Elysium

by Diane Scott Lewis

  She wanted more than reading. Like the men, she’d enjoy discussing literature, exploits on battlefields, and exotic places with their emperor. “His Majesty should never have trusted that English captain who insisted he’d be received with kindness if he surrendered to the British.”

  “You’re right, we were fooled by the enemy, but His Majesty didn’t want to risk running the blockade.” Marchand spoke with a quiet grace.

  “He used to take risks. We might be in America by now.” Amélie danced her fingers along the dipping and rising rail, then turned her back on the people craning their necks on shore. Numerous inhabitants had swarmed like locusts to the wharf the minute their vessel entered the roadstead. “Does His Majesty anticipate he’ll be released from here, or taken someplace…more accessible?”

  “I believe he does. The emperor wrote in protest to England’s prince, but received no reply. Time will tell what we must do next.”

  The rigging and ship’s fabric creaked around them. Amélie shifted with the slight roll of the deck and appreciated the concern on the valet’s face for his master’s plight. She coveted his closeness with their emperor.

  “This is a terrible fall. Our emperor will have to rely on people he never did before.” She ran her ragged thumbnail along her tongue and compared their sovereign, this voyage, to the trials of Odysseus. Was she a rope-thin Calypso? Amélie faced the island with a frown. They’d come to the end of the wine-dark sea. Did opportunities or demons await?

  * * * *

  At sunset, three days later, Amélie noticed the onshore crowd remained undaunted, holding up lanterns winking in the twilight. The French grumbled and sighed as they crawled down into the skiffs. Oars dipped into water and soldiers rowed the boats ashore. Amélie rocked in her little boat beside her father, fishy-smelling broth sloshing around them, and tried not to stare at the islanders’ eager faces.

  During their anchorage in Plymouth Sound, hundreds of people in boats had paddled toward their ship to surround it, calling out Bonaparte. England’s Parliament, however, decided Napoleon’s presence weakened Louis XVIII’s monarchy and the Prince Regent denied their request for asylum. Now the emperor didn’t wish to be gawked at, and they skulked in shadows onto an island that stank as mildewed as the warship they left.

  At the slime-covered landing stairs, Amélie grabbed the hand rope to steady herself and a soldier hauled her up. She tottered beside her father along the tiny quay, thankful to be on a surface that didn’t jounce. A short street paralleled the wharf, separated from it by a rampart and moat spanned by a drawbridge. Her heartbeat trebling, she entered a fortress to be swallowed up.

  A line of armed soldiers held the crowd of onlookers at bay. The Imperial Court passed through first, their progress noted by gasps and whispered comments. Amélie’s head reeled as she stared at the soldier’s rigid backs, their rifles with bayonets thrust high in the air.

  By the flickering light of torches, the colonial town looked shabby, huddled on its main street. Amélie forced her head erect and matched her father’s pace, squishing along in shoes that never dried since the voyage began. She clenched her hands on her elbows and mused that freedom might be more important than grand adventures.

  Soldiers ushered their solemn group past a church and into a large white building at the beginning of the street. A British officer scrutinized them with a sneer once they assembled inside. “Unpack, make yourselves, harrumph, at home. You may be in this boarding house for a few months. The permanent quarters, chosen by the honorable Admiral Cockburn, need extensive renovations. We’ve only a few people to spare with those skills.”

  The soldiers started to shuffle baggage and people into various rooms.

  “A few months? It’s as I feared, nothing will go well for us here.” Gascon shook his lumpy head, his cheeks and jowls quivering like an undercooked soufflé.

  “It could be worse. They almost made us stay aboard the ship.” Perrault clasped his shoulder.

  “Only dead at the bottom of the ocean is worse than this.” Madame Cloubert, Clarice’s mother, rushed past them in a flurry of arms like twigs on a spindly tree. “Where is that loafing husband of mine?”

  Amélie and Perrault were shown to one chamber with two narrow beds. She glanced around the dingy room. Far too old to continue sharing with her father, she moved around trying not to fall over him. Her roiling innards might settle in a room that no longer swayed, though her legs wobbled as if she still maneuvered the ship. “Perhaps we can ask for a screen to put between the beds. I hope they’ve found us something decent for our regular household.”

  “Let’s be confident they did, ma petite.” Perrault smiled in his fleeting way. His bold features and bronze complexion made him look like he’d weathered years behind a plow instead of a stove. He hefted his trunk into a corner.

  Her father’s smile used to reassure her, but sadness lingered beneath it. Always sparing with his emotions, he acted more taciturn since her mother’s death. Sent from Paris to Lyon after that, Amélie hadn’t seen that much of him. Her two older brothers had their own lives and families in France. Here she was all he had left, but he needed to treat her as a woman, not his little girl. Restless inside, she burst out at the seams like a changing creature—a caterpillar rustling in its cocoon.

  Amélie opened her small trunk and checked her books for damage, the scent of the leather and paper soothing. She unwrapped and took out the miniature she always carried of her mother: a lovely and sweet presence flattened in paint. Sometimes Amélie wanted to ask her father if Maman had always been beautiful, never an awkward moment, but to her regret, neither of them spoke of her anymore.

  She ran a finger over her mother’s face and tucked the painting back. “What purpose does the East India Company use this island for, besides supplying ships, so far away from anything?”

  “Ships traveling to and from the Orient stop here to replenish, yes. They drop off their ill, business like that.” Perrault opened his portmanteau near the sagging bed closest to the wall. He pulled out a shirt and smoothed down the wrinkles. At forty-eight her father looked like he’d shrunk below his average height, or had she grown that much taller?

  Amélie removed a few items from her trunk. Her bodice chafed under her arms and she turned away to scratch. “It will be a relief to wash our clothes in fresh water and rinse away the itchy salt.” Braced against the mattress edge, she slipped off a shoe and rubbed her foot through her damp stocking. “I suppose we have to look for anything to be thankful for.”

  He stared up, his gray eyes intent. “I didn’t expect the island to be like this…for your sake.”

  “I’m prepared for any hardship.” She tried a comforting smile to mask her qualms. Her fears that she’d sink under the privation and fall mired into the background, but if she never tried, how else could she test her strength?

  A child screamed in the hallway. Amélie stepped out to see a frantic mother chase after, scolding him. From behind closed doors flowed strident and arguing voices. A woman wept.

  Bumping noises on the outside wall drew her to a window. Heads bobbed behind the panes, people shoving one another from the yard to peek in. All the windows had cheeks and noses, mists of hot breath, pressed against the glass.

  “Ecoutez, we won’t stand for it. These fools must be cleared away from the building immediately.” The Count de Montholon, one of Napoleon’s courtiers, clipped down the hall in his shiny boots. The medium-sized man cut a sleek figure in his tailored blue coat with diagonal bars and gold sash piped in blue. Amélie pictured him as something slippery, gliding off a rock into the sea. “What kind of lawless establishment are they running here?”

  Clarice strutted over and waved toward the windows. “Such idiots, gawping out there, spying on us.”

  “They think we’re animals in a zoo,” Amélie said. In a crack of wood, someone prie
d open a nearby window sash. She rushed forward and slammed it back down, then met her reflection. Her large brown eyes stared back, wary and distorted in the uneven pane.

  “These excitement-starved natives want a view of His Majesty,” Saint-Denis said in amused exasperation when he strolled up pulling one of the imperial trunks. “We’ve hung cloaks over the curtains to shield the emperor’s chamber. Marchand and I will sleep outside his door, to be on guard through the night.”

  “You’re very brave.” Clarice flashed him a smile, which he appeared to ignore.

  “Too bad the islanders knew we were coming,” Amélie said. One of the admiral’s flotilla had arrived five days before the Northumberland.

  “As forever as it takes for news to reach them out here,” Saint-Denis snorted, “I’m sure they were quite shocked to learn of His Majesty’s leaving Elba, Waterloo, and now…”

  The boarding house owner hurried past them with the count talking in his ear and Madame Cloubert fast on their heels. The head chambermaid halted in front of the two girls and valet, her angular face scrunched up like a peach pit. “That island innkeeper insists his place is clean. Check your beds with care tonight. Bugs crawled all over mine. Must we settle for any scrap from the British? Clarice, help me find your father.”

  “Oh, Maman, Papa probably doesn’t want to be found,” Clarice said in a sullen voice as she traipsed after her mother.

  “Madame Cloubert and Clarice always insist on sharing their opinions.” Amélie swallowed a laugh. “Neither dares grumble loud enough for the emperor to hear though. Oh—”

  Napoleon strode down the passage with his grand marshal, Count Bertrand.

  Saint-Denis set down the trunk and gestured for Amélie to move back to the wall. He slipped beside her, bowed, and lowered his eyes. She still managed a peek, one of many.

  Her emperor’s reddish-brown hair looked silky above his short neck and broad shoulders. He wore his green jacket with scarlet collar and cuffs of a colonel of the Chasseurs of the Guard, his medals glinting in candlelight from the wall sconces. His belly protruding over his breeches altered him from the gaunt young officer who wrested France from the Directors. Napoleon’s portrait as First Consul, hanging in their Paris cottage, had shown a hawk-like visage with penetrating eyes.

  Amélie glanced down at her shapeless body in the high-waisted Greek-style chemise, popularized by former Empress Josephine. People seldom controlled the packages they came wrapped in.

  Her desire to rise in importance possessed her. She stepped forward, intending to catch the emperor’s eye. Saint-Denis grabbed her arm and jerked her back. Count Bertrand flicked them a surprised glance as he and Napoleon continued past. The two men disappeared around the corner.

  “You can’t approach His Majesty like that. You know it’s forbidden,” the valet whispered with a wry smile. “I told you that on the ship. Now try to behave yourself.”

  Amélie wriggled from Saint-Denis’ grasp. She poked her sharp shoulder blades into the wall behind her and ran her hands along her arms. If she resembled a moth more than a butterfly, a moth could thrust out its wings and soar just as high.

  Chapter Two

  A person who has lost the room in which he was born, the garden where he played as a child, the house of his forebears, such a person has no fatherland—N.B.

  Napoleon glanced around the little pavilion built in the Hindu style and regretted his time had come. After inspecting his future home to the east, the day after they arrived on the island, he’d been escorted past this bucolic setting. He’d requested to stay here on this businessman’s country property so he wouldn’t have to return to the town’s prying eyes. The occupants, William Balcombe and family, had proved most kind and accommodating. They’d treated him with unfailing respect in these last two months at The Briars.

  Tropical flowers scented the air. The children played on the lawn past the garden, their laughter so sweet. This respite, almost like a bizarre masked ball—dictating to his chamberlain among the camellias, teasing with the young ones—was over.

  Napoleon ran a comb through his hair and groaned at his image in the mirror Marchand held up. An image that once struck fear into his enemies. Now soldiers waited outside for him to emerge, to travel under guard and take up residence surrounded by British soldiers like a prisoner of war. How had he allowed events to progress so badly? After escaping Elba and entering Paris without firing a shot, he’d sent out messengers requesting peace, but the nations allied against him hadn’t believed him. The ruling regimes never trusted a parvenu who dared to make himself the most powerful man in Europe. Perhaps he’d been a little too belligerent and deceitful in his dealings with them, though he’d hate to admit that to anyone.

  The most heinous of all was Austria refusing him his wife and sweet, chubby-faced little son, so smart for three. No, the boy was now four. A year since he’d seen him! Napoleon clenched his jaw, then peered out the pavilion window. Admiral Cockburn sat astride his horse several yards away, an impatient look on his long face. Napoleon smiled. He’d kept him waiting on purpose, to show he was still the emperor and no one dictated his actions.

  He dipped his fingers in his pocket, pulled out several gold coins sticky with damp, and handed them to Marchand. “Give these to that elderly slave who has tended the garden here so well.” Napoleon donned his jacket, his uniform crisp and clean, medals shining, and tried to generate the old gusto into his words. “Let’s blind that English buffoon with pomp. I will extend my thanks to these generous people who took me in, and we’ll be off to explore new territories.”

  * * * *

  Two red-coated officers blocked Amélie’s passage on the front stoop of the boarding house. “Ready for your journey?” one spouted in French. He winked at the other. “These frogs are so proud of their Boney. Proud of his endless wars and battlefield butchery. He trampled France and everyone else, but Wellington showed him.”

  “C’est odieux, you English should be more gracious in victory.” Amélie gritted her teeth and nudged past him, the humid air thick in her lungs. She banged her small trunk down each step, refusing their peevish offer of help. Relieved to be out of the crowded dwelling, she was eager for the change that would bring her together again with the emperor.

  Soldiers led up oxen pulling carts. Several island inhabitants stared and murmured from across the street. A sailor stood in front of a sleazy café and belched. Jamestown’s dilapidated wooden buildings sagged in a heat that leached into her skin.

  Amélie found it bizarre that this was the only town on Saint Helena, an island so small it stretched a mere seven English miles north to south, and ten east to west.

  Count Henri-Gratien Bertrand, a spare man in his early forties, assisted his two children into a cart. He looked wilted in his dark blue tunic, a red silk sash with gold fringe tied around his waist. His tall blond wife stood off to the side, a sulk on her face. When he tried to hand her in, she shook off his grasp.

  “Now we’ll stagnate here. We could have stayed in England, but you insist on following him wherever he goes.” The countess flounced herself into the cart. Bertrand mounted a horse, his round shoulders drooping more, and followed his family.

  Saint-Denis chuckled as he lifted Amélie’s portmanteau into a cart. “Countess Bertrand screamed about coming on this journey. Remember when she tried to throw herself out a porthole?” The young man’s slick black hair and thick-lashed eyes gave him an exotic look—someone hiding secrets filled with mischief. “The emperor said she didn’t try hard enough.”

  “I feel no sympathy for the countess.” Amélie had watched the woman chase after an official in Plymouth, begging him to tell her husband he needn’t go to Saint Helena with Napoleon. “I’m glad Count Bertrand is a loyal officer for His Majesty.”

  Charles-Tristan de Montholon sauntered out escorting his wife, who brimmed with a smile.
The Countess de Montholon waved a fan over her plump chest, prominent in the décolleté of her silk gown, as she waited for their cart to be brought around. “Do hurry, Charles, I’m anxious to see His Majesty. He must have been so lonely without my, our company.” The countess pursed her rouged lips and ignored the small boy fidgeting beside her as if he wasn’t her own son.

  “I’m surprised the Montholons joined this little troupe of ours,” Saint-Denis said after the count’s cart rattled off. “It seems odd when more loyal men were sent away.”

  “Madame Montholon is certainly overly familiar with His Majesty. I don’t know how he derives any pleasure listening to her inane chatter.” Amélie watched them on the ship, but wished she hadn’t revealed her envy. “Couldn’t a well-read woman be more to his liking?”

  “Don’t be naïve.” Ali snickered. “Our emperor prefers docile females who please him.”

  “I’m not naïve.” Or was she? She expelled her breath. “He hasn’t met the one who may change his mind.”

  “Attention!” An English lieutenant stood on the boarding house porch and snapped out a long sheet of paper. “This decree is from His Royal Majesty, already read to your betters. You are all prisoners of the British Crown. You will not aid in any way the escape of the prisoner, General Buonaparte, under threat of death.”

  “Death?” Amélie shoved her portmanteau under the cart seat. The English carried their vindictiveness to extremes, but she’d never thought her life was in danger.

  “Foreign ships will be fired upon if they approach the island,” the lieutenant read on. “Everyone must obey nightly curfews, and if out beyond it they’ll be severely punished.”

  “Merde!” Clarice tramped toward the carts, her face flushed. She swept damp auburn hair from her cheeks. “I told you they want us to die here.”