The Queen's Fortune

by Allison Pataki

  Napoleon was determined to make the capital a thriving center that would attract not only the French but hordes of international tourists as well. The Brits and other Europeans flocked en masse after so many years during which our city had been out of reach, and Napoleon welcomed their arrival. He wished to make his seat at the Tuileries a vibrant and fashionable court, and he issued an order to his wife that they would host grand soirees every week. Soon these Tuileries nights gained a reputation across Paris for their gaiety and lavishness—banquets fueled with music and dancing, witty conversation and champagne-soaked flirting—and an invitation from Josephine, who sat on a throne during these gatherings, became the most sought-after ticket in town.

  Following these festive nights of exclusive guest lists and excessive feasting, in the mornings, the public was invited to watch Napoleon and Josephine awake and dress, a public levée ceremony the likes of which the French had not seen since the same rituals of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. The etiquette now governing daily life in the Tuileries was so exact and the ritual so precisely observed that one might have blinked and presumed oneself back in the Versailles court of a century earlier.

  There was more good news for the Bonaparte family as that peaceful spring warmed into summer. After years of longing and disappointment, my sister was finally enceinte, her belly growing rounder by the day with Joseph’s baby. Napoleon smiled when he learned of his brother’s good news, but I noticed the small, barely perceptible tightening of his jaw, the minuscule twitch of his eyebrow as he glanced sideways at his own wife, her waist as slender as ever beneath her suitably patriotic French silk.

  * * *

  —

  That evening, Napoleon pulled Joseph aside. As I stood with Julie beside her husband, we could hear their exchange. “Congratulations, brother.”

  “Thank you. We are happy.” Joseph shifted from one foot to the other. “With any luck, it shall be you next.”

  “Indeed,” Napoleon said, nodding. “But…how? After so long?”

  Joseph leaned closer to his brother, speaking in a low voice that I could barely hear. “It was the waters. I truly believe it. Julie traveled to Plombières this winter, to the spas, where she took the healing waters. She fed on spinach dowsed in oil and eggs and drank from the curative fountains. She became pregnant shortly after her return.”

  The following week, Josephine was packed up, along with her daughter, Hortense, and sent in her coach to the spa town of Plombières.

  * * *

  Napoleon had studied the ancients, and he knew well enough the importance of both bread and circus; fortune provided him with the perfect opportunity for both when he turned thirty-three that August.

  It was declared a public holiday across France. Previously, that same day had belonged to the Virgin Mary, as it was the holy day of her assumption to heaven. But even though we had reconciled with the Church, Napoleon had decided that the day would be in his honor instead, and he proclaimed it to be “St. Napoleon’s Day.”

  The whole nation joined in wishing our popular First Consul, simply “Napoleon” now, a joyful birthday, but only a few hundred were fortunate enough to receive invitations to his private fête. He arrived, following a parade through Paris, with his brown hair wreathed in laurels, looking like his heroes of ancient Rome and Greece. Josephine entered beside him wearing a stunning gown of pink crêpe overlaid with fresh-clipped rose petals, her own dark hair ornamented with a diadem of brilliant diamonds.

  Napoleon found Bernadotte and me several hours into the lavish party. My husband was on his best behavior—I had begged him earlier that day to keep a subdued profile and offer only pleasant words of well-wishing. And that was what he did when Napoleon approached, I noted with great relief. “A toast to you, First Consul,” Bernadotte said, lifting his champagne glass. “Peace reigns and the people are happy.” My husband smiled, even though I knew, as his wife, how bitter those words tasted on his lips.

  But, indeed, however much my husband had disagreed with the establishment of this new government, it appeared that Napoleon’s leadership had been good for the nation in recent months. Our countryside appeared poised for a fine fall harvest, and Napoleon had been busy with orders to build new granaries to store the surpluses as a preventive measure against future bread shortages or price inflation. Through his treasury, he was in close communication with every regional governor, receiving regular reports on the price of bread. Far from the scarcity of the previous administrations, his own government had amassed reserves of grain, and he planned to meticulously monitor the deployment of those surpluses when and where they were needed, so that no French housewife might ever complain that her family went hungry under Napoleonic leadership. Business owners and merchants relished the promise of peace, tourists from across the Continent marveled at the artwork he had amassed and made public in the Louvre Palace, and trade boomed as it had not in years. We were a wealthy nation once more, our gold mints churning out new coins emblazoned with the profile of “Napoleon: First Consul.”

  And just recently, in thanks for these improvements, the French people had gifted Napoleon with the best birthday gift imaginable when they elected him, by a stunning majority, First Consul for Life. They wanted him as their sole and undisputed leader.

  Nothing stood between him and complete power.

  Napoleon received my husband’s compliment now with a curt nod, his ever-alert eyes roving the crowd of his party. Perhaps he was seeking out Josephine. Or perhaps he was looking to see whether anyone had snubbed his invitation. Eventually, he answered, saying only: “Ambition is never content, even at the summit of greatness.”

  It was a curious statement, particularly since we were all gathered at a celebration of his life. But I understood; I knew how deeply unhappy Napoleon was in his personal life. The greatest single source of his discontent was his lack of a son. Julie was growing ever rounder with his brother’s baby. Josephine had returned from Plombières, but as far as I could tell from her still-slender waist, she was not carrying his child.

  Ever since the attempt on his life, Napoleon had displayed a singular obsession with begetting an heir. With the flood of British tourists into Paris had come British gossip—and newspaper reports as well. Unlike all French papers, these publications were not censored by Napoleon’s government. “They infuriate him, these British writers,” my husband said to me that morning. “They call him impotent. They call him short. They laugh at his lack of an heir. But more than that, they scare him. See here?” My husband pointed to that morning’s cartoon in an English journal. A stout Napoleon stood wreathed in a crown of laurels, looking like a hero of ancient Rome, as behind him, toga-clad senators wielded sharpened blades. Underneath the image the caption said: How did Caesar end?

  The threat was so thinly veiled that even I had quickly understood the meaning: the British newspapers were calling for assassination.

  “Do you see Hortense?” Napoleon’s question pulled me back to the present and his birthday ball, and my eyes followed to where his stepdaughter stood nearby. “At least she gives me cause for celebration, even if my own wife does not,” Napoleon said. I could see to what he referred—the soft swell of Hortense’s midsection under a loose ivory gown. Hortense, now nineteen years old, had just married Napoleon’s younger brother Louis only a few months prior. And already Hortense was pregnant.

  “The child will be one half Bonaparte and one half Josephine, just as ours would be. And Louis assures me that if it’s a boy, he shall be called Napoleon. So, it’s something. But, alas, it’s unfortunate to be made an uncle twice in one year, and a step-grandfather as well, but not yet a father.”

  Chapter 25

  Paris

  Spring 1803

  IT WAS INDEED A BOY born to Hortense and Louis, and he was called Napoleon Bonaparte. But our First Consul did not grow any less impatient with his own childlessness. The fights at
the Tuileries continued. The weekly Bonaparte family dinners were often delayed or disrupted, with Josephine arriving late, if at all. The Bonaparte siblings whispered the hateful lie—loud enough for not only Josephine to hear but the French newspapers as well—that Napoleon was, in fact, the father to Hortense’s son. That the barren mother had pushed her own daughter into Napoleon’s arms in the hopes of getting him a son and keeping him happy. It seemed there was no end to the vile malice that churned throughout the First Consul’s family.

  I came to dread my own visits to the Tuileries for fear of Napoleon’s increasingly regular and violent outbursts, made all the more horrifying because of their shamelessly public nature. Julie, besotted as she was as a new mother to a baby girl, confided to her husband that both she and I dreaded the company of his brother, and so Joseph allowed us to excuse ourselves from many of the family gatherings. Instead we gathered regularly as just two sisters, with Oscar relishing his new role as big boy, petting and admiring his darling new cousin.

  But the invitation that came to me that morning was unlike any of the others—it felt more like a summons than a request. It bore Napoleon’s consular seal, even though it was written in Josephine’s long, elegant hand. I was to go to the Tuileries alone—without my husband or my sister. Even without my son, who enjoyed his visits to his godfather for the bonbons and toys offered at the palace, unaware in his childish innocence of the darker undertones of the adult interactions.

  As Bernadotte was back at his headquarters in Brittany with the Army of the West, he wouldn’t have come anyway, but I would have liked the chance to speak with him before going. Nevertheless, when the morning of the appointed rendezvous arrived, I dressed with care, making sure that I selected a gown of French brocade and a fine brooch of sapphire and ruby stones—a color palette paying dutiful homage to our tricolor.

  The Tuileries grounds were always bustling, especially the public gardens, but I was ushered quickly past the crowds and toward the grand stairway by a palace attendant clad in gold cloth. Inside, as I marched dutifully toward the staircase, I noted that the bloodstains across the wall were fainter, but not entirely gone. I shivered as I climbed.

  I had no idea what Josephine wanted with me—I had long ago stopped trying to predict her moves. But if I had to guess, my suspicion was that perhaps she was finally pregnant and she wanted to somehow control how the news seeped out. Maybe she had use for me as some sort of advance messenger. Whatever my purpose to her, I was sure I wouldn’t understand it until after I had unwittingly performed whatever duty she had in mind for me.

  I was admitted into her yellow salon, but it was not Josephine who awaited me there. Napoleon stood, alone, before the row of tall windows. “Ah, Desiree.” He turned upon my entrance. “My dear sister.” He crossed the room to me, taking my gloved hand in his and kissing the top of it. I was immediately on edge as his green eyes held mine. When was the last time we had been alone in a room together? I wondered. Had it been in Marseille? No, Italy? Surely that had to be it.

  “It’s so good of you to come. Now, I’m just a rude soldier, but because my wife has taught me well, I know what my first question as host ought to be: What can I offer you? Something to eat? Drink?”

  My throat was dry, but I answered: “Nothing, sir. I am…thank you.”

  “ ‘Sir’?” He cocked his head, and I could see that he was in a mood to charm. “You are one of my oldest…friends.” But he didn’t tell me what I should call him instead of sir. He released my hand and gestured toward the nearest chair, upholstered in Josephine’s merry yellow silk. “Well, then, sit. Please.”

  I did as he ordered.

  “Josephine may join us eventually. She’s bathing. You know how she loves to languish in her baths, my lazy little Creole. I realize that it’s an outlandish luxury—these daily rosewater and jasmine baths of hers, when the Bourbon princes themselves set the tone at court for bathing only several times a year. But we certainly have the servants to haul the water. And she does love her perfumes and her oils….” He shrugged, flashing an indulgent smile.

  I did not care to hear more, but I nodded.

  His eyes held me in their narrowed gaze. “It is good to see you, Desi.” Desi? I forced my face to remain expressionless, saying: “You as well.”

  “How is my godson Oscar?”

  I felt my body clench at hearing my son’s name spoken by Napoleon’s lips, but I managed an even tone as I answered: “He thrives, thank you.”

  “I am glad to hear it. And your husband?”

  “He is in Brittany,” was all the reply I offered.

  “Yes, that’s right.” Napoleon crossed his legs and folded his hands on top of his knees. He didn’t wear gloves, and I was momentarily dazzled by the pale, soft smoothness of his hands. A soldier’s hands, a horseman’s hands, yet they were as pristine as those of a lady who never lifted anything heavier than a porcelain teacup. I knew that Josephine gave him regular manicures—filing down his nails and massaging his palms with fragrant oils—and yet the sight still distracted me.

  “I know,” he said, flickering his fingers, easily perceiving my thoughts. “I tell my wife that she pampers me more than a woman.” He shook his head. “But she is such a doting companion. She takes such pleasure in spoiling and nurturing me, I can’t very well tell her no.”

  “Then you are lucky in your choice of a wife,” I said.

  “What about you, Desiree?”

  I stiffened, sitting up a bit taller in my chair. “Pardon?”

  He arched a lone dark eyebrow as he leaned forward, his voice low and confidential as he asked: “What sort of a wife are you?”

  I tilted back in my chair, hoping to put as many inches between us as possible as I weighed my words. He had become such an unapologetic seducer, sleeping with all variety of women, married or not. Perhaps he had cycled through all the ladies of Paris and now sought to revisit old paramours? I cringed at the thought. “I am a faithful wife,” I said, my tone decisive, without a drop of flirtation. “My husband and my son are, well, everything. As such, I try always to be an attentive wife and loving mother.”

  Napoleon studied me, and I couldn’t help but notice the full, fleshy softness of his face. And not just his face—without the constant exertion of battle, with all of his feasts and parties and the celebrated chefs now in his employ, Napoleon was downright plump.

  “Would you ever…stand up to your husband? If he needed…if the situation warranted it?”

  I tried to mask the confusion that his question elicited. Was he asking me not to become his lover but instead act as his spy? To go against my own husband? “I’m not sure of the question, sir, and thus I fear I cannot provide you with the answer for which you hope.”

  He waved his hand, swatting the thought away. “Never mind.” He looked around the room. “What do you think of the artwork?”

  I tried to follow the thread of his thoughts, but I couldn’t see any connection, so I answered as truthfully as I could: “I think the artwork adorning your palace is second to none. I think that here in this palace of the Tuileries and in the Louvre, you have collected a body of art that will be the envy of nations for many ages to come.”

  “Do you see that bust over there?” He pointed toward a marble piece in the corner of the salon. “It’s done by an Italian sculptor, a man by the name of Ceracchi.”

  “Ah, Giuseppe Ceracchi, I admire his work,” I said, glancing at the bust, relieved to find the conversation drifting toward something as benign as art. I was eager to keep it there. But Napoleon’s green eyes careened toward mine, an unmistakable flicker setting them aflame.

  “Yes, Giuseppe Ceracchi. So you know him?” The sudden intensity of his tone, and indeed his expression, unnerved me.

  “Not…not well.” I shifted in my seat, rearranging the folds of my skirt. “Bernadotte and I, we have met him once or
twice. Most likely at parties given by you and the First Consuless.”

  Napoleon nodded, still studying me intently. “Is that so?”

  “Sir?”

  Now, his eyes narrowed, he said: “The same man, this Ceracchi, has recently been found guilty of plotting against my life.”

  I gasped. I knew that Napoleon lived in constant fear of dying without an heir. I knew that he had agents all over the city, and indeed all over Europe, constantly digging around for word of any potential attempt on his life. And yet, I didn’t understand what any of this had to do with my husband or myself. I still did not know why I had been called here. All I could manage to answer was: “How horrifying. I am very troubled to hear that.”

  Napoleon uncrossed his thick legs and pressed his palms onto them, the tips of his manicured fingers going white from the pressure he exerted. “He followed me to the theater. He was covered in explosive material. He planned to blow me up.”

  I shuddered, my eyes flying to the door. All I wanted was to leave and return home. Or, at the very least, for Josephine to walk through that door and join us. Her presence would at least defuse the discomfort of this exchange.

  Napoleon continued, oblivious of—or perhaps indifferent to—my uneasiness: “I know how to interrogate a man, Desiree.”

  “Oh?” I shifted in my seat.

  “And a woman, for that matter,” he said. “I know how to…pull…the truth out of someone.”

  I swallowed, noting that my mouth was parched. Even my words sounded dry as I said, “I’m sure you have had much experience.”