‘Don’t talk to me about problems, your lascars won’t listen to anything I say!’
‘Are your customs papers not in order?’
‘Of course they are! They think there’s something strange about me receiving empty barrels! I can’t help it if we have neither wood nor coopers on the island, can I? And I’m hardly going to deliver my oil in a handkerchief on the end of a stick!’
Octave resolved the difficulty, and was joking about it with Forli when a familiar voice rang out behind him:
‘I see that you have found your cane, my dear Blacé.’
Marquis de la Grange climbed out of a launch dispatched from the merchant ship, and stepped on to the gangway. His collar was open, and his face was hidden beneath a vast and very plebeian straw hat.
‘Blacé?’ Octave hoarsely. ‘I know no one of that name...’
‘Chevalier! Signor Forli is our friend, so what does your new name matter, whether it be Chauvin or Sénécal?’
‘It’s Sénécal.’
‘Fine! That sounds authentic enough.’
The three men strolled along the rampart walk, which was usually blocked off - but Octave enjoyed special privileges and the sentries gave him a military salute. La Grange was quite taken aback.
‘My word, Chevalier, you’ve come up in the world ...’
‘I have little merit, Marquis, if you knew ...’
‘Knowledge is precisely my purpose in coming here, Chevalier. Tell me all.’
‘The Emperor, that is, Bonaparte, is surrounded by idiots. When he asks the time of the old gendarme who acts as his batman, do you know what that ass tells him? “Whatever time pleases Your Majesty.”’
‘Basically I’ve come here to assess the standard of his entourage,’ said La Grange with an explosion of laughter, ‘What’s your role in all this now?’
‘I’m a kind of butler; I observe, I can go anywhere I like, sometimes I recite appropriate verses ... The other day, Bonaparte was grumbling about his court, so I gave him a riposte I had taken from a Shakespeare play in the library: ‘He that can endure to follow with allegiance a fallen lord does conquer him that did his master conquer.’
‘Lovely!’
‘It’s from Act III of Antony and Cleopatra. . .’
‘Monsieur Sénécal is playing down his role,’ broke in the oil merchant. ‘He also has police powers, and everyone knows about it.’
‘Is that true?’ asked La Grange, astonished.
‘Yes, if you like,’ Octave replied immediately. ‘I’m well read, and it’s been useful to me.’
‘Ah, yes, the old education ...’
‘I’m supposed to ensure good order among both things and people, but I have no official title.’
‘Perfect! You are precious to us, Chevalier.’
Far away from eavesdroppers by now, they began to swap confidences of a more serious kind. La Grange had travelled in person to establish a connection between Paris and his agents on the island. He supplied information before he asked for it: thus Octave learned that the formidable Maubreuil was rotting in prison: rather than attacking Napoleon in the forest of Fontainebleau, as he had been commissioned to do, Maubreuil had robbed the Princess of Wurtemberg, the wife of Jérôme Bonaparte, on the road to Nemours, as she took eleven coffers of gold and diamonds to Germany. Tsar Alexander had been furious about this affront to a princess of royal blood and ordered an inquiry. The police had found one of the diamonds on Maubreuil’s bed, in his lodgings in the rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg. Octave also learned that the Count of Sémallé was suspicious of Louis XVIII, who was too much inclined to listen to the perfidious advice of Talleyrand and reformed Jacobins. Sémallé believed this would lead to disaster, and devoted himself exclusively to the Count of Artois, the Lieutenant General of the kingdom and the only person - in his eyes -who could maintain a real monarchy.
Having listened to these details, it was obvious to Octave that he was, in turn, expected to inform the Marquis about life in the Mulini Palace and the behaviour of the Emperor, but he delivered only selected truths, and breathed easier for knowing La Grange was leaving again that evening on the Neapolitan ship. He now looked on the oil merchant in a different light, fortunately, and thought of ways of using the man for his own purposes, providing him with distorted information to pass on to Paris.
Wanting to deliver his report on the day’s events to the Emperor, Octave discovered that Napoleon had gone in search of a country residence; he did not return to the villa until morning, after exhausting his aides-de-camp and valets by riding at a gallop.
*
The unctuous Foureau de Beauregard, physician to the imperial stables, had taken care of Napoleon’s health since the defection of Dr Yvan in Fontainebleau, after the attempted poisoning. The man was unpopular because he sought to display his knowledge on every occasion. A pedant, as chatty as a blackbird, always delivering quips that were a whisker away from slander, he emerged from the kitchens carrying a steaming bowl, walked the length of the ground floor, and entered the bathroom at the end of the east wing. The Emperor was relaxing in an enamel bathtub coffered with exotic wood. Foureau held out the concoction in both hands.
‘Your Majesty should drink it very hot, this brew is excellent for cleansing and firming the innards.’
Napoleon took the receptacle, brought it to his lips, took a little sip and bellowed: ‘Ah! Do you want to burn my tongue and my throat with your infernal mixture?’
‘Chicken, sire, clear stock ...’
‘Clear but scalding!’
‘It has to be drunk that way to have any effect...’
‘It’s had its effect!’
‘Only the heat can overcome and dispel the diseased element. Hippocrates is quite clear on the matter.’
Up to his chest in salt water, the Emperor inhaled the scented steam of the consommé, and the doctor immediately grew alarmed.
‘No, no! Not like that!’
‘What is it this time, Monsieur Purgon?’
‘By inhaling the fumes, Your Majesty is swallowing columns of air!’
‘Really?’
‘It’s very bad for you. That air will whirl around the intestines and give you colic.’
‘By my age I ought to know how to drink!’
‘Sire, those vapours can be harmful, the bouillon needs to be liquid to provide relief, and besides, Aristotle himself...’
‘Would all three of you kindly bugger off, Hippocrates, Aristotle and you!’
Despite the fact that civil affairs remained a matter for Count Bertrand, Octave had officially replaced the Duke of Bassano, and this gave him the privilege of entering the Emperor’s room unannounced. He arrived via the valets’ room, which opened on to the garden, just as the eloquent medic had the bowl and its contents hurled at his waistcoat. Hubert the valet, silent and practised, picked up the pieces of faience before sponging down the tiles.
‘Charlatan!’ the Emperor yelled at the departing doctor, who was annoyed but still obsequious. Columns of air indeed!
The Emperor struck the bathwater with the palms of his hands.
‘Columns of air!’ he went on. ‘Did you hear that, Monsieur Sénécal?’
‘No, sire.’
‘Just as well! And invoking Aristotle to make you swallow soup that boils your entrails!’
Octave never disturbed the Emperor without good reason. When Hubert the valet had left with his pieces of bowl and his wet rag, Napoleon said, ‘Shut the French window, Monsieur Sénécal, the walls have ears in the Mulini. What news do you bring me?’
‘It’s precisely on the subject of eavesdroppers, sire ...’
‘I know! They’re listening to me, they’re watching me, they’re repeating my words, distorting them, interpreting them, worrying about my projects, noticing my every mood, my every movement, what I eat, if I have backache or a stomachache, they follow me when I go for a walk - ha! I’ve got eyes: the moment I venture outside, Campbell is hot on my heels, I sometimes wonder if
he doesn’t hire English dwarfs to hide under my bed, in my drawers, in my pocket, in my snuffboxes!’
‘Your Majesty insisted that Colonel Campbell stay on the island of Elba.’
‘Of course! I know him. Although he isn’t aware of it, that idiot is telling London precisely what I want him to.’
‘It’s not just the English . . .’
‘Pass me a hot towel, Monsieur Sénécal, help me climb out of this bathtub and let me hear what you have to say.’
While the Emperor, wrapped in his towel, sprayed himself with eau de Cologne, Octave told him what he had learned the previous day by going to the harbour, describing his surprise at bumping into La Grange dressed as a Neapolitan businessman and detailing the arguments between the King’s entourage and the partisans of Louis’s brother the Count of Artois - and the double game being played by Signor Forli, the oil merchant who was sending news to Paris.
‘He’s a nice enough chap, about thirty, he gets on very well with his many customers. I saw him delivering olive oil to the Forte Stella the other morning, although I didn’t know what he was up to at the time, and he seemed to be very good friends with General Cambronne.’
‘He’ll be sending reports to Italy, I expect. How? And to whom?’
‘Forli writes his messages in lemon juice, between the lines of anodyne letters to his family. The reports end up in Livorno, with the French consul, Chevalier Mariotti, who reveals them with the help of a candle, writes them out again, sending one copy to Talleyrand and another to the Count of Bussigny in Rome ...’
‘Pussini?’
‘Louis XVIII’s ambassador.’
‘Well, Sénécal, let’s treat your man Forli like my Campbell. Does he trust you? He does? Does he think you’re the royalists’ envoy? Perfect! You’ll feed him information. We’ll invent stories for him as we see fit. Of course, you will report only to me.’
‘Not a word to Monsieur Poggi?’
‘Not a word, I tell you, not to anyone!’
‘And yet you’ve put Monsieur Poggi in charge of the police and ...’
‘And he distracts me with his gossip, he helps me gauge the temperature of spirits on the island, no more than that. So, just to me, you stubborn mule!’
Hubert had silently returned and was dressing the Emperor, who continued talking to Octave without worrying about the presence of the loyal valet.
‘When you see your chap again, Monsieur Sénécal, just to show the resigned and inoffensive side of my character, tell him that I read no newspapers from the Continent. Tell him that some do reach me, but I scorn them, and have no interest in France.’
‘That will be easy, sire, because you really do refuse to read those papers.’
‘I don’t need to, and you know it! Our visitors keep me sufficiently well informed, especially the English, who are less than enchanted by the King of France, and who come and peer up my nose as they might the dromedary in the Jardin des Plantes!’
Napoleon was just buttoning his white piqué waistcoat before climbing to the first floor - to see how the Florentine painters were getting on as they decorated the trompel’oeil ceilings with laurel garlands, victories and gauze held by bundles of lances - when, looking out the window, he noticed Bertrand walking across the lawn.
‘Here comes our great marshal with his doleful countenance. I bet you, Sénécal, that he is about to announce the arrival of Countess Bertrand and her children, that he likes his apartment in the town hall either a great deal or not at all; in short, some domestic matters that I couldn’t give a fig about.’
The Emperor went out into the garden, jacketless, putting on a straw hat.
‘Has your wife arrived, your grace?’
‘Yes, sire, this morning...’
‘Is she well?’
‘As well as possible, sire, but she is pregnant and the journey has tired her ...’
‘I will pay her a visit.’
‘Thank you, sire, but...’
‘But come upstairs with me, I am going to see how our painters are managing, because I’m taking a great interest in the decoration of the Empress’s apartments!’
‘The Empress . . .’
‘Do you bring me news? And my son?’
‘No, sire, no, I meant the ex-Empress.’
‘Josephine wants to join me?’
‘Not any more ...’
‘Then finish your sentences, damn it!’
‘Fanny, my wife, tells me she was very ill.’
‘Is she better? No? Does she want a good doctor, if such a creature exists?’
‘She has died in Malmaison.’
Napoleon sat without leaving his armchair till evening. He fiddled with his watch-chain, plaited with Josephine’s hair, as though it were a rosary and quietly rejected the audiences he was supposed to be giving; he ate nothing and went to bed early, a thousand memories beneath his closed eyelids.
*
With much to do, the Emperor forgot his grief. The following day he wanted to climb the Monte Giove, dedicated to Jupiter, from which he would look down on both his island and the Tyrrhenian Sea. For that, however, he needed a local horse, one that knew where to set its hoofs among the stones along the edges of the ravines. Octave was at his wits’ end: how could he ensure the Emperor’s safety in a land of dense forests? Assassins could so easily ambush him and disappear. The Emperor didn’t care; his need of pure air, of mountain-tops, was too great, and up there, if the chestnut trees were bushy, so much the better, as it meant there would be shade and wind (for summer in Portoferraio was stifling). Nonetheless, Napoleon did not refuse the escort of the Polish lancers; they would abandon their usual mounts to ride, as he did, those safe animals, accustomed to the scrubland and its many hazards.
The troop galloped for a long time along stone-battered hairpin roads, not stopping until they reached Marciana Alta. This was a village perched half-way up the slope, the kind often seen in Corsica, where severe-looking houses push their way into poorly cobbled, rocky streets. There the horses had to be abandoned to the care of the lancers, who watered them from a spring that flowed among the lichen.
‘Could you make yourself useful, Campbell?’ asked the Emperor.
‘Certainly.’ Campbell had insisted on accompanying Napoleon on this trek, and had been granted permission to do so.
‘Give me your arm.’
Campbell, his back aching from hours of riding, began the climb, limping slightly as he struggled to keep up with His Majesty. Napoleon was not tired in the slightest, and was taking comfort from terrain like that of his childhood.
Clutching sticks carved from branches, the two men climbed a path lined with low walls, at intervals drinking water from their leather beakers, scooped from springs that bubbled among the rocks; treading on moss and bracken, they entered a primitive forest and, after walking for some time, they finally reached a chapel dedicated to the Madonna, daubed with naïve frescoes and framed by knotty hundred-year-old chestnut trees whose roots pierced the ground and re-emerged like snakes. Next to the chapel stood a hermitage, the home of the sanctuary’s guardian. He indicated the path and pointed out the peak, a hundred yards higher, at the end of a pile of fallen earth. Napoleon and Campbell clambered up there with one last effort, panting, their legs heavy. From the ridge they could see Corsica to the west, and the lacy peaks of the Monte d’Oro. The Emperor sat down on a rock, and Campbell threw himself on the ground.
‘Do you know this perfume, Master Campbell?’ asked the Emperor, taking in a big breath through his nostrils.
‘Perfume, sire? What perfume?’
‘Breathe in, for heaven’s sake! You northerners have your noses blocked! You can’t smell anything but mud from the top of the white cliffs of Dover! Even with my eyes closed, I can recognize Corsica by its perfume. Why go anywhere else, Campbell? I’ve come home to take root.’
‘I understand . . .’
‘Pfft! No, no, you can’t understand. Your moors are odourless! My scrubland is fi
lled with the smell of wild thyme and the essences of paradise.’
The Emperor got to his feet, resting an arm on the shoulder of his breathless companion, who, red as a well-cooked lobster, was sponging himself with his sodden handkerchief. Napoleon returned to the rock he had used as a seat, and gazed across at Corsica. He came from that land of mountain folk, rough and ready, families ready to murder each other at the first hint of a slight, taking refuge behind the loopholes of their farms. He remembered his nurse Illaria, telling him about the baby-eating vampire, and the uspirdo, the bird that announced death by descending with the fog. To protect him against bad luck, she used to place a dish of water on his head and pour three drops of olive oil into it, chanting as she did so. In her language, a mixture of Tuscan and Berber, she told him that Satan had struck the peak of Tafonato with a hammer, that the cemetery of the Île Sainte-Marie, in the pool of Diana, was cursed. The barren land beyond the valley of Lozari was the revenge of a three-headed monster. She also told him that curé Gabrielli had summoned up the devil to save the members of his clan who’d been besieged by a rival family, and that the devil had turned the rivals into grey sheep; and that some witches had taken possession of the cemetery above Cuttoli, that the twisted, flickering flames seen on some nights in the hamlet of Busso, i fochi di u Busso, were the souls of the damned. These fables were a mixture of Greek myths, Islam and Christian martyrology, because over the centuries Corsica, like its neighbour Elba, had passed through the hands of the Spanish, the Greek, the Etruscans, the Saracens, the Romans; Seneca, who had been exiled there, had worried about the dark forests where the elves danced. Napoleon recalled a group of shepherds, great stout fellows with pointed hats who slept on bracken and were thought to be soothsayers. He’d seen them throwing the keys of a chapel into the midst of their flock to cure sick animals, and they had told him that two months before his birth, near the point of Parata, above the Bloody Islands, a comet had been sighted.
When he returned to the hermitage, deliberately placing all his weight on Campbell’s shoulder, Napoleon seemed happy. Rather than losing himself in nostalgia, he regained his strength, and chivvied the colonel into the guardian’s cottage. He wanted to live there, he wanted to escape Portoferraio and the phoney palace that was being renovated in the countryside, isolated on a peak, but far from trees and exposed to the sun.
Napoleon's Exile Page 19
