The Josephine B. Trilogy

by Sandra Gulland

  His rage had to do with money. The designer I’d hired to make over the house had demanded payment for the renovations—one hundred thousand francs! I sat down, stunned. That was an incomprehensible sum. “One hundred and thirty, in fact,” Bonaparte ranted, kicking the flaming logs, making sparks fly. “The house itself is only worth forty, and you don’t even own it. The frieze in the dining room isn’t even painted by David. It’s by one of his students.”

  There was a frieze in the dining room? “Most of the value is in furnishings, Bonaparte,” I said in my defence.

  “Most? Even seventy thousand in furniture would be outrageous—I don’t care who made it, Jacob Brothers or not! There’s no way I’m going to pay for half of this. I’ll contribute thirty thousand, but not a sou more.”

  Leaving me with a bill for one hundred thousand? “No doubt there has been a mistake. I’ll talk to Vautier.” The renovations were the last thing I wanted to deal with, however, after an absence of almost two years. First I had to see Hortense. And then, of course, Aunt Désirée, the dear old Marquis. And then Thérèse—had she had her baby yet? And how was Père Barras? And the Glories, of course! Not to mention the business I needed to attend to, my lawyer to see.

  “How can there be a mistake? Vautier produced your letters as evidence. You gave him total licence! One never gives total licence.”

  I removed my gloves, taking in the changes: the Pompeian frescoes, military trophies, chairs upholstered in striped fabric. The renovation was simple, yet elegant. I ran my hand over the surface of the new mahogany desk. The grain seemed to shimmer under my fingertips. I felt I could see deep into the heart of the wood. “Does none of it please you, Bonaparte?”

  “Come see our beds,” he said with a little grin.

  Our bedroom had been designed to look like a military tent. “Watch.” Bonaparte released a latch and our two beds sprang together with a noisy clatter.

  “Clever!” I sat down on one of the stools, covered with chamois leather to resemble a drum. The beds were draped with a canopy of blue and white stripes, the bedposts forged from cannon.

  Bonaparte tugged at my arm.

  “Not now, Bonaparte,” I pleaded, but smiling. “It’s not even noon yet, and I need a bath.”

  “We’ll bathe together,” he said, pulling at my sleeve, “after.”

  Late now, almost 11:00 P.M., a very long day.

  I’d bathed and was changing into an afternoon gown when I heard horses in the courtyard. A slender young woman in a white riding frock was stepping down from a barouche. A mass of golden curls fell to her shoulders. I put my hands over my mouth. Mon Dieu. Hortense?

  “Maman!” Hortense cried out when she saw me, all the airs of une élégante of Paris giving way to that of a girl. Her eyes were an extraordinary blue; how was it possible that that surprised me? She slipped off her cloak, chattering. “Where’s Eugène? I saw his horse saddled by the stable. That’s Louis Bonaparte’s horse? The General’s brother is staying here? But why isn’t Eugène back yet? I’ve been telling all my friends he would be returning with you.”

  My daughter’s long fingernails were painted red. And breasts—she had breasts! “Eugène is in Rome,” I stuttered. “He’ll be—”

  “What took you so long? Where were you? Every day there have been notices in the journals that you’d arrived. Maman, what’s wrong? Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing,” I croaked, taking her in, this lovely young woman.

  Aunt Désirée arrived shortly after, barking instructions at two valets who carried the old Marquis into the house by the garden entrance. They deposited him in the down armchair, where he looked about with a dazed expression. I asked my manservant to put on a fire and Lisette to set out the gifts I had brought back from Italy with me.

  “Modern,” Aunt Désirée said, looking around the drawing room, appraising the changes.

  “Grecian is modern?” I stooped to kiss the old Marquis. His beard smelled of brilliantine.

  “Bonne à Pare Té!” he said with vigour.

  Hortense laughed. Aunt Désirée motioned to her to sit straight, keep her knees together, fold her hands in her lap, and not to laugh so loudly—all in one silent gesture known to all women and girls. Hortense made a prim face, but nevertheless did as instructed. Aunt Désirée gave me a triumphant look. “Hortense, that shawl looks lovely—did your mother bring it back from Italy for you? Where is our famous General, Rose? I bought a flower vase for three francs just because it had his image on it.”

  “Bonaparte is at the Luxembourg Palace right now, at a meeting with the Directors.” I motioned to Louis Bonaparte to join us. “But I’d like to introduce you to Louis, Bonaparte’s brother.” Hoping that the presence of at least one Bonaparte might appease.

  Aunt Désirée gave Louis what I knew to be the appraising look of a woman on the watch for a husband for her niece. “Charmed! How many brothers does General Bonaparte have? And sisters, of course.”

  “There are a great many of us, and soon to be more,” Louis said, tugging at a budding moustache. He glanced at Hortense, a flush colouring his cheeks. My daughter lowered her eyes. “My oldest brother Joseph is in Rome with my sister Caroline—”

  “And Eugène,” I interjected, arranging gifts on the table—a Roman vase, a glass bowl from Venice, a length of embroidered silk brocade from Genoa as well as a number of pretty trinkets.

  “My sister Pauline is in Milan,” Louis went on. “She’s married and in an interesting condition. And my other married sister who lives in Corsica is also in an interesting condition. And my brother Lucien is in the north, and his wife is in an interesting condition, as well. And then there is Jérôme, who is going to school here in Paris.”

  “Jérôme is only thirteen,” I said, chagrined by the parade of fertile Bonaparte women—of which, it was clear, I was not one.

  “How nice for Hortense and Eugène to have so many new brothers and sisters,” Aunt Désirée exclaimed with too much enthusiasm, perhaps in an effort to display her Christian acceptance of so many Corsican relatives. “I mean aunts and uncles. And so many cousins to come,” she added, acknowledging the fecundity of the Bonaparte clan.

  Louis backed toward the door. He had an English lesson to attend, he explained, and therefore had to take his leave.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you,” Hortense told him in careful English.

  “Thank you, miss. Goodbye,” Louis answered in kind, tipping his hat in the English manner.

  “What a charming boy,” Aunt Désirée said as soon as he was out the door, turning the Roman vase in her hands. I explained to her that it was not “modern” but actually quite ancient. And then we talked of this and of that—the extraordinary welcome Paris had given Bonaparte on his return, Hortense’s awards at school, how well Eugène was doing as an aide-de-camp—and then, of course, the gossip:

  “Of course, you’ve heard the news regarding General Hoche.” Aunt Désirée had the look of a cat depositing a dead mouse at the foot of its owner. “Regarding his murder.”

  I closed my fan. I opened my fan.

  Aunt Désirée leaned forward. “You know what I heard? That it was your friend Director Barras who did it.”

  “Aunt Désirée,” I interupted. I didn’t want Hortense to hear false rumours.

  “My theory,” Aunt Désirée went on, disregarding me, “is that Director Barras, who is known to be greedy, was after the million francs General Hoche embezzled.”

  “Aunt Désirée, I don’t think—”

  “It was eight hundred thousand.”

  I looked at the Marquis in astonishment. He had slumped down so far into his armchair that he was practically doubled over, a dreamy expression in his half-closed eyes. “Did the Marquis speak just now?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Aunt Désirée said. “It was well over one million.”

  They stayed for a light repast and then had to leave in order not to unduly tire the M
arquis. Hortense is staying with them in town because, as Aunt Désirée informed me, it would be improper for an unmarried young lady to stay in the same house as an unmarried young man, even if that young man is actually her uncle. Tearfully I bade them all adieu and ordered my horses harnessed: I was anxious to see my lawyer about the Bodin Company contract. And then, after that, Thérèse, and after that, Barras.

  “Thérèse is still in childbed,” Tallien (civil, but not sober) informed me. The baby had been born thirteen days earlier, on the solstice. “A girl,” he shrugged. “She died at birth.”

  “I’m so sorry, Lambert!” I put down the parcel of infant gowns I’d brought from Italy and embraced him. How many times in the past had I done so, thinking him young, thinking he was not so much vulnerable as impressionable, in need of guidance. But now he had the weary fragility of age. Something in him had broken, had not mended. “How is Thérèse taking it?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Thérèse was enthroned on the chaise longue in her bedroom. I leaned over to kiss her cheek.

  “Did Tallien tell you I’ve locked him out? Did he tell you why? Of course not. He refused to call a priest! My baby died unbaptized. And then, a few days after, he expects ‘service.’ I’ve had it with these men of the people.”

  Her hand was icy cold. I pressed it between mine to warm it. I felt utterly miserable. I loved her with all my heart, but I loved Tallien too. I’d known him as an idealistic youth.

  The maid appeared with a bottle of port, crystal stem glasses. Thérèse wiped her cheeks, embarrassed to be caught crying. “My midwife’s orders,” she said brightly, clinking the rim of my glass with her own. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you. We’re all still in shock over Lazare’s death. You should have seen his funeral. The streets were thronged—I’ve never seen anything like it. And now my midwife tells me his widow miscarried, the poor thing. She’s only nineteen. A bit touched, though, they say.” Thérèse downed her glass. “You’re going to Talleyrand’s ball tonight?”

  “I’m so sorry you won’t be there.”

  “I wasn’t invited. It appears that I’m no longer wanted at any gathering that includes virtuous women,” she said with obvious irony. “Did you hear what happened at the ball given by Pulchérie de Valence? As soon as I arrived, all the women left.”

  “I don’t understand!” During the Terror Thérèse had saved the lives of many of these so-called virtuous women, often at the risk of her own life.

  “I was apparently too public about threatening Tallien with a divorce. Women are supposed to suffer in silence, remember? And then I made the mistake of offering shelter to a young man who had rescued me from bandits one night. He was injured, but a woman of virtue would have sent him away regardless. And then there was a horrific scandal over a portrait of me that was hung in the annual Salon. The arbiters of good taste demanded that it be removed.”

  I smiled. “Were you clothed in this portrait?”

  “I’ve never looked more chaste! No, they didn’t approve that the painter portrayed me in my prison cell. Anything to do with the Terror is not to be mentioned in polite society, I gather. I’m not sure I care, frankly.”

  But she did. I could hear it in her voice.

  The door was pushed open by a child in ruffled muslin. “Maman?” It was baby Thermidor—walking, and talking!

  “Sweetie, do you remember Josephine, your godmother?”

  “Yes,” the two-year-old said doubtfully, her chubby fingers stuffed into her mouth.

  I held out my arms. Would she come to me? She ran across the room and onto my lap. I felt her tiny fingers pat my neck, tap, tap. I glanced at Thérèse. She’s so beautiful, I mouthed. But thinking, I confess, how the little girl’s future would be ruined if Thérèse and Tallien were to divorce.

  After my visit with Thérèse I instructed my coachman to take me to the Luxembourg Palace. The drive seemed to take forever, the streets were in such poor repair. And everywhere, signs of misery. Children in rags ran alongside my carriage, crying for alms. I threw them what coins I had. A boy in a moth-eaten English travelling cap, his ribs showing, beat the others away with a stick. I looked away, sickened, as I pulled through the palace gates and into the privileged realm.

  “Damn the Royalists,” Barras’s parrot squawked as I was shown into the salon. Barras was sitting in an armchair by a roaring fire, petting his miniature greyhound. “Don’t get up,” I told him, stooping to kiss him.

  “No, no, a gentleman must always rise for a lady,” he said, lowering Toto onto a tasselled cushion, patting the dog’s head apologetically and then pulling himself up out of the chair. “Grand Dieu, my friend, but you do look lovely,” he said, his Provençal accent laconic, caressing. “As always.”

  “Oh, I’ve made a mess of you,” I said, brushing powder from his velvet smoking jacket. He smelled pleasantly of cigars and spirit of ambergris.

  “Sit, sit,” he insisted.

  There was a web of worry lines around his eyes. He seemed to have aged in the year and a half since I’d seen him last—or was it simply that I’d not noticed before? “How are you?” I asked, accepting the chair he indicated. He seemed weary, I thought. World-weary. Battle-weary, more likely.

  “Oh…” He made a dismissive gesture, then let his hand drop. “The usual. I’m getting a new roof put on Grosbois, my modest country abode—now that’s a job.” He cleared his throat. “And now all this fuss over Talleyrand’s ball. Too Ancien Régime, according to my fellow Directors, who have only reluctantly consented to go, but in plain dress. We’re going to look as out of place as Quakers at a brawl.”

  The name Lazare Hoche hovered between us, impossible to ignore. “I noticed funeral wreaths at Saint-Roch,” I said finally. “My coachman told me there’d been a service just recently in honour of Lazare.”

  “The official service was three months ago, but people just won’t stop! Every time I turn around, I run into some damn procession carrying an effigy of him.” He looked away, struggling, I suspected, for control.

  I studied my hands, turning my betrothal ring round and round. “You know, ironically, the last time Bonaparte saw him, he predicted that Lazare would die at a young age in his bed. We were at Thérèse and Tallien’s that night, before we were married, and Bonaparte was reading everyone’s palm. I never told you this story?”

  Barras shook his head, his hand over his mouth.

  “It comforts me, I confess,” I said, my voice quavering dangerously, “to think that maybe it was meant to be.” If Death wants you, he will find you: every soldier’s creed.

  “Merde.” Barras buried his face in his hands.

  January 3.

  Oh, what a day, what a night. It began with my cook, who was frantic—Bonaparte would only eat hard-boiled eggs, he claimed. Callyot leaned toward me confidentially. “Because they cannot be tampered with, Madame.”

  Then the designer arrived; it was impossible to put him off. “I trust the work is pleasing?” Vautier said, handing me a scrap of paper on which the terrifying figure 130,000 francs had been written in a tiny script.

  Oh, extraordinarily pleasing. Brilliant. But perhaps somewhat more…costly than I had anticipated. (By tenfold!)

  “As you wrote, nothing but the best for the Liberator of Italy.” He bowed.

  I’d written him that? “I will have my banker contact you.” Thinking, how was I going to come up with the money?

  Lisette appeared at the door, one hand on the ivory knob. “The dressmaker, Madame.”

  I dispatched the designer with extravagant praise and equally extravagant promises. He politely gave way to my frenzied dressmaker. Every woman in Paris required a new gown for the ball, her staff of thirty-two seamstresses had been working day and night, she exclaimed, instructing her footman to display our creations. The gown for Hortense was exquisite, I thought, but the gown for me—a simple yellow tunic of a Grecian design—had an under-chemise made of muslin. “But English mu
slin is expressly forbidden,” I said, dismayed. It had even been printed on the invitations.

  Her eyes bulged; I feared she would be taken with apoplexy. “But Madame,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “Madame de Chevalley’s underskirts are of muslin, as well as those of Madame de la Pinel.”

  “Neither Madame Chevalley nor Madame de la Pinel is the wife of General Bonaparte,” I reminded her gently. As well—although I declined to tell her this—the design lacked elegance. (She’d ruffled the hem!) I repeated my request for simplicity.

  “Madame Bonaparte—if I may be so bold—are you sure you want such a plain tunic? I have three girls in my employ devoted entirely to the application of sequins.”

  No ornaments, I insisted. And no muslin petticoat.

  On account, Madame Bonaparte?

  Yes, of course—on account.

  And then the jeweller, who insisted on being shown in with his case of (I confess) irresistible wares. I selected a lovely strand of gold interlocking leaves. What else would look right with a Grecian tunic? “On account, Madame?”

  And so, on it went. Lisette has just arrived with a jug of warm mulled wine. The carriages have been called for nine, she informs me.

  “So early!”

  It is time for my bath…

  And perhaps just a bit of laudanum.

  Bonaparte sat on a stool beside my toilette table, watching as Lisette made up my hair. He was pleased, he said, with the simplicity of my gown. “We must appear to live within my means.”