The Secret Life of Josephine: Napoleon's Bird of Paradise

by Carolly Erickson

  We lay thus under the hot sun, with no sound other than our own breathing and the lapping of the waves against the sand, until Euphemia turned in her hammock and the boy raised his head to listen. Then, abruptly and without a word, he got to his feet and was gone. He did not lookback. I was alone. I began to shiver. Eventually I slept.

  Later, I heard Euphemia and Manette stirring and talking to each other. I sat up, feeling dizzy, and wrapped a light quilt around my shoulders as I customarily did when returning home from the beach. Euphemia, who was gathering her hammock, looked over at me.

  “Some rats made a nest in your hair while you were asleep, Yeyette.” I did my best to smooth my long dark hair back from my face and comb out the worst tangles with my fingers. Did I look different, I wondered? Had I changed? My mouth was swollen from kissing and my muscles ached from the strain of lovemaking. I would never be the same inside, no matter what my outer appearance might be.

  For what I discovered, on that long-ago afternoon, was that I was made for love. I thirsted to be caressed, kissed, touched. To be loved physically as well as emotionally. I loved Scipion with all my heart, but I had loved this boy, this stranger, with my body. And of the two kinds of love, this love of the body was far stronger and richer and more desirable. I knew then that I would always yield to it, no matter how hard I might try to resist.

  7

  I WORRIED, of course, that I might find that I was pregnant. But my monthly flow arrived, and I felt enormous relief. And just at that time there was widespread relief all across the island of Martinique, for the English fleet moved off toward St. Lucia and for the first time in months French ships were able to enter and leave Fort-Royal harbor. My father took advantage of the opportunity to book passage for us on the small ship Ile-de-France, part of a convoy bound for Brest.

  It happened quickly, and we lost no time in going on board the ship, despite my father’s weakness (he had been ill all spring) and my mother’s last-minute pleas that we change our plans and stay home. Our trunks had been packed for a long time, so it was only a matter of putting on our traveling cloaks and filling our hampers with food and making the trip from the plantation to the harbor. Scipion met us at the quayside, wearing the uniform of a lieutenant commander. I congratulated him on his promotion.

  “Lieutenant Commander du Roure, at your service,” he said with a deep bow. “I have been assigned to the Ile-de-France.”

  As soon as he learned that we were to make the journey to France he made certain that he would be assigned to our ship. He told me that he wanted to be near me during the long trip, to protect me.

  “You may come under attack, you know. It will be very dangerous at sea. The convoy is carrying an immense treasure in jewels and gold, all the valuables the colonists want to ship to their relatives in France for safekeeping. But try not to worry. I won’t let you come to harm.”

  He led us to our cabin, a tiny space with a ceiling so low I could barely stand and my father had to stoop. How we could all fit in the cramped space I couldn’t imagine, for there were four of us, father and I and Euphemia and Aunt Rosette, and our trunks and boxes as well. I had never been on shipboard before—in fact I had never left the island—and had no idea what to expect. It was clear we would have to learn to adapt—but how?

  We had not been at sea more than a couple of days when the first storm struck. The rocking and pitching of the ship made our stomachs lurch. Nauseated and in pain, we huddled in our shared cabin, wretched and throwing up, unable to eat or sleep. I had never been so miserable. The ship’s surgeon came to examine us but said he could do nothing; it was seasickness, he told us, and nearly everyone on the ship was affected by it. We would feel better when the storm passed.

  But the storm lasted three days, and more storms followed, with hardly an interval of calm weather between them. I clutched the pouch of herbs and chicken bones I wore around my neck—a talisman against death by drowning—and tried to swallow the warm broth Euphemia brought me several times a day. Even as I drank, however, the ship lurched violently to the side, and the broth spilled out onto the floor where it mixed with the seawater that constantly sloshed there. It was no use: I could eat little, and what I did manage to eat, I could not keep down. I grew thin. I dared not try to look in a mirror for fear of what I might see.

  In the fourth week of our journey an English frigate bore down on the frigate that guarded our convoy, the Pomona. We were in the rear of the long line of French vessels, many miles behind the flagship. Still, we could hear the booming of cannon and see the dark yellow smoke on the horizon ahead of us. The English frigate sailed off, but as Scipion explained to me, our convoy had to alter its course to avoid another encounter with English vessels. The course change brought us into latitudes where the likelihood of storms was even greater than before. Rain and wind lashed at the ship, and my father, who had needed constant care from the start of the voyage, began to look deathly ill.

  I put my fetish around his neck as Euphemia muttered a prayer in her mother’s African tongue.

  “Take that vile thing off me!” he protested weakly, clawing at the fetish dangling from its cord. “And stop that voodoo praying! If I’m going to die, let me die in peace, without any mumbo-jumbo.” The St. Christopher medal he wore gleamed on his chest, and his eyes were bright with fever.

  I wanted to help him but most of the time it was all I could do to cling to my own narrow hard plank bed, shivering under my wet blanket, and try to endure my own nausea and pain.

  Finally there came a day of calm seas and clear skies, when the ship was steadier and a few of the hardiest passengers came up on deck for fresh air. Stumbling up out of the hold, grasping the railing along the stairwell, I felt as though I had been dead and shut away in a dark tomb and was only now coming back to life and emerging into the light.

  Scipion was at his post on the foredeck, wearing his freshly pressed uniform, looking handsome and fit. He was scanning the horizon with a spyglass.

  “With luck, we should be in Brest in another six weeks,” he told me. “Unless we encounter more storms and are blown off course. Tell me, what will you do once you disembark?”

  “Alexandre and Aunt Edmee are going to meet us, I suppose. My father wrote to tell them that we were about to sail.”

  “And then you will get married.”

  “Yes.”

  Scipion sighed. “He’ll be giving up a lot, becoming a married man, your Alexandre. He’s known for keeping company with many women.” ‘Aren’t all you young officers alike in that way?” “Alexandre de Beauharnais surpasses us all.”

  “Then why did he have to send all the way to Martinique for a bride?”

  “Because, my dear Yeyette, he wanted a young virginal girl for his wife. Most of his conquests are married ladies. Besides, it is usually best for a young man with a title to marry within his family, a distant cousin or niece. It is expected.”

  Our conversation was interrupted by the delighted cries of passengers who had caught sight of dolphins leaping and playing alongside the ship. We watched them for a long time, exulting in the fresh sea air and dazzling sunlight, walking back and forth along the deck to exercise our long-unused legs. I had not worn any but wet clothes for weeks; merely to be dry was a great comfort.

  We had more days of sun, but before long the rain and wind returned, and we were once more confined to our small cabin. Our seasickness returned as well, though it was not quite as severe as before. We grew irritated with one another almost past endurance. Our civility wore thin, we fought and jostled each other and reverted to acting like spiteful children. We were constantly hungry, for we were living on rancid meat and ship’s biscuits crawling with worms. All the fresh food on the ship had long since been eaten or spoiled. From being constantly wet the walls of our cabin became coated with green slime, which dropped on us whenever the ship rocked and worsened the stench that enveloped us.

  At last, after four months at sea, we came in sight of the French c
oast. The harbor was shrouded in fog. A lighthouse sent out a bright beam across the water, but it gleamed only fitfully, and the waves were high— too dangerously high for us to disembark on small rowboats and go ashore. We decided to wait until morning to leave the ship.

  That night, lying in the fetid, dark cabin, uncomfortable on my narrow bed, I swore I would never, ever spend another night at sea.

  In the morning, however, I could not help but feel excitement. I would soon be in Paris! With Euphemia’s help I dressed in my least rumpled, least waterstained gown and let her dress my hair as best she could, using only a damp comb. The gown was too large for me, I had lost so much weight. And when I looked in the small mirror Aunt Rosette handed me I was shocked. My complexion was ashen, my once plump pink cheeks sallow and thin. Dark circles ringed my eyes and my bosom no longer swelled enticingly.

  “You look like the survivor of a shipwreck,” Aunt Rosette said with a sly smile.

  “Well, I practically am. We all are.”

  Aunt Edmee and Alexandre were waiting on the dock to meet us. Aunt Edmee, looking lovely and rested, her shining blond hair piled into an elaborate coiffure with fruit and flowers interwoven among the tresses, her lilac silk gown stretched over wide paniers, was smiling a warm welcome. But Alexandre, stiff and correct in his immaculate white uniform and dark tricorn hat, a long saber at his waist, looked irritated.

  “Joseph! Rose—or shall I call you Yeyette? You are here at last. How very glad we are to see you!” Edmee stepped forward and embraced us warmly, graciously endeavoring to overcome her natural reaction to the foul smells that clung to us—smells her rich perfume was not strong enough to cover up. “And you too Rosette. I see you are still wearing that familiar gown. Well dear, we’ll have to find you a different one. I have dressmakers waiting in Paris to sew Yeyette’s trousseau. They can make a gown for you too.”

  Edmee acknowledged Euphemia with the barest of nods, reluctant to show any connection to her though Euphemia, being my father’s bastard daughter, was in fact her niece. In Martinique, such relationships between Grands Blancs and people of mixed blood, being very common, were taken for granted and freely acknowledged. Evidently in France they were not.

  I returned Aunt Edmee’s embrace and turned toward Alexandre, who was looking at me fixedly. “Where is your hat?” “My hat?”

  “No lady goes out in the sun without a hat. The sun ruins the complexion. Yours has already suffered.”

  I looked at Aunt Edmee, who was nonplussed. Among the decorations in her complicated coiffure was a small but unmistakable straw hat decorated with artificial lilacs.

  “Alexandre, I have just spend four months in the dark hold of a ship, being sick. I assure you, the last thing I needed was a hat.”

  “Perhaps what you needed even more, mademoiselle, were some manners. I am not accustomed to being addressed so outspokenly, and in such an insolent tone.”

  I glared at him. This was the Alexandre I remembered, the cold, haughty boy who criticized other children and was so disliked by us all. But there was a major difference: this Alexandre was tall, and very goodlooking. His disdain only enhanced his manly appeal. Indeed it was difficult to believe that he was only nineteen.

  “Nonetheless,” he added, taking my ungloved hand and lifting it toward his lips without actually touching his mouth to it, “since you are my betrothed I shall do my best to overlook your lapse, and hope it will soon be mended, along with your chapped skin.”

  Alexandre summoned a cabriolet and took us all to an inn, where, as I recall, I spent a blissful hour in a copper tub of hot soapy water and ate a meal of fresh chicken and soft white loaves with not a worm in sight! Ah, comfort! Refreshed, fed and clean, I received Alexandre in the room I shared with Aunt Rosette. Immediately on entering the room he began pacing back and forth, his hands behind his back, his tricorn hat under his arm.

  “The ceremony will be held at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. All the documents have been prepared. We will take our first meal as man and wife in the mairie, and then we leave for Paris. The bankers there are awaiting us.”

  “I doubt if father will be able to travel. He is very ill.” “Then we can leave him here with your maid to attend him. He can join us in Paris when he is better.” “I’m not leaving him.” “You will do as I say”

  “I’m not your wife yet, Alexandre. Don’t try to give me orders.”

  Aunt Rosette, who was sitting beside me on the sofa, coughed and poked me in the ribs with her elbow.

  “In a day or two, I’m sure, my brother will be recovered,” she said in an effort to make peace between the increasingly vehement Alexandre and myself.

  “Yes? And what if he dies?” He glared at poor Rosette, who shrank beneath his harsh gaze.

  “How can you speak so? He is my beloved father, and the man who took you in when you were a child in Martinique! You owe him a great debt, and now he is ill and needs your help. Have you no feelings?”

  “Pardon me, Rose, if I remind you that it was your father who was eager for us to marry. He knows as well as I do how important it is that we settle the legal arrangements as quickly as possible! He is deeply in debt, and I have agreed to lend him ten thousand francs to satisfy his creditors. But I cannot do that unless we marry, and take the proof of our marriage to the bankers in Paris!”

  The long uncomfortable silence that followed this outburst was broken by Rosette.

  “Alexandre, try some of this excellent brandy the innkeeper brought up for us. It will calm you and fortify you.”

  He held up one hand in a gesture of refusal, and strode to the door. Before leaving he turned toward me.

  “Ten o’clock. St.-Luc-sur-Mer. I’ll send the cabriolet to get you.”

  8

  HAD MY FATHER NOT INSISTED that I follow Alexandre’s order I might never have gone to the church of St.-Luc-sur-Mer and married Alexandre Beauharnais, and I might have spared myself much anguish.

  But my father did insist, and told me frankly that without Alexandre’s loan our family would surely be ruined. His eyes were full of suffering, and I could not resist doing what he asked. It was, after all, the sole reason we had come to France: so that I could marry Alexandre.

  And so I put on the simple white gown Aunt Edmee had brought from Paris for me to wear on my wedding day, and the white lace veil my grandmother had given me before we left Martinique—the veil she had worn many years earlier when she had been plain Catherine Brown of Dundreary, marrying the French aristocrat who became my grandfather. Alexandre had a bouquet of greenhouse roses sent to me at the inn, so that I would have flowers to carry when I stood before the altar.

  One thing I did on my own, however, and it surprised everyone. I sent a note by the innkeeper’s son to the Ile-de-France, to Scipion, asking him please to come to the wedding. When I got to the church I was much comforted to see him standing there, the only guest apart from Aunt Edmee and Aunt Rosette (father was far too ill to attend) and a few of Alexandre’s brother officers.

  I got through the brief wedding ceremony by keeping my mind focussed on my absent father, and how greatly it would distress him if the financial arrangements he had made with Alexandre were to fall through. I stumbled over the words of my vows, and could not look at Alexandre when he spoke his. Afterwards, Aunt Edmee told me that I looked beautiful and that the sound of my voice repeating my vows was so low and sweet and girlish that it made her cry.

  “Listening to you, I couldn’t help but think of your poor sister Catherine,” she said. “Dying so young the way she did. She was our first choice as Alexandre’s bride, you know. A much better age for him than you. A man should be at least five years older than his wife, I always say, and you are only three years younger than he is. Yes! It should have been Catherine standing here today. But then, if it had to be anyone else, dear Yeyette, I’m glad it is you. Such a dear, innocent bride. Such a lovely face. You and Alexandre will have many beautiful children, I’m sure.”

  I s
tood beside Alexandre while his fellow officers came up to offer their congratulations. One was gallant enough to call me “a breath of the islands” and kiss my cheek, but the others made bawdy remarks and looked me up and down in frank appraisal.

  “I hope she’s worth it,” I heard one of them say. “She looks a little pinched and peaked.”

  “For forty thousand a year, I’d have married the coachman’s daughter!” another retorted, without bothering to lower his voice.

  “She’s a treasure beyond price.” It was Scipion, coming forward to defend me. “I can assure you of that. And she is a wellborn lady who deserves the utmost politeness in address.” He came to stand at my side, and looked at each of the officers in turn, his gaze coming at last to rest on the unsmiling Alexandre.

  “How do you know that my wife is such a treasure?” Alexandre asked Scipion in a loud, challenging tone. “Have you had experience of her yourself?”

  I heard Aunt Rosette give a little cry at this offensive remark. Aunt Edmee began to walk toward us.

  “Sir, you forget who and where you are,” Scipion said. “There is nothing wrong with my memory.” “Only your behavior.”

  “I ask you again. Have you had experience of my wife?” Aunt Edmee reached us. “Alexandre, calm yourself. You know full well that your wife is a virginal young girl.”

  “I have had the honor of Mile Tascher’s acquaintance in Martinique,” Scipion said. ‘And the privilege of offering myself to her as a protector during her long voyage.”

  “Lieutenant du Roure has given us a great deal of help,” I put in. “We are in his debt.”

  “Indeed so,” Edmee added. “Had it not been for the lieutenant’s assistance, they would have had a much more difficult voyage.”

  Alexandre looked at each of us in turn, shaking his head in disgust.