“Your maman, she wanted you home early,” Bonaparte scolded me lightly, and I had the strangest feeling that he had been watching me all evening.
“It is early!” I replied, spinning in dizzy pirouettes. “I doubt it is more than an hour into the day!”
He clucked at me with the hint of a smile. I smiled back.
The emperor did not know quite what to make of me.
“Did you drink any port?” he asked me, uneasy.
“They don’t serve port at parties!” I flopped down in a chair next to him.
“Well, not to the children, perhaps,” he replied.
To the children! Offended, I got up to leave, but his voice stopped me.
“Did you—,” the emperor began, hesitant. I turned back to face him. “Did you dance with anyone?”
I determined not to make his task easy for him. After all, what business was this of his? Standing up, I danced in dreamy circles about the lawn.
“Ah, oui,” the emperor said, sadly humorous. “I see.”
I could not know what he was thinking just then. But now that, as I write these words, I am no longer young, I can guess that he was feeling rather old.
The emperor yawned. Dizzy from my spinning, I nearly landed in a heap on the grass. I glanced toward Plantation House, with its brilliant rocking lanterns.
“Look at them!” I said, pointing. “Like someone caught the fireflies and put them in jars! Like someone caught stars!”
“The stars are in jars!” Bonaparte sang, imitating me. “The stars are in jars!”
“Don’t make fun of me,” I said.
The emperor nodded.
“And don’t sing,” I added.
He shrugged. I ignored him and stood up. I did my pirouettes. He watched me dance.
“Betsy,” he said with intensity, “you look very…” I glanced up at him expectantly. He seemed to recover his reserve. “…appropriate tonight.”
I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed. He had led me to expect some sort of daring compliment. My face showed my displeasure.
Still, I sat down next to him again. We were silent, awkward with each other as never before.
“Licorice?” he said, offering me some from his tin.
I shook my head. I looked toward Jamestown, its lights twinkling in the distance. The clouds above it drifted apart, revealing the same glorious golden moon I’d seen the night Huff had died. But even the sad and painful memories revived by that sight could not ruin the glory of this moment. Oh, how I hoped Huff, wherever he was, would forgive me for feeling so happy!
“There’s never been a night—not ever! So bright!” I exulted.
“Garlands of light,” Bonaparte said. He appeared to be lost in a dream of his own. “Diadems of light. The trees, the city, ablaze with light.”
“Yes!” I said, surprised that he, too, understood the specialness of this night.
“The Great Silver Star over Place de la Concorde,” he continued. “Twenty-two steps, up—up—to the throne of the Golden Bees.”
Puzzled, I turned to face him. It was clear he was not speaking of this night, but of another, long ago. I listened intently as he wove his magic spell.
“Fireworks!” he said, waving his hands in the air. “First blue, then white, then red—exploding across the night! Ka-boom! Ka-boom! Ka-boom-boom! One thousand singers, one thousand dancers—and all of France crying, ‘Vive l’Empereur! Vive l’Empereur!’”
The emperor floated back down to earth from the heights to which the crowd had raised him. Slowly, he became aware of my presence once more.
I looked at him, thinking, wondering.
“That—,” he explained, “that was the brightest night, my young one. The coronation—Notre Dame, Pope Pius VII, the crown of Charlemagne!” Here he spoke softly, enmeshed in more tender memories. “And Joséphine—sweet and matchless Joséphine…” He leaned way back in his chair and sighed. “That night, we danced; I held her in my arms. The crowd stepped back, gave us room. The empress!”
As he spoke, I saw her in my mind’s eye—and saw myself as she. I, the empress! I, Joséphine. Dancing in the arms of Napoleon the Great, who, for that one special night, had a grace on the dance floor that he had never exhibited before—or since. After all, it was only a dream. Why spoil it with his clumsiness?
“I remember the feel—the silk of her dress against my arm,” Bonaparte continued, brushing his hand lightly across his wrist. “The feel of Joséphine! Her perfume…” He sniffed the air and sighed with ecstasy. “Jasmine as she moved. Sandalwood when she stood still. The cape trimmed with ermine—soft; not as soft as that sweet skin. The crown, her diamonds, fires like her eyes. No, not as bright! Not as bright…”
He fell silent, as if the memory had crossed over some invisible line and was now bringing him more pain than joy. I did not know how to reach him in that place.
“My head hurts,” I said. It was the truth, and as something to say, it seemed harmless enough.
“I am not surprised,” the emperor replied. “After all that dancing.”
“Thank you for the necklace,” I said, undoing the clasp and handing it back to him. “It is very beautiful.”
He nodded. I stood up and walked toward the Briars.
“Whist tomorrow?” I called out to him from some feet away.
He nodded again.
“No cheating!” I said. The emperor attempted to appear stern, but I suspect he was actually smiling.
I ran toward the house, all girlish arms and legs.
“Good night, Boney!” I called as I rounded the bend.
“Bonne nuit, mademoiselle!” he called out to me.
I don’t know what made me do it, but I stopped in my tracks. An impulse to turn around had taken hold of me. And, to my astonishment, when I did, I saw the emperor standing up on the veranda, bowing toward me as he would to…well, to an empress!
I smiled beatifically at him and curtsied.
And now I walked—slow and ladylike—toward home.
Chapter 15
The first indication I had of Governor Lowe’s arrival on St. Helena came two days after the admiral’s ball. I found myself imprisoned in the wine cellar. And it gave me a taste of just what sort of man the emperor’s new jailer promised to be.
No, it wasn’t Governor Lowe himself who tossed me in that dungeon. It was, rather uncharacteristically, my father. But it soon became clear that it was Lowe who was really behind my punishment.
It seems that someone—and the “someone” I suspected was Gourgaud—had been very upset by my daring to turn the emperor’s sword against him some nights earlier. And Lowe had hardly had time to unpack his first trunk before he received a written complaint about the unruliness of one Betsy Balcombe. While I was in Jamestown the previous day, the new governor had paid a call on my parents. Lowe informed them that he would be tightening security around the emperor and his suite and that his plans did not include young English girls waving swords around his prisoners. He recommended to my father that he administer some rather harsh punishment to his child so that she would be taught a lesson. It was Willie, my favorite “spy,” who later told me of these events.
I suppose my father did not want to start out on the wrong foot with the new governor, so, reluctantly, he agreed to punish me. And I was sentenced to spend a day in purgatory, with only rats and my father’s wine bottles for company.
It seemed another Betsy Balcombe entirely who, just forty-eight hours before, had been dancing in a beautiful ball gown, in the arms of a handsome soldier. How I wished Carstairs would come and rescue me! But there was little chance anyone but Lowe and my family knew of my current plight. And I suspected that Gourgaud had intentionally withheld the news from the emperor, so my friend could not comfort me.
It was only by chance—so I learned later—that the emperor discovered my situation. As he was walking by the Briars—escorted by Poppleton, of course—he heard a loud crash. It sounded like glass breaking,
and it seemed to be coming from the cellar. Bonaparte asked the captain to dismount and take a look through the window.
“It’s the Balcombe girl,” Poppleton reported to his charge. He couldn’t fail to notice that I was surrounded by broken wine bottles.
“Which one?” Boney said. I suppose if it were Jane, he wouldn’t have bothered to investigate any further.
“The less attractive one,” Poppleton replied.
If I hadn’t been “feeling no pain,” as my father’s navy friends liked to say, I’d have been enraged by the captain’s tactlessness. But to be perfectly frank, I had consumed nearly a whole bottle of my father’s best Riesling and was in a grand and forgiving frame of mind.
Poppleton peered through the window bars at me.
I hiccuped and winked at him. “Helloooo, sailor!” I said.
Poppleton winced and turned his head, as if my breath offended him. “I think you had better talk to her, sir,” Poppleton told the emperor.
Boney asked me how on earth I had come to be in the cellar. I told him the whole story—how he could understand my slurred speech, I’ll never know—and by the end my excessive joviality had turned into a crying jag.
He reached for my hand through the bars. “There, now, mademoiselle,” he said, comforting me. “Now we are both prisoners, and you cry. I don’t cry.”
“You have,” I replied.
“Yes,” Boney said. “But the prison remains a prison. So it is better to be cheerful.”
“I don’t like Ssssir Ludson Showe,” I complained.
The emperor laughed at my tipsy speech.
“Don’t cry,” he said. He pushed his handkerchief through my prison bars. I took it from him, dabbed my eyes, and passed it back. “Remember, Betsy, I understand all you say and do. Yes, more than your parents, perhaps. When you are liberated, come to me and we shall have my chef make some bonbons and we shall laugh again!”
I was grateful to him for his kindness. But after that I fell asleep rather suddenly before I could tell him so.
Some hours must have gone by because when I awoke again, it was dark and the emperor was gone. Thank goodness I was sober by the time my father released me from “jail.”
Before his arrival I hid the empty bottle behind some full ones and swept the broken glass to the side.
The next day, I awoke with a headache like a thousand bees had taken up residence in my brain. My mouth felt dry and cottony, as if it had been plugged with a very tiny mattress, and even the slightest bit of light hitting my eyes was as blinding as a thousand suns. The emperor was heartless enough to be amused by my experience of the aftereffects of drunkenness.
He was playing colin-maillard—what we English call “blindman’s bluff”—with Willie and Alexander at the Pavilion (I felt too much under the weather to do more than watch) when Bertrand arrived with an announcement. It was a letter from Governor Lowe, the grand marshal explained, and required His Majesty’s immediate attention. Willie untied the emperor’s blindfold so he could open and read the letter. As he read it to himself, I watched Boney’s expression alter from one of merriment to outrage.
“Surely the man is not serious!” the emperor said. “Listen to this, Bertrand.” He read the note aloud: “‘In addition to the regulations enacted by Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn, K.C.B., it is further explicitly declared that no person is to receive or be the bearer of any letters or communications from General Bonaparte and the officers of his suite, or to deliver any to them. Any persons transgressing this order will be immediately arrested and otherwise dealt with accordingly by command of His Excellency Lieutenant General Sir Hudson Lowe, K.C.B., governor and commander in chief…’ et cetera, et cetera.” Bonaparte crumpled the letter and tossed it into the fireplace.
Bertrand addressed all of us. “Can you imagine how this pompous ass announces a trip to the latrine?” he said. “‘I, Sir Hudson Lowe, lord and master of the universe, et cetera, et cetera, do hereby announce that I am going to relieve my glorious self!’”
Everyone laughed, but I suspected that under that laughter was more than a little concern about how life would change for the exiles now that Lowe was at the helm.
The next morning, I was writing a letter to Madeline, my only friend from school (who was still residing in London), when I was briefly interrupted by a knock on my door.
“Have you seen Huff?” my mother asked me. It seemed he was two hours late for his tutoring session with the boys, she explained, and it wasn’t like the old man to be so unpunctual.
I told her the truth: that I had no idea where he was. After all, how could I know where the old man, may he rest in peace, was at that moment?
Some time later, my mother grew so concerned that she had my father look for Huff. When the landlady at Huff’s lodgings in Jamestown avowed that she hadn’t seen the old man in days, my father organized a search party. The searchers combed the island. At last, when no trace of Huff could be found, my parents concluded that he had been killed by one of the wild boars that roamed St. Helena. Huff had always had a tendency to wander off at odd hours and in odd places, and the explanation seemed to them as plausible as any.
We held a lovely service for him and buried him in absentia under a banyan tree. Willie and Alexander were very sad at Huff’s loss. My father said Dr. O’Meara had volunteered to serve as the boys’ tutor until a proper replacement could be brought in from London.
If I sound rather cold and detached as I relate these events, it is only because I had been mourning for Huff for some days by the time they occurred and had no more tears left to weep.
On the afternoon of Huff’s funeral Governor Lowe and one of his aides, a Mr. Reade, showed up unannounced at the Pavilion. Lowe had never met the emperor face-to-face before. The governor rapped on the door. Gourgaud opened it. I was visiting with the emperor in the other room.
“Hudson Lowe is here, Sire,” Gourgaud told him. “He says ‘Mr. Bonaparte’ will stop whatever he is doing immediately and receive him.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” the emperor said, more than a little annoyed. “Tell him that the emperor will receive him when Monsieur Lowe learns some proper respect.” Gourgaud returned to the front door.
“The emperor is indisposed,” we heard Gourgaud transmit to the governor and his aide. In a moment Gourgaud returned to us with another message.
“The governor says, indisposed or not, you will see him or pay the consequences.”
That did it. I hadn’t seen the emperor so angry since the day after he arrived on St. Helena. His left thigh twitched—from an old war wound, he once told me—his eyes turned cold, and he drummed his fingers on the table. But he made no reply.
“What—what shall I tell him, Your Majesty?” Gourgaud said uneasily. I think Boney’s anger always made the man a bit nervous.
“Rien,” the emperor said with finality. “Such impertinence is not worthy of a reply.”
Gourgaud seemed satisfied by this. The governor was going to be completely and utterly ignored.
Boney suggested a round of reversis. But it was not easy for me to concentrate on a game amid the racket coming from the front of the Pavilion. Every few seconds Reade would pound furiously on the door, and the whole house would shake as if we were experiencing an earthquake. And every now and then, we’d hear the governor yell, “I demand—I order you—to open up, Bonaparte! In the name of the Crown!”
I left the card game so I could peek through the curtains in the next room. Reade and the governor were standing on the veranda, steam almost visibly coming out of their ears. And the governor’s appearance? I must say, Lowe couldn’t have looked more like I’d expected him to if he’d been an actor cast to play the part. He was thin, with a long, scraggly neck like a rooster on half rations. His hair was faded yellow—almost dirty, as if he were in want of a bath. Lowe’s cheeks were sunken, angular—I suppose God hadn’t seen fit to give him more than the minimum allotment of human flesh—and covered with freckles
and ugly brown blotches. It seemed as if he had some sort of skin disease that would excite more revulsion than pity. He had the kind of face that could only have been earned from a just deity, by a lifetime of misdeeds.
“The docteurs must soak him in sulfur and mercury,” the emperor remarked disdainfully. “And regarde—those hyena’s eyes of his!” I hadn’t noticed Boney join me in spying on Lowe through the curtains. We watched the governor confer with Reade, and although we couldn’t hear what Lowe said, I could tell a great deal about him by his stiff, affected way of moving, his nervous twisting, and false smile. Yes, Sir Hudson Lowe was a born jailer.
We heard the sound of rain beginning to spatter on the rooftop. In a moment it turned into a deluge. And Lowe and Reade stood outside in the downpour, shouting, pounding in vain on the front door, appearing more every moment like two very large and uncommonly ugly drowned rats.
Boney and I giggled over this spectacle, but I couldn’t help wondering if he had acted in his own best interests by enraging this powerful personage. After all, it was Lowe who now held the keys to his prison.
After another ten minutes the house no longer shook with the sounds of Lowe’s pounding fists. He and Reade had gone home.
When the rain stopped a couple of hours later, Boney suggested we go for a ride. “Come,” he said. “I need some fresh air.”
While Boney got Hope from the barn, I went for Belle.
“I was sorry to hear about Monsieur Huff,” the emperor told me as we saddled up upon my return. I started at hearing the old man’s name. Apparently, one of Boney’s staff had told him the news during my brief absence. “My condolences to you and yours, mademoiselle.”
“Merci,” I said. “We are all very sad.”
“Old as he was,” the emperor continued, “he had only just begun. Had Huff lived, he would have done great things.”
I was struck by the irony of Boney’s remarks. Was he referring to Huff’s work on the Rosetta stone? Or perhaps to…something else? But I said nothing and merely nodded in agreement with him.
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