‘What has happened?’ Anne kneeled in the wet grass beside the Empress. Anne could see she had been crying. Her face was swollen with it, blotched and haggard. Without thinking, she gathered the Empress in her arms. ‘Shh, what has happened?’ Anne stroked Josephine’s hair as though she was a child. Before she would never have dared to touch her so openly, but it felt right. It felt necessary.
They leaned against one another, skirts dampening in the swampy soil. Anne held the Empress as she sobbed.
‘There now,’ she crooned, still holding Josephine and rocking gently from side to side.
Josephine wailed. Her anguish brought tears to Anne’s eyes. She had never seen the Empress like this. Anne presumed divorce. The worst must have happened. Anne was not proud of herself, but her thoughts moved from sympathy to survival. What it would mean for her children, for Félix and herself, if the worst had happened for the Empress.
She looked up towards the château, expecting to see some of Josephine’s ladies coming to her aid. Had they all abandoned her now that the Emperor had?
The Empress’s silk dress was smeared from the mess of the birds. Her beautiful gown would be ruined. Anne helped the Empress roll herself upright, where she sat pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. As the shuddering in her shoulders slowed, the Empress slumped, weak and limp. Anne stayed silent. She would not say anything in case whatever came to mind was wrong. She would wait for the Empress to speak.
‘He is dead,’ she whispered.
A cold shard pierced Anne’s belly. Did she mean the Emperor?
‘The Emperor is dead?’ Anne asked, unable to check the fear in her voice. If the Emperor had been killed what would this mean for all of them? Would it be turmoil again, like the death of King Louis XVI? Would those who supported the old regime be slaughtered?
The Empress shook her head. ‘I have never felt pain like this,’ she said. ‘I have never lost a child.’
Anne reeled. ‘A child?’ Had the Empress been pregnant and miscarried? Anne searched her face. She well knew the pain of a lost child. Even one not fully formed.
‘Do you remember our little Napoleon running down these slopes?’ the Empress asked, her voice small. ‘Chasing the swans into the water?’
Anne nodded.
The Empress squeezed her eyes closed. ‘I cannot stop myself from blaming Bonaparte for sending them away. If he had not sent Hortense to those cold and boggy marshlands, my grandson would never have caught this fatal croup.’
It was Queen Hortense who had lost her son. Of course Anne remembered the boy, a bonny one, younger than her sons. He was to be the Emperor’s heir. The poor lad must not have made five years of age.
Anne felt ashamed that she had thought of herself and her family. A child was dead.
‘Hortense needs me,’ the Empress said. ‘She is paralysed with grief. They say she will not eat, she has fallen into a stupor. It is all so terrible.’
Anne had no words of comfort to offer. She sat in the cold, wet grass feeling the world spin, feeling nausea swill in her stomach. She thought of her boys and wanted them near her, needing to hold them in her arms and check that they were safe. But she was too afraid to move. She felt like she was slipping, sliding towards the lake, unable to stop herself. The spring grass was lush and long and she pushed her fingers between the blades and gripped.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Summer 1807
Josephine held three letters from Bonaparte, delivered to her at the Palace of Saint-Cloud just moments before. His faithful courier, Moustache, had ridden his horse to death to bring them to her. She had heard him arrive, ran to the window, and watched the poor steed stagger and topple to its death in the courtyard.
The letters were barely worth its sacrifice.
‘He beseeches me to be more courageous. To forget my sorrow. Enough he says. I have wept enough. Who is he to tell me what to feel?’ The anger rose and boiled out of her before she could stop her words. She knew she should not speak her mind in front of Fouché, her husband’s adviser. Barely six weeks had passed since the death of her grandson and Bonaparte wished her to be cheerful and contented. He even wrote to Hortense, accusing her of being selfish in her grief. Josephine despaired of his insensitivity, his cruelty. Was he so absorbed in himself now he thought of no one else?
‘He has won a great victory, he tells me.’ She shook the letter in her hand. ‘He thinks me selfish and uninterested in his military success. I wish you would be more reasonable, he says. He wants me to be gay and hold balls and celebrations in honour of his victory over the Russians. How can I, Fouché? While I am in such grief? All I can feel is pain. My grandson gone from this earth, my daughter inconsolable, while my husband remains in Poland with his whore!’
Fouché’s eyes were slippery but she faced him down.
‘And now I find my mother has died and everyone has kept the knowledge from me!’
Fouché went gravely still. He had not known that she knew.
‘My mother is dead, Fouché. Why did no one tell me this?’
The first shock of hearing the news from her informants had passed, her grief put aside for the moment while anger took its place.
‘We did not want to distress you, Madame.’
‘Fouché, you lie so smoothly, you make me think I cannot trust you.’
‘A month of mourning for your mother would only make the court unhappy. More sad tidings would depress the spirits of the people. It is best to continue with the celebrations.’
‘You mean a mourning wife is no use to him.’ Josephine moved to the window, the letters dropping from her hand. The success of his armies held no charm for her. ‘Too maudlin for the public to see.’
‘He wishes you to be a beacon of hope. Think of yourself as a shining light. The people love you. He knows that; it is what he loves most about you.’
‘The people are fainting in the theatres, did you know that? Screaming and fainting when they hear the lists of casualties read out. No amount of fetes and balls will deceive them into happiness.’
‘The practice of reading the war bulletins has been discontinued.’
Josephine gave a low, mirthless chuckle. ‘Of course. How convenient.’
‘It is true there has been much sadness. It is a lot for the public to take. And the death of the heir, it makes people unsettled, anxious that the empire is vulnerable.’
‘The death of an heir? The death of a child.’ She turned on him. ‘The death of my grandson. A child you yourself once bounced upon your knee.’
Fouché had the good grace to look bereaved.
‘You should have told me of her death, Fouché,’ she accused, her voice breaking.
Fouché coloured, two dots of puce on his cheekbones. He could not meet her eyes as he finally admitted: ‘He commanded us, Madame, to keep it secret. It was for the morale of the country.’
She turned away from him, shocked to know how Bonaparte had used her. She had believed that he loved her, cared for her, beneath it all. But this? To lie, to conceal her own mother’s death from her, just so it would not interrupt his political celebrations? It was beyond belief. Does he care for nothing now other than his own ambition? she wondered. Or is it simply that he no longer cares for me?
Her head was pounding with the pressure of the tears that would no longer come. She felt the swelling behind her eyes. She would not let herself think of her poor mother, not yet. Josephine rested her forehead against the pane of glass, looking down into the courtyard. She had no one left—her children far away, her mother dead, her husband in love with another. And she had let this happen to her. How had it come to this?
Below, five men hauled on ropes and dragged the steaming mound of horseflesh to be cut up for the dogs.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Winter 1808
Marthe walked stiffly in her heavy coat. The mist was thick over the river and the figures crossing the Pont Royal appeared out of the fog as dark and sudden shapes. Mart
he had no time to prepare when the woman she had named Shade materialised at her side, gripping her elbow and steering her towards the rail of the bridge. Together the two women stood, both tall and thin in dark grey coats, gazing down at the swirling waters of the Seine.
‘You know what to do?’ Shade asked her.
Marthe nodded.
‘We are trusting you,’ she said. She turned to Marthe, her eyes reading Marthe’s face, before she gave one grim nod and turned away. Marthe watched her continue across the bridge towards the Tuileries Palace and slip behind a veil of mist.
Marthe set off towards the Quai Voltaire. It was a reconnaissance, Dominic had said, that was all she needed to do. The Emperor had returned from Poland triumphant, boasting how he liberated the Poles from Russia, extending his empire. Marthe thought of him as a strutting cock, conducting his celebratory parades, while his soldiers drifted home, bewildered and damaged. The house that the Emperor had arranged for his mistress—the one they called the Polish wife—was a short walk from the Tuileries. Each one of the Clandestine would take their turn watching the house with the blue door on Quai Voltaire.
Feathers of moisture landed on her cheeks. She turned her face to the sky as the drizzle began to fall, enjoying the sensation on her skin. Alongside the Seine, the booksellers were busy covering their stalls of books with oiled canvas. These were elderly men in battered top hats and threadbare gentlemen’s coats. Rain dripped from their long noses as they eyed the sky, weighing up the odds, feeling the coins in their pockets and thinking of a pipe and a port wine beside some fire. As she walked beside the riverbank, the booksellers ignored her. There were benefits to being a woman of advancing years. At almost fifty she had become invisible.
The house with the blue door was narrow and tall and she paused across from it with the rain falling on her shoulders. The curved doorway was magnificent, twice the height of a man, with two doors that could swing open and ironwork brands that at night would blaze with firelight. Marthe imagined the Emperor leaping from his carriage in haste and banging on those doors, demanding entrance. Her eyes travelled up to the second storey with its ornate carved stonework around a window and balcony. Was she in there now, this Polish wife? Was she looking out across the river at the mist lifting from the rooftops of the Tuileries Palace, wondering when her Emperor would leave his wife?
Marthe had no reason to linger among the bouquinistes now they were packing up their cases of books and loading up their barrows. On the corner, an artist hurriedly folded up his easel and she remembered when she had once begged to buy some of his drawing pads and crayons. Two years ago she had come here wandering the streets without aim, seeking something to fill her days, and now here she was again on this Paris street, but armed with purpose. She crossed the road, nimbly dodging the ankle-drenching puddles.
The rain had emptied the footpath. The antique chairs and side tables had been carried back into their musty shops. Outside the galleries, there were no faux marble statues, no fake Egyptian mummies. She could see all the way back towards the Pont Royal. She would surely notice the Emperor’s carriage crossing the bridge and coming towards her; all she needed to do was find a safe place to sit and watch. Her job was to make a note of his movements, to see if there was a routine to his coming and going through the blue door.
The Clandestine were testing her, she knew that. They did not trust her yet. Perhaps they were all here somewhere in these shops, watching her walk past the windows. But when she looked in, all she saw was her own shadowy reflection. The raindrops were falling harder now, hitting the windows and blurring her image.
Marthe slowed her stride as she came to the blue door. She could not help but look up to the windows, feeling the rain on her cheeks. What would it be like to see the Emperor? Would he look like his picture on their coins, or the miniatures and reproductions sold in the stands along the Seine? She hardly believed he was a real person. A man of myth, his legend as overblown as his Empire. She kept her eyes trained on the bridge, that link between his world and hers, the ordinary citizen, wondering what she would feel at seeing the man who had killed so many.
Suddenly, the door swung open. She cried out as a guard pushed her roughly back. And then he was there, the Emperor, coming out of the doorway. A strangled gasp escaped her mouth. He was dressed as a bourgeois gentleman. She saw his portly stomach pushing out the buttons of his silk vest, the curve of his white jowl as he turned his head to look at her. For a man not yet forty, he looked aged, his skin pasty, nothing like the square-jawed youth of his portraits. She could not imagine him on a horse riding into battle. His eyes passed over her without lingering, without noticing the terror in her heart. She was close enough to touch him. If she had only thought to conceal a knife in her sleeve, all it would take was one lunge. As easy as pitching forward, as easy as a stumble. He would not expect it of her, an old woman with shock in her eyes.
A carriage drawn by a single horse rattled up behind her. And he was gone. A few strides was all it took to cross her path. She heard the snap of the driver’s whip, the sharp metallic strike of the horse’s hooves on the wet cobbles, and then the gently falling rain.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Summer 1808
As Josephine quietly entered the nursery she was relieved to find it empty of workers. It was Sunday and she often enjoyed a day of pottering in the glasshouses alone. It worried her that this summer had been so hot. Her callistemons looked thirsty. It was a relief to fill the watering can from the well and douse each pot with fine, feathery spray. It was a wonderful feeling, she thought, to give to those in need.
The door of the nursery creaked open.
Bonaparte entered, a faint smile softening his face. Surprised, she dropped her watering can.
‘Don’t let me interrupt you. Continue,’ he urged. ‘I have come to watch you.’
Josephine could hear no sarcasm in his tone. This warmth startled her. She had grown too used to his condemnation of late, she realised. Since returning to Paris that winter, Bonaparte had been distant, preoccupied with his whore in Quai Voltaire. Josephine said nothing to anger him. Life was simpler and calmer when she gave him no cause to feel aggrieved.
‘I didn’t know that you had come to Malmaison,’ she said, wary.
‘I missed you.’ He pushed himself away from the door and moved towards her.
She received his embrace and rested her head against his chest. It felt good to have his arms around her. She felt some of the old fondness returning for them both. Ordinarily he would not abide a long embrace, his back would stiffen, he would pull away, but today he seemed content to hold her in his arms.
‘I have heard from Hortense,’ he said. ‘She has rallied. I am pleased to hear she is being more courageous.’
Josephine squeezed her eyes closed tight. It was a relief that Louis was now treating Hortense more kindly after their son’s death, but Josephine did not trust him. She wished Bonaparte would allow her to visit her daughter in Holland. Perhaps now, in this moment of tenderness, she might ask if she could leave Paris? But even as she thought it she recognised the impossibility. Bonaparte needed her here to charm the people, to make them feel safe. He would say the people needed to see their Empress, to remind them this empire was worth fighting for.
Bonaparte’s popularity in Paris had never been so low and this war in Spain was doing nothing to improve it. Was that why he had come here today—to say that he was leaving to join the fighting in Spain?
‘Come,’ Bonaparte said, ‘let us walk on this fine summer’s day.’ Gently he took her arm.
Josephine complied willingly, finding this sudden closeness with her husband surprising, but welcome. She was relieved to have him smiling down on her and stroking her hand as they walked. It was Malmaison that did it. It was always here, in summer, that they had the best of times.
As they walked out across the sunny lawn, the llamas panicked and scattered. She gripped Bonaparte’s arm for surety.
; ‘Do you remember Hortense singing,’ she asked, ‘here on the lawn? She has such a beautiful voice.’ Josephine caught herself wondering if her daughter still sang.
‘I have been wanting a chance to speak with you alone,’ Bonaparte said.
‘The dahlias are so delightful at this time of year.’
‘Josephine? Are you listening?’
‘I think I will begin a new collection of roses. I wish to collect a specimen of every type of rose that has ever been bred. I find the subject fascinating.’ Her pulse was thrumming in her neck. She felt like a spider dangling on a single strand of web. Don’t say it, Bonaparte, she prayed. Please don’t speak it.
‘Josephine, you know what I must say. Why make it difficult for me?’
Fear caught her throat. He could not ask this of her. How could she carelessly give up her husband? Her natural instinct was to resist. She wanted to turn and run from him, not to hear the words he meant to say. But she remained silent, staring out over the calm lake and the gently swaying reeds. Her swans were nesting again. Why was giving life so easy for some and so impossible for others?
‘It is for the stability of my empire. You must understand: I need an heir.’
Josephine drew a deep breath. How could she compete with his need for immortality?
‘Will you help me make this sacrifice?’ he asked.
She turned to her husband, making him stop, holding his forearms tight. ‘We need each other, Bonaparte, we always have.’ Had he forgotten that they were destined to be together, that he had told her so many times that his star had risen because of her? ‘We are two colonials who have become Emperor and Empress of France!’ she said, echoing the words he had once said to her. ‘It must be written in the stars.’
‘Why must you make me wretched?’ He stamped his foot, petulant. ‘Will you not say it? Will you not make the sacrifice for us both? I must do my duty to France and you must do your duty to me.’
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