Perhaps my face showed all of this, because my sister crossed the room and stood before me, her hands reaching to pull me into a gentle hug. “Don’t worry, Desi. I shall still be your sister. We will always keep a place for you in our home.”
Our home? So she and Joseph were already a “we”? And I was the guest they had agreed to welcome? I swallowed hard, forcing back the threat of tears. I would not cry, not when she was being so resolute about it all, so clearly treading cautiously with me, as if I were the emotional child whose eruption was to be anticipated and managed. I would be as practical, as mature as Julie was. I pulled away from the hug, leveling my chin as I looked at her. “When?” I asked.
“Soon. You know they are awaiting word from Paris on Napoleone’s proposal for Italy. When Napoleone leaves for the capital, Joseph will go with him. If his brother continues to rise in the army, then Joseph could have a real chance at a career in the new government. He hopes to be a diplomat. He must be in Paris for that, beside his brother. And the only way I can go with him is if we’re married.”
My mind raced to take all this in, but my sister hadn’t answered my question. “So, when?”
“Before summer’s end.”
“But…that’s in a month! Surely you aren’t going to marry someone you’ve only just met?”
Julie sighed and I bristled at the way she was clearly reminding herself to be patient—a patience born of pity, was it? I resented that.
“It is the best way, Desi.”
“Why?” I asked, my tone biting. “How can you think that leaving home is for the best?”
“You know what it’s been like at home. With Maman. Well, this could help things. Could help all of us. Joseph…he has connections but no wealth, and we have wealth but no protection. In aligning with each other, our deficits become obsolete, but our assets, united, become all the better.”
I absorbed this, leaning away from Julie to lower myself onto the bed. She sat beside me, our bodies sinking slowly through layers of plush bedding. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “I’m not beautiful like you, Desi. Nor am I young. But I could not hope for better than Joseph. He is a kind man. He will be good to me, to our whole family.”
“Well…why does it have to be so soon? Why can’t you just wait a few years?” Until I’m older and ready to be married as well, I thought. But I didn’t say it.
“Oh, Desiree.” My sister patted my hand, turning to glance at her reflection in the mirror. “You don’t know anything of the ways of men and women. There are certain things that…a lady…cannot do. At least, not until she’s a wife.”
* * *
I stood alone in the garden, the familiar space barely recognizable as I surveyed the scene. Maman had conjured our very own Eden at the Clary villa, with heaps of roses perfuming the air and hundreds of candles lighting the space. Joseph had ordered a massive arrangement of flowers delivered to our home for the wedding, accompanying the garlands of hibiscus and honeysuckle that draped the long banquet tables in the garden.
Nicolas had spent generously on both the wine and the meal. As night lowered around us, the air was redolent with the aromas of not only the flowers but also the feast—lamb and pork, saffron rice and stewed apricots, platters of whole fish, skin crisped, eyes and bones still in place.
The evening was balmy with just the slightest breeze, and though the seagulls cawed, though nearby the cafés of our busy harbor town filled with their nightly diners and revelers, we heard none of those summer sounds, for Maman had hired musicians for the night.
Nicolas had invited several of our family’s most important clients, and he looked on, the père de famille now that Papa was gone, approvingly. Maman flitted about in her gown of midnight blue silk, tossing orders at the servants and accepting the compliments of the wedding guests. She’d been so nervous about a summer rain, but the night settled around us clear and comfortable, and the relief was evident in her broad smile.
The Buonaparte family arrived en masse just before the meal was served. I met them all: the younger brothers, Lucien, Louis, and Jerome. They all shared the same dark hair and languorous accents. They kept to themselves mostly, mingling only with the Buonaparte sisters, who were also in attendance. There were three of them: Pauline, Caroline, and Elisa, and they told me their names in quick succession.
I also met Mamma Buonaparte, the fierce Letizia, who entered the dinner party surrounded by her offspring. Looking at her, I guessed that she might have been beautiful once, perhaps in her youth, but her dark features were now sharp, scraped of all softness by age and hardship and the ruthless Corsican sun. She was quiet but civil with Maman, thanking her for her hospitality. I greeted her, staring into her unsmiling face, thinking that with her aquiline nose—much like her favorite son’s—and stern, alert eyes, she might pose as a formidable matriarch of the former Roman Empire. “It is an honor to meet you, Madame Buonaparte,” I said, lowering my eyes as I curtsied before her. She studied me with that probing gaze, and I instantly understood that this was another trait she had bequeathed to her son. I did not know what Napoleone had told her of me—or indeed whether he had told her anything at all—but I felt cowed as she returned my greeting, and then she turned to her nearest daughter and demanded a cup of wine.
With the Church having been carved up and stripped of all power, including that of blessing a marriage, Julie’s wedding was just a quick legal affair at the town hall before the feast at our home. Fitting, as that is where she and Joseph had first met, just months before. Nicolas and Napoleone attended as witnesses, and I was to attend to Julie at the fête.
Of course the musicians began the night in the only way imaginable: a boisterous playing of “La Marseillaise,” the anthem of our new Republic, given its name after volunteer soldiers from our own hometown sang it while marching on Paris. We sang along to the jaunty tune, men doffing their caps, women holding hands to hearts.
I felt a tap on my shoulder a moment after “La Marseillaise” concluded; I turned, already knowing whom I would find. Of course my eyes had been tracking Napoleone since the start of the feast. I’d watched greedily as he’d laughed with a sister—I believe it was the middle one, Pauline. I’d noted how he had waited solicitously on Mamma Letizia, bringing her plates of fish and cups of wine and slices of lemon cake. I’d relished seeing this other side of him with these women he loved, had even enjoyed the prick of envy that it had elicited in me.
“May I?” He held a hand toward me now as the musicians began their next set. I had barely placed my hand in his before he was guiding me forward into a swift quadrille. His steps were decisive and self-assured, if not entirely fluid.
Nearby, Joseph laughed, the sound of his joy soaring over the din of the partygoers and the music. “He is happy,” Napoleone said, keeping his eyes fixed only on me.
“So is she,” I answered. And she was; for that I was happy, too. But my heart did carry a pang of sadness, knowing that Julie would be gone that night. Nearby, to be sure—they had taken a modest but comfortable townhouse close to the square, only a few blocks from our neighborhood. But still, she would not be in our home, in the bedchamber we had shared since before my memories began.
“Mamma likes you,” Napoleone said, his pronouncement pulling my thoughts from Julie. I stole a glance across the garden, where Letizia sat, scowling, flanked on each side by a daughter, two of her sons standing over her like sentries.
“She does?” I asked.
“She thinks you are a dear girl. From a respectable family.”
I nodded. I supposed that was good.
“When you and I are married, I’ll have my men fire a 101-gun salute before the feast,” he said.
I would have tumbled to the soft grass, I was sure of it, had he not been holding me up, guiding me through the dance steps. When you and I are married. There’d been no proposal.
“
How does that sound?” he asked.
I shook my head, looking into his green eyes.
“What is it?” he asked, his self-assured composure flickering for just a moment.
“At my wedding, I want something else,” I answered.
“Oh?” He flashed half a grin, daring me to oppose him. “Pray tell.”
I squared my shoulders, willing myself to speak my own mind: “I’ve heard that in Paris they have these new machines. They fill them with gas and they can fly.”
“Yes, hot-air balloons,” he said, nodding. “Indeed. I’ve seen one.”
“You have? So they really…fly?”
“They really do. And if you want one at our wedding, we shall have one.”
My eyes went wide. That was the second time in a matter of minutes that he’d said we would marry. Did he really mean it?
“But not yet,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “I won’t marry you yet. Not while I still await word from the Committee on my invasion plans for Italy. Not until after that campaign is concluded in victory. I wouldn’t take the chance of making you a widow at the age of sixteen.” He said it all with such decisiveness. It was settled. But like so many other moments, he had never even asked.
Did I wish to marry him? I considered the question a moment as he guided me through the dance steps. What did I wish—sixteen years old, dancing on the wedding night of the person closest to me in the world? Like everyone else in our fearsome, fragile world, what I wanted most was an escape from the Terror. I wanted my loved ones to survive. I loved my family, I loved my home—that, I knew.
But did I wish to remain at home, with Maman, now that Julie was gone? I knew the answer: no, I did not. Julie was speaking of going to Paris with Joseph and Napoleone; how could I stay behind in Marseille?
And now here was this singular, strong man, standing before me, telling me that I would go with them. A man more self-assured and powerful than I had previously known possible. A man so much wiser in the ways of the world than I had ever hoped to be. A man who made plans, and knew how to act on them. The brother of Julie’s husband. Just when it had appeared that my entire world would fall apart, he’d stepped into it—both he and his brother—and nothing had been the same since that time. Yes, I loved Napoleone.
And so I allowed myself to imagine even more—Napoleone and I joining forever, and my cleaving even more irrevocably to Julie and to Joseph, too. A new city, a new life. Our bond forged out of the strength of not just one union, but two. What could be better?
Chapter 6
Marseille
1794
I HAD HOPED I WOULD STILL see much of Julie after her marriage, but I certainly hadn’t expected her to appear back at home the next morning, before I’d even finished breakfast. I sat on the terrace with Maman, drowsily taking in my coffee, my mind and my movements sluggish from the previous evening’s feast, from the fatigue of dancing late into the night. Maman looked triumphant but in need of a good rest. Even the gardens appeared tired, haggard from the spoils of the wedding festivities. But then I blinked in surprise, for there stood my sister before us, her eyes red and her face taut, her new husband standing beside her.
“Julie? Dear? Weren’t the pair of you to depart for Nice this morning?” Maman and I both beheld the newlyweds with a shared look of concern; had their first night of marriage been so terrible?
Julie pressed her kerchief to her face, looking at me as she did so.
“Whatever is the matter?” Maman asked, looking from Julie to her new son-in-law.
“It’s Napoleone,” Joseph said, his voice hoarse as he took my sister’s hand in his.
“What…what about him?” I asked, lowering my bowl of coffee onto the table as I slowly stood.
“He’s been denounced,” Julie said.
“Denounced?” Maman gasped the word. It was a fate only one step short of the guillotine—a certain path toward imprisonment, at the very least. “But he’s close to the Robespierres,” Maman said, as if to refute their claim.
“That’s just it,” Joseph said. “There’s something much larger going on. My brother isn’t the only one at risk.”
Julie and Maman both went pale. I was certain that I did as well. I could not believe that I’d stood here in these very gardens just hours prior, dancing in his arms and speaking about our own wedding.
Joseph closed his eyes, running his large hand through his unkempt hair. He hardly appeared like a happy bridegroom on the morning after his wedding night. “I’d go into town to find out, but I fear the mob. Word from Paris is that Robespierre has been…killed.”
Maman groaned as I collapsed back into my chair, my mind churning to make sense of this. Robespierre—our nation’s de facto citizen ruler, the man who had overseen the executions of so many, even our king and queen—now dead? How mad could this nation possibly go? Who was left to be consumed if the rabid beast was now eating its own head?
“Not just Robespierre…his brother and Danton, Saint-Just, Desmoulins.” Joseph rattled off the names we all knew so well—the names of the iron-willed and radical young men who had seized the reins of power, steering our government toward its ruthless policy of mass executions. “They are denouncing and killing one another. Paris is a bloody battlefield once more. Anyone close to them is at risk. And my brother was close with them, Augustin Robespierre especially.”
“Where is he?” I asked. “Château d’If?” I offered the name of the nearby fortress that dominated our sea view, rising up out of the Mediterranean, an ancient and feared island dungeon.
“I wish he were that close.” Joseph shook his head. “They’ve taken him to the prison in Antibes, Fort Carré. Do you know it?”
I shook my head.
“They have his writings to damn him as well,” Joseph said. “He wrote some pamphlets in favor of the Jacobins…in favor of the Republic, really, but they are claiming it was to prop up the Robespierre government.”
“So then, what is to become of us?” Maman asked, her triumph of the previous night turned to fresh terror. We were no better off for having aligned ourselves with the Buonapartes after all; in fact, we were now worse off.
“We wait,” Joseph said. “It is all we can do. There is a general in Paris, Barras, who is leading this coup to oust the Jacobins from the government. He appears to be more moderate. Perhaps he will show leniency.”
Julie stepped forward, placing her hand on my shoulder as she looked to her husband. “I would think so…for a war hero like your brother. And an innocent one, at that. He’s committed no crimes against the nation.”
Joseph sighed, crossing his arms. “We both know that neither service to the nation nor innocence is enough to save a man from the blade, my dear one.” But then he turned to me, his tone lifting, the effort of this summoned fortitude visible in his weary expression. “Do not despair, Desiree. Not yet. My brother is beloved by his men; they would break down the walls of the prison and set him free before they’d allow him to ride a tumbrel to the guillotine. While Napoleone’s men live free, there is hope.”
* * *
Joseph urged us to rebuff despair, but Maman took to her bed. “We are ruined,” she cried. “Just as I feared. I should never have been fool enough to believe that we could secure our safety by an advantageous marriage. Instead, we’ve now aligned ourselves with a family viewed as hostile by the government.”
I found it increasingly difficult to be alone in the house with Maman. I took some refuge at my sister’s home, though I knew from the twisting of her hands, from the pinch of her mouth, that she, too, was afraid—fearful that her husband would be arrested next. Nicolas was so preoccupied with managing Papa’s affairs, and he’d taken a spacious townhome for himself closer to the port—in large part, I suspected, to escape Maman’s daily carping—so I barely saw my brother, save for the occasional Sunday dîner en famille
. When I wasn’t at Julie’s, I took off on foot. I walked the coastline, my fraught nerves propelling my steps along the craggy shore, like a sailor’s wife haunting the limestone cliffs, eyes narrowed, fixed on the blue horizon in search of returning sails.
I thought of Napoleone constantly—he filled my daytime thoughts and prevented the sleep of my nighttime hours. If only I could have heard some word from him as to how he was doing—if only I could have visited, or even written him a note. But these were the days of revolutionary justice, and prisoners such as Napoleone were not afforded the luxury of correspondence with the outside world.
When I needed some task to occupy my restless hands, I drew. There by the water, I sketched my familiar coastline in chalk, hoping that my eyes would spot a ship’s outline against the horizon, carrying Napoleone toward me and forcing me to scrap my work.
How could it all have fallen apart so suddenly and unexpectedly? I wondered. Just days earlier I’d been wrapped in my innocent bliss, newly tasting the sweetness of a first love, thinking that I might actually soon be married. And safe. And happy. He had spoken so surely—of love and of Paris and of a 101-gun salute at our wedding feast. And I had believed it all. In his presence, there had been no reason not to believe.
Yet there I stood—powerless once more. The person I loved was suddenly in the clutches of a cruel and random quarrel so much larger than we were. The man I had given my heart to was imprisoned in a medieval fortress, a dark and distant place from where we had no word. And suddenly, nothing was sure. Least of all his life.
The days passed in this manner. And then it was late August, a mild evening in the final days of summer. Dusk was lowering around the gardens, the first glimmers of starlight piercing the sky, and I sat outdoors. Maman had retired to her bed hours earlier, and I was alone. Passing time, knowing sleep would evade me yet again.
The Queen's Fortune Page 6