Anne glanced at Marthe, but she was staring out of the window at the gathering cloud.
‘Have you tried to germinate the Eucalyptus globulus?’ Labillardière’s gaze flicked back to Félix’s seed box.
‘Not as yet.’
‘She will want to grow them with these new glasshouses. She will want to establish her own nurseries. You had best be first to succeed.’
Félix bristled. ‘I have my own priorities.’
Labillardière gestured to the seed box. ‘Perhaps the Jardin des Plantes should take them for you?’
Félix’s mouth dropped open. Anne stared at him. Outside the rising wind rattled the oak trees, thrashing their limbs and sending crisp leaves swirling past the window.
‘A storm is coming,’ Marthe said suddenly, rising to her feet. ‘We had best be on our way.’
Anne could not agree more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Autumn 1802
For three days the early storm lashed Josephine’s garden. The wind and rain kept her from venturing out, and even when the wind stilled, the low clouds shrouded her trees in mist and obscured her view of the glasshouse. She was convinced it would be destroyed. She pictured shattered glass strewn across the tiled floor, not a single pane remaining, her Grand Serre reduced to a skeleton of iron and brick.
The morning after the storm cleared, Josephine rode out in her phaeton to inspect the damage. She urged the horses on. Her heart was in her mouth as she drove around the final bend past a copse of weeping willow. The building glittered in the morning sun. A miracle. Her glasshouse stood.
The architects rubbed their heads, laughed heartily, and looked relieved. Droplets of rain clung to the face of the glass and sparkled like diamonds. The floor was slick with water, reflecting the sky and creating the illusion of a lake. She stayed to watch the final panes of glass lifted high above, to the very top, fifteen feet in the air. Every man cheered as the last piece was placed. By the end of the morning, her glasshouse was made whole.
Josephine was struck by the enormity of it. Not just the size—though this truly was the grandest glasshouse in France, perhaps Europe, perhaps the world!—but that she had achieved it. She had wished this structure into being, sweated over the design, worried over its creation, and now it was here because of her.
It was pride she felt as well as love. She longed for Bonaparte or Hortense to be here with her to see it.
On the night of the storm, Hortense had sent a small note back with the carriage. Home safe. Each word was a rebuke. Louis’s house was not her home, Josephine wanted to say; Malmaison was her home. How she regretted her foolish words about duty. How ruthless and heartless she must seem to poor Hortense. Her relationship with her daughter had never felt so near to breaking.
Days later, news reached her that Hortense had gone into labour.
Josephine rushed to her daughter’s home, excited but fearful and imagining the worst. Birth was dangerous, even for young women, and a firstborn even more so. What if something terrible happened to Hortense and this awful rift between them was never mended? She leaped from the carriage only to be turned away at the door. Louis forbade her entry. She raged at him from the steps, not caring that she stood in full view on the Paris street, but the servants obeyed their master and barred her, closing and locking the door.
She returned to Bonaparte in tears. ‘She needs me! She needs her mother. How dare Louis take his hatred for me out on Hortense!’
Bonaparte was incensed. ‘He forgets who pays for his residence!’ Bonaparte promised to intervene, to remind Louis of his obligations.
Josephine waited at Malmaison, flinging herself from room to room, unable to settle. She remembered that first night here in the château making tents out of dust cloths and curling up together in the bed, mother and daughter.
Bonaparte returned late at night. ‘A boy,’ he said, voice hoarse. ‘She has had a healthy boy.’ His eyes were glistening. Josephine reached out and their fingers gripped one another. All their hopes lay with that tiny child.
‘And Hortense?’
‘She is safe.’
It took three more days before Louis would allow Josephine entry to his home.
When she pushed open the bedroom door to see Hortense propped up in bed cradling her baby, Josephine hovered in a moment of startling joy. Her child now had her own baby. She watched Hortense touch her son’s tiny hands and feet and was reminded of the gentle way Hortense had once played with their dog Fortu. Hortense who sheltered injured rabbits and tried to raise baby birds who had fallen from their nests. Hortense would be a good, wise mother. A natural mother. When she smiled at the child in her arms, Josephine recognised a heart dizzy with love.
‘Hortense?’ Josephine said uncertainly from the doorway, praying she had been forgiven. She hoped that Hortense would feel as she once had in this moment. The intensity of her love for Eugene had eclipsed all her dislike of his father. Slowly, Hortense raised her head and then beamed at her mother, beckoning her over, washing Josephine in pure relief. She felt light-headed, full-hearted. She kissed her daughter’s forehead and then her grandchild, tears falling on them both.
‘I am so pleased you are well, my brave girl,’ Josephine said, throwing her arms around her.
‘Of course, Maman!’
Josephine smiled at her strength. ‘You look well. Are you recovered? Was it an ordeal? I am so sorry I was not here for you. Louis …’
Hortense nodded, cutting her short. ‘I was well cared for. I am fine.’ Her tone was neutral.
Josephine dropped her gaze to her beautiful grandson. He was scrunch-faced, eyes closed and long black eyelashes still wet from some recent upset. Suddenly he yawned and stretched like an old man, and it made them both laugh. Josephine longed to hold him, but Hortense pressed him to her chest, gently patting his back.
Josephine kneeled at Hortense’s bedside. ‘I have wonderful news,’ she said, stroking her daughter’s arm. ‘Bonaparte has made your son his heir.’
Hortense stiffened. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Bonaparte thinks this would be the solution to all our problems. Your baby, his nephew, will be named as his heir. One day your son will be a statesman, a leader of France!’
Hortense looked shocked and Josephine fumbled for the right words. ‘It is only an adoption in legal terms.’
‘An adoption? Maman, what have you done?’
‘Don’t you see? This solves everything—this makes us secure.’
‘My son will be Bonaparte’s son? You know what Louis suspects, Maman! This will only make it worse for me.’
Josephine shook her head, confused by her daughter’s stubbornness. ‘You and Louis are his true parents. It is only a matter of succession.’
‘You will not take him from me!’ Hortense tightened her arms about her swaddled son.
‘No, of course not. He will be yours to raise and care for. You will have your baby with you always. I would never take him from you.’ Josephine tried to soothe her daughter. ‘Think of what this would mean for him. What it would give him to be Bonaparte’s heir.’
‘Are you so desperate for your own child that you would steal mine?’
‘Hush, Hortense, you are emotional. Why do you speak to me like this? Haven’t I always done everything I could for you? Hasn’t it all worked out for the best?’
‘Not this time, Maman.’
Hortense was panting, there was a wild look in her eye. Josephine was startled by the change in her placid daughter. But she remembered how motherhood could turn the gentlest cub into a tigress.
‘Don’t you see, Hortense? If Bonaparte has an heir, his advisers will stop urging him to divorce me. It will keep our family together.’
Hortense turned her face away. ‘You have lost yourself, Maman. I barely recognise you.’
Josephine jerked back. Hortense was cruel to treat her own mother in this way. ‘We will discuss this again at a later time,’ Josephine said. ‘For now I just
want to spoil my grandson.’ Josephine held out her arms.
But Hortense remained motionless, her shoulders curled around her son. For a moment, just a moment, Josephine thought her daughter was going to refuse her. But then the baby passed into her hands. Little Napoleon Charles. And he rewarded her with a magnificent smile.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Summer 1803
Marthe watched a child running across the grass with her palms turned up to the sky, trying to catch the dandelion seed heads tumbling through the air. Each time the breeze twirled them away from her. The girl clapped her hands together again, still hopeful, and peered into her cupped hands to find them empty. Her face crumpled and Marthe understood the feeling.
All of Paris was rejoicing at the birth of the First Consul’s heir even now, nine months since he was born. Painters sketched likenesses of the babe and tried to sell them to the gullible. ‘Isn’t he bonny?’ the women crowed. It could be a picture of any child, Marthe sneered, wanting to shake the women who parted with their coin.
Marthe was tired of disappointment. Life, it seemed, was filled with it. She wondered, with a dull ache, if Mme Lahaie had had her baby by now. Jacques had not mentioned it. But then she was barely speaking to her husband at present, not after what had happened in the Jardin des Plantes that summer.
Marthe came to the Luxembourg Gardens every day now, since she was banned from the Jardin des Plantes. Most times she sat by the Medici pond, where the vibrant green leaves of the trees above were reflected in the water. Here children pushed tiny sailboats along with sticks. Today the crows were heavy in the air, sweeping noisy wings above her head. A boy sitting in his mother’s lap stood and toddled across the path, tempted by the flowerbeds. He reached for a stem and pulled, tossing it to the ground and stamping on it. Marthe snorted in pleasure. A kindred spirit.
Earlier that summer, they had moved lodgings to Saint-Germaindes-Prés on the opposite bank of the Seine to bring Jacques closer to his work at the Jardin des Plantes. He had been given a desk in an attic space in the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle and Marthe had been pleased when Jacques no longer lingered in the apartment with his folios of dried and flattened plants.
Marthe was sad to lose her view of the Seine, but their new apartment on Rue Crébillon was larger, on the fourth floor instead of the sixth, and she had furniture. She had relished the choosing of carpet rugs and new curtains and upholstered chairs. She had demanded Jacques buy them a dining table fit for a party of twelve and its gleaming mahogany finish was her pride and joy. Of course she knew they would never have an occasion to use such a table, but it gave her perverse pleasure to make such a purchase nonetheless.
It was a short walk to the Jardin des Plantes from their new home. She was curious to see it, curious to see the place that occupied so much of her husband’s life. A slow-burning thirst had taken hold of her of late. She was no longer content to sit and wait.
What sort of man had no need for physical contact? What type of man would not sleep with his wife? This thought had tormented her for the three years of their marriage and she was determined to discover where his needs were being met. Jacques was a creature of strict routine and predictable habits. It was easy to follow him. It felt like a game.
Each morning, Jacques always took the same route from their house, past the Jesuit College, on to the newly built Pantheon with its gleaming white columns, along the street named after his friend André Thouin, and down Rue Mouffetard just as the market sellers began to set up their stalls. He moved quickly, ducking away from the bustling marketplace where the boxes of chanterelles and rolls of cheese were being piled onto the street. He never looked behind him, never saw her weave between the fishmongers and the butchers.
The first time she had lost sight of him and had found herself alone and bewildered, walking up and down the busy merchant street. He must be meeting someone here, she had surmised. She watched the prostitutes. They gathered in the alleyways to smoke clay pipes and wait for custom. Her heart was beating hard as she forced herself to walk among them. They looked and smelled sour. What would she do if she found her husband here, in this street, rutting up against a wall? She risked everything by confronting him. What on earth had possessed her?
That day she had returned home chastened, but her curiosity soon outweighed prudence. She had to know what nature of man she had married. Against all better judgement and care for her own safety, she followed him out at night. She saw him enter a house and convinced herself that all manner of disgusting orgies would be committed there. Why else would he not need to satiate his urges with her, not even in the dark, not even with his eyes closed, unless he could find more than enough to satisfy him elsewhere? She had heard tales of secret sects of orgiastic devil worshippers. She knew her husband was an atheist. In the end, the truth was hardly worth her risk. That house was the meeting place of botanists. They met to argue over the proper classification of lilacs.
The streets around the Jardin des Plantes were named for its famous men; Cuvier, Buffon, Linné. Her husband’s name was not among them. Too prickly and selfish, she did not doubt, to be truly part of the establishment. She stalked the grounds of the Jardin des Plantes, watching the windows of the top floor of the museum. He had complained about the office they gave him, of its sweltering summer heat and the damage to his specimens. She had commiserated and promised him that in the winter he would likely freeze.
The gardens were much larger than she expected, but she was not surprised by the orderly avenues and the plants all laid out in neat rows. Four thousand species all arranged by family, Jacques had once boasted. A designated alpine garden to collect species from all over the world, he had enthused. She had barely contained a yawn.
Marthe found the oldest tree in the garden, a pistachio tree, planted one hundred years before when the Jardin du Roi was a physic garden for the King. She walked among the medicinal plants and plucked a grey-leaved stem of the absinthe, Artemisia absinthium. It grew wild in Siberia and all across central Asia, she read on the stake. How surprised it must be, she thought, to find itself here in the middle of Paris, lined up like houses in a street.
Every day at noon, Jacques took a walk around the gardens. His route was predictable, down one avenue beneath the cropped plane trees and back along the other. He walked swiftly, and it was difficult for her to remain obscured. But soon she learned if she positioned herself on a bench among the medicinal plants, she could see him pass her twice on his circuit.
Then one day he took a different path. He had walked past her as usual towards the Seine but did not return along the other avenue. She heard the distant bells marking half past the hour. He was late. Her heart kicked. This was it. He must have met someone, perhaps in some dark corner of the garden itself. A pulse of heat shot her to her feet. What was she to do? Did she really want to know?
Marthe had heard talk of men who had no interest in women. It was whispered that they took their pleasures with the gypsy boys along the river banks. Was that what she would find if she followed Jacques along this avenue? Her nostrils flared, sucking air. She trembled. Wasn’t this what she had come here to know? Still she did not move.
Marthe snapped open her parasol, casting herself in shade. The air was warm, the day impossibly cheerful and sunny. It was not the sort of day on which one followed one’s husband to his depraved assignation on the slum-lined riverbanks.
Her feet crunched the tiny pebbles. On park benches either side, men watched her pass with predatory eyes. A lone woman was still a novelty. She strode down the middle of the avenue, instinctively keeping her distance. She would walk the length of this avenue until she reached the Seine. She would find her husband.
To her left loomed the entrance to the menagerie, a zoo that had been moved from Versailles after the Revolution. She’d heard a rhinoceros and a lion had been saved from the mobs. At the zoo entrance she caught sight of her husband’s distinctive tall hat weaving through the crowds. There, she
was sure of it. She swallowed. How fitting that in such a bestial place she might uncover her husband’s secret. Tearing open the clutch of her purse she paid the entrance fee. She had never visited the zoo, never seen a man-eating beast contained behind iron bars. Today she had the taste for it.
The strolling families were a hindrance. She snapped her parasol closed and swung it, point forward, in front of her, clearing the way. Her husband was as slippery as a lemon pip. Marthe lost sight of him as the squawks and screeches of the menagerie distracted her. She leaped at the guttural rumble of the lion from somewhere deep in the menagerie. The crowd slowed and tightened around her and, when she forced through to the front, she came face to face with an elephant.
The creature stood mighty and tall with its trunk curled above a pile of hay. It flapped its ears and swung its head and she looked into its eye. An eye of sadness. An amber eye fringed with long lashes that held her gaze. Marthe gasped, realising how long it had been since anyone had looked at her so intently. She pressed against the arrow-headed bars to steady herself. She wanted to reach out and stroke its flat, furred forehead and the folding wrinkles of its hide. She put out her hand through the bars, stretching out her fingers, without success. The beast grasped hay with its trunk and fed its mouth, and she smelled the warm grassy scent of its breath.
She gathered herself. People were staring. She drew back from the cage, somehow altered. The elephant was a strange and wondrous thing.
She moved on, determined to find her husband. There. His hat. Ahead, she glimpsed Jacques enter La Rotonde, a hexagonal redbrick building that was newly constructed and not yet open to the public. As she drew closer she noticed a barrier had been pushed aside where Jacques had passed under an arched entryway. Inside an animal screeched. She heard bars rattling. Marthe stopped at the barrier, and looked around her. No attendant was waiting with his whistle. No one had seen her husband enter. Was it worse to imagine what she might find or to see her fears confirmed?
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