Napoleon's Rosebud

by Humphry Knipe

  The boy hovered in a way that suggested he was waiting for a tip. She gave him a penny. “Fank you, miss. I am to tell you that I have already delivered an invitation to the French general and that a carriage will be calling for you. The general said he would wait for it ’ere with you.”

  She opened the envelope, careful not to break the handsome seal. Lord and Lady Holland request the pleasure of your company for dinner at Holland House on Monday, the fourth of May, at 4:00 p.m., it read. Under the type, written in ink by a loud hand, was the note: “Wear the dress!”

  Gaspard, in well-worn regimentals, arrived early. He sat and made awkward conversation with Mr. Balcombe over a sherry while he waited for Charlotte, who was busy dressing upstairs, and the carriage.

  “So you never actually spoke to Lord Bathurst?” asked Balcombe, a little reassured by the news that he wasn’t the only one to get short shrift.

  “There was no need,” said Gaspard. “I told his man enough. I will no doubt talk with Lord Holland this evening. I take it your meeting was a failure?” he added spitefully.

  “On the contrary, it went well,” lied Balcombe. “Tyrwhitt is like a father to me. He has been my guardian since I was ten. Appointed by the prince regent himself. However, my sudden arrival here in London due to my wife’s illness came as a surprise.”

  “There’s no need to pretend that you left the island because of your wife’s health, Mr. Balcombe,” said Gaspard. “You fell in combat, you know that. What you may not know is that those letters you were given—defamatory letters, all of them—we composed them for Governor Lowe’s consumption. Oh, how the emperor laughed when we wrote them together!” Gaspard leaned forward in his chair, lowered his voice to a whisper. “You see, it was I who told Lowe that you were trying to smuggle them out. It was a ruse to convince the idiot that I had turned traitor, that I was now his man, not Napoleon’s. That it was safe to send me to London!”

  Even Gaspard’s battle-hardened heart softened when he saw the stricken look on Balcombe’s face.

  “Governor Lowe promised to say…my wife’s illness,” was all Balcombe managed to get out.

  “Love and war!” said Gaspard with a light laugh, as if that resolved a trivial issue.

  Charlotte was having her hair curled by Lucia, who would have given anything to change places with her. “Of course I haven’t met Lady Holland,” Lucia said with a trace of bitterness, “but I have heard all about her—hold still, you want to be kissed by a prince, not a hot curling iron. She’s a scandalous woman.”

  Even with her limited exposure to fashionable life, Charlotte had learned that the more besmirched your reputation, the more eager you were to besmirch someone else’s. What Lucia had done to poor Mr. Burchell in Saint Helena, abandoning him at the church door, so to speak, was outrageous. But here she was about to let loose a broadside aimed at the honor of her hostess-to-be, Charlotte was sure.

  “Scandalous?” she asked. “In what way?”

  “To begin with she’s a hypocrite,” said Lucia twirling the curling iron which had turned Charlotte’s long, wavy blonde hair into spirals. “She pretends to her liberal hangers-on that she’s a firebrand for slave emancipation, when her father is the biggest slave owner in Jamaica!”

  “Really? I heard he farmed sugarcane.”

  “Ha! And who do you suppose cuts and stacks the cane? Squirrels?”

  “She was married young, wasn’t she?”

  “Age fifteen. To an indolent aristocrat more than twenty years older than she was. Well, he couldn’t have been that indolent, because they had five children.”

  “She divorced him, didn’t she?”

  “Hold still! Yes. She fell for Liberal Lord Holland, or he fell for her, when she was traveling alone in Europe. Traveling alone? A woman of quality? Unbelievable! Not only did they have an affair, but in an excess of Liberalism, Lord Holland got her pregnant. Oh, what a scandal! There was nearly a duel. They married two days after the divorce. Of course Lady Holland was shunned by society, so she just went ahead and created a society all of her own, half of them titled Liberals, half penniless poets.”

  “Byron”—Charlotte was annoyed when she detected a tiny tremor in her voice when she said the name—“was a guest, wasn’t he?”

  “Practically lived there! Until he was banished from England, two years ago. Did that find its way to Saint Helena? I’d be surprised if it didn’t. All people seem to do there is gossip, because there’s nothing else to keep them occupied. I ought to know.”

  Charlotte allowed a few seconds for that comment to creep under the carpet. “Byron. Something to do with incest with his sister?”

  “No, much worse than that, I’m told. Something unmentionable. Ask Lady Holland. I’m sure she’ll have no problem mentioning it.”

  From outside came the clatter of a carriage drawing up, a nervous whinnying of horses. Charlotte rushed to the open window. The carriage was gilded, the griffin coat of arms on the door. It was time for her to step onto the stage.

  Holland House, with its red brick turrets and soaring arches, was a fairy-tale castle when sunset lit it on fire. The carriage carrying Charlotte and Gaspard joined the queue of elegant conveyances, many of them resplendent with coats of arms, waiting to deposit their distinguished passengers at the front portal.

  As Charlotte and Gaspard stepped out of their carriage, the full orchestra assembled in the garden struck up a slow triumphal march, full of heady vainglory.

  “Handel,” said Gaspard, standing even straighter. “They’re playing it for us, in honor of the emperor.”

  Every eye was turned on them. There was even a flutter of applause. Once again Charlotte felt a delicious tingle running up the back of her neck, a magical sensation she had first felt when Napoleon noticed her at Porteous House in Saint Helena, that little island that now seemed so very far away. Here she was, being cheered on her way to the front door of a famous palace when her parents wouldn’t have been welcome at the back!

  “I think you’re right, they’re playing it for us,” said Charlotte when she recognized the tall, handsome man, now in naval uniform, who had paid for the dress she was wearing. She had seen him signal the bandleader to strike up.

  He approached them with a wide, very white smile. “Thomas Johnson,” he said. “Charlotte Knipe. General Gaspard Gourgaud. Welcome to Holland House!”

  “And thank you for the dress,” said Charlotte as he pressed his lips to her gloved hand. How she wished she didn’t have to wear gloves so he could see her hands naked!

  “You must thank Lady Holland. May I say how splendid you look in it? You have quite stolen the center of attention!”

  “I believe they have a new statue of the emperor. I would like to see it,” said Gaspard, who was annoyed by the rapt expression on Charlotte’s face.

  “It’s in the Portuguese garden,” he said, waving in the direction of a large hedge maze. “Ask anyone. I’d show it to you myself, but I have strict instructions from Her Ladyship to inform her the minute you arrived.”

  The bust was bronze. The sculptor had somehow captured Napoleon’s calm ferocity. It stood on a polished granite pillar with a short Greek inscription carved into it.

  “What does it say?” asked Charlotte.

  Gaspard frowned and narrowed his eyes, but Charlotte got the distinct impression that he had about as little Greek as she did—which was none at all.

  “He is not dead,” said someone behind them, who sounded like he was talking in a dream. The voice belonged to a fat little man with a plump pink face who was jauntily dressed in a maroon jacket with blue trim. “That’s how it begins. Do you want me to read you the whole thing? Of course you do.” He blew his nose on the handkerchief he carried like a flag of surrender, because everything about him from the stoop of his narrow shoulders, bent knees, his shuffle when he walked a few feet closer, suggested a deep-seated and insatiable indolence. He recited the inscription in a melodious voice, his eyes closed with pleasure: />
  He is not dead, he breathes the air

  In lands beyond the deep,

  Some distant sea-girt island where

  Harsh men the hero keep.

  “It’s a line from Homer’s Odyssey, you know. It refers to the isle of Ogygia, where Odysseus was marooned. Code for Saint Helena, of course. And we don’t need to venture a guess as to whom the harsh jailer is, do we? Hudson Lowe, of course, who is the subject of poetry himself!”

  “Of course,” said Charlotte.

  The nose on the friendly pink face was blown again. “And you? You have an unfamiliar accent. Where do you hail from?”

  “Saint Helena.”

  “Yes!” said the little tub of lard, delighted that Charlotte had entered his magic realm. “You are a Nereid from the enchanted isle! Oh, how splendid this all is!” The little man closed his eyes, as if he could see better that way, waved his handkerchief around as if he were cleaning a misted window. “Enchanting!”

  Gaspard’s boots creaked as he impatiently shifted his weight. “Where will we find Lord Holland?” he said.

  “It’s Lady Holland you need to find, monsieur. She rules this magic realm!”

  “I’m Charlotte Knipe, and this is General Gaspard Gourgaud,” Charlotte said.

  The odd little man waved his handkerchief in farewell. “Coleridge,” he said with a lazy little bow, “at your service. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.”

  They found Henry Richard Vassall-Fox, third Baron Holland, holding court in his hall, which was bigger than Saint James, the largest church in Saint Helena. His Lordship, standing at the center of a knot of sycophants, was resting a hand on the shoulder of a man dressed like a Roman senator. It was a bronze cast of Lord Holland’s famous uncle, Liberal firebrand Charles James Fox. Suddenly Lord Holland lost his audience. All eyes, including his, were devouring the girl in the emerald dress who approached with a threadbare French officer of some sort.

  “Who is this feast of femininity?” asked His Lordship rhetorically. “You must be Napoleon’s girl, surely?”

  “Charlotte Knipe, Your Lordship.”

  “Knipe,” said Holland. “That’s an unusual name.”

  “Not on Saint Helena, Your Lordship,” said Charlotte. “There it’s quite common.”

  “Common? Really? And that accent of yours?”

  Charlotte smiled. “That’s even more common, sir. It’s Yamstock. Means we’re descended from yams. Yams are our national food, you see. Or at least they used to be.”

  “Yamstock? How droll! I’ve never had a yam in my life. I shall immediately order my gardeners to plant some in your honor. Tell me, does Napoleon eat them?”

  “I don’t think so, Your Lordship. General Gaspard Gourgaud would know,” she said, nodding to Gaspard, who, she sensed correctly, was by this time breathing fire at being ignored.

  “Ah, General Gaspard Gourgaud! What an honor. I believe that you fired the last volley of cannon at Waterloo. Is that so?”

  Gaspard, somewhat mollified by the remark, made a shallow bow. “Yes, Your Lordship. I believe I have that distinction.”

  “Splendid! Napoleon said something amusing about cannons. What was it? Oh, yes, he said the most honorable way for two gentlemen to become acquainted is to exchange cannonballs instead of greeting cards!”

  When the wine-fueled titter from his hangers-on subsided, Holland abruptly adopted a more serious tone, and the faces surrounding him obediently adopted a more serious expression. “But tell me, how is the emperor being treated? One hears so many conflicting accounts.”

  “Monsignor, if we could talk privately,” said Gaspard.

  “Oh, certainly,” said Holland, “if we have to.” Reluctantly he relinquished the support of his uncle’s bronze shoulder. “This way.”

  Holland, a short, broad man hobbled by a gouty ankle, escorted Charlotte and Gaspard across the vast reception room. Up a grand staircase they went, into his lavish private study. A footman in a well-powdered wig lit a seven-stemmed candelabra on an ebony table before backing out the door and closing it softly behind him.

  “Well, now,” said His Lordship with an unselfconscious display of his uneven yellow teeth, “what’s the big secret?”

  “I told the War Office what it wanted to hear.”

  “Which is?”

  “That Napoleon is living in the lap of luxury. That he lords it over everyone. Treats us all like dogs. He plans to escape to America and raise an army, which will rub the British Empire off the map.”

  The color drained from Lord Holland’s gouty face. “You blackguard! We hoped you were coming to England to get the emperor’s conditions improved. But you have done exactly the opposite!”

  Gaspard raised his long nose and aimed down it like a marksman. “With respect, Your Lordship, I am merely following the emperor’s instructions. You see, he wants to be treated worse, not better.”

  “What? Has he gone mad?”

  “No. He wants freedom, not comfort. He is martyring himself. He wants the British government, through Governor Lowe, to treat him so badly that it causes an international scandal of such proportion that the British government will be forced to unchain him.”

  “So you fed the War Office lies that seem to confirm Napoleon is a dangerous monster?”

  “Yes. Otherwise the War Office would never have allowed me to visit you.”

  “And the moment you’re here, you switch sides and reveal how Napoleon is made to suffer?”

  “Yes. The emperor ordered me to inform you, in case you become aware of any…exaggerations.”

  Holland gazed at the candles while he thought this over. “Very elaborate,” he said. He raised his eyes to Charlotte, who he could see was becoming increasingly restless. “And you, Miss Knipe, where do you fit into this labyrinthine plot?”

  “I have a private message from the emperor for Lady Holland,” said Charlotte.

  “Thanking her for the books and the sugared prunes?” said Lord Holland with a sly smile.

  Charlotte ignored the attempt at humor. “The emperor has instructed me to help with the whispering campaign.”

  “A whispering campaign. The diabolical cunning of the man! He knows that there’s no sound in London that carries farther than a confidential whisper. Try one out on me, would you?”

  “He is forced to live in an unfurnished dank hovel,” Gaspard jumped in, “fed stale bread spread with rancid butter, given the choice of drinking either sour wine or muddy water. Imagine the horror. The flame of the Enlightenment extinguished by perpetual fog!”

  Holland looked visibly shocked. “This is certainly not what we hear from the War Office.”

  “The redcoats sell tickets to people who want to take a peep at the emperor,” Charlotte said. “They treat him like a circus freak.”

  “I can see my guests are about to be royally entertained. Don’t worry, none of them will tattle to the War Office. At least not until tomorrow!”

  Without any warning the door burst open, and a woman in a regal velvet gown with a truncated peacock’s feather presiding over her lumpy turban barreled in. “Henry!” she said in a loud voice. “How typically selfish of you! You have stolen our guests of honor. Everybody is dying to hear all about Napoleon straight from the lips his favorite general!”

  “Dearest—”

  “Don’t dare dearest me! You’re a selfish old squirrel forever hoarding the best nuts for yourself! Stand up, girl,” she said, ignoring Gaspard, who had jumped to his feet and bowed crisply. “I want to look at that dress. After all, I paid for it!”

  It seemed every word that dropped from Her Ladyship’s lips was spiced with pepper. “First of all, I love the color. Green is the emperor’s favorite, because it is the symbol of spring, of rebirth. But I suppose you chose it because it matches your eyes. And what a daringly low waist! Unlike the empire line, it emphasizes the natural female hourglass waist. I certainly hope it doesn’t catch on, or all of us old biddies will have to go back to squeezing ourselves
into corsets!”

  “May I present General Gourgaud,” Charlotte said.

  “General Baron Gaspard Gourgaud!” exclaimed Lady Holland as if she had just noticed him. “What an honor to meet you. Everyone knows how you saved the emperor’s life two—or was it three times? Our most deeply felt thanks for that. But come, Charlotte, diplomatic strategy is way above our shallow little heads. We must allow the men to delve into such deep matters. My guests are straining at the leash to devour you. Come along, we mustn’t keep them waiting! You see, the silly things believe you are the emperor’s mistress and that you have a buffet of naughty Napoleonic tidbits for them.”

  Charlotte had the distinct impression that behind the mask of an overbearing harridan was an extremely cool and intelligent player. “Yes, Your Ladyship. I mean, I do have some information. Scraps, really.”

  “Well, then, tallyho, let’s throw them to the hounds!”

  Although Charlotte could feel eyes eating her up, their owners were too well-bred to swamp her. Instead they waited their turn for Lady Holland to make the introductions before barraging her with questions.

  “Is it true the emperor had to sell his imperial silver to feed his servants?”

  “Tragically, yes. Fresh food is very expensive on the island. Ordinary people live on potatoes and salt beef.”

  “What are his accommodations like? Is it true that his house is nothing but a rambling cowshed?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately the roof leaks, which feeds the mildew, and the mildew feeds on just about everything else. His servants do their best to hide it by hanging fabric on the walls and ceilings. But it has to be scraped off books and boots. Playing cards have to be dried in the oven before every game!”

  “How dreadful!” Lady Holland crowed. “And talking of dreadful, what about Sir Hudson Lowe? We have heard his surname, Lowe, is most appropriate:

  Sir Hudson Lowe, Sir Hudson Low,

  (By name, and ay! By nature so…)

  Everybody knows that rhyme!”