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

by Carolly Erickson

  Hour after hour, as the earth beneath the tent grew red and the surgeon’s apron became covered in fresh gore, the parade of hurt and dying men continued. The air reeked of ordure, flies swarmed over the living and the dead, the latter unceremoniously piled in mounds and covered in canvas for there was no one to bury them. The terrible carnage went on, the thunderous cannonade as well, until around midafternoon the guns stopped firing and we all paused to listen to the quiet.

  It was not completely quiet, of course. There were still men groaning and crying out in pain, and we could hear in the distance the rattle of musketfire and the pounding of horses’ hooves.

  We had no real idea how the fighting was going, for the random reports that reached us contradicted one another. “We’ve captured the bastion,” one voice shouted. “We’re losing! The Russians are overrunning our lines!” another said. “The enemy is on the run!” we heard, but then we were told the Grande Armee was being beaten back and that Bonaparte was calling for the reserves.

  Back and forth the messages went, all afternoon, leaving us uncertain of anything except that many, many men had been badly hurt, and that their suffering was heartrending.

  At dusk I looked up and saw a tottering figure walking hesitantly toward the tent, one arm outstretched in mute appeal. His shirt and trousers were bloodstained, his face bruised and bloodied. He looked as if about to collapse.

  I went out to help him, looked into his eyes and recognized Donovan.

  With a cry I rushed to support him and, weeping with joy and dread, guided him in to where the surgeons were working.

  “Help this man! Quickly!” I shouted, my voice hoarse and raw. “He must be saved!”

  But Donovan was sinking to his knees, and I could not support his weight. With a choking sound he fell forward, his body inert, eyes shut, onto the reddened earth.

  59

  “NO! NO!” I cried out again and again, shaking my head in denial as orderlies lifted Donovan onto the surgeon’s table and cut away his shirt to reveal his terrible wound.

  “A shell,” the surgeon remarked. “A shell must have exploded quite near him. There is much damage to the abdomen. It is a vital wound.”

  Fateful words, a vital wound. I had been hearing them all day, as the surgeon did his bloody work, and most of the men he had been speaking of had died.

  Donovan’s life was ebbing, and I knew it. Only a wisp of hope remained. He stank of powder, and breathed in hoarse gasps interrupted by spasms of coughing. When he coughed he brought up blood.

  I handed the brandy to the surgeon and gritted my teeth when he poured it over Donovan’s open wound, making him convulse and scream, his scream little more than a gurgle in his throat. I washed the blood from his face. His forehead and cheeks were scratched and scraped raw and there was a wound above his left temple.

  “I had no idea you would be here,” I murmured. “I didn’t know you would be in danger.”

  “Do you know this man?” the surgeon asked me.

  “Yes. He is Donovan Brown. I mean Donovan de Gautier.”

  “What is his regiment?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  And of course I didn’t. All I knew was that he was pledged to stopping Bonaparte, in any way possible. Today his purpose had brought him to this battlefield—and I, unwittingly, had weakened the army and very likely helped to cause his injury.

  “I didn’t know, my darling, I didn’t realize you would be here,” I whispered to him, my tears falling on his closed eyes as I bathed his face. “Please forgive me. I implore you.”

  The next few hours were among the most painful of my life. I wrestled within myself, now blaming myself for what had happened to Donovan, now arguing that he and I were acting toward the same end, and that he would have approved of everything I and my companions had been doing, had he known of it.

  I could not bear to watch as the surgeon removed the fragments of the burst shell from his red gaping wound and cauterized the charred flesh around it with a hot iron. His belly was fearfully swollen, his face pale and thin—nearly as pale as the faces of the dead men piled like cordwood under the canvas behind the tent. I did not trust the surgeon to tell me honestly whether he expected Donovan to live. Besides, I didn’t want a medical judgment—I wanted a miracle.

  I held his cold hand and rubbed it between both of mine, looking down into his face. Was he asleep, or had he lost consciousness? I couldn’t tell.

  “He must be moved off the table so I can attend to others,” the surgeon said. I looked around—and saw that Edward and Christian had entered the tent and stood quietly by.

  “We’ll put him in the wagon.” Carefully my two companions laid Donovan on a stretcher and took him to our wagon, where I made a bed for him on the hard wooden slats under the canvas roof.

  “He’ll die if we don’t get him indoors, near a warm fire,” was Christian’s observation. “I say we leave tonight, and try and find a town where we can take shelter and let him rest.”

  There seemed to be nothing else we could do. I wrapped Donovan as tightly as I could in what thick blankets and garments we had and lay down next to him, hoping to warm him with my body. We set off, through the detritus and confusions of the aftermath of battle, toward the northeast.

  FOR FIVE DAYS, under a sky dark with low-lying clouds that wept chill rain, we made our way toward Moscow. At night we were offered shelter in the huts of peasants and craftsmen, ploughmen and village elders. Donovan’s dreadful wound did not fester, thanks to Euphemia’s healing herbs and poultices, and his lungs did not fill with thick fluid that might have choked him. We did our best to keep him warm and to dress his wound with fresh bandages.

  Though he did not show any sign that he heard my words, I talked to him, telling him how swiftly he was healing and how he would soon be completely well. I told him of the outcome of the battle, how neither side had conceded defeat (for so we heard), and I recounted to him my own efforts to weaken the deadly, serpent-like French army and my resolve to do what I could to weaken Bonaparte as well.

  I held his hand and talked to him, smoothing his dear brow and kissing his wounded forehead, assuring him that I would never leave him and that all would be well.

  On the sixth day, toward midafternoon, we crested a low hill and came upon a remarkable sight. It was as if hundreds of huge colorful balls had been tossed down across a landscape, immense blue, red, yellow and gold balls, each set atop an imposing building. On closer view the balls proved to be the domes of churches, each with its glittering cross that caught fire from the sun’s slanting rays.

  I held my breath at the magnificence of the spectacle and Christian and Edward too marveled at the vast size and splendor of the Russian capital.

  “How many people live here, do you think?” I asked Christian. “More than in Paris, surely.”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “I have never seen any city as large as this.”

  “Or as empty.” Euphemia’s tone was quizzical, skeptical. “Where have all the people gone?”

  As we drove down the hill and into the city it became more and more evident that the Muscovites had indeed departed. There were no carts or carriages, no marching soldiers, no religious processions, not even an open-air market with vegetable and flower-vendors, public letter writers and guards to keep the peace.

  We passed mansions, churches, shops and squares: all empty, as if swept by a great wind that had blown everything and everyone away Only in the poorest, oldest and shabbiest quarters, where the streets were narrow and many of the wooden houses decayed and nearly roofless, did we see a few people huddled in the shadows. Like the buildings they occupied, they were in decline, the women dressed in the cheap, dirty frills of prostitutes, the men roguish-looking and sinister.

  After much searching we found our way to the Dorogomilov Bridge, where, according to instructions Scipion had given me before we left France, we expected to find the home of his friend Hagop Garabi
dian, an Armenian merchant long resident in the city.

  Our wagon entered the wide courtyard of an imposing stone mansion and, much to our surprise, we found the courtyard full of people.

  “Is this the house of the merchant Garabidian?” Christian called out in French to one of the men, who was carrying a heavy wooden box.

  The man nodded, and inclined his head toward the front door of the house. Edward and Euphemia stayed with our wagon while Christian and I presented ourselves at the door, which was opened to us by the merchant himself, a nearly bald, energetic, ruddy-faced man of about fifty who ushered us into his bare salon. I told him that I was a friend of Scipion du Roure and at the mention of Scipion’s name his face brightened. Yet he went on to explain that we had come at an unfortunate time, as he was just about to leave the city.

  “We have all been ordered to evacuate as quickly as possible,” he explained. “It is not safe for any citizen of Moscow to remain here as the French army is arriving and our military commanders have decided to retreat.”

  “Just as they did at Borodino,” Christian commented.

  “Yes. Is there not a French proverb about this course of action?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye. “Reculer pour mieux sauter? Step back in order to jump ahead further?”

  “We have come from Borodino,” I told our host. “We have an injured man with us who needs rest so that his wound can heal.”

  “Ah, then my house is yours, of course. I shall leave you the guest cottage. There is food in the cellar and firewood in the shed. The police have been confiscating all the food and fuel in the city in order to deny it to the French but they have been lax in scouring the suburbs.”

  Monsieur Garabidian showed us the large, spacious guest cottage and then left us to settle in, saying that he and his household would be gone by nightfall.

  “I caution you, do not stay any longer than absolutely necessary,” he said as he left us, brushing off our thanks with a wave of his plump beringed hand. “Moscow is a dangerous place. There is looting. Once the French come they will seize the city and cease to be disciplined men. They will become marauders.”

  We thanked him for the warning, and for the food and shelter.

  Inside the cottage, we found that most of the furniture had been removed, but there was a table, and a number of soft pillows and a thick carpet that we spread before the hearth to make a bed for Donovan. In the cellar we found oil for lamps, meal and flour, beets and turnips, some wine and even a cask of vodka.

  Edward looked around the large storage area thoughtfully. “If we must, we can take refuge here, in this cellar,” he said. “Garabidian was right about the danger of looting and lawlessness. Such a fine, rich proud city, abandoned in such haste. It is an invitation to pillage. This house could be assaulted.”

  I shuddered at the memory of being in the cellar of Les Trois-Ilets on the night the plantation burned, how we were forced to take refuge there, until Euphemia showed us a way out. The thought was a chilling one; that night had been among the worst I ever spent.

  The next morning the courtyard was deserted and we realized that the merchant and all his servants had gone. But at midday we heard the tramping of feet and the creak of carriage wheels, and knew that the remnant of the Grande Armee was beginning to arrive in the city.

  All that afternoon and evening, as the noise of the incoming army continued, I felt frightened—far more frightened than I had been at Borodino. Euphemia felt the same fear.

  “There is evil coming,” was all she would say, but I could tell from her frown how troubled she was. Her premonitions were rarely wrong.

  I could not sleep that night. I watched over Donovan, worried that Euphemia’s prophetic words might concern his welfare. But he slept soundly enough, and his forehead was not hot with fever. It seemed to me that his beloved face, lit by the flickering hearth fire beside his makeshift bed, was becoming less pale with each passing day. I kissed his cheek and murmured that I loved him.

  Weary of watching over him, I got up and went to the window, which looked out over the nearby bridge and ramparts. In the distance I could see patches of orange, glowing on the horizon. Fire!

  Immediately I called the others, and we all stood looking out across the city, our trepidation growing.

  “It’s the soldiers! They’re probably making fires in the streets to warm themselves!”

  “Why would they do that when there are so many vacant buildings? No, it’s the cooking fires, or maybe just sparks from the flints.”

  “Or pipes they forgot to put out, that started fires by accident.”

  Everyone had an explanation, but we were all thinking the same, unthinkable thing: what if the Russian soldiers had set fire to the city after the last of the Muscovite citizens left, to ensure that the French could not benefit from its remaining stores of food and fuel? What if the fires were deliberately set?

  We did not try to sleep but sat before the window, watching the widening patches of orange, dreading that before long they would merge into one continuous, all-consuming blaze and that we would have to flee for our lives. If indeed the Russians had started the fire, we wondered, weren’t our French soldiers now attempting to put it out? Would they succeed?

  I thought afterwards how lucky we were that Hagop Garabidian’s house had not been in the crowded heart of Moscow, where the greatest concentration of old wooden houses were, and where the fire was at its most destructive, but in a spacious outlying part of the city, where the houses were of stone and there were no storehouses or arsenals to be targeted for destruction.

  For the fire did indeed spread, growing wider and more allencompassing day by day, until it engulfed most of the city. The mansion grounds where we were did not burn, though the air we breathed was full of black smoke and ash and the heat of the fire was so intense we all felt singed by it.

  What I remember most was the smell. An overpoweringly strong, acrid smell that all but burned our nostrils and made us cough and drink water until our stomachs nearly burst. I have never smelled another odor like it. It was as if all the stale, decayed things of centuries were burning, along with rancid incense and the worst stinks from a gigantic kitchen full of charred meat. The stench stayed in our clothes and hair, the very taste of it lingered in my mouth even after the destructive fire had begun to die down and the once grand city of Moscow was little more than smoking embers, amid the soot-blackened domes of the stone churches.

  Finally after nearly a week we noticed that the air began to clear and that at night the horizon was once again dark, with no orange flames shooting into the sky, only the steady bright light of the comet shining down over all.

  I decided then that it was time to seek out Bonaparte.

  60

  BONAPARTE, WHEN i FOUND HIM, after many inquiries, was at an undamaged stone house near the towering fortress of the Kremlin. He was pale and distracted, a man near the end of his wits.

  He was pacing back and forth behind a huge desk littered with papers. Aides and messengers came in and out of the room in a steady stream, bringing more papers and taking others away. On the desk was a goblet filled with a dark liquid—barleywater, I felt sure. It was Bonaparte’s preferred remedy for hemorrhoids.

  As he walked back and forth, his gait jerky and unsteady, he mumbled to himself, opening and closing his snuffbox reflexively and pausing briefly to inhale a pinch of the yellowish powder and sneeze violently into a much used purple handkerchief. As if oblivious to those around him, he hacked up phlegm, spat, and wiped his mouth with the back of one small plump hand.

  “Your Imperial Highness,” I began, addressing him with the formality he always demanded, but he cut me off.

  “I suppose you have come about your boy.”

  He seemed unsurprised to see me, which in itself surprised and confused me. Did he have intelligence that I had been traveling with the army? “Well, he isn’t here just now. I sent him to Russia, you know.” Now I was thoroughly confused. “Yes,” I sa
id lamely.

  “Don’t worry. He’s alive. I’m alive too, as you can see.” “I can tell you are in pain.” “You always could tell that.”

  A messenger brought him a paper and he read its few lines hurriedly, then took up a pen, dipped it in the inkpot and scratched a few words on the bottom of it, leaving dark blotches of ink on the paper and the desk before handing the paper back to the messenger.

  He reached for the goblet of barleywater and drained it. Then, glowering, glaring down at the floor, he resumed his nervous, angry pacing.

  “Why in the name of all the saints in heaven haven’t they come to surrender?” he shouted. “They are finished. I finished them at Borodino. What are they waiting for?”

  “I can’t say, sire.”

  “That mincing Tsar Alexander, a pretty boy, a boy in a man’s uniform. And that old whoremonger Kutuzov, with his one good eye and his icons—what in hell are they doing? Are their brains so addled they can’t remember how to get back to Moscow?”

  He stopped where he was and looked at me, a gleam in his eyes. He had had a revelation.

  “They are afraid of me,” he shouted. “That’s it. They fear that I will annihilate them the moment they set foot in my city. It is my city now, this ruined Moscow. I will rebuild it. It will be more glorious than before.”

  He bawled out “Messenger!” and snatched up a paper from the desk. A boy in a guard’s uniform appeared in answer to his summons. Bonaparte took up his pen and dipped it in the inkpot. But as he attempted to write, his hand shook violently and he could not form the words. Cursing, he made another attempt, dipping the pen in and out of the inkpot convulsively, making the ink fly out and spill. With a roar of frustration he flung the pen across the room and shouted at the guardsman.

  “Write this down! To Tsar Alexander and his lackey Kutuzov, surrender or I shall annihilate you! The emperor of the world has spoken!”

  The messenger hurriedly did as he was asked, then gave the paper to the emperor to sign. He spat on it.