The Black Hawk (30 page)

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.”

Thirty-seven

HE DIDN’T WANT TO LEAVE OWL, BUT HIS JOB WAS to find the Englishman before the French did.

She was alive. Coughing, wheezing, eyes watering, with a nasty burn on her back, but alive. She’d feel the hurt later, when she stood still.

He spent one minute with her, just long enough to hear her breathing clear. No time to say he’d thought she was going to die—thought they both were going to die—and he would have traded his life to get her out.

No time, no place, to kiss her. They’d do that later. He’d find the Englishman and wring his damn neck. Then he’d take Owl to bed.

He signaled Pax, and they took off, following the route the Englishman must have taken, down the corridor and out the door, into the courtyard between the Tuileries and the Louvre.

Ten feet from the door he let himself look back. Owl had attached herself to that bastard Napoleon, playing guard. She was drawn up straight, all steel, ready to shoot anybody who looked at Bonaparte cross-eyed.

The best strike came after the first one failed and the target relaxed. If he was running an operation to kill that cove, he’d do it now.

Clever Owl. Consummate professional. Nothing she didn’t see.