The Secret Life of Josephine

by Carolly Erickson

  “No one will find us here,” I said, thrilled, excited at the prospect of hiding, like a child playing a game. I had not felt so alive in years.

  “Won’t there be a hue and cry?”

  “Yes! Oh yes!” I was gleeful. “But they would never think to look here!”

  He stroked my arm as we talked. His fingers were soft, warm, almost weightless. I reached up to touch his face. The face I had longed for, day after day, night after night, for so many years.

  Just to hear him breathing and talking, to feel his fingers touch my arm in the dark, was a pleasure beyond description.

  “You are all I believe in any more,” I said, and then we kissed, and lay together on the broad sofa, our lovemaking all the more urgent because we could hear footsteps just beyond the wall, and voices calling out. The servants were asking one another where I had gone. I nestled into his arms, secure in the dark, aware that I had not felt secure in a very long time.

  In Donovan’s strong arms I was no longer empress, I was a treasured woman, ageless, vibrantly alive, whole and rich in feeling. The heavy garments of responsibility fell away and I was clothed in the fresh light clothes of a loved woman, beautiful and youthful and unencumbered.

  Later, when Donovan had gone and I had returned to my boudoir I stood before my pier glass, astonished to see, not my usual careworn face and round, motherly body but a glowing girl, my face radiant, my skin shining, my body slender and lithe. I was all warmth and life, like a garden newly bathed in dew, the thirsty plants turning their leaves to the moistening rain. I shut my eyes and imagined myself back in Martinique, in the rain forest, the broad-leaved trees bursting into fulgent life all around me. The rich smell of the fallen leaves, the moist earth, the jungle flowers pressed in on me, and I felt as if I had been born anew.

  47

  MY MIGRAINES WERE GONE. My physicians were astounded, my servants, especially those who had witnessed my acute suffering for so many years, were frankly amazed. Only Euphemia, looking into my shining eyes and observing the changes in mood and appearance that had come over me, guessed the truth.

  “So he’s back, is he?” she said in an undertone.

  “Yes, but you must keep his return a secret,” I whispered, looking around to see who might be listening. “No one must know.” She smiled. “That face of yours is going to tell the world.” Several hours later Euphemia came to me again. “Where is he staying?”

  “Anywhere a legless man can take shelter I guess.”

  “You keep promising me a cottage of my own, at Malmaison,” she said, “now that I am getting old.”

  Euphemia did not know how old she was, as her mother never told her the year of her birth, but we reckoned that she had to be close to sixty—and her wrinkled cheeks and pouchy eyes were proof of her advancing years.

  “Maybe it is time to make good on your promise. He can stay with me.” It was a very good idea. Bonaparte rarely went to Malmaison and when he did he only visited the house and the grounds adjacent to it, not the extensive gardens and fields of wheat and vines, or the folds where I kept my Merino sheep, or the pig farm (Bonaparte hated pigs) or even the ponds where my black swans floated serenely amid the lily pads.

  I told Bonaparte that I was going to build a small village, like the one Marie Antoinette had built at Versailles, and that I intended to house aging servants there.

  “Good,” he said, waving his hand disrnissively barely looking up from the papers spread out on his desk. “That will keep you busy.”

  What he meant was, that will keep you from harassing me about my mistresses.

  With the chief architect from the Tuileries I laid out a plan for a hamlet of twelve cottages, to be built in a wooded setting around a pond. There would be a chapel, a stable, a blacksmithy and a small shop. Work began at once and within a month the first of the cottages, an ample brick dwelling with four bedrooms and a sizable gardener’s shed, was nearly complete. Euphemia moved in—and Donovan quietly moved in at the same time, occupying a comfortable bedroom designed specially for him with a hidden trapdoor leading to the outside.

  As one by one the other new villagers began to occupy their cottages, they were told that Euphemia had agreed to shelter a poor helpless veteran of the wars. They were sympathetic—and surprisingly incurious. They went their own way, and they let Donovan go his.

  Bonaparte was preoccupied with his current venture: defeating the new coalition of enemies that had risen against France.

  The forces of Prussia, Austria and Russia had joined forces to defeat us along with our old enemy Britain. It was a mighty set of foes—but then, as Bonaparte never tired of saying, it was his destiny to confront and destroy all the enemies of France.

  “I shall take over all Europe,” he announced. “It is in my stars. But you, Josephine, shall stay here and build your little village. I cannot take you with me where I must go this time. I will need to move too quickly. You would only slow me down, with your headaches and your complaints.

  “Think of it,” he continued, rubbing his plump soft small hands together, his left cheek twitching with a nervous tic. “Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, even London—all under French rule—and soon. There is no force great enough to stop us. France is invincible. I am invincible.”

  I hardly heard his words. I was thinking of Donovan, and of how we would be able to be together, day after day, night after night, at Malmaison.

  “This news agrees with you, I see,” Bonaparte said, looking intently at me for the first time. “You are looking very well. Not so old.”

  “Thank you sire. It must be because I am looking forward to hearing of your great victories.”

  So Bonaparte went off to war, and I began spending most of my time at Malmaison, with Donovan.

  We were discreet, and Euphemia, who had long been urging me to leave France and return to Martinique to live with Donovan, protected us. That I often spent time at Euphemia’s cottage aroused no suspicion, for everyone knew how much I loved her and that we had been inseparable all my life. That Euphemia’s veteran houseguest went to the main house on the estate—my mansion—aroused no suspicion either, for it was well known that he lived from my largesse (I saw to it that this story was spread) and I often entertained impoverished soldiers and sailors, mothers without husbands or male protectors, and various unfortunates from the nearby town of Rueil. I was viewed as a local benefactress. I was called “the Good Josephine”—a name that often made me laugh, when I considered my reputation and some of the events in my past.

  Donovan and I spent long hours together, loving, holding one another, sharing meals—and talking, telling one another all that we had been doing and thinking since he left Paris so many years earlier.

  “I often think what a terrible mistake I made, marrying Bonaparte instead of going back to Martinique with you,” I told him. “I regret it every day.” I told him of Bonaparte’s cruelties, and of the odd tie that still bound us, despite all the turmoil in our marriage. “Sometimes he tells me he needs me. I am his good luck charm, he says. I am the only one who can give him solace when he is sick or troubled. I know that in a perverse way he loves me—even though he wants to hurt me.

  “And he adores Eugene. He has adopted him, formally. My Eugene is now Eugene-Napoleon of France, a prince of the empire.”

  “I remember how Eugene worshipped the general when he was a boy,” Donovan said with an indulgent smile.

  “Eugene needed a father. Bonaparte filled that need.”

  “And you, Yeyette, needed a husband. And you knew I could not offer you marriage.”

  I hung my head. “Yes,” I said quietly.

  “You were right to make the choice you made. How could you know what Bonaparte was really like? He did not know himself. He has changed as he gains more and more power.”

  “How I hate it all! Being his wife, putting up with his mistresses, walking twenty paces behind him—”

  “Being Empress of France.”

  “You know tha
t matters nothing to me!”

  “You enjoy being mistress of Malmaison. Had you come with me to Martinique, you would have been mistress of nothing at all.”

  He got up from the sofa where we had been sitting and walked to the fireplace. The hearth glowed bright, from time to time a burning branch split with a crack, sending a shower of glowing orange sparks upward. His face toward the fire, his back toward me, Donovan went on.

  “When I got back I found my plantation in the hands of slave rebels. All the cane was burned, the house was destroyed. I had nothing. I was adrift, lost. I hid in the forest. There were outlaws there, black and white together. I joined them for a time.”

  He paused. When he went on his voice was strained, I could tell that what he was telling me was painful for him.

  “The English came, their fleet anchored in the harbor of Fort-Royal. They were in charge, they were unopposed—but they had too few men to control the interior of the island. No one was really in charge. It had been like that for so long! I was foolish to imagine that my little plantation could survive amid all the chaos.

  “Bonne Fortune! What an ironic name!” His laugh was bitter.

  “There was an English officer, a Captain Jack Mowat, who approached me one night outside a tavern. I hadn’t eaten in three days. I must have looked like something he’d hung from his yard arm.”

  “ ‘Come on in and feed yourself,’ he said. His French was poor but I understood well enough. He seemed kind. I was in no position to refuse what he offered. After I finished eating and drinking he put a bag of coins on the table between us.”

  “ ‘How would you like to work for me?’ he said.

  “I was startled, but said nothing.

  “ ‘We can use a man like you in Paris. There is a ship in the harbor that can take you to LeHavre tonight.’“ “He wanted you to spy for the British.” “Yes.”

  “To turn against your country your own people.” “No.”

  Donovan spun around and faced me, and came over to sit beside me once again.

  “I have never told you about myself, about my origins.” “No.”

  “I was not born in Martinique,” he said, taking my hand in both of his. “I was born in Ireland, in Dundreary. My name at my birth was Donovan Brown.”

  “Like my grandmother Catherine Brown! So we are—” “Distant cousins, perhaps.”

  “I have only the faintest memories of Ireland. I never had a father. My mother died when I was very small and a man—he said he was my uncle, but I have no idea who he really was—took me aboard a ship. He called himself Jean de Gautier. So I became Donovan de Gautier. I think I must have been about four years old.

  “He took me with him. It seemed we traveled the seas forever. I don’t know what he was—a pirate, a merchant, maybe both. He kept me alive, for my mother’s sake I think. There were battles. My uncle died, not of wounds but disease. We were becalmed. It was unbearably hot. He couldn’t survive. I brought him water to drink—endless cups of water, but he just got weaker and weaker.

  “Most everyone on the ship died. It was terrible. The smell—oh, the smell ... I still have nightmares about it. Then a French ship came and rescued the few of us who were still alive.

  “I still remember the captain’s voice booming out across our deck.

  “ ‘Come aboard! We are here to save you! Come aboard!’“

  I shook my head in disbelief. “What a harrowing story!” I cried. “What an ordeal!”

  “The French ship brought us to Martinique and left us there. I have been on my own ever since.”

  “And you still have no idea who you really are.”

  “I am Donovan Brown.”

  “Do you think Jean de Gautier was really your father?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t look alike. His eyes were very blue, like my mother’s. Mine are brown.”

  “So when I first saw you, you were an orphan, living on your own. I used to try to guess who you were. You wore the clothes of a Grand

  Blanc, but they were old, worn out clothes. And you did not look like the child of a Grand Blanc family.”

  “I belonged nowhere. I lived on the streets of Fort-Royal. I waited outside the bakeries and at the end of the day the bakers’ wives would sometimes give me rolls. I fought vultures and wild dogs for scraps of meat. I learned to hold horses for a few coins. I ran with a pack of boys, mostly quatroons and octoroons. I learned French, a little Ibo and a little Carib. I remembered some Gaelic, but never used it. I always felt as though I belonged among the Grands Blancs. I wanted to be a soldier, a swordsman. I practiced against the other boys, with sticks, there in the street.”

  “Why did you come to Les Trois-Ilets?”

  “I saw your grandmother in a shop one day. I heard her talking to some English people. Her accent was the accent I remembered from my childhood. She reminded me of my mother, and my lost home. I heard that she lived at Les Trois-Ilets. So I went there—and then I saw you.”

  It was by far the longest speech I had ever heard Donovan make. It explained a great deal.

  “My dear grandmother! She was always so outspoken, so very tart!”

  “You are like her in that way.”

  I smiled. “I hope so—a little.

  “But tell me, why are you revealing all this to me now?” Instead of answering he folded me in his arms and kissed me, long and lovingly.

  “Because I must leave you, dearest Yeyette. And soon. And I may never see you again.”

  48

  HE LEFT A FEW DAYS LATER. As he prepared to go, gathering his things with the help of Christian, he told me the reason for his haste, and revealed the plan in which he hoped to play a vital part.

  “What I tell you both now is known to very few. You must not repeat it.”

  “Of course not,” Christian and I said, speaking as one.

  “You will be protected by the simple fact that no one will suspect you. The sweet, vague, kindhearted empress and her faithful manservant: no one would imagine you might carry important information of use to the enemies of France.”

  “It is because I am a good Frenchman that I assist you,” said Christian staunchly “I am a supporter of the true king, Louis XVIII, in his court in Warsaw, and not of this false, self-made Emperor Napoleon, who has no royal blood yet believes that he owns the earth!”

  “There are many who feel as you do, Christian. King Louis will one day rule, I am certain of it.”

  The old king, Louis XVI, had left a son behind when he was executed but the boy had died in prison. His rights passed to his uncle Stanislaus, who called himself Louis XVIII.

  I had never taken any interest in politics. I had observed the ebb and flow of power, to be sure, and had even helped to turn its direction one way or another, but power itself never captured my interest.

  That kings should rule over others seemed to me natural and right. After all, there had been kings in France for hundreds of years. They were a race set apart, born to govern others. But now, in our day, for the first time, the power of kings had been questioned, and challenged, and ultimately set aside. Now, it seemed, the strongest man, or the richest, or the most frightening, was thought to be the one who ought to rule.

  My husband Bonaparte had simply taken power. Stolen it. Or so it seemed to me, as I began to think about the subject seriously for the first time. The more I thought, the more I realized that everything about Bonaparte was false: his titles, his claims to sovereignty, the ceremonies he invented to impress the public. He was a sham. And I was a sham as well. I was part of his facade.

  His military victories were not false, to be sure; they were genuine enough. But his authority to lead armies was not legitimate. It was based on theft—the theft of the true royal authority from King Louis XVI, an authority now possessed by King Louis XVIII.

  I knew that my thinking on this subject was very simple, yet I felt there was truth in it. And if Donovan was prepared to fight for the cause of the monarchy, then I ought to b
e too.

  I listened closely to all that Donovan told me on our last night together. We sat before the fire, drinking wine, allowing ourselves to be lulled into drowsy relaxation. We fed each other Donova’s favorite chocolates, the kind called “Venus’s Nipples.” No one disturbed us, through the long night hours.

  “I will remember this night,” Donovan said as I laid my head on his chest. “The warmth, the comfort, the feel of you beside me. I will carry it all with me into the nights to come.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Portugal. Then, if we succeed, probably Spain.” “And if you do not succeed?”

  “Then you will hear nothing further. You will know that I am— beyond reach.”

  He rubbed my cheek gently with his knuckles.

  “We must stop him, you know. It must be done, before he swallows up everything we value. He will never stop on his own. He will never be satisfied.”

  “Have you heard that he has been sending his political enemies to the Seychelles Islands? At court they are calling this purge the Xittle Terror/ It is a repeat of the Great Terror, the one under Robespierre that I remember so well/’

  “Then if I disappear, and you hear no news from Portugal, you can send someone to the Seychelles Islands to find me.”

  He got up to put a log on the fire and sat down again.

  “I have heard him say he means to conquer the world,” I remarked.

  “It is not just a boast. The latest information I have from Captain Mowat is that right now Bonaparte is plotting to divide Asia between himself and the Russian tsar Alexander. They have drawn up maps showing how they mean to divide the continent. They have signed treaties and agreements.”