The Princess of Nowhere

by Lorenzo Borghese

  She had hoped that it would end with the last race, although it was a faint hope and grew even fainter when she saw Pauline throw him a glove with a note inside. But nothing had happened that evening or the next night. And tonight had been the last night of Carnival. The night of the Borghese ball.

  Sophie had looked anxiously for a harlequin mask among the guests at the villa. Hours had passed, the clocks had struck midnight, and she had started to relax and enjoy herself. Tomorrow she would be little Sophie again; tonight strangers had brought her iced drinks and tiny bouquets of flowers and asked her to dance. One had even kissed her hand. She was pleasantly dizzy from champagne, which she thought much nicer than wine. How lovely it was to pretend to be a grown-up! Perhaps, she had thought, she would have one more candied fig before she went to find the servants who would take her and Donna Anna back to the palace. She had turned to look across the terrace to where the coaches were lined up behind the hedge.

  It had been purely by chance, then, that she had seen him. In another few minutes, she would have been gone. She would never have known. But now she did know. Sophie hugged her knees and stared out the window. The sun was rising; she could see reflections of pink in the low clouds. Soon the household would gather itself and go off to mass and come back with ashes on their foreheads.

  Pauline.

  Camillo.

  Ashes.

  He had been standing by a dragon-lantern, right where the steps of the terrace went down into the formal garden. The hedge behind him cast a shadow over his left side, so that he seemed to be cut in half vertically—a short, broad-shouldered figure, with the bright parti-colored silks over the upper portion of his face. Instinctively, Sophie had looked around for Camillo. He was in the next room, talking earnestly with an older man who was not wearing a mask.

  Where was Pauline? Sophie’s heart was pounding and she was sweating. She felt as though she were in a bad dream. The champagne bubbles in her stomach suddenly felt like globs of slime. She had stood watching, helpless, as Pauline walked up to the harlequin man. Pauline was laughing, of course. She had smiled and said something, and then tapped him once on the shoulder, lightly, like a child playing a game of cache-cache. And then she had run, laughing again, to the far end of the garden and disappeared into the darkness beyond the lanterns.

  The harlequin man had followed her.

  Sophie had not gone back to the palace with Donna Anna after all. There was some twisted devil of curiosity in her that wanted to see what would happen. Perhaps Pauline would return in a few minutes. Perhaps the prince would not realize that she was gone. Perhaps she had imagined the whole thing. She had stood in her corner as the party grew wilder and wilder around her, looking out at the terrace steps and waiting for something—she was not sure what.

  Several servants had already come up to her and asked if she had seen Pauline, by the time Camillo found her.

  “Sophie, do you know where Pauline is?” he had said. His face was pale and strained.

  This, she realized with dismay, was that nameless something she had been waiting for. It was horrible. It was terrifying, and painful, and unfair. Why had she ever wanted to join the world of adults? Her hands were shaking; she twisted them into her skirt and willed them to stop.

  She had tried to answer calmly. “I am sorry, Your Excellency,” she said. “I saw her earlier when you were both receiving guests, but now it is so crowded.” What could she say? She was no longer sure whom she was protecting, Pauline or Camillo. She only knew that it was essential to prevent Camillo from finding the harlequin man. “She—she was complaining that her mask was uncomfortable, so that she might have changed it for another, and perhaps if she went outside, she took a domino as well.”

  “Is she on the terrace?”

  Sophie darted a quick, guilty glance toward the fateful lantern at the foot of the stairs. “Yes, I think so. Yes, I saw her there a few moments ago.”

  The prince looked over toward the terrace. Sophie cursed herself. What if he went out there? What if he asked someone about Pauline, someone who had seen her run by, laughing, half an hour earlier, pursued by a young man in a harlequin mask? She corrected herself hastily: “Or perhaps—perhaps she has gone back to the supper room.”

  Camillo seemed to will himself back from someplace very far away. He gave Sophie an attempt at a smile. “I will look for her there, then.”

  She had watched him walk away to rejoin his guests, his shoulders straight, nodding to this person and that, giving directions to the servants.

  She hadn’t fooled him. No, she hadn’t fooled him at all.

  And now she was sitting by her window, in her own personal Lent, remembering his face. That small, not-quite-successful smile. She was thinking about Camillo, and she was trying to hate him, and she knew he did not deserve it. The person who deserved her hatred was Pauline.

  So why did she love Pauline? Why did Camillo love Pauline?

  It was a mystery.

  SEVEN

  Bagni di Lucca, August 1804

  Pauline was sick.

  Again.

  And they had quarreled.

  Again.

  Camillo paced back and forth on the balcony adjoining the dining room of their villa. There was a spectacular view: rocky cliffs and crisp green treetops falling away to the river far below, with its ancient stone bridge. Pauline had exclaimed in delight a month ago, when they had first arrived in Bagni di Lucca. It was so lovely! The air was so clear! It was so cool here, so fresh! Thank heavens they were not in Rome, now that it was high summer. She knew she would feel better very soon.

  She did feel better—for a day, or a few days, or a week. And then she would feel worse again.

  He had convinced himself that this time she really was improving. Just two days ago, she had been dancing at a public assembly with the dazzled mayor of the little spa town, shrieking with laughter as the music got faster and faster, ignoring the raised eyebrows of the more aristocratic guests. This morning she had been doubled over in pain, white and sweating. A servant had carried her to her bath; she could not walk. She had eaten nothing since breakfast the day before.

  A polite cough behind him. “Your Excellency?”

  It was Pauline’s doctor. Camillo turned and waved the older man to a seat.

  Peyre sank down onto one of the marble benches with a grunt.

  “How is she?”

  “I gave her some laudanum. The attack will pass. She should feel more herself in a few days.”

  But, thought Camillo, watching the doctor’s face.

  “But she must rest.” The doctor slapped the polished surface of the bench. “Your Excellency, she must rest! After the last episode, I advised her to remain in bed for a week, as you know.”

  Instead, she had gotten up thirty-six hours later and danced all night with the mayor, and the Russian count, and the Florentine minister of the exchequer, and everyone and anyone else except Camillo, who stood by the punch bowl, pretending not to watch her.

  “Don’t look at me,” said Camillo with a grimace. “She never listens to me.”

  “Well, she certainly doesn’t listen to me.” Peyre sighed. “Now, while she is in pain and weak, she will do anything I recommend. And cry, and promise to be good, and have her attendant write down lists of things she must not eat. But the moment she feels better again—” He gestured with his hand as if he were throwing something over the balcony railing.

  “She doesn’t listen to her mother, either, if that is any consolation.”

  Peyre nodded gloomily.

  “How is the signora? You saw her this morning, didn’t you?”

  Letizia Bonaparte had arrived in Italy with Pauline’s brother Lucien in late spring and had joined Camillo and Peyre in persuading Pauline to leave Rome once the summer weather arrived. She had accompanied Pauline and Camillo to Pisa, then to Florence, and now here to Lucca, where she was taking the waters along with her daughter. Her lodgings were down in the valley, much c
loser to the baths, and in spite of Pauline’s attempts to coax her from her rooms, she was refusing almost all invitations; the heat in Florence had brought on an attack of quartan fever and she was observing a strict regimen of diet and rest.

  Peyre gave a dry smile. “Madame Letizia is following my orders and is much improved. Unlike your wife.”

  Camillo sank down onto the bench and asked for the hundredth time, “What is wrong with her this time? Do you know?”

  Peyre shrugged.

  “The usual?”

  “I believe so.”

  Pauline had been ill, off and on, ever since her return from the West Indies eighteen months earlier. She had seen doctors in Paris and doctors in Rome, but none of them could do better than the humble and loyal Peyre, who had accompanied her back from the Caribbean. His theory was that Pauline had contracted a tropical disease in Saint-Domingue, which had settled in her intestines. Or perhaps it went back even further, to an attack of fever that had followed the birth of Dermide. Whatever it was, it seemed to come and go as capriciously as Pauline’s own whims. When it came, she was miserable. When it went, she forgot at once how ill she had been and sprang out of bed, convinced that this time she was truly healthy again.

  Until the journey to Rome, Camillo had been blissfully ignorant of his bride’s various ailments. While they were courting, they only saw each other once or twice a week, usually at the sort of brilliant occasions for social display that acted like a tonic on Pauline. Then, after the first wedding ceremony, their clandestine “honeymoon” under Napoleon’s own nose in Paris had provided an even better tonic: sex, and plenty of it. Until suddenly, once the marriage became public, Pauline had fallen ill again, just in time for the monthlong trek to Italy.

  Camillo was no doctor, but over the course of the last seven months he had noticed a pattern to Pauline’s illnesses. When she was bored, she was ill. When she was amused or intrigued, she was well.

  That, in fact, was the theme of their most recent quarrel.

  It had started yesterday, when Pauline did not appear for dinner. A picnic originally planned for the evening had been canceled at the last moment, and Camillo and Pauline were to dine alone for the first time in weeks.

  Camillo had spent half an hour with his valet, dressing as formally as if the Queen of Etruria were coming to dine with them. He arrived in the anteroom adjoining the smaller of the two dining rooms and waited.

  And waited.

  Finally he rang for a servant.

  “Please see when Donna Paolina will be ready to dine,” he ordered.

  The footman returned a few minutes later. “Her Excellency sends her regrets; she is not well. If you will wait one moment, signor, the table is being reset.”

  So, she was not well? All afternoon she had been feverishly planning her outfit for the picnic, sending the maids running to the kitchen and the garden and the stables to look for charming little items for the rustic “basket” that Pauline planned to carry on her arm.

  A moment earlier, he had been starving. Now, he suddenly had no interest in food whatsoever. He brushed past the startled servant, stamped up the stairs to Pauline’s room, and burst in without knocking.

  She was lying in bed, wearing a nightgown and an old shawl, with no makeup on. There were dark circles under her eyes. She was sipping something that smelled dreadful and clearly tasted worse, since she was making faces with every mouthful. A maid was wringing out a cloth in a basin and looked up, startled, as Camillo banged the door open.

  He didn’t know what he had expected—to find her in bed with a lover, perhaps?

  “I am sorry you are not well,” he said stiffly.

  She glared at him over the rim of the cup. “I would like to be left alone.” She took in his careful toilette. “Oh, I see you are going out. That is just as well. I shall be asleep when you return; please do not disturb me.”

  “I am not going out.” He raised his eyebrows at the hovering maidservant, who took the hint and scurried out.

  “How dare you send my servant away?” She sat up in bed, her cheeks flushed.

  He pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down. “Doesn’t it seem odd to you,” he said, ignoring her question, “that yesterday you had no difficulty dancing hour after hour with half the male population of Bagni di Lucca? That a few hours ago you were hopping on one foot with impatience while trying on dresses? And yet suddenly, when you are merely requested to come down for dinner with your husband, you are too weak and ill? You cannot stir yourself to walk down one flight of stairs?”

  Her eyes flashed. “Not when I am dining with a prig and a fool.”

  “Then you admit that you are not really ill?”

  “I admit nothing of the sort!”

  He changed tacks. “Why did you insist on going to the ball, when Monsieur Peyre had expressly forbidden it after your last attack? When both your mother and I asked you to rest for at least another day?”

  Her mouth formed the most perfect, delectable pout. “I felt fine yesterday.”

  “Yes, because there was a ball. Because you could get dressed and put on jewels and have men admire you.”

  She raised her eyebrows, every inch the princess. “And what is wrong with that?”

  “What is wrong with getting dressed and putting on jewels and being admired by your husband?”

  “Oh, please.” She set down the cup.

  “Don’t you think I notice these things? That if you are posing for Canova, for that damned statue, you are happy to take all your clothes off in the middle of March and lie there with nothing on but a scrap of drapery? But when I ask you to come to mass in our family chapel, it is too cold, in a fur coat, and gloves, with a hand-warmer and a rug in the carriage? That if some adventurer dares you to drive his cockleshell of a chariot around the seven hills of Rome, you spring up there like a monkey, but when my mother asks you to host a reception in our own palace, your legs are too weak to stand for half an hour or so to greet our guests? That in Pisa—Pisa, where you proposed to rest and recover your health—you complain of every ailment known to mankind and worry that even in the hills it is too warm, but you leave at once when the queen invites you to Florence—Florence, which is baking in the midsummer sun—and promises parties and banquets and legions of admiring courtiers?”

  “You are simply jealous,” she snapped.

  “I would have no cause for jealousy,” he said coldly, “if all they did was look.”

  “Out!” She erupted from under the covers, waving her arms. “Out! Out!” She was trembling with anger. “You want me to behave like a good Roman matron? Like your mother? I might as well lock myself in a convent! Christ’s blood, I would be better off in the convent! I wouldn’t have you or your mother or my mother or my uncle or my brother to plague me!” And she burst into tears.

  The fights were always the same, and they always ended the same way. Pauline would begin to cry, and Camillo would melt, and apologize, and beg her to stop, and they would end up in bed.

  Not this time, he vowed.

  He was halfway to the door when he heard her start to cough. And then the coughing turned to hacking, and he was rushing back toward the bed.

  “Go away,” she tried to say, waving him off.

  “You really are ill,” he stammered. She was. She was always really ill, and he always thought, until the last minute, that she was shamming. It was as though she could will herself to be sick when she wanted to avoid him or avoid something else unpleasant. He had said as much once to Peyre, and Peyre had replied somberly: “No, it is the other way around. She is ill, but she can will herself to be healthy. For a time.”

  He didn’t believe that. He wouldn’t believe that.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, he held her shoulders until the coughing subsided. “Here.” He handed her the cup of whatever tonic she had decided would cure her this time.

  One sip. A sour grimace. Another sip.

  If he let his hand slip down, he could reach he
r breast. He could see it through the sheer lawn of her nightgown. She would stop coughing as he stroked her, or her stomach would stop hurting, or her headache would go away. That was how it always ended. Sex as peacemaker. Sex as medicine.

  What had happened to sex as joy?

  “I’ll send your maid back in.” His tone was distant, formal. He stood up and straightened his neckcloth. He would go eat his cold food, in his cold dining room, alone.

  “Thank you.” Her tone matched his.

  He had rung for the maid and left without looking back.

  So here he was, with Peyre, trying once again to solve the insoluble problem: What was wrong with Pauline?

  “I asked her last night why she had gone to the ball when you had advised against it,” he confessed.

  Peyre whistled. “That was brave, but probably unwise.”

  “She was furious.” But Peyre already knew that. The whole household probably knew it; her shouting must have penetrated every corner of the villa.

  The doctor rose. “I should look in on her again, I think.”

  “Yes, thank you, Monsieur Peyre.” He hesitated.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “No, no.” Camillo shook his head.

  This, too, was a regular feature of their encounters. They had discussed Pauline’s diet, her lungs, her circulation, her nerves, her complexion, even her urine. The one question Camillo never asked, and the one question Peyre never answered, was this:

  Could Pauline still have children?

  Camillo was fairly sure he knew the answer; he simply didn’t want to hear it.

  He was fairly sure Pauline knew the answer, too. And that she didn’t like it any more than he did.