And yet, in spite of these victories, my Bernadotte was furious. Once more on the battlefield, Napoleon had turned his ire on my husband, accusing him of not being where he needed him, calling him a bungler and threatening to have him shot.
We had been walking for hours, and I was trying to cool Bernadotte’s temper before we were expected at dinner with the other generals and our Emperor. My husband was fed up with everything about Napoleon, both on the battlefield and off, where the two men seemed to be locked in a fight of their own. If Bernadotte needed to vent weeks’ worth of frustrations, then let him do it here, where only my ears might hear it and where I might attempt to steer his troubled thoughts back toward calmer waters. The setting was lovely, the air mild and golden, and all of Vienna stretched out beneath us as we sat before Maria Theresa’s Gloriette monument. Just below, the grotto fountain churned and gurgled, its stone figures frozen mid-frolic in the water, and beyond that, the vast maze of shrubbery and Habsburg tulips.
“Interesting to think,” Bernadotte said, “that this is where Marie-Antoinette grew up. We beheaded her for being a queen. And yet, Napoleon has set his Empress up in a manner more lavish than anything Antoinette ever enjoyed. And him? He lives more wastefully than any Louis Bourbon ever did. The people are so easily manipulated. And he knows how to do it.”
I nodded; of course it was true. And yet, I would never trade places with Josephine, not for all of the treasure in her massive jewelry box.
“Tell me, how is our Empress?” Bernadotte asked. “The embattled Josephine.”
“Embattled is the correct choice of word,” I answered. Even when my husband had invited me to join him in Vienna, and many other generals had done the same with their wives, Napoleon had insisted that his remain in Paris. “She is not happy. She cries often. Napoleon no longer writes to her. She senses how far he has strayed. And now that she’s turned forty-six, there will be no hope for a child.”
“Well, if you think she was unhappy when you last saw her in Paris, her sadness shall only grow.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Countess Marie Walewska is pregnant.”
I sighed, staring out over the view of green hedges and tightly clipped lawns. “His mistresses have fallen pregnant before. Josephine has weathered each announcement with calmness.”
“No.” Bernadotte shook his head, his arms crossed before his broad chest. “This is different. Countess Marie is not some Parisian actress or officer’s wife. She is noble. But worse still—Napoleon loves her. She was by his side for the entirety of this past campaign, in his bed every night. So inseparable were they that people began to openly call her the ‘Polish Wife.’ ”
I listened closely, my heart speeding up as I understood his point. Would Napoleon finally put Josephine aside?
“His advisers approve of her—she is young, beautiful, and pliable. If this child is a son…it shall be hard for Napoleon to resist making him legitimate.”
“Through marriage to Countess Walewska?” I asked.
My husband nodded. “Perhaps. But, knowing him, he might have his eyes set on an even higher target. A princess from somewhere else in Europe. The man’s hubris makes it difficult to guess.”
I frowned, looking out over the glorious lands of the once-glorious Habsburg Empire. They had been humbled, these blue-blooded rulers of Austria—vanquished on the field of battle and then chased from their lands, chased from their kingdom, just like all the other crowned heads of Europe who had fallen before Napoleon.
Could I really imagine him cutting ties with Josephine? No, I couldn’t; the two of them were so deeply and inextricably linked in my mind, two threads of the same rope, it was impossible to imagine one without the other.
A breeze rippled across the hilltop just then, sending a sprinkling of raised gooseflesh to the surface of my skin. I noticed, then, how the sun was dipping low toward the west. “We had better go in to dress for dinner,” I said, glancing toward my husband.
“Yes,” he agreed. “We know that our Emperor does not abide lateness. And I need not give him one more cause to berate me.”
We walked down the hill slowly, each of us wrapped in our own thoughtful silence.
“Oh, hell,” Bernadotte groaned. Though I startled at his profanity, my eyes followed his stare and saw the same thing he did: the small, round figure emerging into the back gardens, walking down the horseshoe stairway just as we were approaching the same door. “We have no choice,” Bernadotte whispered to me, tightening his grip on my hand. “He’s seen us already. We will greet him.”
“Desiree!” Napoleon lifted a hand in our direction.
“Sire.” My heart galloped as I curtsied in greeting—I hadn’t seen him since the house party in Malmaison. That horrifying fumbling in the dark room.
He watched us approach, placing a hand on his thick waist. “You always seem to show up, Desiree, just as things are getting lively and fun. Good to see you, my dear girl. Now the party can really begin, eh, Bernadotte?”
My husband did not reply, because just then, all of our attention turned toward a servant racing toward us, a young man in plain clothes, his long hair disheveled and loose. His face struck me as bizarre—his features almost feral. I stepped an inch closer to my husband.
“What is it, man?” Napoleon stared at the approaching figure, but he clearly did not recognize the attendant, either, even though he never forgot a face.
“Please, sire, a petition.” The man approached us with a harried, frantic stride, his pale eyes ablaze with a peculiar intensity. “A petition for you.”
“What?” Napoleon asked, confused. Bernadotte pulled me back, closer to him, and I watched with misgivings as the man removed the petition from his pocket. “Halt right there!” Just then, two of Napoleon’s nearby aides shouted, lunging toward the young man. Two more gendarmes stepped in front of Napoleon as the man raised his hand, brandishing the petition, and I noticed then that it was not a paper at all—but a massive carving knife. I screamed in surprise as it all unfolded right before us, fast as a blink. “Death to the tyrant!” the man yelled, his body writhing in protest as a swarm of guards descended on him, his eyes alight with murderous intent.
“Assassin! Seize this would-be assassin!” Napoleon’s face was ashen as he understood, as he saw how close death had come. As the Emperor was whisked away indoors, I turned to my husband, who stood in mute shock beside me. We had nearly seen our Emperor murdered right in front of our eyes—and by a man screaming the very sentiment that was written on my husband’s chest.
Chapter 33
Château de Fontainebleau
Winter 1809
“ISN’T IT SOMETHING—AS THOUGH plucked from a fairy tale?” Josephine’s breath misted the air around us as the horses clip-clopped forward, pulling our gilded coach up the broad avenue toward the picturesque castle tucked back in the snow.
“It’s enchanting,” I agreed, examining the place as we approached. Indeed, it could have been plucked from a drawing in one of Oscar’s storybooks.
“My husband said, ‘Now, Fontainebleau, there is the true home of the kings of France.’ It’s over fifteen hundred rooms.” Josephine sat a bit taller in the coach, adjusting the sable collar that draped over her shoulders, her svelte body encased in a snug travel cloak of purple velvet. “I think it will be a splendid little party.”
Our Emperor had declared that he, like the grandest and most ancient ruling families of Europe, should have a winter court to which he and his government might decamp, and I could not disagree that he’d chosen one of France’s most stunning spots. “Have you ever been here?” Josephine asked me, weaving her arm through mine.
I shook my head.
“That’s right. I always forget that you’re a southerner like me,” Josephine said. “Accustomed to palm trees and ocean breezes, not these castle moats and snow-c
overed forests. But we will have fun nonetheless, won’t we?”
Our retinue came to a halt before the sprawling palace and its grand front entrance, where a light sprinkling of snow dusted a massive stone staircase that unfurled in a wide horseshoe. Already, Napoleon had made his imperial imprint on the ancient castle, for I saw that, amid the tall windows and the fanciful turrets, the golden eagles of his reign kept guard over the entryway.
Josephine was helped out of the carriage, her ensemble of imperial purple presenting a stunning splash of color against the white snow. “Oh, I am so happy to stretch my legs,” she said, as I stepped out behind her, and then she added: “And to see my husband.”
Oscar, who had ridden with his tutor and his nanny in a coach farther behind, exited and quickly took off to explore the snow-covered grounds, impervious to the cold air and delighting in his freedom after so long a journey. I gave him a quick kiss but remained with Josephine, bracing for what might come during her reunion with her husband. But as we made our way up the broad, imposing stairway and into the castle’s large front hall, we noticed, with surprise, that it was not our Emperor who awaited our arrival.
“Paulette,” Josephine said, using the affectionate family nickname but barely masking her disappointment at seeing her sister-in-law. “How good of you to receive us.”
Pauline said nothing but simply kept a tight, haughty smile fixed on her lips.
“Where is the Emperor?” Josephine asked, stuffing her hands farther into her fur muff.
“His Imperial Majesty, my brother, is occupied. He has asked that I receive you in his place,” was all Pauline offered by way of an answer, and she looked only to me as she said it. “He has already been here for a day, and was surprised to have arrived ahead of your party. He was…less than pleased…that no one was here to receive him when he arrived, weary, after so many months of war.”
Josephine didn’t say anything to Pauline, but instead tugged on my arm and directed the waiting mob of footmen toward the second floor. “I wish to go to my suite,” she said as we made our way up the grand staircase, its panels colored with tableaux of Alexander the Great’s many lovers and romantic conquests.
There, at the top, Napoleon stood.
How long had he been watching?
Upon seeing his wife’s ascent, he fixed a hand on his thick waist and tossed his chin back. He smiled, but no hint of good cheer reached his eyes, or his voice. “Ah, Josephine! Here at last? Good of you to join me.”
Josephine took her flowing skirts into her hands and ran up the remaining stairs toward him. “But how did you beat us here? I came as soon as I received word that I was to meet you. I couldn’t have been here any sooner.” She raised her thin arms toward him in an embrace, but he shook his head, lifting his hands between them. She remained a step lower as he looked down on her, saying: “That was it? I guessed that perhaps you had other important business to attend to in Paris.”
Josephine stiffened, her voice going quiet, the girlish ebullience of the carriage ride vanishing. “What could be of more importance to me than you? Of course not.”
I glanced down the stairs and noticed how Pauline watched the whole exchange from below, her lips curled upward in a satisfied sneer.
Napoleon cleared his throat and turned from Josephine toward me. “The servants will show you both to your rooms. I trust you’ll be comfortable. Dinner at six.” And with that, he turned and made his way, alone, toward some room at the end of the dim corridor.
“Wait.” Josephine trailed him, arms aloft as if begging for his benediction, or perhaps his mercy. “But…won’t I stay with you? I wish to stay with you!”
I kept my eyes down and climbed the remaining stairs, following the servants who offered to direct me to my own bedchamber. Bernadotte was currently stationed with the army in the north, negotiating a treaty with the Swedes, and Julie and Joseph weren’t scheduled to arrive from Naples until that evening, so I would be largely on my own for my first afternoon in Fontainebleau. Already I wished it would be over, my only joy coming at the thought of a brief reunion with my sister.
My desire for our stay to speed by was only heightened when, while settling into my suite, I began to hear shrieks and wailing. Horrified, I left my trunks with the servants and made my way back into the corridor. There, I found Josephine collapsed in a heap, her thin arms banging uselessly on a massive, unyielding door. She did not appear to care who might hear her as she cried out: “Let me in! Let me in! Please, can’t you see how you are murdering me with this cold treatment?” But the door was impassive before her desperation, as was her husband on its other side. I pitied Josephine in a way that I never thought I would.
“Empress?” I grimaced, kneeling onto the floor beside her. “Can I help you?”
Josephine turned to me, her eyes glassy from weeping. “He’s barred the doors! To his bedroom! Even the adjoining door between our bedrooms. Bad enough that he won’t share my room, but to put me in a separate room and then refuse me entry at his door….” She collapsed her head onto the door with a dull thud.
I turned and saw them there—Pauline, Elisa, and Caroline. They stood among the flickering shadows at the end of the long hallway, openly laughing as they looked on. If Napoleon loved the tragedies of antiquity, then they were his trio of Furies, dancing with glee at the bonfire of the damned.
I turned back to Josephine, my hands resting gently on her back, as I did when trying to comfort Oscar. “Come, Empress, you aren’t well. You must rest.”
“No!” she protested. “I won’t sleep in that bed! I won’t be stuck in there alone! He’ll lock me in. I know it.”
“Then you must come into my bedchamber.”
“But…” She clung to me, her grip surprisingly strong as I tried to help her to standing. “Will you stay with me?” Her voice was desperate.
“If that is what you wish, then yes, I shall stay with you.”
This seemed to give her some measure of comfort, and she allowed me to pull her upright. Her body was feather-light. “He means to throw me over, Desiree. I know it. He’s wanted to for some time. They’ve all been telling him to, but he’s unwilling. He hoped, instead, to make it so bad for me that I would leave him. But doesn’t he see? I would never leave him. As God is my witness, I love him more than my own life. I would never break our sacred vow that we made to one another, even if it meant following him to hell. It would be no hell, so long as my Bonaparte was there with me.”
But their vow was not sacred—at least not anymore. It was all over the news: Napoleon was feuding openly with the Pope, the same man who had attended his coronation and blessed his marriage to Josephine the night before. Fed up with Napoleon’s flagrant disrespect and the constant war he was making across Europe, the Pope had excommunicated Napoleon. The Emperor reacted by putting the Holy Father under armed house arrest, showing how little he truly honored the Pope’s authority, much less some hastily uttered midnight marriage vows.
“What am I to do?” Josephine asked me now, her tone plaintive. As I looked at her, scared, shivering in the shadowy, cold corridor, I thought of her as a girl in the Caribbean, her home in shambles after a hurricane destroyed the entire estate.
I sighed, unsure how else to answer: “Well, you shall do the one thing you can do in this moment. You shall dress and you shall join him for dinner at six.”
* * *
Julie and Joseph arrived just before dinner, and I found great relief in the brief but happy reunion. Julie gushed over my Oscar and how much he’d grown, and I savored the sight of my two nieces and their girlish smiles. My sister and I saw our children happily settled with their nannies before making our way down to the meal. I did not have time to acquaint Julie with the events of the afternoon, for just then, Pauline appeared on the stairway and we made our way as a small, quiet group. Surely my sister sensed that something was amiss—mi
sery crackled through the cold castle air.
Josephine appeared in the dining room just before the stroke of six, her narrow frame draped in white—her husband’s favorite shade on her—a broad white hat and veil covering her haggard face. She trembled throughout the meal, her body wilting in her chair as she tried to suppress her tears, but we all heard her weeping beneath the thick veil.
No one spoke at the table. I couldn’t eat, even as the servants brought out an endless procession of platters—duck and pork and filets of tender beef. No one touched their food, really, except for the three sisters, who ate with gusto. After the dishes were cleared, Napoleon looked up and spoke for the first time, his eyes fixing on his brother Joseph as he asked: “What time is it?”
Joseph glanced at the clock, but before he could answer, Napoleon pushed away from the table and stood from his chair. The page rushed toward the table, the Emperor’s after-dinner coffee ready in his hands, and the young attendant made to walk toward Josephine so she might pour her husband’s cream, as she did each night—and as only she was allowed to do. But Napoleon shook his head toward the man. “No. Bring it here.”
The page, confused, obeyed his orders and brought the tray of coffee and cream to the Emperor, who poured his own coffee, swallowing it in one gulp, and, without glancing back at his wife, quit the room.
Josephine fainted.
* * *
He went to her bedroom that night, that we knew. Not because we could hear the sounds of their reconciliation, as we had on so many other nights, but because we could hear her hysterical shrieks, the low groans of her weeping.
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