The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.

by Sandra Gulland

  There are others in the field, four diggers, a pile of lime, a cart nearby. Bodies. Heads.

  “Still?” Still more to bury?

  “The mountain meets the earth.” The driver laughs at his joke. He nods toward an old woman in a spotted muslin dress, sitting in the dirt. “She’s always here,” he says. He twirls a finger at his temple, meaning: crazy.

  Unlike the rest of us, I think with irony.

  I scan the broken earth, the weeds. So this is where Alexandre lies. And the others—Lazare? Frédéric? The dear old puppeteers? It comforts me to think of them all together.

  I head out across the field. I do not have a plan. At the centre I pick up three stones. One for Hortense, one for Eugène, one for myself. I feel the smooth surfaces. Tokens.

  Is that all there is? Is it true, what the Jacobins say—that death is eternal sleep, no more, no less.

  The soothsayer said: You will be unhappily married. You will be widowed.

  I watch as two birds fly through the air—a pair. I wait for some sense of meaning. But there are no answers, only this … this awful emptiness.

  In which ghosts come to life

  August 10, 1794.

  The dawn was breaking when I set out, accompanied by Jacques. The beggars on the Rue de Vaugirard were still asleep. In front of the Luxembourg a grocer was whipping a donkey in an effort to make the old creature move. We made our way around the quarrelsome pair.

  It was a short walk to the Carmes, I knew, but one which bridged two worlds. There are degrees of courage, and I was unsure if I had the will to enter those prison gates again. I was thankful Jacques was with me.

  A guard I didn’t recognize opened the gate. Jacques knocked on the heavy plank door to the turnkey’s office. I heard someone coughing inside. Within, by the light of one tallow candle, the turnkey was hunched over a journal, scowling. A very pregnant Lucie was slumped sleepily on a chair, bursting her seams. Aimée was sitting in the far corner. I was struck by the animal look in her eyes.

  She burst into a crazy laugh, which in turn gave way to a rattling cough that stole her very breath. “Am I so very frightful?” she gasped, when she could breathe again.

  Jacques took her basket, her meagre possessions. “Ready?”

  “What about Jean-Henri?” I asked.

  “Croisoeuil?” The turnkey leafed through his papers. “No.” Lucie shrugged.

  Out on the street an old man came up to us. “Welcome.” He handed Lucie a flower.

  “How does he know?” She watched the man hobble away.

  I took Aimée’s hand. I could feel the bones.

  “We are staying at my Aunt Fanny’s on Rue de Tournon,” I told her.

  “It’s a short walk from here. Are you strong enough?”

  “We’re not going to Rue Saint-Dominique?” “It’s been sealed.”

  “I can’t go home?” I saw something crumble within her.

  “Come,” I said.

  Evening.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked Aimée as I helped her to bed. She seemed strange to me yet.

  “I pretend,” she said.

  I sat down on the bed beside her. It seemed a curious thing to say.

  “You’re pretending, too. Only you’ve convinced yourself,” she said.

  Tears came to my eyes. She was right. I did pretend. I did not speak of the horror I have known. “It’s different out here, Aimée. We ‘re different.”

  “The craziness, you mean.”

  “More than that.” I pulled the covering sheet over her, kissed her forehead. “Sleep.” I closed the drapes, blew out the candle on the mantle.

  “You didn’t say what it was, Rose,” she said, in the dark.

  I stood for a moment. What was it? “Shame,” I said. In the dark, one word. Shame that we broke down, grovelled, begged. Shame for crying out, weeping, beating our heads against the stones. Shame for losing hope, faith, for being willing to forsake everything, anything, in barter for life. Shame for knowing fear, its sickening grip.

  The shame of the survivor.

  “Yes,” Aimée whispered. “That too.”

  August 11.

  This morning I met with Citoyen Dunnkirk, my banker, attempting to “To the English?” I thought of Father, of a life spent in battle against “les Goddams.” Had Mother offered English officers my father’s bed? I was thankful he was dead.

  “I assure you that this information will be held in strict confidence. I am aware of the dishonour this could cause you, the suspicion—”

  “She is well?” I interrupted. “The plantation—is it …?”

  “I don’t know if you are aware that your father left a substantial debt—one hundred thousand livres.” Citoyen Dunnkirk sneezed into an ugly green kerchief.

  “Why was I not—”

  “We just found out ourselves. Your mother—a resourceful woman, by all accounts—made an arrangement with her creditors whereby the debt would be paid off over a period of time. Fortunately, the crop was good this year, in spite of the civic turmoil. So good, in fact, she was able to pay off the debt and is reported to have hosted a celebration party for everyone in the village.”

  “Mother?” Surely he was talking about another woman.

  “Quite sure, Citoyenne. In fact, we are given to believe that your mother is comfortable, perhaps even well-off. She should have no difficulty providing you with the interest on your holdings—if she can get it to you, that is. Due to the war, any correspondence will prove difficult, of course.”

  “I can’t write to her?”

  “You could try,” he shrugged. “Is she aware of your … situation?”

  “She knows nothing.” Nothing of prison, nothing of Alexandre’s death.

  We reviewed my accounts. I have a sizeable (and growing) debt to Citoyen Dunnkirk, who so kindly advanced funds for the care of the children while Alexandre and I were in prison. “I will repay you,” I assured him—but how? “I have gems hidden in my rooms on Rue Saint-Dominique. I can sell them, when …”

  When … When the seals were removed. When would that be?

  “It will take time,” Citoyen Dunnkirk warned, sneezing again. “The wheels of bureaucracy have always moved slowly—and now …” He threw up his hands.

  “What about La Ferté?” I asked. Alexandre had invested all of his inheritance in his country estate.

  “Your husband’s properties have been sequestered. Items of any value have been sold by the government at auction.”

  “Sold?” There was a painting of Alexandre as a child—I had wanted it for Hortense and Eugène. “And when might that sequester be lifted?”

  Citoyen Dunnkirk looked at me uncomfortably. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, Citoyenne, but the law gives the government full possession of the property of the condemned. Even if the sequester were to be lifted today, the estate would not accrue to you or your children.”

  Slowly I grasped the situation. According to law, Alexandre died a criminal. The children have been robbed of their inheritance. They face their future with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a blackened name.

  I returned to Rue de Tournon shortly before noon. There were a number of people gathered on the street. A woman with a hurdy-gurdy was standing in front of the door to Fanny’s hôtel.

  “Something is happening,” I told Fanny, putting my handbasket down in the foyer. Crowds frightened me.

  “They’re releasing prisoners at the Luxembourg today.” Fanny was holding a stack of books in one arm. “And making a spectacle of it—speeches, a parade apparently.”

  “Where are the children?” I asked.

  “Up at the corner.”

  I sighed. Watching prisoners being released had become a form of entertainment. “Lucie as well?”

  “She consented to go, in spite of the fact that the dress I provided was not judged suitably flattering.”

  “Neither prison nor pregnancy have dampened that child’s vanity,” I sai
d. “And Aimée?”

  Fanny nodded toward the double doors leading out onto the balcony. “She only just got up. Were you able to get coach tickets to

  Fontainebleau?”

  “I’ll try again in the morning.” Two times already I’d tried to get a pass.

  I stepped outside onto the balcony. Aimée was leaning out over the edge, her hair hanging down loose and long. I thought to say something to her, to caution her against immodesty, but held my tongue. What did it matter, any more?

  I put my arm around her shoulders, kissed her forehead. She’d slept for over twenty hours, the sleep of the dead, but even so, she looked exhausted.

  “Good,” she said, answering a question I had not voiced. She put her hand to her mouth to still a cough.

  I looked out over the throng. A woman with a child at her breast was wearing a dress made from a flag. Four young men dressed in togas were making their way slowly down the street carrying a banner proclaiming “la nation.” Everyone cheered as they passed.

  “This seems like a dream to me,” I said. Now and again a wind carried a faint scent of honeysuckle.

  Aimée laughed. That awful prison laugh, Fanny called it.

  A carriage pulled by a team of old bays turned onto Rue de Tournon. Two open carriages followed. A tall, young man bedecked with red, white and blue ribbons was standing in the last one. The woman in the flag dress began yelling joyously, holding up her baby as if for a blessing.

  “Isn’t that Tallien?” I asked. Tallien’s signature had been on my release form. A stunning young woman sat beside him, scantily dressed in a white toga, a sash with the words “la liberté” draped across one shoulder. Her curly black hair was cut short, like a boy’s. “And Thérèse Cabarrus!”

  For days the children had been telling me the story: how a beautiful young woman had sent Deputy Tallien a note from prison, hidden along with a dagger in a cabbage, how for love of her he had brandished her little dagger in the Assembly, challenged the tyrant Robespierre, ended the Terror.

  “Your friends—the new King and Queen,” Fanny said, joining us. “That could be useful.”

  I picked a blossom from a potted rosebush and attempted to toss it into the carriage. I missed and tried again, calling out this time. Thérèse glanced up. She tried to say something to Tallien, but it was too noisy on the street, the crowd too demanding.

  Shortly after there was a pounding at the gate. Jacques returned with a message. “A boy,” he said. “He said to tell you that the lady with Deputy Tallien invites you to see her.”

  “Thérèse? Did he give an address?”

  “Nine Rue Georges, Chaussée d’Antin. Tomorrow afternoon at three.”

  “You will see about Marie?” Fanny demanded, grasping my arm.

  August 12.

  A thin boy, only a little older than Eugène, answered the door.* I followed him into a room full of potted flowering bushes. “She will be with you,” the boy stuttered, and disappeared.

  I heard a woman singing—her voice was lyrical, slightly melancholy; it had a haunting quality. Thérèse Cabarrus stepped into the room. She was dressed in a loose white tunic drapped in the Roman style. Her short, jet-black curls framed her face, her tresses shorn, short and boyish, like my own … but for the same reason? I wondered. It did not seem possible. The grey pallor that marked the victims of the Terror, the shadow that enveloped our souls seemed not to have touched her. Was it possible she had even been in prison?

  “You do not bear scars,” I said, after exchanging civilités. It was bad form to refer to the horrors of the past, but I felt somehow compelled.

  She slipped a foot out of a white silk slipper. “See these?” She touched three spots on her toes. “From rats.”

  I put my hand to my throat. I had seen what rats could do.

  “May I confide in you?” Her touch on my hand was light, caressing. “When I was taken to La Petite-Force, I was held in a room by eight guards. I was told to remove my clothes.” She recounted her tale without emotion. “I knew the danger I was in. The turnkey, a little man with a repulsive face, claimed authority. He ordered the men away. But then he demanded his due.”

  I looked at her—her clear white skin, her young flushed cheeks. She looked a child, an infinitely vulnerable but voluptuous urchin.

  “I used to believe in love,” she went on, “but no longer. Perhaps that is my scar.” She examined my eyes with surprise. “You weep? For me?”

  “Yet love makes great deeds possible,” I said. “I am told you refused onthreat of death to sign a statement that would have compromised Deputy Tallien.”

  “I am cast in the role of a heroine. I enjoy the part, I confess. The lines, the costume, the applause have a certain charm—don’t you think?” She smiled, fanning herself. “Forgive me for indulging in theatrics. It is a weakness of mine. But I promise I will always be honest with you. It was not love that inspired my loyalty. It was simply that death ceased to frighten.” She closed her fan with a snap. “And that, my friend, is true freedom.”

  I heard the sound of a man’s voice in the entryway, footsteps. Tallien entered. Close behind him was Deputy Barras, his long sword trailing.

  “Rose!” Tallien exclaimed with a boyish grin. He embraced me.

  “How good to see you,” I said, unexpectedly moved.

  “You recall Deputy Barras?” Tallien asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “The two of you came to my salon on Rue Saint-Dominique, several years ago.”

  “Citoyenne Beauharnais, what a pleasure,” Deputy Barras said, taking my hand and kissing it tenderly, in the old style. He smelled of spirit of ambergris. “Has it really been so very long?” he asked, his eyes mournful and tender. He’d gained weight since last I saw him—his leather hunting breeches were tight on him. Even so, he defined elegance.

  “Young Guéry showed you in?” Thérèse asked.

  Deputy Barras embraced her fondly. “He looks too thin,” he told her. “Send him over to my place; I’ll fatten him up.”

  “I’m not letting him anywhere near you.”

  “Unfair!” Deputy Barras lowered himself into a plush pink armchair.

  Tallien stood in front of the fireplace. “My condolences, Rose. I was grieved to learn about your husband. …”

  I nodded yes.

  “How unfortunate. Only a few more days and … If only …”

  If only …

  “We are all of us in mourning,” I said. All of us in shock. “Everyone lost someone dear.” I accepted the glass of cherry brandy the maid offered. I raised my glass to propose a toast. “I would like to express my gratitude. First, to you, Tallien, my dear friend. It was your name on my release form.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out sooner,” he said.

  “And, second, to the three of you. I am under the impression that together you saved us from Robespierre, le tyran.”

  “We ‘blood-drinkers’—as he was so fond of calling us—finally got a bit of his.” Deputy Barras downed his glass of brandy.

  “Tallien and Barras deserve the credit,” Thérèse said.

  “Didn’t you send Tallien a note and a dagger hidden inside a cabbage?” I smiled. “That’s what my children tell me.”

  “I love that story,” Thérèse said.

  “In truth, we’d been plotting for some time,” Tallien said.

  “The tip-off was when Robespierre began taking riding lessons,” Deputy Barras said, tapping tobacco into his pipe. “When a politician begins to ride, prepare for battle—an elementary lesson taught to all students at any military college.”

  “So Thérèse didn’t send a note to Tallien?” I asked.

  “You mean the one that refers to our friend’s ‘notorious cowardice’?” Deputy Barras laughed. Tallien gave him a menacing look.

  “I did send a note,” Thérèse said. “The gaoler’s wife smuggled it out for me. I fabricated the story of the cabbage in order to protect her. It makes a good fable, don’
t you think?”

  “I especially like the part about the little dagger,” Deputy Barras said, his big, sorrowful eyes drôle.

  “I’m amazed people believe it,” Tallien said. “How could one possibly keep a dagger in prison?”

  “Ah, but the French love a good story,” Deputy Barras said.

  “Not that there aren’t good stories to be told,” Thérèse said.

  I put my hands to my ears: I’m listening!

  Then all stories began: how they had plotted; how Tallien had brandished a dagger (his own) in the Assembly, confronted Robespierre (“I still can’t believe you did that,” I told him. “I can’t believe it either,” he said); how Deputy Barras had boldly taken charge of the military, been the one to arrest Robespierre; how in the middle of the night Deputy Barras had stormed the Temple, seen the Boy—the King’s son—alone in his cell.

  “You saw him?” I asked, interrupting.

  The Boy. I almost said: King. “How old is he now? Ten?” He was only a little younger than Hortense, I recalled, who was eleven now. I remembered seeing him at the theatre, sitting on his mother’s lap. I remembered his sweet distress over his mother’s tears. How horrible it must be for him, so small a child, an orphan now, alone in a prison cell.

  “The Little Capet is small,” Deputy Barras said, “too small to be King. Fortunately. But ill. He’d been badly tended.”

  Thérèse tapped my hand with her fan. “I should caution you, Rose: every time the subject of the Boy comes up Deputy Barras begins to weep.”

  Deputy Barras laughed. “It’s so unbearably sad! When I saw him he was dressed in grey rags, lying in this tiny cradle—he refused to sleep in his own big bed for some reason. His face was all puffed up, his hands swollen. Frankly, I’ve been terrified he might die, so I’ve ordered him examined, put under care. No sign of rickets, the doctor assures me.” He shrugged. “But I’m not sure how old he is, frankly. As for Madame Royale, his sister, she’s”—he cupped his hands, indicating breasts—"healthier, although not in the head. She has difficulty speaking. I’ve been told our dear-departed Robespierre paid her a visit. No doubt she owes her life to his … interest, you might say. If we’re not careful, we’ll be having a litter of would-be kings and queens to worry about. Can you imagine a Capet-Robespierre combination? Terrifying. But the boy …? Yes, well, nine, eight perhaps? A sweet child. I wish …” He sighed.