Labillardière still made time to take a turn about the gardens each day at midday. The fresh air, the outdoors, the routine, all helped to stimulate his thoughts. Even at this most crucial moment, he could not put aside the regularity of his walks. He began to twitch at his microscope as though some internal clock knew exactly when it was time for him to venture out into the avenues of the Jardin des Plantes.
Autumn was a favourite time, when the plants were changing swiftly and each day brought a new profusion of colour. The oaks changed limb by limb, colouring to gold or red or brown, the process of senescence playing out vividly before him. Now was the time of the evergreens to take centre stage; they only needed to wait for winter’s gales to whip the old leaves away and reduce the oaks to sticks.
His wife had not returned to the gardens. It had become habitual to look for her parasol or her elongated frame poised in the act of pursuit. He was thankful she had not embarrassed him further. Marthe was contrite when he confronted her and placed the parasol on the table between them. She had said nothing and neither had he.
Marthe was not as he imagined a wife should be, although he wondered now if he had put much thought into how a wife and companion might behave when his brother had suggested the match. They were a disappointment to one another, he could see that. Clearly, he had been misinformed of her intentions regarding procreation. A child was simply out of the question. The marriage had been a mistake, but he was cognisant of his responsibilities to her. How could he cast her aside now?
His own mother had been the perfect wife to his father. Never too loud, never too demanding, and she was always busy. His mother was a lace maker, his father a lace merchant. Their home was a rabbit warren of tiny rooms and corridors, a makeshift home inside a medieval leatherworks that had become their lace-making workshop. During the day, he rarely saw his mother; she kept the door of her workroom locked and would not let the boys enter. Jacques had little knowledge of her craft, but once, driven by curiosity, he had glimpsed her through the keyhole, back bent with a square of lace lifted close to her face, and a needle pincered in her fingers. His sisters all went into the trade as soon as they could thread a needle and the apprenticeship took seven years of their lives. Jacques could not bear the thought of being trapped inside those low-ceilinged rooms little bigger than cupboards, and he escaped to the hills around Alençon with their forests of beech and birch as often as he could.
His mother, Madeleine, was a devout Catholic and she wanted her sons to go into the priesthood. At night she would read to them stories from the Bible with the fire crackling at her back. But Jacques and his younger brother François would beg her to bring out their favourite book, the one given to Madeleine’s family by a Venetian lace maker long ago—the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci. He remembered her reading to them, he and his brother cross-legged at her feet and the leather-bound volume large on her lap. He heard the sound of her fingers turning each page. They would wait patiently for her to lift the book and reveal the speckled, browning pages filled with drawings of catapults and wonderful flying machines.
By the time he was twelve, his mother had given birth to fourteen babies and half of them had died. Each new baby was a cause for celebration within the family, thanks were given to God, the baby was taken to the church and baptised as soon as it had been wiped clean. How long would this brother or sister be with them? he had wondered, looking down at the squalling babe. He could not share the excitement. Even then he could see the waste of it.
Marthe needed distraction. Perhaps the problem was one of boredom. A lack of mental stimulation. Perhaps he ought to find his wife something more informative to read. He could not remember seeing her ever opening a book. Another childhood favourite of his had been an illustrated volume of the bridges and aqueducts of Rome. He brightened to think of it. He would present it to her when he returned home. Another thought then struck him. Could she be encouraged to act as a secretary of sorts? He pondered this as he reached his favourite part of the Jardin des Plantes, the alpine collection.
He walked along the rows. This collection was intended to make sense of the world. It showed what similarities plants needed to survive in the extremes. It was a garden that taught lessons in the compactness of the plants, the woolliness of leaves, and the early budding of its flowers. This was why plants from expeditions needed to be kept in gardens dedicated to learning, not dissipated in a woman’s flowering beds to be lost among a profusion of showy blooms.
It irked him that the artist Redouté had not yet completed the scientific illustrations for his plantarum of the New Holland flora. The artist had been diverted by the consul’s wife and her vanity project to document the plants of her garden. Labillardière had spluttered to hear it. Who on earth would be interested in the types of lilies the woman grew?
It seemed he would have to wait. Redouté was the best and the consul’s wife was prepared to pay double the usual rate. Anger quickened his stride and shortened his walk around the gardens. It propelled him up the museum staircase. His legs were beginning to tire of this climb, but as always his work drove him upwards, spurred by the knowledge that he would soon be the first man in the world to document the botany of New Holland.
He had been told he was a difficult person, by his friend Thouin most recently, and perhaps it was true, yet his path in life had been unfairly strewn with imbeciles. He understood that people found him uncompromising, but why should he change? It showed a lack of fortitude to be bending and swaying with the will of others just to keep the peace. He had never been afraid to speak his mind and he should not need to change to suit the sensibilities of others. Men like Thouin were too eager to please. This matter of the Baudin seeds should be settled quickly and forcefully. She could not have the seeds, damn her.
If they did not set boundaries now then she would take more liberties with all the expedition artefacts. He imagined her walls strung with shields and spears, woven baskets and precious vellum paintings of fish and birds that no one in Europe had seen before or would likely see again. The collection needed to stay in one place, safely here at the museum, for proper study and understanding by learned men. He blamed Lamarck; the savant was a fool for publishing a key to identifying plants for the amateur garden enthusiast. Lamarck was short-sighted. What value would there be in maintaining august scientific institutions when everyone could think themselves a savant—even the consul’s wife?
Labillardière ducked as he climbed the last two flights of stairs that were built narrow to fit a less important man. Thouin was too weak with her, Labillardière decided. He must be firm. Those seeds belonged to France.
At the top of the stairs, Thouin was waiting for Labillardière. He burst, like a boil popped. ‘She wants Lahaie!’
Labillardière reared back and struck his head on the low ceiling. The sudden appearance of Thouin and this proclamation startled him. It took him a moment to comprehend. He snorted. ‘Nonsense. She can’t have him.’
He rattled his key in the door. It was a ludicrous thought; Lahaie belonged to the Jardin des Plantes. He had grown here, made of the very soil itself. Lahaie would not leave his appointment at Versailles for her.
A musty scent not dissimilar to mouse bedding wafted about the office. Labillardière unbuttoned his coat and threw it over a chair with Thouin following close behind.
An ape uncurled herself from her bed in the corner and came towards them.
Thouin swore in shock.
The orangutan lifted Labillardière’s coat from the chair and stretched up to hang it on a hook. Her dress had been freshly laundered.
‘Thank you, Rose,’ said Labillardière, oblivious to Thouin’s surprise.
Rose ambled over to him and received a scratch beneath her chin.
‘You cannot keep her here,’ Thouin hissed.
‘Why ever not?’
Rose stretched out her neck, enjoying the attention.
Thouin’s face reddened. Labillardière wished Thouin would tak
e his outrage elsewhere. He was now at a crucial stage of his classifications and he needed to return to his microscope. Rose was simply an orangutan that needed food, water, company and a safe place to sleep. She needed their help. It was not too much to provide.
Thouin huffed, averting his gaze from the orangutan as though she were not even there. ‘The consul’s wife is offering Lahaie the position of chief gardener of her nurseries at Malmaison.’
‘Well, she cannot have him.’ Labillardière crossed the attic to open a high window for the breeze. ‘Impossible. He belongs to the Jardin des Plantes. Send someone else.’
Thouin shrugged. ‘There is no one else. My hands are tied.’
Labillardière turned slowly, feeling a rotten board sink beneath his feet. ‘You are not considering it?’ His voice was incredulous.
The orangutan sensed his growing unease and went to his side. She picked at his sleeve. Labillardière stroked her hand to reassure her but his mind was troubled. What would this mean, if Thouin let Lahaie go to her? Lahaie had a collection of the New Holland seeds. Labillardière remembered seeing the travelling case on Lahaie’s sideboard at the Trianon. It had pride of place in the room, like a trophy. If Lahaie had not been so lax in his priorities they could have established the Eucalyptus globulus by now and claimed it for the Jardin des Plantes. Lahaie had been irritatingly stubborn. Now that collection of seeds was at risk of falling into her hands.
Labillardière had encountered the towering eucalypt, with its surprising pale and peeling trunk, in Van Diemen’s Land. He had been taken with the mast-like quality of the tree, which grew to staggering heights. One had been felled for wood to mend their boats, and Labillardière had cut samples from the crown to capture the cream-coloured spiked flowers for his herbarium. He remembered the scent of honey in the blooms and his excitement at finding the species in flower, so necessary for a proper description. He had named the species after the bud caps that reminded him of little spherical buttons. At the time he had no thoughts of propagation and had not gathered any of the nuts. Only the gardener Lahaie had been interested in collecting seeds.
Now he could think of nothing but those small, hard gumnuts. This striking tree, this magnificent specimen that he, Jacques Labillardière, had discovered, could bring so much of value to France—wood for masts, oil from its leaves and perhaps many other uses still to be discovered by thorough and careful study. If they were first to germinate these seeds, no one could doubt the work they did here was important. In those small, hard nuts were the germs of a giant tree. A giant tree that would secure the worth of the savants at the Jardin des Plantes.
He paced, thumping his fist against his thigh. Rose pursed her lips and made low kissing noises. ‘Do not distress yourself,’ he said to her as he stalked the length of his room. He pushed open another stiff and reluctant window. He needed air. He needed to think.
At Versailles, Lahaie was growing all manner of species collected by the Jardin des Plantes, including those from their own journey. Soon he would have duplicate seeds of the Baudin expedition, a journey of circumnavigation that far surpassed the places they had been able to explore. Labillardière felt clammy. If Lahaie went to Malmaison, she would have access to it all.
‘Lahaie’s wife was pregnant when I visited last,’ Labillardière said to Thouin, spinning around on his heel. He remembered his visit to Versailles, his shock at seeing Anne once again with child. Could Lahaie not control himself? It made him doubt for a moment the wisdom of entrusting Baudin’s collection of seeds to a man so clearly incapable of self-government. ‘She must have the newborn by now. The family cannot travel, surely.’
‘The consul’s wife would not be dissuaded so easily.’
‘But it might allow us time?’
Thouin tapped his foot, considering.
‘Send her a gift instead,’ Labillardière pressed. ‘An animal from the menagerie. A rhinoceros. A zebra?’
Thouin paused, his face strangely animated as his gaze fell on Rose, who had climbed up on a small couch and tucked her toes under her skirt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Winter 1804
‘They mean to give me a monkey in place of Lahaie!’ She laughed aloud, mirthless. Thouin’s note had been awaiting her return to Malmaison. ‘Now I am determined to have both!’
She tore his message into strips. They are stalling, she thought, hoping to get to the shipment from Baudin’s second ship, the Géographe, before her. She would write to the Minister of Marine again, remind him that the government intended for an equal share of the specimens of the Baudin voyage to come to Malmaison.
A sudden gust of wind sent rain slapping against her window. This winter had been wet and dreary and filled with formal banquets in cold-walled palaces. She had been kept from Malmaison too long and now she was impatient for the spring.
‘If it is a battle they want, then they shall have it,’ she muttered to the empty room. She drew out a fresh sheet of paper and tapped her quill in the bottle of ink, watching the black liquid siphon up into the stem. She lifted her quill, determined, but felt sadness sweep into her ink strokes as she wrote the name of the gentle Captain Baudin. He could not help her now. News had reached them that Baudin had died of consumption on the journey home.
Josephine wrote frequently these days when once she had hated to sit and write letters. Now it seemed all she did was scratch ink across the page. She had written to English captains of convict transports and her favourite seed merchants and even the head gardener of Kew. Her ink had splashed, promising an exchange of plants for mutual benefit. Bonaparte would be horrified if he knew. She had pleaded with him, but trade with Britain was banned since he’d declared war on Britain, imposed sanctions and arrested every adult male Briton in France. Her letters were futile as not one ship crossed the Channel, and it dawned on her that her supply of seeds from the explorers of the new worlds had finally ceased. Baudin’s collection was now her only means of procuring plants from Terra Australis, this newly named continent, and Thouin and Labillardière seemed adamant she would not receive her share.
In desperation, she wrote to rival savants at the Jardin des Plantes, men like Desfontaines and Lamarck, hoping to win their favour. As a show of good faith, she sent them rare plants that she had sourced from the West Indies and grown in her nurseries. She sent them copies of her Jardin de la Malmaison, which was now two volumes, with one hundred and twenty colour plates of glorious illustrations by Redouté. This book showcased the work she was doing in her gardens and impressed on everyone that her collection was important. Here was proof that she could grow these exotic wonders: brilliant yellow mimosas, exquisite flowering vines with trumpet-shaped bellflowers, trees that were spike-leaved, feathery or with magnificent broad leaves like the bronze-coated Port Jackson fig. Her favourite discovery so far was the shrubby boronia with its unassuming brown bells—such tiny flowers but such a wonderful, generous scent. There was still so much more to find. And no one in France had yet germinated any of the mighty eucalyptus.
The door to her chamber crashed open. Josephine dropped her quill and ink splattered across her page.
‘Madame, I need your assistance.’ Bonaparte’s new secretary staggered into the room. He pressed his hand to his groin and crumpled like he had been kicked by a horse.
‘My God! What has happened?’
‘Speak with him,’ the man panted. ‘Convince him this course of action is insanity.’
This business with the Duc d’Enghien had caused the injury. Bonaparte would not keep a single adviser if he kept treating them this way. His old friend Bourrienne had been dismissed the year before.
She frowned. ‘I don’t know what you expect me to do. I have already begged him to release the duke, but he has turned me away.’
‘There is no one else who can sway him,’ the secretary pleaded with her.
‘It will do no good.’
‘We must try. Fouché has filled his head with these murder plots.�
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Joseph Fouché. Thin-lipped and skull-faced with one eye that slid slightly away from the other. Josephine distrusted the man. She had been pleased when Bonaparte dismissed him as Minister of Police years before, but now he was back in favour with her husband. Fouché’s sources of information were valuable currency. The Duc d’Enghien was accused of a plot to assassinate her husband, but few believed he was guilty. She suspected the opportunity to play the besieged hero suited Bonaparte’s needs.
Josephine replaced the lid of her inkpot and housed her quill. Setting aside her correspondence, she rose to her feet. ‘Very well. I will take Bonaparte his coffee as usual. But I make no promises.’
The secretary collapsed into a chair.
She poured a dark and steaming brew into one of Bonaparte’s favourite cups—white porcelain with gold trim and golden eagle motif. At Bonaparte’s study, Josephine knocked gently then entered.
Bonaparte sat at his desk, fists clenched.
‘They mean to kill me, Josephine!’ he whined as soon as she entered.
‘My love, my love.’ She rushed to him, setting his coffee down in front of him.
‘They make attempts on my life. My life! Do they forget who has restored glory to France?’
‘They do not understand your greatness,’ she said, speaking softly to calm him. Bonaparte was more agitated these days than ever before. The last few months had been a great strain.
‘They plot and scheme to bring me down. My enemies are everywhere. I do not know who to trust.’
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