The Princess of Nowhere

by Lorenzo Borghese

  SIXTEEN

  She was never the same after the ball. They had all known it would happen, that she was clinging to her temporary gift of health with both hands and refusing to let go until the ball was over, but it was still hard to see her sink back into the cycle of sleeping days and awake days. By the end of March, she was worse than she had been in December; there were not many awake days, and they were so painful that she sometimes gave up and let laudanum send her back to sleep. By mid-April, she was in nearly constant pain and would fret for hours at the slightest noise outside in the street, or if a maid set a bowl down on the wrong table. Her brother Louis visited and, after one afternoon of watching his sister toss and turn, agreed with Camillo. It was time to leave the city.

  Camillo rented a villa on a hill to the south of Florence, a pretty, square stucco house with gardens just starting to come to life and a sweeping view back toward the town. He hired nurses and maids. He moved furniture from the palace to the villa, including the bathtubs. This time he set up Pauline’s rooms on the ground floor, so she could be wheeled outside in a bath chair if the weather was fine.

  The last item to be moved was Pauline. He had sent Sophie and the servants on ahead; he wanted to be sure that Pauline’s bed and medicines were waiting for her. As he got into the carriage with her, she clutched his hand. Her fingers were like sticks.

  “Can we go to the park?”

  He was puzzled. “The park?”

  “The one with the fountain. You said they turned it back on in May.”

  It was the second of May.

  She gave him a bitter, triumphant smile. “I’m still here. And I want to see the fountain and the flower beds.”

  “It’s in the wrong direction.” He thought that the ride to the villa would already be longer than she could tolerate without serious discomfort.

  “I want to see it.”

  Nobody was as stubborn as a Bonaparte, he thought. They drove slowly to the Cascine and pulled up in front of the fountain. Thank God, it was on.

  She looked out the window. “It doesn’t look like much,” she said, disappointed. “But the flowers are nice.” She lay back, exhausted and gray with pain, and didn’t say anything else until they pulled up in the drive of the villa, half an hour later than expected.

  “I saw it,” she said defiantly. “That’s what counts.”

  * * *

  By the second week of May, she was no longer able to go outside, even in the bath chair. Sophie went out every morning and cut fresh flowers for her room. She seemed to be fading right along with Pauline, paler and more strained every day. He saw Pauline watching Sophie sometimes when Sophie wasn’t looking and knew Pauline was worried about her. But since Sophie never left Pauline alone for more than five minutes now, he had no chance to ask her about it.

  One evening he was sitting with a brandy in the garden, watching the moon rise behind a grove of olive trees.

  “Your Excellency?”

  It was one of the footmen.

  “Yes?”

  “The princess sent me to tell you that she is feeling a bit better and hopes you will come sit with her for a few minutes.”

  “Let’s bring her out here,” he said suddenly. It was so beautiful. The air smelled like warm dust and flowers, and the olive leaves looked like they were made of silver.

  “Shall I get the chair, sir?”

  “No, we’ll have to carry her. Go get Matteo and bring a bed out here.”

  It took twenty minutes to set everything up, and he cursed himself for a fool during every one of them. But when they brought her out and laid her on the bed, she looked around her like a child, delighted.

  “It’s lovely,” she said softly.

  “You would have been more comfortable in your room,” he said gruffly.

  “I’m never comfortable.” She said it calmly, without any bitterness. “And Sophie thinks you are being romantic, so she won’t follow me, for once, and I can finally talk to you about her.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “Camillo, you’ve done so much for me already. I hate to ask anything more. But—”

  “You want me to take care of her after you are gone.”

  “She doesn’t need money,” Pauline said quickly. “Napoleon gave her a generous dowry, and I am leaving her a large sum as well. Plus”—she gave a little cackle—“you won’t believe this, but the British army pays her a widow’s pension. Like clockwork, every quarter-day.”

  “She needs a home,” he said.

  “I did something terrible to her,” whispered Pauline. “I’ve never forgiven myself. I gave her—I gave her some medicine in Turin, and it was too strong for her. I thought she was better, but after she married, she found out—she can’t have children, Camillo. She got very sick after Waterloo; she was pregnant and some damage from those doses I gave her made everything go wrong. I don’t know if she’ll ever marry again. Watching the two of us can’t have given her a very good opinion of the institution of marriage. Her husband’s family abandoned her after she miscarried; her father died five years ago, and her brothers couldn’t even be located for his funeral. I picture her wandering around Europe, like a ghost, always on the edge of things.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” he said.

  “Do you promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Promises made to a dying person are sacred,” she reminded him. She looked at the moon. “I don’t think I’ll die tonight. It’s too lovely out.”

  She was quiet for a while, then she asked him, “Is Jerome coming?”

  “Yes.”

  She asked every day now. Her youngest brother was at the moment the only one of her siblings within reach of Florence.

  Hurry, Jerome, he said silently.

  Sophie paused in the doorway of Pauline’s room. One of the roses she was carrying was digging its thorns into her wrist, but she just shifted it slightly and stood as still as she could. Pauline was sitting up in bed, leaning against the pillows, her eyes closed. She wasn’t sleeping; Sophie could tell. She was waiting for her next dose of laudanum, willing herself not to take it yet. Camillo was sitting next to her, holding her hand. She was gripping his fingers so hard they were swelling slightly at the tips. The two of them sat like that for half an hour at a stretch sometimes, saying nothing.

  Camillo had taken her aside last night, after the doctor had left.

  “Pauline is worried about you,” he said without any preamble.

  “I am fine.”

  “What are you going to do after—afterward?”

  “I don’t know.” She knew they were going to ask her this question sooner or later; she should have had an answer ready. “Go back to France, perhaps. Stay here.” She added stiffly, “I have money of my own, you know.”

  “She asked me to look out for you,” he said. “Tell me, Sophie. What would you like to do? Where would you like to live? You will be very well dowered; I could arrange another marriage for you if that is your preference. My brother Francesco divides his time between France and Italy; he has written me that he would be very eager to have you join his household. And you would be welcome to stay with me, as well.”

  “What of the duchess?”

  “She is very generous and kind-hearted.”

  Sophie thought that even a saint might have some difficulty welcoming her rival’s ward into her own home. “I can’t talk about this now,” she said. “I won’t.” The doctor had said Pauline had only a few days to live.

  He hesitated. “I should mention one thing. Since you say you have thought of returning to France.”

  “You wish to remind me that the Bonapartes are not very popular there?”

  “Look.” He handed her one page of a letter.

  It was from his brother Francesco. He warned Camillo that a series of books about the fallen imperial family had been published, most anonymously, but some “authored” by former confidantes of Napoleon and his family. The most popular and
successful of these books were all attacks on Pauline. She was the new Messalina, the Whore of Babylon, she had slept with Napoleon, she had taken Negro slaves as lovers, she had walked on the necks of her ladies-in-waiting, she had posed nude for a roomful of men, she had forced Napoleon to divorce Josephine. “I warn you,” wrote Francesco, “so that you may do your best to protect her from these books and those who have read and believed them. I am told it is even worse in England.”

  Sophie handed it back. “She knows all about them.”

  “She does?”

  “Her English friend, Lady Holland, sent her an excellent selection of quotations from both the French and the English versions.”

  He was horrified. “And you gave her the letter?”

  “I don’t open letters from friends like Lady Holland,” she said. “But I did read it, afterward. She showed it to me. She thought it was very funny.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Sophie had gone off and cried.

  “Don’t forget what I said,” he had told her, folding up the letter and putting it back in his desk.

  “I won’t.” She had added, after a moment, “Thank you.”

  She hadn’t slept much last night, and when she did fall asleep, she had dreamed that someone was speaking to her in French and she couldn’t understand them. Most of her dreams were in Italian now. She even thought in Italian. Was her dream a sign? Pauline would have thought so. She was very superstitious.

  Pauline stirred on the bed, and Sophie came in and found a vase for the roses. Camillo was flexing his newly liberated hand.

  “Jerome will be here tomorrow,” she told Camillo quietly.

  “Good,” said Pauline, without opening her eyes. “I’ll have a Leclerc, and a Borghese, and a Bonaparte. All my families.”

  Camillo could have told the doctor not to announce her own death date to Pauline. “You should send for a priest, Your Excellency,” he had told her last night. “At once.”

  “It’s ‘Your Imperial Highness,’” she had corrected him. “And I’m not ready for a priest.”

  He had strongly advised her to have a priest brought as soon as possible.

  At that point Camillo had decided she would somehow make it to the next day out of sheer spite.

  “I don’t want to die at night,” she had whispered, after the doctor had left. “It’s dark.”

  “We’ll wait until tomorrow morning, then.” He settled into the chair by her bed.

  “Are you there, Camillo?” she said a few hours later.

  “I’m here. What is it?”

  She shifted on her pillow. “I’ll wait until daylight.”

  “For what?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He barely slept now, afraid he would miss something, some word or gesture. Some last bit of Pauline. When he did doze off, he woke listening for her breathing, afraid she might have slipped away in the five minutes he had lost.

  The curtains in her room were open all the time now, night and day. “Don’t shut the world out,” she complained when the maid tried to draw them. “I like to see it.” So he saw the sky gradually turn the color of slate, then granite, then pearl.

  Pauline’s eyes were open. “This is the last one,” she said, watching the sky brighten.

  “Do you need more medicine?” He started to reach for the bell rope.

  She shook her head. “No. It doesn’t hurt. Or rather, everything hurts, but in a different way. My body is saying good-bye.” Her eyes closed again, but her hand slipped into his. This time she didn’t squeeze.

  The sun rose, and Pauline stirred again. She turned her head and looked out the window. “All right,” she said. “Send for the priest. And my maid. And Sophie. I’m not dying in my nightgown.”

  He rang the bell but didn’t get up.

  “Go away,” she said gently. “I’m going to have a bath, and then my maid is going to make me pretty one last time. Get some rest, get something to eat. I promise not to die without you.”

  Sophie got to pick Pauline’s final outfit. In theory. First, she picked a blue robe; Pauline told her blue was the color of the Virgin Mary and she couldn’t think of anything less appropriate. Then Sophie picked a rose-colored silk; it had been one of Pauline’s favorites.

  “No,” said Pauline after a moment’s reflection. “I think I seduced Pacini last year wearing that.”

  The maid held up four more gowns; Pauline shook her head.

  “White?” said Sophie. “You want to wear white?” There was only one gown left in the armoire.

  Pauline tilted her head to one side and studied the dress. “Why not?”

  Because you are paler than the fabric, thought Sophie. Pauline was still wrapped in towels from the bath, and she was exactly the same off-white as the linen. But Sophie didn’t say anything. There was always the rouge pot.

  It took both of them to get Pauline into the dress, since she could not really stand up without help, and she was breathing hard when the last button was hooked. But she looked triumphant as they helped her back into bed.

  “Now my hair,” she said. “And then some paint.” Her maid was an old hand at this now; in a few minutes, Pauline looked almost healthy.

  “Jewelry,” she announced after studying her reflection. “Something gaudy and distracting.” She directed the maid carefully in placing earrings, two necklaces, and a diadem, and then held up the glass again. “Very good!” she approved. “What do you think, Sophie? Do I look like a princess?”

  Sophie thought the gown and the jewels, perhaps not by accident, bore a remarkable resemblance to the outfit Josephine had worn to be crowned empress.

  “Now,” said Pauline to the maid, “go fetch something. I don’t care what. Just tell all the others that I am not dressed yet and go away for ten minutes.”

  When the door closed behind the servant, Pauline looked at Sophie. “No one is coming back in here until you tell me what you are doing.”

  “What do you mean?” said Sophie, suddenly feeling cold and sick.

  “What are you doing tomorrow? And the day after that? And the week after that?”

  Sophie shook her head, helpless.

  “Camillo spoke to you; I know he did.”

  “He did.” Sophie didn’t want to remember that conversation. She didn’t want to be having this conversation. While they were choosing gowns, it was a game. This wasn’t a game.

  “Sophie, look at me.” Unwillingly, Sophie met Pauline’s eyes. They glittered fiercely above her hollow cheeks. “I’m dying. Now. I can’t feel my feet. My hands are going numb. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.” No.

  “I am not letting anyone else in until I am sure that you will have a life after I am gone.”

  “I don’t know!” shouted Sophie. “How can you ask me to answer that question now, of all times? How can I think about anything else? I have only been apart from you for fifteen months in the last twenty-two years! And I was miserable for every single day of those fifteen months!”

  Pauline grimaced slightly in pain and shifted her position. “If I die without talking to Camillo and Jerome,” she said, “they will be very upset. And I need to dictate my will. Stop being so stubborn and just answer me.”

  “What do you want me to do?” said Sophie, starting to cry at last.

  “I want you to be happy,” said Pauline. Her voice was very low. “I want you to belong somewhere. We were always wandering, the two of us. So where do you belong? Do you want to try to be French again? Or do you want to stay here and be a Borghese?”

  “Borghese,” Sophie choked out.

  “Good,” said Pauline. “That’s what I thought.”

  Camillo changed his clothes and swallowed some coffee but arrived back at Pauline’s room before she was ready and had to wait outside the door. He paced back and forth impatiently until he realized that anyone seeing him would think he was an expectant father outside his wife’s confinement. It was a birth of sorts, he thought, then
went and sat in a chair, his head in his hands. Jerome came a few minutes later and stood by the wall, his face set. The priest was here now, too.

  Pauline admitted them an hour later. She was wearing a magnificent white gown, a full set of rubies, and what he suspected was some very cleverly applied makeup. She was pale but not sallow and was sitting up in bed. She looked almost well enough to go outside. For one minute his heart leaped; she was better again; she would laugh and dismiss the priest, as she had done several times earlier. But she didn’t. When he watched her swallow the wafer, he felt himself go numb. Her voice, intertwined with the priest’s, seemed to come from very far away.

  “Now the notary,” Pauline told her maid. In front of the five witnesses, she made a long list of bequests. Camillo recognized some names: her nieces and nephews, Dermide’s nursemaid Carlotta. When she came to Sophie, he went over and stood next to her while Pauline dictated the names of four properties that were now hers. Sophie was crying silently, not even bothering to wipe the tears away.

  Then he heard his own name. “To my husband, Prince Borghese, the villa known as Villa Paolina, in Bagni di Lucca, in gratitude for his care and devotion during my illness.”

  He looked up, startled. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would leave him anything.

  “It’s so beautiful there in the summer,” she said. “I wanted you to have it.”

  When the notary had finished, she signed her name. Her hand shook. For the first time, Camillo began to believe that this was real, that Pauline was leaving him. He could see now that under the makeup she was growing paler and paler, that her whole body was trembling slightly with the effort of holding herself up.

  “Thank you,” she said to the maid and the notary. “You may go.”

  Now, he thought. Now she’ll lie down.

  No. She beckoned Jerome over and spoke with him for a little while before embracing him. Then she turned to Sophie. Her voice was getting softer and softer; Camillo couldn’t hear what she said, and Sophie was unable to reply; she simply sobbed. At the end, Pauline said something to her that produced a nod. Then Sophie kissed Pauline’s hand, not once but twice, and fled.