Betsy and the Emperor (9781439115879)

by Rabin, Staton

  Tappen challenged briefly but faded fast under pressure. It was Hope and Nelson, Hope and Nelson. Now drawing away. Neck and neck, nostril to nostril, eyebrow to eyebrow! Here comes the wire!

  I shut my eyes, leaning forward with all my might. And we crossed the finish line.

  When I opened my eyes, people were swarming about us. Someone had placed a ring of roses around Hope’s neck.

  By Jove, we’d done it! I—that is, we—that is, the emperor had won! There I was, looking like a charwoman, wiping the mud from my cheeks.

  Lowe was livid, on his feet. Yelling something about “disqualification.” But the crowd was shouting, cheering. We Brits like to see the mighty fallen. Lowe had made a lot of enemies since arriving on St. Helena, and no one gave a brass farthing what the silly gov had to say.

  Well, well! Well, well, indeed. How do you like the taste of canary feathers, Sir Hudson Lowe?

  Chapter 22

  My poor father. When he summoned me later that day at the Briars, he didn’t seem able to make up his mind whether he was more angry with me or proud for what I’d done at Deadwood. So he sentenced me to thirty minutes’ confinement in my room—the briefest imprisonment of my criminal career.

  Governor Lowe, I’m sorry to say, was not similarly lenient with my father. He fired him from his position as purveyor of Longwood, and Lowe said he’d send a scathing report to the East India Company—a missive that we all knew was virtually certain to cost my father his other position as superintendent of public sales as well. I was wracked by guilt, for strange as it sounds, it had not occurred to me that the governor would punish my father for my doings.

  As for the emperor, I got a detailed account through O’Meara about his reaction to the race. It seems that when Boney watched the stretch run through his spyglass, he couldn’t see well enough to know which horse had gone under the wire first. Desperate to learn the outcome, Boney had practically tackled O’Meara when the doctor arrived back at Longwood some hours later.

  “Well? Well?” the emperor had demanded.

  “It was Betsy on Hope!” O’Meara told him, dancing a jig and raising his fist in the air. “By a head, to be sure, but the lass won it!”

  Boney kissed the doctor on both cheeks. “Formidable! I knew it. I knew it!” he crowed. The emperor sat down, exhausted from the effort of standing, savoring his victory. “Ah!” he said. “The corpse of an enemy always smells sweet.”

  “Rest easy, my lad,” O’Meara said, patting him on the shoulder. “We’ll be wanting you alive to see other happy days.”

  The doctor told me that it was the first time he’d seen the emperor smile in months. “And you know what else the man said, dearie?” O’Meara asked me eagerly. I shook my head. He imitated Boney’s pinched accent: “‘Eh bien, this almost makes up for my defeat by Wellington, n’est-ce pas, Docteur?’”

  What joy, what rapture! It was I, Betsy Balcombe, who had given the emperor of France his last victory.

  But in the meantime, my father was going down to defeat. And I was determined to do something about it.

  “Miss Elizabeth Balcombe,” Reade announced me to the governor. I stepped into the office, where Lowe was stooped over, feeding a guava to Jonathan the tortoise. Perhaps Lord Nelson was no longer his favorite pet.

  The governor looked bilious at the mere sight of me.

  “Sir,” I blurted out. “My father knew nothing of my ride on Hope. He doesn’t know I’m here. But I came to tell you it was not his fault and if you are displeased with anyone it must be with me.”

  “I am glad you are here, Miss Balcombe,” Lowe replied sharply. “You shall save me the trouble of having to make a trip to the Briars to convey a message to your father. Tell him that the Balcombes are to be deported from St. Helena at the orders of Sir Hudson Lowe.”

  Deported? Booted off St. Helena like common criminals?

  “What?” I said. “You—you can’t do that!”

  “I assure you, Miss Balcombe,” he replied calmly, feeding another juicy tidbit to the tortoise, “I can and I will. You have been fraternizing with the prisoner, disturbing the peace, associating with an enemy of the Crown. You and your family represent a threat to security, and I have been given the authority to do whatever I deem necessary to preserve it. Young woman, consider yourself fortunate I don’t have you hanged for treason! You are dismissed.”

  Words of contempt bubbled up from my core. There was no use holding back now. After all, what more trouble could I possibly get myself into? I gritted my teeth in disgust.

  “You—you—” I struggled to think of a worthy name to call him. I tried one of Boney’s. “You petty quill driver!”

  Well. That certainly felt good.

  “That will be all, Miss Balcombe,” Lowe replied, ignoring the insult. He sat down at his desk and scribbled on a ledger.

  I turned to go. And then it dawned on me. I was never, never going to see Boney again. I had to see him again. I had to!

  “Um…Governor Lowe?”

  “What is it now?” he snapped.

  With what I was about to ask him, I was suddenly very sorry that I hadn’t stopped myself from calling him a quill driver. “May I see him before we go? Just once?”

  He stared at me, no doubt relishing my groveling.

  “Please, sir?” I said.

  Lowe crossed his arms and smiled that death’s head smile of his. “Never let it be said that I am not a generous man,” he said at last. “Yes, you can see your charming playmate, Miss Balcombe. One time only—on the very day you leave St. Helena. That is all. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  As I walked out the door, I suppressed an almost uncontrollable urge to vomit.

  My father would have fought our eviction from St. Helena, but my mother was developing rheumatism and he felt a change in climate would be the best thing for her.

  It was no small task to move a lifetime of possessions off of a remote island in the South Atlantic. There were Alex’s toys and Willie’s books, my father’s souvenirs from his sailing days, and all the useless nonsenses my mother had collected over the years and couldn’t bear to leave behind. Even a humble baby’s bowl uncovered from some dusty cupboard made my mother dissolve into a puddle of tears, which seriously slowed our departure. I had little of my own to pack; I always travel lightly, poised for quick getaways, I suppose. But Jane’s dresses alone could have filled a freighter!

  Christmas came, but without the usual joy of the season. In hopes of bringing us better luck in the year to come, my mother defied her aching hands and baked mince pies, which, so tradition had it, promised a month of happiness for each one eaten. Then my father lighted the Yule log with a stick saved from last year’s fire—supposedly to protect the house from burning down after our departure. But when the mince pies quickly turned rancid from St. Helena’s damp climate and the Yule log failed to “catch” on the first try, even my optimistic mother had to acknowledge that this did not bode well for us.

  As we gathered dutifully round Willie’s piano to sing “Auld Lang Syne” for our last New Year’s Eve on St. Helena, my thoughts wandered to someone I knew well, who also had little to celebrate. The clock struck midnight, and I wondered, what was he doing, what was he thinking, at this very moment? I found new meaning in the song’s words:

  Should auld acquaintance be forgot

  and never brought to mind?

  Should auld acquaintance be forgot

  and days of auld lang syne?

  And here’s a hand, my trusty friend

  And gie’s a hand o’ thine

  We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet

  For days of auld lang syne.

  The sad days stretched into weeks, then months, as we made final preparations for our departure. I noticed our packing seemed to go ever more slowly as the day we all hoped would never come drew near.

  All in all, it wasn’t until March of 1817 that my father affixed a padlock to the front door o
f the Briars. Though I pleaded with them tearfully, my parents would not permit me to take Belle with us back to London. The captain had told them there was no room on the ship for swine. Imagine!—calling a horse such as Belle “swine”! It pained me awfully to leave her behind, but I took some consolation from knowing that I had left her in Toby’s tender care.

  The trunks and boxes were waiting, and all that remained was for me to say farewell to my friends. Toby and I embraced silently; we had known each other too long and loved each other too well for mere words. At my insistence, my father had finally granted Toby his freedom; and he and Belle would be bound for Haiti, the land of his birth, on the next boat out of Jamestown. I hoped with all my heart that both of them would find peace and happiness there.

  At last, it was time for me to pay my most important call, and I insisted I make it alone.

  I found the emperor sitting in his garden at Longwood, reading a book. His health had improved considerably since the Deadwood Races, but Dr. O’Meara had warned me that his illness had peaks and valleys—much like St. Helena herself—and that the prognosis for his eventual recovery was not good.

  Boney had done wonders with that garden. Everywhere one looked were flowers—blue, white, and red, of course—all trying to outdo one another in magnificence for the emperor’s pleasure. The small plot of hardscrabble land in front of Longwood was now a greenery of which the ancient biblical city of Babylon could be proud.

  “Ah, mademoiselle,” Boney said as if he’d last seen me only yesterday. “‘Come into my parlor,’ said the spider to the fly. Don’t worry, Betsy, I won’t bite.”

  “You did last time,” I said with a smile.

  “That is true,” he said. He swept off his hat and made a small bow. “Pardonnez-moi.”

  He was looking much better than when I had seen him last. I sat down next to him in a wicker chair and inhaled the sweet fragrance of the flowers.

  “I like your garden,” I said.

  “Merci, mademoiselle. It is an earthly paradise, which I shall soon exchange for the real thing.”

  “You must not talk like that! You frighten me.”

  Boney shrugged. He opened to a page of his book and read:

  “But she was in this world where beauty

  Has the harshest fate;

  A rose, she lived the life that roses live,

  A morning’s space.”

  “Very pretty,” I said. “Did you write that?”

  “In war and literature,” Boney replied, “I always give credit where credit is due. C’est François de Malherbe, not I.”

  The emperor gazed off into the distance, to the mountains and the sea. Clouds ringed the towering peaks, as if God had been playing horseshoes.

  “You will be sailing over the rim of the sea toward England,” he said sadly, “while I stay to die on this miserable rock. Look at these mountains, Betsy! These are my prison walls. Soon, you will hear the Emperor Napoleon is dead.”

  Until now I had retained the illusion that we would see each other again. But the charade was over. The dam broke, and I wept.

  I fished in my dress pocket for my handkerchief—and realized I’d already packed it up in my trunk.

  Boney knelt by my side and gently dabbed my teardrops with his handkerchief. “There, now, mademoiselle,” he said, placing the cloth in my hand. The letters “NB” were embroidered in gold upon it. “You may keep this, Betsy, as a token of our parting.” He removed a small envelope from his jacket. “And this, aussi,” he said, giving it to me.

  The envelope contained four locks of the emperor’s hair, tied with ribbons. He smiled mischievously. “One lock for Betsy,” he said. “One for mere et pere et les garçons. And the emperor is so generous, he has even provided one for sister Jane.”

  I wiped my nose on my sleeve and managed a small smile. “Are you sure you can afford to give away so much hair, Boney?”

  “Very amusing, mademoiselle,” he replied.

  “Thank you,” I said. “For the hair, I mean.”

  I stood up to leave. We looked at each other, knowing the end was now upon us. Briefly, I shut my eyes, straining to burn his features into my memory. And in the next instant, I felt that he was almost able to read my mind.

  “You will forget me, mademoiselle,” the emperor said with a sigh. “As my son will not remember his father.”

  “Never,” I said, hugging him fiercely. “Never!”

  He took my face in his hands and kissed me on both cheeks.

  Briefly, I gripped the small, graceful hand that had led a thousand cavalry charges and dried my tears for me. Then I stepped back, turned slowly, and walked away.

  He called out to me. “It is worth the time after all, mademoiselle,” he said.

  I turned around and looked at him quizzically. His voice was barely audible. His eyes were moist like a seal’s.

  “To make oneself loved,” the emperor said.

  I nodded. We understood each other. I walked down the long, winding path to the sea, where my family and our ship awaited me.

  I was twenty yards below the Longwood plateau when I suddenly remembered I had not actually said good-bye! The emperor was now gone from my sight, but I called out to him just the same. Would he—would he still be able to hear me?

  “Au revoir, Boney!” I knew in English that meant only “until we meet again.”

  There was no reply. I supposed he had gone inside. Disappointed, I continued down the slope.

  But then the emperor’s voice floated down to me on the breeze, brightly, but without my optimism: “Good-bye, mademoiselle!”

  At nightfall our ship in Jamestown Harbor raised anchor. I stood on the moonlit deck facing the island.

  Good-bye, St. Helena, you palsied prison. Finally, I had the freedom I had sought for so long. But now that I did, I wasn’t sure I wanted it. Without the emperor, I felt like I’d lost an arm—like the real Lord Admiral Nelson.

  And yet freedom was the most important thing, was it not? Freedom! It had been Boney who had taught me to be truly free. Odd, I thought, to be schooled in liberty by a man who was a prisoner. But then, who better to value its sweetness? With him to inspire me, I had done great things. He had literally taught me to fly.

  In the end, I had failed. But was the emperor a failure for doing great things and falling short in the final days of his career? Did Waterloo erase all his successes? No, Boney was not a failure—and neither was I!

  Still, I felt as the French people must. Their brave leader is gone and they wonder whether they can go on without him.

  But Boney lost far more than I: his crown, empire, armies, his nation, his family, and his freedom. And yet he went on, did he not? With dignity and courage, in the face of all that. He had lost so much more than I was losing now.

  If Boney could go on, then surely I must. And the emperor would expect no less of me.

  It began to rain. I leaned over the ship’s railing, watching the storm as we pulled away from shore. Lightning flashes ripped jaggedly across the sky. Off in the distance a dog howled—a lonely, horrible sound. I shuddered.

  I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  “Don’t be scared of the thunder, Betsy,” Jane said. “I’m here.”

  I stared at her, surprised by her kindness. But for the next while she did not leave my side. We stood there at the rail, taking a long last look at the dark, black hump of St. Helena.

  Jane held my hand. She was my sister, after all.

  And far away, a pale yellow light hovered over Longwood.

  It was three years later—some twenty years ago now as I write these words—on an unusually cold day in May 1821 when news reached me in London of the emperor’s death.

  Some say he was poisoned by his enemies. I know better. He died of a broken heart.

  Epilogue

  Nearly a year after that sad day in 1821, my husband, Mr. Abell and I (yes, the unruly girl of my youth had blossomed into a rather appealing young woman, or so my
husband claims; and would you believe it?—he is a distant relation of the execrable Ensign Carstairs!) were honeymooning in the north of France.

  In a small town there we came upon a charming country inn and thought it would be a fine place to spend the night. While my husband unloaded our trunk from our carriage, I went inside to inquire about a room.

  A man was bent over behind the front desk polishing his shoes. I stood before him, but he didn’t notice me.

  Weary, and getting a bit impatient to turn in for the night, I cleared my throat to catch his attention, but to no avail.

  “Concierge!” I said, ringing the bell on his desk. “Avez-vous une chambre, s’il vous plaît?”

  The man raised himself up slowly and looked at me. And to my astonishment, standing there before me was Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte!

  My husband walked in dragging our trunk and found me dumbfounded, frozen like a statue in front of the desk. “Are—are you all right, darling?” my husband said. But my attention was wholly fixed elsewhere.

  “It’s me—me, Betsy!” I said to that old familiar face. “Betsy Balcombe!”

  But the man behind the counter did not seem to recognize me. Tears came to my eyes—along with sorrowful realization. I trembled and extended my hand to him.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you…,” I said, voice shaking with emotion, “Monsieur Roberaud.”

  Author’s Note

  Betsy Balcombe (later, Mrs. Abell) was a real girl who came to know and befriend Napoleon Bonaparte during the early years of his captivity on St. Helena. By some accounts, Betsy was fourteen when the emperor arrived on the island; others say she was thirteen. I chose to make her fourteen in my story so she could grow up more quickly.

  In 1844 the real Betsy wrote an autobiography titled Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon During the First Three Years of His Captivity in the Island of St. Helena, Including the time of his Residence at her Father’s House, “Briars” (London: John Murray). I have gone to enormous lengths to avoid reading this book as I feared it would be so charming that it might discourage me from having the temerity to attempt to tell Betsy’s story in my own way.