The Queen's Fortune

by Allison Pataki

  I received a letter from her the following day. I stared at the seal in shock, tearing through the hardened wax to find her handwriting, elegant and slanted, her words as soft and gracious as ever. The paper smelled of her floral perfume. Josephine didn’t mention the news outright, but she wrote:

  My darling Desiree,

  My sister, my friend, would you be willing to come with your cherished Julie to visit my estate in Malmaison? I do long to speak with you both, to unburden my heart and savor the comforts of fair-minded and faithful friends. My daughter is with me, but my son is with my husband, serving as his aide-de-camp in Egypt. I miss my Eugene terribly and worry for his well-being daily.

  Will you come to me? I believe that you shall be delighted by the greenhouses and flowers I have out here. We girls from southern climes do not get enough of the lush greenery of our childhoods while in Paris.

  Please know that my husband and I cherish you so, Desiree, and hold you in a special place in our hearts.

  Believe that I am and shall remain,

  Your faithful,

  Josephine

  Bernadotte was out, so I marched the letter straight to Julie’s. Unfortunately, Joseph was at home, so I had no choice but to show him as well.

  “Faithful?” Joseph spat in tight-lipped rage. “How dare she! She invites my own wife, as if she’d whisper her honeyed words into your ears and conspire to win your allegiance against our family!” He paced the room, his flesh a dark, mottled red. “Or worse—she’d seek to corrupt you as well! Inviting you to partake in her drunken orgies with her seedy men out there, and whatever else she gets into in that sinful palace!” Joseph read the letter once more, crumpling it upon completion. “I have a mind to march out to Malmaison myself and bring her back to Paris in irons. Faithful? Faithful as a jezebel, besmirching our family name. If only the Bastille still stood, she could rot in there!”

  “Joseph, please,” Julie said, walking to her husband’s side and putting a hand on his shoulder. “She is simply seeking an ally because she knows she’s been entirely cut off.”

  “And she suspects she’d have a better chance with either of us than with your sisters,” I added. “Or your mother, for that matter.”

  “Bonaparte women are loyal, she’s right to suppose that! And she won’t have the chance to make a try for the two of you, that’s for damned sure. You are to decline,” Joseph insisted. “Or better yet—you are not to reply at all.”

  But I did reply. I felt it too harsh not to. I was grateful to have the pregnancy in order to plead my excuses and indisposition. I told Josephine as much, and several days later, a cartload of baby gifts arrived from her—Chantilly lace and cashmere blankets and a hand-painted wooden bassinet—along with a warm note professing her joy on my behalf.

  If only she’d had a child of her own by Napoleon, Josephine’s situation might have been less precarious. Napoleon would have been less inclined to leave the mother of his heir. But their marriage had never produced any children, so none of us knew what Napoleon might do to her upon his return.

  * * *

  As the months passed, the lenders continued to lurk around her home on the Rue de la Victoire, but Josephine remained ensconced out at Malmaison with Hortense and her household, and she didn’t invite me again. It seemed that even as she fell from grace, her husband’s stock only continued to soar ever higher.

  The mode in fashion and décor that winter and spring was all things Egyptian because of Napoleon’s victories in the east. As my belly grew rounder, I indulged in a bit of the loose, flowing style, grateful for a break from the corseted silhouette of constricting layers and unyielding boning.

  People were voracious to read about how Napoleon had vanquished thousands of tribal warriors before the imposing backdrop of the ancient pyramids and the Sphinx. How he had brought the glory of France to the land of ancient wealth and knowledge. Newspapers now regularly compared Napoleon to the great conquerors of antiquity, his idols Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. I knew all too well how delighted he’d be to read such comparisons, and I didn’t doubt that he’d had some part in inviting them.

  And, like those legendary conquerors of old, Napoleon had taken it upon himself to become an insatiable lover in the exotic east, as well. In addition to the news of his military victories, the papers spilled over with accounts of his romantic conquests—stories that, I suspected, he had also invited and abetted. As I grew bigger, approaching the time of the baby’s arrival, I read almost daily a new salacious report. Though he was encamped in remote desert outposts, Napoleon did not suffer in the least for lack of pleasure, or so the papers reported with their giddy and gushing descriptions. He diverted himself, it seemed, with a different woman every night—there were the dark-eyed Egyptian women who danced, nearly nude, for our general and his top officers; there were the “camp girls” who traveled with the French army, doling out their favors in exchange for monetary rewards; and there were the French society ladies, too, the powdered wives of Napoleon’s officers and staff. It seemed Napoleon had begun a rather ongoing and ardent affair with a twenty-year-old beauty by the name of Pauline Fourès, the wife of one of his lieutenants. I saw the portrait of the young Madame Fourès when it was printed in the newspaper and couldn’t help but shudder—the lady could have been my twin sister, we were so alike in appearance.

  * * *

  The labor pains began in the middle of the night, waking me as I discovered that I lay in a tangle of damp sheets. “Wake up.” I shook Bernadotte, pulling him from deep sleep beside me.

  “What is it?”

  Just then a fresh pain gripped me around my middle, a ruthless vise, and I winced. “It’s time,” I whispered in the quiet of our bedchamber. “The baby is coming.”

  Bernadotte leapt from bed, dashing out of the room to rouse the sleeping servants. In less than an hour I had our doctor at my side, along with a midwife, my sister, and a small cluster of our female servants. Bernadotte left the house to go to Joseph’s, along with his closest aide, a man named Antoine Maurin.

  I clung to Julie’s hands as the hours stretched on, crying out in agony. My bed was wet, and I was not sure if it was the blood or the fluids from labor, perhaps both. “I’m here, Desiree,” my sister whispered, remaining at my side as daylight once more gave way to darkness.

  The room was a blur as the servants hurried in and out with fresh linens and pots of water, the midwife swabbing my face with a cool cloth as she urged me to breathe. Finally, when I feared the pain would rip me in half, I shut my eyes and a strange noise filled the room: a thin but hearty yelp.

  I opened my eyes, looking to the foot of the bed in slow, exhausted astonishment. He had arrived, at last, a crying boy with dimpled, rosy flesh and a shock of dark hair. The midwife wrapped him in fresh linen and placed him in my arms as my sister looked on, weeping. The midwife then showed me how to latch him to my breast. He ate lustily, his small fists pounding my breast as I squirmed, feeling ticklish at the odd new sensation.

  My husband returned home an hour later, bursting into my chamber. He ran to the side of the bed as the others excused themselves from the room, and we sat together, staring in shock and wonder at the babe in my arms, amazed by the sudden reality and permanence of his small physical presence in our lives. “What shall we call him?” I asked my husband, speaking quietly so as not to disturb the baby’s dozing. Just then his small lips let out a whimper and we both laughed, overtaken, giddy with our primal adoration.

  “What do you wish to call him?” Bernadotte asked me, leaning forward to pass a finger through our son’s thick hair. “Have you any ideas?”

  Of course I’d thought about it. Francois had been my father’s name. But then there was the man who had been beside me nearly every day since my father’s death—the man who, I knew, longed for a son more than anything. The man who longed to give my sister a son.
“I was thinking Joseph Francois,” I said. My sister would be deeply moved, I knew that.

  “I love the idea,” Bernadotte said, his eyes still affixed to his son.

  “Really?” I asked.

  He nodded. But then he frowned.

  “What is it?” I asked. The baby opened his lips, as if seeking out his next meal, and I adjusted him in my arms, guiding him once more to my breast.

  “There is one other opinion,” Bernadotte said, his tone tenuous.

  “Oh?” I looked from my son back toward my husband. “Who else would have an opinion on what we should name our own son?”

  Bernadotte leaned his head to the side, looking down at the nursing baby. “You might guess. Who always has an opinion?”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said, my tone dropping low. “Napoleon?”

  “He did write to say that, if it was a boy, he thinks I should name him after his favorite poem, ‘The Legend of Ossian.’ ”

  I crinkled my nose in irritation—I knew that Napoleon was a voracious reader and that he loved the classics, but I’d never heard of the poem. “What’s the name?”

  “Oscar,” Bernadotte said.

  “Oscar,” I repeated. It was an unusual name, not typically French. A strong name, but certainly a bit funny sounding. My first instinct was to reject it. To tell Napoleon he had no right to interfere. If he longed to pick a boy’s name, then he should have a son of his own. Or sway some other couple who sought his approval, because the Bernadottes most certainly did not.

  But then I paused a moment, thinking. Napoleon was the most powerful man in France. If he flattered himself in thinking that our son’s name was in some way a credit to him, well, perhaps that could benefit our son. I felt the world shift beneath me in that moment, a pivot both subtle yet permanent; I knew, suddenly, that my own pride and self-interested vanity mattered little compared to my son’s future and well-being.

  And what did it matter, really, if we slipped one more name in there? “All right then,” I agreed. “But only after the others. Joseph Francois Oscar Bernadotte.”

  “One more thing, my darling,” Bernadotte said, taking my hand. “You shall be allowed to choose the godmother. And I have no doubt whom you shall name.” He stroked my palm. “But I shall choose the godfather.”

  I shifted my body in the bed. “I had wished to name Joseph along with my sister. But I suppose it is fair this way. Whom shall you choose? Maurin?”

  Bernadotte shook his head, suddenly avoiding my eye contact. “I think there is only one natural answer.”

  “Indeed?”

  “He made our introduction possible. He gave me the post that allowed me to be here by your side right now. Our son’s godfather could be no one other than Napoleon.”

  Chapter 18

  Paris

  Fall 1799

  IT BEGAN AS A WHISPER, as it always does. Hushed voices in the darkness, more quiet by far than the shouting mob that railed outside—more quiet, and yet far more dangerous. A veiled insinuation, a raised eyebrow. An invitation to a candlelit midnight rendezvous. A slow and cautious dance toward the topic of treason.

  Even though I was entirely consumed by my new son, immersed in his constant demands for milk and soft caresses, I couldn’t help but hear the words.

  Coup.

  Quiet.

  Overthrow the fools.

  We make it quick, before they have the chance for resistance.

  I couldn’t help but notice the men who gathered in my home, seeking my husband’s counsel, whispering behind gloved hands when they noticed that Madame Bernadotte and her new baby sat nearby. There was the political leader Abbé Sieyès. My husband’s military ally, Antoine Maurin. Minister Talleyrand became a regular visitor. And Joseph, too, sometimes accompanied by Napoleon’s other brothers, Lucien, Louis, and Jerome. Though they were always friendly to me, inquiring after my well-being and the health of my new babe, these men never truly waited to hear an answer, instead ushering my husband to the other room and shutting the door.

  As Minister of War, my husband seemed to be the only popular leader in our nation’s government these days. He’d become a national hero of sorts in recent months. He’d taken to writing popular bulletins in Le Moniteur calling for patriotism and service to the nation. The recruits and enlisted men loved him and trusted him; the generals saw him as knowledgeable, steady, and pragmatic.

  All I had to do was read the newspapers to know that a growing unrest was stirring. Our political leaders were reviled, our government all but defunct. Not since before the storming of the Bastille had there been such widespread misery in the streets. People were starving as bread lines wrapped around the filthy street corners, and winter would only make the fuel and food shortages worse. Royalists and Jacobins were now regularly fighting in the boulevards. Our Directory, the five quarreling and incompetent politicians at the head of our republican government, had lost all respect. Years earlier, when the times were less patient, they would have ensured their own trips to the guillotine.

  Without his leadership, our army had lost nearly all of Napoleon’s gains across Europe, suffering catastrophic defeats throughout Italy to the Austrians and Russians. In France, the people cried out for Napoleon, all but holding their breath as they awaited his return from Egypt after nearly two years away.

  Because our little Oscar—yes, Napoleon’s choice of name had won out—woke me so often in the night, I noticed the gathering of men who spoke over candlelight on that particular September evening, just a few months shy of the new year and the new century. They were not aware of my presence; they did not detect me as I positioned myself outside the study door, Oscar suckling noiselessly at my breast. Thus was I able to hear their open and honest conversation with my husband.

  “The army’s confidence is entirely ravaged.” It was Barras, Napoleon’s former mentor—and Josephine’s former lover. He was now a member of the unpopular Directory. “It’s been nothing but financial waste and fraudulent army contractors. Morale is abysmal, and defections are at an all-time high.”

  Talleyrand interjected, “We need someone whom they can trust.”

  “I understand that.” My husband’s voice. My spine stiffened, my arms instinctively clutching my baby tighter as Bernadotte continued: “But would it not then be an abuse of that same trust?”

  “Come, Bernadotte, you must see: you would be doing your nation a service,” Talleyrand said.

  “I serve the constitution,” Bernadotte retorted.

  “The military would stand behind you.” That came from Sieyès, also a member of the Directory and a man known throughout France—and indeed the Continent—for his cunning. I could detect his haughty tone and clipped cadence as he went on: “And we would form a government to quickly legitimize your claim. Make it a sanctioned administration. Draft a new constitution.”

  My husband sighed. “Why do you come to me with this? Why not one of you, if you’re so decided upon a coup d’état?”

  Barras answered: “It must be you, Bernadotte, can’t you see? You’re the Minister of War—the most popular leader in the government. The common people love you, and you have hundreds of thousands of troops under you, spread across Europe. The generals admire you; the soldiers adore you. And the people of France are fed up with incompetent civil servants. They want strength. They want a champion to unite and then lead.”

  I braced against the wall, going dizzy as I heard all of this. These men, Sieyès and Barras and Talleyrand, already had their hands on the reins of the country’s power, but now they were urging my husband to help them arrange an overthrow. To oust the discredited Directory and the incompetent legislature. To form yet another new government, and one in which they could hold an even larger portion of the authority. But they needed a general to provide the military strength and legitimize their claims, to be their pa
rtner—a respected general, a good man. They wanted my husband to be that man.

  Oscar fidgeted at my breast, perhaps feeling the hastening of my heart, and I quickly rocked him. On the other side of the doorway there was silence in the room as my husband considered these words, wrestled with the enormity of their proposition. They wanted a coup, and they wanted my husband to do it for them. I was certain they would hear the rapid pounding of my pulse as I stood there.

  “There is no one to stand in our way.” Talleyrand pierced the silence with an urgent whisper. “You have the army. The power can be ours. And yours, Bernadotte, if only you’ll reach forward and seize it.”

  But these words would not move my husband, and I knew that; I understood that without even hearing his answer. Did they not know of my husband’s unwavering character? His loyalty to law and reason? Did they not know of the words he had branded on his own chest? Death to Kings.

  Chapter 19

  Paris

  Fall 1799

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE HE WOULD do it.” My husband’s fury was quiet, restrained, and all the more terrifying as a result. I had never before seen him like this. Though I was in the room rocking Oscar, who slept in the bassinet beside me, blissfully unaware, my husband and his companions spoke openly and freely. Discretion was no longer necessary, as the situation was unraveling out of their control and across the city.

  “Let’s wait and see. Give him time to prove the claims false,” Barras said, his tone more slack than my husband’s.

  “But they aren’t false claims, and we know it.” My husband paced the room, a newspaper rolled up like a club in his hands, and he used it now to smack the mantel. I winced, looking to my son, but he slept on with that newborn peace afforded only to the most innocent.