Betsy and the Emperor (9781439115879)

by Rabin, Staton

  We had not ridden more than a hundred feet from the Pavilion veranda when Poppleton galloped up seemingly out of nowhere and blocked our path. It was nearly impossible to avoid a collision. I screamed. The emperor and I pulled up on the reins with all our might—just in time. Hope reared up, whinnied in terror, and crashed to earth again—still on his feet, thank heaven. The impact of his hooves kicked up a blinding spray of mud.

  “Cochon! You fool!” Bonaparte said to Poppleton, cursing and sputtering. “Watch where you’re going!”

  “Sorry, sir,” the nervous young man replied.

  “Poppleton! I have a young girl with me,” the emperor said. “Have you gone mad? You could have killed us all!”

  “As I said, sir, I ask your forgiveness.”

  “Hmmpphht!” Boney said, motioning for Poppleton to get out of the way.

  Poppleton didn’t move.

  “Well? Vite!” the emperor said. “What are you waiting for? Make way!”

  “I—I’m sorry, sir,” Poppleton said again. “I can’t. Governor’s orders.”

  “What!?” the emperor demanded. “What are you talking about?”

  “Governor Lowe has ordered me to stop you if you ride beyond this line.” He pointed to a miniature Union Jack stuck on a pole in the ground.

  “Impossible!” Boney said, incredulous. “You mean to say the emperor of France is not at liberty to go riding on his own horse in broad daylight? I have ridden tous les jours de ma vie—every day—for forty years!”

  “I’m afraid so, sir,” Poppleton replied sheepishly. “Not past this point. Governor’s orders.”

  The emperor gnashed his teeth. “Why, that—that—!”

  “Uh, we’ll be turning back now, Captain,” I said, breaking in. I tugged at Boney’s sleeve. He scowled at me but said no more. “We were—we were going home now anyway.”

  Chapter 16

  My father once told me, “Betsy, change is like a storm at sea. If you do your duty, strap yourself to the mast and hold your ground, you’ll weather the storm all right. But cower in fear belowdecks, the ship will be torn asunder—and you’ll find yourself in the cold confines of the briny deep.”

  This, I suppose, was a long way of saying that if you don’t make way for change, it’ll sink you. And in the weeks after Governor Lowe’s arrival, I certainly did come to feel that I was on a sinking ship. For the emperor and me, both, the new governor—with all his petty regulations and degrading restrictions—had brought storms to our sea of tranquility. Boney and I grew closer, clear in the unspoken knowledge that time was short and we would soon be separated. Longwood would soon be ready to accept its new prisoner.

  The only bright spot for me in this tempestuous seascape was the hope that Ensign Carstairs would sail into my life again. Each day I arose with the expectation that this—this!—would be the day of our long-awaited reunion. He sent me notes, explaining that try as he might, he could not get leave to come see me. I wrote back, with all the romantic outpourings of my youthful soul. But see him, I could not. The governor had restricted civilian access to the military encampments. So, as 1815 plodded slowly into 1816, and my wallowing winter dragged its way into soggy spring, I waited. And waited.

  It was on a Wednesday morning in the spring of 1816 when an event occurred that I shall always remember with horror. The day began innocently enough. My family and I were eating breakfast in the dining room, and the boys were fighting over the last scone. Suddenly, we heard the door burst open like cannon fire.

  My father, and all of us, immediately sprang from our seats.

  Governor Lowe was standing in the doorway holding a slave roughly by the arm. The poor man’s other arm was bent painfully at the elbow, pinned behind his back. Tears rolled down his smooth cheeks. The man was in leg irons. I gasped in horror when I saw who the prisoner was.

  “Toby!” I was stricken. My eyes sent him a message that his pain was my pain, his suffering, mine. I ran to my father and clasped his waist, imploring. “Father, Father, please do something!”

  “Shhh, Betsy!” my father said. But he was as angry as I, that was clear. He strode toward Lowe. “Governor, what is the meaning of this? Release him!”

  “As you wish,” Lowe replied. He sent Toby spinning across the floor, leg irons clattering noisily against the wooden boards. Toby landed in a heap at my father’s feet, and I ran to his side.

  “Toby, what have they done to you?” I said, trying to comfort him. I shook with fear. “What have they done!” His arms bore the cruel marks of Lowe’s tentacles.

  “Is all right, missy,” Toby whispered to me. “Everything soon be all right now.” With all the pain he was in, Toby was comforting me!

  “Does this man belong to you?” Governor Lowe demanded of my father.

  Father looked at the governor with disgust. “He belongs to himself,” my father snapped. “He works for me.”

  “Well, then, I see I have come to the right place,” Lowe said with oily smoothness. He paused and methodically removed his gloves, as if he were planning to stay for a nice little visit. The governor turned toward my mother and smiled charmlessly. “Don’t bother to put tea on for me, Mrs. Balcombe. What I have to say to your husband will only take a moment.”

  Of course, my mother had had no intention of doing any such thing.

  Tom Pipes approached Lowe’s pants leg. He sniffed at him, bared his fangs, and growled, low and threatening—as if he were facing down a rat in the barn.

  “Nice doggie,” Lowe said, patting our Tom on the head. He fed him a tidbit from his pocket. Tom—traitor that he was—stopped growling. My stomach roiled in revulsion. I reminded myself to give Tom a bath after this encounter—as I always did after his scuffles with skunks.

  “I’m quite the animal lover, you know,” Lowe said, as if any of us gave a damn. “I understand you have horse races here, is that not so? I’ll look forward to running my Nelson in one of them.” He stroked Tom, cooing kindly to him, as if this were a pleasant social call on his good friends, the Balcombes.

  “State your business!” my father said. I was amazed by his restraint. But Lowe had contacts with my father’s employer, the East India Company, and he knew he must watch his step.

  Lowe abruptly removed an envelope from his military jacket. “This letter, addressed to Marie-Louise in Austria, was found hidden on your man there,” the governor said, pointing to Toby. “He was caught trying to sneak aboard the Northumberland as it was getting ready to sail out of Jamestown last night.”

  Marie-Louise? That was Boney’s wife! My father did not look as surprised as I would have expected him to.

  “The communication is signed by the Frenchman,” Lowe continued. He opened the letter, turned it rapidly to the last page, and handed it to my father. “Napoleon,” he said, pointing to the signature. “That is in direct violation of my orders! Did your daughter transport this letter to that slave on behalf of the prisoner? Answer me!” the governor demanded.

  “She most certainly did not,” my father replied. Well, it was nice to see him defending me. And then he said the most astonishing thing. “I did.”

  My mother gasped. And Lowe couldn’t have looked more surprised if you’d told him he was first in line to succeed to the throne.

  William Balcombe? Smuggling letters for the emperor? I wouldn’t have thought him capable of such intrigue. But I must have gotten my devious mind from somewhere.

  “Balcombe,” Lowe said at last, pacing the floor and twitching nervously, “I suppose you know that by delivering this letter for the prisoner, you are in direct violation of my orders—which is to say, in direct violation of His Majesty, King George III, of whom I am the appointed representative on this island?”

  “I do,” my father replied forthrightly. I had to give him credit for courage.

  My mother took a deep breath, preparing herself for the worst. Suddenly, it was all too much for her, and she swayed from side to side like a drunken sailor. Then, hand to her
forehead, she moaned and—

  “Mother!” Willie shouted, frightened. I ran toward her, but my father got there first. He caught her just before she hit the floor. Father carried her to the couch.

  Willie fanned her with an arithmetic book he was carrying. My father sent Alexander for some water.

  At last my mother’s eyes fluttered and opened.

  “Are you all right, my dear?” my father said, patting her hand. Mother smiled wanly.

  “What has happened?” she said, still woozy.

  “Everything’s all right now. I’m here,” he replied.

  Father kissed her forehead. She squeezed his hand. I had rarely seen such a display of affection between them.

  Father turned to Hudson Lowe. “Have you anything further to say, Governor?” he said, glaring.

  Even Lowe seemed a bit cowed by my mother’s accident. “Just this,” he replied, struggling to recover his dignity. “I’ll let you off this time, Balcombe, in deference to your wife.” I breathed a sigh of relief. But Lowe wasn’t finished. “But I warn you, sir. If you, or any member of your family”—he looked directly at me—“help the Frenchman again in any manner, there will be hell to pay!”

  Lowe grabbed the emperor’s letter rudely from my father’s hands, tore it into pieces, and dropped them on the floor. With that, he spun on his heel and was gone, slamming the door in his wake.

  No one in my family discussed the incident after that. My mother quickly recovered and spent the rest of the morning nursing Toby back to health. I didn’t dare ask my father anything about how Boney had come to entrust him with his letter. Or why Father had chosen Toby, his most valued slave, to deliver it to Austria. The emperor had lost his only chance to reach his wife and son with a letter. But Toby had lost far more: his chance to be a free man.

  The rest of the day passed without incident. But that night…

  “Betsy,” Jane said as she sat in front of the looking glass, giving her tresses the requisite hundred strokes with the hairbrush. “I shall offer you some sisterly advice.”

  With Jane, I had come to understand that “sisterly advice” was synonymous with spitefulness.

  “Yes, Jane?” I said. “Please do it quickly.” I yawned. “I want to go to sleep.”

  “I think you are seeing entirely too much of General Bonaparte.”

  “What business is that of yours?” I snapped.

  “No need to get all huffy about it,” Jane said. “I’m just thinking of your welfare. The boys at the barracks are talking about you, you know. And Governor Lowe doesn’t like it either.”

  “Well?” I said, shrugging. “What are they saying?”

  Jane put her brush down and blew out the lamp. She got into bed. “Perhaps when you are older,” she said, her voice dripping with condescension, “I shall explain it to you.”

  “I’m not stupid, Jane,” I said. “I know just what you’re implying. But I don’t believe you.”

  “Oh, no?” she replied. “Why do you think Ensign Carstairs is so interested in you?”

  I flinched. Jane knows about me and Carstairs! Well, I reasoned, she did see us dancing together at the party, after all.

  “So that’s what this is all about!” I said, triumphant. “You’re jealous of me and Carstairs!”

  “Don’t be silly, Betsy,” Jane said, not too convincingly. “That has nothing to do with it. I’m just worried about you, is all. The boys in the barracks think that if that canny old Frenchman sees something in you—heaven knows I don’t understand what it could be—you must be quite a hussy.”

  It takes one to know one.

  “Oh, do shut up, Jane,” I said. Her comments were not worthy of a more polite response. Only a fool would think there was anything improper between me and the emperor!

  “Suit yourself,” Jane replied.

  I rolled over and went to sleep.

  The next morning, just to infuriate Jane, I suppose, I made sure to visit the emperor. I told Boney about the terrible events involving his waylaid letter to Marie-Louise. He was outraged by Lowe’s rampage against Toby and my family, and vowed to do something about it.

  Just then Bertrand entered the room. “Some newspapers for you, Sire,” he said, placing a roll of them on the table. “From Paris.”

  An old army friend had sent them to Boney and, I suppose, since the newspapers did not qualify as “correspondence,” they were not intercepted by Lowe. The gazettes were months old—already beginning to yellow around the edges—but the emperor sat down and unrolled one excitedly, gingerly, eagerly, as if it were an original copy of a precious historical document like the Magna Carta.

  He put on his spectacles and read the papers to me aloud. One article was about the price of butter in Paris. Another was about the declining health of King George III.

  “Ah!” he said, perusing the back pages of one paper. “Here is an article about me. And it mentions you, too, Betsy.”

  “Really?” I said, quite thrilled. “Read that one!”

  He translated for me: “‘The former Emperor Napoleon, now held prisoner on the island of St. Helena located some twelve hundred miles off the coast of southwest Africa…’ blah, blah, blah,” he began, skipping ahead. “Ah! Here we go. ‘He is seen frequently in the company of a spirited English nymph, Betsie Balcombe.’ They spelled your name wrong; ah, well,” he said, shrugging. “That’s the press for you.”

  “Go on!” I said, thrilled that my name was being read all over Paris. “Read the rest.”

  He continued. “‘In all the cafés it is possible to hear people wondering how France’s Old Soldier, who by all accounts has grown quite round about the middle’—well, I like that!—‘could have convinced this dainty piece to become his—’”

  Abruptly, the emperor stopped reading. He seemed to be very uncomfortable. “C’est tout. That’s all,” he said. “I suppose the rest is missing.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said, snatching the article from him and reading it silently to myself.

  I knew enough French to know they were calling me his mistress. I was mortified. This very moment, I, Betsy Balcombe, was being sniggered about like a common courtesan—my name bandied about all over Paris!

  Hot tears of anger and shame burned on my cheeks. I had to know the truth.

  “Do you think of me?” I asked him. “That way, I mean?”

  The emperor, troubled, looked down at his hands and sighed.

  “Do you?” I demanded.

  “Betsy, if I thought you were still a little girl, I would say—I could say no. No, I never think of you; never. But now it is different, you are older, more a woman—and know better than to believe what little girls believe.”

  He glanced up at me. I shook my head slowly, not wanting it to be true. I covered my ears. I wouldn’t listen to any more of this. I was shocked, hurt. More than anything else, I felt he’d betrayed me.

  Gently, Boney removed my hands from my ears. “You are different now,” he continued. “Others, too, will change. They, too, have that right! What we are together will stay just the same as always—yes, the same, nothing more. But people will talk, as maybe they should. And you must care what they say, Betsy. You must care.”

  “No!” I said, overwhelmed by pain and confusion. “I don’t care! If I meant anything to you—you wouldn’t care either!”

  I ran, crying, from the room and out the front door of the Pavilion.

  “Betsy! Betsy!” the emperor called after me, helpless, helpless as he had never been when at the head of his army. But he knew he would be stopped by the guards if he tried to follow me.

  Besides, at heart Boney probably knew that there was little he could have done for me. This was just another one of those inevitable growing pains—the “storms at sea” of which my father spoke—that we must all learn to weather. And, in the end, each of us must face those storms alone.

  Chapter 17

  Betsy!” my mother called up from downstairs. “There’s someone her
e to see you!”

  Good heavens, I thought, it must be Carstairs! He’s finally come here to see me! But, alas, my hair was a fright, and one hand was smeared with guava pulp. I had been drowning my sorrows in tropical fruit. Why is it, I wondered, that unexpected visitors have an uncanny way of ferreting out one’s most unattractive days?

  It was the morning after my row with the emperor. I was up in my room, pen in my guava-free hand, brooding on paper, as was my wont.

  Carstairs! My ensign, my love, I had written. Soon we will be reunited.

  “Coming, Mother!” I shouted, scrambling to straighten out my hair. I wiped my sticky hand on a linen towel and cascaded downstairs with a sway and a saunter, as I imagined a London opera singer might.

  “Good morning, mademoiselle.”

  Blast!

  “Oh,” I said, not bothering to conceal my enormous disappointment. “It’s only you.”

  “Only me?” Boney replied, teasing. “That’s a fine bienvenue for the emperor.”

  Poppleton stood by his side. The emperor’s “nanny du jour.”

  “Sorry,” I said. Then, remembering I was supposed to still be angry with him, I added, “What do you want?”

  He took me by the hand. “Come with me, mademoiselle. I am about to keep a promise I made to you.”

  I walked with him. It was a sticky, steamy day on St. Helena—a typically unpleasant one. It was a bit like breathing into a paper sack. Poppleton, in his tight uniform and weighed down by a heavy musket, sweated like a horse. Before long our destination became clear. Boney was taking us to Plantation House.

  We rapped on the door and were admitted. Poppleton waited outside. Reade announced us.

  Governor Lowe was seated at his desk—scribbling another one of his pompous orders, I suppose. He did not bother to look up.

  “So,” he said facetiously. “To what do I owe the high honor of this unexpected visit?”

  “This is Mademoiselle Betsy Balcombe,” the emperor said. “I have learned how you have treated her family. I am not pleased with it.”