The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.

by Sandra Gulland

  “Poor Paul,” Tallien said, handing him a handkerchief. “Who would have thought that becoming a public parent of the state meant becoming a parent.”

  Deputy Barras wiped his eyes, sighed wryly. “It’s a job. The crown jewels, the crown prince and princess”—he rolled his eyes —"the crown.”

  “Don’t say that!” Thérèse said.

  A footman came to the door with a note on a silver tray.

  “Speaking of jobs—” Deputy Barras shoved in his lorgnon and squinted at the note, holding it at arm’s length. He handed it to Tallien. “You read it,” he said. “You have young eyes.”

  “They’ve changed the meeting to this afternoon,” Tallien said. “At four.”

  “The Committee?”

  Tallien nodded.

  Deputy Barras groaned, pulled out his timepiece. “We’d better get over there.” He stood, stretched, his hand on the small of his back. “I’m getting too old for this.” He put on his velvet toque hat, adjusting the tricolour plume. “If we leave that group alone for even a minute, there will be another take-over—only our heads will be the ones to roll this time.”

  “Hold on a moment.” Thérèse was rummaging through stacks of loose papers on a writing desk.

  “I’ll get the horses ready,” Deputy Barras said, standing. “Au revoir, Citoyenne.” He bowed and kissed my hand.

  “My pleasure,” I said.

  “Here it is.” Thérèse handed Tallien a scrap of paper.

  “Another list?” He groaned.

  “The ones with the stars are the most urgent.”

  He slipped the note into the pocket of his striped redingote. “I’ll see.”

  I stood, withdrawing a list of my own from my velvet bag. Tallien smiled ruefully when he saw it. “I’m surrounded by angels of mercy.”

  “It’s about my cousin,” I said. I pointed out Marie’s name. “Citoyenne Marie Beauharnais—remember? We’d been working to get her out, before I was imprisoned. But she’s still—”

  Tallien put up his hands: stop!

  “And Jean-Henri Croisoeuil, my friend Aimée’s son-in-law,” I went on, regardless. “He’s in the Carmes, and—”

  “I will do what I can,” he said, taking my list. “I promise. But it’s difficult. Robespierre may be dead, but his followers live. They’re a tenacious lot.”

  “If anyone can do it, you can,” Thérèse said.

  Tallien put his hands to his chest, mocking the pose of a hero.

  “You jest,” I said, “but were it not for your courageous act, we would not be alive today.” Tallien smiled uneasily. He was more comfortable in the role of a rogue. “I owe you my life,” I said, kissing his cheek. “I will never forget it.”

  7:00 p.m.

  Thanks to Tallien I was finally able to obtain seats on a post-coach to Fontainebleau. We leave in the morning.

  Thursday, August 14.

  The children and I have been to Fontainebleau and back. I’m exhausted.

  It was unsettling to see Aunt Désirée and the Marquis. Aunt Désirée is over fifty now, true, but she looks even older. And the Marquis, at eighty, is an invalid. His mind has begun to wander, his memory weak. Mercifully. Several times he called Eugène by Alexandre’s name.

  They are back in their own house now. The place had been ransacked, their belongings ruined—but this is trivial in Aunt Désirée’s eyes. Her grief for Alexandre is without bounds. I fear for the effect the violence of her feelings will have on her heart. The loss of all of their worldly goods would be enough in itself, but none of it means anything to her. Her one consuming grief, and it is incessant, is the fact of Alexandre’s death.

  Aunt Désirée was not Alexandre’s mother, but she loved him far more than his own mother did, more than I ever did. It is for her I weep.

  That evening.

  So many are being released, one would think the prisons were empty now. Yet even so, Marie remains. “You must be patient,” Tallien told me.

  “Patient!” Fanny cried out when I told her.

  I understood. I was in prison for four months and it very nearly killed me. Marie has been in for over nine months. How much longer can she hold on?

  Friday, August 15.

  Lucie’s husband Jean-Henri has finally been released. He, Aimée and Lucie will be returning to Croissy in a few days. I’m hosting a small gathering on their behalf—a reunion of sorts, in spite of Aimée’s ill health. General Santerre and my former cellmate Jeanne-Victoire d’Aiguillon will be coming, as well as a number of others recently released from the Carmes.

  Lannoy has threatened to quit if “that beast Santerre” sets foot in her house. I reminded her, gently, that this is not her house, that we are guests of my aunt.

  Fanny has been trying to console me about my hair. “You look like a Greek shepherd. Even your créole accent is fashionable now.”

  I nodded, not hearing, examining myself in the looking glass, my cropped hair: “coiffure à la victime,” it is called.

  “Short curls suit you,” Fanny went on. “They make you look young.”

  Young?

  Never. Never again.

  Evening.

  The gathering began with discomfort. We were strangers to one another, ill at ease in this world. But with time (and wine) we discovered we could be ourselves again, speaking a language few others could understand, the language of prisoners.

  Toward midnight General Santerre introduced a bawdy game of charades that had us howling with laughter. We fell upon one another weeping. It was at this moment that Jacques entered. He whispered something in Fanny’s ear.

  Fanny glanced at me, made a gesture I did not understand. I cocked my head to one side: pardon?

  Everyone in the room grew still. “Mon Dieu,” Aimée whispered, looking toward the door. I saw the colour drain from her face.

  “Rose?”

  It was a man’s voice—a familiar voice. My heart jumped. I turned. Lazare Hoche stood before us.

  * This is Guéry, the fourteen-year-old son of one of Thérèse’s business acquaintances, released the day before from the Luxembourg prison

  In which I must bid farewell to those I love

  Lazare smiled. “I am not a ghost,” he said. “I wish everyone would stop treating me like one.”

  I stood, approached. In a moment I would faint, I knew.

  “Don’t, Rose.” His voice had that tenderness—that same tenderness I remembered.

  “Lazarro?” Speaking helped. I put my hands to my face. “It’s just … we … I thought …” Tears flooded my eyes.

  He leaned his sword against the wall, took off his hat. “Are you not going to embrace me?” Teasing.

  I pressed my cheek against the scratchy wool of his jacket.

  Aimée and the others crowded around us. Lazare bowed, a mock gallant. “You ask: Is he dead? Alive?” He laughed.

  He was as handsome, as vital as I remembered him. I leaned against the wall. A feeling of light-headedness had come over me.

  “I take it this is the famous General Hoche.” Fanny gave him a beguiling look, a look she reserved for handsome young men, and slipped one arm through his. We followed their slow progression into the salon. “You were said to be dead, General. No doubt you have a story to tell. Perhaps you could entertain us with an account of your resurrection. We have come to love miracles.”

  Lazare helped Fanny to the sofa by the fireplace, then lowered himself onto a leather armchair close by. I sat with Lucie and Aimée on the sofa opposite. A whirlwind of emotions filled me. I held myself in check, fearful lest my strong feelings became too evident. Lazare. Alive.

  He seemed a crude man in Fanny’s elegant salon, his humble origins evident. And young. Younger than I remembered. A tall man, thin. That had not changed. But pale, I thought. What had happened to him?

  General Santerre stood in front of the fireplace, his hands clasped in front of him, a bemused expression on his face.

  “You knew about this?” Aim
ée asked.

  General Santerre and Lazare exchanged looks. Lazare accepted a glass of port from Jacques. Then he related his story. He had been kept in a dungeon so deep he’d been forgotten. On the fourth day of August the bars to his cell had been opened. He thought his time had come. He emerged into the light, surprised that there were no guards, no guns, no tumbrils waiting. “The turnkey had his feet on a table. He was singing a rude camp song. I thought of escape, but before I could make a move he gestured: Out! As if shushing a stray cat away. Then yesterday, midday, I ran into our friend, General Santerre, in a cabaret in Les Halles. He told me of this gathering and we devised this little surprise.”

  Lazare caught my eye and dared to wink. I looked away, my heart beating foolishly. We had been lovers, true—but in that other world, that world of shadow and desperate need. Out here, the rules were different; everything changed. Out here, Lazare was a former stable groom; I a former vicomtesse. Out here, Lazare was a handsome young man, married, a general with a brilliant future … and I? Who was I but an impoverished widow, a mother of two, no longer young, no longer pretty.

  As the guests departed, I stood back, unsure of what to say. Fanny had long since retired, and Aimée, no fool, disappeared without a word, leaving Lazare and me alone together.

  He leaned against the door, looking at me, saying nothing.

  “You must not stare so,” I said.

  “I was grieved to learn of your husband’s death.”

  “He was one of the unlucky ones.”

  “He was a good man, a good general.”

  “Did you really think so?”

  “You do not know that?”

  “A wife sees her husband in a different way.”

  “And how do you see me?""You are as forthright as ever.” I smiled.

  He put on his hat, took his sword. “If I were to call …?”

  I looked toward the stairs. “My children, it is still very … I don’t know.”

  “Could we meet? At the Café Lutte in the Palais-Égalité, perhaps?”

  “Palais-Royal, you mean?”

  He nodded, slipping on his cape. “If you wish to see me, I will be there tomorrow, at one.”

  Saturday, August 16.

  Fanny warned me that the Palais-Royal had changed—but even so, I was unprepared for what I saw. Booths and tables were set up in the courtyard, selling everything that could be imagined: confiscated church relics, silver tea services, candlesticks, snuffers, used clothing of every description, much of it clearly from the closets of aristocrats now dead, banished or merely impoverished.

  And the noise! It was early in the afternoon, but even so, the dance halls and gambling rooms were packed. Young women in transparent gauze gowns hung about the fountains, posing to attract the attention of the young men, themselves dressed outrageously in tight silk.

  It was with some relief that I slipped into the quiet of the Café Lutte. A violinist played in one corner. A waiter moved silently over the thick carpets. Even the most scarred among us looked fresh in the soft candlelight.

  Lazare stood as I was shown to his table. “You came,” he said. It was with some pleasure, I confess, that I noted relief in his voice.

  “You thought I might not?” I asked, allowing him to slip my cape from my shoulders.

  He kissed the back of my neck.

  I turned to face him. I had prepared a number of things to say: that I was only recently a widow; that it was too soon, my children required all my attention; that it was too complex, not right; that I was ill still, not yet strong; that he was himself married; that what had been begun in a prison, under the threat of death, might not be the same now, here, in this other world. …

  Yet words escaped me. I lost all will. I found myself accepting his attentions with gratitude. We spent a very short time together in the café. Then I went with him to his rooms.

  August 17.

  I’ve never known a man like him. Honest, open, boisterous … He does not disguise the fact that he was raised in a stable. No, he is proud of it! Crude, bold, gentle—he takes life by storm.

  He is a big man: big in heart, big in body, big in soul. He has the power to chase the shadows away, banish ghosts.

  He has no patience for etiquette, intellectual games, social protocol. “I am a Republican!” he says proudly. He is a believer, in spite of all he’s suffered.

  His heart knows no limit. Nor his courage. He is said to be a genius. Young. Fearless. Bright.

  “You know General Hoche?” Eugène asked, incredulous.

  “He is a friend,” I told him. Proudly.

  August 19.

  “It’s tomorrow you leave, is it not?” I asked Lazare, trying not to show my disquiet. I had known for some time that he would be going to Thionville, to see his young wife. I also knew that he loved her … knew the first time he told me of her, knew by the way he spoke her name—Adélaïde—that I had no business in his life. Yet I could not turn him away; my need was too great. “When? In the morning?”

  We were in his bed, the bedclothes crumpled, sweaty. I stretched out over the pillows, a film of sweat cooling against the oppressive summer heat, the pungent sweet smell of love heavy in the air.

  “I wrote her this morning.” He stroked my arm, my neck, touched my damp hair. “I told her I wouldn’t be coming—that I’ve been delayed.” “Why?” I dared to ask.

  A hint of a smile played around his lips. “You want to know?”

  I nodded. I needed to know.

  “You want me to answer truthfully?”

  “We have agreed to be truthful with one another.”

  “The truth is I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you.”

  I buried my face in the pillows, hiding my tears.

  He began to make love to me again, but I stilled him. There were things I wanted to tell him, things I could not say. How I woke every night, drenched in sweat, gripped by fear; how at times a faint feeling came over me, a feeling of sickening helplessness; how at dusk I sometimes saw the faces of the dead, pressing at a window; how I felt a lingering shame, still—as if, somehow, I had deserved to be imprisoned; as if, somehow, it had been my failing, my weakness, my fault. But the worst, the most haunting pain, was the cold that had entered my heart. I feared I could no longer love. Not even him.

  But how could I tell him such things? “Does your wife love you?” I asked instead.

  “Is that what you were thinking—of Adélaïde?”

  Adélaïde. A hard name to speak without tenderness.

  “No,” I said. “But I hope she does love you—for if she doesn’t …”

  If … if …

  “She loves me.” Lazare turned onto his back. He rubbed his chin with his hand. He turned toward me. “I don’t come to you lightly, Rose—I come because … What we’ve seen, felt, been through—it has scarred us, somehow, set us apart. I—” He stopped. He could not find the words.

  “You don’t have to explain,” I said. “I understand.” I pressed my face to his chest. Yes. The shame of the survivor.

  Thursday, August 21.

  Lazare has been reinstated as Chief of the Army at Cherbourg. He leaves in two weeks.

  Two weeks. …

  August 23.

  Eugène will be thirteen soon—he is coming of age so quickly.

  “He should start his military training,” Lazare said.

  “He should be in school.” Even I was appalled by his spelling. Yet it was all I could do to pay for his boots.

  “I could take him.”

  Lazare’s words registered slowly. “Take him?” I asked.

  “He could work on my staff—as an apprentice.”

  “He’d be working, for you?” I began to understand. “You’d look after him, keep an eye on him?”

  “I like your son, Rose—he’s an honest boy, forthright. I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t think he’d do a good job.”

  “Very well,” I said, fighting back tears.

  S
aturday, August 30, 3:30 p.m.

  The days go by too quickly. Already, Lazare is preparing to leave. And now Eugène, too, is packing.

  August 31.

  This afternoon, I said to Lazare, “I will see you tomorrow?” There were only a few more days.

  He cleared his throat. “Adélaïde is coming. She’s bringing my horse. My sword and pistols. I will be needing them.”

  Suddenly I felt frail. “Tomorrow?”

  He reached to take me in his arms.

  September 1.

  Eugène will be leaving in the morning—the day before his birthday.

  Hortense and I made a birthday cake for him. Without any eggs and very little sugar it was a miracle we could even eat it. We surrounded it with flowers from the garden. “At least these are free,” I said.

  He has polished his boots three times. My son, thirteen—a soldier.

  Later.

  No word from Lazare. I sent him a note: “Am I not to see you before you leave?”

  He arrived two hours later.

  “You love her,” I said.

  He took my hand. His eyes spoke of profound confusion.

  Tuesday, September 2.

  They are gone, Eugène, Lazare.

  Eugène did not look back.

  How could I say: Take care.

  How could I say: Protect my heart.

  * France wants her King

  In which friends comfort & distress me

  Saturday, September 6, 1794.

  Thérèse and Tallien persuaded me to go out last night, to a concert at the Feydeau. “A cure for melancholy,” Thérèse said.

  The Feydeau—it was easy to be persuaded. Most people had to wait in line three days to get tickets.