The Emerald Storm Read Free

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 Nîmes 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