The Queen's Fortune

by Allison Pataki

  Josephine swallowed. We knew that she was now in her early forties. Her window to have Napoleon’s heir was rapidly closing. “There is?” her voice was raspy with longing.

  “But this child…” The old woman shut her eyes a moment, her voice low and trancelike as she continued. “I am not seeing it clearly beside you. It won’t be yours.”

  Josephine leaned her head to the side. “I know!” she said, snapping her fingers after a moment. “You are seeing my darling daughter, Hortense. She is with child again. With Napoleon’s nephew. And grandson.”

  “Hortense?” The soothsayer repeated the name. “Fair of hair?”

  “Fair? Well, no. Dark hair. Like mine.” Josephine ran her hands through the hair that poked out from under her red bandana.

  The woman shook her head, disagreeing, but before she could continue, Josephine interrupted. “What else? Tell me something else.” She leaned forward, hoisting her wineglass in the air toward me and saying, “More wine.”

  I exchanged a look with Elise as I turned to fetch the wine; we knew the rumors. Word came to us even in Mainz that one of Napoleon’s mistresses back in Paris, a young beauty named Eléonore Denuelle, was pregnant. Was she fair of hair? I wondered.

  Josephine hugged her legs in toward her chest now as she looked at the cards spread before her. I passed her the refilled wineglass and then retreated to the back of the shadowed room, where I could not see her cards, only her face, which had gone pale. I pulled my fur cloak tighter around my shoulders.

  The old woman, droning on in her low voice, continued: “A beautiful home. More lavish than a palace.”

  “Malmaison,” Josephine said, nodding. She looked relieved. “My greatest source of joy.”

  “There are many plants there,” the woman said.

  “My greenhouses. Napoleon gives me specimens from all over the world. Australia, Tasmania, Siam, Madagascar—”

  “But in your life…there is one.” The woman was rocking back and forth now, no longer looking at anyone as she spoke, her eyes rolling back as if what she saw was not in the same room we occupied. “This one grows so high that it threatens to choke all the others. It could choke you as well.”

  “What could you possibly mean?” Josephine demanded, her tone imperious as she sat back in her chair.

  “I don’t,” the woman groaned, shaking her head. “I can’t see it. All I see are these plants. But…take caution. That’s all I can say. Be careful. Watch whatever it is that climbs too high.”

  “Weeds!” Josephine leaned forward and swept the cards from the table, reaching for her refilled wineglass. “I think that’s enough. I didn’t ask for a gardening lesson.”

  But the woman was not yet finished. “There will be a great victory. He will tell you—”

  We all shrieked when a knock sounded on the door; we had all been fairly entranced ourselves by the woman’s strange words. Josephine stared at the door as if she felt misgivings about answering, fearful of what might lurk on the other side. Finally, pulling herself straight with a fortifying breath, she said: “Come in. What is it?” She sat tall, the Empress once more, as a liveried page appeared. “Majesty.” He bowed, eyes lowered. “We have word from His Imperial Majesty.”

  Josephine waved the man forward and took the letter. Her hands trembled; her face had gone paler than the parchment on which the note was written. But as she read the words, her features began to soften. And then, she giggled, reading aloud her husband’s words: “Never was an army more thoroughly beaten. I’ve executed some fine maneuvers against the Prussians at Jena and won a great victory.” Josephine lowered the paper and looked at the old fortune-teller, laughing as she said: “A great victory. Well, it looks like you did see one thing correctly this evening!” She turned back to the letter, reading aloud: “The armies of my enemies continue to fall before me. My Grande Armée is the greatest force this continent has ever seen. Although it’s no thanks to Bernadotte. I ought to have him shot—at the very least court-martialed.”

  The words were out before Josephine realized what she read. She dropped the paper and looked at me in a flash, apologetic, as the women around me sneered. Only Elise, my new friend, frowned.

  “Desiree,” Josephine said, her face creasing with genuine remorse. “I am sorry. I…I didn’t know before I read it.”

  “It’s quite all right,” I said, my tone steady, hiding the concern I truly felt. When I spoke again, I forced levity into my words: “You know how these men are, their emotions hot from the battlefield. They shall be friends again tomorrow.”

  * * *

  But I heard from my husband the next day, and his letter confirmed the quarrel with Napoleon—an exchange of heated words following the French victory at Jena. He was irrational, Bernadotte wrote, his anger evident in his note. He would not hear me speak. He kept fuming that he could have me shot. That he would have had me shot but for the anguish it would cause you. I had done nothing but follow the orders of my direct superior. Berthier ordered me to march my men to Dörnberg—I had no idea I was needed by Napoleon at Jena, nor did I know that that was to be the main site of engagement. None of us knew. Napoleon is simply seizing this moment to vent the feelings he has long held for me, namely rivalry. Jealousy. He tells me that he spares me because of you, when in fact, I suspect that perhaps it’s the opposite: that he despises me because of you.

  I lowered the letter, my hands and the paper trembling.

  There was no way for my husband to see my reaction to these words, and for that, I was thankful. I thought for a day before responding with great care—writing soothing words to try to calm him, while also indicating to him that I understood his sense of injustice and heard his frustrations. My husband was a good man, an honest man, but he would have been the first to admit that his hot Gascon blood made him no diplomat. That much I knew. My only hope was that, with time, both he and Napoleon might calm down and the cooling of tempers would bring about some sort of reconciliation in their friendship. Or at the very least, a détente in their relationship as officers.

  More news streamed in. Within a few weeks, our French forces had taken the critical German city of Berlin, but Napoleon’s letter announcing the victory sent Josephine to bed in hysterics. I wondered what he had written to her. I found out soon enough, when Pauline came into the drawing room that afternoon with a letter of her own. “A son!” she said, waving her note like a flag of victory.

  We all looked up, curious for more news. We need not have worried: Pauline was happy to gush to us. Eléonore Denuelle had given Napoleon a son, and she’d named him Leon, in a clear honor to his father the Emperor. An illegitimate son, yes, but still, it proved that Napoleon was not sterile. A fertile wife would have given him a legitimate heir by now. I knew the sisters’ hopes, that this would provide yet another argument for Napoleon to leave Josephine.

  * * *

  —

  The Empress called me to her chamber that evening. I found her in bed, her hair tucked into the Creole bandana, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy. She appeared so small under a pile of covers, her dinner tray untouched on the bedside table. She asked me to join her in bed, so I obeyed.

  “It is all simply to make me jealous,” she said, her voice hoarse. I did not say anything but let her continue. “To be sure of my love. He has never forgiven me for taking my pleasure elsewhere early in our marriage. He is testing me. But I shall remain faithful. I shall pass this test, and our love shall soar to ever greater heights.”

  And it seemed that perhaps she might have been correct, for November brought with it news that our Emperor would be leaving Berlin to travel to the Polish front, and he had finally invited Josephine to join him. He wished for her to meet him in Warsaw. She read aloud from the letter at lunch the following day. “The nights are long and cold without you. I long for you beside me on these frozen plains. You, my sole source of warmth and
joy in this otherwise wearying life.”

  Josephine lowered the paper, a well-timed blush turning her rouged cheeks darker. These past few weeks had taken their toll, and her features had started to appear drawn, even a bit gaunt. Yet this most recent letter had done much to revive her spirit, and indeed her complexion. “I would read on,” she said, glancing at her husband’s note, “but I cannot possibly share the remainder of the letter. It would make you all too embarrassed.”

  Pauline rose from the table, frowning, and left the room, her sisters following after her. Josephine merely grinned, digging into her meal with a greater appetite than I had seen in weeks.

  I would go to Warsaw along with my Empress, but also to see my Bernadotte, who would be marching there with the Grand Armée. I was glad of it—I longed to see him after so many months apart. If only Oscar could join us, and then we would be reunited as a family once more, but my son was still installed safely back in Paris with his nanny and tutor.

  We ladies prepared for the hard, cold journey across the Polish plains. It would be December by the time we set out, and the road to Warsaw would be a bleak one; we were told to expect heavy rains, perhaps even early-winter snowstorms.

  Josephine had arrived in Mainz with six coaches full of clothing and jewelry, and so we began packing her up weeks before the journey, for we knew the task was a daunting one. The first day of December brought with it snowfall and a new letter from Napoleon. I sat with her and Elise in her bedroom, sorting brooches, when the servant brought it in. The Bonaparte sisters had gone off to some other activity, which was just as well for the rest of us.

  Josephine sprang up to grab the note off the golden mail dish and hopped into bed to read it. She was giddy with anticipation for their reunion. It seemed, however, that the letter did not bring good news. “Impossible,” she groaned, leaning backward and curling into a heap on the bed. I walked slowly toward her. “Empress?”

  Her eyes were shut, her back to me. A confused shrug from Elise.

  “Madame, is everything all right?” I asked, though of course I guessed the answer.

  “No!” she rasped, turning toward me. I saw, in that instant, how tired she looked. Her eyes—scrubbed clean of her customary makeup by the tears she cried—had a netting of fine lines encircling them. Age and worry and disappointment were closing in on her once-bright features, waging a battle of inevitability that she could not win. I had never thought she looked her age; I had never believed her beauty to have faded. Her body was still svelte and lithe, her personality still vivacious when she was in the mood to be so. But just then, in that moment, I could see the years on her. Hard years, most of them. And perhaps doomed to grow harder still.

  “No, everything is not all right,” she responded. “See for yourself.” She pressed the crumpled paper into my hands and I looked down, reading Napoleon’s familiar hand: I am inclined to think you should go to Paris for the winter. The roads are bad and these plains are frozen. I cannot expose you to such fatigue, and it is hardly appropriate for an Empress to find herself in bivouacs and taverns—go back to Paris.

  It was an order, and one quickly and decisively issued. Napoleon was disinviting her from the front. But were his reasons in earnest—or merely an excuse? We did not know. I certainly had a guess.

  Several days later, after our trip had been canceled, word came of Bernadotte. Terrible news, a letter that sent me into frantic tears, when I was so used to being the one to comfort Josephine. My husband’s aide, Maurin, wrote to me that my husband had been struck in the neck with a Russian bullet, near a place called Spanden in Prussia. He had survived, but just barely, and he had fallen from his horse before being carried off the battlefield in a cart. The army field doctor who was treating him feared for his life.

  I ran, hysterical, into Josephine’s room, waving the letter in my hand. She listened, nodding gravely, as I read. “Of course you must go to him,” she said after I had finished reading.

  “Thank you” was all I could say, my breath uneven, my mind racing with the plans for my trip across the frozen winter roads.

  “Think nothing of it,” she said. “Why, I bet your trunks are still packed.”

  “Indeed, Empress, they are.”

  “Then go. Leave at once. And…if you see Napoleon…well. Tell him that I love him, and I long for him. I would gladly join him where he is, be it bivouac or tavern.”

  * * *

  It was hardly a bivouac and hardly a tavern. I reunited with my husband—who had mercifully survived and was expected to make a steady, if slow, recovery—at Schlobitten Castle in East Prussia: a squat stone home once belonging to an ancient noble family. The weather was too cold for us to enjoy the grounds or the nearby lake, and, besides, my husband was up for little more than resting on the sofa before the fire, but I was happy simply to sit beside him, warm, grateful that his body was healing.

  Napoleon and his attendants were nearby, my husband explained, at Finckenstein Castle to the south. “Has he visited you in your recovery?” I asked. We lay in bed that evening, burrowed under several heavy quilts, but my feet were still cold.

  “No,” Bernadotte answered. “He wrote. After the injury. But I haven’t heard from him since.”

  In spite of this, my Bernadotte’s spirits were high. He said nothing more to me of his feud with Napoleon, so I did not ask. Instead, he seemed eager to speak about his recent campaign against the Prussians, in an oddly named place called Lübeck.

  “I had the most remarkable time there, Desiree. With some Swedish generals. My men had taken them captive. I was of the mind that, rather than treat them like prisoners, we stood to gain far more by treating the Swedes like gentlemen and thus learning their ways. I freed them of their braces; I treated them as my guests. I heard all about their country. Truly, it sounds like a fascinating place, this Sweden. We shall have to go sometime.”

  “Sweden? Yes, certainly,” I said, trying to stifle a yawn, when really all I longed for was sleep. But then my husband said something that jolted me instantly awake. “And while I was falling in love with the Swedish generals, our Emperor was falling in love with a Polish noblewoman.”

  I sat upright in bed, leaning toward Bernadotte with a sudden, keen interest. “What?” Falling in love? We all knew that Napoleon had mistresses and lovers—many other women, too many to possibly count—but to fall in love with someone other than Josephine? I had never imagined it possible. But Bernadotte nodded his head. “Indeed, it’s true. Our little general is quite enraptured.”

  I glanced at him sideways, incredulous. “Who is she?”

  “A countess.”

  “She’s Polish?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Bernadotte seemed significantly less surprised than I was. “They are holed up together in Finckenstein Castle. You know that is why he won’t allow Josephine to join him?”

  I absorbed these words. “I suspected there was some…reason.”

  “That reason is named Countess Marie Walewska.”

  I stared straight ahead, stunned.

  “Come now.” Bernadotte placed a hand on my arm. “You know he’s no saint.”

  “Of course I know that. I just never imagined anything…serious.”

  “With him,” Bernadotte said, sighing, “everything is serious.”

  “But…what is she like?”

  Bernadotte considered my question a moment before cocking his head, answering: “She’s the opposite of Josephine.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “She wanted nothing to do with him,” Bernadotte said. “Which, as you might imagine, does not happen to him anymore. Napoleon picked her out of a crowd when we first marched into Poland. Thousands lined the streets. He saw her on the route, blond and unsmiling, wrapped in fur, and he immediately arranged for his men to bombard her with bouquets of flowers.”

  I couldn’t help but
see Josephine’s face in my mind, even as I listened to the story. Josephine’s parting embrace of me in Mainz, her final words: Tell him that I love him, and I long for him. I believed that to be true.

  Bernadotte carried on, his Gascon flare for storytelling now at full tilt: “He invited the countess to dinner at his camp, but she declined. He thought her refusal was some ploy, so he sent her jewels, but still she refused him. She simply sent the jewels back, along with a short note stating that she was married. As you can imagine, this only delighted our general. There’s nothing the man loves more than a conquest.”

  “So what did he do?” I asked.

  “He kept inviting her to visit him. Finally, her husband insisted she accept his invitation. Can you imagine? He knew an opportunity too good to pass on, even if his wife didn’t.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said, pulling the bedcovers closer around my shoulders in our drafty room. “Well, what is she like, this Countess…Marie…Waska?”

  “Countess Marie Walewska,” Bernadotte corrected. “Well, she is rich and beautiful. She speaks flawless French. She is intelligent….”

  “Well!” I said, chortling. “I believe you may have fallen a bit in love as well, Sergeant Belle-Jambe.”

  He reached for me in bed, beginning to tussle with me, but then his injury gave him pain, and he released me, leaning back. “No, no. I admire her, that’s all. She is a woman without any design, which is rare in the orbit of the Emperor these days. She truly had no interest in being Napoleon’s latest quarry. She didn’t care for the gifts, the attention, the power. Her husband is ancient and ill, and it was he who supported the liaison. Finally, she relented, and Napoleon happily took her to his bed. Since then, he has seen no other woman.”

  I thought about all of this a moment, contemplating something in my head: “But this can’t have been going on that long, since Napoleon invited Josephine in November and only rescinded the following month. Perhaps it isn’t really love? Perhaps it is simply some passing infatuation?”