Pessac cleared his throat, took a deep breath. Really, they wasted so much of his time. He’d have to blot out what he’d already written. Fine. He did so, and changed agitator to deserter. Then in another column he wrote 4e Régiment Étrangers. Then he waved the boy and the sergeant away.

GODS

They’d also watched Bonaparte’s victory parade, as they watched many things in the world and would always watch them, and (among others) they’d picked Johannes Meyer out. It mostly always happened like that, for no reason and at random. Probably they were bored with Bonaparte; he’d had such a good run since being plucked out of Corsica, and here was just more of the same pomp. Everyone knows the gods love a good joke, and look . . . They grinned and nodded between themselves and then pointed down at the crowd, made more random selections: him, her, her, him et cetera. Choices made, they whipped up the sticky tendrils of fate and loosed the surging winds of change (those puff-cheeked cherubs) and young Johannes Meyer felt a shiver down his back.

And then the gods took a well-deserved afternoon nap.

All that’s left for us are the incomplete maps, to conjecture and argue their scale.

Book II

BOOK II

THE PEAKS OF SUCCESS

Général de Brigade Michel François Fourés had given up on being received by the Emperor.

At the Battle of Jena, and then leading his cuirassiers against Prussian forces along the Isserstadt–Vierzehnheiligen line, he’d forced General Hohenlohe’s troops into a wild retreat, all the way beyond Gross Romstadt and into the dewy Capellendorf Valley, the Prussians abandoning artillery, arms and supplies as they ran, surrendering by the hundreds. No matter, it seemed, this success. Instead of an audience with the Emperor, instead of orders to pursue the fleeing Prussians and their king (instead of honours), he’d been assigned administrative duties in Berlin.

The général was aware they all disliked him—Berthier, Soult, Lanne, Ney and Davout, the marvellous maréchals of this Prussian campaign (and before that the Italian, and before that the Austrian, and before that all the other campaigns). They had the Emperor’s ear. A ring of whisperers. The further up the ranks of the Grande Armée Fourés had risen, the more he’d had to contend with their politics and manoeuvring. Finally, it seemed, he’d reached his summit. There was no place else for him to go.

Administrative duties.