The General's Mistress

by Jo Graham

  Two of them, crowding in close ahead.

  The horse. I had the weight of the horse. Like movement underwater, every moment seemed to take forever, like movements of a dance I knew, a dance Charles had known forever. And Nestor had been a cavalry mount. They rushed in, and I pulled back sharply on the reins. Nestor rose on his hind legs, flailing at them with his sharp, heavy hooves. A squeeze and he plunged forward, striking one of them sharply. I brought the pistol butt down hard on the back of the man’s head as we lunged past, saw him fall insensible.

  I pulled Nestor around, and he had the bit in his teeth now. We charged back in as though I had a saber in my hand, Nestor’s weight bowling another over into the mud, though I don’t think he was hurt. “Back!” I said, hauling him around.

  And now they were converging, all four of them. I backed away. I could escape into the woods or down the road toward the column. But that would mean leaving Isabella and the others. I could not reload—the second man had the powder. And I had no sword.

  “Come and get me then!” I yelled. “Pissant sons of bitches!” They would have to try to corner me without getting close to Nestor’s forelegs. Nestor stamped for emphasis.

  And then there was a thunder of hooves. Auguste Thibault and two of his officers charged into it like daylight into snow, a flurry of swords and Thibault’s white warhorse. Auguste’s hat was off and his glasses clung to the tip of his nose, an expression of grim fury on his face, his epée in his hand.

  It was over very quickly. Two of the bandits went down in the first rush. One ran, and in the confusion escaped into the gulley. The last one, his right arm clenched bleeding at his side, sank to his knees in surrender. A lieutenant I knew by sight alone dismounted and tied him up.

  The other lieutenant rode up to me. He must have been no more than seventeen or eighteen, with wide hazel eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked. My clothes were a mess of blood and powder and bone.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m fine. I don’t know about anyone else.”

  The understudy was moving. She had a bruise along the side of her face and her nose was bleeding, but she was climbing out of the wagon and kneeling down beside the second man. I saw her checking him, talking softly. His unfired pistol lay on the road beside him, the mate of mine.

  Auguste swung from the saddle to the wagon box, reaching down for Isabella.

  She got up gingerly. Her dress gaped open to the hips, her breast streaked with blood where someone had clawed at her, and she clutched at Auguste’s hands as though he were her savior.

  “I heard the shot,” he said. “God, Isabella, I’ll never forgive myself. You could have been killed. Without you, I’d have no reason for living.” His glasses had been lost in the fight, and in the expression on his round face I suddenly saw what Isabella had seen in him. “You are everything to me. Everything, my dearest love. . . .” His last words were muffled as Isabella stepped into his arms, holding on to him and bursting into wild tears. Auguste rained kisses on her hair, murmuring incoherently.

  I slid off Nestor. My knees shook a little, but I could control them. The brains on my hands were sticky. For a moment my stomach turned over.

  No, I thought savagely. No.

  I put my hand against Nestor’s warm side. He turned his head to me and butted me softly. “You were perfect,” I said to him. “You’re the best horse.”

  He nickered and put his head against my shoulder. I rested there, leaning on him. Then I carefully put the pistol back in its holster on the saddle, and reached for my saddlebags, suddenly acutely aware of the dampness of my trousers. I had a spare pair in my bags. I would change before anyone noticed. And no one would remark on my changing clothes, given the blood everywhere.

  I changed behind Nestor. When I came out again, the second man was sitting up in the wagon with the soubrette and the understudy holding cloths to his head. He had a large purple lump rising and it had bled a little, but he seemed to be talking coherently to them.

  Auguste swung back onto his horse, Isabella before him, her draggled skirts spreading over his stirrups. It was getting dark.

  “Lenotre, will you bring the wagon along and escort the ladies? Paul, can you take the rear? Let’s get everyone into camp. I am taking Mademoiselle Felix ahead with me.”

  The one he had called Lenotre looked up. “What about the bandits, sir?”

  “Leave them where they fell,” he said. Auguste glanced at me for the first time. “Madame St. Elme seems to have accounted for two of them. Perhaps you will ride with the boys there and bring the wagon in?”

  I nodded as smartly as I could.

  Auguste held out his epée. “I think you’ve earned this.” He put it into my hand. “I’ve another.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He touched his heels to his horse’s sides and trotted away into the gathering darkness, Isabella clasped tightly before him, the white horse shining in the last light.

  I rode behind with the two young officers, bringing the wagon in, the epée naked in my hand. Auguste had forgotten to give me the scabbard.

  The rest of the trip to Paris passed without incident. I got the scabbard from Auguste the next day, and wore the epée with Charles’s clothes for the rest of the journey. It was not too heavy for me. With a straight blade and a narrow blood channel, it was unadorned and none too fancy, but it was light and cold and very, very sharp. I made sure it was very, very sharp from then on.

  Nestor seemed inordinately pleased with himself, as well he might. He practically frisked his way up and down the passes. I spoiled him a bit. He deserved it.

  We reached Paris as autumn began. I used the First Consul’s gold to rent an apartment on the third floor of a respectable house—one large salon with a Franklin stove at one end so that I could cook, and a bedroom. I would have no roommate this time.

  Isabella would hardly be available. She and Auguste set up housekeeping together in Rue de Turin immediately. Which of course meant that they needed furniture. Isabella and I spent a happy day in the flea markets getting a few things that would make it possible to live in some comfort. She spent Auguste’s money. I spent Bonaparte’s.

  A pair of Louis XV armchairs, the pale-blue upholstery softened by time, would grace the salon, along with a modern table with sphinx claw feet à la Égyptienne. I bought some pots and china, a nice tea set that had three cups and a saucer broken and could consequently only serve five, and scarlet velvet curtains in a vast lot, which turned out to be enough curtains for the salon and the bedchamber, plus an extra pair that I hung over the door from the salon to the bedroom, looped back with the gold tasseled ties. I bought a somewhat battered four-poster, but then sprang for a new feather bed, white linen sheets, and a set of gold satin curtains and a gold brocade cover for a feather duvet. I stopped then. The money needed to last. And I had spent more than half.

  There was also the expense of Nestor’s stabling. Isabella suggested that I should sell him.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, balancing packages one on another. Isabella wanted to go look at crystal.

  She looked back at me over the top of a huge box, her bonnet feathers nodding from a fashionable brim. “It seems contradictory to me to build a nest and keep your horse for the open road.”

  “It may be,” I said. Isabella had had quite a bit to say about staying in Paris from now on. “But I don’t know what I’ll do next. There’s Ida and Charles both, both my lives.”

  “I think you take Charles too seriously,” she said. “Sometimes it scares me. You know, you’re not really him.” Her dark eyes were worried.

  “I am,” I said. “Charles is every bit as real as Ida. It’s not as simple as a masquerade.”

  “I wish it were,” Isabella said. “I wonder about you sometimes.”

  “So do I,” I said. Surely if anything was a symptom of madness, it was Charles. And yet I had spent some of my happiest days as Charles, freed from everything a woman should be and should do, invulnerab
le in a waistcoat. Men did not feel as women did, did not suffer. But truly, what did it matter if I was mad? Who in all the world truly cared, if I did not?

  And we bought crystal. She bought a great deal. I bought a pair of wineglasses, long and graceful, with knobbed stems, the rims touched with gold.

  When I got home, a boy was waiting with a message for me. I gave him a coin and read it, waiting for my purchases to be brought up from the wagon Isabella had hired.

  17 Vendémiaire, Year VIII

  Dear Ida,

  I am returned to Paris after a fortnight in the Saar with my family. I know that you are also traveling, and perhaps this is the reason I have had no letter from you. I hope that you are well and that the weather has held fine.

  I have just this day arrived in Paris, and I asked about until I heard that you were here from a friend of mine who heard from an artillery colonel with whom you had traveled from Italy. In short, we’re both here now.

  I should like to call on you, if I may.

  Michel

  It took some time to find ink and a quill and paper, my heart beating fast all the while. I hadn’t bought any when I was shopping with Isabella.

  Dear Michel,

  I would be pleased if you could come for dinner tomorrow night. It would give me the greatest pleasure if you would present yourself at eight o’clock.

  I hope that you are well, and that your leg is much better.

  Ida

  Queen of Swords

  Since I had just moved in, I spent the next day running around madly preparing for dinner. I bought table linens, and then spent most of the afternoon buying food. I decided not to get overcomplicated. A good mushroom soup was not beyond my skills as a first course, and could be made on the Franklin stove without difficulty. A roasted chicken could be purchased ahead of time and served cold, dressed up a little bit. A salad was easy, and there was nothing in it that needed cooking. Bread, naturally. A Spanish Manchego to go with Madeira and fresh plums as a last course would round it out nicely. Not a formal meal, but then formality would be hard to manage with no cook and no servants.

  Trying to impress the peasant general with your housewifely skills? my Inner Moreau asked sarcastically. I wasn’t much interested in my Inner Moreau’s opinions anymore. I knew exactly what Moreau thought of Ney, and exactly what he would think of my dinner efforts.

  Ney was punctual, knocking on the door exactly at eight. Patting my hair into place, I went to open it.

  He was taller than I remembered, and fairer. A summer in the sun had bleached his hair more red than bronze; it was caught behind him in a long, old-fashioned tail that went halfway down his back. The same sun that had bleached his hair had left his face sunburned and freckled, and his eyes looked very blue against his skin. His hat was under his arm.

  “Madame St. Elme?” he said, as though for a moment he wasn’t sure. Perhaps I had changed too.

  I stepped back from the door. “Please come in, General Ney. I’m glad you were right on time.”

  He pulled out his watch from an inner pocket. “Actually, I was early. I’ve been waiting down in the stairwell until it was time.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “You could have come up.”

  He looked around for a place to put his hat that wasn’t either on the table set for dinner or on one of the chairs. “I couldn’t have. My mother always hated it when guests were early and threw all her plans off.”

  I took the hat from him and cast around. No place to put it. “I’ve just moved in,” I said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to put it on the bed in here.” I scurried into my room and dropped it on the bed, then popped back out from behind the curtains.

  He was standing in the middle of the salon. The windows were open, letting in the last warm air, though the sun was setting. It was really fall now, and over Paris the stars were high and far away, the evening star glittering through the smoke and cloud, Sirius rising cool in the sky.

  He seemed to fill up my room, though he could not be that tall. Still, it was strange to look up a good six inches. I was a tall woman, and unused to it.

  I went over and closed the windows to give myself something to do. “It will be cold later,” I said.

  “Probably,” he said. “It was last night.”

  “The weather is often variable at this time of year.”

  “Yes,” he said. “The weather can be different from day to day.”

  I looked at him. Blue coat, gold braid, the tricolor sash wrapped around his waist. I had imagined him often, tried to remember what he looked like from that one brief meeting. I had imagined him before that, the King of Chalices in my tarot deck, the red-haired king, swift in every feeling. And yet the reality was strange. He had a square jaw like a street fighter, but he stood like cavalry.

  “Are we going to talk about the weather?” Michel asked.

  “We don’t have to,” I said. “We could talk about something else.” He had a small scar across his jawline on the left side, white against his sunburn. A practice foil? A childhood accident?

  He looked down, almost as if he had read my thought in my eyes. Down meant straight down my cleavage. I was wearing my new pink gown, a rose so dark it was almost red, with gold trim at the sleeves and waist. Then he took a step back and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a grubby piece of paper, folded many times over. “I brought your letter back.”

  For a moment I didn’t know what he meant.

  “The one you meant for someone else. ‘I am sending your boots as you requested, along with several pairs of new stockings. I have taken care of the table linens. . . .’” He held the paper out to me.

  I felt myself flushing wildly. “You must think me a complete idiot.”

  “The letter was for General Moreau?”

  “You know that I was with him,” I said, taking it from him.

  “I didn’t, but I certainly found that out,” he said. “When Moreau called me into his office last spring and upbraided me for being no gentleman, the kind of cad who cuts in on his senior’s territory, and warned me that if I intended to keep my command in the Army of the Rhine, I had best learn how things are done.”

  I drew a deep breath and half-turned away. “I am so sorry,” I said. “I never meant that he should hold it against you. I told him that nothing had ever happened between us.” I put the paper down very carefully on the table, next to the pewter forks that served me for plate. For a moment I felt my eyes swimming.

  “You got worse,” he said. He stepped closer, and I could almost feel him behind me, as solid and trapping as a wall. “I heard he threw you out.”

  “He did.” I shrugged. I didn’t look at him. “That’s how it goes sometimes.” I turned and gave him a brilliant, brittle smile.

  “I didn’t know,” Michel said. “I’m sorry. I thought you were an actress. I saw you on the stage later.”

  “You seem to have turned up for all my most humiliating moments,” I said.

  He smiled, and it was grave and kind, not mocking. “You were very bad. But I liked it anyway.”

  “I’ve gotten better,” I said. “I only got that part by sleeping with the right person.”

  “The fat man I saw you with after?”

  I nodded.

  “I thought so,” he said. “So I didn’t come up to you.”

  “But you were watching me,” I said. “You sent the roses. There was no card.”

  “There was when I left them,” he said. “It must have gotten lost.”

  Along with my shoes, I thought. Oh yes, I could see too easily how that had happened. “He gave me money and a part,” I said.

  Michel put his head to the side. “Are you trying to make me think worse of you?”

  “I want you to know what I am,” I said. “I want you to have no illusions about me.”

  “I know what you are,” he said. “At least, I think I do.”

  I looked away. I could not stand the expression on his face. If I looked at h
im another moment, I would do something I would regret. Like burst into tears. Or kiss him.

  “Dinner is nearly ready,” I said. “Would you open the wine?”

  I put the length of the room between us, ladling soup and getting out the bread. He handed me into my chair as soon as I had put the plates on the table, and poured the wine deftly.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve just moved in. I have no servants yet.”

  Michel shrugged, breaking off a piece of bread. “I never had servants at all, growing up. We all just did for ourselves. My father was a cooper for the vineyards at Saar-Louis, and there were five of us children, so we all had to do our part. Mother couldn’t have kept up otherwise.”

  “Are you the oldest?” I asked.

  He shook his head, his mouth full of soup. It took a moment before he swallowed it. “I’m the middle one. My sister Sophie is the oldest. She’s six years older than I am. She was married long before I left home. Margarethe is my other sister, and she’s five years younger, and still lives with my father. Joseph was my older brother, and he was two years older. He was killed at Trebbia last year.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “That must be hard.”

  He nodded. “And then Charles was my younger brother, two years younger. He died when we were children.”

  I caught a sudden breath, as though something had punched me.

  “What’s the matter?” Michel said, laying his spoon aside.

  “I had a brother named Charles, too,” I said. “Two years younger. He died when I was eight.”

  “I was nine,” Michel said. His hand reached for mine across the table. “I didn’t mean—what’s wrong?”

  “I can’t even begin to tell you,” I said. “About Charles. About my family. It’s so complicated.” I shook my head. “It’s too strange. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  Michel shrugged. “I believe some pretty strange things.”