Rolt took a white silk handkerchief from his pocket and shook out the folds. He wrapped the shrunken head there and then slipped it into his pocket. He carefully closed the cabinet door.
The maid helped him with his coat.
‘Goodnight, sir,’ she said and opened the front door.
Rolt smiled and nodded. ‘Lord Oldham may need a blanket,’ he said and stepped outside. The cold air was a shock. As he began to walk, his heart was beating fast.
SWIFTWING
James Noble was well and truly done with King and Country.
At twenty-two, he was still no bigger than he’d been at thirteen. He had glossy black hair and coal eyes too, and a good nose until the regiment champ broke it in a betting bout (he was still a touch wobbly at times, weeks later).
All James Noble needed was somebody to help him with the boat.
Harris wouldn’t do it—he was desperate for family and home (up north on the Kentish coast)—and, besides, it made more sense to take the Prussian, who’d surely be wanting to head that way, across the Channel.
They fixed it all for the same night. Easy enough, with Harris in the guardhouse and the keys on a hook.
Nobody spoke. They took the keys and let Johannes Meyer out of his cell. They opened the front door and ran for the trees. Simple as that.
‘Ten pounds says you’ll see Old Bailey before me,’ James Noble said when they’d made it to cover.
‘Sure.’ Harris smiled. ‘But how would you ever know?’
A moment later, he was gone.
Noble turned to Johannes. There was a wrenching feeling in his guts. He hadn’t expected it. ‘We go this way,’ he said.
There was a fine drizzle falling and the ground was soft and the grass slapped wetly against their boots as they ran, crouching, though the darkness. They were headed down to a cove about a mile along the coast. When they got there, Noble revealed a small round boat, hidden underneath branches. He saw the dubious look on Johannes Meyer’s face.
‘It’s just a paddle to the real boat, son. Don’t panic. It’ll get us there.’
Johannes climbed in first and then James Noble pushed off and jumped in behind, almost tipping them over. He settled on his knees and began to paddle, but the coracle turned like a wheel over the water, no keel, and the two of them aboard like children on a fairytale leaf. It was woven of wicker and stank of brine and fish guts and everything was wet and slimy with dew. Neither man was particularly fond of the sea, and less so now.
‘Use your hands,’ Noble said. ‘We’ll get there quicker.’
The lugger was about a quarter-mile off the coast. First they had to swing around a ragged finger of rock to get its bearing. Shapes appeared there, dark stone skulls against the night sky. They could hear the soft rhythmic hiss of the tide as it spread and sank into the gravel and shell scree of the beach.
‘Keep her straight,’ Noble said. ‘Haste, my friend!’
They paddled steadily and the sea lapped at them and soon the dawn crept into the horizon. The clouded sky turned pale orange and pink.
‘It’s grand, isn’t it?’ Noble said, pointing at the sunrise. ‘That way, my good man, into the light!’
Johannes Meyer’s hands were numb and he was cold and uncertain.
They paddled, spun about, seemed to go nowhere. Maybe an hour passed and then a fog rolled in. Before it settled completely, Noble cried out, ‘There!’
She’d been a chasse-marée once upon a time, smuggling wool to the French; now she hauled mackerel as a lowly fishing lugger. Swiftwing. Ghostly and beautiful in the morning light. Noble smacked Johannes on the shoulder. Both men were grinning with relief.
MOSES
The boards of the guillotine were slicked with blood. The doctor moved quickly; there was no time to lose. He went to his knees beside the basket, reached in and turned the head around so that he was staring at the man’s face.
Breathing fast, Dr Antoine Girodet leaned the severed head against the side of the basket, cursing himself now for not having thought to bring something—a rolled-up towel or a block of wood—to stop it from falling over. But he managed to fix the head at an angle, then instantly let go, aware that he’d already contaminated the experiment (too late!).
Girodet gripped the sides of the basket, ignoring the warm blood seeping into the knees of his pants.
‘Moses!’ the doctor said. ‘Moses!’
The eyelids seemed to flicker, but remained closed. It was baking hot in the courtyard and the sun was directly above.
‘Four seconds,’ Christophe Bergerard said, standing over Girodet’s shoulder, a watch ticking in the palm of his hand. This was the second experiment he’d been involved with since agreeing to the doctor’s offer and terms of employment. The first had yielded no science to record.
‘Moses!’ Girodet said again, wanting to shake the basket with frustration but managing to restrain himself. It had taken bribes and bargaining (food, liquor, women), threats and violence, finally the promise of setting his wife and children free to convince the Negro to cooperate. And now he was holding out!
‘I still have your children!’ Girodet said. ‘Can you hear me, Moses? your wife and your children!’
‘Seven seconds,’ Bergerard said.
Girodet leaned in, agonised, desperately willing the Negro’s head to give him a sign, a twitch of the cheek or of the lips, if not the eyes blinking as they had agreed to. Anything! But quickly, by Christ, for the window was closing rapidly.
Ten to twenty seconds, post-decapitation, Jacques de Dieu had estimated, until life slipped the body entire.
‘Do it, Moses! Tell me!’
Bergerard said, ‘Ten seconds.’
Girodet snapped, gave in to his anger and slapped the severed head across the cheek. It rolled around in the bottom of the basket. Then the doctor reached in and gripped the Negro by his ears, picked up the head and stood and held it in front of him.
‘Hear me, Moses!’ he said.
‘Fifteen seconds.’
‘Hear me!’
And then, by God, the eyelids opened.
Girodet almost dropped the head from shock. He saw the pupils dilate. He felt a great trembling through his body. It had happened. The slave Moses had opened his eyes.
‘If you can hear me, Moses,’ the doctor said, ‘blink!’
The eyes blinked once, slow as a drunkard’s.
Girodet said, ‘How many children have you sired, Moses?’
The eyes closed, but then stayed closed as the seconds ticked … two … three … then slowly, separately, each gluey lid opened on a bloodshot eye. There seemed much effort behind it, much will.
‘yes!’ Girodet said. ‘How many children do you have? Blink the number, Moses! Blink it!’
Once.
Twice.
‘yes! How many?’
The eyelids closed.
Then nothing.
Girodet waited.
But it was over.
After a moment, he dropped the head back into the basket.
‘Merde,’ he said. Moses had five children.
He turned to Bergerard. ‘Time?’
‘Twenty-two seconds,’ Bergerard said.
‘you saw it?’
‘Everything.’
Christophe Bergerard handed the doctor a rag to wipe his bloody hands.
‘Well,’ Girodet said. ‘Not too bad.’
‘When do you want to try again?’ There was another slave locked up in the washhouse.
‘Tomorrow,’ Girodet said. The beautiful mulatto girl was waiting for him. ‘Will you write it all up for me, Christophe?’
‘Of course.’
‘There will be more arriving on Thursday with the agent, too. If he can get through, we won’t be short.’
‘I’ll take care of it.’
Dr Antoine Girodet left the courtyard. He would have to wash up before he saw Josephine.
Bergerard looked down at the head in the basket. One eye had opened
again. It was fixed on him but saw right through Bergerard, somewhere far beyond.
‘Barbu!’ he called out.
The old slave ran over with two others. They collected the head and body of Moses, then set to cleaning down the bloody guillotine with brooms and buckets of water.
ALONE
A young Portuguese corporal and an old Creole man with a mule and wagon came to escort Elisabeth to the Hôtel de la République, right in the centre of town. Christophe had decided to remain with the doctor.
‘What else can I do with the général gone?’ he said. ‘I have no money or work and Girodet has offered me both.’
‘He guillotines slaves.’
‘For science.’
Elisabeth von Hoffmann said nothing. She kissed the général’s aide-de-camp on the cheek. ‘Be careful, Christophe.’ Then she climbed up into the wagon and sat beside the old Creole man (who smelled of fish), relieved to be leaving Girodet and his disconcerting hospitality behind.
They moved off. The day was already hot and humid. Every day was the same, every day was hot and humid; every day the heat pressed down and the buildings and trees in Cayenne shimmered in the light. As the sun rose, the world slowed and sank and the day took twice as long to pass.
The wagon swayed and rocked over the uneven road.
The young Portuguese corporal led them on his small brown horse and twice he turned his head and smiled at Elisabeth. After a time, he let the wagon come up alongside him.
He looked over to Elisabeth and touched his hat. ‘If you will permit me, Mademoiselle?’
Elisabeth nodded. The young corporal’s face was flushed and shiny with sweat.
‘They have taken the Général Fourés to Rio de Janeiro,’ he said. ‘Please do not say that I have told you this.’
‘Why have they taken him there?’ Elisabeth had been to see endless officials but nobody had told her a thing.
The young corporal shrugged. ‘I do not know. I am sorry.’
He rode the horse back up to lead the wagon again. Children ran across the road, dogs sniffed and weaved, there were soldiers on foot in pairs, Portuguese, a few English. Negro women balanced bundles on their heads, hips swaying like palms.
At the hotel, the young corporal helped Elisabeth down and then he and the old man carried her luggage to the room.
‘My name is Duarte dos Santos,’ he said at the door. ‘Please, Mademoiselle, if you need my help, you must ask. Anything.’
‘Thank you, Duarte,’ Elisabeth said. She liked the feeling of his name as she spoke it. ‘you are very kind.’
Corporal Duarte dos Santos bowed and walked off. His boots echoed down the stairs. He hoped, deep in his heart, that she would indeed call upon him.
Elisabeth closed the door and turned to the empty room. Part of her felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness, of having been abandoned. She could barely grasp in her mind everything that had happened, the distance she’d come. But another part of her trembled with nervous excitement.
She went downstairs and ordered hot water for a bath, and then she opened all the windows and shutters in her room, let the heat pour in.
EXTRACTS FROM THE RECORDS OF THE BEXHILL COURT MARTIAL 13 SEPTEMBER 1810
(1) Testimony of Charles William Talbert, pilot of His Majesty’s cutter Arrowhead: ‘They had her mizzen for a foresail and the foresail out for a main and you’d have caught more air in a coat if you’d’ve known what you were doing, your Honour.’
(2) Testimony of George Boulton, owner of Swiftwing, in pursuit of the stolen craft aboard His Majesty’s cutter Arrowhead: ‘When the fog came in we thought, well, that’s it, we’ll never catch up now, not with the cover and then the night coming and the wind in the right direction. But we sailed out for a look in the morning and the fog blew off quick like. She’d basically drifted down the coast, and when we got to her, she was sitting like a log on the water and one of ’em was splashing an oar around.’
Lieutenant-Colonel J.W.R. Pike for the Prosecution: ‘How far had she sailed?’
Boulton: ‘Oh, about six or seven miles off the Hythe head. But to be perfectly accurate, sir, there were no sailing about it.’
(3) Lieutenant-Colonel J.W.R. Pike for the Prosecution, questioning Sergeant Edward Tennant, who’d been aboard His Majesty’s cutter Arrowhead in pursuit of the two deserters from the 2nd Light Battalion of the King’s German Legion: ‘It has been claimed, Sergeant Tennant, that the two accused called out, “France! France!” in an excited manner and with their arms waving when His Majesty’s cutter Arrowhead became visible to them after the fog lifted. Is this correct?’
Sergeant Edward Tennant: ‘yes, that is correct, sir.’
Lieutenant-Colonel J.W.R. Pike: ‘How did you interpret their actions?’
Sergeant Edward Tennant: ‘They thought we were French, sir. They believed they’d made it across the Channel and reached the coast of France.’
Lieutenant-Colonel J.W.R. Pike: ‘Were they fearful or gleeful?’
Sergeant Edward Tennant: ‘I would say they were gleeful, sir.’
Lieutenant-Colonel J.W.R. Pike, addressing the Judge Advocate: ‘I understand this as no less than an act of treason. I submit the prisoners should be hung until dead as in accordance with the law.’
(4) Lieutenant E.P. King Carr for the Defence: ‘I beg the court to bear in mind that though clearly these two men are guilty of absconding, their motivations were never treasonous. Private Noble was escaping extreme abuse at the hands of one Lieutenant Schneppen of the King’s German Legion, who at this moment is conveniently on leave and could not appear before this court, and who has, I wish to state for the record, other charges pending against him. And Private Meyer, a Prussian ally who’d previously been forced into servitude with the French, who escaped and heroically served our king at Walcheren, was merely trying to get back home in order to help overthrow the French occupation of his own country.’
(5) Judge Advocate the Honourable E.H. Ampleforth: ‘Based upon the evidence presented this day, I am inclined to agree with the Defence that the defendants were not intending to desert for the purposes of joining or fraternising with the enemy. However, there is no question of their intent to desert from the ranks of the King’s German Legion, 2nd Light Battalion, or of their wanton theft of the lugger Swiftwing during the attempt to do so. Therefore, I sentence Private James Francis Noble to transportation and fourteen years’ penal servitude in His Majesty’s colony of New South Wales, and Private Johannes Meyer to transportation and penal servitude for the term of his natural life in His Majesty’s colony of New South Wales.’
DIVORCE
The conqueror of Europe couldn’t bring himself to do it (though he wanted it done and knew that it was inevitable), so he asked Hortense to speak to her mother, and then he asked Eugène, but Josephine’s children said they’d not be party to it. He asked the archchancellor, who’d wrung his hands and pleaded to be spared the terrible task, and then he asked others too, but each had declined in turn, no matter the threats or promises.
Fontainebleau became miserable and oppressive, the whole situation exceedingly unpleasant, and the Emperor became volatile and raged unpredictably, more so than usual.
To everyone’s great relief, the Duc d’Otrante accepted the burden.
On the designated day, in Bonaparte’s study (where he’d been left alone to prepare), the ageing duke had a glass of the Emperor’s brandy and fixed his clothes in the mirror. Then he had another brandy and two more after that, and then, finally, strode across to Josephine’s chambers.
Graceful as ever, she answered the door and let him inside. The Duc d’Otrante cleared his throat and told the Empress that divorce was unavoidable and of utmost necessity in order for the Emperor to secure a dynasty with legitimate heirs.
‘It is for France that he sacrifices himself, my Empress,’ he said, exactly as he’d been instructed. ‘For France.’
Josephine turned from the fireplace. She knew Napoleon’
s sentimental claptrap when she heard it, even via another’s voice.
‘Is that what you believe?’
The Duc d’Otrante blushed.
Josephine saw the old man’s unease and felt pity for him. She understood how impossible it was to be oneself when tasked by Bonaparte.
‘It is all right,’ she said.
There was a noise in the next room. They both heard it and knew instantly that it was Bonaparte, listening at the connecting door.
Josephine raised her voice, managed to hold it from breaking, ‘For France! But it is me he throws on the pyre.’
The divorce took place in the throne room of the Palais des Tuileries. Inside, it was dark and gloomy as a church. Napoleon sat solemn and lost to his thoughts, flanked by Maréchal Murat on the left, Eugène on his right. He’d just spoken (‘God only knows how much this has cost my heart’) and signed the act of annulment.
The Empress, dressed in white, stood with her daughter Hortense before the table draped in rich green velvet, where the Duc d’Otrante held the divorce act that now awaited her signature. The Bonaparte family sat in the spectator chairs behind her (‘Good riddance,’ Bonaparte’s sister, Pauline, had whispered) along with the maréchals, Bessières and Ney, and there was Talleyrand too, of course, and a few other minor officials. Josephine could feel their eyes upon her as she signed the act. And then it was done.
Later, alone together in Bonaparte’s chambers, they held each other.
‘Be brave,’ he said. ‘I will always be your friend.’
He left her Malmaison. She would be free to retain her title and all her jewels and would be assured an annual allowance of some three million francs. He would honour all her debts. Her Paris residence would be at the Palais de l’Élysée.
But there were demands, too.
Josephine was to withdraw from public life and desist from scandalous behaviour. She would receive no special treatment, and should she be invited to an official event where her former husband was in attendance (particularly if in attendance with his new wife) she was not to expect acknowledgement from him of any kind, they were not to speak with one another and she was never to approach him.
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