I put the letter down again. I wanted Michel. I wanted to put my head on his shoulder and feel worthy again. But he was far away with his father, tending a dying man. I could not ask him for anything, certainly not to hurry back to Paris so that he might take me to Amsterdam.
I shivered despite the heat. I did not want that house. There was nothing in it that I needed, and the thought of owning it disturbed me. As for plantations in Curaçao, I had never really considered them, had never thought about them at all. Hundreds of slaves might toil in the heat, lashed by overseers for the profit of owners on the other side of the world who did not even have to look at their handiwork. I did not want slave plantations. If they would settle cash on me to make it simpler, I would take the cash and leave the rest. I could use cash. Cash is always insurance against the future.
The future without Michel, some part of me whispered, and I tried to stifle it, but the part would not be still. Passion wanes, love dies. Do you think he will love you still when you are thirty? When you are forty? Do you think he will live twenty years, storming into the face of the guns? Your father did not see his fortieth birthday, and is not Michel the picture of the same careless gallantry, the same reckless will? If you do not want to die an old, mad whore you had best have money of your own put by in good Swiss banks, insurance against waning desire and bullets alike.
19 Fructidor of the Year IX
Dearest Michel,
I am glad to hear that your father is better. I hope that his recovery will be swift and complete.
I have had a letter from my cousin telling me that my husband is dead. As you guess, I do not mourn. But there is a great deal of legal paperwork that requires my signature. I wish I could talk with you about it, but I know that isn't possible.
I am leaving Paris for a brief time. I have agreed to meet the attorneys in Lille, so that I do not have to physically place myself in their power as I would if I went to Amsterdam. My cousin Louisa will be there, and you need not worry that something will happen to me. I will be very, very careful indeed. To that end, I have asked Auguste and Isabella to both go with me to Lille, and you know Auguste can be as dogged a protector as one could wish.
Perhaps I should be sad or sorry that Jan is dead. But I cannot be. No matter what comes, I can imagine no worse fate than to be a wife, tied forever to someone who owns you and can do as they wish with your body, your property, even your children. I will never be able to get my children back. If I had not been a wife, they would be mine. I wish they were bastards. Surely in all the world there is nothing that should be pitied so much as a wife!
I miss you terribly, and I hope that you are not too badly sunburned.
Love from your,
Elza
28 Fructidor of the Year IX
Dearest Elza,
I wish I could say that I'm sorry your husband is dead, but I'm not. What does this mean about your children? Why can't you take them? If they are coming to Paris with you we will work that out. It would be easier if I were there, but I'm not.
Dearest, I hardly know what to say. I am not good with words. If I could simply put my arms around you and tell you that we will do the best we can, you would know what I mean, what I want to say.
Do not you think there are some people who marry for love and who may be happy?
My father is doing better, and I begin to think that he will live. His breathing is better, and when the doctor puts the paper tube to his chest and listens he says his lungs are clearer than they were.
The barley harvest is upon us. Last spring my father put some in the field behind the apple orchard. It's not a big field, so I have been getting the barley in by myself, which is good hard work, which I need. Yes, I am very sunburned, but I have been before you know.
I miss you so much. I will be back to Paris soon, I hope. After there is the barley there are the apples, and my father can't do it this year, but as soon as the apples are in I will leave for Paris and for you.
With all my love,
Michel
9 Vendemiaire of the Year X
Beloved Michel,
I am still in Lille. No, nothing is wrong, other than the need of lawyers to run back and forth. The terms they proposed to me were not acceptable. Which sent them back to Amsterdam to talk to Jan's father, and then back here with different terms. They want to give me nothing, of course. And I do not think we will come to an agreement.
I'm so glad that Isabella and Auguste came with me! We sometimes make a gloomy and quiet little party, but I do not feel entirely alone under their eyes, under the way they say "Madame Ringeling ci-devant" as though I did not have a right to the name. I do not claim your protection, and Auguste bristles at any slight to my reputation, as soiled as it may be. I begin to feel that these good friends are more my family than those related by blood or law who are picking me apart.
You ask if I do not think that some people who marry for love may be happy. Some are happier than others. I do not see how one can call it love, wanting to own another person. Oh yes, some husbands are indulgent! You see I permit my wife to read, and to manage her own pocket change? She may even go out in the carriage for half an afternoon without telling me where she is going.
But I do not think that ownership and happiness can readily exist together, whenever one human being owns another. And in all countries in the world, ours less than most, marriage is nothing else. It is as well to ask a slave if they are not happy! If I were a slave, I should prefer a soft master to a hard one, but better yet my freedom!
Of course you are harvesting apples! And I miss you too.
Your adoring,
Elza
30 Vendemiaire of the Year X
Dearest Elza,
I am back in Paris, and you are still in Lille, I suppose. I trust it's all going well, and that you are probably on your way back. If not, I will come to Lille on the moment.
Is marriage such slavery for women? Could not one marry an equal and love them as such? Or do our laws, our society, render even that good intention impossible?
What do you think of Santo Domingo, just as a question? I mean, about going there?
Love,
Michel
I arrived home in Paris from Lille on a beautiful autumn day. When I took Nestor to the stable I saw that Eleazar wasn't there, so I wasn't surprised that the apartment was empty. And why shouldn't Michel be away? It was the middle of the afternoon and Michel had not known that I was arriving. There were dozens of places he might be and things he might be doing.
By nine 'o clock I was starting to get a bit irritated. I had arranged for a light dinner that I hoped he would be home to eat, but by ten I was getting hungry and considered just going ahead without him. I had not seen him in more than three months, between his journey and mine. I poured myself a glass of wine and nibbled on some olives and bread, telling myself to be fair. He had not known I was arriving. He had probably decided to have dinner in a tavern with one of his friends rather than a cheerless dinner at home alone.
It was after eleven when I heard his step on the stair, quick and heavy. He opened the door and the expression on his face was as joyful as I could have wished. I ran into his arms and there was a great deal of kissing and cooing before any coherent conversation.
"I saw Nestor," he said, "When I was bringing Eleazar in, and I knew you must be back. Elza." He ran his hands over my hair, as though reminding himself what it felt like. My hair had grown in three months, long enough to pin up again and to train in curls over my ears. His touch was light, and his eyes were warm.
Something else registered.
"What happened to your hair?" I asked suddenly. His hair was cut short in the popular Brutus cut, layered to a finger's length all over, just brushing the top of his collar in the back. It looked very fashionable and neat. But I missed that flow of long copper hair, long as the middle of his back.
Michel looked sheepish. "I got it cut."
"I see that," I said. It did
look nice. Shorter, it had some fullness and body. And really the long tails had gone out of fashion entirely.
"Do you like it?" Michel looked unwarrantedly shy. "Nobody really wears it that long anymore. Not in Paris. I mean, they do in Saar Louis, but when I came back to town it seemed like it was time for a change."
"I think you look uncommonly handsome," I said, smiling.
"That's what Madame Bonaparte said," he said.
My eyebrows rose straight up. "Joséphine?"
"I just came back from Malmaison," he said. "You know. The country house she bought just outside Paris. I was at a picnic."
"With Joséphine?" I would not have thought he was Joséphine's taste, tight white pants or not. I would not have thought that she would have been indiscreet after all the talk about a man named Hippolyte Charles a few years ago, who had been rumored to be her lover to her detriment and the fury of the First Consul. Only Michel would be foolish enough to step into that fire.
He shifted from foot to foot. "She was there. So was Bonaparte and a whole lot of other people."
"Oh." Relief must have showed in my face. "That kind of picnic." I smiled at him. "Politics. You know, I can't really see you and Joséphine."
Michel didn't laugh. "No?"
"No," I said, wondering if it were all one sided. Joséphine inspired admirers, and I understood that, could even see how her kindness and quiet might attract. Michel was acting like a man with a guilty secret, or perhaps I was just being suspicious. And jealous.
Joséphine was beautiful.
"Is it because of my birth?" he asked, quite seriously.
"No, it's because she's married to the First Consul," I said. "Michel, he is not a man to cross."
"I wouldn't," he said. "I mean, I don't think of her that way. I can't imagine...." He seemed suddenly all confusion, and I wondered if I had misread something. "The First Consul is all amiability."
"He is?"
"Yes." Michel seemed now on firmer ground. "I've been out to Malmaison about a dozen times. We've spent hours in his study, talking about tactics and our different experiences in Italy and Germany. We've never been in the same command, so it's all different. I was in Army of the Rhine all along. We spent two hours talking about Hohenlinden. Very different conditions than Marengo. Marengo was close, let me tell you. Privately he knows how tight it was. Elza, he's the best I've ever seen!"
I felt my shoulders relaxing from a tension I didn't know they held. "Is he?"
Michel nodded, and went to take his coat off. He poured himself a glass of the wine. "Amazing. I've worked with men who were good, but I've never seen anything like him."
"Is he better than you?" I asked, watching his intent face. The haircut really did make him look different.
Michel grinned. "Ten times better. I would feel like a boy learning my trade again if it weren't that he makes it clear that he is as filled with admiration as I am. It's not hollow praise. I mean, I know what it is to be flattered. I'm not an idiot. He's not flattering when he wants to know what I would do with this situation or that, when he asks how I would take on a certain problem. He wants to know how best to use me. Because he knows I'm good."
"You are," I said. "And if you are not Moreau's creature, then he will use you. He has the power to give you a command. Michel, you are getting so much better at politics."
Michel shrugged. "It has nothing to do with politics. Bonaparte knows how to get things done. I understand it now. He's the kind of general anyone would give anything to serve under. He's that good. The kind of genius that comes along once in a century or two." His eyes met mine, clear and filled with light. "Grant me that I know what I'm looking at when I see it."
"I do," I said. I wet my lips, seeing not Michel but the First Consul as he had been in Milan, unanticipatedly kind. I had wanted to make foolish promises, to swear things that have no place in a courtesan's life. But Michel had a sword to give.
I went and put my arms around him.
"Do you see it?" he asked.
I nodded. "Yes. And I'm glad that you do."
Michel shook his head a little ruefully. "Sometimes you suddenly meet the person you were born to serve. That may sound poetic and silly, but I think you understand."
"He's our hope of keeping the things we've won. My liberty." I said the sensible things, and they were true, but they did not even begin to explain the complexity of it, of what I knew of Michel's yielding nature.
"Not to go all the way back to 1648," he said. "Not to lose everything we fought for in the Revolution, to have a Bourbon prince on the throne and the end of everything. Elza, I like Saar Louis, and I like being home, but that world is too small for me. If I had to stay there I would go mad. If I had to spend my life with nothing bigger." His arms tightened around me. "This is big. So very big."
I put my head against his shoulder. "I know." He smelled the same. That had not changed. "Like touching fire."
I felt him nod against the top of my head. "We were talking about a hypothetical campaign on Vienna, and he has never campaigned in Bavaria and Franconia, so I was telling him about the roads, and what I would do. He laughed and said I should be his Hephaistion."
I smiled against him, pressed my lips to the hollow of his throat above his collar. "You too are Alexander?"
"Hum?" Michel bent his mouth to my hair, nuzzling at me.
"Alexander in Asia," I said. "I've done that play two hundred times. I was Sisygambis, the queen mother of Persia. She's been captured after the Battle of Issos, and Alexander comes to see her, bringing Hephaistion with him. They come in together and Hephaistion is taller and more handsome so...."
Michel kissed me and the rest of the history lesson was lost.
In the morning we lay together in drowsy silence, lapped together in the warmth of the duvet.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"For what?" I was only half awake, and could not think how he had given offense.
"For not being in Lille with you."
I sighed, rolling into his arms. "Jan is dead, and I am glad of that. But he had filed divorce papers before that, charging me with adultery. So his father's lawyers are saying that I forfeited all my property to him before his death, and that rather than his widow, who would still have the rights to my dower property, I am only his former wife, disgraced. And that therefore I have no rights to anything, not my children, and not my own family's money."
Michel stroked my hair.
I bent my face against his shoulder. "I should never have married him. If I had not been stupid when I was young! But I thought he loved me, you see."
"I do see," Michel said. His hands did not stop, gentle and quiet.
"You asked me if I thought equals could marry." I put my cheek against his chest. "Not in this world, Michel. Not when a woman belongs to her husband, body and soul. Not when she cannot vote and cannot go to war, when she cannot divorce him on equal terms. Not when her children belong to him. If a man wants an equal, he must take Plato's advice and seek an eromenos, because only with another man can he find someone to stand with on even terms."
"I'm not sure Plato is saying we should all sleep with men," he said. He kissed my brow gently.
"You want an equal, Michel. And you can have one in Charles, the way you cannot in Ida. That's how it works. We can't escape the world we live in."
"I don't see why we can't change the world we live in, instead," he said, and I heard that stubborn note creeping into his voice. "Do as we please, and damnation to the rest."
"I wish we could," I said, and leaned up and kissed him softly. "Oh, my darling, I wish we could!"
Loves Lost and Found
Corbineau refilled my glass. "And yet," he said. "Somehow you managed to foul it up, the both of you."
"It wasn't Mademoiselle Auguié's fault, Jean-Baptiste," I said. "Truly it wasn't. She of all people was not to blame." I took a deep breath, half leaning against him. "She was eight when Marie Antoinette went to the guillotine, when
her father was arrested for being an aristocrat. Her mother killed herself in front of Aglae. She was eight years old, Jean-Baptiste, when she and her sisters were thrown into prison, in to one of the cattle houses full of every kind of prisoner awaiting the guillotine. Her sisters were four and six." I took a drink of my brandy. "It amused the guards to throw in a basket of boiled potatoes and let the inmates fight for them. And yet she survived, she and her sisters, and in a few weeks one of their mother's friends was arrested and thrown into the same prison with them."
"Joséphine de Beauharnais," Corbineau said.
I nodded. "Her husband had been executed and she was scheduled to die. Separated from her own son and daughter, she took her friend's children under her wing, braiding their hair and picking the lice, caring for them as if they were her own daughters. And then Paul Barras came to her with his devil's bargain. He had wanted her, you see, when she was Vicomtesse de Beauharnais, but she had refused him. Now he had a bargain for her -- to live with him as his mistress, obeying him in all things, and thus escape the blade."
Corbineau refilled his own glass. "A pretty offer," he said sharply.
"But Joséphine drove a bargain with him. Her release, and that of the Auguié girls. The Auguié girls remanded to her custody, and her own children likewise. Barras agreed, and so Joséphine and the five children lived together. When she married General Bonaparte, he took on all five of them, paid the Auguié girls' school tuitions as he did Joséphine's own daughter's, acted as stepfather to them all. Even when times changed, when M. Auguié was released from prison, Aglae stayed with Joséphine as a lady in waiting and companion to her daughter, Hortense, as much Joséphine's daughter as any other. This was the girl the Emperor offered Michel."
I took a long drink, letting the brandy burn down my throat. "I understand why. Joséphine wanted a man who would be kind to Aglae, who would cherish her and who would never frighten her or mistreat her. Someone who would be mindful of her scars and do his best to make her happy. That's Michel, of course. And she liked him, Aglae I mean. I don't think she fell madly in love with him, but that's not how aristocratic marriages are made. She liked him. She thought well of him. And the Emperor…" I took another sip and shrugged. "Well, what better Drypetis? Who dearer than a girl who was practically his daughter?"
Jo Graham - [Numinous World 05] Page 14