The Game of Hope

by Sandra Gulland

  * * *

  —

  30 Brumaire, An 7

  La Chantereine

  Dear Eugène,

  How does one know what’s true and what’s false? These letters, for instance. Since it’s unlikely that you will ever get to read them, I can confess my midnight thoughts, my midnight fears that you are dead.

  My music instructor says that music is like prayer. If that’s the case, I am holy indeed. I hope that my music can reach you from afar. Somehow. Can you not hear me? Surely you can.

  Your sister Chouchoute, who misses you terribly

  * * *

  —

  In drawing class Citoyen Isabey said it was important to draw at least five sketches a day. He added that all prominent artists did this, and that even musicians “sketched” out their compositions. “Important work does not come from one sudden flash of genius,” he said. “It comes from persistent daily effort.”

  I started a section in my music composition notebook for such sketches: one a day. It would help keep my mind off Egypt, I thought. In time, I had nine—most of them quite bad, but a beginning.

  * * *

  —

  The news of Egypt—what little managed to get through—continued to be alarming. A placard was pushed through the school gates claiming that the General and fifty thousand of his men had died.

  “Lies!” Maîtresse said, tearing it to shreds.

  * * *

  —

  With Maîtresse’s permission, I began to play the piano in the hour before the evening meal. I closed all the doors and played quietly, so that nobody could hear. I would begin by practicing one or two of the pieces I had been taught, followed by one I was copying, analyzing how it was constructed. And then I would play a piece of my own from my composition notebook. They were pathetic imitations, but every now and then there would be a phrase that pleased me.

  There was one melody in particular that haunted me. I could imagine it, but I couldn’t play it. Almost, but not quite.

  * * *

  —

  The rumors continued to be dire, but the worst was yet to come. Early one wintry morning, Eliza burst into our room, breathless from climbing the stairs. “The General is demised!”

  Ém, Mouse and I all turned from making our beds.

  Eliza, her cheeks rosy, was wearing a heavy coat, boots, mitts and even a knit cap. She’d just been dropped off after visiting her family in Paris. “I thought to tell you first,” she lisped. She’d recently lost two front teeth.

  I picked up my sack of clean clothes from the laundry and sat down on my bed. “Demised?” What did that mean? I wondered, folding my clothes, beginning with the biggest pieces, my dress, smock, nightgown and petticoats.

  “Deceased, maybe?” Eliza said, clutching her raggedy cat.

  “You can’t mean that,” Ém said.

  “Surely not,” Mouse said.

  “That’s impossible,” I agreed. Even so, my hands shook a bit, pairing my stockings. “These stories are lies spread by our enemies,” I said evenly, putting my folded clothes into my trunk and lowering the lid. “If something like that had happened, my mother would have been the first to know. She would have sent word.”

  “My father was enlightened of this intelligence this morning,” Eliza said.

  This gave me pause. Eliza’s father was privy to news from abroad. It was possible that he knew things before Director Barras. “Did your father tell you this?”

  “No, I spied,” she said proudly.

  One of Maîtresse’s maids appeared in the door. “Citoyenne Hortense, Maîtresse Campan wishes to see you.”

  “Oh no,” Mouse said.

  * * *

  —

  Caroline was standing in the foyer outside Maîtresse’s study. “Do you know what this is about?” she demanded, chewing on her thumbnail, tearing a sliver off and swallowing it.

  “No,” I said, although I had a fearful hunch.

  The door swung open. “Good, you’re both here,” Maîtresse said. “Come in.” Her expression was grave. “Have a seat.” She gestured to the two wooden chairs, and settled into the armchair behind her cluttered table. “I’ve had”—she paused to swallow, her hand on her chest—“news,” she said, picking up a sheet of paper.

  I gathered my shawl around me. I trembled, but not from the cold.

  “This news out of Egypt came by a circuitous route—overland, I’ve been told.”

  Caroline was swinging her feet, still gnawing on her thumb.

  “General Bonaparte has been—” Maîtresse paused to clear her throat. “I very much regret to have to tell you that the General has been wounded,” she said, her voice quavering. “Fatally.”

  The word hung in the silence.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  Caroline sat still as a statue beside me.

  “So very, very sorry,” Maîtresse repeated, her voice tearful. “It appears to have been an assassination,” she said, offering Caroline the document. She paused before adding, “Your brother Louis wasn’t hurt, and Eugène was untouched as well, angel. It was only the General who was—” But she didn’t finish. “I know what a shock this must be,” she said, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

  Caroline stared at the sheet of paper. She couldn’t read well at all, and usually pretended. She passed the paper to me.

  The stationery was thick, of fine quality, embossed with a seal that looked official. It was signed by Director Barras’s secretary.

  “Read it out loud,” Maîtresse suggested.

  I cleared my throat. “It has been confirmed,” I read, my voice unsteady, “that an Arab fatally shot General Bonaparte with a pistol at close range.”

  “It’s a lie!” Caroline blurted out.

  “I wish to God that it were, dear girl,” Maîtresse said. “Your families have sent for—”

  Caroline hit the table with her fist. “A blasted lie.” She stomped out, slamming the door behind her with a shuddering thwack.

  Maîtresse opened a notebook, took up a quill, dipped it in ink and made a careful note. I sat on the edge of my chair, waiting to be dismissed. The General, my stepfather, was dead? I felt numb. It couldn’t be true.

  “This is tragic,” Maîtresse said, putting down the quill. She stood to embrace me. “We are all of us going to have to be strong, angel—your mother especially.”

  LOVE LETTERS

  Maman was in a pitiful state, too overcome to get out of bed. Her room looked as if a storm had swept through. Papers were scattered all over the floor—letters, they looked like. Usually Maman was annoyingly tidy.

  “In time all will be well.” I couldn’t think what else to say.

  “I’m frightened, dear heart,” Maman said.

  I put my arms around her. “Don’t cry.” It pained me to see her so broken.

  Mimi handed Maman a small glass. Laudanum, I guessed, by the medicinal scent. Wincing at the bitter taste, she gulped it down.

  “Sleep now, Yeyette,” Mimi said, smoothing the pillows, calling Maman by her childhood name.

  “I can’t,” Maman moaned, but soon she quieted.

  I followed Mimi into Maman’s dressing room.

  “She’s been like this since the news came,” Mimi told me, pulling black mourning gowns and veils out of a trunk to air.

  “She must be worried about Eugène.” I certainly was.

  “Hortense!” Mimi turned to face me, her hands on her hips. “Your mother is grieving the death of her husband.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound uncaring.” In truth, I didn’t know what I felt.

  I folded the papers I’d picked up. Because of the messy handwriting and misspellings, I guessed that they were letters from the General. Letters from a man now dead; like footsteps in sand—easily erase
d.

  * * *

  —

  That night, as I was putting my notebooks into my schoolbag for the return to the Institute in the morning, I looked at the letters. They were, as I had guessed, from the General, letters he’d written to Maman shortly after they’d married.

  I was revulsed! Horrified. For they were letters of scandalizing passion.

  A thousand kisses as fiery as my soul . . .

  I love you to distraction . . .

  I embrace you a million times . . .

  My adored Josephine . . .

  I worship you more every day . . .

  A kiss on your heart, and one much lower down, much lower!

  I will never forget the little black forest.

  Little black forest? Just thinking that made me sick.

  * * *

  —

  “You must feel devastated,” Citoyen Jadin said as soon as I arrived for my afternoon lesson at the Institute.

  “Yes, of course,” I said with a shrug.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, taken aback, no doubt, by my indifferent expression.

  I confessed my confusion. I would never wish anyone dead, I told him, but I hadn’t felt sad on learning that my stepfather had been assassinated. Rather, I felt numb.

  “It has been a shock to us all,” he said.

  “But I never understood why my mother married him. He was nothing like my father.”

  “Were you close to him?”

  “My father? I loved him.” Idolized him.

  “But were you close to him?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said, positioning myself on the stool.

  “Did you do things together, the two of you?”

  “My father had important things to do, and he was often away, so no, not really.”

  “Did he write to you?”

  “You mean letters?” Of course Citoyen Jadin meant letters, but I was perplexed. The only time I’d seen my father’s small, neat handwriting was in the margins of his books. “I wrote letters to him, but I didn’t send them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was only a child, and a girl, at that. He had high standards.” Then, unaccountably, I burst into tears.

  Citoyen Jadin pulled a handkerchief from within his jacket and handed it to me. “Was it something I said?”

  I took a shuddering breath. No. No. “It’s just that the last time I saw my father, he was in prison, with my mother.”

  “Which prison?”

  “The Carmes.”

  “Oh,” he said heavily. The Carmes was known as one of the worst.

  “A woman took us to a house that overlooked the prison. The shutters on a prison window opened, and there they were.”

  “Your mother and father?”

  I nodded, drying my cheeks. “It must have been arranged,” I said, taking a breath. And then another.

  “How old were you?”

  “I’d turned eleven a few months before.”

  “So young. That must have been hard.”

  “It was. I cried out for my father. I couldn’t help it. The prison guards heard and came to take him away.” I took another shaky breath. Oh, Father. “And then they sent him to the guillotine.”

  Sobs came over me, my breath coming in gasps.

  “It wasn’t because of you,” Jadin said, his voice full of feeling.

  But it was.

  * * *

  —

  “Told you!” Caroline crowed, jabbing me in the ribs with her finger and then bolting off.

  Mouse glanced at me, puzzled. “What was that about?”

  Ém, sitting on a courtyard bench, glanced up from the book she was reading, a romance (disguised as a book on science). “Did something happen?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  I glimpsed Eliza running toward us, weaving in and out of the other students as if in a race, her breath streaming out in clouds. “Agreeable news! The General is not demised!” she called out, twirling Henry by his tail.

  Mouse looked at me with astonishment. “The General is alive?”

  “Indubitably,” Eliza exclaimed, tossing Henry into the air and catching him neatly.

  Mon Dieu.

  * * *

  —

  20 Nivôse, An 7, décadi

  La Chantereine

  Dear Eugène,

  I am home with Maman in Paris. She is euphoric. We’d been told that the General had been assassinated, and I feared for her health. Of course that news was false. Now she has faith that you and the General will return. She is even having the General’s study on the ground floor refurnished for him. I have come to my room in an attempt to escape the noise and commotion below.

  Her joy is infectious. My heart gladdens imagining your return—and that of all the other aides, of course.

  Stay safe. Come home.

  Your little sister Chouchoute, who loves you very much

  Note—I think of you always, but when I dream, it’s Christophe Duroc who appears. I hardly know him, yet I get faint whenever I think of him. Does that mean I love him? How can one tell? My music teacher says that the human heart is a mystery, and I believe he is right.

  Speaking of mysteries, some of the girls at the Institute continue to be convinced that there is a ghost there. Strange!

  THE MORNING CHRONICLE

  “I have something to demonstrate to you,” Eliza said, taking a newspaper out of her schoolbag. “Is the name of your brother Eugène? It displays a communication from him.”

  “In a journal?” I’d become skeptical of news. The General had been killed; the General was alive. What could be trusted anymore?

  “Here. Read it!”

  It was an issue of the London Morning Chronicle, published almost two months before.

  My dear mother, I have so many things to say that I don’t know where to begin.

  My heart jumped. It was a letter from Eugène, printed in both French and English. I devoured my brother’s words, and then I didn’t know what to think. I read it again. In his letter, he warned Maman that the General was unhappy because he’d been told she was having an amourette—

  An affair of the heart?

  —that she was having an amourette with Hippolyte Charles.

  Stunned, I leaned against a pillar. Silly Citoyen Charles with the long braids and marionette voice?

  Eliza, hugging Henry, looked concerned.

  “Did you read this?” I asked, my voice weak.

  “Of course. It is English. But what’s an amourette?”

  “It’s a French word meaning friendship,” I lied. “A close friendship.”

  “Like you and me?”

  I nodded, letting out a deep breath. “May I keep this, Eliza?”

  * * *

  —

  Once in my room, I built up the fire and threw the newspaper on it, watching until it was only ashes. I didn’t want anyone to see it. I recalled the disturbing images in the book in my mother’s desk. To think of Citoyen Charles and my mother as . . .

  Impossible! It couldn’t possibly be true. Hippolyte Charles was only twenty-five years old, if that. He was my brother’s friend. I thought of Maman’s delight at his antics, her smiles—and my own delight as well. We were all fond of him. He was a family friend.

  Yet might it be true? I thought of how Maman had cheered in his company at the civic celebration, leaning on his arm. I recalled seeing her touch his hand.

  * * *

  —

  Nasty: Reading a passage in a book over and over without understanding its meaning.

  * * *

  —

  I spent the following décadi—a bitterly cold day—at Maman’s house in Paris. She was uncharacteristically gloomy, which of course made
me wonder. Had she seen that newspaper? Did she know what had been printed?

  “Has Maman said anything about the English press?” I asked Mimi.

  “No. Why would she?”

  “Oh, no reason.”

  I resolved, several times, to ask Maman about it—but each time I failed. Finally, I blurted it out. “Maman, did you see the London Morning Chronicle?”

  “What do you mean, dear heart?” she asked, picking up a nightcap she was embroidering for me.

  It was a question, but not really. “I mean the issue with a letter from Eugène printed in it,” I said, darning one of my woolen stockings. “It was published months ago.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” she said, but coloring.

  “His letter was written to you. Someone at school showed it to me.”

  “Showed you the actual newspaper?”

  I nodded. “Eugène said in his letter that the General was unhappy, because he believed that . . . that you were—”

  “Was it Caroline who showed it to you?” Maman asked, squinting her eyes with suspicion.

  “Someone else.” I didn’t want to tell her that it had been the daughter of the American ambassador.

  “You know, of course, that the letter can’t possibly be authentic,” she said.

  So, she did know of it.

  “As an aide-de-camp, Eugène would have been told to be very careful about what he wrote because correspondence might be intercepted—and exploited—by the British. He would never have written to me about such a thing.”

  About such a thing.

  “Of course,” I said, heavyhearted. She hadn’t denied it.

  * * *

  —

  Nasty: When you fear your mother might be having an affair of the heart.

  * * *

  —