The Josephine B. Trilogy

by Sandra Gulland

  Evening.

  A wind has risen, but not in the right direction. Bonaparte watches the sky. Hourly, from the widow’s walk, he scans the horizon with a spyglass, searching for signs of the enemy.

  May 14.

  This morning, bringing my cup of hot chocolate himself, Bonaparte informed me I would not be going.

  A breeze billowed the curtains, filling the room with the rancid smell of the harbour. “Going where?” I asked, confused, pulling the covering sheet over me. I was naked, my sleeping gown tangled somewhere in the sheets. Since reaching Toulon Bonaparte had become even more ardent than usual. Being back in active command had brought out a vigorous energy in him.

  He sat down on the bed. I moved over to make room for him. He put his hand on my shoulder, as if to console me, and it was then that I knew what he was going to say. “Bonaparte, no. Please don’t leave me behind.” I felt tears pressing. Stupid tears.

  “It’s too dangerous—the English are out there. They’ll likely attack.”

  It was silent in the room but for the ticking of a clock. “You never told me that.”

  He took my hand, kissed it. “When we get to Egypt, I’ll send a ship back for you. La Pomone, if you like.”

  I pressed my head against his shoulder. “It frightens me to be separated from you, Bonaparte.”

  “What is there to be afraid of?”

  His family, I thought.

  May 15.

  I sit idle as everyone scurries about, preparing for the “crusade.” They are filled with excitement, and I, with a feeling of sadness…and dread.

  May 18.

  The flags are blowing to the east. Eugène came running up the stairs to my suite. “We’re leaving at dawn,” he cried out breathlessly, his cheeks rosy.

  May 19.

  All night I could not sleep. At the first hint of light, the first crow of a cock, I slipped out of bed, went to the window. The masts in the harbour were bobbing in the breeze. The weather vane pointed east.

  “Where’s Fauvelet?” Bonaparte jumped out of bed, fully alert. I helped him into his uniform. He had been shaved the night before, in anticipation of the morning. A knock, three knocks. “There he is.”

  “General, they’re—”

  Bonaparte bolted out the door, buttoning his long linen trousers.

  I sat down at my toilette table and regarded myself in the glass. The morning light was cruel, the worry lines clear.

  Another knock. Fauvelet again, apologetic. “Twenty minutes, Madame.”

  Twenty! Mimi performed a small miracle, transforming me from an anxious woman who had had no sleep into the elegant wife of General Bonaparte.

  Eugène burst in and struck a heroic pose. “Ready?”

  There was a call from the first floor. “Coming!” He leapt down the stairs, his hat flying off behind him.

  As we came out into the morning sun, a great cry went up. People were waving flags, dressed in a colourful assortment of feast-day clothes. A cluster of people surrounded a man with a board hanging from his shoulders that proclaimed, “Final bets here.” The locations were listed along with the odds. I dared not look for fear my expression might give the true destination away. Portugal, I kept telling myself. They are sailing to Portugal. The crowd cheered, began singing “Chant du départ.”

  The moment I’d been dreading came. I took Eugène’s hands, examined his face, his soft eyes, the freckles across his nose, thinking: I will always remember him thus, if…

  “How does one tell a soldier to be careful?” I asked, choking up.

  “Maman.” Squirming, uncomfortable in front of Louis and all his shipmates.

  I kissed him quickly, before he could escape. “I’ll be joining you.” Soon.

  Bonaparte met me on the railing. I held my handkerchief to my nose. Everyone was watching us, I knew.

  “Stay in Toulon until it’s clear that we have made it,” he said.

  “There’s a chance you might turn back?”

  He stroked a lock of hair out of my eyes. “If we’re forced to.”

  By the English. “Oh, Bonaparte, I hate this.” I pressed my cheek against the rough wool of his jacket—that same frayed jacket he’d worn in Italy.

  “If you need anything, ask Joseph,” he said, his voice thick. “I’ve told him to give you forty thousand a year.”

  “But I will be joining you in a few months.” Why this talk of a year?

  “You’ll go to Plombières for the treatment?”

  I nodded. The treatment for infertile women.

  “When it’s safe, I’ll send La Pomone for you.” He kissed me lightly on the cheek. “And then we’ll get on with our project.”

  “General Bonaparte?”

  “One moment, Fauvelet.” A gust of wind blew hair in my eyes. I held onto my hat. Bonaparte put his hand on my shoulder. “If I should—”

  “No, Bonaparte!” The angels watched over him; I had to believe that.

  He stopped, his eyes glistening. I pressed my face into his neck. Please: “Take care.”

  I was escorted to a balcony of the Marine Intendancy building, where a number of women were sitting, officers’ wives. They shifted so that I might have the best chair. The paymaster came out, carrying a tray of spyglasses. “Oh,” we all exclaimed in unison. And then laughed.

  I took a spyglass, searched the decks of L’Orient. “I see your husband,” I told Madame Marmont, a young bride of only sixteen. But no Eugène, no Bonaparte. “By the helm.” I showed her how to adjust the glass, so that the focus might be clear.

  She put her glass down, blinded by tears. “It’s hopeless.”

  Gunshot! The crowd on the shore began singing La Marseillaise, and we all began to sing along. I pressed my glass to my eyes. Finally I spotted Bonaparte in a cluster of men at the helm. I recognized him by his hat. My heart surged with pride to see him. I searched the faces for Louis and Eugène.

  “I put my money on Sicily,” one of the women said.

  “I’m sure it’s Africa,” Madame Marmont said. “Else why would they take so much water?”

  “Even I don’t know,” I lied.

  As the ships weighed anchor, the cannons in the fort were fired and a military band on the shore broke into a brassy hymn. The warships and the fort exchanged salutes. The smell of gunpowder filled the air.

  “They’re raising the sails!” The wind pulled L’Orient forward. A cheer went up on the shore.

  “Oh,” I cried out. For the huge ship had listed sharply.

  “Something’s wrong.” Madame Marmont jumped to her feet.

  “It’s dragging bottom!”

  “It will right itself,” I assured them—Madame Bonaparte assured them. But inwardly I was trembling.

  “It’s righting now.”

  Yes. The huge ship bobbed on the water like a toy. The crowd cheered. Wind filled its gigantic sails, pulled it forward. A lone trumpeter blasted out a note. I waved my soggy handkerchief, but I could no longer see through my tears.

  IV

  Lobbyist

  “…women are politics.”

  —Talleyrand

  In which I very nearly die

  June 14, 1798—Plombières-les-Bains.

  A harrowing voyage, but I’m here at last in the charming mountain spa of Plombières-les-Bains—slate grey houses crammed into a narrow valley as if they had tumbled into a crevice and were too weary to rise. A beautiful setting, cliffs rising to the sky, thick forests all around, the air bracing and clean. But such a small village! (I walked its length in seventeen minutes.) And so much more isolated than I’d expected.

  June 15.

  I met this morning with Dr. Martinet, the water doctor. He is a short man with a trim build and a businesslike air. He wore thick spectacles and a white canvas coat. His hair, which is thinning, was unpowdered, braided at the back into one very long tail, looped and caught up with a white cord. All along one wall of his study were framed testimonials.

  “Letters from
happy patients,” he said with a sweep of his hand. He had moist lips (as if he had been licking them), and moist eyes too, I noticed, as one might expect in a water doctor. “I like to begin by pointing out that our program enjoys a high rate of success.” He closed his eyes when he talked. “It is important that the patient begin with this knowledge, for faith—or rather the obedience that faith makes possible—is essential to its successful completion.” He opened his eyes.

  I sat forward on my chair. The possibility that there might in fact be a cure encouraged me. I had come with prayers in my heart, but little hope, I confess. “I intend to be a model patient, Dr. Martinet.”

  He leaned back in his cracked leather chair, his hands gripping a board onto which papers had been clipped. “The program is not for those lacking in courage. It requires some degree of both physical and mental strength to successfully complete. But”—he held up an index finger—“nature rewards those who endure. Now, Madame Bonaparte, if you will begin by telling me your history.” He peered at me over his spectacles. His eyebrows are thick, bushy (in contrast to his thinning hair), giving him a somewhat diabolical look.

  This is what I told him:

  I first conceived at the age of sixteen, after only a few months of marriage, but miscarried. My son, Eugène, was then conceived and brought to term. Less than two years later I conceived a daughter. It was a difficult pregnancy and she was born several weeks early.

  “But otherwise normal?”

  “I had difficulty producing milk.” I cleared my throat. “And then—” Did he need to know that Alexandre and I had separated? “Years later my husband died…and two years after his death I married General Bonaparte. That was just over two years ago.”

  “And you have conceived by this union, but miscarried?”

  “My doctor thought it might have been a mole.”

  “Interesting! And then did the flux resume?”

  “For a time it was sporadic.”

  “And the last one was…?”

  I wasn’t sure exactly. I’d been in Milan. “Over a year ago.” Although possibly a year and a half.

  “Did you take anything to re-establish the flow?”

  I pushed forward the list of herbals (linden blossom, wormwood, coltsfoot) that a doctor in Milan had prescribed, the tea of aloe, gentian root and jalappa. “I also consulted a midwife, who gave me uterus powder.” I declined to tell him about the Gypsy I’d gone to in Italy—the one with a well-picked savin bush in her vegetable garden—and the rue tea Mimi had persuaded me to try.*

  “But no results?”

  “The powder made me ill.”

  “And your relationship with the General is…?” He licked his upper lip.

  I nodded, flushed.

  Dr. Martinet tapped his pencil on the desk. “Madame Bonaparte, during the Terror you were held, were you not?”

  Imprisoned, he meant. “Yes, I was in the Carmes for four months.”

  The doctor leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “I must tell you, I have had a significant number of patients who were likewise ‘held’ during the Terror—women who likewise seem to be suffering from an inexplicable infertility.”

  I felt a tightening in my chest. “It’s true that the flux became unpredictable during that time.”

  “The effect of shock on the female constitution is proven to be disruptive. If nourishment is lacking, the air oppressive, exercise restricted—any one of these factors is known to affect a woman’s capacity to be that which Nature intended her to be, a mother.”

  “Are you saying that the cessation of my periodic sickness may have been caused by my being in prison?”

  “I am suggesting that it may be a very strong possibility. According to my observations, a number of women who have been detained in this way have suffered a cessation of the flow and have plunged, regardless of age, into a condition curiously resembling that of a woman long past the age of reproduction. They have difficulty sleeping, experience an overwhelming anxiety, melancholia—insanity in some cases. And, needless to say, all of them are barren.”

  “Dr. Martinet, do you mean menopause?”

  From a book Dr. Martinet loaned me:

  First, one grows stout at the back of the neck, where two prominences form at the lowest cervical vertebrae.

  The breasts become flat and hard, less spongy.

  The legs and arms dry up, resembling those of a man.

  The abdomen enlarges to the extent that the woman may appear to be pregnant.

  A beard often manifests itself.

  I am at the desk in my sparely furnished room overlooking the main street of Plombières. It is warm. I’ve opened the double doors wide onto the balcony. I can hear the sounds of horses, carriages, people talking, walking. Somewhere, someone is playing a violin beautifully.

  I am shaken, I confess, by my conversation with Dr. Martinet. It had never occurred to me that I might be past the age of fertility. I think of old women, stooped and withered, whiskered and dour, and despair overwhelms me.

  June 16.

  This afternoon I experienced the showers—“the torture chamber” the women here call it. Now I know why.

  In an outer chamber I was asked by an attendant to remove my clothes—all of them. In this state of Eve I went into a small steam-filled room occupied by another woman standing in front of a drawn curtain of white canvas.

  I was alarmed to hear a man say, “Madame Bonaparte.” The voice was coming from behind the curtain. “This is Dr. Martinet speaking. Do not be alarmed; your privacy will be respected. Are you ready?”

  The steam was already so thick I felt I might suffocate for want of air. The attendant, a thin woman with a massive nose, was fiddling with a hose and a series of valves. In front of her was a pit, into which she aimed a powerful flow of steaming water. “Get on the mark,” she said, holding the pulsating hose to one side. I stood on a faded green circle in the middle of the pit. “Turn around.”

  “My assistant will aim the flow of the water on the base of the neck.” Dr. Martinet’s voice seemed ghostly, detached. “She will proceed slowly down the spine. The sensation may be uncomfortable, but be assured that in spite of the stinging sensation, you are not, in fact, being burned. Support bars are provided in case you require support.”

  I clasped hold of the bars.

  “The nape of the neck is the centre of your being, the centre of vitality. The nurse will begin the descent.”

  The stream of boiling water began to burn its way slowly down my spine. Uncomfortable! I would kill him, I vowed, but not quickly. Quickly would be too kind.

  At the end of this torture I was so weak that the attendant had to help me into the accompanying room, where I was laid out on a bed and left to sweat in great quantities. A cure, I am told. If I survive.

  2 Prairial, Luxembourg Palace

  My friend,

  Paris is seething yet again. Last year we were attacked from the right; this year it’s from the left. As feared, the elections resulted in a number of radical Revolutionaries taking seats in the legislature, all of them united in one cause: to bring down the Directors. The committee we set up to review the election results disqualified one in four. You can imagine the reaction.

  Tallien, unfortunately, was one of those disqualified, and there is nothing I can do to reverse the decision. Thérèse has appealed to me to get him a position with Bonaparte in Egypt. Frankly, I think she just wants him out of the country.

  Père Barras

  June 4, Paris

  Honoured sister,

  As manager of the Bonaparte Family Trust,* I have been instructed by my younger brother to provide you with three thousand francs on the first of each month. I have forwarded a bank note to Citoyen Emmery, your banker. I advise you to manage it responsibly.

  In answer to your query, the cost of a cure at Plombières is not the responsibility of the Bonaparte Family Trust. A wife’s lack of fecundity is a problem to be borne by the wife. The estate of
the husband’s family should not be encumbered.

  Familial regards, Joseph Bonaparte

  Rue de Thrévenot, Paris

  Dear Rose,

  Émilie is now married; I dissolved in tears. You were missed—our little party seemed sadly lacking without you. The bride looked lovely in the dress you had made for her, although mute, which I attributed to a virginal apprehension. But later, on discovering the bride and Hortense in the powder room in tears, I learned that there is more to the story. The bride had apparently confessed to your daughter that she loved another.

  I lectured the girls on duty, and spilled milk, and how fate had intended Émilie to marry Lieutenant Lavalette since that is how it turned out—then I left to look after my guests. Eventually the girls appeared, Émilie red-faced and mournful. The groom—a dear man, if a bit of a simpleton—was fortunately oblivious to his young wife’s sorrow.

  I warned you about allowing the girls to read romantic novels. Now you see the result.

  Remember your prayers, Your godmother, Aunt Désirée

  Note—I read in the Publiciste that the fleet is headed for Spain. And I thought they were going to Africa! I’m relieved, I confess. At least in Spain Eugène can go to church.

  And another—Madame Campan asked me to remind you about Hortense’s and Émilie’s tuition.*

  Chère Maman,

  I have a terrible confession to make. Émilie is unhappy and it is all my fault. It began in the early spring. Louis Bonaparte had taken to visiting our school, and I told Émilie it was because he fancied her. But the truth, the terrible truth, was that I feared he fancied me and I didn’t want anyone to guess! And so then she fell in love with him! And because of that, poor Louis had to go on the crusade and poor Émilie is miserably married. Oh, my dear Maman, I want to die for shame.