Napoleon's Rosebud

by Humphry Knipe

  That’s all it was. A large map of the Thames, showing the docks that cluttered the riverbanks all the way to the sea. There were ships and rowing boats sketched in everywhere, but nothing that resembled a porpoise.

  Charlotte looked up boldly into the dangerous blue eyes. “I’m not quite sure of the rules of the game,” she said, “but this is just an ordinary map. There is no sign of a porpoise.”

  Captain Johnson made an ironic little bow. “Of course there isn’t! That’s the genius of it. It’s a ship, all right. It’s been just about everywhere on that map today, but when it’s underwater, it doesn’t exist!” He puffed so exuberantly at the pipe that Charlotte choked on the smoke. Captain Johnson, eyes burning like blue fire, didn’t seem to notice. “Tell the emperor that I will tow the Eagle to Saint Helena and enter the sixty-mile visibility zone at night. Then, well before dawn, I will transfer to the Eagle and the tow ship will flee for the horizon. At dawn the Eagle will dive and complete its approach to the island underwater.”

  “How does the submarine move? Not by wagging its tail, surely?” said Charlotte, who couldn’t resist the temptation to ruffle this gorgeous man’s feathers.

  He favored her with a flash of white teeth. “We tried that, in fact, but settled on a propeller. Do you know what that is?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, it spins around and pushes you through the water.”

  “A sort of water wheel?”

  Captain Johnson, still working on his pipe, answered with a mouthful of smoke. “Sort of.”

  “But what drives the propeller? The emperor will want to hear every detail.”

  “A steam engine. It can drive the Eagle at five miles an hour underwater—more on the surface.”

  “I see,” said Charlotte, although she didn’t. She was overwhelmed by the technology. She was overwhelmed by the madcap adventurer. She was on a wild, moonlit ride. But this time it wasn’t with Byron, it was with Captain Johnson. Polly was right—he was irresistible. He could have most of her anytime he wanted. She could see in those sharp eyes of his, in his secretive smile, that he knew.

  Captain Johnson blew smoke at the ceiling, watched it rise. “The emperor will understand. He’s very technical, you know. He summoned Professor Volta to Paris in ’01. Gave him a medal for discovering the electric battery. Now, if only someone would invent the electric motor, the Eagle could travel around the world underwater!”

  Charlotte recovered her wits with an effort. “Tell me more about the escape,” she said.

  “Quite simple! We will take Napoleon on board that night, transfer him to the tow ship, and then head for America, where he will be welcomed like the hero he is.”

  “But how do you get the emperor from Longwood to the submarine? He’s surrounded by guards, night and day.”

  Johnson put down his pipe. “Dr. O’Meara helped us work out this part. We will attach a cable to a peak near Longwood house and run it down to the sea. The emperor will disguise himself as a liveried servant, who, as you know, come and go from the house as they please. Once through the perimeter of guards, he will be taken to the cable chair. The chair will have a footboard behind it for the man who controls the rate of descent with a brake. I will be that man.”

  During the long moment of silence that followed, Charlotte imagined Napoleon, squeezed into green livery, whizzed down a cliff to the sea by a dashing swashbuckler in the dead of night. The idea seemed utterly brilliant and equally preposterous at the same time.

  There was a loud knock on the door. It was a longshoreman who touched his cap. “She’s back, Captain. We’re opening the sea gate to let her in!”

  The dock was about fourty yards long and twenty wide. It was closed by a floating wall the man had called a sea gate, which was being cranked open. Captain Johnson led the way down some steps to the concrete edge of the dock. The muddy Thames lapped at their feet.

  “She’s coming in,” said the captain when the gate was fully open. “Can you see anything?”

  There wasn’t even the slightest ripple on the surface. “No.”

  “Totally invisible, you see. Now behold the behemoth!”

  There was need for the warning. A muffled clanging noise rose out of the water, as if Neptune had thrown open the doors of his undersea dungeon. A moment later the surface of the water split open, as a great black porpoise hissing clouds of steam lunged out of the water.

  “Miss Charlotte, I present you with the Eagle, 114 tons, eighty-four feet long. It is the eagle that will fly Napoleon to America.”

  Chapter 19: Home

  Saint Helena!

  Charlotte spent most of the day clutching the ship’s railings as the island, the tip of a vast undersea volcano, emerged slowly from the sea. The boat, caught in the teeth of the ill-tempered southeaster, tacked to and fro as it fought to make headway.

  The thousand-foot walls of Napoleon’s prison, and the vast moat of the South Atlantic that surrounded it, glowed like bronze as the day died, but the highlands were lost in a mantle of weeping clouds. It would be cold and foggy on Deadwood Plain. He would be sitting in front of a tiny wood fire, reading, perhaps, or dreaming of the glorious past.

  And Daniel? Dear Daniel! An innocent leaf on the vines of intrigue that infested her life. He would probably still be working away in his Botanical Gardens, aware from the boom of the signal cannon that a ship was coming in, unaware of its troublesome cargo.

  Perhaps not so innocent, according to Polly. The thought struck at Charlotte like a viper.

  “This is our last good-bye,” Polly had told her when the carriage dropped the girl off in Cheapside on its way back to Holland House. “Now that you’ve seen the submarine they’re goin’ to ship you straight back to Boney, mark my words, wif’ no time for farewells. Lucky fing! You struck gold with that Daniel of yours. I’ve ’ad your French general Go-Go. I’ve ’ad Lord Byron, because you know ’ow much he likes to slum it with types like me. I’ve even ’ad that ’andsome Captain Tom Johnson back there with his submarine. Let me tell you somefink, dearie. Daniel’s twice the man in bed as any of ’em, if you know what I mean!”

  Not so innocent at all.

  The confusing dream that had woken her in her cabin the previous night leaked back into Charlotte’s mind. She was on a wild moonlit ride with Byron, who was screaming exultantly into the wind. Above them, climbing up the cliff face with superhuman speed, was Frankenstein’s monster, lit by great flashes of lightning. Standing on the mountain’s pinnacle, waiting for the monster, was Napoleon, wearing his threadbare green coat, Legion of Honor medal, and black hat. Byron was no longer clutching the reins. It was Daniel who whipped on the horses, trying to catch up with Napoleon, who was racing down to the sea on the cable chair with her standing behind him on the footboard, fleeing to America with him.

  Just a silly dream.

  The next morning the ship anchored in James Bay. According to the census, there were 820 white Yamstocks on Saint Helena, 618 Chinese laborers, five hundred free blacks, and 1,540 black slaves. At least half the Yamstocks were at the wharf to see the island’s most beautiful girl, one of their own, return from her mysterious mission to Europe. Of course her mother, all elbows, was there, as were her brothers and sisters and aunts and cousins and all their friends and relatives. Half the island.

  The only Yamstock who wasn’t there was the one she wanted to see most. Daniel.

  “He’s waiting for you in the Gardens,” her brother Henry, who wore his kilt for the occasion, told her when his quick eyes saw her searching the crowd. “He told me to tell you to slip away and meet him there. He’s taking you to see someone.”

  She excused herself from the impromptu gathering on her mother’s porch, said Daniel wanted to see her alone. There were nudges and there were winks, but not even annoying children dared to follow her.

  He was waiting at the door of the little shack where he kept the garden tools. A horse stamped and snorted impatiently. Daniel kissed her and for a
glorious moment held her close, his heart beating against hers.

  “We’re late,” he said.

  “For him?”

  “He says you have a message.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go!”

  The horse was a fine looking animal. “Yours?” she asked.

  “On loan from Longwood. I’ve been practicing my riding.”

  He mounted first, pulled her up behind him. She wrapped her arms tightly around his waist. His stomach was hard and ribbed with muscle, the reward of hard physical work. He gave the horse its head. The wind whipped through her hair. For a moment she was back in Venice, on the sands of the Lido, racing Byron.

  Daniel’s twice the man in bed as any of ’em.

  Napoleon’s carriage was waiting for them at Hutt’s Gate, the portal to Deadwood Plain. A footman took the panting horse. Another opened the carriage door. Napoleon wore his threadbare green coat decorated with his tarnished Legion of Honor medal with its defiant imperial eagle at the center. His deep-set eyes glowed in his gloomy face.

  He didn’t greet her. “What did you think of London?” he snapped.

  “It is unimaginably huge, Your Majesty.”

  “I was within a stone’s throw of visiting it myself a few years ago,” he said with an expression of grim humor. “With two hundred thousand men at my back.”

  “You would have been greeted as a liberator.”

  “I will be, I’m sure, as soon as I get off this cursed rock. You have news for me.” It was a statement.

  “An American has designed a boat that sails under the water. I have seen it.”

  “How big?”

  “Over eighty feet long.”

  “How is it powered?

  “Steam, I think. It belched stream when it emerged from the water.”

  “Whom have you told?”

  “No one.”

  “Not even Daniel?”

  She glanced at Daniel for confirmation. “No,” she said.

  “My jailer will interrogate you first thing tomorrow,” Napoleon said. “He is a clever inquisitor with a nose for secrets. But you must keep the news of the craft a secret. Can you do that?”

  Charlotte caught the inquiring look Daniel shot at Napoleon. The emperor’s face remained impassive. Her eyes flew back to Daniel. Only then, when she couldn’t see it, did Napoleon give him a curt nod of assent.

  Afterward, when they were back at the Botanical Gardens, Charlotte and Daniel walked together, keeping their voices low as if there were ears in the breadfruit trees. First she described Captain Johnson, to make him jealous, and then gave him a waspish description of Polly, because Polly made her jealous.

  Daniel changed the subject. “You missed Dr. O’Meara by just two weeks,” he said.

  “Pity. I would like to have told him what a hero he is in England.”

  “That’s exactly what Governor Lowe didn’t want.”

  “It doesn’t matter what he wants,” said Charlotte. “Dr. O’Meara will be taken straight to Lady Holland. Lowe knows that. I’m surprised he let him go.”

  Daniel pulled out a weed, examined its roots. “Orders. He had no choice. London had no choice. O’Meara didn’t commit a crime. He refused to commit one. England is still a free country, you know.”

  “Not until it frees the emperor.”

  As Napoleon predicted, His Excellency Sir Hudson Lowe sent for Charlotte the next morning. He skewered her with his suspicious sideways look. “You saw Napoleon yesterday afternoon,” he snapped without asking her to sit.

  “Yes. We ran into him by chance at Hutt’s Gate,” she lied. “He was taking a drive around his perimeter.”

  “By chance? I see. Did he ask you about London?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I stayed with Lady Holland part of the time. She said you did her the honor of calling on her several times. She sends you her most cordial regards.”

  Lowe’s laugh was as dry as Jamestown dust. “Whom did you meet at Holland House?”

  “As you know, Sir Hudson, Holland House has receptions almost every night. I met a great many people.”

  “Damn Liberals, all of them, baying for Napoleon’s release.”

  “Yes.”

  He seemed startled by her candor, but his words were calm enough. “I’ve heard you spread O’Meara’s lie, that I ordered him to kill Bonaparte.”

  “I commented on it, yes, when asked. It was impossible not to. It was the talk of the town.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I had known Dr. O’Meara for years but that he had never mentioned it to me or anyone else on Saint Helena.”

  “A good answer. Lady Holland seems to have grown a cool head on you. A formidable woman that, formidable. Did she ask you to give Napoleon a message of any sort?”

  “She asked me to give him a bag of sugared prunes. She said he can’t get them here.”

  “Prunes? Really?” Lowe muttered, distracted. Then he seemed to pull himself together. “Sit, we need to talk.”

  Charlotte sat on the edge of the chair, back ramrod straight, as she had seen bon ton ladies in London do. “About what, Sir Hudson?”

  “About your duty to report acts of treason, especially as related to the security of the prisoner. Treason is a hanging crime. Did you know that?” he said very softly.

  Charlotte, eyes large pools of innocence, nodded. What did this man know?

  “Is there anything you need to tell me?”

  Somehow she found her voice. “No, Your Excellency.”

  Lowe nodded thoughtfully. Abruptly his tone became more convivial. “I suppose you know that Countess de Montholon, the woman who’s been taking General Bonaparte’s dictation, has just had a child, a daughter?”

  “Yes, sir. Little Napoleone-Josephine.”

  “Napoleon’s child. Just as well it wasn’t a son, or we’d have a second prince imperial on our hands! Another stroke of luck: Napoleon hates the smell of breast milk, can you believe that? Milk for his own child? So he’s banned the countess from his presence. It’s thrown her into the bowels of a depression—often happens to women after childbirth, apparently. She hardly gets out of bed.”

  Charlotte knew all this. “Which means that he needs someone else to take his dictation.”

  “My, my, you are quick. But are you quick enough to realize that you will need to keep your eyes and your ears open for anything…irregular, which you must immediately report to me?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. You can rely on me.”

  Long after dark that evening, a lone horseman rode unseen out of Jamestown, up the path that wound itself up the precipice of Ladder Hill, onto the winding road that led to Plantation House, where Sir Hudson Lowe, weary with the stress of the day, was already in his dressing gown, ready for bed.

  “What is it, man? You said it was urgent,” Lowe said as soon as the valet had bowed himself out.

  “It is, Sir Hudson. A monstrous plan to snatch Napoleon away from under your nose.”

  “Nonsense! I have thought through every possibility, every single one! What is this plan?”

  “A submarine.”

  Lowe’s eyes widened with a rapidly growing sense of panic. “A submarine? What in the name of the devil is that?”

  “It’s a new American invention, sir. Instead of sailing on the surface of the sea, it sails underneath it.”

  In a vision from hell, Lowe saw a craft of as yet undetermined shape sailing right underneath the fleet of frigates that he had circling the island, day and night, spiriting away the man he hated more than Satan himself. “That’s impossible!”

  “No, sir, it is not,” said Daniel. “Charlotte saw it with her own eyes, in the Thames. It was totally invisible until it surfaced so close to her she could almost touch it.”

  “She told me nothing of this fiendish invention. Nothing! This is treason! I will throw the lying whelp into a dungeon so deep that not even the rats will fi
nd her!”

  “It is about eighty feet long, Your Excellency. It can hold a crew of twenty men. It has large glass portholes for navigation. She saw men inside waving at her.”

  “Good God! Can her report be trusted? Of course she can’t, she lied to me!”

  “But not to me. And not to Napoleon.”

  “She told him about this…this thing?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  Governor Lowe beat the arms of his chair. “And she will tell me as well, even if I have to strip her naked and break her legs on the wheel!”

  Lowe was so anguished that Daniel felt quite sorry for him, but he stayed in character. “Sir, with respect, I think there’s a better way. If you arrest her, the plotters will know that their secret is out. Perhaps they will come up with a plan that is even more devious. Charlotte tells me everything. I pass it all on to you. We have placed a cuckoo in Napoleon’s nest. All we have to do is listen when she sings.”

  Lowe unclenched his fist slowly, as if the secret to what he should do was written on his palm. “How do they plan to get him from Longwood to the sea?”

  “Charlotte says a man called Captain Johnson, a smuggler who has made a practice of escaping from prison, will attach a cable to a mountain crag, perhaps on Horse Point, and run Napoleon down in a cable chair.”

  Lowe’s eyes shot from side to side as if they were trying to escape from his roiling brain. His lips moved, silently as a goldfish. “Damn and blast that blackguard!” he spat. “Liberals everywhere will scream blue murder, but this forces me to make Bonaparte’s life even more of a misery than it already is. I’ll deny him his carriage rides. I will redouble the guards. Post men on all the crags near Longwood, night and day. I will cut his visitors. I will put his staff on starvation rations. I will strike back at him by making absolutely certain no one sneaks him even a single antihemorrhoidal leech!”