“He told me you did! Villemarest showed him the list of appointments, and he was not on it!”
“Ah.” His frown cleared. “That list is not mine. It was drawn up by your brother.”
“Well, I do not see why I cannot have my music master with me! If I must go to Turin, I should have some few pleasures still left to me!”
“Certainly,” he said, his tone indifferent. “I will tell Villemarest that he is part of your personal staff.”
Pauline stamped back to her room, forgetting that she had left Felix waiting for word from her. Obviously, Camillo did not understand that Felix was his rival. Perhaps he had not heard the gossip yet, or perhaps, having met Felix, he had judged him too young and timid for the gossip to be true. And, in fact, she conceded to herself, it had taken quite a lot of persuasion to get Felix into her bed. He was not a very bold Romeo.
The villa she had borrowed for her stay in Nice had a lovely garden lined with orange trees, which had just finished blooming. Pauline set the stage again. This time the cast was larger than it had been for the aborted drama in the bedroom. She was the principal, of course. There was a wrought-iron bench beneath the trees at the far end of the garden; Pauline had two of her pages carry out cushions, a tray of wine and refreshments, and some music. She and Felix would sing duets.
Next came the question of the messenger. Someone had to bring Camillo out at the right moment. Not her new ladies-in-waiting; she did not trust them, and they were strangers to Camillo. Not Madame Ducluzel; she would never forgive Pauline for involving her. The pages would not be able to make sure Camillo arrived on cue.
“Sophie,” she muttered. “And it will be good for her, too.”
Sophie was now in an awkward phase: tall and gangly, her breasts just starting to round out, half-girl, half-woman. She showed no interest at all in the pages, who were good-looking boys only a little younger than she was, or in the equerries, equally good-looking young men a little older than she was. She drifted around looking soulful and pure and tripping over her own feet. Pauline was, for once, thankful that Sophie was not Catholic. She was at that age when many girls (although never Pauline) decide they want to enter a convent.
And so, the play commenced. Pauline summoned Felix; they arranged themselves beneath the sweet-scented trees. The sky was crystal-blue, the Mediterranean Sea below a deep turquoise. They sang the first duet. Partway through the second, Pauline put her hand over the music and smiled at Felix.
“It is so lovely out here, don’t you think?” She tossed the sheets aside and reclined invitingly on the cushions.
With a nervous glance back toward the house, Felix snatched the music up. “For Christ’s sake, Pauline, your husband is fifty feet away!”
“A hundred. He cannot see us, you know that.” They had used this spot before. It was completely invisible from the house, tucked into a corner of the garden.
He still looked terrified.
“Just a kiss. Just one kiss. It’s the music, it’s the spring breeze, it’s the sea and the sky! We are meant to be happy—can’t you feel it?”
It wasn’t one kiss, of course. She knew he wouldn’t be brave enough to go much beyond kissing, so she kept it light, teasing him with her tongue, slipping her dress off one shoulder and inviting him to fondle her breast. That would be enough.
Steps on the gravel path. Sophie’s voice, a little breathless. “She said she needed to show you something at once, something about some ships that shouldn’t be in the harbor—”
Felix choked and scrambled to his feet, knocking over the carafe of wine in the process. Pauline let her dress slip a bit farther down, then looked up, as if surprised.
Camillo completely ignored Felix. “A very charming scene,” he said. He glanced down the hill to the water. “I take it the only ships that are in the wrong harbor are here in the garden?”
“What do you expect, if you neglect me?” Pauline shot back.
Felix was attempting to stammer excuses. Camillo gave him a cold stare. “Escort Signorina Leclerc back to the house, please,” he said. He turned to Sophie and made a formal bow. “My apologies, Sophie.”
The girl gave Pauline an anguished look, then turned and ran, followed by Blangini, calling after her and stumbling on the loose gravel as he went.
“Well,” said Camillo when they were alone. He sounded tired and disgusted, not jealous.
“Well,” said Pauline, in sarcastic imitation.
“You needn’t have gone to so much trouble,” he informed her. “I already knew.”
She sat up, indignant. “Then why did you give me permission to take him to Turin?”
“Do as you please. Bring him and anyone else you fancy with you; I don’t care.” He started to walk away.
“Camillo!”
Was it her imagination, or did he stiffen slightly? He did turn back. Grudgingly.
“You were gone. I saw you twice in three years! Don’t tell me you were faithful to me the whole time you were with the army!”
“No,” he admitted. “But I was at least discreet. There are not five people in the world who could tell you the names of my mistresses. Whereas, even out on the borders of Russia, I knew the name of every one of your lovers. And so did most of Napoleon’s army.” He folded his arms and leaned against the garden wall. “Do you know what was waiting for me when I staggered off the field at Friedland?”
Friedland. Pauline thought she remembered that name. A battle, somewhere. Somewhere far to the east, near the Baltic.
“Thirty thousand dead,” he said. “Most of them the Tsar’s, but still. And I got back to my tent, covered with blood, and found a little packet.”
“Letters?” she whispered. Who would have written to him? His mother? One of her ladies-in-waiting? No, they only reported to Napoleon.
“Not letters. Cartoons. My wife, in the newspapers.”
She had seen those cartoons. She had laughed at them. Apparently, Camillo had not found them amusing.
“I didn’t believe the one that showed you in bed with your brother,” he said. “For one thing, I credit him with too much good sense to entangle himself with you. But the rest? They seemed all too plausible. Especially after I had been informed by several eyewitnesses that you had at one point actually been so lost to decency that you had packed up and gone to live in the house of one of your male servants to make it easier for him to service you.”
“He was my chamberlain, not my servant,” she objected hotly.
“When you are a princess,” he said calmly, “your chamberlain is your servant.”
“It was a perfectly nice house,” she muttered. “His family is older than ours.”
“Than yours,” he corrected.
“So what do you want?” she demanded. “Do you want me to take a vow of celibacy? You certainly don’t seem interested in performing your marital duties.”
He sighed. “I don’t want anything from you. Go your own way, and I shall go mine. It’s no use my asking you to behave with some modicum of propriety; you won’t listen. Since you are clearly barren, I at least don’t need to worry about a cuckoo in the Borghese nest. But I refuse to waste my time any longer trying to mend this farce of a marriage.”
He was halfway down the path before she recovered her wits. “Camillo!” she screamed. “You don’t mean it! I know you don’t!”
This time he had not turned around. Pauline had been left alone under the orange trees, with wine soaking into her skirt.
Seduction had failed; jealousy had failed; next she had tried sympathy. She still remembered how tender Camillo had been to her in Lucca, how frightened. Of course, she had really been quite ill then. But she could reproduce those same symptoms, especially since travel always made her stomach unsettled.
The following week, they had set out for Turin. As the parade of carriages crawled over the mountains into Italy, Pauline drooped hour by hour. She refused to eat. She fainted conveniently into an equerry’s arms when he helped her from the carriage.
She stayed up all night in the inns and kept her servants running for obscure remedies.
Her husband never came near her. Whenever she sent him a message detailing a new symptom, he sent back his best wishes for her recovery, followed by a visit from the doctor. Vastapani had been appointed by Napoleon to replace Peyre, who had resigned in disgust during one of Pauline’s more flamboyant affairs. Vastapani would take her pulse, check under her eyelids, examine her urine, and shake his head.
“I don’t understand it,” he would say. “Everything seems quite normal. Perhaps another dose of calomel will set you right.”
There was no point in swallowing calomel or extract of rhubarb if Camillo was not paying attention; eventually, she had dismissed Vastapani and “recovered” in time to make a grand entrance to Turin in an open carriage at Camillo’s side.
For the past six weeks, she had tried one last ploy: she had tried being good. She was charming to the Piedmontese burghers; she danced the local dances; she ate the disgusting, bland, creamy local dishes; she smiled by Camillo’s side and did nothing, absolutely nothing, that her own mother would not have done.
It was choking her. She was drowning in her own tediousness.
Very well, then. It was time to leave. Napoleon thought she was not really ill? He forbade her to return to France? She would show him, and Camillo, and all of them.
TEN
So.” Pauline handed Sophie a glass of sweet wine. “How old are you now, Sophie?”
For four years, Sophie had been bouncing back and forth between the schoolroom and Pauline’s little court. First, there was her brief stint in Rome as a pretend fourteen-year-old. Then, the summer at Frascati with its dreadful conclusion. After Dermide’s death, she had been happy to remain in the world of lessons and early bedtimes. She was convinced that Pauline blamed her for her son’s illness, that Pauline would never want to see her again. But when she had arrived in Paris, several weeks behind Pauline, Pauline seemed to have buried her anger with Dermide’s coffin. She greeted Sophie warmly, housed her in rooms next to her own, and insisted that Sophie be included in the coronation ceremony. Sophie found herself once more a junior lady-in-waiting, being fitted for dresses that were so heavy and stiff she could barely move in them. The promotion lasted until the prince went off to the front. Then, once again, Sophie was banished to the top floor of the hôtel and a governess arrived to resume her lessons. She had a sort of duenna, too, a superior maidservant who was the sister of one of the prince’s men. Her name was Bettina, and she reported every single scandalous tale about Pauline to Sophie with great relish. “You’re back in the schoolroom because she wants to put someone in her bedroom,” Bettina told her. “Just wait and see.”
Bettina had been right, of course.
When that lover disappeared (he had joined the army and gone off to fight in Austria; Sophie was never sure if he had volunteered or been forcibly conscripted by an angry Napoleon), Sophie was once again Pauline’s favorite companion. Lessons had been curtailed, then suspended. The governess had left. Pauline had taken Sophie with her to Nice; she had given her jewelry and teased her about her lack of interest in men. One day, Sophie was dismissed again, this time to a small room at the back of the villa, which she shared with Bettina. “She’s at it again” was Bettina’s dark prediction. A week later, Felix Blangini had arrived and been installed in Sophie’s old suite, right next to Pauline.
Now they were in Turin, and Pauline wanted Sophie back.
“You be careful,” Bettina had said gruffly this morning when Sophie opened the note from Pauline. “She’ll be all sweet to you now, and then cold as ice tomorrow.”
Sophie knew that.
She had never had a proper letter from Pauline before, though. It was addressed to her dearest cousin Sophie, and it informed her that she would be expected to meet with Pauline every afternoon at two from now on. Sophie had assumed that there was to be some sort of public reception every day, and she had struggled into her court dress and had her maid curl her hair. But when she had gone across the hall to Pauline’s chambers, there had been no one else there. Just Sophie and Pauline and the heavy furniture and Chinese vases. Every room in the palace had at least three vases, and Sophie was sure she would break one sooner or later.
Pauline had looked at Sophie’s outfit and burst out laughing.
“Sit down, you goose. It’s just to be the two of us. Don’t wear anything like that tomorrow; it makes me itch just to look at you! Here, have some wine.” She led Sophie over to an embrasure by the window; two chairs had been pulled up next to a table. The window looked out onto the Piazzetta Reale, which at the moment was gray and wet.
“Dreary, isn’t it?” Pauline made a face, then turned her back to the view and poured two glasses from the decanter on the table. It was heavy, sweet wine, dark gold in color.
“So, how old are you now, Sophie?”
She took a cautious sip from the crystal goblet Pauline handed her. It seemed very strong to her. But Pauline was drinking hers. “Fifteen.” She gave her true age. Fifteen, to Sophie, was magnificently old, and she had only arrived at that estate ten days earlier.
“Is that all?” Pauline poured herself another glass. “Well, that explains a lot. I must have been confused; I thought you were older.” She tilted her head to one side and studied Sophie. “Good eyes, good skin. A bit bony, but you’ll fill out. Don’t let your maid curl your hair like that again; it makes your face too long.” She leaned across and patted Sophie’s knee. “I have been neglecting you,” she said. “But now I mean to make it up to you. A girl your age needs a mother, someone to tell her about men and marriage and the way the world works. You’ll come and visit me at this time every day—unless there is some state ceremony, of course—and I’ll answer all your questions.” She sat back and beamed at Sophie.
Sophie was holding her glass suspended between the table and her mouth, gaping.
“Drink up,” Pauline encouraged her. “I wasn’t shy at your age, but I know you, Sophie. You’re a prude, like Camillo. You won’t tell me anything until you’ve had a glass or two.”
Mechanically, Sophie took several more swallows from her glass.
“Let’s start with the young men attached to the court,” Pauline said briskly. “Who do you fancy?” She saw Sophie’s face and clapped her hands. “So, there is someone! I thought you were looking a bit less ethereal since we arrived in Turin.”
Sophie silently cursed her too-expressive face. “No, no one,” she lied.
Pauline laughed. “I’ll have it out of you, never fear. How can I help you if I don’t know who it is?” She frowned suddenly. “It isn’t d’Aniano, is it? He has the pox already, even though he’s only sixteen.”
“No,” said Sophie, feeling her face start to burn.
“Well,” said Pauline. “That’s a blessing. But as long as we are on the subject, I’ll tell you how you can check to see if your lover is infected. It’s usually a little sore about this big—” She held up her fingers in a small oval. “It looks a bit like a button, and it feels hard when you touch it. If you spot something like that, send him off to get dosed with mercury salts before you sleep with him.”
Wine, or curiosity, or both, got the better of Sophie. “Where—where is the sore?”
“On his cock, of course. Where did you think?”
“Oh.” It wasn’t possible for her face to get any hotter.
“Have another glass of wine,” Pauline said. “Are you still a virgin? I assume so, but one never knows.”
It took three days and six glasses of wine for Pauline to worm the name out of her. Sophie had resolved that she would be boiled in oil, stretched on a rack, and crucified before she confessed. But Pauline was like an unstoppable force of nature. She bombarded Sophie with names. Was it a Frenchman? Villemarest? Mont-Breton? Or an Italian? De Sordevalo, perhaps? She interspersed her queries with comments about their physique, their erotic history, if any, and their marital prospects. For the fi
rst time, Sophie discovered that she herself was a desirable bride: Napoleon had set aside a dowry of fifty thousand francs for her.
Sophie held out until the inquisition took a disturbing turn. In the middle of some unflattering comments about the potency of one of the equerries, Pauline suddenly stopped in mid-sentence. “How could I have been so stupid?” she exclaimed. “I am forgetting what I was like at fifteen! I am asking about all the young bachelors, but of course it is a married man! They are always the most attractive to girls.”
“No,” protested Sophie. For some reason, it was very important to her that Pauline be disabused of the notion that Sophie would fall in love with a man who was married to someone else.
“No?” Pauline looked at her searchingly. “He isn’t married?”
Up until now, Sophie had not answered any of Pauline’s questions, just ducked her head and sipped her wine. But now she did answer: one word, “No.” And like a dam with a small crack in it, that one answer quickly led to more. All Pauline needed was a “no,” and she was on to the next possibility. Was he French? No. Italian, then. One of the pages? No. Equerries? No. A soldier? One of the officers in the militia? No. A member of the household? No. Of the Piedmontese nobility? No.
“Mother of God,” gasped Pauline, after this last response. Her eyes lit with amusement. “I know who it is. It’s that young hothead, that idiot from Milan who wants to throw the French out of Italy! What is his name? Visconti? I’ve seen him with you, in fact! But he was scowling; not very lover-like.”
Sophie said nothing, at least out loud. Inside her head, the words unrolled like a furled banner opening: Gian Andrea Visconti. Gian Andrea Visconti. Gian Andrea Visconti.
“Hmmmm.” Pauline was thinking, one finger perched on her lower lip. “He would do nicely as your first lover,” she decided. “Although he might need some training. But of course you cannot marry him.”
Gian Andrea was descended from an ancient and powerful northern family, and he carried himself like a prince of the blood. Tall, slender, and hawk-faced, with a swatch of dark hair that continually fell into his eyes, he seemed to Sophie like the hero of some chivalric romance. The nineteen-year-old had come to Turin with a letter of introduction from his great-uncle, who owned half of Milan, but it soon became clear that he had no intention of playing courtier.
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