The Josephine B. Trilogy

by Sandra Gulland

“Mon Dieu, Bonaparte,” I said, standing abruptly. “That’s almost your entire family!”

  June 1.

  We set out to meet them on the road, Bonaparte and I and the two “youngsters”—Pauline and Louis. South of Milan, a carriage came into view escorted by soldiers on horseback. Bonaparte let down the glass. “It’s them.”

  “Put up the glass,” Pauline protested.

  “Don’t screech.” Louis covered his ears. He is two years older than Pauline and the two constantly bicker.

  “Oh, I feel a fright,” I said to Bonaparte. I was fatigued from the heat and parched with thirst.

  Bonaparte ran his fingers through his hair. “Maria-Anna has changed her name to Elisa and Maria-Anunziata is now Caroline. But Girolamo’s only thirteen. I can still call him Fifi.”

  “How should I address your mother?” I felt a sick headache coming on. Why had I not thought to take laudanum?

  “As Signora Letizia.” Bonaparte clasped and unclasped his hands, then wiped his palms on his thighs. “She gave birth to thirteen children; eight survived.”

  “Remarkable.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “She is famous for her tiny hands and feet,” Pauline said.

  “She’s from Corsica’s Sartène district, well known for bandits and blood vendettas.” Bonaparte adjusted his sash. “As a child, I thought my mother was a warrior.”

  One of our horses whinnied. Bonaparte pounded on the ceiling. I fell forward as the carriage came to a sudden halt. Bonaparte pushed the door open and jumped to the ground.

  “Aspetta un momento,” Pauline yelled, tying her hat strings. “Napoleone, aspetta!”

  The footman let down the step and helped Pauline out of the carriage. I heard shrieks: my Corsican family. I pulled my shawl modestly around my shoulders.

  “Madame?” Louis held out a white-gloved hand. “May I offer my protection? The Bonapartes are known to be rowdy.”

  “How is it you are so gentle, Louis? Are you sure you are a Bonaparte?” I was relieved to see him smile. No more risky remarks, I told myself.

  We approached the noisy group. A boy was tumbling in the dust, laughing. Girolamo, no doubt. Bonaparte punched him on the shoulder and the boy punched him back, feigning to box.

  “I wonder who that fat man is,” Louis said.

  An older man with a pudding face was standing by the coach, his mouth hanging open as he watched the Liberator of Italy clasp his young brother in a headlock, the boy cursing like a sailor. “You don’t know him?”

  A plump girl of about fourteen—Bonaparte’s youngest sister Caroline, I expected—was making excited hops in front of Pauline. Regarding everyone with a look of disapproval was a thin, mannish woman with heavy features: Elisa. And at the centre of the commotion was Signora Letizia, a tiny woman clothed in a black linen gown set off rather incongruously by yellow fluted neck-ruches. “You are killing yourself, Napoleone.” At least, that is what I thought she said, for her heavy Corsican accent made her difficult to understand.

  “Ah, there you are.” Bonaparte released his hold on young Girolamo, who went tumbling. He took my arm and turned to face his mother. “Maman, allow me to present my wife, Josephine.”

  I made a respectful curtsy. “At last I meet my honoured mother,” I said, kissing her on both cheeks. She was smaller than I’d expected, but a great deal more frightening.

  She frowned, looking me over, and said something to Bonaparte in Italian. Then she turned to her eldest daughter. “Get your husband.”

  “Now?” Elisa let out a hiccup.

  Bonaparte looked from Elisa to the man standing by the coach. “Elisa got married? But I didn’t give permission!”

  “You are not the head of this family,” Signora Letizia informed her son.

  “Félix!” Elisa yelled. “Get over here.”

  “I’m going to get married too!” Pauline displayed her ring.

  Bonaparte’s mother fixed a baleful look on me, as if I were to blame. A whirlwind of dust stung my eyes. I squeezed Bonaparte’s arm. “It’s too hot in the sun.”

  “He’s an idiot,” Bonaparte fumed in the privacy of our room. “How can Elisa stand him?”

  “I don’t believe she cares for him in the least.” Elisa, it would appear, cared for no one.

  “She’s not going to get a sou.”

  No dowry? I could just imagine the maelstrom such a pronouncement would provoke. With the Bonapartes, I was beginning to understand, even the smallest slight was cause for battle. “Do you think your mother will allow Pauline to marry General Leclerc if you don’t grant Elisa a dowry?”

  Bonaparte scowled.

  I covered his hand with my own. “I believe you are right, Bonaparte. I believe your mother is a warrior.”

  June 3.

  Bonaparte’s Uncle Fesch, his brother Joseph and Joseph’s timid wife Julie have arrived, so now all the Bonapartes are here—all but Bonaparte’s brother Lucciano, that is, who I’m told refused to come to Italy because of me. (Or rather, I should say Lucien, for apparently he has changed his name as well.)

  “His wife miscarried,” Lisette told me, “and he claims it’s your fault.” Lisette has become an invaluable informant.

  “How could I have had anything to do with it?”

  “It’s because you prevented Pauline from marrying Deputy Fréron.”

  “I wasn’t the one to forbid it! And in any case, what would that have to do with Lucien’s wife’s miscarriage?”

  “Lucien Bonaparte and Deputy Fréron are friends.”

  “They are?”

  “And that’s why General Bonaparte got his brother Lucien assigned to the Army of the North—to get him away from Deputy Fréron. Or rather, you got the General to do it.”

  “Bonaparte will do something just because I ask him to?” I smiled at the thought.

  “And so Lucien Bonaparte and his wife had to move north and then she miscarried—”

  “I was so sorry to hear that.”

  “And so the mishap was your fault.”

  I frowned, puzzled.

  “Because of you, they had to move. When they moved, it happened.” Lisette shrugged. “Bonaparte logic.”

  June 4 (Pentecost Sunday).

  Our first big family dinner. I am chagrined to discover that the preferred subjects of conversation among the Bonapartes at table are infertility and money.

  “Why is there no bambino, Napoleone?” Signora Letizia tapped her knife for emphasis. She had taken the position of honour at the head of the table.

  Bonaparte ignored his mother’s pointed stare. He was sitting with his arms crossed, glowering. His brother Joseph, as the eldest, had claimed the chair to the right of their mother and it bothered my husband, I knew. (The Bonapartes take any indication of rank very seriously.)

  “As the French Ambassador to Rome, I will be making sixty thousand francs a year,” Joseph told Uncle Fesch. “As General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy, Napoleone is paid only forty thousand.” He picked up a fork, examined it with interest and passed it to his wife, who likewise examined it, turning it over to read the inscription.

  “Magnifico!” Elisa’s husband Félix said, wiping the perspiration from his brow.

  “Joseph, you can get some very good deals on sculptures in Rome,” Uncle Fesch said, leaning back in his chair.

  “Lei e troppo vecchia, Napoleone,” Signora Letizia told Bonaparte.

  I coughed on a chunk of chipolata sausage in the rice. Troppo vecchia: too old. I am too old, she’d told him—too old to have children.

  “O primavera, gioventù dell’anno. O gioventù, primavera della vita!”* Pauline sang off-tune.

  “Maybe she’s barren,” Elisa said. (Hiccup.)

  “Plombières is an excellent health spa for that problem,” Joseph’s wife hissed across the table at me. “It’s expensive, however.” The daughter of a silk merchant, Julie Bonaparte had a straightforward view of the world: profit, loss, supply, demand. Mark-up. And now and aga
in: quality goods.

  “What does barren mean?” Girolamo had pressed the bread into dough and formed a moustache with it.

  “I’ll explain when you’re older, Girolamo,” Elisa told him.

  “I’m thirteen. And I’m changing my name to Jérôme.”

  “Liar. You’re only twelve.” Caroline grabbed a chunk of his dough moustache and threw it across the table.

  “Maman had thirteen babies, five died,” Pauline said.

  “Magnifico!” Félix said solemnly.

  “Salute. To Maman!”

  “Cin-cin!” (Hiccup.)

  “Cin-cin, cin-cin.” Uncle Fesch raised his glass, oblivious to the chunk of bread dough in his wine.

  “Salute.” I raised my glass to my new family.

  [Undated]

  Joseph, Elisa, Lucien (not here), Louis, Pauline, Caroline, Jérôme.

  Joseph, Elisa, Lucien, Louis, Pauline, Caroline, Jérôme.

  I’m getting it.

  June 8.

  “Forty thousand francs,” Bonaparte announced to Elisa. “Each.”

  Bonaparte and Joseph had just returned from a meeting with a notary in Milan to arrange dowries for Elisa and Pauline.

  “I’m getting forty thousand?” For a moment I thought Elisa might even smile.

  “Well, actually, for you, thirty-five plus three Corsican properties—Vecchia and the two vineyards.” Bonaparte shrugged. “It amounts to the same thing.”

  “Vecchia is damp.” Elisa made a face. “What did Pauline get?”

  “Forty thousand—in gold.” Pauline stuck out her tongue.

  5:15 P.M.

  “Napoleone!”

  Bonaparte looked up. “Was that my mother?”

  “Napoleone!”

  It sounded as if Signora Letizia was outside the door to our suite. “She wishes to speak to you, I believe.”

  Bonaparte went to the door. “Your footman is asleep,” I heard his mother say. “Is l’anziana inside?”

  L’anziana: the old woman. A surge of anger went through me. This morning, Lisette had heard my mother-in-law refer to me as la puttana, Italian for whore! I’d been doing everything in my power to gain my mother-in-law’s favour, but nothing seemed to please her. Indeed, even my acts of kindness were viewed as an affront. I made her look like a peasant, she’d told Bonaparte. When I won at reversi, I made her look stupid. (I’d intentionally only won one game out of four.) I was too trusting of my servants—I should sleep with the silver at the foot of my bed. I shouldn’t be giving the beggars so much. I laughed too much—I should be silent, like Joseph’s wife Julie. And didn’t I realize I was too old to wear flowers in my hair? In short, she was determined to detest me.

  Bonaparte stepped outside. I could hear his mother talking to him in Italian. Then he burst back into our room, his mother close behind. “Zitto! Basta!” Bonaparte stomped his feet.

  Signora Letizia crossed her hands over her chest. “Then I refuse consent. Pauline will not marry.”

  Bonaparte sat down on a chair, his legs stretched out in front of him. He hit the arm of the chair with his fist. “You’re telling me—the man who waged war on the Pope and won!—you’re telling me to arrange a Catholic ceremony for my sisters?”

  “Please, Signora Letizia, do sit down.” I pulled out a chair for her. She stood ramrod stiff. I searched for a possible compromise. “Could a religious service be performed without anyone knowing?” I asked Bonaparte.

  Bonaparte snorted. “Banns would have to be read…” He made a circling motion with his hand to mean, and on and on.

  Signora Letizia moved toward the door.

  “Un momento, Signora Letizia. Per piacere.” I turned to Bonaparte. “A dispensation could be granted from having banns read, surely.” For a price. “And the ceremony could be performed here, in the little chapel.” We could air it out, get rid of the bats. “No one need know. And the civic ceremony could come after.”

  Silence.

  “The civil ceremony must come first,” Bonaparte said finally.

  “Would that satisfy you, Signora Letizia?” I asked, as gently as I could.

  Her lower lip stuck out in a pout. “Elisa too.”

  “Elisa’s already married!”

  “Not by the Church.”

  I touched Bonaparte’s arm. What did it matter, one ceremony or two? “They could be at the same time.” I didn’t dare suggest that our own marriage might also be blessed.

  He grunted. I looked over at Signora Letizia. She tipped her head slightly. Did that mean yes? I wasn’t sure. “Very well then,” I said with more confidence than I felt. I opened the door for Signora Letizia. “We will work out the details this afternoon,” I whispered to her. She stomped woodenly out of the room.

  I closed the door behind me, but was startled by an explosion of laughter.

  “Well done!” Bonaparte embraced me.

  June 14.

  “There’s a strange little man to see you.” In honour of the festivities Lisette had put on her best gown—a muslin chemise banded by violet shirring that she’d done herself.

  “The priest from the village?”

  “I…I think not.”

  A little man entered the room, his boots in his hand. His socks were dirty and full of holes. He bowed before me. “Signora Bonaparte?”

  “Father Brioschi?” It was the priest. But his clothes! “Lisette, ask him if he brought his vestments.”

  “Habetisne vestimenta?” she asked him in Latin.

  “Si.” But he just stood there.

  “I’ll get someone who speaks Italian,” Lisette said, heading out the door.

  I nudged a wooden chair toward Father Brioschi. “Peccato,” he said. What a shame? I wondered what he meant. I was saved from the discomfort of this “dialogue” by Lisette returning with Caroline Bonaparte, her plump young body squeezed into a pink taffeta gown covered with a froth of ruffles.

  “Caroline, this is Father Brioschi. Could you—?”

  “This is the priest?”

  “Could you ask him whether he has brought his robes?”

  “Ha portato i suoi abiti?” The little man said something in Italian and shrugged. “He didn’t bring anything,” Caroline said.

  “Perhaps your uncle has something he could borrow.” Uncle Fesch travelled with an elaborate wardrobe, much of it gleaned from the coffers of vanquished Italian nobility and clergy.

  Shortly, Lisette returned, staggering under the weight of a jewelencrusted white wool cape. I displayed it for the humble priest. “Per voi.”

  He ran his fingers over the glittering surface, whispering something reverent in Italian. “He said it’s as lumpy as a diseased sow,” Caroline said.

  The oratory smelled mouldy in spite of all the flower bouquets. Pauline emerged in a gown so revealing that Father Brioschi was rendered speechless. Victor Leclerc looked on blissfully, his hat cocked sideways, wearing a grey overcoat very much like that of Bonaparte. He could not take his eyes off the wonder of this beauty, his bride. (His bride could not take her eyes off her own reflection in the polished brass.) Then a frowning Elisa and a trembling Félix joined them at the altar—thankfully, no hiccups—and Father Brioschi was finally able to squawk out the lines.

  So, now that the ceremonies are over, it’s time to prepare for a feast, a reception and a ball. Already, the Bonapartes are bickering over the seating arrangements at table tonight. Already, I’m exhausted.

  [Undated]

  “Is something going on?” Lisette asked, biting off a thread. “Signora Letizia changed her gown.”

  “Likely it has to do with the viewing today.”

  “The viewing?” Lisette licked the thread to knot it.

  “During the Ancien Régime, the public thronged to Versailles every weekend to watch King Louis XV eat an egg. So, the Bonapartes thought that the public should be allowed to watch Bonaparte eat.”

  She looked astonished. I put up my hands as if to say, Don’t ask me, I have nothing t
o do with it!

  June 19.

  “They’re gone, Madame!” Lisette poured me a glass of champagne.

  “Pour a glass for yourself, Lisette,” I offered. I was in a celebratory mood. Jérôme had been sent back to school in Paris. Joseph, his wife Julie and young Caroline Bonaparte had departed for Rome. Louis had been sent to Brescia with dispatches. And now, just this morning, Signora Letizia, Elisa and her hapless husband had left for Corsica.

  Leaving only Pauline.

  I heard a door slam, a shrill voice.

  I clinked my glass against Lisette’s and smiled ruefully. Only Pauline?

  In which I receive shocking news

  June 21, 1797—Mombello.

  “Is this all the mail there is from Paris?” I put down the small stack.

  “That’s what Moustache said,” Lisette said, staring out the window.

  “Nothing from my daughter?” Nothing from Eugène, either.

  “Just what’s there.” She burst out laughing. “The footman is drunk! You should see him.”

  I went through the stack for the third time, more slowly: a letter from my banker; two letters from Barras; three from Aunt Désirée; two from Thérèse; a number from people whose names I did not recognize, the usual requests for favours. And bills, of course. Quite a few.

  I tore open a notice from Madame Campan. It was only an announcement about an upcoming recital—a recital I would miss. Attached was a little note: “I thought you would like to know that ‘the general’ called on your daughter. All is well. She has become a beautiful young woman. She was brilliant in the part of Cassandra in Agamemnon.”

  Lisette was laughing again at the scene outside the window. “Madame, come here—quickly.” She turned, puzzled by my silence. “Madame, what is it? Is it bad news?”

  “Oh—no.” I smoothed out Madame Campan’s note. The perspiration from my hand had caused the ink to smear.

  Lisette stood up. “Would you like me to get you some orange water?”