We’d accepted the invitation—or perhaps, more accurately, we’d obeyed the summons. Upon our arrival, Josephine had swept me into her arms. “Desiree, my darling! I must show you something. Come with me to the greenhouses. Orchids! Vines and vines of orchids! Pink and white and yellow and even purple. I want you to pick one to take home. To remind you of your beloved south.” With that, she’d ushered me out toward the Tuileries greenhouses, leaving my husband alone with Napoleon.
Bernadotte and I did not speak until we returned home from the Tuileries to the Rue de Monceau. There, assured of our privacy, even from servants and aides who surely were being courted by the Bonapartes, my husband told me of his conversation. “It will be fine, my darling. We have struck an alliance.”
I crossed my arms, confused. “An alliance? But how? What did he say?”
“He told me that the nation has clearly desired and invited his leadership, that France needs the goodwill and support of all of her children now, and that it would be damaging if I were to hold myself apart. He asked me to march forward with him and with all of France.”
“What did you say?”
“I was honest,” my husband answered. “I told him that I had long hoped, and believed, that France might flourish under a republican government. He pointed out that that was not to be, and I said that I believed he was correct. He then asked me if I could be trusted, given my republican leanings, and I answered in the affirmative. I did not promise him affection. But I promised him my loyalty. For France. And I shall keep my word.”
“So then, he intends to make a new government?” I asked.
“Yes. And if it’s a new government he desires, then that is what he shall have.”
I nodded, absorbing this. Wondering what it meant for us.
“Desiree.” Now my husband’s voice betrayed an excited edge. “My darling, he has asked me to join him in the new imperial government.”
My stomach tightened. Did this mean more war—a posting higher in the army? Or perhaps an assignment similar to the one for which we’d been bound for Louisiana? “What will that be?” I asked, fearful of the reply.
“He will be returning to the ancient tradition, going all the way back to Charlemagne, when the great men of the nation were called the Marshals of France. He will create eighteen such Marshals, chosen from his best and most loyal generals, and he would like me to be one.”
Even as my husband spoke breathlessly, my mind raced to absorb all of this. Bernadotte was popular in the army. He had proven himself a skilled general in battle. He had been an outspoken patriot of the Republic, resistant to Napoleon’s efforts to grab power. And, perhaps most significantly, Bernadotte, in marrying me, had forever linked his fate to that of the Bonaparte family. Joseph, Napoleon’s favorite brother, was married to my sister. That meant that for Napoleon, there was no escaping the Bernadottes, since Napoleon and Joseph would never be anything but the closest of brothers, and Julie and I would never be anything but the closest of sisters.
Did Napoleon, ever tactical and self-serving, wish for my husband to join his side because he truly respected him? Or, as I more strongly suspected, because he loathed the idea of having my husband as a critic at large? Was Napoleon, in offering these generous gifts and titles, attempting to neutralize Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte and bolster his own position?
Whatever Napoleon’s reasoning, his outreach seemed to have worked, because my husband was flushed and excited now as he spoke to me: “Can you imagine? Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, penniless, fatherless Gascon. Too poor even to study the law. Marshal of the French Empire.”
I laughed at this. “I most certainly can imagine it. There is no man more deserving,” I answered. And then I thought to myself: Napoleone di Buonaparte, penniless, fatherless Corsican. Too poor even to afford dinner. Emperor of the French. These were strange times indeed. “Did…did you accept the appointment?” I asked.
“I did.” My husband nodded, reaching for my hands, which he swept up now as he pulled me closer. “He had me swear an oath of loyalty. I vowed to serve France, and so that is what I shall do, even if it means also serving that rascal Bonaparte.”
* * *
And just like that, I had a crown of my own. I was named the Princess of Pontecorvo alongside my husband, who was henceforth its Serene Highness the Prince. Along with the Marshal’s baton, Napoleon was gifting his family members and favorites with the many kingdoms he’d snatched in his victories. He’d seized so much property and wealth from the enemies of France—men who were now either dead or imprisoned—and what he did not bestow on Josephine or Madame Mère or his brothers and sisters, he dispersed among his Marshals.
Pontecorvo was a small Italian kingdom, its population less than that of my hometown of Marseille. We had never set foot in Pontecorvo; I didn’t even know where it was located, other than the fact that it was south of Rome and near the Tyrrhenian Sea, but that didn’t matter, as we would not have to relocate there. My husband would only have to visit our kingdom from time to time, but we would henceforth be the recipients of all its wealth. Imagine this, compared to governorship of Louisiana.
Bernadotte and I were also gifted with a sprawling mansion on the posh Parisian street of the Rue d’Anjou, a palais seized when its owner, a French general, was exiled on the First Consul’s orders. Josephine had already plundered most of the household wares for her refurbishing of Malmaison, so Napoleon presented us with two hundred thousand francs to decorate the home, this on top of the three hundred thousand francs he had already bestowed on us simply for becoming Marshal and Marshaless of France.
And now, here I sat in Josephine’s busy salon amid the harried preparations for the coming coronation ceremony. “Of course, the witch did say…well, she did warn—” But Josephine cut herself off. “Oh, never mind.” I noticed how her cheeks went pale, how her eyes lowered.
“What?” I asked, an uneasy tremor agitating my voice. “What else did that fortune-teller say to you?”
Josephine shook her head, blinking her long lashes, refusing to look at me. “Nothing. I wasn’t even certain that I heard her correctly. The ramblings of an old blind woman. Anyhow.” She shrugged, forcing a smile to her features, raising her hands to gesture around the room. “Doesn’t it make you think of a dream? As if we’ve landed in the fables of the Arabian Nights? How splendid to see such luxury all around us.” Josephine looked at the servants who hurried past her, their gloved hands laden with priceless fabric and jewelry. “The only difficulty is that my husband doesn’t know what to do about the matter of the virgins.”
“The matter of the…virgins?” I repeated, unsure of her meaning.
“You know my Bonaparte has such a mind for details—he doesn’t let a single fact slip his notice. Well, at the coronations of antiquity, there were always the pure temple virgins looking on, standing at the altar, blessing the emperors.”
“Oh,” I said, watching as Josephine wove a wisp of satin between her slim fingers.
“But Talleyrand and Sièyes, who have been tasked with finding these virgins for my husband, well…” Josephine shrugged her lean, bare shoulders. “Seems they can’t find a pair of virgins in the entire city of Paris. Unless they want a nun for the role.”
“Ah, I see the problem.” I nodded, shifting my weight in my seat.
Josephine continued to stroke her satin, savoring the soft feeling between her fingers. “Of course, I told them: ‘Don’t look at me, gents! I can’t even remember what the word means—and I certainly don’t know any!’ ” And with that she began to laugh, twirling the satin in small circles through the air. “But enough of that, we’d better get you fitted, Desiree, my dear one. And then it’s on to the next lady.”
I obeyed, rising from my chair and walking toward the wall of tall mirrors. A team of seamstresses held out my dress for inspection and I nodded my approval, stepping into the soft la
yers of the magnificent gown. Josephine watched intently as I was adjusted and poked and prodded. Our dresses, as attendants to the Empress, were to be slightly less splendid versions of Josephine’s white satin and gold tulle masterpiece.
“Look at mine,” Josephine breathed, her tone reverent as she gestured toward the massive mound sprawled across the salon, its layers in the hands of a dozen gloved attendants. “Just as he wanted it,” she said.
Napoleon had given his wife specific and exacting orders as to how he wished her to look on his coronation day, and she knew better than anyone the importance of executing his orders with flawless precision. On this evening, with only hours remaining before the next day’s ceremony, the imperial dressmakers were frantically finishing the last stitches of this most important artwork: pearl-colored satin embroidered and embellished with golden tulle. Josephine would wear a whimsical ruffled collar above the gown’s low neckline. Massive diamonds would drape her throat, her ears, her wrists, and the belt that cinched her famously narrow waist. Napoleon had suggested a wide hoopskirt, the silhouette preferred by Marie-Antoinette, but Josephine had talked him out of that. “We must be new. Better even than the Bourbons.” She’d persuaded him to settle instead on a sleek skirt that flattered her still-slender physique, and a lavish train of red velvet and gold stitching, its sprawling length worthy of the central aisle of Notre Dame.
“It is quite grand,” she said. “Oh, but you’ll look lovely, too, Desiree dear. Napoleon gave me strict orders to make sure that all of my darling sisters appear resplendent. ‘Caesar’s wife must be accompanied by only beautiful and good ladies,’ is what he said to me. And you are both of those things, Desiree. Beautiful and good.”
I nodded my thanks. We had each been gifted ten thousand francs when we were asked to attend Josephine at the coronation, to cover the costs of our custom robes and jewelry for the occasion. In truth, I had spent far more than that. So had Julie. We were wealthy, and Bernadotte knew what was expected of me, so it was no problem. But he did remind me that the typical French household had less than a fraction of that for the entire year.
Josephine now flitted around the room in her dressing gown of soft rose silk, giddily overseeing my fitting as well as the artists and seamstresses who were finishing her own gown.
“And to think…all of this for me.” She glided toward where I stood, smiling, taking my hand in hers as she whispered: “Shall I tell you a secret?”
I shifted on my feet, eliciting a frustrated sigh from the seamstress inspecting my skirt. “Only you can answer that,” I said in reply.
Josephine’s hazel eyes sparkled, and I imagined the mischievous Creole girl stealing sugar from the sucrerie. She tossed her head back in a quick laugh. “Oh, I shall. I’ll tell you. You’ve always been the nicest to me.” She leaned closer, breathing the words into my ear so that no attendants might hear: “We shall be married tonight.”
“Married?” I repeated the word, confused.
She nodded. “Napoleon and I. At midnight.”
“But…you’ve already…” They had been married for years. I myself had seen it happen.
“By the Pope!” she said, her voice low and conspiratorial. “Our marriage is a civil arrangement only, but we have yet to be joined in the eyes of God. Tonight that shall change, right here, at home. Blessed by the Holy Father himself. Truly married, a sacred bond that no man can break—nor any woman. Not even Letizia.”
Bernadotte and I had been married in a civil ceremony only, but that had always been sufficient for us. The same was true for Julie and Joseph, and nearly all of the couples united during the revolutionary years, when the secular law reigned supreme over any teachings of the outlawed Church. Though always respectful of the Church and the clergy in his military dealings, my husband was not an overly religious man, and so the approval of the Church would have done little to add legitimacy to our union in his eyes, just as the absence of the Church’s sanctioning had done little to delegitimize it. Napoleon had reconciled France to Rome and to the papacy, but I had believed that to be a savvy move of political expediency; in all the years I’d known him, I’d never suspected him of having any deep or meaningful faith. Had Josephine suddenly become a religious woman? I looked at her now, seriously doubting it.
“I went to the Pope myself,” she told me. “You know that he’s here, in Paris, for the coronation.”
“Of course,” I said, nodding. “What business did you have with the Pope?”
“Well, the coronation is to be a Mass. A holy event sanctioned by God. When I met with the Pope, I wept and trembled, told him that I did not feel right participating in the coronation as Napoleon’s Empress when I was not even Napoleon’s true wife. At least, not according to the laws of heaven.”
I was beginning to understand. But I let Josephine continue: “What did old Pius do? His Holiness went directly to my husband and said he could not officiate the coronation—he could not anoint a woman with holy oil who was only a concubine in the eyes of God. We must either be married by the Church or lose the Church’s blessing altogether. My husband might have refused the request coming from me, but he wouldn’t refuse when it was a direct order from Rome. And risk the entire coronation? Not at this late date. Not when he is this close.”
“But…was he cross with you?” I knew Napoleon’s temper, and I knew how he hated to be outfoxed, particularly as it so rarely happened.
Josephine lowered her eyes, thinking a moment before answering. “He was cross. I let him rail at me; I rode out the storm. But I simply cried. When he was done, I fell to my knees…” And she did so now as well, pressing her palms together in humble supplication, demonstrating with her body how she had performed for her husband. “I told him that I served him and no other man and I only wanted to do everything in my power to ensure that all of the various factions around us were united in their support for him, that there could never be any cause for any camp to claim there was even a drop of illegitimacy to his rule. And that meant reconciling even God himself to our—to his—cause. He eventually forgave me.” She rose now, patting down her dressing gown, offering a quick, offhand shrug of her shoulders. “Besides, he can’t bear to fight with me at the same time he’s fighting with his sisters and mother.”
I understood—I understood without Josephine having to say more. Behind the smiles, the giggles, the shrugs, Josephine hid a world of other emotions. Chief among them: fear. She, the Empress after tomorrow, was terrified. Just like so many others across France were scared, unsure of their own position or even safety.
Her recent trip to Charlemagne’s holy pilgrimage site of Aix-la-Chapelle—her frantic attempt to present Napoleon with the one gift he wanted most ahead of his coronation, a baby—had proven a failure. In recent months, his calls for divorce had begun to shift from passing insinuations to outright threats. He no longer even attempted to deny the many lovers whom he bedded in his offices and dressing room. In fact, when Josephine recently walked in on him in the middle of an afternoon tryst with one of her own ladies-in-waiting, rather than being apologetic or shamed that he’d been caught, Napoleon had been furious with his wife for interrupting him, chasing her from the room and around the palace, trying to get his hands on her as he roared loud and violent threats. When he failed to snatch her up, as her lithe frame had outrun his, he’d turned instead to hurling chairs and yelling that she sought to ruin him. He’d vowed to throw her out of the palace—and then, he’d returned to his lover and resumed his liaison.
Of course Josephine didn’t mention any of this now. But she didn’t need to. I’d heard plenty from my husband and my sister. “There’s a paper model of Notre Dame Cathedral in the palace,” Bernadotte told me. “Napoleon reviews it each day, laying out his plans for every moment of the Mass and coronation. He’s had thousands of small figurines made, each with a name to correspond to a guest of the Mass. He does not know where to put th
e tiny Josephine figurine.”
And Joseph had said in front of both Julie and me: “I am urging him to seat her with the rest of the congregation, rather than crowning her beside him.”
So Josephine had done what she’d needed to do for herself and for her children—she’d cornered him into a holy marriage, sanctioned by the Pope himself, a bond from which he could not escape. And now, on the eve of the Mass, it appeared that Napoleon had decided where his wife’s paper figurine would be positioned in the model of the great cathedral; she was to be crowned alongside her husband.
It was true that Napoleon had wanted to keep his wife on his side because his family had erupted into open rebellion in recent weeks. Not Joseph or the rest of the brothers, but Letizia and her daughters; the Bonaparte women were furious that Josephine would be crowned Empress and thus officially elevated to a rank above their own. They reacted with unchecked hostility. They no longer stood when she entered a room. They did not look in her direction when she spoke to them. They called her barren and laughed in her presence about her husband’s mistresses; they loved to recount the episode, now infamous throughout Paris, of Josephine storming in on Napoleon in bed with two of her household maids.
* * *
I saw the vicious hostility firsthand that evening at dinner, when Bernadotte and I joined the Bonaparte family at the Tuileries Palace. It was the night before the coronation. The next day, their golden son would be elevated to the highest position in all of France. It was a staggering feat for him, for all of them, rising as they had from penniless refugees of a dusty farm on the island of Corsica to their adopted nation’s First Family. And yet, the Bonapartes were not in a celebratory mood as we sat down to the meal.
Elisa, Caroline, and Pauline presented a united front of dark scowls as they took their places at the long table. I knew of the sisters’ fury—they were incensed not only over Josephine’s position but my sister’s as well. Julie, as wife to Joseph, was to be made a Princess of the Empire. While Napoleon had no son, his brother Joseph was his rightful heir and a Prince of the Empire, but the sisters remained out of the order of succession. They had only hours left to have their way, and they intended to use the dinner, apparently, to make their case to Napoleon. “Why should we not be named princesses?” Elisa demanded, with an angry wave of her ring-covered hands. “You would condemn your own blood to obscurity while elevating others over us?”
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