The Secret Life of Josephine: Napoleon's Bird of Paradise

by Carolly Erickson

  He paced back and forth, glaring down at the floor, swearing in the Corsican dialect.

  “And that girl! That big, soft, dull girl they had me marry! She hasn’t a brain in her head, always going on about her father this and her father that. Do you know, she actually told me she had never seen a naked man? She blushed red as a sunset when I took off my nightshirt.

  “ ‘Have you never seen a stallion?’ I asked her.

  “ ‘No, sir.’

  “ ‘Or a bull?’

  “ ‘No, sir.’

  “ ‘What, not even a male dog mounting a bitch in heat?’ “ ‘I was only allowed to see female animals, sir. Never males.’ “Can you imagine! The ignorance, the stupidity—” “They were keeping her pure,” I ventured.

  “They were keeping her moronic. When I think of my dear, devoted Walewska, who was ready to marry me if I asked her, who bore my son, who never asked anything of me, always was loyal and put up with all my rages and really loved me . . .”

  “I thought Madame Walewska had a husband already.”

  “There was a separation. I could have gotten an annulment.” He dismissed my demur with a wave of his hand.

  “Oh, Josephine, I chose the wrong one!” And with a sigh of genuine remorse he flung himself on my sofa, his hands over his belly

  It was my cue. I sat down and took his head into my lap, rubbing his temples and murmuring soothingly that all would be well. Evidently divorce had not severed at least one old ritual that still bound us.

  “You won’t desert me, will you Josephine?”

  I wanted to say, it was you who deserted me, but held my tongue.

  “I am Your Imperial Highness’s loyal servant,” I said.

  “You were always my good luck charm. Last night I began to fear my luck had run out. There’s a curse on the Hapsburgs. I know it now. I can feel it. Why didn’t anyone tell me? But you, my Josephine, will send me luck. You will read your cards, cast your spells, pray to your powers on my behalf, won’t you? Even now?”

  There was pleading in his eyes. I felt his fear. He needed to believe he had not lost me. He needed the reassurance I had always provided, the reassurance only I could provide.

  I saw then that I still had power over him, and that in time, that power might be used to break his dark hold over his empire.

  “I am yours to command, Your Imperial Highness,” I said dutifully, but in my heart I knew that along with the arsonists, the plotters and counterplotters, there was now the force of Bonaparte’s own need weighing on his mind, a heavy aching need that tugged at him and threatened to hinder all his grand designs.

  53

  TO MY INDESCRIBABLE JOY, I received a letter from Donovan in the spring of the year 1811, just as the imperial court was holding its breath and waiting for the new empress Marie Louise to give birth.

  A tall, strong French cuirassier came to me at Malmaison, looking very impressive, like a Roman soldier in the time of the Caesars, in his steel plumed helmet and embossed steel breastplate.

  He saluted me, and then reached solemnly into the short scabbard strapped to his waist and pulled out his sword. Wordlessly he handed me the murderous-looking weapon, with its razor-sharp blade, and I took it, gingerly, by the curved handle, afraid of cutting myself. As I took it I saw, enclosed within the elaborate handle, a rolled-up scrap of paper. I looked up at the cuirassier but he did not meet my gaze. His face remained impassive.

  Was it a trap? Or was he a member of that ever larger group of French officers who sought to overthrow Bonaparte? I was so terribly eager to read the note—for I was sure the paper must be a message from Donovan—that I took a chance and trusted the tall steel-helmeted man before me.

  “Thank you,” I said gravely, handing back the sword but keeping the note. “Will you take some refreshment?”

  Food and wine were brought. I had the valet escort the officer to the dining room. As soon as he was gone I tore open the letter.

  “Dearest Yeyette,” Donovan wrote, “how I wish you were beside me! What frolic we would have! The man who carries this will tell you his true identity and has news of me. Trust him.”

  As I read on, overjoyed that Donovan was alive, my fingers went to the pendant charm I wore around my neck, enclosing the last note I had received from him, in which he said he was freezing and starving. I had been true to the vow I made on the day that note arrived: I had never taken it off.

  I cannot tell you where I am but the bearer of this note will tell all. Our fight against the Great Satan goes well We prepare for new battles. Oh my Yeyette, I have found at last the cause for which I was born, the realm to which I belong. At last I have stepped out of the shadows into the light. Pray for me my dearest. Until I am in your arms, I am ever yours.

  Moved by the inspiration in Donovan’s message, I could not help but weep. He was alive, he was full of hope and felt uplifted by his labors. I reread the brief note several times, then went in search of the cuirassier. He had taken off his helmet and breastplate and was eating, rapidly and very hungrily, what lay on the plate in front of him: a roast chicken, some pate, strawberries from the greenhouse and a loaf of fine white bread.

  He stopped eating abruptly as soon as he saw me and stood up, standing smartly to attention. I saw then that he was a handsome, redheaded young man, well built and strong, with wary blue eyes. He fairly glowed with youth; looking at him, I felt old.

  “Please, finish your meal,” I urged him. “We are not at all formal here at Malmaison.”

  “Thank you, madame,” he said and sat down again. At a reassuring nod from me he resumed eating hungrily.

  “I suppose you have come a long way, and without much food,” I said. “I appreciate the sacrifice you have made. The writer of the note says that I am to trust you. Who is it that I am to trust?”

  He stood once again. “Sergeant Edward Costello, 95th Rifles,” he said.

  An Englishman! “Ah! So you are not a cuirassier after all.”

  For the first time he smiled. “No. It is merely a useful costume while I am here.” He sat down again. “Please tell me about Donovan.”

  He took a swallow of his wine, then put down his fork. “We fought together in Portugal and Spain.”

  “I received word of the terrible battle at La Coruna.”

  “It was a defeat, but we survived it. Or I should say, some of us did.” He looked down at the plate in front of him, with its chicken bones and strawberry leaves. “We were driven out of Portugal by the French, but we came back. Donovan and I led bands of villagers in raids against the invaders. We burned provision wagons, stole horses, ambushed stragglers. In the good weather, in the growing season, we went about our work. In the winter we froze with the peasants in their huts and waited for spring.”

  “And Donovan? Tell me about him.”

  “Ah, there’s a brave man! He taught me to fight. Never lose your daring,” he said to me. “Daring is everything. He said he had learned that from General Bonaparte.

  “He often talked about you,” the cuirassier went on after a pause. “He said you had the softest eyes in the world.” He smiled again. “Now I see why.”

  I sighed. “These poor old tired eyes have been bothering me a lot. They sting and burn, and the drops the doctor gives me to soothe them don’t seem to help. Ah, the long list of my ailments! My ears ring and buzz, my eyes sting and I have a humor in my head that won’t go away How my head hurts sometimes! I am getting to be an old woman.”

  The cuirassier shook his head. “No. Never that.”

  Edward moved into Donovan’s rooms in Euphemia’s cottage and the villagers were told that he was an officer recovering from a slight wound. They paid little attention to him, caught up as they were just then by news from the Tuileries, where Empress Marie Louise had just given birth to a son.

  At last, Bonaparte had a son of his own, a royal boy, with the blood of kings in his veins and the French imperial crown as his inheritance. He was given the grand title King of
Rome, and I heard that an architect had been commissioned to design a palace for him, a palace larger than Versailles, more impressive than the largest royal residence ever built.

  The Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld lost no time in coming to Malmaison to tell me all the news from court. She had seen the newborn lying in his golden cradle, she said, and he was rosy and plump and perfect in every way. She called him the “son of France,” and told me in detail how Bonaparte boasted of his size and strength, and how Marie Louise blushed at all the compliments being paid to her.

  I was not rude to the duchess, but I hardly listened to anything she said, as my thoughts were elsewhere. I was thinking of Donovan, and feeling for the thousandth time the joy of knowing that he was alive, and longing for the day when we would be together once again, and I could tell him all that was in my heart.

  54

  “YEYETTE! YEYETTE! Wake up, Yeyette!”

  It was Euphemia, her voice cracked and hoarse, her urgent shouting triggering a spasm of coughing.

  I sat up in bed. It was still dark, but the birds had begun a sleepy chirping outside my window.

  “What is it? Is it Hortense? Is it one of the children?”

  Still coughing, Euphemia shook her head. “Put on your dressing gown. Come quickly,” she gasped. She went to my wardrobe and brought out a gown, moving with surprising agility for her seventy-odd years. She handed the garment to me and helped me wrap it around my waist. Then she led me downstairs and out into the courtyard where a wagon was waiting.

  “Tell me where we are going!” I demanded after Euphemia had fairly pushed me up and into the wagon and made me sit down on the rough bench behind the driver.

  “You will see. He has come. The great one has come.”

  It was all she would say, as the wagon rattled along, headed in the direction of the cottages around the lake where Euphemia lived. I saw that she was tense and pale, but also full of a strange excitement. I had never seen her in this state before.

  Dawn was breaking as we reached the lake, and I saw at once, through the morning mist, that a tent had been erected beside the water. As we came closer I made out the figure of a very old, very dark man with red feathers in his straggling grey hair and wearing a dirty red cloak. He was seated on a tree stump. Around him were three African men in loincloths but with ragged jackets covering their chests and arms. It was Orgulon.

  The wagon stopped and I got down, hardly able to believe what I was seeing. The ancient quimboiseur, who had looked as old as time itself when I saw him in my girlhood, now appeared almost skeletal, with little flesh on his bony legs and a skull-like face. His skin was greyish-black, his withered hands bent, the fingers curled under, like the claws of a chicken. Yet when I approached him, and he turned his wrinkled face toward me, I saw that the look he gave me with his one good eye was still powerful, and I shivered slightly under his gaze.

  A fire had been lit in one corner of the tent, and there was a strong odor of incense in the air. A drift of smoke reached me as I knelt down on the damp grass beside the old man.

  He fixed me with his one-eyed gaze. Presently he spoke, his voice faint and raspy.

  “The time has come,” he said. “The fer-de-lance will strike. You must kill it.”

  “How?”

  “Frighten it. Then kill it. And the demon that sent it.”

  “How will I know the demon?”

  “You married him. Now you must destroy him.”

  I cannot describe the feelings the old quimboiseur’s words evoked in me, a shattering, numbing blend of awe, dread, and a curious exaltation.

  Once long ago Orgulon had saved my life, and told me I was being spared for a purpose. Now he had come all the way from Martinique, an arduous journey of many months, to announce to me that my purpose was at hand.

  I did not doubt his oracular words.

  “His way lies eastward. Follow him. I will send you a light to see by.”

  He sighed then, and his head slumped forward on his chest. The men who stood by, in attendance on him, gently eased him onto a mat and drew a blanket over his shrunken body.

  I did not linger, but returned to the house along with a trembling Euphemia.

  “He spoke to you. He knew you.”

  “He remembered me from all those years ago, when I went up Morne Gantheaume in search of him.”

  “You were lucky he didn’t shrivel up your heart in your body.”

  “Of course not. He believes I have something important to do. He wants me to live so that I can carry out my important task.”

  “What task?”

  I looked at Euphemia. Her eyes were wide with fear and uncertainty. “To kill the fer-de-lance.”

  Orgulon lived just long enough to deliver his message to me. When Euphemia and I returned to the lakeside cottages later that afternoon, his attendants were wrapping his body in strips of bark tied with red cloth.

  “Where will they bury him?” I asked Euphemia.

  “The grave of a quimboiseur is always hidden. The body dies, but the spirit walks at night. It goes in search of the gods of the underworld— and finds them at the sacred crossroads, the place where the living meet the dead.”

  “But that was on Martinique, far away.”

  Euphemia shook her head. “There are many sacred crossroads in this world, wherever the gods are revered.”

  As we stood by, Orgulon’s attendants completed their task. Leaving their tent in place and their fire burning, they hoisted the old man’s body on their shoulders and noiselessly walked off into the forest, oblivious of us and of the cottagers who had come out onto the grass to watch what was happening.

  “Good Josephine,” one of the cottagers called out to me, “who were those men? What were they doing here?”

  “Old friends of mine from Martinique,” I told them, leaving them unsatisfied but reluctant, since I was their social superior and benefactor, to ask more questions.

  It was dusk, the blue hour. A cool wind stirred the leaves in the trees around the lake, and I pulled my shawl more tightly around my shoulders.

  Suddenly the darkening sky seemed to grow lighter. A curious radiance flooded from the western horizon, then gathered itself, moment by moment, into a glowing ball with a long trailing tail, all agleam.

  I had never seen anything like it. Gradually, as we watched, night fell, but along with the stars there glowed in the sky this radiant bright orb with its shining train.

  “I will send you a light to see by,” Orgulon had told me, and here it was, light abundant, his gift and his legacy. I stood in awe, wondering at the light, hoping it would not fade, seeing in it a sign that I could indeed carry out the task Orgulon had given me. I stood for a long time, until Euphemia tugged at my sleeve and insisted that we leave, reminding me that I had had no supper and that she, for one, was getting cold.

  I let her lead me back to the house, our way lit by the glow above us. Orgulon’s light. I shone within, exulting in all that I had seen and heard that day, sure that my life had taken a new and wondrous turning.

  55

  “IT IS A COMET, OF COURSE,” Bonaparte snapped as he looked up from his desk, lifting his pen from the paper in front of him. I had come to the Tuileries to receive my allowance, the money he had agreed to give me each year when he divorced me. I knew that he was about to leave once again on campaign, having raised a vast army that included not only Frenchmen but Germans, Poles, Dutch and Italians. It was said to be the largest armed force ever assembled. I wanted to make certain I received my allowance before he left.

  After keeping me waiting for more than an hour, Bonaparte had finally had me admitted to his study and wordlessly handed me a bank draft. I thanked him but did not leave right away, despite his glare of impatience. I lingered, fascinated. Since receiving Orgulon’s message I saw my former husband in a new light, as the demon who must be destroyed.

  There he sat, in his gilded chair, on a deep padded cushion. I knew why he needed the thick cushion—b
ecause he was increasingly troubled with hemorrhoids that gave him much pain. On the wall behind him was an immense portrait of himself as a young man, long locks flowing, sword in hand, fending off a horde of enemies against a dramatic landscape.

  Does he really imagine that he still looks like that, I wondered.

  Doesn’t he realize how fat he has become, how his stomach sticks out from under his vest? How he slumps, and glowers, and has become as white and pale as a mushroom?

  “Why are you still here? Can’t you see how busy I am? I’ve answered your question about the light you’ve been seeing in the sky. It is a well known celestial phenomenon. A comet. Shall I spell the word for you? Fools believe comets foretell disaster. I know better. This one foretells my victory over the Russians.”

  “But France is in fact in the midst of disaster,” I argued. “Look at all the people who are out of work, and all the banks that are failing. The newspapers are full of stories about riots and strikes and shortages of food. Why, I’ve got beggars by the score coming to my door at Malmaison.”

  It was true. Even at Malmaison, my oasis of peace and safety, the quakes and tremblings of the Paris financial markets could be felt— and their human wreckage encountered. Even I, who did not usually read newspapers or interest myself in the ups and downs of others’ investments—unless of course I was likely to profit from them—could not ignore the stories I was hearing, stories of bands of starving men and women roaming the streets like packs of hungry wolves, stories of suicides, of people turned out of their houses and camping by the roadside in shelters made of old lumber and stones and bricks. My cooks served soup to the poor wretches who came to my door, and I sent food into the nearby village of Rueil to relieve the want there.

  Standing where I was, in Bonaparte’s private study, and seeing the inescapable change in him since he divorced me and married Marie Louise, it was hard to escape the conclusion that his marriage had brought him—and France—bad luck. And the comet symbolized it.