The Queen's Fortune

by Allison Pataki

  Paris

  Spring 1810

  “HE BELIEVES IT TO BE a curse,” Bernadotte explained. “A curse on his marriage—indeed, on his succession.”

  We lay in bed, my legs interwoven with my husband’s. I had felt unwell for days, the sickening smell of fire still clinging to my nose and skin and hair, and I held on to Bernadotte now, hoping to draw comfort from his tall, strong frame. My sleep had been troubled ever since the tragedy of Napoleon’s wedding ball, pierced by the screams of all those poor souls trapped within the burning building. How easily it might have been us, had we simply stood on the other side of the hall, had Bernadotte not pulled me quickly to safety. How would Oscar possibly navigate such shifting and dangerous days as an orphan? I shuddered once more, forcing the thought from my mind.

  The days immediately following the disaster were filled with waiting; all of Paris waited as firemen and gendarmes combed through the rubble for any possible survivors. Once it was all settled, it was counted that a handful of people had burned to death, including Prince Schwarzenberg’s own sister, whose charred corpse had been identified by her massive family diamonds. The Emperor’s sister Caroline narrowly survived, but she lost the baby she had been carrying in her womb.

  Napoleon was so horrified by the catastrophe that he ordered the creation of a new fleet of public firefighters throughout Paris. But superstitious as he was, he believed his marriage already doomed, his dynasty once again in peril.

  “Now he will be even more paranoid, even more restless. He will never stop making war,” my husband said with a sigh. The night was dark, but neither of us could sleep.

  “With whom will he make war?” I asked. “He’s married into the Habsburgs.”

  “There will always be another enemy. England. Prussia. Perhaps even Russia?”

  I turned to Bernadotte, ran my fingers through his dark hair, noting errant wisps of gray. My husband was aging, I noted to myself. “Perhaps she’ll give him a son. And quickly,” I ventured. “Perhaps he’ll be content to stay put and play the role of papa, of husband. Even just for a bit.”

  Bernadotte grunted, a noise to indicate that he did not share my same hope. After a long pause, his words pierced the silence: “My darling?” His voice was tender in the dark, a bit tenuous.

  “Yes?”

  “I will die if we stay here.”

  I felt my frame stiffen in his arms—I was certain he felt it, too. What did he mean by such a horrific statement? Hadn’t these past days been grisly enough? Bernadotte continued: “He will never stop fighting in Europe. Never. Because he will never be satiated. Each new victory, rather than bringing him closer to peace, draws him deeper into his paranoia. I am sure of it: I will die, either on his battlefield at the hands of the Prussians or Austrians or British or Russians. Or else…I will die by his orders.”

  Now I was genuinely distressed, because I sensed how earnestly my husband meant his words. “How can you say such a thing?”

  “He’s trying to get rid of me,” Bernadotte said. “Has been for some time. He offered me Governor of Rome. You know what has happened to his generals in Rome—it’s a city hostile to us. Even more so now that our Emperor is keeping the Pope under house arrest.”

  My heart clenched. In my mind, I was standing in a Roman palace, staring out a window: darkened streets, crowds gathering to curse France, screaming figures clambering over a fence that suddenly seemed ludicrous in its futility. “Duphot,” I said, my voice sounding strangled as I uttered the name.

  “That’s right.” Bernadotte glowered. “And the point is, Napoleon wants me out.”

  “I won’t go back to Rome.”

  “You don’t have to, my darling. I’d never accept the post.”

  “What did he say? When you turned it down?” I asked.

  “He called me a hotheaded Gascon. Told me I don’t know my place.”

  I grimaced, taking my fingers to my forehead and slowly rubbing my brow.

  “He hates me,” Bernadotte added. “Since Wagram. Or perhaps before that—the battles at Jena and Eylau as well. But really, I suspect it took root even earlier.”

  I turned and glanced sideways toward my husband. “Why?”

  His eyes held my own in the dark. “You.”

  “Me?”

  “You, and Oscar. He sees our happiness. He sees our son. He sees what he could have had—he hates that he chose to forgo it. And he hates me for getting what might have been his. My happiness stands in censure of his stupidity. He grows ever more hostile toward me with each passing month.” Bernadotte exhaled slowly, emptying his breath completely. Eventually, he said, with a tone of finality: “We must go.”

  I was grateful for the bed beneath me, because my body felt weak. “Go?” My voice sounded hollow. “Go where?”

  He slid out from under the covers now and hopped to standing. He began pacing before our large bed. “Bernadotte? You are frightening me. France is our home.”

  “But really, does it feel like a home, Desiree? With Julie gone quite often, Joseph as King of Naples. And with Josephine out, you can’t tell me that you feel comfortable at court. You were a member of the old order…but surely you see that times have changed. He…has changed. Or perhaps he is precisely as he has always been, only he’s changed everything around us.”

  That was true, and that served to silence me a moment. It was true that I had no real place at court these days. At least, certainly not near Napoleon and not anywhere near his new Empress. She was a girl who preferred to speak German and surround herself with the close friends of her Habsburg homeland. Of course Napoleon, well, he was always looking forward, ceaselessly so—to the children who would come, to the victories he could win.

  Bernadotte and I, we were of the past. I, especially, was of his past. I turned to my husband now, asking, “But…where would we go?”

  Bernadotte paused his pacing, turning to face me. He leaned forward and pressed his hands onto the bed before answering: “Sweden.”

  “Sweden?” I repeated the name of the foreign country, frowning in my bewilderment. I knew nothing of Sweden—I could not even see in my head where it was found on a map.

  “It’s a northern country,” he explained, noting my surprise. “On the Baltic Sea.”

  “But…they aren’t French.”

  “No. But they are enlightened. They are very pro-French and seeking to strengthen their ties with us.”

  This did little to clear up my confusion. “But…don’t they have a king of their own? A Swede?”

  “Their King Gustav was an imbecile—feeble in body and mind. They forced his abdication. They put his brother on the throne, King Charles XIII, but he is old and without children. This once again leaves them vulnerable. Then they chose the king’s cousin, but he just recently fell dead. He suffered a fit, slid from his horse, and was gone. So…their situation remains precarious.”

  “I still don’t understand why they would turn to…Paris…for an heir.”

  “Much less to me, common-born as I am,” my husband added, seeing my point. “I was as startled as you are when I first heard. But it does make sense on further consideration. They’ve fought a bitter war with Russia and lost—to disastrous consequences. They lost much of their territory in that defeat, and now they’re scared they could lose their Baltic ports as well. They want to align with Napoleon; they have signed on to his Continental System. They know me to be related to him through marriage—thanks to you—and they remember me fondly. I oversaw their captured officers and prisoners of war during our campaigns in Prussia.”

  “Yes, I remember. The Swedes.” My mind spun.

  He crossed his arms. “I was kind. And I was fair. They remember me in Sweden, in the military but also the government.”

  “But…do such things happen this way?” I asked. “The crown of Sweden is simply up for o
ffering?”

  “They have sent their minister and diplomat, a man I once held as my prisoner, a Count Mörner, to Paris to meet with Napoleon.”

  “Oh?” My fingers felt cold as I gripped the bedcovers. Why did I feel as though things were already in motion—that I was being pulled by a wheel much larger than anything I could steer?

  “Desiree…it looks as though they mean to offer me the crown.”

  My pulse raced. Bernadotte was entirely serious. “Think of it,” he said. “King and Queen of Sweden.”

  “But…Bernadotte.”

  “Yes? What do you think?”

  “I…it’s…I—”

  “Please tell me.”

  Now he yearned for my thoughts? I swallowed, my voice toneless as I answered: “My home is in France.”

  * * *

  I did not like Count Gustav Mörner. Not through any fault of his own—in fact, he was a pleasant enough man, well-dressed and well-mannered, polite, eager to offer smiles and a soft voice to Oscar when he visited our home on the Rue d’Anjou. But I disliked him because I knew what he wanted and I knew why he visited; I knew what he and Bernadotte discussed once they shut the heavy oak door to my husband’s study, closing me out.

  My husband would leave these meetings with his cheeks flushed, his hair flying away from his face as though the discourse of these private conversations with the Swedes involved some intense physical feat. He was excited—I could see that. More so than I had seen him in years. Filled, suddenly, with a glimmer in his dark eyes, a sense of purpose enlivening his steps around our home.

  I learned from Bernadotte in those weeks more about the strange northern place that was trying so hard to lure him—to lure us—to accept its crown. Sweden was a constitutional monarchy, with both a parliament and a king, but they would have no one to sit on their throne when their current monarch, an elderly man with little spirit and even less popularity, died.

  Their government supported Bernadotte’s appointment as heir to the Swedish throne, and so they dispatched a small army of ministers and diplomats to negotiate with Napoleon’s government. It seemed as though our own Emperor could be brought around to the idea, based on what my husband was hearing from his friends in the court. All that would remain then was for Bernadotte to accept the crown. Or, perhaps more accurately, for me to accept the crown.

  I had no desire to leave France. To leave Paris. It was odd—as strange and foreign as the capital had once felt to me, a young girl newly arrived from Marseille, somehow, over these many years, it had come to feel like home in a way that I was sure no other place ever would. I could not imagine leaving, particularly for some place covered in snow where the sounds and sights would be alien. More alien than even Louisiana in New France would have been.

  And yet, France had proven a fickle companion to both my husband and me, hadn’t she? France was a changeling—constantly shifting on us, swerving just when we felt as though perhaps we might finally have a sure footing underneath. Last year, I was in the inner circle of one Empress; this year, I could not understand the German being spoken by the new Empress.

  All that spring, the Swedish ministers and diplomats kept knocking on our door at the Rue d’Anjou. I began to soften to the idea, gradually, for two reasons. The first was that I saw my husband hopeful again, invigorated by the idea, eager as he hadn’t been in quite some time.

  The second reason was that I came to understand that, even if Bernadotte was made King of Sweden, it need not mean that I would move there. At least, not permanently. Napoleon, who fancied himself a glorious and flying star, plucked crowns from the constellations with apparent ease; my sister had been named Queen of both Spain and Naples, her husband recently gifted yet another throne by Napoleon—and she was often in Paris. And I was Princess of Pontecorvo, after all, yet I had never even been there. Napoleon put crowns on the heads of Frenchmen as though they were as changeable as the season’s hats. Wouldn’t this mean that we could simply stay in Paris, even if we were suddenly named King and Queen of Sweden?

  And what’s more, would it not be good for my son, my boy, to have such an illustrious title added to his inheritance? Oscar Bernadotte, Prince Royal of Sweden—someday to be named a king of an ancient European power? It was more than I had ever dared to imagine for any child of mine. The thought did fill me with a giddy excitement.

  And yet, as I began to warm to the idea of my husband’s new assignment, it seemed that Napoleon began to waver on whether to approve it. Word came to us through the Swedes that Napoleon was suddenly avoiding their envoys and ministers, frustrating their diplomats by canceling meetings and neglecting to reschedule. Our Emperor’s support for the venture had cooled.

  “He is toying with me,” my husband would rail, when he would hear from his Swedish visitors that they had had no response from the Tuileries. “He shows me no respect. Can’t you see why I must get away from that man?”

  Weeks passed in this way, with no word from our French court. Then, to our surprise, Count Mörner informed us that Napoleon had instructed the Swedes to offer the throne to Eugene, his former stepson, the child of Josephine. Eugene had declined the offer immediately, but what move, we wondered, would Napoleon make next? My husband was infuriated as Count Mörner began speaking dolefully about a return trip to Stockholm.

  And then, just as spring warmed and blossomed, the trees around us ripening into the lush fullness of summer, an unexpected invitation arrived at our home on the Rue d’Anjou. The Emperor and Empress—I thought of Josephine at first, and only remembered it was Marie Louise after Bernadotte reminded me—wished for us to join them for dinner at the Tuileries.

  * * *

  We arrived early, ten minutes before six. It was a pleasant June evening, and the Tuileries gardens were in the full throes of early summer, the doves in the trees warbling softly in the bright light of Paris’s long evenings.

  We were shown into the Salon d’Apollon, where Napoleon and his new bride received us with tight, forced smiles. As she greeted my husband, I took in the appearance of my hostess.

  Marie Louise appeared to me as a girl playing dress-up in her mother’s lavish gown. It was not as though her manners and her posture were not flawless—they were; she was, after all, a Habsburg bride, and she had been schooled in the ways of a princess since her earliest years. It was more that she did not yet appear entirely at ease in her role as wife—or, perhaps, as Napoleon’s wife. If the two of them had grown comfortable with each other, acclimated and intimate in their new union, it did not yet show in their body language, which was unnaturally formal, even aloof. And yet, as my eyes quickly scanned her appearance, taking in the rich sweep of her yellow satin gown, I noticed the first telltale signs of a new pregnancy: the soft swell of her belly, fuller breasts, the hint of a flush on her otherwise pristine skin. Napoleon would finally get his heir.

  “Well then, shall we eat?” Napoleon said, apparently in no mood for cordial chatter. We nodded our assent and he led us into dinner, his wife walking stiffly beside him.

  The meal was served, but Napoleon did not speak and so neither did we. Marie Louise made no attempt at small talk, in stark contrast to how Josephine had once conducted her own lively dinner parties at this same table. The food was cleared, and the Empress poured her husband’s coffee.

  It was only then that Napoleon propped his elbows on the table and looked at us, something clearly on his mind. “Bernadotte. My old friend.”

  My husband nodded, waiting for more.

  Napoleon’s eyes were two green stones as he said, “Shall we speak about Sweden?”

  My husband cleared his throat, folding his hands in his lap as he accepted a serving of black coffee. “Sire?”

  “I know that is what you came here to discuss.”

  “I came here, sire, at your invitation,” my husband answered.

  Napoleon stirred the
cream in his coffee slowly, staring only toward my husband. I hoped that perhaps the happy fact of his wife’s pregnancy might have put him in a more charitable humor, but I was not entirely certain that Marie Louise had told him yet. Surely he would have said something, had he known. He would never have been able to resist an opportunity to boast—especially on the matter closest to his heart. Finally, after a long pause, Napoleon said: “Very well, Bernadotte. You may have your crown.”

  Silence hovered around the table. Inside my chest, my heart galloped.

  Napoleon took a slow sip of coffee, his gaze remaining fixed on my Bernadotte. “A fatherless Gascon lad,” Napoleon said, grinning after a moment. “Too poor even to be an attorney. Now offered a throne.”

  What about a Corsican boy too poor to buy an olive farm? But I did not say it aloud. Bernadotte swallowed a gulp of coffee, shifted in his seat. Napoleon continued: “It is good. It is a monument to my reign and an extension of my glory. You shall be yet one more point on my star.”

  Bernadotte cleared his throat, and I knew that as he did so, he was biting back words that would only hurt his cause with Napoleon. So then, he really wanted this crown—enough to mind Napoleon and bridle his own hot blood.

  “There is only one matter on which I will have your agreement,” Napoleon added. “Before I can send you off into the great white north with my blessing.”

  “Oh?” Bernadotte raised his cup.

  “I must insist on a clause that you, and therefore Sweden, will never make war against the French.”

  Bernadotte sipped his coffee, and I sensed that he was using the time to form his response. When he lowered his cup, he spoke slowly: “I understand the sentiments of that, sire. And though of course I agree with it in my heart, and my head, you must see why I could not agree to it as a fixed principle. That would make Sweden a vassal state.”

  Napoleon shook his head, a quick, tight gesture. “I must insist, Bernadotte. How can I allow you to go there with the chance that you might someday fire on your fellow Frenchmen?”