The Emerald Storm

Chapter 2

A stiza and I had been married less than a year, joined in wedlock the summer of 1802 by Lieutenant Andrew Sterett on board the American navy schooner Enterprise. That dashing officer had plucked us out of the sea near Tripoli after we escaped the Barbary pirates.

I suppose our shipboard union wasn’t exactly a woman’s ceremony, given that there could be no flowers, bunting, or bridesmaid. But we did have three redoubtable savants as witnesses (my companions Robert Fulton, zoologist Georges Cuvier, and geologist William Smith) plus my little friend Pierre Radisson to warn my lover that she was crazy to marry a man as senseless as me. Fortunately, I’d met Astiza during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, and she’d had ample opportunity to judge my merits and shortcomings. Cupid had seen fit to reunite us.

The crew did make the ceremony festive by stringing signal flags from the rigging, crafting a temporary bridal train from a scrap of old sail, and organizing an orchestra consisting of fife, drum, bell, and horn that managed barely recognizable versions of “Yankee Doodle” and “Heart of Oak.” A wedding march was beyond their repertoire. After Sterett pronounced us man and wife, I kissed the girl with gusto, danced a jig with little Harry, fondled the emerald I’d stolen from the pasha of Tripoli, and looked forward to a life of ease.

Pierre also gave us a locket he’d lifted in our headlong flight from Tripoli, set with diamonds and worth a gentleman’s yearly income.

“For your honeymoon, donkey,” he told me.

“But you need a reward, too!”

“There’s nothing to buy where a Canadian voyageur goes. Spend this gift on your wife and son.”

Certainly our marriage began as an idyll. Sterett put my family ashore in Naples, and we visited the newly excavated pits at Pompeii dug by antiquarian William Hamilton, who seemed to have permanently lent his wife, Emma, to my old acquaintance Admiral Horatio Nelson. Ruins fascinate Astiza, and even I was intrigued, given that I’d seen Pompeii artifacts in the mansion of Malmaison outside Paris, bought by Napoleon’s wife, Josephine. We congratulated Hamilton on his industry and saw gratitude that we were interested in something other than his straying wife. I judged him happier without the tart, who was too young for him anyway and a parvenu as shameless as me.

From Naples, Astiza, Harry, and I made our way to Rome and its overgrown Forum, and so northward, enjoying the European peace between Britain and France. We had a sunny Christmas on the island of Elba and then, after New Year, 1803, made the quick crossing to France, which was visibly prospering since Napoleon had seized power. We drifted toward Paris, busy learning to be husband and wife.

Astiza was the kind of bright, independent woman whom some men would run from, but who fascinated me. She was seductive as a siren, poised as a goddess, and as commonsensical as a midwife. What she saw in me I can’t say, unless I represented a challenging remodeling project. I simply knew I was lucky to have her, and hauled in my winnings.

I first met her after she helped her Alexandrian master take potshots at Napoleon, and she’s proved a scrapper ever since. She’d been a brilliant slave-highly educated, with a scholar’s curiosity about ancient mystery and a wizard’s determination to make sense out of existence. We’d fallen in love on the Nile, just like Antony and Cleopatra, except with a lot less money.

Despite my infatuation, I daresay there’s more work to a marriage than poets let on. Negotiations are worthy of a Talleyrand. What time to bed and which side do you sleep on? (Left, for me.) Who tracks the money (her) and suggests ways to spend it? (Me.) What rules govern our child (hers) and who works off the boy’s energy with romping play? (Me.) Do we sup in candlelit cellars with hearty portions of ale (my preference) or sunlit terraces with vegetables, fruit, and wine? (Hers.) Who decides on a route, deals with innkeepers, sees to the laundry, drags along souvenirs, initiates lovemaking, rises first, reads late, sets the pace of travel, decides appropriate attire, sketches out an ideal home, lingers in a library, contemplates ancient temples, pays extra for a bath, burns incense, rolls dice, or takes coach seats facing backward or forward?

More seriously, I was set on finding us a home in America, while my wife longed for the sunlit mysteries of Egypt. Trees enclosed her soul while sheltering mine, and I was drawn to mountains while Astiza preferred the shore. She loved me, but I was a sacrifice. I loved her, but she pulled me in directions to which I was reluctant to return. When unmarried, the future was vague and full of endless possibility. With marriage, we began to make choices.

Wedded bliss is certainly more complicated than the rapture of falling in love, but once you share out the victories and defeats and come to compromise, there’s more contentment than I’d ever enjoyed. The growth of little Harry is a marvel, and the warmth of a nightly lover is a relief. We became comfortable with our intimacy, leading me to wonder why I hadn’t seriously considered marriage before.

“You’re actually a quite suitable father, Ethan,” Astiza remarked with mild surprise one day, watching me build a dam on a little rivulet near Nimes with Harry, who would turn three in June.

“It helps to retain the mind of a twelve-year-old,” I said. “Most men do.”

“Do you ever miss your independence?” Women forget nothing, and worry forever.

“You mean the bullets? The hardship? The scheming temptresses? Not in the least.” I pointed out some more dam-building rocks to Harry, who was working like a beaver. “I’ve had more than enough adventure for any fellow. This is the life for me, my love. Dull, but comfortable.”

“So I’m dull, now?” Women pick at words like a barrister.

“You’re radiant. I just meant my new life is pleasantly placid, without the bullets and hardship.”

“And the temptresses?” See what I mean about women forgetting nothing?

“How can a man be tempted, when he has Isis and Venus, Helen and Roxanne?” Yes, I was becoming quite the husband. “Here’s some more stackable stones, Harry-let’s build a castle on the shoreline!”

“And blow it up!” he cried. I was teaching him to be a boy, even though my wife sometimes frowned at our games.

So my family came to Paris. My plan was this: A precious gem is more portable, and easily hidden, than a sack of money. Accordingly, we’d wait to sell the emerald where I judged I’d get the best price. Only then would we set off for some safe and sleepy place in America, my homeland.

I’m afraid there was vanity in this schedule. I had, after all, recently found and destroyed the mirror of Archimedes, rescuing Harry and Astiza from pirates in the process. I couldn’t resist the possibility of hobnobbing with the first consul again in hopes of being told how brilliantly I’d performed. There was also the lingering question of the vast Louisiana Territory that France had acquired and which I now considered myself expert on, having been dragged there by a Norwegian lunatic. I’d already advised Jefferson to buy and Napoleon to sell, but the negotiations had stalled while the president sent a new diplomat named James Monroe to Paris. I was just the man, I thought, to hurry things along before I retired as a gentleman.

That’s the trouble with success. It makes you feel indispensable, which is a delusion. Pride exacts more trouble than love.

Accordingly, when my family arrived in Paris in mid-January of 1803, I was asked by American envoy Robert Livingston to lobby Napoleon about the fate of the wasteland west of the Mississippi River. Since Livingston offered to put us up in a hotel and was working with my friend Fulton on a new contraption called a steamboat, I persuaded Astiza we should enjoy Paris while I sought another audience with Bonaparte. The city was buzzing with talk of renewed conflict with England, which is always entertaining: war is perennially exciting to society people with little chance of having to actually fight it. Astiza was curious to explore the city’s famed libraries for texts on mystery religions.

So we lingered like gentry. I was proud that while we’d once been imprisoned in Paris, now we were invited to its salons.

What we both wouldn’t dare admit is that we were still treasure hunters at heart.

Which set the stage for disaster.