The Josephine B. Trilogy

by Sandra Gulland

“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.

  Saturday, 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.

  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.

  Thérèse loaned me a hat with long silver plumes, a matching silver wig and a necklace shaped like a snake.

  “Are you going to go out looking like that?” Lannoy demanded when she saw me preparing to leave.

  “You should see what Thérèse is wearing,” I said, amused by her disapproving look.

  “It’s what Madame Cabarrus doesn’t wear that attracts notice.”

  At the theatre there was a terrible crush. The Feydeau is known for its excellent orchestra and the best soloists in Paris, but that isn’t the main attraction. “It’s the audience,” Thérèse said—and she was right. All the fine ladies of Paris arrive as if onto a stage, looking rather like courtesans. No corsets at the Feydeau!

  I felt like a star, the crowd lined up three deep to watch the parade, with applause for the most dramatic, the most outrageous. Thérèse, who would look spectacular in a nun’s habit, was the obvious favourite.

  “You should have been an actress,” I told her. The press of the crowd frightened me.

  “I am an actress,” she said.

  Inside, it was like a private reception, everyone going from loge to loge, so unlike former times when it was considered improper for a woman to even move from her chair. Fortunée Hamelin was there, an ugly seventeen-year-old créole well known for her ribald wit—“and a body that makes men weep,” Tallien moaned. And sweet-faced Madame de Châteaurenaud (“Minerva”)—looking like a cream puff in white gauze. And even sweet little Madame de Crény was there, wearing an amusing headpiece with a giant feather sticking straight up. I last saw her when we were both living at the abbey de Penthémont—a saltpetre factory now.

  It was an amazing scene—all the aging aristocrats, the former elegant men and women of taste, together with their now-grown children, who, having come of age in the Terror, have cast aside all restraint and dress outrageously. “It reminds me of Carnival in Martinico.” I looked out over the audience. We were sitting in Thérèse’s luxurious loge, sipping excellent champagne.

  “Isn’t that Citoyen Loménie’s son?” she asked, indicating a youth in a checked coat and an enormous green cravat. “Is that a blond wig he’s wearing?” The “Gilded Youths,” they were called—our outrageously dressed young men.

  “It’s the half of thirty-four crowd gone to seed,” someone said.

  Thérèse turned, spilling her champagne. “Citoyen Fouché! You are forever creeping up behind me.”

  I attempted to disguise my surprise. Fouché: “the mass murderer of Lyons,” the deputy who had signed the most death warrants. Yet the man who stood before me was a slight, ill-kempt, and pockmarked human being with gaps between his teeth and unruly red hair. I’d been told he went mad with grief when his daughter died. How could such a man be a monster?

  “Half of thirty-four?” I asked. “I’ve heard that expression before. What does it signify?”

  Thérèse explained: “Half of thirty-four is seventeen. The Boy in the Temple is Louis XVI’s heir, seventeenth in line…”

  “I understand—seventeenth in line for the throne.” The Boy. Le Petit Roi. “The Little Fellow” was what Hortense called him—an orphan of ten sleeping alone in the Temple prison with rats. And now, according to some, King.

  Thérèse filled our glasses. “Are not the words ‘Révolution Française’ an anagram for ‘La France veut son Roi’?”*

  I looked at her. For a brief, treacherous moment I doubted my friend’s Republican conviction.

  “Royalists!” Citoyen Fouché cursed. He took
a box of snuff out from his waistcoat pocket. “They are stupid, greedy, entirely without morals—and all here tonight.” With his eyes half closed, he inhaled the fine powder.

  “You jest,” I said.

  Citoyen Fouché brushed the snuff off his waistcoat, smiling slowly. The smile of a man who did not jest.

  “Citoyen Fouché knows everything,” Thérèse said. “He makes himself useful in this way.” She leaned toward him, her low décolletage revealing. “It is rumoured you have eyes and ears in every salon, Citoyen.”

  Citoyen Fouché snapped shut his snuffbox lid, making a sound not unlike a pistol being cocked. “Is there something you wish to tell me, Our Good Lady of Liberty?”

  Thérèse tapped Citoyen Fouché’s hand with her fan. “You could profit at the gaming tables, you dissemble so well.”

  The musicians began to warm their instruments. A group of people in the lower levels clapped, then laughed.

  Citoyen Fouché turned to go. “Good evening, Citoyennes. I see the concert is about to begin.”

  “A curious man,” I said, after he left.

  Thérèse fanned herself languidly. “Did you notice that Iva Théot is here tonight?”

  Iva Théot is an older woman, a former duchesse, prominent in society. “Is that significant?” I asked.

  “Iva Théot reports to Citoyen Fouché.” Thérèse finished off her glass.

  “Iva?” Bumbling, matronly Iva Théot—a spy for Fouché?

  Thérèse laughed. “Rose—you are so easy to shock.”

  “Conspiring, ladies?” It was Deputy Barras, arm in arm with Tallien.

  “Oh, it’s the mischief-makers.” Thérèse made a face behind her fan. “You both look…bright, shall I say? Deputy Barras—have you been leading my darling astray?”

  “Just a little contraband coffee, my dear—six cups.”

  “Coffee!” Thérèse groaned. “And you didn’t bring me any.”

  Deputy Barras greeted me gallantly, then stooped to kiss Thérèse’s hand. “You look exquisite tonight, Thérèse, my child. Good enough to eat. Caution lest you excite an old man’s interest.”

  “Doesn’t she?” Tallien put his long fingers around Thérèse’s neck.

  “What’s that unpleasant odour?” Deputy Barras sniffed the air.

  “Citoyen Fouché was just here,” Thérèse said, and they laughed.

  “Have you ever met his wife?” Tallien asked. “The ugliest, the most stupid woman…”

  “Yet he’s devoted to her,” Thérèse said. “I find it touching.”

  “Citoyenne Beauharnais, you elegant creature,” Deputy Barras said, filling my glass with champagne, “what do we hear from our beautiful man in Cherbourg?”

  “General Lazare Hoche is already spoken for, Paul,” Thérèse said.

  “Alas.” Deputy Barras lowered himself gracefully into the chair next to mine. He turned to me with a plaintive expression. “Such is the thanks one gets for saving the man’s life.”

  “You saved General Hoche’s life?” I was confused. “I thought it was Deputy Carnot who arranged for his release.”

  Deputy Barras made a theatrical groan. “Carnot! When General Hoche was in the dungeon I was approached by the executioner with a list of the condemned. I was the one who scratched out our dear Lazare’s name—but you need not tell him that. One wouldn’t want him to feel beholden to me, would we?”

  “Hush,” Thérèse whispered as the soloist began.

  After the concert we went to Garchy’s on Rue Richelieu (I had an apricot ice with almond biscuits—delicious) where the gaiety continued into the small hours. Deputy Barras entertained us with stories that had us aching with laughter. In company he is the spark that makes a gathering memorable, the master of comedy, of wit. It is hard to believe the rumours one hears. “A man who knows how to play his cards,” Thérèse told me in the powder room, referring not to the sport of the gaming tables—a passion both Deputies Barras and Tallien share—but to his unerring instinct for strengthening his political hand.

  From Garchy’s the men persuaded us to go to a gaming house in the Palais Égalité (I won two livres—in coin—playing faro), and from there, after Tallien lost more than was wise, to the Café Covazza, and then to Madame de Châteaurenaud’s (Minerva’s, that is), where we played “magnetism” games, debated reform and gossiped about love.

  At dawn we all headed over to a little café on Rue Saint-Honoré where we encountered a number of people who had been at the theatre: wild Fortunée Hamelin and two of her party (not her disapproving husband, I noted), tiny Madame de Crény with a tall man named Denon, as well as Citoyen Fouché, oddly enough, sitting alone at a table at the back, an untouched bowl of broth in front of him.

  “Do you not enjoy your broth warm, Citoyen?” I asked, stopping to exchange pleasantries.

  He shrugged. “Have a seat, Citoyenne Beauharnais?” In spite of the hour, he was sober. Unlike myself.

  I took the chair he offered. He asked the waiter to bring a glass, which he filled from the bottle of Hungary water on the table. “Have you been working, perhaps?” I asked. “You do not have the air of a carefree man.”

  “Yes, I believe I have been working.”

  “You are not sure?”

  “The line between work and play is never entirely clear.”

  “It is the nature of your work that is not clear.”

  He looked at me with a steady expression. “You are a woman who appears to speak truthfully—yet in this instance I feel I can be confident that you are fully informed as to the nature of my work. I can only conclude that you are one of those women who gives the impression of candour all the while concealing your hand.”

  I cocked my head to one side. “I generally win at the gaming tables, too.” I smiled.

  “Not many regard an ability to dissemble an attribute. Yet it is one of the truly indispensable talents.”

  “I did not know you to be a philosopher.”

  “There are many things you do not know about me.”

  “There are things I know that would surprise you.”

  “Such as…?”

  “Oh—that you feign not to care, yet your heart is tender,” I ventured, “and that this distresses you.” I observed his look. He appeared amused rather than upset. Perhaps foolishly, I went on. “That you put on an undisturbed air—yet your imagination is easily heated, so you guard against it.”

  He sat back in his chair and looked at me. “I understand you are in need of money.”

  I felt heat in my cheeks.

  “Forgive me, I have offended you,” he said. “You must understand that such matters do not mean anything to me. You are a woman without the protection of a husband—this is not a fault, although some would have it so. Your family is distant and in all likelihood impoverished. You have two children to provide for. Furthermore, you play in the company of the rich and reckless. This costs—of course—costs a great deal, but it also pays, does it not? Contacts, properly cultivated, are an invaluable asset. No doubt the balance is to the good. Over time, of course.” He sat back.

  I glanced toward the table at the front. Deputy Barras was observing us.

  “Furthermore,” Citoyen Fouché went on, “I am aware of the contributions you give to your relatives, as well as to a number of friends. Not to mention neighbours, street beggars, common ruffians. Indeed, your hand is too frequently open. I would advise you to be more cautious.”

  “You do know everything.” I was embarrassed. Was nothing private?

  He did not smile. “I will take that as a compliment—but alas, much eludes me. I am in need of assistance in this respect. If you are ever in need, do come to me—I would be most grateful for the services you could provide, services that would be of benefit to the Republic, I should add. I know you to be a sincere patriot.” He glanced toward my table, where Tallien was speechifying rather loudly now, Thérèse laughing. “Unlike some.”

  I rose to go, uneasy. “We are all of u
s patriots, Citoyen Fouché.”

  “You are leaving me.” He refilled his glass with water. “I confess my imagination has been heated. You seem to understand a great deal.”

  “My friends claim I am naive.”

  “They are mistaken—you see through the masquerade to the true spirit of a man. I have been disarmed. Like a gallant knight in days of old, I am for ever at your service.”

  I smiled. “I believe you mean it.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek and returned to my friends, who teased me at length about my new conquest. I endured, enjoying their good humour—yet I confess that this one brief interchange has disturbed my repose. Citoyen Fouché’s words linger still.

  September 10.

  Last night, just after midnight on Rue des Quatre Fils, Tallien was attacked by a ruffian with a pistol. He fell, wounded. When the assassin hit him on the chest with the butt end of his pistol, Tallien let out a cry that woke the neighbours. He was taken to his mother’s home, close by.

  When I saw him in his mother’s humble apartment, I was shaken. He was resting on a bed in the tiny salon, behind a canopy of patched curtains. A bullet had gone through his left shoulder. He’d been bled, but even so, he continued to suffer pain.

  “Remember when I said that in a revolution, men must not look behind them?” he asked. “I was wrong.”

  “It was a Jacobin who tried to kill him,” Thérèse told me as we helped Tallien’s mother clear the tea cups. Six days earlier Tallien had been expelled from the Jacobin Club for being too liberal in his views.

  “You don’t think Carrier had anything to do with it, do you?” I asked. Deputy Carrier was President of the Jacobin Club. He was the one who had had Tallien expelled.

  “Carrier wouldn’t do his own dirty work.” Thérèse put a soup bowl down on the wood table. “He would hire some thug to do it for him.”

  Dirty work. It was rumoured that during the Terror, Carrier had ordered over ten thousand executed in Nantes—drowned in the Loire River. Ten thousand.