We approached the grand civic building, the Hôtel de Ville, where the tricolor flag of the Republic hung limp on this windless day before the elaborate baroque exterior. A row of tall arched windows flanked a cavernous doorway. My heart lurched in my chest, the enormity of my task slowing my steps. My sister noted my hesitation. “Come now. It’s for Nicolas,” she said, her voice low and determined.
We crossed the threshold from the bright Place into the government building. City clerks and government bureaucrats buzzed about the massive, high-ceilinged space without noting our entry. The air was cool, the hall filled with a sense of purpose. “Where do we go?” I turned to my sister, immeasurably grateful that she stood beside me. I had been inside this building only a handful of times, always with Papa, never for anything this significant.
“There?” Julie pointed toward a long queue, where petitioners—apparently from all across the south of France, based on the number of people—stood lined up before a window, a faceless bureaucrat apparently turning the wheels of justice from behind that partition, though it appeared he did so at a crawling pace.
“We won’t see anyone until Christmas,” I gasped, frowning at the interminable line. “Where is Nicolas?”
“I don’t know, Desiree,” Julie answered, her voice betraying a hint of frustration—or was it perhaps the same fear I felt? “I know nothing more than you do.”
“Excuse me?” I turned to a nearby guard who stood before a side exit of the building. He looked at me, offering no reply. I continued: “Our brother has been wrongfully imprisoned, and we are here to post his bail. Would you be so kind as to direct us toward an administrator who sees to prisoner releases?”
The guard studied me, then Julie, then turned back to me. His mouth spread into a smirk as his eyes traced a clear line down the length of my figure. I clasped my hands in front of my waist, thrown momentarily off-balance by the bald, unmasked desire in his eyes. “You want my help, sweetheart, what’re you going to do to get it?”
My mouth fell open, prompting this guard to snigger. Before I could stammer out a reply, Julie was beside me, her frame rigid in defiance as she declared: “We have means.”
The guard turned to Julie, amused. “I guessed as much, based on the dresses.” As he spoke, I could smell the sour-wine reek of his breath. “So did Citizen Capet,” he said with a chortle, his street accent coloring the derisive nickname he gave to our dead king. “Fat lotta good it did ’im, eh?” He grunted out a laugh, scratching the groin of his stained trousers with a lone finger. “You’ll wait your turn, citizeness, just like every other free man and woman.” With that, he jerked his stubbled chin toward the long line of petitioners snaking away from the clerk’s window. “Don’t care if you got the fanciest gowns in the building. Just means some guard might want to get rich tearing ’em off your posh skins.”
“Come, Julie,” I said, tugging on my sister’s hand, regretting that I had sought this brute’s assistance. We shuffled away across the hall, eyes down, our resolve sufficiently battered by the hostile disrespect we’d seen so far.
“Look at the line,” Julie said, toneless. We walked quickly across the vast interior space, not toward any particular destination—we simply wished to be as far away from that awful man as possible. “It’s as you said, we shall be here for days and no closer to saving Nicolas. He could be tried and executed before we ever reach the clerk.”
I nodded. I was so disturbed by all of it—by the glimpses of the prison and the church, by the guillotine, by the vulgar man in the street and now this vile guard, but mostly by the length of the line and our utter powerlessness to save Nicolas—that I did not even see the figure in front of me until I’d walked straight into him. Only the bulk of his body against mine plucked me from my troubled musings. “Oh, I am sorry, monsieur. I mean, citizen! I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.” I kept my eyes fixed on the floor, fearful that this man might handle me as roughly as the others had.
His answer was entirely unexpected: “A lady need never apologize.” The man’s tone was completely devoid of hostility; his remark carried no hint of malice or lewdness. I glanced from under the brim of my bonnet up into a broad, unfamiliar smile. The face into which I stared was dark and ruddy, not attractive, but his large eyes appeared kind. The tension in my body slackened, just a bit.
“But then, a lady need never frown nor fret, either, and yet I see that you do both.” His accent sounded foreign—Spanish, perhaps? Though he spoke with the authority of someone in charge, he wore loose breeches and a simple jacket, not an administrative uniform or government robe. The tricolor revolutionary cockade was fixed prominently to his jacket, pinned over his left breast. He stood tall and broad-shouldered, and he appeared older than I was, in his mid- or late twenties. But why did he keep referring to me as a lady, rather than citizeness? And who was he?
“Joseph di Buonaparte, at your service,” he offered, answering my thoughts. His cap already in hand, he swept it aside with a flourish as he bowed deeply before my sister and then me. “And you are?” His eyes held my own and I saw a glint of good cheer, perhaps even mischief, as he asked the question.
“Desiree Clary,” I answered, lowering my eyes as I offered a quick curtsy. My sister did the same beside me. “Julie Clary.”
“Ah, the famed Clary girls?” This man, this Joseph di Buonaparte, repeated our family surname, clasping his hands together. “Daughters of the late Francois Clary? A fine citizen. A man who made this port city rich.”
Julie and I exchanged a glance, and I could see that she wondered the same thing: Who is this strange man with his easy smiles and his odd accent?
“But please, you must tell me—what service can I render for the daughters of the late, great Citizen Clary?” he asked, eyes darting from me to Julie, then back to me, where they remained.
I stood still, temporarily mute in my incredulity. Julie took a step forward. “If you are in earnest, and truly willing to help, citizen…?”
“A Corsican never offers anything unless he intends to follow through,” he answered. “Unless, of course, he doesn’t wish to. But that is an entirely different matter.” He laughed, his eyes resting on mine, and I nodded, pretending to follow. Well, then, he was Corsican, at least that much I understood—the accent must have been Italian. But why did he speak as if he could actually help us?
“In that case, I shall meet your kindness with candor, sir. Er, citizen.” Julie appeared to trust this strange man’s gregarious manners, and she addressed him frankly as she related the story of Nicolas’s imprisonment, leaving out the detail that Papa, a royalist, had made a generous gift to the crown just before the outbreak of the Revolution. Joseph di Buonaparte nodded knowingly as he listened, the confidence of his bearing not wavering in the slightest, even in the face of Julie’s clear distress.
When Julie finished, he crossed his arms before his broad chest. Eventually, he nodded. “I understand,” was all he said.
“We…we would be most grateful if in fact you could help us.” Julie lifted the purse from her pocket, just enough so he could see it. “And we would be happy to demonstrate our gratitude.”
Joseph cast a look around the massive hall before leaning close and putting his hand on top of Julie’s. The gesture was overly presumptuous, bordering on improper, but there was no hint of lasciviousness or impropriety in it, simply an earnest concern as he said, “Please, Citizeness Clary, put away your purse.”
Julie hesitated a moment, looking at his hand on hers, before heeding his request. “What you can do—” Joseph said.
“Anything,” I offered, stepping forward, the hope evident in my tone. Joseph turned to me now as he spoke: “There is a nice café across the square. Why don’t you ladies go and have a seat on the terrace? Order me a glass of something cold. Perhaps even a glass of wine. I promise you that, before this office closes for the day,
you shall be walking home with your brother.”
Julie and I looked from this man, this incomprehensibly kind stranger, toward each other. Was he to be believed?
Julie, surveying once more the interminable line of petitioners and apparently seeing no option other than to trust this Citizen di Buonaparte, looked from me back to him. “Sir, we put our hope in you. Thank you.”
“You can thank me once I’ve brought him to you. Nicolas?”
“Yes, Nicolas Clary,” Julie answered. “He was brought in this morning. We don’t know where he’s being held.”
“Then I shall find out.” Joseph di Buonaparte nodded, winking once at me. “Now, please, out of here. To the café! There are far too many rogues in this building masquerading as revolutionaries. No place for a pair of ladies.”
* * *
Neither Julie nor I spoke as we sat at a table on the terrace, barely touching our cold lemonades. We were both wondering the same thing, I knew, and there was no need to voice the questions that neither of us could answer: Who was this Joseph di Buonaparte? Did he truly intend to help us? And, if his intentions were indeed to help, was he even capable of doing so?
The clock in the square marched steadily around the minutes and hours, passing teatime, until suppertime approached. The government offices would be closing soon. I shifted in my seat, my fingers restlessly smudging the sticky moisture that clung to the cup of my untouched drink. I was lost in my thoughts, a sequence of morose musings. I was thinking of Papa on the last days I’d seen him. Weak, in his massive bed, drifting in and out of fretful sleep. Maman huddled beside him, weeping and praying, even though our prayers had been made illegal. I was dreading the walk back home to Maman.
“By God.” Julie’s voice pulled me from my grim reverie, drawing my attention upward. “Look!” She pointed across the crowded square and I turned in that direction, my eyes darting past pigeons, students, housewives, dirty little children. There, two figures—one broad and tall, the other trim, well-dressed, familiar—emerged from the massive front doorway of the Hôtel de Ville into the early-evening light. They walked purposefully away from the town hall.
I gasped. “Nicolas!” Both Julie and I were out of our chairs in an instant, scrambling off the terrace to race toward our brother. I was the faster runner and reached him a few paces ahead of Julie. We both gasped for breath as we collapsed into his arms.
“Girls!” Nicolas welcomed our assault. I laughed, even as tears filled my eyes. “Nicolas, thank God.”
“No, thank Joseph di Buonaparte,” Nicolas replied, allowing Julie and me to squeeze him a moment longer. People passed by in the square, watching, familiar as they were with daily tears outside the town hall—though such tears of joyful reunions were far less common than the other sort.
“Thank Joseph di Buonaparte indeed,” Julie said, turning to our improbable new benefactor. “But how can we ever?”
The tall man bowed before us once more, his facial expression seeming to inquire whether we had dared to doubt him. Of course we had. And yet, here stood Nicolas.
“Are you…free?” I asked, my voice hesitant. I simply wished to take my brother’s hand and pull him away from that building, away from those unseen prison cells, back into the safety of our family’s walled villa.
“As you see me,” Nicolas answered.
“Really?” I asked, hardly willing to believe it. “Clear of danger?”
Nicolas tilted his head toward me. “As clear of danger as anyone in this nation can claim to be.”
I hugged my brother again and Nicolas allowed it. “And all because it appears that my younger sister has charmed the heart of an important man,” Nicolas whispered into my ear, pulling out of the hug and pinching my cheek. Even had he not pinched my flesh, I have no doubt I would have flushed a shade of deep crimson, for I felt my entire face grow warm at the comment. My younger sister has charmed the heart of an important man. I swallowed, my eyes fixing firmly on the ground, away from the appraising stare of my brother, away from the expectant and eager smile of Joseph di Buonaparte.
Julie stepped in, mercifully. “It’s more than we dared to hope,” she said, her voice level. “And we insist that we must repay you, sir, for your kindness.”
“Please, Mademoiselle, er, Citizeness Clary, away with the money purse! You insult my Corsican sense of chivalry.”
“If not with money,” Nicolas said, “then how?”
I allowed myself to look up at this and saw Joseph clasp his large hands, glancing from my brother toward me, then back toward Nicolas. Now even he looked slightly sheepish, as he fidgeted with the hat in his grip. “If it’s not too bold…perhaps you might allow me to help you…escort your sisters safely home?”
Nicolas nodded with half a smile, sliding his arm through Julie’s, leaving me unattended. “It would be our pleasure.” Nicolas turned his gaze toward me, his eyebrows lifting. “Isn’t that so, Desi?”
I stared at my brother, at his expectant expression, and then saw Julie, her own features arranged in a manner in which I could not decipher her thoughts, an uncommon occurrence between us. Then I looked to Joseph; so eager and hopeful was his smile. I did not want the attentions of this bold man—so much older, so very forward—on me, and yet I knew that we were indebted to his kindness, and it was clear what Nicolas expected of me. “Escort us home? Of course. Certainly,” I stammered, breaking eye contact as Joseph strode giddily toward me, extending his thick arm for me to take. Together, the four of us turned our backs on the town hall and the crowded square and started toward home.
I’d never been escorted home by a man before, other than my brother or my father. At only sixteen, and coming of age as I had during a time of war, I had never been courted. Papa and Nicolas were both far too protective to allow it, and, besides, young men of my class, if not imprisoned or dead, seemed far too busy with politics these days than to waste time on trivial matters like flirtation.
But now, here I was, walking beside a man I’d known barely a few hours, following behind my newly freed brother as evening draped itself over the narrow streets of Marseille. I blinked, hardly able to understand all that had happened in just half a day. Nicolas and Julie clipped briskly ahead of us, a pace set by my brother, I guessed, in order to grant a bit of discreet distance between our two couples. I was uncomfortable on the arm of this relative stranger, shy and sheltered as I was, and thus grateful for the short distance back to our family’s home. I was also grateful that Joseph babbled away at my side for the entirety of the walk, apparently happy to tell me his thoughts on Corsica and Marseille without any need for my reply. “The city is called Ajaccio,” he said, describing his hometown. “You’ve never heard of it? Ah, but you must see it. Someday. The land! It’s not unlike this. We also overlooked the Mediterranean. But never in my whole life did I see my mother buy olive oil or wine, we had so much of it on our family’s land.”
Ahead of us, Nicolas paused with Julie, turning as we approached the front gate of our home. “Citizen di Buonaparte, you must come in. Mother will insist on meeting my deliverer.”
Apparently not one to decline any sort of invitation, Joseph assented with a hearty nod. “Indeed! I would like to meet the madame who produced daughters such as these.”
“Careful, my good man,” Nicolas said, flashing a good-natured smile. “I may owe you my life, but that does not mean I will sit by to witness flagrant flirtation with my sisters.”
“But I’m Corsican!” Joseph bellowed. “I can’t resist the opportunity to flatter a beautiful woman.” Joseph’s entire frame reverberated with his fulsome laughter, even as he held on to my arm and guided me through the gate onto our property.
Maman’s joy at Nicolas’s safe return was as excessive as her despair had been earlier in the day. She wrapped her arms around him as if she might never let go. She ordered the footmen to bring us champagne. As the eve
ning outside darkened, she called for the candles to be lit and the French doors thrown open, allowing in the balmy air and the nighttime sounds of the gulls and tree frogs. “A toast,” Maman said, lifting her glass toward the guest in our drawing room. “To a hero for our Clary family,” she said, smiling broadly at Joseph, who was clearly reveling in Maman’s attentions. All I wanted was to finish this glass of champagne, perhaps eat a quick bite of supper, and then slip upstairs with Julie, where we might discuss all that had occurred on this strange day.
But Maman, overjoyed at having her son home safely, appeared intent on chatting with our visitor, her rare interest in playing the hostess as surprising as it was inconvenient to me. She ordered that our flutes be refilled. “But you have an unfamiliar accent, Citizen di Buonaparte. Are you Italian?”
“Close, madame,” Joseph answered. “Corsican.”
“Corsican,” Maman repeated, nodding slowly. “How…novel. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a Corsican.”
“There aren’t many of us to meet,” Joseph said, his easy, good-natured smile drifting from Maman to Nicolas to Julie, before finally resting on me. “It’s just a small island of grapes and olives, after all. But it’s home. Or at least, it was home.”
“Rather as unstable there in Corsica as we are here, isn’t that so?” Maman asked, ordering yet more champagne for our guest. I fidgeted, stunned by my mother’s loquaciousness, her sudden interest in Corsican politics. Her spirits soared higher this evening than I’d seen them in quite some time—certainly since before Papa’s death, possibly since before the Revolution’s outbreak. Her motives were clear to me: after months of fretting that Papa’s wealth and the favor of the nobility might mean our undoing, she finally believed that we had a protector in this di Buonaparte fellow, and she was giddy with relief. Dogged in her determination to solidify his good favor.
The Queen's Fortune Page 3
