help you get him back.” Smith beamed.
She was skeptical, but I was of the mind we needed whatever help we could get. “See here, Sir Sidney, I agree that ours is an alliance of convenience,” I said. “I was simply trying to sell a jewel when a renegade secret policeman stole it, kidnapped my son, Horus, and demanded secrets I don’t have. We’ve no idea where Martel is, or what to tell him if we find him. Nor am I entirely clear what he really wants.”
“He wants to conquer England. Have some tea, please, and I’ll tell you more of what I know.”
We sat around a side table as the service was set, oil paintings of stern-looking dead Englishmen looking down on us as if in judgment from a secular Sistine Chapel. Life for the upper class is constantly trying to live up to the standards of ancestors who never seemed to have had a good time. Out the windows, the Thames through the wavy glass was a parade of watery commerce, sails slipping by like bird wings.
“First of all, Leon Martel is a scoundrel,” Smith began. “He was an underworld boss of some sort—the rumor is he turned country girls to prostitution and orphan boys to pickpockets—when he decided to join Bonaparte’s new secret police rather than risk being caught by them. His allegiance is to himself, and he reportedly had hopes he could succeed Fouché someday as police minister, either through promotion or betrayal. Instead, he’s now found himself out of the police and suspect to his fellow criminals as turncoat and informer, so he’s extorting people like you and shopkeepers like the jeweler Nitot. He’s made a close study of torture and uses it on people who cross him. He’s also a coward; he was drafted into the early French Revolutionary armies and deserted.”
“A man who makes anyone else look good,” I summarized, glancing at my wife. Those of us with flaws are encouraged by such comparisons.
“As the two of you know as well as anyone,” Smith went on, “England is a nation with a powerful navy. By the end of this year we’ll have seventy-five ships of the line and hundreds of frigates, while France has but forty-seven battleships. We hear nineteen are being built, and we must always fear alliance between Bonaparte and Spain. Still, our confidence in our navy is high.”
Indeed. The English seemed to win almost every sea fight they picked.
“However, we have a relatively weak army. We believe our soldiers are the finest in the world, but they are relatively few and spread over a large empire. If Bonaparte can get a hundred and fifty thousand men across the Channel, which our spies tell us he intends, London will fall. There will be an eternal reign of terror.”
I was of a mind that London cuisine could benefit from a French invasion, and that a glass of wine in late afternoon was preferable to a pot of tea, but I kept such subversion to myself. The English would die like lions to defend boiled mutton and dark beer.
“That means the English Channel is key,” Smith went on. “If Napoleon can control it, even for a fortnight, he could land an army and conquer our kingdom. He might achieve passage with a decisive naval victory, but we believe that unlikely. He might lure our ships away, but I hope Nelson is too clever for that. Then there’s the chance of strange new machines of war—yes, I’ve heard of Fulton and his plunging boat, or submarine—but it takes time to perfect new inventions. Or Bonaparte could take to the air.”
“Ethan and I have been in a balloon,” Astiza said.
“You never quite got all the way in the balloon,” I amended. I still had nightmares of her fall.
“I remember,” Smith said. His ship had rescued me when I crashed in the Mediterranean. “But balloons can be shot down, and are slow and victim to the vagaries of the wind. Cayley’s glider only descends. What if such a craft could go up as well as down, and travel exactly where you pointed it? What if men could fly like hawks,
She was skeptical, but I was of the mind we needed whatever help we could get. “See here, Sir Sidney, I agree that ours is an alliance of convenience,” I said. “I was simply trying to sell a jewel when a renegade secret policeman stole it, kidnapped my son, Horus, and demanded secrets I don’t have. We’ve no idea where Martel is, or what to tell him if we find him. Nor am I entirely clear what he really wants.”
“He wants to conquer England. Have some tea, please, and I’ll tell you more of what I know.”
We sat around a side table as the service was set, oil paintings of stern-looking dead Englishmen looking down on us as if in judgment from a secular Sistine Chapel. Life for the upper class is constantly trying to live up to the standards of ancestors who never seemed to have had a good time. Out the windows, the Thames through the wavy glass was a parade of watery commerce, sails slipping by like bird wings.
“First of all, Leon Martel is a scoundrel,” Smith began. “He was an underworld boss of some sort—the rumor is he turned country girls to prostitution and orphan boys to pickpockets—when he decided to join Bonaparte’s new secret police rather than risk being caught by them. His allegiance is to himself, and he reportedly had hopes he could succeed Fouché someday as police minister, either through promotion or betrayal. Instead, he’s now found himself out of the police and suspect to his fellow criminals as turncoat and informer, so he’s extorting people like you and shopkeepers like the jeweler Nitot. He’s made a close study of torture and uses it on people who cross him. He’s also a coward; he was drafted into the early French Revolutionary armies and deserted.”
“A man who makes anyone else look good,” I summarized, glancing at my wife. Those of us with flaws are encouraged by such comparisons.
“As the two of you know as well as anyone,” Smith went on, “England is a nation with a powerful navy. By the end of this year we’ll have seventy-five ships of the line and hundreds of frigates, while France has but forty-seven battleships. We hear nineteen are being built, and we must always fear alliance between Bonaparte and Spain. Still, our confidence in our navy is high.”
Indeed. The English seemed to win almost every sea fight they picked.
“However, we have a relatively weak army. We believe our soldiers are the finest in the world, but they are relatively few and spread over a large empire. If Bonaparte can get a hundred and fifty thousand men across the Channel, which our spies tell us he intends, London will fall. There will be an eternal reign of terror.”
I was of a mind that London cuisine could benefit from a French invasion, and that a glass of wine in late afternoon was preferable to a pot of tea, but I kept such subversion to myself. The English would die like lions to defend boiled mutton and dark beer.
“That means the English Channel is key,” Smith went on. “If Napoleon can control it, even for a fortnight, he could land an army and conquer our kingdom. He might achieve passage with a decisive naval victory, but we believe that unlikely. He might lure our ships away, but I hope Nelson is too clever for that. Then there’s the chance of strange new machines of war—yes, I’ve heard of Fulton and his plunging boat, or submarine—but it takes time to perfect new inventions. Or Bonaparte could take to the air.”
“Ethan and I have been in a balloon,” Astiza said.
“You never quite got all the way in the balloon,” I amended. I still had nightmares of her fall.
“I remember,” Smith said. His ship had rescued me when I crashed in the Mediterranean. “But balloons can be shot down, and are slow and victim to the vagaries of the wind. Cayley’s glider only descends. What if such a craft could go up as well as down, and travel exactly where you pointed it? What if men could fly like hawks,
Similar Books
