No one stepped forward. No one said anything. What was there to say?
“Lucien!” Pauline had spotted her brother. She ran to him and seized his shoulders, shaking him. “Where is he? Where is Dermide?”
He couldn’t speak. Tears were running down his face. Everyone except Pauline was crying, in fact, even Don Francesco.
Her face was so pale; her eyes were so dark. Sophie thought she looked like a ghost. Lucien put his arms around her, but he left a little space, as though she were not really there. As though she had died and not Dermide.
“I am so sorry,” he whispered.
“I want to see him. Please, Lucien, I must see him. I must say good-bye.” She was begging, her voice cracked and broken. When he did not answer, she broke free and turned to the others, staring hollow-eyed at each one in turn, seeing in their faces the news she had already received from the courier: she would not be able to see the body. It had been wound and sealed in the coffin almost at once. In this heat, with the fever still spreading, even Pauline’s frantic messages could not prevail.
“We put your hair in the coffin, Paolina,” Lucien said, his voice hoarse. “That, at least, we could do.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I sent you my hair. I did do that.”
The courier had ridden all night and all day. There had been a letter wrapped around the locks of hair, but the writing was so jagged and smeared that no one could read it.
Lucien stepped over to her and put his arm gingerly around her shoulder. “We put it all in.”
“There was a lot of it this time.” With a savage little smile, she pulled off her bonnet and tossed it onto the paving stones.
Lucien stepped back; Madame Ducluzel gasped. Sophie, horrified, put her hand over her mouth to cover her own instinctive cry.
Pauline had hacked her hair off nearly to her scalp. Little dark tufts were sticking out at odd angles. Her hair was shorter than a boy’s, shorter than a priest’s. Without her bonnet, she looked even more pale and drawn.
“She did the same thing when her husband died,” Carlotta whispered to Sophie, her eyes huge. “Only this time it is even worse. She looks like a patient from an insane asylum!”
It was a mistake to speak. Pauline whirled at the sound and pointed at Carlotta. “You! Were you with him? When it happened?”
The nursemaid stood paralyzed with fear.
“What about you? Was it you who watched him die?” Pauline turned to Madame Ducluzel. “I trusted you! I trusted all of you!” she screamed suddenly.
“Le bon Dieu—” the housekeeper started to say, her voice shaking.
“God has nothing to do with this,” said Pauline fiercely. “God would not take my little boy away and not even let me see his body! God is not that cruel!” But you are, said her burning eyes and set face. “Who was it? Who was at his side, in my place?”
“There is no one to blame,” Lucien said, his tone suddenly stern. “We all took turns nursing him. He had the best of care. Don Francesco”—he gestured toward Camillo’s younger brother—“brought two doctors from Rome. Many others fell ill with the same fever—nearly a dozen of us. I was in bed for four days. Alexandrine is still sick; so are Lotte and Drina.”
“They’re not dead,” said Pauline bitterly. “Only my son is dead.”
Don’t ask again, prayed Sophie. Don’t ask who was with him when he died. And, like an answer to her petition, she heard the sound of horses’ hooves on gravel. Another, much larger coach emerged from the end of a long avenue of live oaks and drew up alongside Pauline’s.
Whoever was in this coach was not eager to get out. The shades remained down over the windows; the doors remained closed. There was no movement, none of the normal gentle rocking that indicated passengers getting ready to alight. When the footman jumped down and unfolded the steps, everyone waited in fascinated silence to see what would happen when he pulled open the door.
Nothing. No one appeared.
It was so bright in the sun in the middle of the open stone space that it was impossible to see inside the carriage. Was there anyone there?
The footman stepped up to the black hole, reached out a hand, and assisted an elderly woman down the steps. Pauline’s mother. Sophie relaxed. She had been unconsciously holding herself taut, ready for something terrible.
Madame Mère hobbled stiffly over to her son and embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks and the mouth. “A sad business,” she said, looking around at all the spectators to the family drama. “Although I must say that I raised eight of my thirteen, mostly on my own, as a widow of modest means, and lost none once they had passed the age of two. But here is Pauline, who cannot manage to rear her six-year-old even with the help of a tutor, a governess, a nursemaid, and dozens of other servants. Joseph and Lucien have each already lost one out of their three and have only one son out of six babies. Napoleon has no children at all; Elisa’s son died at five months, and Louis’s son—if it is his son—is even more sickly than Dermide. Hortense is increasing again, so I suppose we will see if one of my children besides Caroline can manage to produce a healthy boy.”
She looked at Pauline and pointed back to the larger carriage. “There is your husband. Do your duty and behave as a proper wife, and perhaps God will grant you another son.”
Camillo was just emerging from the interior of the coach, unfolding his tall form somewhat awkwardly in the narrow opening.
Sophie tensed again.
But Pauline said nothing as Camillo came forward. She looked tired now and wilted, as though some force that had been sustaining her had suddenly disappeared. Moving even more slowly than her mother, she took Lucien’s arm and walked with tiny, shuffling steps toward the house where her son had died.
Pauline sent for Sophie that evening.
She was in the chapel, one of the few rooms in the great stone house that Sophie had never entered. She had expected it to be grim and dark, but even at night, lit only by lamps and candles, it was charming and ornate. The ceiling curved up overhead in elaborate white-and-gold panels, each framing a picture of what Sophie supposed must be saints or angels. Most of the images vanished upward into darkness, but a trick of reflection lit the central boss of the vault, decorated with the figure of a dove surrounded by golden rays. Sophie stared up at the dove until a touch on her arm reminded her why she was there. It was Camillo, and he put a finger to his lips and led her forward to a small niche off on one side, where Pauline was kneeling in front of a bank of guttering candles.
“Here is Sophie,” he said gently.
Pauline crossed herself and rose. She looked at Sophie, and Sophie’s heart sank. Pauline had discovered who had been with Dermide on that last, horrible night. Who had watched him die.
“Not here,” said Camillo. He led them back into the main wing, up a flight of stairs, into a small sitting room. Pauline lowered herself into an armchair. She did not invite Sophie to sit, although Sophie’s knees were trembling so hard that she thought she might fall over.
“You were with my son.”
Pauline looked sad now, not fierce and terrible as she had out in the sun in the courtyard. But Sophie was still afraid.
“Yes,” she said, so softly that even she could barely hear it.
“You will tell me about it.”
Carlotta had dragged Sophie into a deserted anteroom earlier, after the scene in the courtyard. “Don’t tell her,” she warned. “She’ll ask, but don’t tell her.” Five minutes later, it was Madame Ducluzel, with the same warning. Then Lucien Bonaparte. Then the page, Paolo. So she had had plenty of time to think about it. To think about what she would say.
It all went out of her head at the sound of Pauline’s low, commanding voice.
“What—what do you want to know?”
“How did he get sick?”
Sophie looked at Camillo. Tell her, his nod said. “Everyone was sick,” she said, twisting her hands in her skirt. “I think Lotte had it first, and she wasn’t very ill, but
then she never got better, either. And then some of the servants, and then Monsieur Lucien …” She faltered.
“And Dermide?”
“He didn’t seem ill at first, but then later we realized he must have been sick already that morning. He was impatient with everything and didn’t want to eat. That evening he had the flux, and so then we knew and put him to bed. But he still wasn’t very bad. It looked like what had happened to Lotte—he was in bed for two days, but he was bored and restless and kept asking to get up. Only he still had a bit of fever.” There was a huge lump in her throat; she could barely speak. “The doctors said he was doing well but that he shouldn’t get out of bed. And he was asking for you.”
“He was?” Pauline brightened.
Camillo was looking daggers at Sophie, but she continued.
“Yes, starting the first morning he got sick. He wanted you to come back. He wrote to tell you so. I helped him.”
Tears were pooling in Pauline’s eyes; she brushed them away impatiently. “Go on.”
“Well, that was the first day. Before we knew he was sick. But then after that, when he asked for you, Carlotta would come get me, and I would help him write another letter.”
“Do you have them?” Pauline said eagerly. “Do you have the letters?”
Sophie nodded. “The first one was sent. But the rest are in my copybook. He was going to make fair copies when he was allowed out of bed.”
“So, that last night, you were helping him write a letter.”
“Well, we started the letter. But then he got bored and wanted to play a game. So I went to get some cards. Carlotta stayed with him,” she added hastily. “And then I came back, and we were going to play, and I touched his hand, and he was so hot! Much hotter than the first two days.” Her knees were shaking again.
“Where was my brother? Where was Madame Ducluzel? Where was the tutor?”
“They were all sick.” Sophie closed her eyes. Everyone had been sick, except Sophie and Carlotta and some of the other servants—strangers, people Dermide barely knew. “We sent for the doctor again. He was very puzzled. He thought the fever would go back down, that it was just the time of day. That Dermide would be better in the morning.”
“And then what happened?”
Sophie took a deep breath. “He was angry that we had called the doctor; he wanted to play cards. So I took out the cards, but when I was laying them out on the bed, he fell asleep. And he was sleeping, and Carlotta went to get some water or some towels or something—I don’t remember what—and then he gave a little sigh. And it looked like he had just woken up for a minute and then gone back to sleep, but he hadn’t. And then Carlotta came back—”
Sophie covered her face with her hands and sank down onto her knees. Please believe me, she prayed silently. Please believe me, and think of him falling asleep, with the cards sliding off the coverlet. Every night since Dermide’s death she had had the same nightmare, of the little body convulsing and twitching, over and over, the eyes rolling back in his head, the thread of drool running out of the side of his mouth. She would sit bolt-upright in bed, gasping for air and trying to tell herself that it was only a nightmare.
Except it had been real.
She felt a hand underneath her elbow. It was Camillo. He had pulled a chair forward, and now he lifted her into it. She leaned against him for a moment, oddly grateful.
“So.” Pauline’s voice had a vicious edge. “I give you a home. I treat you like my own daughter. When you are ill, I nurse you around the clock. I bring you back from the dead. And this is how you repay me. My son is dying and you are fetching cards and playing games.”
Sophie shrank down in the chair. I should have stayed in Rome, she thought, numb with despair. I should never have come to Frascati.
“Well?” demanded Pauline. “Have you nothing to say for yourself? Look at me!”
Sophie raised her eyes. Pauline’s face was a mask of anger, rigid and hollow. “Go now,” Camillo said in her ear. “She doesn’t mean it. She is mad with grief. Go. I’ll talk to her.”
With a choked sob, Sophie fled. She could hear Pauline screaming after her.
“Don’t think I’ll forget!”
Camillo wished he could run away as well. He had not been alone with Pauline for four days, ever since the moment when he had made her lie down, warned her that he had bad news, and given her the letter from Frascati. She had been rational only long enough to confirm the news—no, it was not a mistake; yes, he had spoken to the courier himself. Then she had curled into a ball at the foot of her bed and started to wail—a thin, highpitched sound like nothing he had ever heard before. She didn’t respond when he called her name, when he touched her, when he shook her. He had summoned Peyre and left her to whatever comfort medicine could provide.
“Let me know if she would like to speak with me,” he had told Pauline’s page. “At any time of the day or night. If I am asleep, wake me.”
There had been no summons. Pauline wanted no one and nothing. She had refused to see her mother. Her servants were forbidden to enter her room except when sent for and were instructed not to speak at all in her presence. She had left at dawn the following morning, riding alone in one of the smaller coaches, without even her maid or her page. Ahead of her, a courier galloped on a fresh horse, carrying a letter wrapped around the newly cut dark curls. It had been left to Camillo to make arrangements to pack, dismiss servants, fetch Madame Mère, send servants ahead to engage rooms for the night. Pauline had not even stayed at the same inns as Camillo and her mother.
There was a long silence after Sophie left. Pauline sat stiffly upright in her chair, staring grimly at the place where Sophie had been sitting.
“It is not Sophie’s fault,” Camillo said finally. “She is still a child herself, you know.”
The response was a glance of utter contempt.
“It is no one’s fault,” he went on. “Do you hear me? Not the doctors, not my brother or your brother, not Madame Ducluzel or Carlotta. There was nothing anyone could have done.”
“How do you know?” She stood up, clasping and unclasping her hands. “How do you know that? Don’t you think that if I had been here, I would have noticed something earlier? Or nursed him more carefully?”
There was no safe answer to that question, so Camillo said nothing.
“I must be cursed,” she muttered. “My husband is sick, I cannot save him. My son is sick, I cannot save him. The only one I manage to save is that little witch Napoleon planted in my household to spy on me and tell tales to Joseph and my mother.”
That little witch adores you, Camillo thought bitterly. He remembered Sophie looking away, embarrassed, when he had asked her where Pauline was on the last night of Carnival. She lies to protect you from your own husband and she hates me cordially on your behalf. You treat her like dirt, and she only loves you more.
“I must go away,” said Pauline, more to herself than to Camillo. “I must go back to France. I hate it here; everything is dreadful here.” She was breathing quickly, small, shallow breaths. “Yes, I have to go home. Dermide will be buried beside his father; I will take him to Montgobert.”
She began pacing in circles around the armchair where she had been sitting. “I must send to Rome for the berlin,” she said. “The carriages here are not large enough to hold the coffin. And I will need outriders. And footmen; more footmen. We only have two with us now. A courier can be sent tomorrow morning to tell my brother I am returning to France. If I leave the day after tomorrow, I can be there by the second week in September.” It was as though Camillo did not exist; she didn’t look at him or acknowledge him in any way. She walked around him as if he were a second armchair.
Only after the second circuit did Camillo notice that she was trembling—her hands, her arms, her head.
“Pauline!” He stepped in front of her.
“No,” she muttered, drawing the word out. She was shaking so hard that her voice vibrated: no-uh-o-uh-o-uh-o-uh-o. “
Don’t tell Napoleon. What if he says I cannot leave Italy? Just get in the carriage and start north.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Let me go!” she screamed, clawing at his chest.
“You’re ill, you must sit down.” She quivered between his hands like a wounded animal.
She laughed. The sound set his teeth on edge. “I am not ill. I went to the baths, I drank the waters, I purged, I bled, but I was not ill.” Tears were pooling at the corners of her eyes, and she blinked them away. He could feel her trying to hold herself together. “I left him. I left him, Camillo. I took the doctor.” She looked up at him for the first time. “Do you understand? He was the one who was sick, and I had our doctor with me. Because I am a selfish, lazy mother, who can only think about herself.”
Now she was crying in earnest.
“You are not lazy and selfish,” he said mechanically. Then, with more conviction: “Doctor Peyre could not have done anything more than the doctors from Rome did. He told you so. I heard him.”
She sagged against him all at once, sending him staggering back one step. “Why didn’t I take him with me?” she wailed. “Frascati is too close to Rome; I should have known that. He has always been subject to summer fevers.”
“Don’t do this,” he whispered. “It isn’t your fault. Don’t think that, don’t ever think that.” He picked her up and carried her over to a sofa, where she lay sobbing, facedown, pounding the silk upholstery with her fist.
“Shhh.” He stroked her cropped hair, making soothing noises like the ones he made to his mare when she was nervous. “We will go back to France. Whatever you want. I will make all the arrangements.” He knew he shouldn’t say it, but he did anyway. “I love you.”
She turned over then and looked at him, her tear-drenched eyes so full of pain that he felt his heart squeeze with pity. “You can’t love me. I killed my son.”
“Pauline, no.” He didn’t know what to do or what to say. All he could think of was to sit by her and hold her hand. He took off her sandals, covered her feet with a shawl, tried to wipe her face with his handkerchief. Nothing seemed to comfort her. Eventually he slid down alongside her; she was still sobbing but turned into his arms with a sigh almost of relief and hid her head on his chest. When she would start to speak, he simply shushed her, like a child, gathering her closer and murmuring her name until she subsided.
The Princess of Nowhere Page 12
