The Secret Life of Josephine

by Carolly Erickson

  “I did not eliminate her,” I said quickly. “I do not know what happened to her.” And I began to cry

  Tears always moved Bonaparte. I could count on that.

  Joseph took a step toward me. “You killed her—or your lover did.”

  I shook my head, not looking at him, my tears continuing to flow.

  “See here, brother, we don’t know for certain where the girl is or what happened to her.” Bonaparte, uneasy, was defending me. I knew I was safe.

  “It’s as plain as day. You are letting yourself be blinded by this lying, whoring woman.”

  “You can say what you like when we’re alone, Joseph, but I won’t have Josephine insulted in her presence.” He put his arm around me, and I buried my face in his shoulder.

  Joseph swore, long and loudly and explosively, in Italian. “Can’t you see how she is manipulating you?” he shouted, reverting to French. “Using you, deceiving you . . .” He sputtered, having run out of words.

  I felt sure that, for the time being at least, I had won.

  Or had I?

  Bonaparte waved his brother out of the room, Joseph slamming the door with a vengeful loud bang that shook the walls.

  When we were alone, Bonaparte began slowly to divest himself of the fantastic costume he was wearing. He removed the diamond stickpin from his turban and unwound the yards and yards of ivory linen. When the last of the cloth was unwound, and lying in a heap on the red and gold carpet, he shook out his shoulder-length brown hair and then proceeded to discard the jeweled coat, silk trousers and, last of all, the fantastic gold slippers. He stood before me in his underclothes, a small, quite ordinary-looking man with piercing eyes that now, to my surprise, twinkled with amusement.

  He came up to me and pinched my cheek, so hard I cried out.

  “I don’t care about the girl,” he said. “But I do not forgive you for poisoning the horses. See to it that top-grade oats and hay are sent to the Sarre regiment immediately. If you don’t, I’ll know. As to your friend, the handsome Monsieur de Gautier, I think it would be good for you to be away from him for awhile. Egypt, from what I understand, is quite lovely in the early spring. I’d like you to come with me on my campaign.”

  “Oh no, Bonaparte! I would miss Hortense too much, and Coco, and Euphemia, and besides, travel is too hard on me. My headaches, you know.”

  “I hear they have very fine Arab physicians in Cairo. And healthful springs by the old temples to the gods.” “Please, Bonaparte!”

  “Pack your things. We leave in five days for the Land of the Pharaohs.”

  35

  WITH A HEAVY HEART I embraced Hortense and kissed little Coco goodbye and joined Euphemia in the great lumbering carriage that was to carry us to Toulon, where the army and navy were assembling. Eugene rode alongside us, a seasoned veteran of the fighting in Italy and, at seventeen, already a stalwart young officer. He could not wait for the exciting campaign to begin. He told me that he would make me proud of him and I assured him I could not possibly be more proud, not if I lived to be a hundred years old. He smiled at me, lovingly but slightly patronizingly.

  My day was past, his smile told me, while his was just dawning. Bonaparte did not travel with us in our coach, but he was not far away. We were part of the long line of vehicles, horsemen and footsoldiers that were under his command, all making our way along the crowded high road toward the south.

  All the roads had deteriorated in the years since the outbreak of the Revolution. In the old days of the monarchy the nobles had been responsible for making certain their villagers kept the roads clear of fallen trees and filled the deepest ruts and removed stones and other obstacles. But there were no nobles any more, and the revolutionary governments—we had had so many of them!—were too busy making laws and executing traitors and defending France from outside attack to pay attention to the humble work of keeping the highways passable.

  Every few miles, it seemed, we had to stop while a makeshift bridge was thrown together over a swollen stream, or a team of oxen was hitched to a broken carriage to drag it out of the way The constant delays were exasperating, as was the pace at which we rode, for even when the roads were at their best the long snakelike caravan crawled forward at less than ten miles a day, and when it rained our progress was much slower.

  After a week of grueling days on the road I sent Eugene with a message to my husband. I asked if he would join me for supper. I was traveling with our chef from the Paris household and he prepared excellent meals for us when we stopped each night.

  It did not surprise me when Bonaparte, having been invited to dine at eight o’clock, came riding up to our makeshift wayside lodging at ten. He threw off his waistcoat, opened the top of his shirt and, sitting down at the table, began to pull off his tight boots.

  I stood behind him and began massaging his temples. Immediately I felt his shoulders relax. In another moment he sighed, and announced that he was ravenously hungry, not having eaten all day.

  The chef brought in the first course of our supper, a fragrant, tempting soup, with crunchy fresh-baked bread. Bonaparte ate with gusto.

  “Thank heaven you are with me on this campaign,” he said at length. “I need you. You bring me luck.” He smiled his winning smile.

  “I know you think so.”

  “Ever since we met I’ve gone from success to success.” He reached one hand down the front of his shirt and brought out a small miniature attached to a silver chain. It was my smiling face.

  “You once wore an amulet, as I recall.”

  “You are my amulet now.”

  “Euphemia would say, you believe in putting the spirits on your side.” “I believe in luck.”

  I did not tell him that he made his own luck, by his sheer ability, his force and cleverness, and his remarkable capacity to lead and inspire his men. But then, if he lost faith in the power of amulets and miniatures, who was to say whether his ability might falter?

  I let a long comfortable silence pass before I spoke again. At length I said, “When we reach Egypt, you will conquer Cairo, or Alexandria, or some other important place, and then set up a camp and consolidate and organize your men, isn’t that right? As you did in Milan, on the Italian campaign?”

  “If all goes well, yes.”

  “In a few days we will be near the spa at Plombieres. The baths there are renowned for making childless women fertile. I could take the waters and visit old friends—you know how the Parisians love to go to the spa in summer. Then, once you are established, you can send for me and I can join you for your victory celebration.”

  “What friends?” His eyes had narrowed at my mention of visiting old friends.

  “Fanny de Beauharnais, Georgette DeLongpre, Agnes Crebillon and her daughters—”

  “And Monsieur de Gautier?”

  “I doubt very much that he would be there.”

  “Or our friend Barras?”

  “Hardly. There is no decadence at the spa. Only refinement—or the pretense of refinement.” We both laughed.

  “Very well. I’ll send my brother to look after you—and perhaps Paulette as well.”

  “As you wish.” I knew better than to protest at having to endure the presence of the hostile Buonapartes at Plombieres. I would make the best of the situation. At least I would have a respite from the tedium of travel.

  I said my goodbyes to Bonaparte and Eugene at Dijon and told my driver to take the road eastward. After two days we turned upward into the mountains.

  The air became fresh and cool as we ascended from the hot plains into the pine-scented hills. Once we were on our own, and no longer part of the long military train of riders and carriages, we were able to go much faster and the tedium of the journey fell away. The road to the spa led past quaint villages and along the banks of green streams, under the shade of great old trees and through mountain passes where boulders of immense size stood sentinel as our carriage rumbled by.

  I had often heard friends speak of Plombie
res but was unprepared for the charm of the small town, its promenade lined with glowing lanterns and overflowing flowerboxes, its old-fashioned cottages, each with its own scented garden, its inviting shops, elegant assembly rooms and tea rooms adjacent to the towering neo-classical entrance to the baths.

  I was received with much fanfare and presented with a two-story cottage overlooking the promenade. A band came to play under my window and when I went out on the balcony to listen, I saw that a crowd had gathered to clap and cheer. There were the usual shouts of “Vive Bonaparte!” and “Vive Madame Bonaparte!” and I waved and bowed.

  As I had hoped, a number of my friends and acquaintances from Paris were visiting the spa town. At a crowded tea-dance I encountered Henri and Bernard, the men Fanny de Beauharnais called the Inseparables, both greying, wearing identical skin-tight brown trousers, flowered waistcoats and pale blue silk shirts. They greeted me effusively.

  “So pleased to see you,” said Henri with a gracious little bow. (Bowing, which had disappeared along with noble titles during the Revolution, had begun to return as part of a change in manners.)

  “We are honored to have Madame Bonaparte among us,” said Bernard, who also bowed.

  I smiled. “Thank you both. You remember me when I first came to Paris as a raw Creole from Martinique, a thin girl with a nasty husband.”

  They guffawed. “Even then you were beautiful. In your honor we have written a poem.” They proceeded to recite it in unison:

  “Madame Bonaparte la bonne Madame Bonaparte la belle All our hearts you have won And our loyalties as well!”

  “We are in search of a musician to set our little verses to music,” Henri said in a confiding voice. “We thought we had found one, but he disappointed us.”

  Bernard nodded sadly.

  “Thank you for the kind tribute,” I said. “And tell me, is Fanny here in Plombieres? Is she coming?”

  “Fanny arrived weeks ago. She holds her salon at her cottage every Thursday night. She wants to see you.”

  I presented myself at Fanny’s quaint rented cottage on the following Thursday night. No sooner had I crossed the threshold than a cheer arose from the small crowd within. Fanny, her hair dyed a brilliant red and her aging face clownishly overpainted with powder and rouge, emerged from out of the crowd, leaning on a mahogany cane.

  “My dear Rose,” she said, embracing me with her free hand and looking down at me fondly. Her gaze seemed unfocused, her expression slightly vague. I thought, she is slowing down. Her eyesight is failing. But her mind was still sharp and her opinions caustic.

  “So you married that dreadful man,” she said to me under her breath. “Why on earth would you do that, especially when that other one, that handsome Donovan, was so much more appealing?”

  “Well speak of it later,” I told her. “You must come to my villa for tea.”

  She led me into her music room and introduced me to her current proteges. Much to my embarrassment, they fawned over me, praising me extravagantly, complimenting my dress, my simple hairstyle—I had had Euphemia pin one perfect white rose in my hair—my string of pearls and the gold brooch I wore on the shoulder of my gown.

  The days were long past when my dress caused murmurs among the straitlaced nobles of Milan. I no longer dressed like a daringly stylish Parisian, in gowns of semi-transparent fabrics that clung to my breasts and teasingly revealed my calves and thighs. Under relentless pressure from Bonaparte I had changed my style, adopting the purer, more chaste designs taken from the simple garb depicted in classical statues. These days I looked much more like a Greek goddess and less like a flamboyant, wealthy courtesan sitting in the balcony of a Paris theater. I had left behind that other, more daring self, and had remade myself into the elegant wife of a greatly admired French general, a general whose degree of public popularity was rising with every fresh military undertaking.

  With a stab of regret I realized that the people in Fanny’s salon were welcoming me and flattering me for one reason alone: they were seeking my patronage. The patronage of Rose Tascher, Creole of Martinique, who as a girl had once told fortunes for a few francs in Fanny’s drawing room in Paris. About a thousand years ago, or so it seemed.

  What would these people think, I wondered, if I offered to tell fortunes now? I decided to find out.

  “Some of you remember when I was among you, in Fanny’s salon, many years ago.” I saw some heads nodding. “I told fortunes then. I can still tell fortunes. What if, just for fun, I told my husband’s fortune?”

  There was a gasp of shock, and then a shiver of titillation.

  I saw a gleam of eager interest dawn on the faces nearest me. “Bring her the cards!” someone shouted.

  “I have my own cards,” I said. “I always carry them.”

  Sitting at a nearby table, I drew a deck of tarot cards from the pocket of my gown and shuffled them, thinking all the while of Bonaparte and his army When I felt I had shuffled adequately and concentrated long enough, I began to lay out the cards, face up, across the polished wood surface.

  First to appear was the Fool. Ah, I thought, so Bonaparte is a fool for undertaking this venture into Egypt. Then came the card of the Lovers, with its intertwined male and female figures. As soon as I saw it I realized its meaning: Bonaparte will take a lover while he is in Egypt. I felt a pang, for until now I believed that he had been faithful to me. I knew I had no right to expect fidelity, as I had a lover of my own. Yet the thought of my husband with another woman was surprisingly hurtful to me. I drew out the next card. It was the war chariot, the symbol of the military campaign. Yet right behind it came the seven of wands, which some call the card of strife, and the Hanged Man, the card of reversals of fortune. The meaning was plain: Bonaparte would be defeated.

  I felt a chill of unease and fear. But I didn’t dare reveal to the group watching me that their hero Bonaparte was about to fail in his grand endeavor. I had no doubt that I was reading the cards correctly, and that they were accurate—for the tarot never lies. Yet it would not do to tell what I knew.

  I composed myself, with some difficulty, and made up a tale which I hoped would gratify the onlookers.

  “The Fool represents each of us on our life’s journey; this card stands for Bonaparte at the present point in his life. It does not mean that he is foolish, merely that, like all humans, he is helpless as a fool when confronted by the strong hand of destiny.”

  A chorus of nods and audible sighs of agreement greeted my words.

  “Yes, he is a man of destiny,” I heard someone say.

  I went on. “This card with the man and woman represents our marriage, in which we are happily joined,” I said, pointing to the Lovers. “This one is Bonaparte’s war chariot, and the next shows the swords of his men. This final one”—I pointed to the card of the Hanged Man— “represents the fate of the enemy at the hands of the victorious French army. The enemy will be hanged!”

  A cheer broke from every throat. I had told them what they wanted to hear. Their faith in Bonaparte was intact. They looked forward to a future full of victories. But I knew the truth: that my daring, brilliant husband was on his way to ruin.

  36

  I REGRETTED HAVING TOLD BONAPARTE’S FORTUNE. NOW I knew things about his future that I did not want to know. And I was terribly worried about my brave, eager Eugene, so desirous of proving himself in battle. Now I knew that the battles he would fight in Egypt would be losing battles, and that his danger would be greater than I had imagined.

  I kept this knowledge to myself, tempted though I was to share it with someone I trusted. I did not even tell Euphemia, though for all I knew she was aware of Bonaparte’s future herself, from her own readings of the cards. Like me, she kept a tarot deck nearby at all times, and often laid out the cards, frowning and muttering to herself. But she had other means of divination at hand, rituals and prayers and small fetishes she wore and spoke to, and she used those just as often.

  Euphemia was ill at ease in Plombier
es. She disliked the crisp, cool mountain air and the frosty air of superiority some of the well-to-do visitors affected. As I have said, manners and social rules were changing; the equality so vaunted by the Revolution was giving way to gradations of rank, as in the days of the monarchy. Social snobbery was returning, and social climbing. And it was not entirely a bad thing, because the Revolution had swept away politeness and civility and replaced them with a blunt, brutish coarseness that led to barbarity. Surely civility is better than barbarity, even if it brings snobbishness in its wake.

  I pondered these things as I sat out on the balcony of my rented cottage, and watched the evening promenade along the edge of the park. Couples strolled companionably arm in arm, older people were driven slowly along in open carriages, exchanging greetings with those they passed. The pace was sedate, the atmosphere cordial. I gathered my shawl around my shoulders as evening settled in, bringing cooler air with it. Even then I lingered, watching the lamplighter illumine the street lamps and enjoying the scent of night-blooming flowers rising up from the garden below.

  My summer idyll was brief, however. I had not been in Plombieres many weeks before I learned that my reading of Bonaparte’s fortune had been correct. Who should appear in the spa town but Scipion du Roure, fresh from a naval battle just off the coast of Cairo, wounded in the arm and leg and as deaf as an old man!

  He was taking the waters to help heal his battle wounds, and I went to visit him at his rented cottage.

  I found him sitting in an armchair, with silken cushions around him on all sides, his injured arm heavily bandaged and one leg immobilized and wrapped in linen and gauze. He looked very ill, his face had a bilious yellow-green cast and he had lost all the plumpness in his cheeks. Two orderlies stood by.

  Scipion looked up when I came in, and tried to reach out to me with his good arm, but his eyes were hooded and so full of pain and bitterness that I hardly recognized him. I was much dismayed.