She pressed his head to her bosom, stroking his temples. He slapped her hands away.
‘They fear me becoming emperor.’
Josephine bit her lip. She feared that too. If he became emperor their lives would never be their own again and this simple happiness they had found at Malmaison would be lost. When would there be time for her garden? For her own pleasures? She could not voice these thoughts as he would only accuse her of selfishness. These days she had to tread with care.
‘It is what France needs!’ Bonaparte insisted. ‘A citizen king is the only way to bring stability. This is what the Revolution promised—a commoner ascending to the throne! But these royalists will defy me to the death.’
If Bonaparte became emperor these assassination attempts would not stop. One day her husband’s enemies would prevail, she was sure of it. She noticed the darkness of the room, the oppressive wooden panelling and heavy, leather-bound books crowding the walls. Outside, clouds thickened and blackened and stole the light from the sky. It would soon rain again.
‘I have such pains, Josephine!’ He thumped a fist to his gut, his knuckles turning white.
‘Shh, let me rub your belly. You know it always makes you feel better.’
‘Perhaps they have already poisoned me.’ His voice was self-pitying, morose.
‘Impossible,’ she said resolutely. ‘We have devoted servants to taste all our food.’ She kissed the top of his head. ‘Come, you are being melodramatic.’
He shrugged her away. ‘The Duc d’Enghien must be dealt with. Decisively. He means to put himself on France’s throne.’ Bonaparte pushed back his chair and began to pace. ‘He must be made an example of.’
This was what his secretary feared. This was what had earned him a blow to the groin.
Oh, Bonaparte, there is no proof! she wanted to say. He is not even a French citizen. The whole of Europe will condemn us for this.
Already there was outrage that Bonaparte had sent dragoons to cross the Rhine into Baden and arrest the young duke in his home. People thought Bonaparte cold and cruel, but it was the counsellors and flatterers who made him attempt these villainous actions. This was Fouché’s fault, she fumed. He pointed his sharpened fingernail at the Duc d’Enghien.
Bonaparte lifted a paper from his desk and held it aloft. ‘I have the order here. With a scratch of my pen his life is over.’
Josephine gasped. ‘Execution without trial!’ Her words hung in the dark room. Had he forgotten those awful days, the days of the Terror? Had he forgotten that she too had once faced the guillotine without trial? She feared what her husband was becoming. His rages and moods controlled their lives.
Bonaparte snatched his quill and dunked it into a pot of ink. He scrawled his signature and ended with an emphatic swipe underneath. ‘There, it is done.’
‘No! Think of what you are doing. This is murder!’
Her words rang into silence.
When he spoke, Bonaparte’s voice was soft. ‘Do you dare question me?’
She shrank away. Her husband’s eyes bulged. His jaw set.
‘Do you think to control me? Me? This is not women’s business. I will not listen to your brainless counsel!’ Bonaparte picked up the glass inkpot and threw it at her head.
Josephine flinched away but the sharp corner of the inkpot struck her clavicle. Black ink exploded across her breasts. Stunned, she watched her blood mingle with the ink and spread across her white gown. The dress would be ruined. She couldn’t speak or move. He had never struck her before. The inkpot lay on its side, oozing a black stain onto the rug.
Even before the wound began to throb, she knew this moment would leave a deep and lasting bruise.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Summer 1805
Empress Josephine strode down the long hallways of the Louvre with the footsteps of her entourage echoing behind. The swords of her guards rattled against their thighs. Claire de Rémusat chattered excitedly to the new companion that Bonaparte had chosen for her, Adèle Duchâtel. Josephine walked quickly, itching to be free of the chain of people following at her heels. Outside the Louvre, her equerries, cavalrymen and a trumpeter waited in the heat. All this and they had travelled only half a block from the Tuileries Palace! As empress, she realised, she would never go anywhere again without pomp and palaver. In the palace, she had to change her clothes three times a day just to give the courtiers something to do. Today her clothes felt too tight, too hot, and the air in these corridors was stale.
She touched the tiny scar that now marred the skin on her clavicle. After the execution of the Duc d’Enghien, her husband published newspaper reports in the Moniteur that painted the duke as a conspirator who wanted to seize the throne of France. She could not read them without nausea. It was then an easy matter for her husband to convince the senate that for the security of France, the Consul for Life should be made the Emperor.
The doors she passed were closed. Most of the artist studios were empty, a necessary consequence of her husband’s grand plan to make the Louvre a gallery for the people. The artists were incensed. They had been living and working in these chambers for two centuries and they came to her with their entreaties, not realising that she had no sway with her husband. She placated them, of course, gave them commissions, but that was all she could do. To attempt to influence Bonaparte’s actions would be to evict herself from her own home.
Only one painter still had his residence within the Louvre. Josephine halted outside the studio door and listened to the harried voices.
‘The Empress will be here within moments!’ Jacques-Louis David hissed.
Josephine heard papers shuffled, pencils knocked to the floor. A curse. She imagined a flurry of apprentices.
‘We have nothing to show her!’
Josephine turned to her ladies-in-waiting. One of her attendants rapped on the door.
The voices behind the studio door fell silent. She felt their terror. At least it is only me, she thought, and not the Emperor.
The studio door opened a crack. An apprentice with prominent ears poked his head through. He had the unfortunate appearance of a field mouse caught in the larder.
Her guards entered first and she followed with her ladies-in-waiting. Fortunately, the studio was large and could accommodate her entourage. The room stretched ahead of her like a ballroom, with full-length windows along one side, illuminating the canvases tacked all along the opposite wall. The air was heavy with the odour of drying oil paints. As she swept into the painter’s studio, he came forward and greeted her with an extravagant bow.
‘How long have we known each other, Jacques-Louis?’ She smiled. ‘You do not need such formality with me.’
He pulled himself upright and straightened his tunic. ‘You have been a great patron of the arts, Madame.’
She saw the pained confusion on his face. How was he to treat her now? The General’s wife had become an empress.
‘They tell me you have concerns about the painting?’
She saw him suck air into his nostrils and hold the breath. ‘I am struggling with composition,’ he blurted.
‘Go on,’ she urged.
‘The act of crowning …’
She waited.
‘The Emperor crowning himself …’
‘Like Charlemagne once did,’ she offered.
‘Yes, like Charlemagne,’ he conceded, ‘but the action could be seen to be—how should I put it?’ He cast a nervous glance at her guards. ‘It could be seen as an insult to the Pope.’
The ladies behind her gasped. The painter’s face was now as red as her coronation mantle had been. She should ask one of his apprentices to capture the colour, she thought.
Poor David was almost panting. She sympathised, but what could she say? Everyone in the cathedral that day had been shocked. The traditionalists were scandalised. Even her husband’s supporters were taken aback by his audacity. She remembered the shock on the Pope’s face as the crown was lifted from his hands.
‘You have drawn Madame Mère?’ Josephine was astonished to see Bonaparte’s mother in the painting when she had refused to attend the ceremony. His family had overplayed their hand: the more they scrabbled to malign her, the fonder Bonaparte had become of her. Letizia was a sore loser.
‘The Emperor suggested some changes.’ David wrung his hands.
It was then Josephine noticed the likenesses of Bonaparte’s sisters standing among the crowd instead of holding her mantle as they had been commanded to do. Josephine wished Bonaparte had never insisted on this subservience to her. The petulant witches had dropped the heavy train and nearly made her topple backwards. Bonaparte had snapped at them. But now, as she stared at their impassive faces, cold as stone, she saw he intended to appease their precious sensibilities.
Josephine kneeled on the studio floor, shuffling through the drawings. David had drawn the Pope in a succession of poses: his arms raised with the crowning wreath in his hands the moment before Bonaparte stole his authority from him. Another sketch had both men’s hands on the golden laurel wreath, but here David had struggled with the correct expression for the Pope, not wanting to show the look of horror that had possessed his features in that moment. She shifted the papers. Another sketch of the Pope had caught his face with eyes and mouth downturned, a picture of desolation.
She felt his pain. David had caught the Pope’s humiliation with surprising accuracy. Of course this could never be the official portrait, she thought. It would make us look ridiculous. Besides, Josephine had a special fondness for Pope Pius. He had come to her aid as an unwitting ally when all of Bonaparte’s family and all his advisers urged Bonaparte to divorce her before the coronation. ‘You need an empress capable of giving you children,’ they implored him. Claire de Rémusat had brought their words to her and it stung to hear them. None of them understood that Bonaparte needed her as much as she needed him.
The night before the coronation Josephine had wept before the Pope, confessing that her marriage had only been a civil affair, that she was not married in the eyes of God. Outraged, the Pope demanded Bonaparte arrange a religious ceremony or he would not crown them. It was too late to change the coronation now. Bonaparte had been backed into a corner.
The Pope ordered Cardinal Fesch to be woken from his slumber to give Josephine and Bonaparte a religious blessing. Bonaparte faced her, his hands loose in hers, their eyes meeting. They both knew it would be much harder for Bonaparte to divorce her now. Would he forgive her this act? For once she could not read his expression. The words of her friend Marguerite from the convent returned to her. ‘Be careful, the tactical man is admired for his strategy, but the tactical woman is despised for her scheming.’
Afterwards, she had locked her marriage certificate in her jewellery cabinet along with the deeds to Malmaison. At last she felt a measure of security. But at what cost, Maman? she heard Hortense whisper in her ear.
‘Your Majesty! Stay there.’
She looked up, confused. The apprentice with the forthright ears held out his palm to her. David was staring at his apprentice as though about to slap him into silence.
‘I have a solution,’ the mouse cried. He reached for his pencils, gathered paper. ‘If you kneel just like that, we could paint the Emperor crowning you!’
She understood. She tipped forward and pressed her hands together. She remembered.
‘My God. That’s it.’ She heard David exclaim. ‘The light strikes the bare nape of your neck. Your head bowed.’
She felt dizzy, hot, remembering the moment. She had tilted forward towards her husband, waiting for him to crown her as his consort. It was like waiting for a blade to fall upon her neck. She trembled. Josephine felt the weight of the crown press on her head briefly, then vanish. Bonaparte had placed the Crown of Charlemagne over her tiara then lifted it off again, teasing. Later, Claire de Rémusat had thought it playful, but Josephine knew better. He was reminding me, she thought: I can put this crown on you and I can take it away from you.
It was the perfect solution to David’s problem. ‘Have me kneeling in submission before him,’ she murmured to David. ‘He will like that.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Summer 1805
Félix Lahaie watched the orangutan in her clean, white dress rock gently with the rhythm of the carriage. The hair on her head was sparse and fuzzed like an old woman without a nightcap. Her eyes were round and wet. He had been shocked to learn that this ape was to travel to Malmaison in a carriage with his family. But the orangutan was perfectly behaved, while his boys wriggled and squirmed. She ignored them and kept staring out of the glass window of the carriage with a forlorn look that depressed his spirits. When they drove through the forests, she reached one finger up to scratch at the glass, then crossed her hands neatly on her lap.
Anne looked nervous, flicking her eyes over the orange-haired ape sitting beside their boys. Félix reached over for Anne’s hand and squeezed. She smiled at him tightly. He knew what his wife was thinking. What madness was this? They were country people at heart, brought up among folk who expected life to stay the same day by day, year by year, among folk who feared novelty. His wife would be wondering what her mother would think of travelling in a carriage with a monkey in a frilled dress on the way to meet an empress.
Félix too was nervous. Labillardière had been outraged that Félix had accepted this appointment. His mentor, Thouin, could not conceal his disappointment. In truth, Félix would have considered the position a demotion months ago. But with the coronation, all had changed. One did not refuse an emperor.
The rhythmic sway of the carriage slowed. Félix caught his first glimpse of the grounds of Malmaison as the horses turned. He saw stables and a yard of dogs for the hunt. Along each side of the driveway was a row of clipped and boxed orange trees.
When the horses came to a halt at the entrance, the orangutan waited patiently for the footman to leap down and open the carriage door. Beside him, Anne was tense; even the boys fell silent for a moment. The footman reached for the ape’s hand and helped her down. Félix followed, assisting his wife, and the boys burst out into the sunshine.
The house was smaller than he expected—two storeys, with a third floor in the roof—but it had grace and a pleasing symmetry. At each end of the house were pointed slate-grey roofs like turrets giving it the feel of a castle, but yet restrained and somehow humble. The warm sandstone walls were smooth and inviting rather than ostentatious. These were feelings entirely at odds with his first sight of the Palace of Versailles. Did the Emperor really live here, in this modest home? Of course, the Emperor had many palaces to choose as his residence, Félix reminded himself. Perhaps he only visited here to recall his own humble beginnings and how far he had come.
A conservatory served as the entranceway and it had the appearance of a military tent in royal blue and adorned with gold-tipped spears. Two lush cycad palms guarded the door, giving it an exotic air, reminding Félix of his time in Java. The small party was ushered through to a marble salon. The orangutan went first, holding up her skirts in one hand and taking the hand of the footman in the other. She walked with a bow-legged waddle.
Félix smiled at Anne to encourage her. He rolled each shoulder and stretched his neck. He cleared his throat. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ he whispered to his wife.
In the marble entrance hall, they were met by the Empress Josephine herself. Félix felt Anne stiffen in terror. The Empress wore a flowing white gown and a spray of jewels around her neck. Her hair was adorned with flowers.
Anne trembled at his side and awkwardly completed the curtsy she had been practising all week. She would be wondering how they were to act. Félix was just as nervous. He looked around the en
trance hall of Malmaison with far more trepidation than the ape. The salon was heavily decorated with tapestries of birds, floral watercolours and marble plinths topped with the disembodied heads of Roman gods. His gaze settled on the tall glass doors with a magnificent view of the gardens.
The orangutan curtsied to the Empress.
‘She is adorable, I love her!’ The Empress hugged herself with excitement. The orangutan held out her hand, waiting for it to be kissed.
The Empress giggled.
‘Her name is Rose,’ Félix offered.
‘Oh, my dear Rose.’ The Empress dropped down and captured the ape’s hand in both of hers. ‘I was once called Rose,’ she confided. ‘You see, we will be friends. Already we have so much in common.’
‘She is a gift from André Thouin,’ Félix continued. ‘For your menagerie.’
The orangutan climbed up on a chaise longue and arranged her skirts to conceal her ankles. The Empress squealed with delight.
She turned to Félix. ‘I have been so excited to meet you, so thrilled that you agreed to come and help us with our plans.’
Félix reached for his wife’s hand. It was clammy. Their two boys hid behind Anne’s skirt, both twisting their fists in the fabric. It was the first time Félix had seen his sons so tamed.
The Empress beamed at them all. She handed the boys a sweet each. They both let go of Anne’s skirt to receive their gifts, quickly popping them into their mouths before the treat could be reclaimed. Félix smiled at his boys as their cheeks worked hard, sucking on the bonbons.
‘You have gorgeous children,’ the Empress said to Anne. ‘If you are not careful I will spoil them terribly. Be warned!’
Anne mumbled something unintelligible.
‘They both have your wife’s glorious white-gold hair,’ the Empress enthused to Félix.
Abraham’s hair was flying loose from its comb and spit. Félix smoothed his hand across his eldest son’s head.
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