Félix stammered. ‘I meant only that I would be able to show you the Empress’s estate while they are away. The glasshouses. The collection of exotic tropical plants.’
‘My apologies,’ murmured Marthe. ‘I misunderstood.’
‘Ah yes, the famous glasshouses. I would very much like to see them,’ Labillardière said. ‘But first the Eucalyptus globulus?’
Anne had a bad feeling about this visit. They were being used in some way that she did not understand. Jacques was a difficult man to call a friend, but she had once thought him fond of them even if he struggled to show it. He and Marthe were an odd couple, so alike in many ways yet unable to see it. Two cold fish that were always out of water. Today she felt no warmth from either visitor.
Félix led the way beneath an avenue of poplars, their leaves already beginning to yellow. The air was sweet with their scent and Anne breathed deep, relieved that Marthe walked beside her in silence.
‘You have a stand of melaleuca!’ Labillardière exclaimed, seeing the small trees with their papery bark and soft crowns of fine leaves tinged with red. He rushed over to touch and peel the bark away in his hands.
Félix nodded. ‘It was one of the first we had success with. The seed required no special treatment.’
The path took them down to the lake where the English willows brushed the water and the bulrushes lined the water’s edge. Here the vista across the lake opened out.
‘My God,’ Labillardière breathed. ‘You did it.’
A copse of the blue gum trees shimmered across the lake with their trunks slender and white and reflected by the still water. Anne felt a sudden fierce pride to see them, knowing that she had helped bring them to life.
The group circled the lake so that Labillardière could walk among the saplings. ‘Impressive,’ Labillardière said. ‘Prodigious growth.’
Anne watched him carefully. If the botanist was jealous of Félix’s success he did not show it.
‘How did you achieve the germination?’ Labillardière asked.
Anne sent a sharp look to her husband, but he avoided her eye. He stroked the leaves along a branch and went on to explain the process of elimination, of their failed attempts, and finally described the experiment with the cold grotto. Of tricking the seed into thinking it had passed through the coldest months.
‘Cold moist stratification,’ Labillardière conceded, nodding. ‘Clever.’
Anne worried that it was unwise of Félix to reveal his secret to Labillardière, especially without the permission of the Empress. But he could hardly contain himself. How could she deny him this moment to sparkle? Anne could tell he never expected to hear such high praise from the botanist.
Félix insisted on showing them the Grand Serre. The towering, glittering building still daunted Anne and she rarely went inside. Today, she found it was lusher than she remembered, the interior softening with an abundance of foliage and flowers. Tendrils of jasmine trailed from hanging baskets above their heads. At her side, Marthe looped a bony arm through hers.
‘Do the Emperor and Empress entertain in here?’ Marthe asked, her eyes travelling up the wall of glass. ‘Where anyone could see in?’
Anne nodded. ‘They have had magnificent parties with long tables, all laid out in white and decorated with orchids. It is a spectacle.’
‘Indeed. Do they spend much time here at Malmaison?’
Anne was surprised at her interest. ‘Not as much as the Empress would like. The court moves to Fontainebleau or Saint-Cloud or the Tuileries. The Empress comes here alone often. Now she is in Mainz and we don’t know when she will return.’
Marthe nodded. ‘This war in Prussia is expected to take some time, is it not? There are rumours he means to fight the Russians in Poland as well?’
Anne shrugged. ‘They only come here on weekends. I know nothing of his plans for war.’ Marthe made her nervous the way she watched so intently, with her large round eyes and her head cocked to one side, like some sort of insect.
‘Of course not.’ Marthe gave a strained little laugh. ‘And are they true, the rumours of divorce?’
Anne was rattled. Growing up, her mother would have scolded her for bad manners, asking a question like that. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she mumbled.
Anne looked ahead to Félix, who was deep in conversation with Labillardière. She felt awkward alone with Marthe. There was something hungry in the woman. It made her guilty to think that, but it was true. Unconsciously, she placed a hand to her belly. For the first time she began to feel protective of the life inside her.
‘Do you ever speak with the Emperor?’ Marthe asked.
‘Me? No! Fancy that.’
‘Do you ever worry that someone might attempt an attack, an assassination?’
‘An attack? You mean like the bombing at the Tuileries? No!’ Anne was horrified. The thought had not crossed her mind at all. In this garden they seemed so removed from events of state. Here it was possible to live untouched by the discontent of the world.
‘Of course not, you would be quite safe here. No doubt there are bodyguards. I suppose there are spies and informants and patrols, all that, when the Emperor is visiting?’
‘They are quite informal here, none of that,’ Anne said, her voice rising in alarm.
‘Do not distress yourself—perhaps they have guards that you are not even aware of. Do they tell anyone when they plan to visit?’
‘We never know when they intend to visit, we are just the gardeners.’ Marthe was scaring her with these strange questions. Her skin was clammy. She tried to pull away, but Marthe held her tight.
‘There. You see? It will be a secret, completely unpredictable; no assassin could plan an attack if they don’t know when the Emperor will be arriving. I have worried you needlessly, forgive me.’ Marthe patted Anne’s hand in a gesture that seemed imitated, like she had seen other women do it to console one another.
‘Yes.’ Anne smiled a little with relief, though frowning still. ‘No one can predict the Emperor’s movements. He tells no one of his plans. Except for the cook, of course.’
Marthe cocked an eyebrow. ‘Oh, the cook. Yes, of course. How else would he be fed? A general, as well as an army, marches on its stomach.’ She laughed, a high-pitched screech that would shock the birds from the trees.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Winter 1807
‘Must we spend the whole winter here in Mainz?’ Claire de Rémusat complained.
Josephine looked out the narrow window to the frozen fields. Bare trees stood like pikes, black and bleak against the snow. Her gloved hand rested on the stone lintel and her feet felt the hard flagstones of the floor. Her toes were chilblained; not even her ermine slippers and these bearskin rugs could stop the creeping cold.
‘I hate it here,’ Claire grumbled. ‘Let us return to Paris before La Chandeleur. We could make crepes like we did when we were children.’
The old traditions were returning. Josephine remembered lighting candles all around the house for Candlemas when she was a child and making crepes with her sister. The first one should always be put on top of the armoire, her mother had said, to give us a plentiful harvest and keep misery and deprivation away. Growing up in the Caribbean, Candlemas had been a time of warmth, and even now she could not get used to the coldness of the Christmas season.
‘The Emperor will not send for you. He is with her, this Polish girl, Marie Walewska, in Warsaw.’
Josephine watched a snowflake tumble across her view.
‘He is in love,’ Claire warned.
No, that could not be true. Josephine shook her head, just once. ‘He would tell me. This is just a fling, a mistress like any other. He will tire of her.’
‘They say this time it is different. He sends her gifts, he chases her. They say she is very beautiful.’
‘I do not want to hear it.’
‘Golden hair, blue eyes like sapphires. Only twenty-four.’
‘Claire!’ Josephine snapped. ‘You f
orget yourself. I said I did not want to hear it!’
Claire de Rémusat swept her skirts in a wide circle as she turned away. ‘Then I will let you sit alone in this cold and draughty room.’
Josephine ignored her and crossed to another window. From here she could see the Rhine, the river that formed the easternmost limit to Bonaparte’s Grand Nation. It was as far as she could go, as close as she could get to him. She looked east into the rising sun, across the river and into Prussia. Her husband was out there, with his army, penetrating Poland.
‘They say she was given to him by her husband,’ Claire continued, merciless. ‘Told she must do her duty for her country.’
‘Then she does not love him back. You see? Just like any other. It is only I who loves him. He knows that.’ Unwittingly, Claire had comforted her. The Polish girl was a distraction, nothing more. A spoil of war.
He always returns, Josephine convinced herself. No one is as loyal and true to him as me. It was most painful for her during the first flush of his infatuation with another girl, but he always tired of them. Then with a stab of shame, she remembered his last conquest before leaving for Poland. He was bringing his sluts to Malmaison now.
Josephine had pressed her fingers in her ears to muffle the sound of her husband’s lovemaking. She had been about to retire and sat at her mirror performing her rituals of toilette, enduring the giggling of the new girl and her husband’s roar. Mercifully, she knew it would not last long. She pictured the silk canopies of his bed shaking as the bed slammed repeatedly against the wall.
When she first bought Malmaison, Josephine had been delighted to see the secret passageway to his chamber concealed in a corner bookcase of his study. She had not imagined it would one day cause her such pain.
Washing the rouge from her cheeks and the lead-white foundation, she had appraised her reflection. Her complexion was still good, or passable in low light. She rubbed creams around her nose and forehead, and down into her décolletage.
She looked up at the sound of her door opening. Bonaparte entered wrapped in one of her shawls as if he were a Roman emperor in a toga. He was smiling, but his eyes were cold. Josephine tried to look past him, to the ruffled sheets, listening for the sound of a voice. Josephine did not want to know who this girl was. It was better not to know. But she peered behind him, nonetheless.
‘She was magnificent,’ Bonaparte said. ‘Young and luscious. Her thighs were creamy, though a little heavy for my taste. I had forgotten how juicy young skin can be.’
He stepped behind Josephine and drew the back of his finger along her loosening jawline.
‘This one has the look of you, or what you might have looked like at that age. Caroline recommended her to me.’
Josephine closed her eyes, a shiver convulsed her shoulders. She forced herself to smile. When she opened her eyes, he was watching her reflection intently.
‘I expect I shall see her again,’ he said, taking the pins from her hair and stroking his fingers through it, arranging her locks around her shoulders. ‘You once had such luxuriant curls.’
It was a game for him, but she wished he would not taunt her so. It was cruel. Ever since she had burst in on him with her companion Adèle Duchâtel and confronted him, he had been testing her. She had made a mistake then and almost lost him. Now she knew she could say nothing. She had looked at him in her mirror. We are the same, Bonaparte and I, she had thought. We both like pretty little things. She had twirled her pearl ring, pulling it off her finger. And we both tire of them easily.
Now, Josephine crossed the chilly room in the Mainz Palace to her jewellery box. It was a wooden chest with silver decoration, like a treasure chest. It held all her things of value: her love letters, her certificate of marriage and the deeds to Malmaison as well as her jewels. She picked up her emerald necklace, holding it up to the light. The translucent green glowed like the jungle. Like the lushness of her greenhouse with the sun falling through palms, illuminating some fronds into brilliance and leaving others in shadow. In this land of cold stone and iced fields, she needed the colour green. Thirsted for it. The diamonds circling each green gem sparkled in the candlelight.
How had her mother endured her father’s infidelities? Josephine wondered. Growing up, she had watched her mother curdle with rage when he rode out to the whores and gambling dens of Fort Royal. Rose and her sister Catherine would creep out of the house to keep well away. They chased butterflies through the cane fields and dared each other to count the green snakes in the jungle trees. She had not thought of what her mother must have been feeling. Had no concept of how the betrayals burned.
Should she believe the rumours of this ‘Polish wife’? What if he had found another to hold his heart? Her jealousy was eating her up, making her weak, needy and desperate. Why else was she lingering here in Mainz? She pulled out one of the letters from her sleeve, seeing his bold black marks against the paper. Adieu, my dear. Love me and be courageous. She would lose him if she could not master her jealousy. Rise above. Be a goddess. He loves me above all others, she told herself, and she was determined in that moment to believe it.
But how could he have sent Hortense away? That, more than all his black moods and little cruelties, had shocked her. Nothing she had said would sway him. No plea was persuasive enough. He had shut her out. So Hortense was to be Queen of Holland and live in those dreadful low countries. It stuck in her chest like a splintered bone, this thing she had done. Her daughter’s sacrifice to Louis Bonaparte had been for nothing; Josephine had lost her anyway. And now Eugene, too, had been married to the Queen of Bavaria for political advantage. Had Bonaparte taken her children, she wondered, or had she given them up to him?
Josephine placed her emerald necklace safely back into her jewellery case and closed and bolted the lid. She wished her children could be so easily guarded.
She missed Malmaison and wondered how her plants were coping through the winter. Félix and Anne would care for them. Félix, so humble and enthusiastic. And Anne: steadfast, dependable and true. No deception in either one. Here she had only the dry wit of Claire de Rémusat to amuse her. She cast a sidelong glance at her companion, who was gazing out to the frosted trees. Here, she never knew who she could trust.
If she could wish herself back there without journeying on these snowbound roads she might have given in to Claire de Rémusat’s pleas. Endless cold days rocking in thin-walled carriages with the roads slushed and bogged. Imagine being warm, she thought, warm right through to your bones. With no breath of cold air to chill your skin. She imagined standing in her glasshouse, feeling the sun streaming down on her.
She turned to Claire. ‘I have decided. We will return to Paris. I miss Malmaison.’
‘Truly?’ Claire beamed back at her. ‘I feel warmer already!’
Josephine did not mention the letter she carried in the pocket of her sleeve. She did not say that in Bonaparte’s last note he had lost patience with her. He did not want her waiting and hovering, and he commanded her to leave.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Spring 1807
No one noticed when Anne slipped out of the nursery. She needed to escape the muggy greenhouses with their cloying air and walk through the flowerbeds. In spring everything was changing so quickly and she feared that some bulb, a tulip or a tiny purple crocus, would bloom without anyone there to see it come to life.
Anne walked along the banks of a stream. The grass here was lush and the foliage of the trees all different shades of blues and greens. The day was so still, like a painting, the irises at the water’s edge like daubs of paint in pale yellows and mauves. Toads were barking from the bulrushes and somewhere she could hear the hungry, insistent voices of baby birds.
Anne found she was weeping.
The baby conceived last summer had not survived. It had come with a rush of blood before it was three months old, before she had told another soul of its existence. She had not wanted to be pregnant, that was true. She had been afraid. But whe
n the pain cramped her over and ended the life of her child, she felt despair. All her fretting and wishing it away had come to pass. She had killed this baby with her worry.
That night, she had curled up behind Félix and listened to the snuffling of his breathing. She pressed her face against his freckled shoulder. She had reached out her hand, and he caught it, even in his sleep and had squeezed her fingers between his. Félix, who had been so patient with her, more patient than any other man would be. As Anne lay curled behind him, she made a promise. She would give him a child. She would not be afraid any longer. She would give him a child for both their sakes.
Months had passed since she made that promise and still she had not conceived. Troubled thoughts pulled at her. What if she could no longer bear a child? What if something was broken inside her when her dead baby was wrenched from her womb? Something that had not healed. Her fears followed her into the depths of winter. Would Félix still love her if she could not give him more children to adore?
Now it was spring, a time of new beginnings. Anne crossed a small curved bridge and kept in the shadows of the trees. Her steps were hurried, furtive, as if she didn’t want anyone to see her coming to this corner of the garden. Anne knew it was sacrilege to honour false gods, but she understood why some women might be driven to it. Her prayers to God had remained unanswered. What harm could there be in looking upon a statue? The Empress often came to her, Anne had seen her touch the carved foot and stroke the whippet at her side. There could be no harm in it. Yet she moved quickly and hoped that in the thickness of the spring foliage she would not be seen.
The goddess Diana stepped out of the woods. The sunlight bounced off her smooth stone skin. Anne stopped in awe. The statue looked alive and full of power. Her muscles were proud, her smile beneficent. Anne understood why women prayed to her to bring them children. She saw why the Empress needed her so much.
At Diana’s feet, a figure in a white dress crumpled to her knees and fell down into the grass.
Anne rushed to where the Empress lay collapsed.
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