Three Emperors (9780062194138) (13 page)

I was an outsider like Dray. Reluctantly, I stood and moved next to him. “I watched you bet as foolishly as a mark, Corporal,” I said, even though I hadn't seen the game at all. I just don't like bullies. “Don't blame a Jew for your own folly.”

“Shut your mouth, Digeon—you don't even belong here. Damned deserter, I'm guessing, afraid to show your face to your own regiment.”

“I'm not afraid to show it to you.”

Now we were in a circle of interested men, shouting support for one side or the other. Cheval tried to keep the focus on Dray. “The Jew boy refuses to eat what normal men eat, pray what normal men pray, and drink what normal men drink.”

“You mean he reads instead.” I'd seen Gideon with his nose in a book, and he was conspicuous for wearing spectacles, which were rare in the ranks. His family must have had money, which was another point against him. I noticed now that he'd put the spectacles away.

“I mean I won't shiver while a Jew is warm.” Cheval spat and turned away, ostentatiously buttoning the stolen cloak around his neck. His companions grinned, waiting to see what we'd do.

“Robber!” Dray howled, and despite the difference in size, he ran to tackle him.

The corporal whirled, the coveted cape lifting like a skirt, and met the charge with a thick fist, knocking Gideon to the mud. The men roared, always ready for tumult to relieve the tedium. Cheval spat in dismissal and turned to leave again, but Gideon grabbed his ankle and yanked, tripping him. The thief went down with a thud and a growl. The Jew clawed on top.

They wrestled, but it was no match. The bigger man rolled the smaller over and began to pummel with obvious relish, his comrades cheering him on. I knew it was better not to call undue attention to myself, but this was unfair. Sergeant Hulot put a warning hand on my arm, but I shook it off, strode forward, and gave the oaf a sharp kick in the ribs, lifting him off his victim and rolling him hard in the mud.

“Damn you as well, Jew lover!” Cheval leaped up, seething. “You're joining our ranks? Let's welcome you properly!”

He came at me with a bull's rush, but I was quicker. I let him charge by as if I were a toreador, booting his backside for good measure, and danced away. Unfortunately, I backed into his crowd, and they briefly held me and then pushed me forward. Cheval charged to squeeze me like a bear.

I'd just a moment to reach the small of my back before he grabbed me. Talleyrand's broken blade went up to Cheval's face so that the jagged edge of its stump was inches from his eyes. “Let me go or I blind you.”

His thick arms gave a final constriction and reluctantly dropped. He backed off warily. “You threaten me with a knife, coward?”

“A broken sword will work well enough, if you don't give the cloak back.”

“How brave to wave it when I'm unarmed!”

“And how brave of you to beat a Jew with no friends. Keep it up, Cheval, and I'll gut you like a fish. I can outshoot you, outfence you, and outbox you.”

He studied me narrowly. I was unknown, and it was possible what I said was true. I was also a match for him in size, and demonstrably quicker.

“I should challenge you to a duel,” Cheval muttered.

“You'd gamble your life like you gambled your clothes.” I spoke to the crowd. “Listen, if the corporal is such a gambler, let him cut cards for ownership. If he gets the high card, he keeps the cloak. If Gideon wins, he gets it back.”

The assembly rumbled, debating this.

“Or do you want the three of us to kill each other over a piece of silly cloth on the eve of an important battle? Do you want to explain that to the colonel?”

Sergeant Hulot looked at me with distaste. I'd inserted myself where I didn't belong and was displaying authority I hadn't earned. He was beginning to regret his acceptance of me. But this was a way out of the quarrel. “Who has cards?”

Someone produced a deck, and I shuffled and held it out. Cheval took a stack and showed the bottommost card. “Ten,” he said, with truculence.

I turned to Gideon, who had stood and was breathing heavily, face bleeding, looking at the corporal with malevolence and at me in wonder. He made his own cut.

“Jack.”

The assembly gasped, a couple of men hooting at Cheval's narrow loss. In fury, the corporal yanked the cloak from his neck and threw it at Dray. “Good riddance.”

“Don't worry, Cheval,” Sergeant Hulot said. “You'll soon have a battlefield of corpse clothes to choose from.”

“Yes.” The bully turned to me. “You shouldn't cross new comrades, Digeon. Bullets can come from all sides.”

I gave him a look of deliberate contempt. “So you're a murderer as well as a thief? Confessing before the bloody deed?” I raised my voice. “Remember his threat at his court-martial and execution!”

The soldier scowled, threw his cards into the mud, and stalked away.

Gideon gave me his stack of the deck, which I returned to the soldier who had lent it. I left that man to pick up Cheval's share and blame the corporal for their soiling.

“Why did you do that?” Gideon asked as we walked away. “I can fight my own battles.”

“Not very well.”

“Are you Jewish?”

“Hardly. I like pork, prefer the Sabbath to be on Sunday, and think Moses was an imbecile for not finding the Holy Land for forty years. But I don't like bandits or bullies, and men like Cheval are all bluster.” I slipped the sword stub behind me again. “He won't bother us again.” Not that I believed that.

“I'm impressed. Surprised. Puzzled. Few Christians would come to my rescue.”

“Well, I'm a pagan. Or my wife is, at any rate.”

“Someday I'll repay you.”

“No need. But no need to wait to do so, either.”

“What does that mean?”

“That cloak you liberated is good German wool, and wide as a blanket. I think the clouds threaten snow. I'm bedding with you tonight, Gideon. You need looking after, and I need to keep warm.” I also needed someone to watch my back.

He smiled. “Done. At which time you can explain to me how you rigged those cards.”

Chapter 15

I
'd spent enough time around French army camps to be acquainted with regional stereotypes. Burgundians are the most jovial, which I attribute to their wine. Bretons are the most melancholic, and indeed, they've been in revolt against all sides, from royalist to revolutionary, for almost two decades. Men from Lorraine are infected by German ambition, the Gascons are the most boastful, and Parisians are the most presumptuous. Jews are assumed to be greedy, which was bad, and smart, which was worse, and secretly rich, which was enviable, and steadfast in their faith, which was most annoying of all, because it implied Christians were wrong in theirs. Such was Gideon's problem.

In Paris, the Jewish conundrum had been a topic of salon discussion. Despite prejudice, Jewish society served a vital function. They were prohibited from owning land, and thus were not farmers; segregated from great companies, and thus were not merchants; and barred from the aristocracy, many trades, and universities. Yet they were superb businessmen, working as shopkeepers, tailors, cobblers, and watch repairmen, to name a few. Napoleon wanted to harness their talents, as he wanted to harness all men.

When French revolutionaries granted Jews citizenship in 1791, Gideon told me, a few moved outside the traditional kehilla, or Jewish society in which law and diet are regulated by rabbis. Most Jewish men outside the army's ranks still remained instantly recognizable, however, with long, dark coats, sidelocks, and beard. In uniform, clean-shaven Gideon Dray was as anonymous as I was, but he made no effort to hide his heritage. He was declared odd for admitting what he was, and combative for standing up for himself. Accordingly, I warmed to him. While I'm the most inoffensive and charming of men, I am often thrown into new countries and societies, making me an outsider. Here again, I was the newcomer in our company. As two outcasts, we bonded.

December 1, 1805, was a day of restless maneuvering. For the first time, I experienced this as a private being marched hither and yon, rather than as an American adviser comfortably ensconced at Napoleon's headquarters, watching the display. I didn't like being ordered about, and I kept alert for a chance to slip away.

We were roused at dawn, the camp coming awake with the habitual coughing, spitting, and groaning. A hot breakfast broke the chill, but we felt apprehensive when we were ordered to douse our fire. We assembled and stood impatiently for three hours, waiting for orders. Rumors flew, because none of us knew anything. Gray overcast scudded above our lines toward the Russians and Austrians, an enemy we couldn't see. Snowflakes danced without accumulation, and my personal opinion would have been to wait for better weather, perhaps six months from now. No one asks a private.

We finally marched half a mile, stopped, broke to lunch and optimistically build new fires, were told to douse them, reformed, marched a quarter-mile more, waited two hours, marched back the way we had come, waited, and finally marched a final half-mile before darkness fell. I reckoned we'd finished a fifteen-minute stroll from where we'd started. Gideon and I remained paired, while Cheval cast murderous looks that didn't intimidate either of us. The other men gave the Jew new respect for fighting back, and treated me like a magician. No one accused me of rigging the cut, but they assumed there was some sleight of hand. God wouldn't allow a Jew to simply win.

I'd rounded out my equipment. My leather cartridge box had wooden shelves drilled with holes to hold fifty cartridges. I was issued three flints, a tin of oil, a screwdriver to repair my 1777-model musket, a greasing cloth, a bullet extractor in case my gun jammed, a knife on a lanyard tied to my waist, an oiled scrap of canvas to cover my gunlock against the snow, and a muzzle plug with tassel to keep rainwater out. Particularly important was a sewing kit to mend my uniform and gaiter straps. A rock in a boot can maim a man in minutes, and an officer who doesn't give his regiment time to sew risks hobbling a quarter of his force with blisters.

We were issued two days' rations, making us guess that battle would come the next day. Why waste more on a man who might die? There were four pounds of bread, cooked into rings and slung on a line over one shoulder, these eaten more quickly than hunger demanded because they got soggy in the snow. There was a pound of salt beef, a quarter-pound of dried peas, and two liters of wine in bottles wrapped with straw, as a precaution against breakage. I transferred the contents of one bottle to my leather canteen. A small vial of vinegar helped make stream water safe to drink.

The result was more than sixty pounds of clothes, gun, gear, and food. Veterans carry this as lithely as a deer carries its antlers, but I felt I was swimming in chains. Escaping to the infantry was beginning to seem a bad idea.

Gideon, however, was good company. He didn't complain and didn't pry too deeply into my background.

“You suffered a blow to the head?” he asked when trying to understand where I'd come from.

“Run over by a horse,” I invented. “I remember very little, except that it's best not to be run over by horses.”

“You have a foreign accent.”

“I lived many years in America and Canada. Then Paris. I had some debts, some trouble with women . . .” That was biography enough in any army, and unlikely to be challenged. “And you, a Jew, fight alongside the Christians?”

“I've yet to find a man in the regiment I'd consider a true Christian. They rut, they blaspheme, they loot, and they kill. I make the best I can of military life, and to not fight back is to guarantee being preyed upon. I was conscripted from a village near Châlons. My opportunistic father took it as a sign from God. He trails the army as a moneylender and pawnbroker. Soldiers curse him as avidly as they use him.”

“You must have a skeptical view of society.”

“A realistic one. My father knows soldiers like to lighten themselves of money and belongings before a battle because they regard too much of either as bad luck. So they pawn their loot, gamble what they've left, and then ask for loans. If I contrive to survive, I might inherit a fortune. After the war we may visit Prague. It has one of the largest ghettos in Europe.”

“I wish to visit Prague myself. I'm something of a scholar. A savant, actually, interested in Franklin's precepts of electricity and Cuvier's speculations on the age of the earth. Prague is reputed to be a center of learning.”

“Then God has thrown us together for a reason, my new friend.”

Our
ordinaire
included six others, including Henri the cheerful, Thibault the complainer, Duval the leader, Philippe the shirker, Charles the big one, and Louis the scrounger. Within the company were bullies like Cheval, plus brave veterans, sickly men who once had been clerks, and the useful skills that come from scooping up a range of tradesmen, farmers, shopkeepers, and students. The officers were the Big Hats, and the Imperial Guard the “Immortals,” because they were kept in reserve and thus safer than the rest of us. The “stew cookers” were more valued than virgins. Anyone could fight, but it was the rare chef who could turn army rations into a decent meal. A good cook was worth more than two whores, three officers, or four priests, the calculation went.

The most prestigious and dangerous position in the company was standard-bearer. The flagstaff was heavy, a sail in the wind, and left the holder defenseless. But ah, the glory of carrying a banner that men would die for! It was sublime. It was suicidal. It was brave. I myself wouldn't touch a flagstaff with a flagpole, but then, I'm sensible, which sets me apart from almost everybody.

“Half these men were combat veterans before this campaign even started,” Gideon said, to bolster his confidence and mine. “They've been training in the camps of Boulogne for three years, and not just as companies but as brigades, divisions, and corps. The emperor has given us the best equipment in Europe, and steers us with the same assuredness with which Murat's knees steer his horses or his women. We're outnumbered, but nobody is panicked. We've marched the length of Austria, and can march the length of Russia if we have to.”

“I admire your militant enthusiasm,” I said, “while hoping to live long enough to enjoy our inevitable victory. I've actually been in a coffin, and don't recommend the experience.”

“A coffin!”

“Shared it with a young lady with a broken neck. Too complicated to explain now, but the experience is sobering. Especially when they pile the dirt on.”

He looked at me as if I were mad. People believe me when I lie, and never trust me when I tell the truth.

“If it will relax you, Digeon, the army has no caskets on hand,” he finally said. “The best you can hope for is a hole, probably a mass burial with a dash of quicklime and a cursory benediction from the wrong religion, after men have picked over your belongings.”

“I give you leave to pick at my carrion first, my friend. And I'll take a Jewish prayer as well, just to be safe.”

“Agreed. Give me a Christian one. Here's some pipe clay to whiten your crossbelts. Try to make a handsome corpse.”

“The handsomeness is assured. But dressing well before we die is not unreasonable. A past female acquaintance told me fashion can be more important than wit.” This was Catherine Marceau, who was a useful tutor when she wasn't betraying my schemes.

“Certainly we have peacocks among our officers. Our enemies do, too, I expect.”

“So let's shoot them instead of being shot,” I suggested. “And contrive to serve a few ranks back, so we can tell our grandchildren about our courage.”

When to flee? The anticipation of battle had curtailed any foraging expeditions, sentries had been posted in back of the army as well as in front, to discourage desertion, and officers were anxious about fighting at maximum strength. We were bivouacked in a ravine by a stream, keeping me blind to potential escape routes. Cavalry were herding stragglers back, not allowing them out. So I bided my time, as a good gambler should, trusting I'd be held in reserve until battle smoke and confusion gave me cover.

And then came the most extraordinary evening in Napoleon's life.

We were trying to rest as best we could, but anticipation is the enemy of sleep. Fitful snow had blown all day, the stars were hidden, and our only mattress, the frozen ground, was cold as iron. We lay closer than lovers around a final tiny fire, one side cooked and the other icy, turning in unison like spits of meat rotating in a restaurant. Gideon shared the disputed cloak, which was more tangible reward than I usually get. I lay awake wondering if Astiza and Harry were snug in a cozy apartment or trapped in some foul prison. The night was black as pitch. Was this a time to creep away?

Then a curious rumbling of the kind an excited crowd makes penetrated my fitful doze. I realized the men of our
ordinaire
were stirring. “Get up, something's happening!” I stood, muscles stiff, brain groggy, alarmed by the bustle in the dark. There was a glow in the lines to our left, and I wondered for a moment if the enemy had set something on fire. But no, there were no shots or bugles. Then I saw the flames were moving, advancing like a river of fire, and finally I realized that a torch-lit column of men were coming our way, as if on parade.

We seized our muskets, our officers too uncertain to give orders.

Then shouts and whispers ran up and down the line.

“It's the emperor!”

Napoleon was coming to inspect.

Here was challenge! By the luck of Benedict Arnold, the very man I'd crept away from was approaching me. In procession were officers and Imperial Guardsmen, torches lighting plumed bicornes, bearskin hats, and the turbans of Mameluke bodyguards. Strolling in their center, his hat unadorned and his greatcoat plain, was Napoleon, still surprisingly identifiable by posture and silhouette. His head swiveled like a hawk's, seeming to see into the soul of every soldier. At an hour most generals were snug in their tents, husbanding their energies for battle, he was walking the lines in a flurry of snow, greeting this sentry and that corporal, or picking out a past hero or two with his remarkable memory. His presence had an electrifying effect.

“Vive l'empereur!”

The salutation was a roar. A quiet inspection tour had turned into a torch parade. As Napoleon was recognized, infantrymen spontaneously lit brands in their campfires and hoisted them in salute, the flames steadily expanding. “It's the emperor! It's Napoleon!” Their fervor was greater than for an opera star. They wanted to assert their readiness for battle. The soldiers couldn't leave their place in the army's line, and so the general walked along it, each unit in turn hoisting burning tributes. They illuminated his confident smile.

I'd seen his calculated act before. He practiced having presence.

I retreated into the shadows to avoid being seen. Bonaparte's inspection had triggered a snake of fire a mile long now, sparks flying in the winter wind, the serpent of light a calligraphy of adoration.

“Vive l'empereur!”

The great man's gray eyes caught and held the light. He'd occasionally stop to gently pull an ear, clasp a shoulder, or shake a hand. No man was sleeping now—all were up and all were roaring, except for me. Even my Jewish friend was shouting, and looked at me curiously when I did not. I dared not have Napoleon look my way. Once more I felt isolated and alone, far from home and hollow because of it. Something momentous was happening. The world hadn't seen this kind of military fervor before. War had traditionally been a desultory royal affair of small campaigns by professional soldiers for incremental gains. Now it involved whole nations, and oceans of men. Napoleon had not just seized power; he had reinvented power, fusing French ambition with his own. He was not just a general, or even a conqueror, but the conductor of a strange new fervor.

He passed our own
ordinaire
, slapping the arm of Henri with hearty encouragement and seducing every one of us with a sweep of his eyes. Except me, who knew him better than any man here, all his aspects great and terrible, the titan who represented the best and worst of mankind. When he looked toward me, I shrank back even further into the gloom, so that there was no way he could have recognized me in my uniform. I had to stay absent, lest he turn me over to Pasques and Catherine Marceau and ruin the hunt for my family, which I was desperate to resume.