She studied me and so I stared back, noting the rosy hue of her cheeks in the crisp air. After a moment, I fidgeted under the attentiveness of her stare. “You’re so beautiful,” she said, flashing a sudden smile. “Just as he said. Round and healthy and innocent.”
“Thank you,” I stammered. I wasn’t used to other women paying me such bold compliments, and I wasn’t sure what to do with the invocation of the man whose love we held in common. “You…you are as well.”
She smiled demurely, blinking her long lashes as she cast her eyes downward. “Innocent? No.”
“Well, beautiful,” I fumbled. I hated my girlish awkwardness, the fact that she made me feel as though I stood back on my feet, unable to catch up.
She reached forward and took my hand in her own. Her thin fingers were like ice, but her grip was unexpectedly strong. “I’m sure you guessed that I wished to speak with you alone.”
My breath was a visible vapor between our two faces. “What about?” I asked.
“Napoleon has said such lovely things about you—he positively gushes at your name. He considers you and Julie to be his sisters. I think you and I shall be dear friends; I just know it.” She gave my hand a squeeze, looking directly into my eyes. As she leaned close, whispering to me, I noticed a lone snowflake land on one of her eyelashes. “I wanted you to be the first to know of our joy. You and I shall be sisters soon, because Napoleon and I are going to be married.”
Chapter 11
Paris
Spring 1796
“WE SHOULD SEND OUR REGRETS. It’s not right that you should…” Julie put a hand on my arm, asking for the third time: “Are you certain you will be all right?”
Before I could answer, Josephine swept into the room, her willowy figure draped in a flowing gown of white muslin, a tricolor sash cinched tight around her narrow waist. Her dark curls were swept back, with just a few strands of hair falling around her freshly made-up face. She spotted us across the dark-paneled room, obscured in dim candlelight, and smiled her greeting, “Ah, the Clary sisters!” She was one-half French revolutionary patriot, one-half Grecian goddess—and thus wholly the embodiment of Napoleon Bonaparte’s most fervent fantasies for womanhood. And she knew it, of course. She had carefully honed every detail of her appearance in order to be so.
“I am so glad that you could make it. Thank you.” She crossed the room toward us, where we stood with the surly registrar, a man who’d introduced himself with a frown and the name of Citizen Leclercq. We were on the upper floor of the drafty, run-down town hall of Paris’s second arrondissement, just a short walk from the Avenue de l’Opéra. The registrar had offered us no chairs, so we shifted on our feet as Josephine approached us. Though the room was cold and dim, lit by only a few sparse candles and no fire in the hearth, Josephine’s smile shone warm. “Napoleon told me: ‘My darling, you shall have sisters there to attend you on your wedding night. I promise you that.’ Thank heavens for the Clary girls.”
Julie and I lowered our eyes, unsure of how to respond. Of course, we knew what had transpired—how Napoleon’s mother and sisters had flatly refused to attend any wedding between their kin and Josephine de Beauharnais. “There are thirty thousand streetwalkers in Paris. You may have any of them you like. But why must you marry one?” Letizia had said to her favorite son upon hearing news of his engagement. Rather than deter or intimidate her lovestruck son, these comments had only elicited Napoleon’s outrage and adamant defensiveness of his chosen bride. Joseph told us that Napoleon had railed at his mother and sisters in response, swearing that they would not have another sou from him until they accepted Josephine into the family.
Letizia had left Paris with her girls, shunning the wedding and sending Napoleon into a further rage. He had then stormed to Joseph’s home, where Julie and I overheard him from the opposite side of the house swearing off any family member who disrespected Josephine. He called his mother a traitor and his sisters ungrateful shrews. He’d insisted that Joseph attend the wedding as his witness, ordering him to bring Julie and me to serve as Josephine’s attendants and female family members.
Joseph had convinced Julie of the importance of her being there. Josephine’s children were alive, having survived the Terror, but they were both away—the daughter being educated in a convent, the son at a military école. We were, as Joseph put it, the only family in Paris, dubious as our connection might be. Julie begrudgingly agreed.
I had been less willing. The idea of attending to my former fiancé’s new bride—how could I be expected to look on, knowing that that was to have been my place? It was further evidence of Napoleon’s complete callousness that he never spoke about any of it with me; he simply gave the order to his brother that I must be there and then assumed I would obey.
It was only my reluctance at putting Julie in a spot of further difficulty—the risk of placing her in the path of Napoleon’s temper or financial retribution—that ultimately forced my hand. I knew she would take a stand for me, if that was what I asked. She’d demand that Joseph do so as well. But so, too, did I know that Napoleon was to be in her life forever, as her husband’s closest companion. Even as his patron in government employment, it seemed. And I’d seen Napoleon’s violent reaction toward those family members who had insulted Josephine; I was not fool enough to expect that he’d treat Julie with more care than he had his own beloved mamma.
Wasn’t it easier to just swallow my misery rather than stoking anything further, prompting a potential rift between brother and brother, or worse, Julie and her husband? I would do this and be done with him. At least, that was what I hoped. And so there Julie and I stood, in the back room of the small office building on that early-spring evening, waiting beside the smiling bride.
And yet Napoleon, the ever-prompt and punctual soldier, did not come. Several hours passed. A few of the candles burned to their quicks and flickered out, casting the room into further darkness. Josephine adjusted the draping of her gown. She cleared her throat, restlessly fingered the curls that framed her face. She threw us sideways glances. But she did not speak.
The clock on the cracked mantel struck ten and still the registrar did not offer us ladies any chairs. Nor did he offer us refreshment, even a drink of watered-down wine or a broth to warm ourselves. Finally, after a gaping, unapologetic yawn, the man looked at his timepiece and then glanced at us: “This is more than I can bear. I am off to bed. Go downstairs and fetch a clerk if Citizen Bonaparte arrives.”
Josephine’s face registered alarm for the first time, her cheeks going pale in the candlelight as suddenly only Julie and I remained in the room with her, waiting. “He’s been so busy,” she said, casting a nervous glance from me toward my sister. “You know what he’s preparing for?”
We both shook our heads.
Josephine nodded. “It’s a secret. But I can tell you. The two of you are so kind…kind enough to attend to me here, where I have no living family.” She lowered her voice, making us co-conspirators. “He’s been appointed general of the Army of Italy. At last. What he’s wanted since the earliest days of the Revolution. He’ll finally march into Italy.”
The news was stunning; I remembered back to the first days of our courtship—Napoleon’s plans for Italy. His wish to march through those rich and disparate kingdoms at the head of France’s columns. His plans had been rejected once, a casualty of a toppled regime. But now, it appeared as though he would realize his dream. “When…when will he go?” I asked.
“This week,” Josephine said, her head tilting downward as she examined her fingernails. “I’ll be a brand-new bride, left alone.”
“So soon,” Julie said.
Josephine nodded. “All the more reason why I shall look to you—as my family—to support and sustain me.” Her smile flickered for an instant, feeble like the candlelight in the shadowy room. “I’m not afraid of Letizia. Mamma. Nor am I afraid of the sist
ers. Napoleon is furious with them, but I think that their opposition only makes him love me more.” She grinned at this, her features suddenly coy. “In fact, my Bonaparte doesn’t love me—he worships me. Never before have I known a man to—”
But her thoughts were cut short, because suddenly Napoleon appeared at the door, charging into the room with Joseph behind him. Barras, his mentor, the man who had given him Josephine, was there to serve as a second witness.
“My bride! My everything!” Napoleon held his arms wide, his face flushed and beaming beneath his ever-present bicorn hat. “The army demands my attention, but you, you have already conquered my heart.” He strode toward her, sweeping her into his arms, her gown belling out as he hoisted her lean frame and twirled her around the room. Josephine giggled, his lateness entirely forgiven, and the assistant clerk was called up from the lower floor.
Julie and I stood to the rear of the room as Napoleon married Josephine. He presented her with a golden ring, the words TO DESTINY engraved on the band. With the brief legal ceremony complete—as the Church still held no power to perform marriages—the bride and bridegroom prepared to sign the paperwork. As Napoleon had no birth certificate from Corsica, the clerk waived the requirement, telling him that a sworn oath in the presence of reputable witnesses would be sufficient.
When it was time for Napoleon to state his age, I noticed, with alarm, that he added a year and a half. “I am twenty-eight,” he lied, giving his birthday as February 5, 1768. I knew his birthday to be August 15, 1769. This date he offered would have made him only a few weeks younger than Joseph!
Next, Josephine, also lacking any official document, gave her birthday as June 24, 1768. This, too, I knew to be a lie, making her five years younger than in fact she was. She would have been a child at the time she birthed her own children. Why were they lying like this? I wondered. And then I understood—they were cutting the vast difference in years in order to appear the same age.
Joseph said nothing in protest as he signed the defrauded papers beside his brother. Josephine retreated to the corner of the room to admire her new ring. And then, Napoleon announced: “Back to my home! I wish to fête my bride!”
* * *
After years of waiting, I was finally invited to Napoleon’s Parisian home, but only so that I could join him and the others in toasting another bride on his wedding night.
It was nearly midnight by the time our small party arrived at his large palais on the Right Bank. Napoleon nodded his approval as he surveyed the lavish dinner spread. “Champagne,” he ordered, clapping his hands together. Servants appeared to hand us each a flute of chilled champagne.
I had no appetite as I entered the high-ceilinged dining room, where the long mahogany table groaned under porcelain platters heaped with oysters, turkey and chestnut stuffing, cheese, boudin pudding, stewed apples, and bowls overflowing with fruit and nuts. Josephine, rather than accepting the hostess’s chair at the opposite end of the table, positioned herself on Napoleon’s lap, sipping her champagne as she giggled, tilting her head toward his.
Josephine’s dog, a small male pug named Fortuné, yipped and barked at Napoleon’s feet, apparently jealous to see his mistress’s attention diverted to another. “Fortuné the mongrel may not approve of me, but Lady Fortune has selected me,” Napoleon joked to our table. And then he turned serious, lifting his glass in a toast: “Tonight, and all nights, I am the most fortunate of men. No one can possibly understand the delights of this woman.” His hands roamed freely and unashamedly over her waist and hips as the rest of us fidgeted in our seats. I picked at a piece of turkey on my plate.
Napoleon, apparently, had no appetite, either. At least, not for the food. He twisted Josephine around in his lap so that she faced him as he said: “Now, my little Creole, what say you? Shall I make a wife out of you?” And before any of us could respond, Napoleon hoisted his giggling and compliant bride up from the table, sweeping her across the room in his arms. Before he crossed the threshold, he turned back, glancing at the table: “You all, stay. Eat. You are not to leave until the champagne is done and you are all thoroughly drunk. That’s an order.”
With the newlyweds gone, we turned back to our meals, no one speaking much. Joseph and Barras fell into a quiet conversation about the upcoming plans for Italy. Julie attempted to stifle a yawn. “I’m tired,” she said to me, her voice low.
“As am I,” I answered.
And then, from upstairs, we heard the dog barking. A muffled din as Napoleon could be heard yelling at the small beast. Josephine’s soft voice as she tried to calm either her husband or the dog, or perhaps both.
“Sounds as though Fortuné plans to disrupt the wedding night,” Barras said, chuckling to Joseph. Joseph leaned close and offered some reply, but he made sure that neither Julie nor I heard it. All we heard was Barras’s boom of laughter in response.
A few moments later the chandelier over our heads began to quiver, sending a faint flicker of light across the dining room, the sound of tinkling crystal. And then we began to hear different noises—faint mewlings at first, muffled laughter. Then the sounds rose in volume—two voices, male and female, as Fortuné launched a fresh round of yips. I stopped chewing my dinner, dropping my fork. I looked at Julie, her round eyes and scarlet flush mirroring the mortification that I myself felt. Could it really be? More noises both high and low in register, more trembling of the chandelier overhead. Barras took a long sip of his drink, chuckling to Joseph as he muttered, “Little Corsican bastard wants to make sure we all hear how lucky he is.”
I reached for my sister’s hand under the table. “If you’ll excuse me…I think I need to…I’m suddenly…a headache.”
“Of course,” Julie said. “Joseph, please have them fetch the carriage. Desiree and I will return home.”
Joseph obeyed. As I rose from the table, saying my hurried farewells to the small crowd, I heard Josephine’s sounds even more clearly overhead. I rushed from the room, my sister scrambling after me.
Julie held me close in the cold carriage as I sobbed. She didn’t speak, nor did I, but my body could not help but give voice to my pain—heartache for what had once been, but even more so, mortification. Could there be anything more wretched than hearing the sounds of other people making love? I wondered. Especially when the man has made love to you? Especially when he was the only man ever to make love to you—and the only man whom you ever intended to love?
* * *
Several days later, the newlyweds summoned us back to their home to see Napoleon off for Italy. Letizia and the girls were still not in Paris, still not recognizing the marriage to Josephine, but Julie and I were expected to join Joseph. It was our first time back since their wedding night. At least he was leaving, I thought to myself. And hopefully for a long campaign.
Josephine appeared casual in a lemon-yellow chemise, a kerchief woven through her hair in the style of her native islands. Her eyes were red and puffy. Napoleon doted on her all morning as she reclined in an armchair, legs raised on an ottoman, a plush Smyrna blanket draped across her feet. The servants hustled around them both to load his trunks. Julie and I sat, drinking tea, as Napoleon told Joseph that he was fearful of what his abandonment would do to his wife. This only prompted further tears on her part.
“If only I could come with you,” she said, reaching for her husband with limp arms.
“It is no place for you, my heart,” he said, his fingers tracing the knot of the kerchief in her dark hair.
“But my place is beside you,” she insisted.
He shook his head. “You shall have to be strong, my little Creole.” Napoleon’s tone was imploring but firm.
“I don’t know that I can be,” Josephine said, dropping her head into her hands as she erupted in fresh sobs.
I looked on, surprised. This woman had survived a cross-Atlantic ship voyage when little more than a child. A cru
el husband’s abuse, childbirth, and then the Terror. She’d emerged penniless, without connections, and yet she’d climbed to the top of Parisian society. Surely a temporary military campaign could not be so daunting to her? She’d be here, in a mansion, after all, with Napoleon’s money and household at her disposal.
It was then that I realized it: as I watched them, the caresses and the words passing back and forth between their bodies, I realized that he loved the theatrics of it all. And so did she. When he wished to be the swooning, lovesick boy, she played the part of his temptress, his self-possessing muse. Now that he was the dutiful departing soldier, she was the suffering and faithful soldier’s wife. Josephine managed and comported herself like a beautiful instrument, a work of art so perfectly attuned to the complex and shifting moods of its player—the man on whom she bestowed her favor. That man was now Napoleon, and he was rapt, powerless before her, even as he presumed that she was the instrument and he the handler.
We were all present in the room and thus forced to watch him take his leave of her. “You will be closest to my heart, right here.” He slipped into his officer’s coat, adjusting the miniature of Josephine that he had clipped onto the breast.
“Take me with you,” she begged once more, rising from her chair as he stood.
“The battlefield is no place for you, my darling.” He shrugged her gently off, pressing a hand to her tummy as he lowered his voice: “Especially if my little son is beginning to grow inside here. But know this, while I am gone, you shall be the constant object of my thoughts. To live for you, that is the story of my life now.”
She nodded, fresh tears slipping from her eyes.
“Now, remember, my dearest little one,” Napoleon said, preparing to leave the room. “If you do not write me often, every day, perhaps twice a day, I shall go mad, and I shall punish you when I return.” He kissed her a final time, a long, slow kiss on the lips. “Now I must go.” When he pulled away, her body seemed to lose its ability to hold itself upright.
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