The Rosetta Key

We drove well into the night and rose before dawn, but Paris is a multiday journey. As we went north; the sky grew grayer and the season advanced. Our coach blew the highway’s carpet of leaves into a rooster tail. Our horses steamed when we stopped for water. And so we were clattering onward in the dusk of the fourth day, Paris just hours ahead, when suddenly another fine team and coach burst out of a lane to our left and swerved right in front of us.

Horses screamed and crashed, the teams dragging each other down.

Our own coach tilted, balanced on two wheels, and then slid into a ditch and slowly went over. Astiza and I tumbled to one side in the coach. The gypsies leapt clear.

“Imbeciles!” a woman shouted. “My husband could have you shot!” We shakily climbed out of the wreck. Our coach’s front axel was broken, as were the legs of two of our screaming horses. Cavalry who were escorting whomever we’d collided with had dismounted and were moving forward with pistols to dispatch the injured horses and disentangle the others. Shouting at us from the window of her own coach was an impressively fashionable woman—her clothes would beggar a banker—with a frantic look. She had the hauteur of a Parisian, but I didn’t immediately recognize her. I was an American, illegally back in France, still wanted for murder as far as I knew, who had not even obeyed the forty-day quarantine imposed on those traveling from the East. (Neither had Bonaparte.) Now there were soldiers and questions, even though her coach was in the wrong. I had a feeling being in the right wouldn’t matter much here.

“My business is of paramount importance for the state!” the woman shouted in panic. “Get your animals away from mine!”

“You pulled out in front of us!” Astiza replied, her accent plain.

“You are as rude as you are incompetent!”

“Wait,” I cautioned. “She has soldiers.” t h e

r o s e t t a k e y

3 0 5

Too late. “And you are as impertinent as you are clumsy!” the woman shrieked. “Do you know who I am? I could have you arrested!” I went forward to head off a cat fight by making a bogus offer of later payment, just to get the harridan on her way. Our gypsies had wisely melted into the trees. Two pistol shots rang out, silencing the worst screams of the horses, and then the cavalrymen turned to us, hands on the hilts of their swords.

“Please, madame, it was just a simple accident,” I said, smiling with my usual affable charm. “A moment more and you’ll be on your way.

And you’re heading to?”

“My husband, if I can find him! Oh, this is disaster! We took the wrong turn and I missed him on the highway, and now his brothers will get to him first and tell their lies about me. If you’ve delayed me too much, you’ll answer for it!”

I thought the guillotine had thinned out this kind of arrogance, but apparently it hadn’t gotten them all. “But Paris is that way,” I pointed.

“I wanted to meet him! But he’s got past us and we were taking this lane to swing back. Now he’ll already be home, and I not being there will confirm the worst!”

“What worst?”

“That I’m unfaithful!” And she burst into tears.

It was then that I recognized her features, somewhat famous in the Parisian social circles at whose fringes I’d moved. This was none other than Josephine, Napoleon’s wife! What the devil was she doing on a dark road with night falling? And of course tears brought sympathy. I am nothing if not gallant, and weeping will disarm any gentleman.

“It’s Bonaparte’s wife,” I whispered to Astiza. “When he heard she was an adulteress, on the eve of the Battle of the Pyramids, he nearly went insane.”

“Is that why she’s frightened?”

“We know how mercurial he is. He might put her in front of a firing squad.”

Astiza considered, then moved swiftly to the coach door. “Lady, we know your husband.”

3 0 6

w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h

“What?” She was a small woman, I now assessed, slim and finely dressed, neither homely nor particularly beautiful, her skin warm, her nose straight, her lips full, her eyes attractively wide and dark and, even in their desperation, intelligent. She had dark hair and finely sculpted ears, but her complexion was blotchy from crying. “How could you know him?”

“We served with Bonaparte in Egypt. We’re hurrying ourselves, to warn him of terrible danger.”

“You do know him! What danger? An assassination?”

“That a companion, Alessandro Silano, plans to betray him.”

“Count Silano? He’s coming with my husband, I heard. He’s supposed to be a confidant and adviser.”

“He’s bewitched Napoleon, and has tried to turn him against you.

But we can help. You’re attempting to reconcile?” She bowed her head, eyes wet. “It’s been such a surprise. We had no warning he was coming. I rushed from my dearest friend to meet him. But these idiots took a wrong turn.” She leaned out the carriage window and gripped Astiza’s arms. “You must tell him that despite everything, I still love him! If he divorces me, I lose everything! My children will be penniless! Is it my fault he goes away for months and years?”