‘I did not mean it.’ Marthe swooped to pick up the shards of the broken cup and held them out to Anne. ‘How can you ever forgive me?’ Anne saw her face was stricken.
Once Anne would’ve felt pity for this woman kneeling and shaking like a whippet. She would’ve comforted her, reassured her that it did not matter. It was only a cup. But there was something vulnerable about the broken pieces in her hands that rolled Anne’s stomach.
‘My wife is clumsy,’ Labillardière offered.
‘We can fix that with a bit of glue, it is nothing.’ Félix took the shards from her trembling hands. Anne was grateful to him for offering the sympathy that she could not feel. It was strange to be so uncaring, so separated from someone else’s distress. But the truth was she felt nothing to see this woman quivering before her.
Marthe rose up from the floor unassisted. The woman was all angles—thin limbs, long hands and pointed elbows. Marthe swayed, standing in her green dress alone in the centre of the room, and in that moment Anne couldn’t help but think of her as tall and lean and unwelcome as a weed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Autumn 1805
From the moment Marthe had broken the cup that day in summer, Anne knew she was not right inside herself, that something had shifted and could not be put back. She didn’t feel as much as she should. Her heart was distant from her, as though it had been wrapped in blankets and put at the back of a cupboard for safekeeping. Anne found she didn’t mind her numbness; it was less painful not to care as much as she once had for everyone and everything. Hope and expectation could only cause her hurt.
They waited until autumn to try planting the blue gum seeds. Félix wanted her to be excited and she pretended as best she could. She joined him in the nursery and helped line up the empty clay pots in a row along the bench. There was something eager about them, she thought, like a row of baby birds with their mouths wide open.
It was early, the time she liked best in the greenhouse, before the other nurserymen and women filled it with their chatter. The golden sunlight was muted through the milk-stained glass, casting a soft yellow glow over the rows of plants and turning the floating dust to glitter. It was a holy time, she thought, a time when she felt closer to God.
She picked up her trowel and fed each of the open pots with soil.
Félix was nervous; she could see his palms were moist when he tipped the pouch of seeds into his hand. The seeds were small and nugget-like, plain brown. There was nothing to suggest they belonged to a mighty tree.
‘Are we ready then?’ he asked with a hopeful smile.
Anne nodded and pressed her finger into the soft centre of each pot. Félix followed behind, gently placing a seed in each hole. Without needing to be told, she sieved soil lightly over each one and Félix tamped down the soil with a wooden pestle. They both stepped back.
It was done.
‘Now we wait.’ Félix sighed and stretched out his fingers towards Anne’s hand like a newborn vine seeking something to hold and curl around. She shifted away from him, lifting a watering can and dousing the pots in light, gentle rain.
As the days passed, Anne tried to be optimistic. She found the change of season brought new things to like about her morning walk from the village to the nurseries: the smell of fallen poplar leaves, the view across the lake to the graceful golden willows, the sight of the fledgling swans both white and black swimming alongside one another like brothers and sisters. Did they recognise her? she sometimes wondered. Did they remember her lifting them all onto her lap and mothering them?
In the greenhouse Anne began to hover over the blue gum pots, watching the soil for signs of life. She left them each night with a prayer, worried that the temperature was falling too low. She returned each morning with a new eagerness, with something that felt surprisingly like hope.
Here at Malmaison there were fewer reminders of her loss. Her baby had been conceived and grown in Versailles and now he was buried there. He was part of the Parc du Trianon, and she would never forget that. When she closed her eyes and dreamed, she saw him running through the gardens, a cheeky grin thrown over his shoulder while he stole strawberries and dared her to chase him. He belonged there in Versailles. She would always find him when she closed her eyes and remembered the parts of the garden she loved. But for her living family she knew it was better to be here at Malmaison.
‘Have we had any luck?’ a woman’s voice asked.
Anne swung about. She almost swore in shock but reined back her tongue. ‘Your Majesty!’ Anne remembered to drop into a curtsy. ‘No one told me you would be here.’
The Empress stood in the dusty greenhouse wearing a shining white gown and satin gloves. She had jewels around her neck. Anne blinked. This could not be possible. The Empress waved at her to rise. ‘Please, call me Josephine. We are not at court now.’
Anne was horrified. ‘I could not, Your Majesty. Empress. I mean Madame.’
The Empress gave her an indulgent smile. ‘Thank you for taking such good care of my swans while I was absent. I see they are almost fully grown.’
‘A pleasure, Madame.’ Anne bobbed again, awed by the woman before her and unable to meet her eye. Instead she looked at the Empress’s feet, the soft pink slippers on the dirt floor.
‘Are these the New Holland eucalyptus?’ The Empress pointed a gloved finger at the pots. ‘Your husband told me the seeds had been planted out. I am so pleased!’ Her face was shining.
‘It is early days,’ Anne warned.
‘Indeed. Some things we cannot rush no matter how much we might wish to.’
Anne wondered if they were still speaking of the germination of the eucalyptus. She had heard rumours in the village that the Emperor would divorce her if she could not give him a son. Could that truly be so? Could he cast her aside so effortlessly? Everyone knew that she had gone to bathe in the waters at Plombières desperate to conceive and hoping for a cure. Anne decided she would plant the right herbs for her to drink, motherwort to stimulate the womb; she didn’t trust these doctors and their miracle baths.
The Empress was bending over the pots as Anne had done peering at the soil. Then she straightened and clapped her gloved hands together decisively. ‘We must not watch them or they will never grow.’ Her smile was bright for Anne. ‘Put me to work.’
Anne hesitated. But she recognised the need for hands to be put to use when the mind needed distraction. ‘Very well,’ Anne said. She had been filling wooden trays with potting soil enriched with bark and compost and she slid a tray towards the Empress.
The Empress immediately plunged her hands in their fine satin gloves into a sack of soil.
Anne yelped. ‘Your gloves!’
‘Dear girl!’ The Empress laughed. ‘I have a hundred pairs of gloves, but only one pair of hands!’
Anne coloured, she could not imagine ruining such beautiful and expensive fabric simply to save her hands.
‘I will bring you some,’ the Empress said.
Every day the Empress returned to help in the greenhouse. She watered and pruned the rows of growing plants, she carried trays of seedlings and cleaned the clay pots. Anne blanched to see the Empress’s pink slippers stained by the dirt of the nursery floor and her lace hems turn black. The poor woman who would launder those garments!
As promised, the Empress presented Anne with a fine pair of silk gloves. Anne refused them. It was wanton extravagance, just to save her skin from cracking. What would her mother think? There was nothing wrong with a fierce brush with lye soap every night to get out the engrained dirt. But Anne had slid her hands into the cool fabric just the same and found it as slippery and soft as a puppy’s ear. She twisted her arm to admire the sheen of the creamy silk. She closed her eyes when she dipped her hand into the soil, afraid to see the shine of the fabric go dull and grey. It felt strange to have this barrier between her and the earth, not to feel the soil on her fingers. Anne spread the potting soil in a tray and ran her silken hand across to smooth th
e surface.
The two women stood side by side at the potting bench wearing long, silky gloves that reached up to their elbows. What a picture we make, Anne thought. She almost laughed. Who would’ve thought she would ever be planting seeds with the Empress of France! No one at home would believe it.
Yet Anne still did not know what to make of Empress Josephine. The Empress surprised her in almost every way. She seemed to enjoy chatting with the greenhouse workers and listening to their lives. Anne soon realised that they were used to her visits and that she must come here often.
‘I love the mystery of growing from seed, don’t you, Anne? Waiting and wondering what plants these seeds will become. There is no finer thing than nurturing life into existence,’ the Empress said, as she pressed a seed into the bed of soil.
Anne saw her steal a glance across to the barren pots of eucalyptus.
‘Do you believe in omens, Anne?’
Anne remained silent, uncertain how to answer.
The Empress continued. ‘You see, I have this strange notion that if we are to be successful with these eucalyptus, that all will be well. That I will yet conceive. It is silly, you will laugh.’
But Anne did not laugh, she felt shot through with fear.
The Empress attacked a root-bound flax with a fork. She had come late to the nursery that day and her mood was irritable and on edge. It unsettled Anne to see her like this and made her wary. Wounded animals were wont to bite. By now Anne had heard the rumours in the village that the Emperor had taken a new lover.
‘Growing old is a vicious thing.’ The Empress stabbed her fork into the roots of the flax to loosen it. ‘My legs are dimpling, my waist is spreading. I am a horror.’
‘No, Madame!’ Anne was shocked. ‘You are the most beautiful woman in all of France. Everyone knows it.’
‘Sweet of you to say.’ The Empress smiled over her shoulder at Anne. ‘But you are too young to know what it feels like to see your beloved’s eyes slip away from you.’ She wrenched the bound plant from its pot.
Anne chewed her lip in silence.
‘My hair is thinning, my face falling, it is no wonder he looks for diversions elsewhere.’ The Empress pushed her fingers into the root wad, pulling at the latticework of pale roots tightly twisted over one another. ‘Have you seen her?’ she asked.
Anne’s stomach plummeted. ‘Who, Madame?’
‘Eléonore Denuelle. The whore my sister-in-law has arranged for my husband.’
Anne gripped the bench. She had heard of her, of course: the eighteen-year-old who had been moved into the chalet at the far end of the village. The girl that was never seen. The curtains behind the curved iron balcony were always closed.
‘Caroline has a plan,’ the Empress continued. ‘It is very scientific. The girl will be kept secreted away like Rapunzel in her tower, allowed no gentlemen callers, kept only to be serviced by my husband. Caroline took great pleasure in describing her method to me.’
Anne was shocked. This cruel experiment. Could it be true?
‘Just like breeding dogs,’ the Empress mused. ‘If I wish to cross one of my dogs with a certain sire, then I must keep the bitch separate from the pack. Caroline has designed an experiment to see whether Bonaparte or myself is the infertile one.’
The Empress sounded so calm as she explained.
‘Bonaparte has never fathered a child. But if this girl falls pregnant by him, then they will be certain. His family will urge him to be rid of me. He would not need Hortense’s child to be his heir. He can begin again.’
At last, the Empress’s fingers found their way between the wad of roots and wrenched them in two.
Anne saw the gloves were frayed where her nails pushed through the fingertips. Anne stared at them, knowing they would soon have to be thrown away. If Caroline got her way and the Emperor divorced Josephine, there would be no place for her and Félix. No place for gardeners with a passion for the type of plants that Josephine loved. They too would be discarded like a pair of stained and dirty gloves.
‘Have you seen my husband in the village?’ the Empress asked.
Anne dropped a clay pot. She felt hot fear in her gut and thought instantly of the dark attic, longing for the safety of it. Did you tell the truth to a monarch? She pressed her lips tight.
‘You can be honest with me,’ the Empress said.
The air was stuffy and smelled strongly of the potting soil, rich with compost and manure. She found she was panting, mouth open. Anne had seen the Emperor once with Joachim Murat. The two men had ridden into the village late at night. The horsemen bore down on her, moving at pace, not caring that the noise would wake the village. Anne crouched behind the well, but neither horseman paid her any heed. The Emperor had leaped from his horse and mounted the stairs to Eléonore Denuelle’s chalet.
‘It means nothing,’ she blurted. ‘I only saw him once.’
Anne cringed, waiting for a sharp retort, censure, rage, anything, but there was only silence. When she dared to look, the Empress was swaying, her eyes closed against the tears.
‘Will you tell me if she becomes pregnant?’ the Empress asked, her voice aching. ‘Will you do this for me?’
Her eyes were pleading and a single tear slipped.
How could Anne refuse her? This was a woman, not an empress, who needed her.
She nodded, reaching out her hand, gripping the Empress’s fingers. ‘You must not give up hope,’ she told her. Both women let their gaze fall on the eucalyptus pots, these portents of a better future, willing them to grow.
CHAPTER FORTY
Autumn 1805
Félix rubbed his eyebrows, screwing up his face and smearing dirt across his brow. The seeds had rotted in their pots.
By the end of autumn, Félix had finally lost patience and dug beneath the loam. He found no trace of the little seed. The only blessing was that the Empress had suddenly left for Strasbourg with the Emperor and did not witness his failure. He thumped his fist on the nursery bench, upsetting the pots and making Anne jump. He apologised. He didn’t want to scare her, not with her nerves so strained, but he did not understand why these seeds were needlessly stubborn. The Empress would think him unworthy and wonder at the wisdom of bringing them here. And now this news from the Jardin des Plantes. The letter lay open on the bench, written in Labillardière’s long, looping script.
Labillardière had been successful in opening the capsules of the blue gum. He had written to explain he had used fire to stimulate them to open. Félix could imagine it, the nuts bursting open in the wake of the flames, like musket fire. The news rocked him. He experienced a confusion of emotion as the bile rose and burned the back of his throat. He feared that the gardeners of the Jardin des Plantes would overcome his advantage and succeed where he could not, and he also felt ashamed. He was surprised that his friend had shared this fire technique and it left Félix with a wretched knot of guilt in his stomach that he had not done the same.
Today, he was morose, out of sorts, convinced the Jardin des Plantes would surpass him now and solve the problem before he could. After all, what was he—one simple gardener—against their weight of knowledge? Félix looked across to Anne. Two lines of worry were parallel between her eyebrows. He did not want to burden her with his maudlin thoughts, but there was one fear that would not leave him: the knowledge that their position here at Malmaison depended on it.
‘What am I useful for if I cannot get these plants to grow?’ The words slipped out. He saw the fear reflected in his wife’s face. They could lose their home. He would not be able to provide for them.
‘For the Empress, this is just a game,’ he said. He had been a fool to side with her against the Jardin des Plantes.
‘No.’ Anne shook her head, surprisingly firm. ‘She needs this as much as us.’
Anne came to stand beside him and he was thankful for it, but when he reached for her she moved away. He hung his head. She was not even able to give him that little comfort. It angered him. W
hy would she not speak to him? Why not tell him what was wrong? Whenever he asked her what was the matter, she shrugged and said nothing. How was he supposed to help her?
Félix longed for her to hold him. He missed her touch, the softness of her skin. He could not remember when they had last reached for one another in the night. His once eager and enthusiastic partner was unrecognisable. Each night she climbed the stairs to bed early and feigned sleep when he slid into the cold side of the bed.
What was it that made a seed dormant within its shell, unresponsive to warmth and care?
Félix watched his wife with her face downcast and pinched with worry. He tried to remember her as she had been that day in Versailles when they took to the ice of the canal with their skates. He saw her smiling face, flushed cheeks, strong puffs of warm breath billowing in the icy air.
It was painful to him to see her like this now. He abruptly stood and left the nursery, stifled by the cloying air. He could do nothing for his wife’s spirits.
He would look foolish, but he didn’t care. Félix strode across the lawn and lay down on the earth beneath the oak trees. He needed to focus on a problem that was his alone to solve. Félix closed his eyes. He remembered the nights he spent out in the wilderness with Labillardière. He took himself back to the forests of Van Diemen’s Land, to the base of those towering trees, and imagined himself a seed within its capsule on the forest floor. He lay there, passing through the hot, dry summer that would burst the nut open and send its seeds into the world. Then came the cold nights of winter. He felt a chill. Above him, a crystal-clear night sky sparkled with starlight like glow worms in a cave; he had shivered under that vast black night even in summer. Imagine how cold those winters must be. Then he pictured a burst of spring rain, the kind that soaked the earth and sent ribbons of water across the surface. He imagined the tiny seed, picked up by the fingers of water, floating and flowing, unable to direct its route. Later it would settle in a moist hollow, silt and leaves bedding on top of it. And there it would wait for the warmth to stir something inside of it, to awaken it. He saw the seed split and send its first bright green leaves upwards towards the light. He saw it growing at the foot of a gigantic tree, pushing up, thin and straggly, but hopeful, ever hopeful that it too might one day reach the top of the forest and feel the sun’s rays on its unfurling leaves.
Josephine's Garden Page 28