“Bravo,” my husband said beside me, nodding appreciatively toward the sickly king’s great effort. Courtiers filled in around us to watch as Hedwig and Charles crossed the hall toward the musicians to open the dancing.
The violinists lifted their bows, the two dancers took their places, and just as the music started, King Charles collapsed in the center of the hall, falling to the parquet floor in a heap before his stunned wife. Gasps popped up from among our two hundred guests. The music stopped as Queen Hedwig screamed, her gloved hand flying to her mouth. Within a moment, she had regained her composure, summoning a fleet of servants to her side to lift her husband. She trailed behind as they left the hall in a hurry, the stunned courtiers’ shouts of “Long live King Charles!” swirling in their wake.
* * *
—
Stroke. The next morning, the word spread like a contagion down the long, drafty halls of the palace. The enfeebled king had suffered a second stroke. The court waited for news as a team of physicians and priests remained huddled around the king, day and night. Stockholm was a city on edge as the gray, sunless month of January came to a close. My husband’s ministers briefed him twice a day on the king’s condition, once in the morning and once in the evening. Though not much changed in practice—my husband had already been acting in the role of regent—we sensed that a more official change would soon be taking place.
* * *
—
A week later, my husband and I sat in his private salon, playing bridge with Count Mörner and the Löwenhielm brothers. A small cluster of musicians gave us song, and with the day’s official duties completed, we were in a relaxed mood, laughing over my husband’s Gascon boastfulness. Suddenly, several royal advisers burst into the room, their faces flushed.
We looked up, startled. My husband lowered his cards, and I noted the tightening of his jaw, his slow, somber nod.
Next thing I knew, the newly arrived men were bowing before my husband, their eyes lowered to the carpet. Count Mörner appeared to understand their meaning, and he immediately rose from his chair to do the same, his face solemn.
The old king, I knew, was dead. The room filled with cheers of: “Long live King Carl Johan! Long live the House of Bernadotte!”
* * *
How many times had I participated in coronation events and other court ceremonies? Too many times to count. But never before had I been at their center; never had I imagined that I would be crowned a queen of one of Europe’s ancient and great powers.
It was early May, when the days were nearing their longest, and the sun rose early that morning, greeted by a thunder of ceremonial cannon fire as the city of Stockholm prepared for our coronation. Soon after dawn, church bells began to clamor across the city—for this was a day of importance not only for the State, but for the Church as well.
My husband and his government had declared it a national holiday, and the crowds turned out to enjoy the festivities. Heralds marched through the streets proclaiming the news: my husband was to be crowned King of Sweden, Norway, the Goths, and the Vandals. From my rooms, I saw the bright Swedish flags paraded across the courtyard and beyond the grand gates of the palace. This was new, not a part of the traditional Swedish coronation pageantry, but Bernadotte wished to conjure a festive feel, to lend the weight of ceremony since his was not a long or even Swedish heritage. We were to be a new dynasty, and so, my husband said, it was all the more important that our day be marked by majesty and significance, even if we had to borrow that significance from traditions other than our own.
Elise helped me dress, and we took the entire morning. I had ordered a new robe of spun silver to match my husband’s attire. Bernadotte would wear the ancient crown of Sweden’s beloved King Eric, to which he had added several large diamonds that he’d brought from France, and he carried a sapphire orb. I wore a tiara of diamonds in my upswept hair, a diamond choker around my neck, and matching jewels on my ears and wrists.
As I exited the palace beside my husband and son, I looked out over the scene. The crowds stretched farther than my eyes could take in; people cheering, children waving the Swedish flag, round-cheeked babies perched atop their fathers’ shoulders. The church bells clamored in a frenzied chorus to accompany our footsteps as we left the palace and processed along Slottsbacken Avenue. We arrived at Storkyrkan Cathedral, where my husband was to be made the official leader of the national Lutheran Church. A great canopy of gold cloth draped over our heads. Oscar, now my tall and handsome young man, watched with pride as his father was anointed by the Archbishop.
Back in the palace, we were whisked into the throne room, where my husband and I took our seats at the front of the hall while an endless stream of Swedish nobles, mayors, parliamentary members, government officials, diplomats, and clergymen bowed before us, congratulating us and swearing their loyalty to the House of Bernadotte.
The long, sunlit night outside our palace roiled with the lively sounds of feasting and fireworks. Inside, I sat, stiff and erect, doing my best to carry myself with a queenly bearing. Did I think of her—Josephine? Of course I thought of her, the entire day; she had been the most elegant queen I would ever know, and now we shared more than just the one-time love of the same man. Now we shared the knowledge of what it meant to wear a crown—one plucked from fortune rather than passed through blood. And to know that a crown was both a great gift and an onerous burden.
Chapter 42
Paris
Spring 1821
“HE’S DEAD,” I SAID TO Elise, the words sounding preposterous even as I voiced them. “Napoleon is dead.”
Elise gasped, placing her coffee on the table and running to my side. “I cannot believe it,” she said, reading the French newspaper over my shoulder. “I can’t imagine him…dead.”
Nor could I. “Some men…” I shook my head. “You don’t believe them to be mortal. You can’t imagine that the same inglorious fate will befall them as everybody else.”
I was back on my beloved Rue d’Anjou, my doctors having urged me to take another respite from the frigid Swedish winter, and I had happily obeyed. Being in the French capital, I saw firsthand how Paris plunged itself into a state of deep mourning. The city, though ruled once more by a Bourbon king, celebrated its one-time Emperor as though he still reigned in glory. Residents and store owners shuttered their windows in heavy black drapes. Flags were lowered. The soldiers marched through the streets pale and glum, appearing as if they might weep at any moment.
I longed to know if the news had reached my husband. And if so, what must Bernadotte think of it? Napoleon, his one-time friend, comrade in arms, rival, and then foe. The man who had destroyed the Republic Bernadotte had loved and bled for. The man to whom Bernadotte owed his crown and kingdom, and even his wife.
I dashed off to my salon to write him a note, including clippings of the newspaper articles. Napoleon, dead at fifty-one. An overweight man with swollen jowls and thinning hair, felled by a cancer of the stomach. I found it hard to believe; I couldn’t help but see him as the young Corsican soldier with long, brown hair, unrelenting eyes the color of the darkened sea, uncouth manners that failed to conceal the ferocity of his ambition.
He’d been on the remote island of St. Helena in the Atlantic since shortly after his defeat at Waterloo, a captive in the custody of the British army. There, he’d passed the long southern days by gardening and walking the hills and speaking of bygone times with the small band of servants who attended him. But mostly, he wrote; he wrote journals, he wrote memoirs—his overactive mind was as unwilling as ever to relent, to give way to the slower pace of an island exile and an ailing body.
In the days following his death, the French papers began printing excerpts of his memoir. He’d intended for them to be published—of course he had. Why else would he, a man obsessed with history and legend and the idea of legacy, have spent his final years writing his own story
, if not to share it with all the world? If not to have his word be the final say? It had always been his goal—to shape the thoughts and actions of those around him according to his will and vision. Hadn’t he been so successful in doing just that in life? And so that was what he would do in death, as well.
I wasn’t surprised to see how much of his writing focused on Josephine. She had dominated his thoughts even when he’d had matters as large as conquering Egypt or building an empire on which to focus, so of course she ruled his thoughts when he had nothing else to do but stare at the sea and pace the rocky soil of St. Helena. She was the wife who would have come with me. She would have gone with me to Hell itself. He loved her still, even after the divorce and her sudden death—perhaps even more after the divorce and her sudden death. He regretted that he had left her for a younger princess.
That younger princess had no interest in joining him on St. Helena or even allowing her son to know his father. The boy was living in Vienna among his Habsburg relatives, his title now an Austrian one, the Duke of Reichstätt. Napoleon wrote lovingly of his son, betraying his longing for a reunion that would never come.
I was also not surprised to see that Napoleon wrote many passages about each of his military campaigns and his staggering victories—Austerlitz, Jena, Rivoli, Cairo, and so many others. Or that he wrote rather transparently about his political achievements, outlining the legacy he hoped he would enjoy as a revolutionary and a reformer among the French people and, indeed, across Europe.
I was surprised, however—stunned, really—when I saw my name, when I saw how much of his time and attention Napoleon had allotted to writing about me. Ah, Desiree Clary—for she will always be Clary to me. I took her maidenhead, so it was only right that I should see her married off. At first I tried with Duphot, but then there was that unfortunate business in Rome. So, Bernadotte got to be the lucky man. And wasn’t he all too happy to lap up what I had left for him?
I gasped aloud, mortified, thinking first of my husband, and then realizing, horrified, that all of France would see this. Friends and strangers alike would read about these intimate details of my life with the two men I had loved. And there was more: Bernadotte needed no convincing, given her wealth and her connections, mostly her connections to me through the sister.
The blood thrashed in my veins. I looked to Elise, my eyes wide and unblinking—I was too horrified for tears. And then Napoleon continued: Bernadotte, to say he was a disappointment would not begin to state it. I was the author of his greatness. To think, what he did to France. What he did to me. He was nothing at the outset, not even wanted by his own Gascon mother, but France made him a general, and a Marshal. And a rich man. Bernadotte was the snake we nurtured in our bosom. It was he who gave the enemy the key to our policies and the tactics of our armies.
I lowered the paper, unable to go on. Oh God, I thought, please don’t let my husband see this. It would break him; it would shatter his heart to read this darkest possible utterance of his own deepest-held fears and self-doubts. And in such a public manner!
I knew Bernadotte was tortured by the fact that he’d fought against France. I knew it haunted his sleep, still, to think that he had acted in the interests of his new nation, Sweden, over those of his motherland. But he had been acting in France’s best interests, as well—for he had no longer believed that Napoleon was good for the French. And that was how he had made his peace. And yet, here was Napoleon voicing a vicious indictment of those difficult decisions, and I suspected that these thoughts would deal a more piercing wound to my Bernadotte than any stab of the sword on a battlefield might have done.
I knew, in that moment, that my husband’s conflicted feelings toward Napoleon would not pass with the death of the powerful man. Napoleon would continue to haunt my husband long after this death, perhaps for the remainder of Bernadotte’s new life in Sweden. I understood, because I understood a bit of how my husband thought; even though my husband ruled a kingdom larger than France or England or Prussia, with millions of subjects, he would never forget the rival who had come before him to secure both my love and the love of his nation. The man who had raised him up while also tearing him down. The man who had given him this very crown, after all, or at least, had given the blessing and the connections that were required in its attainment. My husband was beholden to Napoleon for so many things—for his rise in the army, his appointment to Marshal, his reception of this crown, even the introduction to me. He was beholden to him, and so for that he felt both gratitude and deep resentment.
When I did finally hear from my husband, he wrote only of his sadness. He wrote of his admiration for Napoleon as a soldier and he wished him an abiding and eternal rest.
Perhaps there was someone else in my husband’s life these days to whom he unburdened his soul, but it wouldn’t be me, most certainly not through a letter that was sure to be read by multiple censors along its way. Bernadotte never confided in me of his agony—but I knew of it, just the same.
Not surprisingly, after all the talk of Napoleon’s death, my husband became more preoccupied than ever with his own dynasty. Oscar must marry, he wrote to me. It is time. Our son was nearly twenty-two years old, the heir to the Swedish throne, and he needed a wife. More important, he needed sons.
I wrote back to my husband, agreeing with this. Why, by his age, I’d already had an engagement and a heartbreak at Napoleon’s hands, an arranged betrothal to Duphot, then a marriage and a son with Bernadotte. It was time for Oscar to start his own family. I had long hoped that my boy might wish to marry one of my nieces, Julie’s two daughters, Zénaïde or Charlotte. They were lovely girls, several years younger than he was, and they’d been raised as princesses. But my husband immediately rejected the idea, seeing it for what it was—a sentimental move motivated by my own desire to be reunited with my sister, rather than a smart diplomatic play. Besides, my Bonaparte nieces had the worst possible last name.
She should be either German, Russian, or Austrian. The daughter of a king, preferably, and most certainly from an advantageous family. I rather like the idea of a Bavarian princess, he wrote back to me.
* * *
—
It was decided: Oscar, based in Stockholm, would make a grand tour, during which time he’d visit the great courts of the Continent and meet the most powerful crowned heads of Europe and, of course, their marriageable daughters.
I followed it all with a mother’s interest, even if I was in Paris. Oscar went first to Denmark, but there was little interest in King Frederick’s daughters. Next he went to the Netherlands, but young Princess Marianne of Orange struck him as too timid. From there, he traveled to Bavaria, where King Maximilian was the current ruler from the ancient and prestigious Wittelsbach family. My husband wrote that he was particularly excited about this stop for Oscar; the Wittelsbachs were a respected and prosperous dynasty, and they would lend legitimacy to our new reign. In addition to all that, the ruling family in Bavaria was descended from the ancient Swedish ruling family of Vasa. Thus, any alliance with them would make Oscar’s children even more secure on his new Swedish throne.
King Max’s daughter had given him a granddaughter who was not yet sixteen. She was considered a desirable match—Catholic, but then, so was I. Beautiful, with intelligence and many charms, and a large dowry. Bernadotte was ecstatic, writing me that an alliance like this would join the new interests with the old.
The young lady was said to be a great admirer of her paternal grandmother, a dark-haired beauty who had earned herself a throne in spite of a lackluster pedigree. Like her grandmother, the potential bride was known to be witty and charismatic, with impeccable manners and a grace that seemed to come naturally.
And, like her grandmother, she was named Josephine.
Chapter 43
Aachen, Rhineland
Spring 1823
I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT: my son had fallen in love with Jose
phine’s granddaughter, the young girl also called Josephine. To hear her full name unleashed ripples of memory that I felt with my entire body: Josephine Napoleone de Beauharnais. Named after her grandmother—at Napoleon’s insistence—when she was born in 1807, the girl’s middle name had been added as an honorific to her step-grandfather, then Emperor of France.
This is not the end for Josephine and me. Hadn’t I felt it, all those years ago? Hadn’t I known that farewell did not mean forever on that night when Napoleon had banished her from his life and his love?
Now, Josephine and I might be joined once more, and forever; I found it dizzying simply to wrap my mind around this fact. Josephine’s son, Eugene, had married into the Bavarian royal family at the height of his mother’s power, taking as his bride the Princess Augusta, eldest daughter of King Maximilian of the House of Wittelsbach. Surely his skills at survival had come from his mother: through decades of war against his native country and his stepfather’s multiple rises and downfalls, Eugene had remained well-liked at the Wittelsbach court and indeed in Bavaria. Though he’d come of age as a boy riding alongside his stepfather into military camps across Europe, when the time came, Eugene successfully distanced himself from the ill-fated politics of his French family and had taken the title of Duke of Leuchtenberg. He and Augusta had had seven children in Munich. Their eldest daughter, Josephine, was famous for her beauty; she was known to be as gracious as the paternal grandmother for whom she was named.
Our two families were to meet that spring in Eichstätt, where we might allow the young couple to court in the relaxed, picturesque setting of a mountain resort. I knew that my son desired to become engaged to Josephine, but I was nervous, for I knew nothing of the young girl’s heart.
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