The Dakota Cipher by William Dietrich Read Free Book Online

hurtling horsemen. I hadn’t seen anything so astounding since Napoleon’s own timely arrival at Mount Tabor in the Holy Land, converting a certain Turkish victory into a Turkish rout with a cannon shot.
    Bonaparte was less surprised. “The fate of a battle is a single moment,” he remarked.
    Brave little Desaix was shot dead at Marengo at the moment of his greatest triumph, and there has been as much romantic nonsense over this tragedy as Napoleon’s crossing of the Alps. “Why am I not allowed to weep?” the conqueror was later recorded as saying, suggesting a tenderness I never saw him display toward any man, or anywoman, either. Napoleon weep? To him, life was war and people were soldiers to be used. He was sad, yes—Desaix was as valuable as a good horse—but hardly morose about one more corpse in a square mile of carnage. The truth is that the bullet entered through Desaix’s back, either from Austrian fire as he swung around to exhort his men or, just as likely, from an errant bullet from his own side. The number of men accidentally killed or wounded by their excited, confused, and frightened comrades is one of the dirty secrets of war.
    We’d learn later that General Kleber, whom I’d soldiered with on the beaches of Alexandria and the battlefield of Mount Tabor—and who Napoleon had left in command in Egypt—was assassinated by a Muslim fanatic at almost the same moment Desaix fell. So go the people who have been chapters in our lives. Generals are spent like coins.
    By day’s end there were twelve thousand Austrian and French dead or wounded, dead and dying horses, shattered caissons, and dismounted artillery. The Austrians had lost another six thousand prisoners and forty cannon.
    “I have just put the crown on your head,” Kellermann remarked, an impolitic truth he wouldn’t be forgiven for. Let honor be bestowed; don’t grasp for it.
    I made no such boast, but could have. At 4:00 p.m. at Marengo, Napoleon’s rule was finished; by 7:00 p.m. it had been confirmed. Instead, wisely keeping my mouth shut for once, I wangled my way onto Bonaparte’s swift carriage back to Paris after the Austrians agreed to armistice.
    On our journey Napoleon confided that his ambition had merely been whetted. “Yes, I have done enough, it’s true,” he told me. “In less than two years I have won Cairo, Paris, and Milan, but for all that, were I to die tomorrow I should not at the end of ten centuries occupy half a page of general history!”
    Who else counted their history pages a thousand years hence?
    Back in Paris, I was put to work helping negotiations with the newly arrived American commissioners. The confidence I’d won from Bonaparte eased the way for the Franco-American treaty. And so I concluded my tale of derring-do at Mortefontaine where we’d gathered to celebrate peace. We toasted, Pauline Bonaparte’s eyes sparkling at my tale, and even grim Magnus Bloodhammer looking at me with grudging respect.
    I downed another glass and smiled modestly. It’s good to be the hero.
    “Monsieur Gage,” Pauline invited, “would you like to see my brother’s cellar?”

Chapter 7
    O NE OF THE PROMISES OF OUR NEW NINETEENTH CENTURY IS the practical simplicity of women’s clothing. In the old days, getting past the skirts, corsets, and garters of a noblewoman was as complicated as reefing a barkentine in a gale. A man might be so wearied by ribbons, stays, laces, and layers that by the time he got to squeezable flesh he’d forgotten what all the effort was for. The new revolutionary fashions, I’m happy to report, are less complicated, and getting at Pauline, nestled between two wine kegs, was not much more complicated than lowering the gallant at top and hoisting the mainsail at bottom, noting she had dispensed with chemise and bunching what little there was at her waist while she sang like a choir. Lord, the girl had enthusiasm! Her breasts were even better than what portraiture has recorded, and her