have called down a bolt of lightning on all of us, but the truly good see hope in the least likely. “Perhaps you’ll join us for prayers sometime?” she asked my wife.
    “I would enjoy that.”
    The abbess turned back to me. “We know that Napoleon has reinstated the church for his own cynical political purposes, but God works in mysterious ways, does he not? So I advise you, Ethan Gage, to go with God as well.”
    “Appreciated. Though it’s sometimes difficult to understand which way He’s pointing.”
    “She’s pointing,” Astiza corrected. “Isis and Athena.”
    It’s