The Josephine B. Trilogy

by Sandra Gulland

  The weathered door to the school creaked on its hinges, startling a maid who was perched on a stepladder washing the crystal candelabra. I heard Bonaparte’s voice, his lecturing tone. I knocked on the door to the headmistress’s study.

  Madame Campan was seated behind her enormous pedestal desk covered with books and stacks of paper. The small room was furnished in the style of the Ancien Régime, ornate, musty and dark. A vase of silk lilies had been placed under the portrait of Queen Marie Antoinette. Two years ago Madame Campan would have lost her life for showing sympathy for the Queen.*

  The prim headmistress motioned me in without taking her eyes off her guest. Bonaparte was perched on the edge of a puce Louis XV armchair, holding a teacup and expounding on the uselessness of girls learning Latin. His saucer was swamped—with coffee, I guessed, to judge by the aroma.

  When he paused to take a breath, Madame Campan stood to greet me, smoothing the skirt of her gown. Dressed in black, she could have been taken for a maid but for the intricate beaded trim of the head scarf she wore, as if in perpetual mourning. “Forgive me for interrupting,” I said, taking the chair beside Bonaparte. He searched my eyes for a clue. This was an awkward situation for him, I knew, a difficult situation for us both. Things were not going according to plan.

  “General Bonaparte and I have been discussing education in a Republican society,” Madame Campan said, pulling her head scarf forward. “It isn’t often one meets a man who has given this matter thought.”

  I removed my gloves, tugging on each fingertip. My new gold betrothal ring caught the light. I put my hand over it and said, “General Bonaparte is a philosopher at heart, Madame Campan. He gives all matters thought.” I offered Bonaparte a conciliatory little smile.

  Bonaparte emptied his teacup and put the cup and saucer on the side table between us. I reached out to keep the table from tipping. “It’s late,” he told me, pulling out his pocket-watch. “Aren’t you going to tell her?”

  “Yes,” I said, flushing, seeing him through a stranger’s eyes: a short, thin man with a sallow complexion, lank hair, shabby attire. A coarsespoken man with poor manners. An intense, humourless man with fiery eyes—a Corsican, a Revolutionary, an opportunist. My husband. “We have an announcement to make,” I told Madame Campan.

  Only my closest friends knew that we’d married. I wasn’t looking forward to informing my family—nor my acquaintances, for that matter, many of whom would be condescending, I feared, in spite of Bonaparte’s recent promotion to General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy. The genteel world would silently judge that I had married beneath me. It would be said that as a widow with two children to educate and place in the world, as an aristocrat without fortune, and indeed, as a woman over the age of thirty, I was desperate. “I—that is, General Bonaparte and I—have married.” I took my husband’s hand; it was as damp as my own.

  Madame Campan sat back abruptly, as if pushed. “Why…that’s marvellous,” she said, with the appearance of sincerity. “What a surprise. But that’s marvellous,” she repeated. “When?”

  “Twenty after ten last night,” Bonaparte said, drumming his nails on the arm of his chair. “Twenty-two minutes after, to be exact.”

  “Well.” Madame Campan made a small, dry cough into her fist. “Your children have been very good at keeping this secret, Madame…Bonaparte, is it now?” I nodded, grieved to hear my new name spoken, grieved to be giving up the lovely and distinguished name of Beauharnais. “No doubt Hortense and Eugène are…?” She held out her hands, palms up.

  I felt my cheeks becoming heated. “That seems to be the problem. General Bonaparte and I came out to Saint-Germain today with the intention of telling my children, but…” I tried to swallow.

  Madame Campan leaned forward over her desk, her hands tightly clasped. “Hortense does not know?”

  “We were going to tell her just now, but she was upset, so I didn’t think it wise.”

  “She was crying,” Bonaparte said, shifting his weight.

  “How curious,” Madame Campan said. “She was so cheerful this morning at breakfast. Do you know why?”

  How could I explain without offending Bonaparte? “Perhaps she didn’t like seeing me on a man’s arm,” I said, stretching the truth only a little. “She’s so attached to the memory of her father, as you know.”

  “Oh dear, yes, I see. Your daughter is…sensitive.” She spoke the word with deliberate care, pressing her hands to her chin in an attitude of prayer. “She feels everything so strongly! Which is why she is gifted in the theatrical arts, I believe, and in the arts in general. She is, as I have often told you, my favourite student.” She paused. “May I make a suggestion

  ?” “Please do! I confess I’m at a loss.”

  “Perhaps if I told her? Sometimes it’s better that way. I could talk to both Hortense and Eugène together.”

  I glanced at Bonaparte. It was a coward’s solution, I knew, but a solution nonetheless. “Good,” Bonaparte said, standing.

  After, Bonaparte and I stood silently on the bottom stone step of the school, waiting for my coach. “I guess, under the circumstances, we should consider whether or not to visit Eugène now,” I said finally, looking out over the fields to Eugène’s school next door. On the one hand, I hated not to see him; on the other, I owed four months’ tuition. “He’s not expecting us,” I said, as my carriage creaked to a stop in front of us.

  “Back to Paris,” Bonaparte told my coachman, opening the carriage door himself. “I approve of Campan’s approach,” he said, climbing in after me. “She’s educated, but she’s not a bluestocking. And she’s not proud either. I thought she was lady-in-waiting to the Queen.”

  The carriage pulled through the school gates. I nodded apologetically to the beggarwoman sitting in the dirt with her infant at her breast; usually I had something for her. “She was,” I said, tightening my hat strings. Madame Campan had practically been raised at court. “She was in the Tuileries Palace with the royal family when it was ransacked. A man from Marseille grabbed her and was going to kill her, but someone yelled that they didn’t kill women and that saved her.”

  “She was lucky. I approve that the girls learn to make soup and have to tidy their rooms themselves. I’ll enrol my younger sisters.”

  Bonaparte has four brothers and three sisters—my family now. “Your sisters who are living in Marseille with your mother?” In town now, we were passing the castle, a ruin, like so many.

  “I’m going to move them all to Paris.”

  “That would be lovely,” I said, smiling in spite of a pain in my side.

  “How much does Campan charge?”

  “For the year? Three thousand francs.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said, opening a book he’d been reading on the way down, the life of Alexandre the Great.

  “Eugène’s school is even more.” And I was paying for my niece Émilie’s tuition as well—or trying to. It had been a long time since I’d had any income from home.* My coachman cracked his whip. I let my head fall back against the tufted upholstered seat and closed my eyes, the memory of Hortense’s tears coming back to me.

  “Not feeling well?”

  “I’m fine,” I lied.

  Now, in the quiet of my little dressing room, I give way to despair. What am I going to do? Not long ago I’d promised my daughter that I wouldn’t marry Bonaparte. Now she will think I’ve betrayed her. She is too young to understand what is truly best for her, too young to understand the complexities of love, and of need. Too young to understand that promises made with love may also with love be broken.

  Late evening, I’m not sure how late. Still raining.

  More meetings, visitors. Bonaparte is downstairs still with two of his aides. The smell of cigar smoke fills the air. I’m bathed and dressed for bed, awaiting my husband. This is our last night together before he leaves.

  After a fast evening meal (he eats so quickly!), Bonaparte read out loud the letter he’d written to the
Directors announcing our marriage. Satisfied, he folded the paper, shoved it into an envelope, dripped wax on it and thumped it with his seal. Then he put the envelope to one side and rummaged through the drawer where the papers were kept, pulling out a sheet of rag bond. He stood and motioned for me to take the seat at the escritoire. “I need a letter to my mother from you.”

  Of course! I put my lacework aside. He would be seeing his mother in Marseille, informing her of our union—his mother who, according to Corsican custom, should have been asked for permission first. His mother, who would have refused permission had she been asked. His mother, who was opposed to her son’s marrying a widow with two children, a woman without a dowry, a woman six years older than her son.

  Bonaparte paced, dictating what he thought the letter should say: that she was now my honoured mother, that I was looking forward to meeting her, that I would visit her on my way to Italy to join my husband, that—

  There was a sudden rush of pouring rain. I held the raven’s tail quill suspended. I was to go to Italy? “But Bonaparte—”

  “In six weeks, after I run the Austrians out.”

  I smiled. Was he joking? I was saved from my dilemma by the sound of a man calling out from the garden, “Open the damned door!”

  “Was that Director Barras?” I asked Bonaparte, going to the door to the garden. “It is you!” I kissed my friend’s wet cheeks.

  “And good evening to you, General Bonaparte, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy,” Barras proclaimed in a mock official voice, balancing his gold-tipped walking stick against the wall. “My heartfelt congratulations on your recent appointment.” Bonaparte looked sullen, even as the Director shook his hand.*

  “Thanks to you, Père Barras,” I said, draping his military greatcoat over a chair by the fire to dry. Less than a year ago Bonaparte had been unemployed. Barras had been instrumental in getting him a series of promotions, but this last, to General-in-Chief, had taken considerable persuasion on Barras’s part. The Directors had been reluctant to grant the command of an army to a Corsican.

  “Not bad, not bad,” Barras said, turning Bonaparte like a mannequin, examining his new uniform. “A little big at the shoulders perhaps?” His own jacket seemed a little tight on him, I noticed; the tails split open at the back. “But why these frayed epaulettes?”

  “What were you doing out in the garden, Paul?” I asked, changing the subject. I’d brought up the matter of the epaulettes earlier, but without success. (Bonaparte is so stubborn!)

  “I knocked and no one answered. How you can manage on such a small staff, Rose, is beyond me,” Barras said, running his hand through his thinning hair. (Dyed black?)

  “I’m looking for a lady’s maid, in fact.” On learning that I was going to marry a Revolutionary, my former maid had quit. “If you hear of one—”

  “Her name is Josephine now,” Bonaparte said.

  “You’re changing your Christian name as well?” Barras frowned, considering. “Josephine—yes, I like that, Rose, it rather suits you. As does your gown, I must say. Don’t you look lovely. I do know of a maid though. My aunt was telling me of a girl. But only one? You need at least three more. Enough of this Republican simplicity. Republican romanticism, I call it. And speaking of romance, how are my lovebirds this miserable evening?”

  “Just fine,” I said with more enthusiasm than I felt.

  “The Directory can only provide me with eight thousand francs,” Bonaparte said.

  Barras flung back his tails and sat down. (Was he wearing a corset? Barras, at forty, was becoming vain.) “I know, it’s not enough, but at least it’s not the counterfeit stuff England is flooding us with in an effort to ruin our economy.” Raising his hands to heaven. “As if our economy weren’t already ruined.”

  Bonaparte wasn’t humoured. “How am I supposed to feed and equip an army on only eight thousand?” He drummed the chessboard with his fingers, sending two pieces tumbling to the floor.

  “Prayer?” Barras caught my eye and smiled, his beguiling lopsided grin. “After all, it’s legal now—well, almost.”

  “Barras, you do amuse,” I said, offering him a glass of the Clos-Vougeot burgundy I knew he favoured.

  “No, thank you—I just came by to drop off the list you asked for, General,” he said, handing a folded-up sheet of paper to Bonaparte.

  “But these are only the names of the generals,” Bonaparte said, scanning the list. “I asked for the names of all the officers in the Army of Italy.”

  “Even the captains?” Barras stood, reaching for his walking stick.

  “Even their aides.”

  “You’re leaving tomorrow evening? I’ll get my secretary to bring it over to you in the morning.” He punched Bonaparte’s shoulder in a soldierly fashion. “Best of luck liberating the Italians from the Austrians, General, as you so nobly put it. Don’t neglect to liberate their paintings and sculptures while you’re at it, as well as all that gold in the Church coffers. That’s where you’ll find the money to feed your soldiers.” He threw his walking stick into the air and caught it, looking to see whether I had noticed.

  Have to go—I hear Bonaparte’s footsteps on the stairs.

  March 11, morning, a light rain.

  Sleepy this morning, but smiling. Bonaparte approaches conjugal relations with the fervour of a religious convert and the curiosity of a scientist. He’s intent on trying every position described in a book he found at a stall by the river. There are over a hundred, he claims, and we’re only on position nine.

  Indeed, I’m learning never to predict how things might be with him. He can be imperious and insensitive one minute, tender and devoted the next. Last night we talked and talked…

  “Like foam on the wave,” he told me, caressing my breast.

  “I like that,” I said, watching the watery undulations that the firelight was making on the wall, thinking of the sea.

  “The poetry or this…?”

  “That was poetry? And that.” His hands are soft, his touch surprisingly gentle.

  “It’s a line from Carthon by Ossian. Her breasts were like foam on the wave, and her eyes like stars of light.”

  It took me a moment to realize who he meant. Bonaparte pronounced the Scottish bard’s name like “ocean.”

  “Alexandre the Great chose Homer as his poet, Julius Caesar chose Virgil—and I have chosen Ossian.”

  “Bonaparte, you disturb me when you talk like that.”

  “Why? Don’t you like that progression: Alexandre, Caesar…Napoleon?”

  “I’m serious. Can’t you be a normal man?”

  “Aren’t I a ‘normal’ man?” He pressed against me.

  “Well, in that respect, yes.” In that respect, absolutely. Except that Bonaparte was insatiable.

  “Can I tell you something?”

  “Of course!” I was enjoying the quiet intimacy of our talk, this latenight pillow confession.

  “Sometimes I think I’m the reincarnation of Alexandre the Great.” He glanced at me. “Now you’ll think me mad.”

  “I notice you read about Alexandre the Great a lot,” I said, not knowing exactly how to respond to such a statement. It was true—there were things about Bonaparte that seemed strange to me.

  “You don’t believe in that sort of thing?”

  “Sometimes. But not always. When I was a girl, a fortune-teller predicted I would be unhappily married and then widowed.”

  “So you see? The prediction came true.”

  “Yes.” My first marriage had certainly been an unhappy one. “But she also predicted that I would become Queen.”

  He propped himself up on one elbow. “That’s interesting.”

  “More than a queen, she said.” But not for very long. “So you see, predictions are often just foolishness.”

  “Let’s be foolish now.”

  “Again?” I smiled, wrapping my legs around him.

  “You have no idea, do you, how beautiful you are. You are the most beautiful
woman in Paris.”

  “Bonaparte, don’t be silly.”

  “I’m serious! Everything about you enchants me. Don’t laugh. Sometimes, watching you, I think I’m in the presence of an angel come down to earth.”

  I stroked his fine, thin hair, looked into his great grey eyes. I felt confused by the intensity of his feeling. I have never been so loved before. My first husband scorned me; Bonaparte worships me. It makes me want to weep. The truth, the terrible truth, is that I feel lonely in my husband’s arms. If I am an angel, then why does my heart not open?

  Throughout the night, I heard the clock chime one, two, three o’clock. At four bells, Bonaparte wasn’t there. I listened for the sound of his footsteps, watched for a flicker of candlelight, but the house was dark, silent. I tried to go back to sleep, but could not, night thoughts haunting me. Night doubts, night fears. Finally I put on my dressing gown, my slippers, and with a candle walked the rooms. From the half-storey landing I saw a light below. I slipped down the stairs and went to the open door of the study. Bonaparte was there, leaning over the octagonal table, holding a lantern above a map. I watched him like a thief. What did he see, looking over that map? He looked so intent. What were his thoughts, his dreams?

  “Bonaparte?” I called out, finally.

  He looked up, startled. “Josephine,” he whispered wondrously, as if he had found me.

  Early afternoon.

  What commotion! I have only a minute. Tonight Bonaparte leaves for the south, to take command of the Army of Italy. The entire household is engaged in frantic activity. My scullery maid is taking in his breeches (he balked at the expense of a tailor). I asked my manservant to put a proper polish on his riding boots and the cook to prepare a basket of travelling provisions—hardtack, hard-cooked eggs, pickled pork brawn, beets. I sent my coachman to the wine merchant for a case of Chambertin—an undrinkable wine, in my estimation, but the one Bonaparte insists on (it’s cheap)—and to a parfumerie for the almond meal and rose soap he likes to use on his face. I must remember to boil elecampane root in springwater for his rash. And what else? What have I forgotten? Oh, the—