The Princess of Nowhere

by Lorenzo Borghese

  She wrote him a note and begged him to visit her.

  He did not answer.

  She wrote him another note. Napoleon would surely give his permission when he heard Vastapani’s report; could he not have pity on her and spare her the two weeks of misery waiting for the emperor’s official approval?

  This time she received a reply. “His Excellency Prince Borghese regrets that he has no authority outside his own province and must refer this matter to your brother.” He hadn’t even signed it; Villemarest had written it for him.

  Luckily, Pauline had more than one brother.

  Joseph arrived the following afternoon and was shown up to Pauline’s room immediately. He was still in his traveling clothes and brought in the distinct smell of horse and dust as he hurried to her bedside. She had actually forgotten that he was coming and was so relieved to see him that she burst into tears.

  “What is this I hear, that you are sick again?” He would have kissed her, but she pulled away.

  “Don’t come too close. Vastapani says that Sophie and I contracted something at the hospital. It would be dreadful if you became ill as well.”

  He pulled up a chair and sat down, studying her. “You really do look terrible,” he said bluntly. “When they told me you were confined to bed, I thought it was one of your little pets. But I’ve never seen you like this.” He tilted his head sideways. “Your skin is almost green.”

  “Stop it,” she said crossly, wiping her eyes. “I know I’m feeling awful; you don’t need to make it worse by making me feel ugly, too.”

  “You’re never ugly,” he said. But his smile was perfunctory. He really was worried, she could tell.

  She took in his dusty clothing. “Did you come straight to my room?”

  He nodded.

  “So—” She hesitated. “You haven’t seen Camillo.”

  “He met me at Moncalieri and escorted me here.”

  “Oh.” How did he look? she wanted to ask. What did he say about me?

  Joseph cleared his throat. “I take it things are not going well between the two of you.”

  The tears started again. “Please, Joseph, you have to help me! The doctors think I should go to Aix, but Camillo thinks I am faking. I’m not faking, surely you can see that?”

  “No, no,” he reassured her. “No one thinks you are pretending this time. This isn’t like a headache or a fainting spell. Sophie is almost as sick as you are, with very similar symptoms. And Vastapani says there is blood in your mucus when you retch.”

  “There is?” She had a moment of panic. She hadn’t wanted to be quite this ill, just sick enough to convince Camillo to let her go back to France.

  He patted her arm. “Don’t worry about it; it sometimes happens with these inflammations.”

  “Joseph, I’ll die if I stay here!” She really was frightened now. “Camillo says he can’t let me leave the province without Napoleon’s permission. They wrote to him yesterday, but even if he believes the doctor this time, it will be weeks and weeks!”

  He frowned. “What do you mean, you can’t leave the province?”

  “It’s just Napoleon being stupid and petty!” she said, getting indignant all over again. “He keeps writing me back and telling me I may go anywhere in Camillo’s departments, but that I need his permission to cross into France proper.”

  “Well,” said Joseph, bristling. “He may be an emperor, but he isn’t the head of the family. I am. As far as I am concerned, you can leave as soon as you are well enough to travel. And I will tell the prince as much right now. I’m about to be King of Spain; I should have some authority to do something for my sister.”

  Pauline was too sick to make the arrangements. Madame Ducluzel did it for her, and, as a result, her entourage was larger than she would have liked. There was the housekeeper herself, Sophie’s attendant, three ladies-in-waiting, three pages, two equerries, and various grooms and maidservants. The largest coach had been refitted so that Sophie and Pauline could travel lying down; behind that vehicle came carriages for the attendants and servants, one for Pauline’s bathtub and one for her sedan chair.

  At Camillo’s insistence, Vastapani also accompanied her. She would have been happy to take this as an expression of concern. Camillo’s note had made it clear, however, that he still had not forgiven her. At least this note was in his own handwriting. “I have instructed the court physician to attend your party at least as far as Aix-en-Savoie,” he wrote, “and to remain until he is satisfied that Sophie has recovered. I feel confident that he will discharge this office responsibly and thus relieve me of any anxiety I might have felt on her behalf.”

  Who cares about Sophie? Who, indeed?

  After that, she decided not to humiliate herself by asking him to come to say good-bye before she left, although she hoped he would come of his own accord. She was his wife, after all, and she was ill, and she was leaving.

  He didn’t come to say good-bye. He didn’t even make a formal appearance in the courtyard as the coaches were loaded up and the equerries sent ahead to clear the route through the city. Pauline was carried to her carriage by one of her menservants, and as he handed her in, she saw Sophie, red-eyed and damp with sweat, already reclining on the other seat. She was clutching a small posy of herbs and lifting them to her face occasionally.

  “What is that?” Pauline asked, as she arranged herself on her side of the carriage.

  “I don’t know.” Sophie handed it across. “I feel less queasy when I smell it. The prince told me his grandmother used to make one for him when he was ill as a child.”

  So, he had made a point of saying good-bye to Sophie. That wasn’t surprising, after the note he had written.

  Pauline closed her eyes and inhaled. Lavender and mint. It was soothing.

  It was also a message. Lavender, in the language of flowers, was loyalty. And mint was wisdom or grief.

  There wasn’t much difference between wisdom and grief, Pauline decided.

  As they jolted over the passes from Turin to Susa, through Exilles, to Cesana, Sophie simply lay there in misery and hoped she would die. Or at least faint—a long faint, several hours’ worth. Her little posy of herbs was all very well when they were not moving, but the slightest bump set her stomach churning, and the road was nothing but bumps. It was clear that Pauline was equally uncomfortable, and normally that would have meant short, easy days of travel and long rests every few hours. But Pauline was obsessed with reaching France.

  “How far now?” she asked at every halt. Sometimes she would even get out and hobble over to the crossroads to look at Napoleon’s new kilometer markers for herself. But she could never remember how far a kilometer actually was, and one of the equerries had to convert the number into leagues for her.

  Since she and Sophie were lying down across both seats, Pauline’s maid had to sit on the floor. Sophie was constantly afraid that she was going to throw up on the poor woman’s lap and was very relieved when Pauline, who seemed to be improving with every new report of the shrinking distance to the border, decided on the morning of the second day that she and Sophie could ride unattended.

  “Good,” she said as they lurched forward. “Now I can give you some of this.” She handed Sophie several small white almondshaped fruits. Or were they peeled nuts?

  Sophie looked at them doubtfully. “What is it?”

  “Garlic,” said Pauline, putting one of the cloves into her mouth. “Doctor Peyre told me it was very good as an antidote. I ate some yesterday morning and again last night, and I already feel better.”

  Sophie dutifully chewed and swallowed. The cloves were sweet, but afterward her throat felt like it was full of burning fog. She burped loudly.

  “They do give you wind,” Pauline said, eating another one. “Both kinds. And, of course, very foul breath. But there’s no one here in the carriage with us now, so what does it matter?”

  In her five years with Pauline, Sophie had been subject to a number of Pauline’s “remedi
es,” sometimes even when she herself was not at all unwell. In certain moods, Pauline would insist that everyone in the household be dosed with whatever cure she had heard of most recently. Most of them simply tasted bad, but at one point Pauline had decided that everyone needed to be protected against smallpox, which, to Sophie’s horror, turned out to mean having holes punched in her skin with a needle coated with scabs from the skin of a sick cow. Chewing garlic seemed mild by comparison.

  On the third day, they started at dawn to have ample time to cross the pass at Montgenèvre. Pauline was obviously much recovered; as soon as the carriage was underway, she actually sat up, for the first time since they had left Turin.

  “Poor Sophie!” She gave Sophie a sympathetic smile. “Are you feeling any better? I am.”

  Sophie thought about it. Perhaps she was feeling better. Her stomach did not ache so much, and the clammy sweating had stopped. At the moment, her main preoccupation was sleep; Bettina had practically had to drag her out of bed. “Yes, I think so,” she mumbled.

  “Here.” Pauline offered her more of the garlic.

  “Later,” said Sophie, her eyes closed.

  “No, I think you need more.” Pauline pushed the cloves into her hand. “I’m worried about you.”

  It seemed easier to just eat the garlic, so she did. Then she dozed off, starting up occasionally at an especially violent jounce and then falling back to sleep.

  When she woke fully, the carriage had stopped. Pauline’s seat was empty. The door was open, and she could see rocks and a snow-covered peak looming up beside the vehicle. Sun sparkled on the snow—it was midday—and so bright that it hurt her eyes.

  “Sit up!” It was Pauline, filling the doorway. “Sophie, we’re in France! We’re over the top of the pass! I am so happy! Sit up, and I’ll feed you some real French bread.” She climbed in, eyes sparkling, her cheeks red from the wind, hair tousled. It was hard to believe she had been too ill to walk a few days earlier.

  “This is better than garlic, isn’t it?” she said, tearing off a piece from the inside of a coarse-crusted roll. She held it over Sophie’s head, like someone training a dog. “Come on, Sophie, sit up,” she said, coaxing her.

  Sophie struggled up onto her elbow and accepted a tiny bit of the bread. It tasted just like the bread she had eaten last night at the inn in Cesana. Bread dipped in boiled wine. Her diet was very limited at the moment.

  A footman came and closed the door, and the coach started moving again.

  “Now we go down,” said Pauline, her mouth full of bread. “And we’ll stop in Briançon, and then tomorrow we’ll be in Aix. You’ll feel much better by then, I promise you. I didn’t mean for you to be quite so sick. Or myself, either. I was actually afraid for a little bit that I had taken too much and would die.”

  A day earlier, Sophie would have accepted her confusion as part of the general haze of illness and lack of sleep. She was more awake now.

  “Taken too much what?”

  “Arsenic.”

  Sophie frowned. “Arsenic is a medicine?”

  “No, no.” Pauline settled back on the cushions and tucked her feet up underneath her. “I dosed us with arsenic to make us sick. I knew it would work because several years ago in the West Indies I had just these symptoms and Doctor Peyre thought I had an inflammation of the bowels. But what had really happened was that I got a little too brown in the sun, and a Frenchwoman who had lived there for many years told me to eat a little arsenic and I would grow pale again.”

  Sophie was not sure she was hearing correctly.

  “When Doctor Peyre found out, he was furious,” Pauline went on. She didn’t seem to notice Sophie’s horrified expression. “He made me eat twenty cloves of garlic a day. Can you imagine?”

  “You gave me poison,” Sophie said, her voice hoarse. It didn’t come out right. It was meant to be an accusation. It came out as more of a resigned acknowledgment.

  “But now you’re already getting better, and we are in France.” It was clear that Pauline thought this was a completely normal course of events.

  Sophie cleared her throat and tried again. “You gave me poison!” she shouted.

  “Well,” Pauline pointed out, still in her “I am being reasonable” tone of voice, “I gave it to myself, too. I started with a little bit every day, so it wouldn’t take me too hard when I had to actually make myself sick.”

  “Then why did you have to give it to me?” wailed Sophie.

  “So that we would both be sick,” said Pauline impatiently. “So they would think it was some disease. Napoleon kept writing back and telling me that I wasn’t really ill.”

  “I could have died.”

  Indignant, Pauline shot back, “I was much sicker than you were!”

  “Well, you deserved to be!” Sophie yelled. “You deserve to be sick all the time. You are the most selfish, horrid person I have ever known. You told me when I had the fever that no one would ever choose to be sick, but you chose to make yourself sick, and to make it look better, you made me sick, too!” She sat up and banged on the ceiling of the carriage, signaling the driver to stop.

  “What are you doing?” Pauline seemed to realize for the first time that Sophie was truly furious. “Sophie, stop! You’re making a fuss about nothing!”

  Sophie gave her a withering look. “Do you know what Gian Andrea asked me once? He asked me if the prince had poisoned Dermide. Imagine that! Accusing someone of poisoning in 1808! I thought he had read too many stories about the Borgias. I’m never drinking a glass of wine you give me again.”

  The carriage slowed down, and Sophie jerked open the door.

  “Where are you going?” Pauline looked a bit stunned.

  “I’m going to ride with Bettina. She hates you, and so do I.” Sophie climbed down from the carriage as soon as it stopped, then staggered. She hadn’t walked without someone helping her for several days. Gritting her teeth, she set out to cover the fifty yards between Pauline’s carriage, in the lead, and the servants’ vehicle, which followed the ladies-in-waiting and Pauline’s bathtub. The coachmen and footmen all stared at her as she wavered past them, and by the time she reached her destination, Bettina had already jumped out and was coming to help her.

  “What is it?” she said, as she hoisted Sophie in. This carriage was much smaller and was already carrying Madame Ducluzel and three other maids, but they moved aside at once to make space.

  I should tell her, thought Sophie. I should tell all of them. Their princess has poisoned me to trick her brother. I should write Napoleon and tell him to take me away from her and let me go back to my father. She was suddenly homesick for Pontoise and her old house, with its shabby rooms and shabbier furniture.

  “What is it?” asked Bettina again, concerned. “Did the princess decide she wanted the carriage to herself?”

  “Yes,” said Sophie. She closed her eyes. “She said I stank of garlic.”

  They reached Briançon at six in the evening, and Sophie went at once to her room at the inn, shut the door, and put a chair against it. She remembered her three days in bed after the banquet and thought of Pauline, coaxing her back into a good humor, feeding cake crumbs to the bird and teasing her. Not this time, she vowed.

  There was a sharp rap on the door. It was Pauline, of course.

  “Go away!”

  “Sophie, stop this.”

  “I’m writing to the emperor,” she said loudly. “I’m going to ask him to send me back to my father.”

  There was a sudden silence on the other side of the door. Then Sophie heard a slithering sound, then a bump. When Pauline spoke again, her voice came from down by the floor.

  “Sophie, please.”

  “No.”

  “Sophie, you’re all I have left.” She could hear a little catch in Pauline’s voice. “My son is gone, and Camillo doesn’t love me anymore. You’re my family.” There was a creak from the bottom of the door; Pauline was leaning against it. “I would never hurt you, you know th
at.”

  “Oh, Pauline,” whispered Sophie to herself. She started to laugh silently. “You accused me of killing your son. You used me to deceive and humiliate your husband. You tried to seduce Gian Andrea after I told you I loved him. You poisoned me. And you don’t think you would ever hurt me?”

  That was the moment Sophie grew up.

  She sat down by the door and listened to Pauline sob for a few minutes. Then she pulled away the chair, opened the door, and let her in.

  Camillo was reading a letter from his court physician. Pauline and her cousin were both recovering, he wrote. The princess was in good spirits and was planning to travel to Paris later in the summer for the emperor’s birthday. Should Vastapani remain with her or return to Turin?

  He laid it down on his writing table. It was the fourth report he had received. He hadn’t answered any of the others, and he suspected he wouldn’t answer this one, either. For the moment, he shoved it into one of the drawers, then lined up his inkwell and pen stand in a neat row on the now-empty surface of the desk. Villemarest handled almost all of his other correspondence; he would give this to his secretary, too.

  There was a tap at the door. It was his majordomo.

  “Excuse me, Your Excellency, but the wagon from Signor Canova has arrived and is being unloaded. Have you made a decision yet?”

  In which of the innumerable rooms opening off the endless, echoing corridors of the palace would he like Pauline’s statue? Which was arriving, ironically, just in time to replace the real thing?

  “Have it brought into the entrance hall,” he said finally. “I will decide later where to put it.”

  He waited for an hour, pretending that he was not going to go and see it. Then he gave up and went downstairs.

  The servants had set it off to the side, to be out of the way of guests entering or leaving. It was partly in shadow, and the long beams of light from the late afternoon sun picked out segments of the marble and lit them in rectangles that continued up the wall behind it. There she was, naked, just as when he had last seen her on the night of the banquet. But smiling now, self-assured, alluring. Her slightly raised brows seemed to promise the answer to some amusing question.