A movement on the far edge of the darkening gardens startled me from my gloomy solitude. My body stiffened instinctively before my mind caught apace; I wondered if my eyes were playing a trick on me, because there, in the murky light, a figure, narrow and lithe, climbed over the back gate and dropped down into our quiet yard. He didn’t speak, though he stared at me, his face shadowed under his bicorn officer’s cap. I sat motionless in my chair, awaiting some further clue. Was it really him?
He said nothing, simply waved me to him with an impatient hand. I rose, my senses heightened so that the call of a distant gull blared in my ears, the aroma of the nearby jasmine overwhelmed me with its heady perfume. I sailed toward him until he stood just a few steps away. “Napoleone?”
He raised a gloved hand to his lips, asking for quiet. His eyes flickered briefly toward Maman’s window, where a lone candle leaked a feeble glow through the window.
“She’s in bed,” I said.
“And your brother?” he asked.
“He’s taken a place of his own. Closer to the port.”
Napoleone whispered when he spoke next: “There is someplace I wish to take you.”
I nodded, putting my hand in his. I didn’t look back, didn’t consider going inside to rouse Maman to tell her I was leaving with Napoleone. This was my decision to make, and it took me less than an instant to decide. We walked silently toward the gate.
Outside, on the darkening street, a single military coach and driver awaited, and Napoleone held the door as I hoisted my skirts and climbed in. I swept the interior with my gaze and noted, with a pleased relief, that it was just the two of us. As soon as the door shut, closing us in together, I collapsed into his arms. “You’re safe.” I shut my eyes, burrowing my face into his chest as I clung to him. He had never kissed me, in all our time together, and yet now I heaped myself on him like an offering, begging him to kiss me, my face inches from his. “Thank goodness you’re alive.”
“I am,” he said, patting my back, a restrained gesture, all the more so because of the complete unraveling of my own emotions. When he did not kiss me, I pressed my face to his starched officer’s coat, breathing in the woolen scent, intoxicating myself with his presence after such an unbearable separation.
“I am alive, my dear girl,” he said, his tone quiet, as if soothing a child. He lifted me out of his arms and held my eyes with his gaze. He looked tired, physically diminished somehow—his eyelids had a heavy, sunken quality. His hair was more unkempt than usual, matted to his head. His cheekbones were sharp crags, the point of his chin made even more severe without any extra flesh to soften the contours of his face. And yet, as weary as he looked, his green eyes were aflame, restless even. I felt my entire body drawn toward him, pulled, like the tireless waves dragged ashore by the unrelenting and overpowering tide.
“Where are we going?” I asked. I could see through the coach window that we headed south, the water on our right as we drove away from my neighborhood. In truth, I didn’t really care where we went; I was happy simply to be in his presence.
And evidently, he had no intention of telling me. “It’s a surprise,” was all he offered. I tossed my head back, briefly shutting my eyes. “I’m not certain I can stand another surprise.”
“This will be a happy one.”
I exhaled an audible sigh. The coach began to pull us away from the sea, up a hill. I glanced at him sideways, a mixture of impatience and complete willingness to entertain this adventure of his. The air smelled of saltwater and the flower-laced breeze.
“You’ll have to close your eyes now.”
I balked, smiling coyly. “Is that necessary?”
“Entirely necessary,” he said, pulling off the tricolor sash from his uniform jacket. “And in fact, I think I shall add this, for a bit of extra assurance.” He covered my eyes with his sash, and I laughed, enjoying the elaborateness of this plan, whatever it was. “Napoleone di Buonaparte, do you mean to tell me that prison has made you into a romantic man?”
“Prison can claim no such credit. You, Desiree Clary, have made me into a romantic man.”
My heart swelled at this declaration of his, and I found myself yielding to his plans for this nighttime ride. “And what of the driver, does he know where we’re going?”
“Of course he knows where we’re going. I’m an officer; I never set out on a mission without a well-thought-through plan, and my men are always prepared.”
“Well then, General Buonaparte, if this is a mission, I suppose I am your target?”
He leaned close to me now, I knew this by the warmth of his nearby body, by the tickle of his words that landed on my neck: “You are the spoils, the treasure.”
I wanted nothing more than to remain like this, close beside him and alone. I heard the steady clip-clop of the horses, felt the tilt of the coach, and I knew that we continued to climb the hill. With my eyes shut, my other senses grew ever more heightened, alerting me to the details of our surroundings: the thin mist of saltwater in the warm night air, the clatter of the carriage wheels on the hillside road, the nearness of his body beside mine in the coach.
Finally we halted, and Napoleone placed a hand on my arm. “I’ll help you out.”
“Can’t I look now?”
“Not yet,” he clucked, holding the sash in place so that my sight remained obscured.
I stepped blindly out of the coach, my hand in his, giggling as I leaned on him to guide me down to the soft ground. He walked me a few paces, the wind whipping my face, my skirts, my hair. I detected the faint and rhythmic roar of ocean waves shattering against the rocky shore far beneath us.
“Et voilà, now you may look.” He lifted the sash and I opened my eyes, blinking into a vast expanse of velvety evening sky, the stars stitched across it like diamonds. Far below us spread the rolling expanse of sea. I gasped, for I knew this hilltop. “La Bonne Mère!”
“What?” he asked.
“Ah, it’s what we locals call it.” I gestured up, away from the sea, toward the massive shape of Notre Dame de la Garde that hugged the cliffside just behind us. “Our Lady of the Guard. That church is…was…believed to watch over all of Marseille. The Good Mother.” It was an ancient hillside temple, fortified by ramparts and a massive drawbridge, once a house of worship for France’s kings and commoners alike. Each year of my childhood, floods of pilgrims descended on Marseille from all over France, climbing this hill under the strong August sun to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption. Of course my family had taken part in those holy day celebrations—all of Marseille had. But all of that was in the past now, distant memory, beaten down and dulled like the rocks pounded by the ocean so far below.
“Or, rather, what we did call it. Until…of course…the Revolution,” I clarified. No one prayed inside the walls of La Bonne Mère anymore, not since revolutionaries armed with pikes and pitchforks had breached the defenses and marched across the drawbridge, arresting the abbot and melting the ancient silver statue of the Blessed Mother. They’d dressed the statue of our Savior in a red cap and tricolor, the same uniform they put on the head of the disgraced King Louis in Paris.
“The bells no longer ring,” Napoleone said, gesturing up toward the church tower. “They’ve been melted to make bullets.”
I nodded. The clanging of the bells had long ago been replaced in our city by the slicing sound of the guillotine blade, the lusty cries of the crowds gathered in La Place. “But the tower still stands,” he said.
“Tallest point in all of the city,” I said, well-versed in my local lore.
“Come,” he said, taking my hand, pulling me away from the coach.
“Where?” I asked.
“Up.”
“Up? You mean…climb? The bell tower?”
“Ever been up there before?” he asked.
“Of course not.”
“B
est view in the south. Possibly in all of France. Come.” He repeated the order, tugging my hand.
“How…how would we get up there?”
He flashed a wry smile, lifting a lone rusted brass key from his pocket. “Didn’t I tell you? I’m an officer; I never set out on a mission without a thorough and well-thought-out plan.” I didn’t ask further, but instead allowed him to take my hand and guide me out of the breezy night.
Inside La Bonne Mère, the air was cool and dark, and the space still held within it the vestigial aroma of incense, burned so many times during its centuries as a house of worship. “I haven’t been inside here in years,” I whispered, and the sound of my voice echoed off the stone walls, stripped bare of their priceless trappings.
We crossed the massive transept, our shoes clicking against the ancient stone floor. The nuns and priests who had maintained this church and served our community had long ago been arrested or executed, around the same time that the stained glass windows had been shattered. I shivered, squinting around at the naked interior. There were no candles to light our step, but I knew that all of the precious holy relics and adornments had been seized and sold at auction. Some of the king’s relatives had been imprisoned here for a time, earlier in the Revolution, before eventually facing the guillotine; they themselves had served as perhaps the least practically useful of La Bonne Mère’s revolutionary spoils.
“Over there,” Napoleone said, pointing. The tower was tall and grand, its winding staircase coiling upward from the far side of the church. Napoleone let go of my hand when we reached the stairs, ushering me before him.
I quickly grew short of breath as we climbed, my corset pinching against my lungs. When I paused at the second landing, he stopped behind me, granting me a moment’s rest before urging me on again. “Almost there,” he said, and I could tell that he did not gasp for breath as I did. This was not difficult for his thin, strong frame.
We reached the top after what felt to me like an interminable climb. I stood still, gulping in the salty night air and the view of our surroundings. “Worth our labors, was it not?” he asked.
From behind a balcony we had an open view, and we stared now, out over the entire world. I marveled at all that I could see: my city; the narrow, serpentine streets and alleys; the old port glimmering amid a tangle of flickering lights from taverns and homes and streetlamps and cafés. Château d’If loomed before us as well, the stone fortress rising up from the dark blue bay, an outline carved in black against the receding horizon of the Mediterranean. The sea unfurled before us, mirroring the vast expanse of stars and moonlight overhead.
“Is it not beautiful?” he asked, his body directly behind mine. I looked down, out over the sweeping view, but all I could focus on was his nearness. Would he finally kiss me?
“For eleven days, I was a prisoner, caged, staring out at that water.” He put his hand on my lower back as he spoke. I blinked, forcing myself to hear his words, even as my senses thrilled at the press of his palm on my body. “Wondering at each sunrise if it would be my last. I told myself: the sea is forever, it existed long before I did. It shall outlast me. In a world where absolutely nothing is certain, at least that much is true.”
I turned to him, weaving my hand through his. “How is it that you are free?”
He stared at me, his dark green eyes flickering with the lights of the southern stars and the rolling sea. “I should tell you that I arranged some gallant fight. Pirates and a stolen cannon, a swordfight on the ramparts. Is that what you are hoping for?”
In truth, I did not care how he had secured his freedom, only that he was near me. And would remain so. He studied me, his angular features arranging themselves in an appraising expression. “Are you happy I’m free?”
“Happy?” I let out a quick exhale. “That word is not enough.”
He smiled, a rare sight. And then he went on: “My conscience is the only tribunal before which I will allow myself to be called. I was innocent. I knew it. The new men in power showed me leniency.”
I lowered my eyes and whispered my confession: “I was so afraid.”
“But you were brave. And that is more important.”
Had I been brave? I did not know. I had not really had an option. But I liked that he saw strength in me.
He took my chin in his grip, angling my face upward. “You care for me?”
I nodded.
“You really do?” He seemed to need some further assurance. And so I decided to give it to him, freely. He had, after all, just called me brave, and I wanted nothing more in that moment than to be worthy of his affection. “I…I didn’t even realize, until I thought you were gone, just how much I do.”
“Then you will agree to something,” he said.
I didn’t ask what; I allowed my eyes to pose the question.
“You will be mine,” he declared.
I swayed a bit, but his voice remained steady, as if I were one of his men and he were issuing a command: “Listen to me, Desiree. When I was in that miserable cell, I made a vow. I vowed to myself: I will never be at the mercy of those men back in Paris, fools, ever again. I will make my own fortune. I need you beside me if I am to do great things. If I am to be great. You…and Joseph. My plans for Italy will be dismissed now. Who knows what is to happen with this war, now that there is a new regime in power. But I will go to Paris, and I will discover what is next for me. I must be in the capital. But I won’t leave without your word that you will follow. You will come to me, and become my wife.”
I didn’t really understand all of it, not fully. Not right then. I didn’t yet know what such a life would hold. I simply knew that, having stood on this peak, I could not go back down. I could not descend to a lesser height of loving or living. I knew that life with Napoleone would be unlike any life I would have with any other man, unlike any other life I could ever imagine for myself. Life with Napoleone meant an existence lived out on a higher level—and that was what I now yearned for.
“Will you, Desiree?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“Say it,” he commanded. “I need to hear you say it.”
“Yes, I will be your wife,” I said, my voice overpowered by the roar of the wind, by the distant shattering of waves against rock, by the tremor of my nerves. But I did say it, and he heard it.
“Then it’s settled, Desiree.” He made one quick nod of his sharp chin. “I am yours…I am yours for eternity. We make that vow, here, before the constant sea. No one can undo it,” he declared.
He took my hands in his and I nodded my assent once more, feeling stronger, less shaky, in his grip. A thought flashed across my mind: I considered in that moment all those in my life whom I knew to be married, even in love. I thought of Father and Maman and the life they had lived together. I thought of Julie and Joseph. And then I thought: Poor, limited souls!
How pale their loves shone when held against the light cast by this young man who stood before me. They knew nothing of this sort of love, for they did not bask in the love of Napoleone di Buonaparte. With him, it was all so much more, because he was so much more than any other person I’d ever known.
Napoleone reached for me, took my frame in his grip, and pulled me to him. I had wondered whether he would kiss me, and now he did. He kissed me with a raw, unapologetic hunger. I’d never been kissed by another man—and now, I probably never would be—but I was certain that that didn’t matter, for no other kiss could have rivaled his.
As so often seemed to happen, Napoleone led, and I met his command with a yearning assent. I assented as he guided my body down, as he removed his uniform coat and spread it on the cool stone of the bell tower floor to make a soft blanket. And then he laid my body on it, and his body was on mine. I kissed him without shame, telling myself that I was his and so, too, was he mine. I ran my hands through his hair, down his neck, over his back and his arms, e
xploring his skin and muscle. He was so thin in my arms, sinewy but strong. He responded to my touch with a soft sigh, and that emboldened me to continue to claim his body as my own, offering mine in return. He was feral in his own needs as his hands began to explore my body, seeking out parts of me that had never before been offered to another. He fumbled a bit with my gown and I laughed as I helped him, sliding the layers of fabric aside.
I gasped when he undid my corset and yanked my shift aside. I had never been so exposed to a man—to anyone—but my modesty melted away and was replaced instantly by a wave of pleasure as his mouth took over for his hands. “Desiree,” he said, his voice hoarse. “The Desired One.”
He was frantic now, tearing away silk and linen in order to draw the bare surfaces of our flesh closer. I thought back to Julie’s words: There are certain things that…a lady…cannot do. At least, not until she’s a wife. But here I was, all too willing. I was to be his wife, after all. He had said we were bound together for eternity. We’d made our vows to each other, and surely that was all that mattered.
Napoleone didn’t ask; he took my body’s movements, my low and steady hums of delight, to be my assent. And indeed my body welcomed his into mine. He shut his eyes, his face twisting with what I took to be pleasure, his movements quickly mounting in both speed and urgency. He groaned, ever more frantic, my body searing with both pain and the promise of some imminent bliss. But then, before I knew what had happened, he cried out in one long, breathless gasp. I lay under him, motionless, wondering what had gone wrong, as he collapsed on top of me, his surrender sudden and unexpected. He kept his eyes shut as his face went slack.
I felt a small tinge of disappointment as he rolled off of me, landing on his back on the stone floor. He sighed, half laughing, pulling a hand to his forehead, running his fingers through his matted hair. I pulled my shift up, concealing my breasts; it was an instinctive, quick gesture, one I made without even thinking, and then I wondered why I suddenly felt so ashamed, so self-conscious about being exposed before him, when only a moment before I had invited his touch.
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