Marthe crept slowly down the stairs to the floors below. It was early; she could not afford to wake her husband and have him find her sneaking through the house like a thief. At the kitchen door, Dominic spoke.
‘You do not need to do this. We have people there now.’
She pushed past him and laid the weighty book on the table. Taking sheets of coarse brown paper and string, she busied herself with wrapping it.
‘You will not be safe when I am caught. Promise me you will go far away. Warn Jacques if you can. Tell him they know about the bolthole, anything; I don’t want you to die, either of you.’ Marthe heard her voice rising but she kept herself under control.
Dominic reached for her hand. His grey eyes were kind, his face unusually softened. It took the lines out of his forehead and made him look younger. She appreciated his attempt at comfort. Of reassurance. She felt his thumb stroke the back of her hand. His touch was tender, tentative. He pulled her closer, holding her against him. It was strange to be held and she felt her body gently soften. He kissed her forehead and she squeezed her eyes closed. ‘Don’t do this,’ he whispered.
‘He will arrive today,’ Madame Mère announced with satisfaction.
Josephine watched the golden leaves of her elms catch the sunlight as they fell, the wind chasing flocks of them across the lawn. She stood at the window, her back to her guests, but she could feel them staring into her with the ferocity of steel.
Bonaparte’s brothers had yet to arrive, but Letizia had already made herself at home. She rested her feet on a small padded stool. As Caroline had gleefully forewarned, his family was descending and arranging themselves like audience members at the opera, awaiting her fall with eager anticipation. Who would have ever thought, Josephine almost smiled, that a girl from the plantations of Martinique would one day be awaiting the King of Holland, the King of Spain and the King of Westphalia to gather in her parlour?
For the moment, she had only Bonaparte’s mother and sister Caroline, Queen of Naples, to contend with.
Josephine remained at the window, gazing out over her garden, making no attempt at pleasantries. She was determined to ignore them, to give them no satisfaction. She was grateful for the autumn-flowering Correa reflexa, those little fuschia flowers from New Holland that had burst into bloom in the garden beds outside her window. The tubular bells of soft crimson with yellow-green tips drew the bees to their nectar—precious little else was flowering at this time—and Josephine was glad for the activity to distract her from her guests.
‘Will he bring her with him, do you think?’ Caroline asked her mother. ‘Marie Walewska, his Polish wife?’
Josephine dug her fingernails into the wood of the windowpane but made no outward sign of movement. Her garden was a furious blaze of colour, as if each branch was determined to have a last chance to dazzle.
Bonaparte hated this scheming of his family. He once chose her over their greed; he might do so again. It amused her to think how this hatred for her had blinded them. If Bonaparte married again and had a suite of children, how long would they keep their crowns? But their stupidity was cold comfort. Josephine did not want to lose her husband.
Claire de Rémusat knocked at the door and entered. Josephine turned, her hand above her heart. Had he come?
Madame Mère swivelled her head, alert as a bloodhound.
‘A Mme Labillardière is at the gate, Empress,’ Claire announced.
‘Madame Labillardière?’ Josephine asked. The wife of the botanist? It made no sense. ‘What does she want?’
‘Send the woman away,’ growled Madame Mère. ‘She is interrupting a family gathering.’
‘She says she has brought a gift for you from the savants of the Jardin des Plantes.’
‘A gift? How strange!’
‘Let her leave it then and be off!’ said Caroline. Mother and daughter nodded to one another.
But Josephine wasn’t listening. An interruption had never been more welcome.
The wife of the botanist Labillardière stood in the entrance hall holding a plain-wrapped package in her arms. Josephine didn’t know what she expected the wife of the savant to be, but somehow this stern, tall woman seemed to match him perfectly. Her face was pale, her skin almost translucent, so that her blue veins seemed large in her neck and temples. Her hair was greying and pulled back with stray wisps blown about by the wind.
‘My name is Marthe.’
‘Welcome, Marthe, you must come through into the library.’ Josephine looked behind her and noticed there was no carriage. Had the woman walked? This really was very unusual. Marthe followed silently as Josephine led her away from the music room, beyond the eyes and ears of Bonaparte’s mother and sister, and took her into the library.
Marthe held out the large package. ‘It is his personal copy,’ she said.
Josephine laid the heavy book on a side table and peeled back the brown paper. Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen, by JacquesJulien Houtou de Labillardière. Josephine breathed deep.
‘They are all the plants from his travels,’ Marthe said.
And perhaps some from Baudin’s, too, she thought, remembering how tightly the men of the Jardin des Plantes had held on to his collections, but she said nothing, content to run her fingers over the embossed gold title. Josephine carefully opened the pages, reading the listing of features, the cataloguing of fruits and flowers and leaves by their shapes, the recording of a life form’s existence in Latin words: lineari-lanceolatis, acuminatus, these names she recognised—slender, lance-like, pointed. These extinct words, she realised, still had meaning to those who cared to know them.
‘It is a precious gift,’ she said to Marthe, meeting the woman’s pale blue eyes and holding them.
A fierce screeching startled both women.
‘Josephine!’ Caroline screamed from outside the window. ‘Will you call your peacocks off!’
The birds had surrounded her, tails raised high and wide in brilliant plumes of colour. Caroline must have crept through her flowerbeds to spy on them, Josephine realised, unsurprised.
Josephine went to the door and pushed it wide. ‘They are not interested in you,’ she said and pointed to the peahens pecking at the ground beneath her rosebushes.
‘This place is a menagerie! These animals should be locked up.’
‘Perhaps you should stay inside where you will not be harassed?’ Josephine suggested.
Looping her arm through Marthe’s, she pulled her out through the open doors and whispered, ‘Let us walk quickly, I doubt she will keep up.’
Behind them, she heard Caroline sing out, ‘Do not go far. My brother will want to speak with you as soon as he arrives.’ Josephine quickened her stride.
They walked in silence towards the lake, Josephine eager to show the wife of the famed botanist the copse of blue gum growing at the end of the vista. It would do her good to take her mind off the imminent arrival of her husband. When they reached the lake the black swans launched from the bulrushes, gliding out into the middle away from her. The gums stood tall and straight, pale trunks stretching up to the sky. The leaves were lengthening, changing from dusty blue to green, losing their juvenile form. She hoped one day to see them flower.
‘Tell me,’ Josephine said, ‘why have you really come?’
The question seemed to startle her companion. Eventually Mme Labillardière spoke. ‘I have come on behalf of my husband,’ she said. ‘Of the savants at the Jardin des Plantes. They thought to send an emissary, woman to woman.’
‘They are embarrassed to come and see me themselves?’
‘They are concerned there has been some animosity in the past and are keen to put that to rights.’
‘Ah. They want something from me.’
‘They wish to study your plants. They have not had the success they wished with the eucalyptus.’
So the men of the Jardin des Plantes now needed her. Josephine understood Marthe’s purpose. She had been used often enough for the same reaso
n—to soften the way for Bonaparte’s sword. She was flattered but not a fool. These men would claim the credit for her achievements if she was not careful.
But then she faltered, dropping Marthe’s arm. The realisation struck her that it would not matter. After today, she might not be mistress of her own garden any longer. If Bonaparte sent her away, those men could come and take whatever they wished from her nurseries.
As that thought sliced into her, Josephine heard a terrifying cry; the guttural, blood-chilling sound of a woman screaming.
Anne prayed at the base of the statue of the goddess Diana. She would not have come here but she didn’t know what else to do. As she drew closer and closer to her time her dreams were becoming more terrifying. Félix was afraid for her, but he couldn’t help her. He could not banish the dreams from her head and erase the image of her lying as cold and white as stone on a sheet spread with blood.
He asked her to rest, but staying in bed only made it worse. She was too large now to climb up into the attic space. Instead, when the shaking overtook her, she crept to the corner of the room and pulled the blankets over the top of herself. Why was this happening to her again? It was not normal. Her own mother would never have cowered like this and left her children in rooms below with no one to care for them. Again, Anne wondered if she was possessed—if some demon had taken root when her stillborn baby had been pulled from her body.
All morning she had felt the pains, small stabs into the pit of her belly, but it was too soon, she could not be going into labour yet. Her fears had driven her out of the house, out from underneath Félix’s worrying looks, and brought her to the statue of Diana. She felt the moss wet beneath her knees. Her belly was pulling her forward and putting an ache in her back. Anne rubbed the amulet in her hand. Women used it to pray for an easy birth, the Empress had said. Was it wrong to think of her survival? Was it wrong to care about your life above that of an unborn child? Looking up, the face of stone gave her no answers.
‘Please,’ Anne whispered. ‘Please let us both live.’
As she prayed, the statue appeared to ripple. The form of the goddess flickered like sunlight shifting between the trees. Anne blinked. She thought she saw the figure straighten. She gripped the amulet in her fist, feeling the sharpness of the metal in her palm, grounding her to the reality of pain. But as she watched the goddess step out of the shadow of the woods, she fell back in awe. The dog at her feet shook itself and ran, circling around her. Diana stood in the light, her skin returned to radiance, her tunic fluttering in the breeze. The quiver on her back now seemed made of leather not stone. Diana turned, and when her eyes fell on Anne she smiled. Anne felt a great calm, a warmth, a sense that everything would be well. And then the huntress raised her bow and shot her in the stomach.
Pain pierced through her. Anne screamed. The arrowhead had plunged hot and hard beneath her belly. Pain radiated across her back and down her thighs. She doubled over, squeezing her eyes shut. She knew this pain. It was too soon.
The arrowhead must have nicked the bag in her stomach for her waters now washed down her legs. Why had she done this? But the goddess had returned to statue form, receding back into the shadows of the forest, her stone mildewed with moss and mould. Anne bent over again as another contraction wrapped itself around her middle and clenched tight.
‘Anne! What has happened?’
Panting, Anne looked up to see two women running towards her.
‘Is it coming?’ the Empress asked.
Anne groaned from a place deep within herself.
‘Can you make it to the house?’
Anne leaned on the Empress’s arm, determined to walk. She was better than this. She had birthed two sons already. This was not worthy of a Serreaux woman.
‘Help me,’ the Empress cried to Marthe.
But Anne found she could not walk. Her legs collapsed and she was on her hands and knees staring at the wet grass.
Through her pain, she heard a distant voice calling out for Josephine.
Anne was growling like a beast on all fours. Marthe stood beside her looking down at this moment of transformation that she had so badly wanted for herself.
The Empress tried to haul Anne to her feet, but Marthe saw the vacant stare of an inward gaze and realised Anne had gone to some other place with her pain. This place that Marthe had been so jealous of; a place where only mother and child existed.
Behind them, the Emperor shouted for Josephine.
Marthe shot upright, her back rigid. She swung around and saw the Emperor silhouetted black against the sky. When Bonaparte’s voice barked out across the lawn she knew what she had to do.
‘I will take a message to him,’ Marthe offered, her voice light and quick. The knife was in her sleeve.
‘No need,’ the Empress said. ‘Help me with Anne.’
The Emperor stood at the top of the hill, his legs spread. He had not seen the women crouching in the wet reeds. The Emperor bellowed again for Josephine.
‘I will get help,’ Marthe said. The Emperor was alone on the ridge. He would not suspect when she approached him quickly, calling for his help. It would be the work of a moment to insert the blade in his neck, just as Dominic had shown her.
Dominic. Was he safe? Marthe wondered. Had he gone far away as he’d promised her he would?
‘Quick,’ the Empress said, ‘help me.’
Marthe hesitated. ‘Let me call for him.’ She felt her moment escaping her.
Anne’s hand clutched Marthe’s ankle. It was a claw pulling at Marthe’s skirts, pulling her down to her. Anne’s eyes were round with terror, as if she saw the approach of her death as certain as the coming dusk.
‘I will do this for your boys,’ Marthe whispered in her ear. ‘I am protecting them.’
‘Stay with me,’ Anne panted, staring into Marthe’s eyes. ‘I need you.’
What did she owe these people? She had never cared for this woman. Anne had everything that Marthe lacked: a loving husband, two fine sons, a life that Marthe should have had. Her mouth twisted. She wanted to scream her frustration. It wasn’t fair, nothing in her life was fair. Why shouldn’t she be given one child, just one, when others had so many it nearly killed them? Her dislike for this woman was born of envy. She recognised it, knew that it filled her mouth with bitterness. She was tired of the taste of it.
Marthe lifted her head and saw the Emperor turn his back to them and stride away along the ridge. Marthe imagined herself as the huntress drawing back her bow, letting loose the arrow that would fell the tyrant.
Bring one life into the world, or end one to save thousands more? Marthe had only moments to choose.
When Josephine heard her husband’s voice carry down to the lake she yelped like a pup. Bonaparte had returned! She checked the urge to run up the hill to him, to be ready with an excuse, to apologise. He would be angry that she was not there to meet him. But Anne cried out and Josephine slipped an arm around her and tried to haul her up. She was as heavy as a horse. They must get her out of this wet and muddy grass. She called Marthe to help her, but the woman was staring back at the Emperor on the ridge.
Josephine took out her handkerchief and wiped the sweat from Anne’s face. Her lovely face, reddened and slick with sweat. Bonaparte cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted her name. Once he had called her selfish to think of her own happiness, he believed that a wife need only concern herself with her husband’s happiness. He would expect her to go to him. In all things, she saw clearly now, her husband cared first and foremost about himself.
Josephine saw her old self running towards her husband. A ghostly spectre of herself, in her own white dress, her own slippers, the curls of her hair falling loose as she hurried to his call. She watched as the huntress, the goddess Diana, raised her bow and shot the apparition down. ‘Today, I shall be late for my own execution,’ she murmured, turning back to Anne.
Marthe thought of the girl paid to hold the horse and cart on that dark Christmas Eve.
>
Then of Dominic.
And of Anne with her child struggling to be born.
Even Jacques.
They were tainted by association with her. Who was she to take their lives from them? Had she not condemned another assassin for those same actions?
Anne screamed again and Marthe slid an arm around her back. She locked eyes with the Empress and together they lifted Anne from the earth.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Winter 1810
The sky threatens rain. Rose watches her gardeners attempt to bring a makeshift marquee to shelter her. They carry the tent, one man on each corner, and totter down the slope of the lawn. One slips on the wet grass and the corner crumples, almost dragging all the others down. Félix has arranged this, she thinks. It is kind of him.
How could she leave Malmaison? How dare he ask this of her? The wind shakes the early blossoms from her cherry trees, and petals drift like snowflakes to rest on the grass. It reminds her of the sadness of a wedding day. Her glade of ferns raise and drop their feathery fronds in the wind like they are waving goodbye.
Across the lake she sees the hothouse where she and Marthe carried Anne between her contractions. They stayed with her in the warmth of the nursery greenhouse, they kneeled on the hard-packed floor, they hid from everyone behind the milked-glass walls.
Bonaparte did not wait for her that day in the garden. He rode to Fontainebleau and later summoned her there. By the end of the autumn she had made her sacrifice. Before Christmas, Bonaparte had his divorce—a public ceremony where all his family could sit and gloat. Then her religious blessing, her marriage in the eyes of God, was annulled. She was to be removed utterly and completely from his life.
Afterwards he wrote gentle, caring notes. He was worried for her health. He professed himself a constant and tender friend. How the word ‘friend’ had pained her. He gave her four thousand a year to do all the planting she wanted at Malmaison. Yet how could she believe his words of love and affection after this? She scrunches his letter in her hand. Her eviction notice.
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