I knew what was coming.
“Now we have this Madame Campan,” Aurélie told me early in March, after the caravan of coaches rattled back to Saint-Cloud. There never seemed to be any reason for the various shifts between the palaces; only Napoleon’s whim. When he was with us, everyone moved fast. When he sent Josephine, there was a more leisurely pace.
Aurélie was tired, not only from the all-nighters but also from lack of sleep due to worsening dreams, and the tediousness of the increasingly elaborate ritual. “I understand Madame Campan was once a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette, but oh, it is so boring. She tells us where to stand, how deep to curtsey, how many steps forward and backward. Nobody can remember all the rules, and—” She slipped into English, “—the First Consul’s sisters squabble so about who is to go first, and who last.”
I thought, That’s only going to get worse, especially after they start collecting crowns.
“Imagine walking backward! But apparently the sky will fall if we turn our back on the first consul or Madame Jos—Bonaparte. We cannot presume to address her as Madame Josephine anymore, though that is what she asked us to call her. The sad thing is, I can see she doesn’t like any of these changes. The more like a royal court we become, the more afraid she is.”
“You didn’t sleep well last night. You kept tossing and muttering.”
“Another of those dreams.” She shook her head. “If only I recognized people or events, I would take some comfort. But these are always of strangers, in strange places. Last night,” another fierce yawn, “the people were brown, like me, but their eyes were round, their hair black but very straight. Many wore marks of red here.” She touched the middle of her forehead. “Tilaka. Their clothes were very beautiful, somewhat like the toga of the Roman and yet not. Bright colors, and oh, the palaces…” Her hands swooped, shaping the distinctive archways and domes of Akbari architecture early in the Mughal period.
“India?” I asked, wondering how she could dream about a place I knew she had never visited.
“I know not.” She yawned so hard her eyes watered. “Even the language is strange, yet I always know what the words mean. Tilaka.” She made as if scooping something with her forefinger, then touched her forehead. “Bindi, for a wedding. But there was fighting, ghosts and sky chariots and things with eyes like fire.”
“Mademoiselle! It is time,” came a call from the outer room, and Marie raced in to hurry Aurélie along.
As Aurélie carefully walked downstairs in her new gown (all the ladies were dressed in green and white velvet with gold trim for this fete) I thought about Nero’s bread and circuses, and wondered if he, too, had been trying to impose legitimacy, or at least order, from the top down.
Someday I was going to have to study Roman history, I thought uneasily, as we entered the long gallery, and there were the winged beings. They floated like vapor, only shadowy, I noted as I watched them cluster around Napoleon. The only other person who attracted so many was Fouché. When we showed up, however, they would widen their circle and float around us, the wings rising and falling with dreamy rhythm.
Once in a while a couple of them glided close. I recognized them—the androgynous creature from that night at the opera, with the long night-black hair; and a tall male with half-shut sleepy eyes of so light a gray they looked silver, his hair the color of pewter. His smile reminded me of Tony at his most mocking and untrustworthy. Yet it was not without humor, as if he was very well aware of my distrust, and he would be patient. There was no anger, no affront.
Why were there so many around Napoleon and Fouché? The two seemed completely oblivious.
Aurélie took her place in the grand salle. Today she was not playing music, she was there to dance with the zillions of military guys swarming around; to smile and add beauty to the backdrop.
The atmosphere was sharp with anticipation. Though arriving in state with her four chief ladies-in-waiting, it was Josephine who drew the eye. A slender, graceful figure in a deceptively simple gown of pure white, ornamented only by the thin band of lamé trim around the hem, the gold band binding the high waist, the black cameo ornaments holding together the filmy cap sleeves. Around her neck she wore a serpent necklace, and her hair spilled out of a gold band that bound it up Greek-style. The effect so charmed Napoleon that he rushed forward impulsively and led her to the mirror. He admired her from all angles as he pressed kisses on her.
She flushed and made the courtly beckon that Madame Campan had taught her. Napoleon kissed her again as the officers raised their swords with a scraping and ring of metal. They shouted in approval, Napoleon beamed with equal approval, then he signaled imperiously.
The musicians, instruments poised for the past fifteen minutes, launched into the first piece. The wives of the officers and the titled ladies were led out first for the quadrille and gavotte, and then the waltz, which had been introduced in the Year Six—1798—at a ball Talleyrand had given for Josephine. It was already popular, though the visiting English would find it scandalous, and it would be nearly another ten years before it was introduced in London by ladies of rank sufficient enough to provide an excuse for adopting this dangerously enticing dance.
Aurélie had her usual swarm of partners, and as she twirled around the ballroom floor, I got a chance to look around the room. Not only were there more of those winged beings than I had ever seen, but the officers seemed rowdier, more intense.
I witnessed at least three incidences of sabrage. Opening a champagne bottle with a sabre may have been swashbuckling, but it was definitely not courtly behavior. Yet Napoleon did nothing to halt them, even when a bottle broke all over the newly laid parquet. His treasured officers in their sexy uniforms were not savages in his eyes. That opprobrium was reserved for the civilians who criticized him.
Raucous behavior was not limited to the wild Hussars, with their mustachios and cadenettes. One of the younger generals whipped out his sabre and expertly snapped the neck of a bottle of champagne, causing a roar of approval as he filled the champagne glasses held up to him. He poured with an air, sabre still gripped in the other hand.
As dance after dance formed its patterns then dissolved to form another, I caught snatches of speech—“Malta,” “England”—and nasty adjectives coupled to “Whitworth.” The British ambassador had been feted to his face but sneered at behind his back. If history stayed true, he was shortly to get the sneers up close and personal, from Napoleon himself in one of his soon-to-be famous rants.
It was very late when a uniform different from all the others emerged from the relaxed, half-drunk crowd and approached Aurélie.
It was Jaska.
The room was filled with gaudy uniforms. But for those who knew lapels, facings, ribbons, and orders, there was an especial resonance in the challenge, the poignancy, of his wearing the dress of Poland’s National Cavalry: the crimson square-topped czapka, a tailored blue jacket with gold epaulettes and red lapels, and a white cross belt. His trousers were red to match the lapels, with six buttons pulling the pants legs tight to the ankle over his cavalry boots with their jutting spurs. At his left hung his curved sabre, and in his right hand he carried a tasseled walking stick, which he used to ease his limp.
The Polish National Cavalry had been disbanded after Poland was partitioned, but the reputation of the Polish soldiery was evidenced in the way the officers parted with respect as he walked to Aurélie. Then he made a short bow, epaulettes glittering in the light of a zillion candles.
“Mademoiselle, I have been entrusted with a letter to deliver into your hands. It was passed to the French fleet by the British in November.”
“November?” she asked, as she took the letter. Then she looked down, and said, “Oh.”
It had taken that long for the letter to make its way to Paris, and thence to Fouché’s mouchards to read before being resealed. She looked up again. “I have so many questions.”
“Those are perhaps better put to the foreign office,” he said ki
ndly. Then, his faint smile vanishing, “We have almost four thousand families to apprise of the deaths of the Polish soldiers sent to the islands. I am one of those honored with this task.” He bowed again.
“Thank you,” she said, rising to curtsey deeply. “Farewell.”
He bowed again. She watched him until he vanished in the crowd, then she clutched the letter to her heart, her eyes closed.
The nearest ladies began whispering, “Open it!” “Read it!” “Oh, Mademoiselle Prude hath a secret lover!”
Joseph Bonaparte, not far off, was looking her way, his gaze speculative. But Joseph’s wife Julie, who alone of the Bonaparte family was never unkind to Josephine (or to anyone), sat down next to Aurélie in a rustle of silk. “You go read your letter in privacy, little one. If Madame Bonaparte looks for you, I will tell her I sent you away. I know she will understand. Then wash your face and come back and smile, for remember: You are alive even if your lover was snatched up to Heaven. There are many here who would rejoice in the chance to take his place.” She smiled and patted Aurélie’s hand.
Aurélie managed a curtsey and thanks, then fled down the halls, past the rigid Consular Guards, and upstairs, away from the brilliantly lit state rooms. She ducked into Josephine’s pretty anteroom, which had a fire roaring and lamps lit, sank down onto the hearth, ignoring her velvet gown, and tore the crumpled, water-stained letter open.
Anne’s handwriting was a headlong dash, complete to the old-fashioned f for s, even when she wrote in badly spelled, mostly phonetic French, interspersed with equally idiosyncratic English.
My very dear Daughter:
We lost hope of ever receiving a letter, but as my Cousin Kittredge writ yearly for three years, to assure us you were happy and busy, we Councell’d Ourselves to be Content with having achiev’d our Primry Resolve. After that, Events kept us from seeing letters at all for a vast deal of Time.
I am seated here in a side-chamber at Gov’t House, with borrowed Pen and Ink, as I dare not wait upon my own Convenience, but must seize this Opportunity, for the diplomatic pouch goes out on the tide.
The secretary who is to carry it is at this moment at sup, and kindly said he would include my letter if I am expeditious.
We understand that there is Peace between our two Nations, England and France, but you would not know that for the Fighting we have seen in both Jamaica and St-Domingue, which is now in changing of Name to Hayti, at least at the West end. Heaven only knows if anyone, white or black, will survive to speak old Name or New.
I am confound’d to know what to write. It is not for want of words. Instead, it is for their very Prolixity. You will have better News than we get, for the papers from London are at least two months out of date before we see them, and the French even longer. Instead, I will confine myself to news of those you know.
She went on to name people in Aurélie’s life. The list of those who’d died, been wounded, or nobody had word of was depressingly long.
At the end, Anne wrote:
It is our way of thinking that this Island does not want our kind, black or white, for we are Interlopers here, even though many were constrain’d against their Will. But the Land does its best to rid itself of us all by Pestilence, Earthquake, Hurricane, and Drought. And that is beside the monstrous effect of Warfare.
We think of sailing for the Colony at New Orleans, which is said to be salubrious and peaceful. But we stay’d because of Nanny, who would not come off her mountain, in part because of you.
Here is the Particular article of the business. Your Aunt Kittredge writ again, after the long Silence, almost the same time you did to say that you had run off to France in Consequence of the Peace, taking your dowry with you against their Better Judgment. Yet the Secretary here informs me that she hath occasion’d, through her sister’s Connection to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Inquiries into me and my Marriage Lines, without troubling to write to me directly. There seems a vast deal here unexplain’d.
Nanny will not leave Accompong until she knows you have listen’d to your good guide. She instructed me to write that, and only that. You ask if you should come to us, but I put it to you most reluctantly that it is nigh impossible, given the state of Affairs here, and our not knowing if we are to take ship for the colony in the New World. Do what Nanny says, and know that our love and Prayers go with you.
(signed) Anne Kittredge de Mascarenhas, your loving Mother
Aurélie read it through twice, then got up and flitted to one of the many mirrors Josephine had in her rooms. When she could see me, she said, “It appears to me she expected it to be read by others.”
“I believe so, too,” I said, thinking, It would help if you gave me some guidance here, Nanny Hiasinte, if you are listening.
“The part that puzzles me is Nanny—” Women’s voices echoed down the marble hall. Aurélie glanced at the windows. “Dawn is not far off. I must not be found here.”
But she had only taken a few steps in the other direction (the rooms being laid out in strings, with doors at either side) when one voice rose. It was Agatha Rible, Josephine’s chief maid. “Have you seen Mademoiselle de Mascarenhas?”
“I am here,” Aurélie called, as she stuffed the letter down the front of her gown.
In came Josephine, tears dripping down her wan cheeks. She looked back and said, “To bed—all of you. It is late. Get some sleep.” To Agatha, who stood inside the doorway, hands pressed against one another, she said in a tender tone, “Please, my dear Agatha, brew me an infusion of orange leaves. My head aches so.”
Agatha scurried away, her steps noiseless, and Josephine beckoned Aurélie into her bedchamber, an enormous room with a canopied bed.
Josephine rushed around the chamber in a frenzy, blowing out all the candles so that it was only lit by the fire, reducing the light to a dim, ruddy glow that cast gigantic shadows on the velvet canopy.
She dropped onto the bed and pressed her hands to her forehead. “Why do the Bonapartes so enjoy being cruel?” She dropped her hands. “I thought that marrying Hortense to one of them would please them—that Bonaparte would adopt darling little Napoleon-Charles—but nothing I do is right. Nothing. Hortense once said that even if I could become pregnant, they would only spread lies about the father.”
Aurélie wisely stayed silent.
Josephine turned her head on the pillow, her dark eyes reflecting the flames as she regarded Aurélie. “I know Bonaparte is going to claim the crown of France. All the changes, the court etiquette when once we were so free. He wants to be called Napoleon, when he has been Bonaparte these ten years. I went to his chamber myself, the other night. Before we married, I could sit on his lap, and wind my fingers in his hair, and talk to him like a little girl—he liked that. He would give me anything I wanted. I asked him to give up the idea of a crown, and he only smiled, and nodded, and I knew I had lost.”
She squeezed her eyes closed. Tears gathered and tracked down her cheeks. “I am so afraid, Aurélie. Madame Fortuna swore to me on her mother’s grave that my life would be long and illustrious if I followed her instructions to the letter, and I have. It is the same with Monsieur Herne, the Seer. I pay them well. They instruct me according to what the stars say. Yet I cannot but help remember what Madame Villeneuve said: that I would only wear a crown for a short time. And when I was a girl, the nanny.…” Her voice suspended. She gave a sob, then gripped Aurélie’s wrist. “You must do something for me, Aurélie. Say you will do it. I can trust so few—and I cannot send Hortense. You know how she is situated.”
“What is it, Madame? If I can, I will do anything for you,” Aurélie murmured.
“I know. You are a dear girl. And not a spy—ridiculous. I do not believe anything they say. Listen. Bonaparte will not permit me to ride down to Aix-en-Provence, where Mary Magdalene’s grotto is at Sainte-Baume. It is said that women find healing there. He says if I go, the world will know the reason, and laugh at us. But he loves me, I know he does.” She sat up. “Josep
h. Caroline. The Bonapartes all press him and press him to divorce me. Divorce! It would scarcely take that. Do you know the truth about our marriage?”
Aurélie said, “No, Madame.”
Josephine smiled as she pulled a handkerchief from under the pillow and carefully blotted tears from her eyes. “I shall never forget how long he kept me waiting that night! It was a civil ceremony, of course, for in those days, you could only hear Mass in secret. It was at the Hôtel de Mondragon, which was once so very beautiful, but after the Revolution made it over into a district office, it was dismal and filthy. There was a single candle sitting in a tin sconce, throwing light on the marble fireplace and the broken chairs alike.”
Her eyes half closed, and she spoke dreamily. “I wore white muslin, of course. And a tri-color sash. My only jewel was a medallion Bonaparte gave me, inscribed ‘To Destiny.’ Barras was there. He hates me now. He blames me for 18th Brumaire, though I…but we were friends then, and he was to be witness. But Bonaparte was so late! The registrar went off to bed, leaving the ceremony to an underling who had no civil powers. The man hobbled about the room on his wooden leg, thump-tap, thump-tap. Then Bonaparte came at last, and oh, my dear, I lied about my age, and he lied about his, and even his address was false, for he listed it as the town hall, though at that time he was living in the rue des Capucines. Barras had gone by then, and all we had was his aide to witness, but he was underage. And later that night, my darling little Fortuné—the first one—bit Bonaparte, oh, so jealous, it was like an omen, I sometimes think!”
She fluttered a hand through the air. “La! I stray from my point. This marriage certificate, full of lies, issued under a government no longer existing, could be so easily set aside even if he were not First Consul. Ffft! Like blowing out a candle. And yet he doesn’t. Is that not evidence that he loves me still?”