by Tom Keneally
‘I don’t like them,’ said Jane, shivering. They had malicious-looking pincers behind them. I had thought to say that it was strange that the island’s claim to the gigantic extended only to an insect. I was sure that was a symbol of something. But Jane again jumped in and commiserated with him that the Dane had forestalled him. And behind his epaulettes and gestures I saw a serious man of ferocious, diverse ambition. The Emperor, I was sure, would like him. For the longer I spent with him, the more I doubted if at any deep level I could match his spaciousness and his passion and his intellect. I also doubted his fitness for soldiering. I could not imagine him commanding hard-headed British soldiers of the kind we passed on the way to Longwood. And I was uncertain yet whether he was with us to court me or to court Jane or the earwig. Like every loud girl, I doubted my capacity to interest men; it was only later in life that I discovered that loud girls had an advantage, however momentary, with some types.
‘Is there anywhere left on earth where you can go to find a creature that you can attach your name to?’ I asked, since his desire to do so was clearly so fervent.
‘There is Australia,’ he said. ‘It is in botany and zoology a terra incognita. There are the cores of Africa and Amazonia. There is the coast of the Russian colonies, in Siberia and Alaska, fertile with unclassified insects and with minute flowers to which the Indians of the region could lead one. But, alas, a soldier is limited in his discoveries to the places where he is sent.’
‘If the Indians have already found them, are you entitled to put your name to them?’
Croad considered this question.
‘Well, there is no denying the aborigines have known these plants from eons past. But in terms of Latin classifications, they do not yet belong to the European system, and it is in the European system we plant-sniffers seek our fame. In the meantime, the indigenes are free to carry on with their traditional names, and are unlikely to be distressed if far away, in some institute, some rarely encountered bird or Arctic midge is labelled croadii.’
My mother rode out with us on one of our excursions and, giving Croad tea later, asked, ‘If the natives lead you to a species, will you leave their dances unchanged?’
She was teasing him about his missionary fervour for the quadrille.
‘The quadrille exists because we are admirers of all things French, Mrs Balcombe. I don’t think this is true of the native Esquimaux or of the savages at Africa’s centre or of the aborigines of America and Australia.’
Jane reacted by asking him a sudden question.
‘Do you think the man who lives at the centre of Africa will become an Englishman in time? Or a Frenchman?’
Some serious weighing up went on beneath Croad’s extravagant epaulettes.
‘I think he would be better off,’ he said at last, ‘as an English constitutional Protestant than as a French Jacobin or as a member of the Roman church. For he has already in his existence been seriously enough damaged by demonism and superstition.’
‘That is a good answer, lieutenant,’ said my sister, who was certainly finding her voice in his presence.
Croad looked at her with dewy, slightly moist eyes. He did not feel patronised at all, which was in his favour.
When we went into the house for tea, my mother drew me to one side. A hazy blueness invaded from the day outside.
‘You should know, Betsy,’ she told me, ‘Croad comes here to court you, not Jane. The reverse is true with that fool Gourgaud. I thought it would be useful to you if I made that clear.’
‘And what of Major Fehrzen?’ I asked her. I felt a strange pleasure and shock at her clarifying of Croad’s purposes.
‘You are the girl that interests Major Fehrzen too. He is a decent fellow and will play a waiting game, and will not require any gesture from you until you are some years older.’
Yet my meetings with Major Fehrzen were purposefully educational by contrast to those with Croad. The major included me in complex conversations of European politics. On those occasions when his references to statesmen rose above my level of learning, my mother always took up the necessary duties of intellection, of response and comment and question. Fehrzen was a man so earnest that he seemed to carry his own share of the burden of England, and the question of its perfecting through reform. He excited us by asking us whether the Allied powers and their Congress might not give the General the chance to live somewhere that did not smack as strongly of exile as did our island.
‘You see, he speaks so much of his desire to be an English gentleman,’ said Fehrzen.
My mother was now irreverent enough towards the Ogre to say, ‘It is a pity it’s a course he did not choose twenty-five years past.’
‘Ah,’ said Fehrzen, smiling, ‘but he had ambitions then. Now he will never rise again – it would be fanciful to believe he could. He was an exile a hundred days on Elba, but there he had had not a thousand troops to guard him but a thousand troops of his own, and it was a business well within his powers of planning to take them to the south of France and commence his restoration. That is the act of ingratitude which may so drive our ministers to sternness. So, here he has merely maps and pins, and Bertrand and de Montholon, Las Cases and Gourgaud. Yet I think it would be a better concept altogether to permit him to live in our kingdom than to have him settle in America, where his brother Jerome lives, and the Americans themselves, tempting him to some new aggression against Britannia.’
Though it was mere common sense, I was quite dispirited to hear it confirmed by an admirable soldier that I would never see a risen Emperor.
Fehrzen’s hungry mind extended itself also, when he came to dinner, to the matter of slaves. My father, in his practical and unpoetic way, was quite driven by this subject and though he had been provedore to companies whose slave ships reprovisioned at the island, insisted that he had no taste for slaving. ‘We are told,’ my father discoursed, ‘that Jehovah described Job as “perfect, upright, fearing God and eschewing evil”. Yet Job was a slaveholder, say the slave traders, often a rare recourse on their part to the Bible. “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves,” says the Book of Leviticus. And there are other passages of Leviticus I do not want to cite before the ladies.’
Fehrzen declared in agreement, ‘Slavery was one of the unquestioned terms of trade of the biblical times. But it is not the reason for calling people godly.’
Would I ever be able to sit at a table and converse so earnestly, so neatly, with a man who wanted to be considered godly?
My father said, ‘Some say that for the conscientious master, slavery offers more challenges for the exercise of virtue – that we must mind them as we mind our children. And that this is not as true of the owner of the mine with his miners, or the man who owns a mechanical loom shop and his weavers.’
They sat together in fraternal Whiggish agreement, two good citizens letting their ideas settle around them.
Suddenly my father asked Major Fehrzen, ‘Do you think that when they are alone in Longwood, the French speak of escape?’
‘I think there must be at least a daydream of escape,’ said the major, and his eyes flicked a moment in my direction and he smiled in a manner I could not interpret. ‘But the means available have been limited.’
‘I can think of undignified means a lesser man than the Emperor would take,’ my father declared. ‘If I were in his place I might try to hide myself in an empty barrel and be carried down to a transport. But I am an undistinguished man and that is the sort of comic escape ordinary men attempt. Our Friend could never countenance the indignity of being discovered in a barrel. It would become the symbol of his life, and all who hated him could depict him forever as a monkey-like creature bobbing amidst the staves. It is easy to think of escape. But harder to think of an escape worthy of him.’
Fehrzen remarked pensively, ‘America is full of escape plots, but then no one there has seen this island – a rock designed as if God had a hatred of be
aches. If we had one broad strand, some sort of rescue might be possible even though our fast cruisers would be on patrol.’
‘We have our consuls in America though, and they must hear these things.’
‘But then there is Brazil, of course, Miss Balcombe,’ he addressed me, or more accurately, my father through me. ‘They daydream of having the General as their leader.’
My mother commented that Fanny Bertrand was sure the Emperor would not go to Brazil without Madame de Montholon. Major Fehrzen nodded. ‘While your friend’s brother lives in America, then there is always a chance of mischief … We could not, however, have more troops on this island without, I think, sinking it.’
Such were the colloquia to which I was supposed participant but more witness, as Major Fehrzen tried to win the approval of my parents, and my father attempted to gain the respect of Major Fehrzen. They did not employ such efforts on Lieutenant Croad.
Before me on the wall of Longwood hung a vast map of Saxony, and in his white dressing-gown and a red turban on his head, Our Friend was instructing me where to place the coloured pins on the map. Gourgaud stood by him. Now that he had to share the house with all of them, with the de Montholons and the Bertrands so often to dinner, he seemed to have even less the style of an adult than he had had at The Briars.
None of these thoughts deflected me from my task, since the place names were printed in Gothic script and I had to be alert. As the Emperor directed me, I ran about placing black pins to represent Prussia, following instructions as to where the red French pins should go in relation to Erfurt and Eisenbach and Jena, and the blue Austrian ones with Bamberg at the centre. Each pin represented a corps, which I advanced as ordered. I had got the idea by now, and moved Lannes’ corps up on the right to Auerstadt. Even had I not already known the Ogre had won dazzlingly, I would have guessed it from the dispositions. So I got into an almost meditative state of exaltation, and for some reason my father and Fehrzen’s dialogue returned to me, so that I said suddenly, as if I were a year younger, ‘Before you escape from us, will you say goodbye to me?’
‘Before I escape? How can I escape from here, Betsy?’
‘I don’t know, but the world has plans to come for you, and when we add in your own plans … surely …’
‘Surely we have confusion,’ he told me. ‘It is all absurd, Betsy.’
‘But you would say that.’
He took me by the shoulders and stared into me with his large dark eyes, limpid and intense at the same time. ‘No, it is all absurd, and you do not help me by pretending it is not.’ He went and sat by the window and moved some of the papers there.
‘The admiral, as an example, gave me an English paper with a story by a man I have never met declaring that I had told him I would escape to Africa in a basket hung from a balloon. It is a good idea if I could find a balloon gondolier, or have one secreted in by ship, and if that balloon would kindly travel twelve thousand miles in the teeth of the trade winds. Then, this fellow says I claimed I would civilise the Negroes of Africa, recruit an army and form an empire there, and call in my supporters and my family to help me be Pharaoh – the Charlemagne of Africa’s hip!’
He shook his head. Gourgaud remained po-faced and I felt he was indifferent to the conversation, to the hopes the Emperor at least pretended to mock.
‘This is the standard of escape plan suggested to me and attributed to me!’ OGF said, pawing at a page of transcription. ‘If one has never left the English counties, a journey from St Helena to Africa seems a small thing. But when you are located in this island … then you know the world’s dimensions.’
He put a hand on mine and continued, ‘Place two blue pins by the crossroads west of the River Saale. Not there. No, a little to your right. There. Jean Lannes’ Fifth Corps. That’s right. Yes, both sides of that road.’
‘But there is only one pin to a corps unless a cavalry division is involved,’ I told him, quoting back his own rules.
‘But two together means a corps spreadeagling a road. All right, put it on the north side of the road to Apolda. Yes, you would be a splendid lieutenant, Betsy. Come. Don’t worry with the pins anymore. We’ll win Jena tomorrow.’
He was restless. He stood up and gazed out the window to the west. Gourgaud stalked him. The Emperor opened the shutters and pointed out over the low trees beyond the fringes of the plateau on which Longwood stood. Along its edge a line of Chinese could be seen, half-a-dozen men, carrying the vegetable peelings, the bottles, the discarded paper, cheese rinds and night waste of Longwood to a nearby gully.
‘It has been proposed to me, not by any of my suite but by well-meaning outsiders, that I could disguise myself as one of those refuse-carrying Chinese. If I will not go to Plantation House because the admiral will not honour me with my proper title, why would I pretend to take on the appearance of someone other than I am, and wear a conical hat and slink under a pail of rubbish down into the gully and to Jamestown? There are, you see, a thousand chances, broad and narrow. The question is, should they be entertained?’
‘This is exactly what my father says,’ I confessed. ‘That your escape must honour your past.’
He made a gesture with his hand at the outer day and the far sea.
‘And how do I know that any agent of rescue is not an assassin in disguise? How do I know that three or four leagues from the shore they will not throw me into the sea?’
Still, I could not believe that behind the regular rehearsals of battles past, schemes of escape did not plague each hour.
‘You can use two pins if you like,’ he groaned. ‘For Augereau’s Seventh Corps.’
As I left that day I could see, as well as soldiers of the 53rd marching forward from across the natural causeway to the east to relieve the guard, some of the Chinese working on breaking up garden beds in the arid and disordered skirts of Longwood. The Emperor said he liked the Chinese and believed they would introduce an oriental flair into his garden. From the shade of a gumwood tree at the side of the house Emmanuel emerged. There was a strange hunger and discontent on his face.
‘Mademoiselle Balcombe,’ he called as one of the French grooms appeared from the back of the house with my horse. ‘Where is your sister?’
‘She is not well today,’ I told him briskly. He raised his jaw sideways to me, in a sort of challenge, an onset of hostility.
I wondered whether for a kind word he might change his demeanour. But I could not find that word to say.
I said to him, ‘Monsieur Las Cases,’ as if to remind him to try to behave well, and went to pass him by.
He said, ‘You believe you can travel through life artlessly. Yet there is a price to be paid for all that mischief and impudence of yours.’
It was the sort of accusation that made me set my face and step forward in defiance, in spite of the accuracy of what he had said.
‘It is easier to be blunt with some people than with others,’ I told him.
He lowered his voice. ‘You and your sister were discussed at dinner. They talked as if I were not there, or as if I were not one of them. They entered upon a discussion as to which of you was the more charming. Your sister was described as “sweet”, and you were called “alluring”. Do you wish to be called “alluring”? Your sister was declared “enchanting” by General Gourgaud, but you possessed, said one I shall not name, “une allure vertigineuse”.’
In desperation to make him stop, I found the kind word that had eluded me previously.
‘They should have had more care than to talk like that in front of you.’
‘But they talked like that just the same. To them you are meat. And one of the men at the table declared – and I leave you to guess which one – “If I wanted to marry a slave, I would choose the taller sister, but if I wished to become a slave myself, I would approach Betsy.” And the same person then said, “I suspect that His Majesty has the same feeling as mine.” And there was laughter at the table but the Emperor did not protest. So they think of y
ou as just a woman, do you understand? They think of you as a woman.’
For a second it seemed as if he might begin to cry. I had my own confusion to conceal from him. I knew that St Denis, the one the Emperor called Ali, and Novarrez stood behind OGF’s chair at dinner and would have heard all this, and I wondered if the women had been there, Madame de Montholon and Madame Bertrand? Surely not Madame Bertrand. For she would tell me such things. Unless her sense of delicacy intervened.
My mind had flickered about the idea of being desired, but now my sense of outrage submerged that sinister ambition. For I never wanted to be desired in a way that was reflected to me by the little Count Las Cases.
‘You are a poisonous child,’ I hissed at him, but I was fearful that he seemed to know, from the flush and gleam and misery of his face, that he had altered me. I could not think of the Emperor in the same way as I had when placing the pins that morning. How could he ever be approached again, on his own or in the company of others?
I went and took my horse and rode home in confusion behind one of the twins, who was riding bareback ahead. Remaining tatters of pride prevented me from turning back and questioning him and trying to dissolve my discomfort – which seemed broader than my very body – in tears.
I was still overburdened by this encounter with the young Las Cases when Madame Bertrand next visited my mother at The Briars. I was sent for to join them at the table, and I grunted at Sarah and remained where I was, determinedly reading in the parlour, until Alice was back with a note, and said to me, ‘You better come now, miss, or your mama get over-cross with you.’
‘Over-cross’ was Alice’s excellent term for fury.
I waited in the hallway before I entered the drawing room, clenching all my muscles for the entry I must make. I went in, insubstantial as a ghost but also feeling, as I had since I had been confronted by Emmanuel, vaster than the island, bloated with his inferred weight of the desire of the French. I was relieved to hear that Madame Bertrand and my mother were talking about other things, about abrasive Mrs Younghusband, who had become unpopular with the garrison by her quarrel with the Nagles.
