The Queen's Fortune

by Allison Pataki

  Bernadotte spoke first. “You are a longtime friend of Bonaparte’s?”

  I weighed my words a moment before answering; I did not know what Napoleon might have told this man. I decided to offer an account that was entirely truthful, even if perhaps a bit incomplete: “He was stationed in Marseille for a time, and his brother courted my sister. And then married her, so I’ve come to know the Bonaparte family well.”

  Bernadotte nodded, accepting my answer. “My first assignment with the marines was on Corsica. I got to know Letizia and all of them. Everyone on that island knew the fierce Mamma di Buonaparte. She was Mamma then, of course. Now she’s Madame Mère, I hear. A good French name.”

  “Just as her son has changed his name from when I first knew him,” I said.

  “Ah, yes.” Bernadotte guided us both through the dance steps with an easy grace in spite of his tall frame. “She’s not here tonight. Letizia.”

  “I noticed.”

  “She cannot bear her son’s wife, so she made a convenient excuse to be out of town with her girls. She is feuding with her son, you know,” Bernadotte said.

  “They are quarreling once more?” I asked, my interest piqued. “I thought they had reconciled.”

  Bernadotte shook his head. “Letizia accuses Josephine of wasting her son’s money, while sharing other sorts of…gifts…with too many other men. And Napoleon knows of the accusations.”

  “She is openly spreading these rumors about her own son and his wife?” I asked. “He must be furious.”

  Bernadotte nodded.

  “And…how do you know this?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.

  Bernadotte laughed. “Come now. Soldiers gossip more than salon hostesses—you didn’t know that?”

  I knew Napoleon well enough to know that he would never stand for open slander from his own family members against his beloved. And yet, I knew he loved his mother fiercely as well. It must have been torturous for him to have the two women he loved most at odds. But clearly he had made his choice, for only one of them was here tonight.

  I steered the conversation toward a more appropriate topic: “Were you and Napoleon friends, back when you were deployed to Corsica?”

  Bernadotte nodded, chuckling to himself, perhaps recalling some distant memory. “He was nothing but a scrawny scrap of a boy when I met him. Always hanging around our barracks like some local stray, asking us all sorts of questions on how to use cannons and the different types of gunpowder. He left for the academy at Brienne shortly after that. Whenever he gets a bit too high on his own glory, I remind him that I was keeping the peace on his island as an officer of France before he had ever shit in a military school latrine.” Bernadotte realized his mistake only after the words were out, and his dark eyes went wide in embarrassment. “You must pardon my vulgar language. My manners. I’m a louche southerner to begin with, and then put me out in the field with a bunch of coarse men for months and I forget my manners entirely. Will you forgive me?”

  “I suppose I can forgive you, if only because you did not chide me for stepping on your toes a moment ago,” I said, smirking. In truth, I was impressed at this Bernadotte fellow’s candor, his casual self-assurance, and I was enjoying his company.

  I was also slightly amazed at the confidence this man displayed opposite Napoleon—I’d never seen anyone stand up to him in such a way, not even his older brother. And certainly not Josephine, who seemed to handle him with both delicacy and reverence—a well-seasoned sailor harnessing the winds of a massive ship, doing what she could to direct the course in her favor but always recognizing and indeed deferring to the overriding strength of the much larger force.

  But not Bernadotte. Not only did he tower over Napoleon physically, but he teased him as well. Both out of his presence but also in his presence. And, miraculously, Napoleon seemed to abide it with perfectly good humor.

  I studied the man, this Bernadotte, a bit closer. I noted the warm tone of his skin, the thickness of his dark, wavy hair. I hoped then that this strange jaunty music, this waltz, might continue a while longer so that I might remain in his arms.

  “I can assure you, Mademoiselle Clary, my toes did not feel a thing,” Bernadotte said after a moment. “You’re a perfectly graceful dancer.”

  I lowered my eyes, feeling my face flush. “And you?” I asked. “Did you join the military at a young age as well?”

  He nodded. “I was little more than a boy when my father died. I had intended to study the law, open up a practice in our small southern town of Pau. Do you know Pau?”

  “Not well.” In fact, I’d never heard of it, but I did not say as much.

  “It’s just north of the Spanish border. A mountain town buried in the Atlantic Pyrénées. Not much to do there, and Father left us with massive debt. Mother had so many children at home, and I became as burdensome a mouth to feed as my dreams of the law became implausible. So I left, joined up with the Royal Marines.”

  I listened intently, appreciative of how he confided in me after such a short acquaintance. “Humble beginnings,” I remarked. “But this Revolution has made for the possibility of advancement—even for that of a poor, fatherless boy from the mountains of Pau.”

  “You’re a Clary. If I remember clearly, your origins were not so humble?”

  “You remember correctly,” I said. “Though that, of course, made for some worrisome times for us during the Terror.”

  “Yes,” Bernadotte said, his dark eyes narrowing in understanding. “But that’s all behind us now. Hopefully we shall have peace and prosperity in France. And some good leadership.” We both turned now, instinctively, toward the short figure in the center of the room.

  * * *

  Fresh from war and victory, our city’s hero seemed intent that winter on making merry with his wife, and the rest of the capital’s high society fell in line willingly. Hordes of officers newly returned from the front gathered each night in salons and supper clubs, mingling with ambitious civic leaders and charming heiresses, each vying for favor in the inner circle that had sprung up solidly around Napoleon. Joseph, being the closest of Napoleon’s confidants and advisers, had a constant stream of guests and supplicants in his home that winter, and Julie and I grew accustomed to acting as impromptu hostesses.

  A few nights after the ball given by the Bonapartes, we found ourselves at the center of one such spontaneous reception in Joseph’s spacious townhouse, with Talleyrand and his clique of clerks and ministers stopping in to offer their respects. But another visitor arrived just shortly after them, his sudden appearance surprising us all.

  “Sergeant Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.” The footman announced his entry into our salon, immediately causing my pulse to quicken. I plunged myself into conversation with Julie, attempting to appear diverted and carefree. Within moments, after offering his greetings to my brother-in-law and Talleyrand, Bernadotte made his long-legged stride over to my side of the room, where I greeted him with a curtsy and a checked smile. “Sergeant Belle-Jambe, good evening,” I said. He kissed my hand, then Julie’s.

  “Some champagne, sir?” Julie asked.

  “Delightful, thank you, Madame Bonaparte,” Bernadotte replied, and Julie disappeared without another word, leaving me alone with this tall, dark newcomer. We stood beside the mantel and its blazing fire, and I hoped Bernadotte would credit its heat for the sudden rush of color to my cheeks.

  “Mademoiselle Clary, it is good to see you,” he said. He wore his officer’s uniform, and his hair fell in unruly waves around his handsome face.

  “Please, you may call me Desiree, sir.”

  Bernadotte nodded as a footman appeared, proffering two flutes of champagne on a silver tray. I accepted my drink and noted that Julie had not rejoined our small group but rather had woven herself into conversation across the room between her husband and Talleyrand. They were leaning close and sp
eaking in low voices, and I sensed that Bernadotte and I were their topic of conversation, even as they made sure to give us a wide berth. My sister, of course, would be intrigued by my interactions with this man, and Talleyrand and Joseph, well, as rising stars in our new government, wasn’t it their business to know everyone else’s business? Suddenly the fire beside us felt unbearably hot, and I felt my cheeks smoldering from red to an even deeper scarlet. “Say,” I said, looking up at my companion. “What do you think of taking a quick step outside?” I gestured toward the glass doors that gave out onto the terrace and the darkness of the back garden.

  “Lead the way,” Bernadotte said, nodding gamely.

  Once outside, I breathed deeply in the cool air, feeling myself relax in the darkness and the distance from my sister and her co-conspirators. The night was chilly and clear, though not bitter cold, and the stars overhead pierced the sky with just enough light to offer a pleasant glow over the terrace. I took a slow sip of my champagne.

  “I miss our southern skies,” Bernadotte said, slipping his officer’s jacket over my shoulders without my asking him to do so. I accepted this gesture, enjoying the warmth from his body even as the cool air felt nice on my face.

  “The stars in Marseille,” I said, my voice wistful. “I could never decide whether I liked them more in the sky or the way they shimmered in the sea.”

  “In Pau,” Bernadotte said, “in the mountains, I felt sometimes as if all I had to do was reach up and I’d be close enough to graze them with my fingertips.”

  I nodded, taking another sip of my drink. The bubbles fluttered down my throat and into my belly, filling me with a pleasant softness.

  “Warm nights,” he continued, “after Papa died, when Maman would have half a dozen crying babies in the house, I’d slip out as often as I could. I didn’t know where, exactly, Papa had gone, but I had some vague understanding that he was there….” He gestured skyward. “Somewhere up there. As the priest in our village had told me, he was looking down.”

  I sighed a slow exhale. “Was it very hard on you when he died?” I asked, thinking back to my own father’s death, noting how our twinned losses wove Bernadotte and me together with a common understanding of young grief.

  He considered his words a moment before answering: “It was, mostly because of how it changed our family. How it changed Maman. She seemed lost to me, too, after Papa was gone. Without hope, somehow. For any of us.”

  These words hit me in the stomach with a familiarity and a pained sense of knowing all too well what he meant, as I recalled my own maman, her constant fears and ailments in the wake of Papa’s death.

  “I’d look up and I’d pick which star I thought was my papa,” Bernadotte said. “And then I’d name the members of my family, giving each of us a star.”

  I smiled in the darkness. I liked that, imagining this tall man as a young boy, tucked in the grass under a southern sky, staring up at a vast realm of stars and seeking out his comfort with his own mind and dreams.

  “And of course,” he said, stepping closer beside me, “I always gave myself a star.”

  “Of course,” I said, angling my face sideways to look at him. “Which one is your star?” I asked, turning my gaze skyward.

  “Well, now,” Bernadotte said, following my eyes upward. “It would change, depending on the season. Let’s see. Perhaps I could be that one,” he said, pointing toward a determined light that I saw as the bright tip of a ladle. “Polaris,” Bernadotte said.

  “Polaris,” I said, repeating the name. And then, before I knew what he was doing, Bernadotte took my hand in his own and lifted it. My heart thrilled at the press of his warm skin on mine, at the way his fingers gripped my own. He continued, his lips now so close to my ear that I felt his words at the same time I heard them: “But you, you must have a star as well, Desiree.”

  “Oh?” My voice was faint, but my heart was thunderous; I could feel it clamoring against my ribs and my corset.

  “Yes,” he said, sweeping the heavens, my hand in his, eventually settling our pointing on the brightest light. It had an unapologetic glow, almost amber and rose in its hue. “Venus,” he said, his voice decisive. “There she is. The loveliest of all the heavenly lights. That’s yours, Desiree.”

  Before I knew what was happening, my mind flew back to another night, with another man, standing beneath another clear sky strewn with stars. You see that flame that flies past, spreading light across its path? Come with me, Desiree, and you see how that star flies? You shall have the chance to do the same.

  How different these two men were, I thought, even if the pull I felt toward each of them was oddly similar. Napoleon had declared himself a shooting star, a bright and unstoppable light scorching its way across the sky; if I was lucky, I might join him by clinging to his comet’s tail in order to be pulled along behind his glory. Bernadotte, on the other hand, was telling me that I shone bright and beautiful on my own. He saw me, Desiree. How different indeed, I thought, not for the first time. And not for the last time, either.

  Chapter 15

  Paris

  Spring 1798

  THE FIRST HINT OF SPRING came to Paris in the sound of birdsong, in the welcome sight of new buds brightening the bare branches of the city’s chestnut and plane trees. The evenings grew longer, the mornings began to arrive earlier, and the air was gradually warmed by a gentle, strengthening sun.

  Julie and I walked the leafy lanes of the Parc Monceau one afternoon in late April. It was a lovely space, once a nobleman’s private grounds but now the property of the people. The neighborhood remained affluent even after the Revolution had made its mark, with private mansions lining its border. The park itself was filled with flower beds and stone benches, narrow allées framed by shrubbery and a gracious fountain, but the heart of the grounds was a small classical temple, with columns and a rotunda built on the site of what used to be one of the dreaded royal tollbooths. From here, His Majesty’s customs workers had collected fees from the long-suffering subjects as they passed. That hated structure, like so much else once belonging to the crown, had been razed in the Revolution and was replaced by this temple to the republican ideals of antiquity.

  But as we strolled that day, neither Julie nor I was thinking of the violence of the Revolution. Nor were we thinking of any sort of politics. That day, our conversation was of quite a different nature. We were discussing the tall, dark-eyed person of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.

  He had handed me a letter just that morning in the sunny salon of our home, and I clutched the paper as we walked, relishing his private words. You have turned this officer into a young soldier again, no more sure of himself than one who has never faced the battle lines. I find myself suddenly without defenses, as they fall willingly before your smile.

  “With Napoleon, it came to an end because of Josephine,” Julie said, her arm woven through mine as we strolled side by side.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And with Duphot…poor Duphot…it came to an end because, well, let’s not return to the horrors of Rome.”

  “Indeed,” I agreed, shaking my head. “Poor Duphot.” I made a cross over myself, an instinctive gesture from childhood and one that no longer put me at risk of a death sentence, given the more tolerant government of the Directory.

  “Bernadotte is a good man,” Julie said. “And a well-loved general. Some say he’s better in the field even than…well, never mind that. I don’t care what others say. I care only what you say.” Julie paused, turning toward me. “Do you see any reason why it might come to an end between you and Bernadotte?”

  I thought about my sister’s question, feeling my cheeks grow warm even as I knew it was useless to try to hide anything from her. I cared deeply for Bernadotte and she knew it. Ever since dancing with him at that winter ball in honor of Napoleon, and then welcoming him into Joseph and Julie’s home a few nights later, m
y thoughts had been consumed with Sergeant Belle-Jambe. And that was, in large part, because he had proven determined in his regular visits and letters of courtship.

  Bernadotte had just recently leased a large estate, replete with servants and acres of land, several miles past the southern barrier of Paris. He wasn’t in the city at all times, but whenever he did come in, his first stop was to pay a call at Joseph’s home. Bernadotte had proven reliable and unwavering in his attentions. We chatted in the parlor with my sister and Joseph. We enjoyed card games and laughter late into the night. Once, when he played his knave of hearts to vanquish me in a round of whist, I asked him, my eyebrow arching upward: “And how about you, Sergeant Bernadotte? Is it common for you to play the knave with hearts?”

  He looked at me, eyes earnest, as he responded: “Once, perhaps, I fancied myself a knave. But these days, when the suit is hearts, I find myself willing to yield to a queen.”

  Julie and Joseph barely concealed their meaningful looks, as I turned my attention back to the cards in my lap, biting my lip to bridle a full and beaming smile.

  On nice afternoons, Bernadotte and I would stroll through the city, ambling the riverside quays or winding our way along the paths of the Tuileries gardens while one of Joseph’s manservants followed behind with the coach at a discreet distance. Julie and Joseph had imposed on me all the strictures of a traditional courtship, and with Maman back in Marseille with Nicolas, they saw fit to monitor us like watchful parents.

  Bernadotte had, apparently, been perfectly content to pursue such a proper courtship; perhaps a bit too proper for my liking—he had not yet kissed me. As pleased as I was with his steady attention, that fact did trouble me. In truth, I longed for his kiss. I thought about it, both when I was with him and when I was not. Did I not stir the necessary passion in him? I wondered.