Two Empresses

by Brandy Purdy

  I had wept and clung fiercely to Rose when she came to say good-bye, but she had promised that she would come to visit me at the convent every chance she could. We would have lots of fun, she said, and being a married lady, a vicomtesse no less, and my kin, she could command the Mother Superior to let me out for the day. Rose and I would go shopping, she would help me out of my dreary convent habiliment, dress me up in elegant clothes, and we would ride around Paris in a fine carriage. We would sit and sip cups of chocolate at a sidewalk café and watch the fashionable world pass by, and gentlemen would stop to bow to us and admire our pretty hats and say that we had roses in our cheeks. She would have me to stay with her every Christmas and, when I was old enough, she would take me to balls and the theater. I might even find a beau, a man of fortune and fine figure and features, amongst her husband’s friends.

  Mama reminded me of all this, urging me to see that I had so much to look forward to instead of mourning what I was leaving behind in Martinique.

  That night I dreamed I saw Euphemia David standing over my bed in her scarlet tignon and gown of madras handkerchiefs with big gold hoops in her ears and her snake draped and slithering about her shoulders. She bent to kiss my cheek and whispered in my ear: “In my end is my beginning.” When I awakened I found a charm, a gilded serpent with ruby glass eyes swallowing its own tail, lying upon my pillow.

  I still wasn’t sure that the Queen of the Voodoos wasn’t just a clever charlatan, adept at reading people and probabilities, more physician and mathematician than prophetess, but something made me thread a cord through the golden O of the snake’s body and wear it around my neck alongside the pearl cross my parents had given me.

  * * *

  I never dreamed an ocean voyage could be so dreary. When our ship, the Godspeed, rocked it was more like a cradle lulling a baby to sleep than Neptune’s fury. The waters were so calm and the winds so well behaved that we stayed on course and made the voyage in a swift seven weeks instead of the usual two months or a baneful storm-tossed three. I stood on the deck for hours each day, staring at the placid blue sea, hoping to spy something of interest like a shark’s fin or a school of dolphins cavorting. Sometimes the sailors sought to relieve my boredom with wondrous tales of mermaids and sea serpents and exotic lands they had visited, but when one tried to scare me with stories of pirates and what they would do to a pretty little golden-haired girl like me, Marianne, like a fierce chocolate-skinned giantess, seized him by the throat and threatened to throw him overboard if he ever came near me again.

  I had thought my boredom would surely end when my feet touched French soil at last, but I was woefully mistaken. I soon found there was something else that could be even more tedious and dull than seven maddeningly tranquil weeks spent at sea—nine years in a convent school.

  The Mother Superior had sent the mustachioed Sister Claude to act as my jailer and convey me to prison. She had such a deep, gruff voice and broad shoulders I wondered if it wasn’t really a man hiding beneath that wimple, black veil, and shapeless chin-to-toes black robe. I saw nothing of Paris since Sister Claude insisted that the leather blinds be put down and stay down before the wheels of the carriage even started to turn; the one time she caught me trying to peep she gave my knee such a vicious thump with her fingers it raised a livid bruise that would be aching for weeks afterward.

  I passed the time inventing all sorts of lurid tales about Sister Claude and her mustache. My favorite was that she was a convict who had escaped from prison and met a kindly nun along the road, robbed the Good Samaritan of her habit, and then sought sanctuary in the nearest convent to elude capture. But his greatest vanity was his fine black mustache, so he refused to shave it off; luckily the Mother Superior was so shortsighted she thought it was a rather unfortunately placed birthmark.

  Mother Angélique was nothing like an angel. If I had been charged with naming her I would have chosen something more fitting like Diabolique. I was certain she had a pair of devil horns on the bald head hidden underneath her wimple and veil. We butted heads at once like two goats who couldn’t peacefully occupy the same pen or pasture.

  Her rules were stifling and nonsensical. Whoever heard of taking a bath with your clothes on? And by the light of a single candle positioned far on the opposite side of the room! If God made our bodies why was it a sin to touch or look upon them in the pursuit of cleanliness and good health? Besides, my eyes were no strangers to the human form. In Martinique, the slaves wore very little when they labored in the cane fields and even less when they danced in their voodoo ceremonies and I, and other white plantation children, often swam naked, or nearly so, in the sea. But Mother Angélique said we must mortify, never glorify, the flesh, and I must cleanse my soul of sin.

  I felt like a fool stepping into the tub in the long unbleached linen bathing robe that had been given to me. It tied at my throat and had long, wide sleeves so I could reach in to wash my arms, and ties all down the front that I might open, but only one at a time, to reach in and swiftly bathe the flesh within reach. If we took too long, we were accused of sinful explorations. The nun who sat sentry beside the single candle minded the time we spent over our ablutions and reported any dawdlers to the Mother Superior. These absurd rituals and expectations removed all trace of relaxation from bathing and turned it into a race, to be done as soon as we could to avoid unjust punishment. When the time came to quit the tub, the robe was so weighed down with water I was afraid it would pull me back down to drown, since lifting it to wring it out was also not permitted as that would expose the limbs.

  My classmates were quick to tell me that the Queen of France always bathed in such a garment. But I was not impressed. The Queen was also known to sail through ballrooms with a model of a fully manned battleship on top of her powdered hair straining at its roots to stand three feet off her scalp and to wear skirts with panniers so wide she could not walk through a door without turning sideways. During my time in France I heard Marie Antoinette called many things, but never the quintessence of common sense.

  If one of us fell ill and the doctor was summoned we were not even permitted to disrobe for him. And when we slept we must keep our hands above the covers at all times. One of the sisters sat and watched us in the dormitory all night, and those who disobeyed risked having their wrists bound and spending a sleepless night being prayed over. A natural urge to scratch an itchy calf or thigh was instantly suspect. That was how strict Mother Angélique was about safeguarding our sinful skin.

  I was already beginning to wonder why nuns, who so vigorously despised the body and its natural functions, were chosen to mold young girls into perfect wives. To my mind, it was like hiring a man blind from birth to paint your house both inside and out and giving him free choice of color. I once asked Mother Angélique what we were to do when we became wives, subject to our husbands’ amorous demands and the expectation of procreation. She said we should shut our eyes and pray throughout the ordeal, or think of the blessed fruit that might come of our union nine months later if God willed it. I then asked her what of the midwife. Surely it would be necessary to expose ourselves to her gaze. I doubted whether a baby could be safely delivered in pitch-dark or by the light of a single candle set far across the room. I had my palm split open with a cane and was sent to spend the night in chapel fasting and praying for that impertinence. Mother Angélique said I dwelled overmuch on sinful, and bodily, things and should look to my soul more. But when Marie Antoinette defied convention and scorned a midwife and had a male accoucheur attend her in childbed, the brother of her own chaplain no less, Mother Angélique was scandalized. Her face turned red as flames and she momentarily lost the power of speech. I laughed until I cried. It left me with a new respect for Marie Antoinette; apparently she was not as cowed by etiquette as I at first thought. A fashion-mad flibbertigibbet she might be, but she was also a rule breaker just like me.

  Our daily lessons were such that I feared my mind would be both numb and dumb by the time nine years h
ad passed. We had to learn to curtsy perfectly to personages of various ranks. And to glide as gracefully as an angel across a sea of smooth glass with her head held high while wearing wide, jutting whalebone panniers sticking from our hips on either side, our torsos laced to near rib-cracking tightness in corsets, with a heavy court train trailing six feet behind us, and our hair piled and pinned as high as it could be stretched off our heads.

  Even dancing lessons, which I expected to bring at least a small degree of fun to our otherwise dreary days, were just as trying. Sometimes we spent an entire hour learning to point our toes just so without causing a single ripple in our satin skirts; the fabric must stay as straight and smooth as if it had just been ironed. It was a pointless exercise in futility, I thought. Why should anyone care? Why shouldn’t our clothes move with us as we danced?

  Our poor brains were constantly bombarded with such thorny quandaries as: If the Pope and all the ruling families of France, England, Russia, Germany, and Italy did us the honor of dining at our table on the same night how should they be seated so as to avoid giving offense to any of our august guests? When I asked Mother Angélique why she did not also include the Emperor of China and the Sultan of Turkey, she said they were heathens and not deserving of a seat at a Christian table, and I was exiled to chapel with a smarting palm to reflect upon, and, it was hoped, repent, my impertinence again. The same question was endlessly reshuffled with various dukes and duchesses, comtes and comtesses, princes and princesses, vicomtes and vicomtesses, marquis and marquises, and visiting ambassadors and assorted dignitaries and churchmen thrown into the mix. Another variation ran: If the princess of such and such was about to hand Her Majesty her gloves and the princess of so and so walked in should the first princess step aside in favor of the second?

  I honestly could not have cared less. I just wanted to go home and forget all the ceremonial garnish and pointless fussiness that attended life in France. It was not to my liking; I preferred a more commonsensical approach to living. When I thought of my future, I saw myself as a happy and contented plantation wife, concerned only with my husband, our children, and running my household, socializing with our neighbors and relatives, not handing the Queen of France her gloves or the Pope a finger bowl filled with rosewater. In Martinique we took our clothes off when we bathed, and when we danced it was for fun, and a wrinkle in her satin skirt as she pointed her toe was the last thing on a woman’s mind.

  * * *

  Honesty behooves me to admit there were some lessons I enjoyed, like the intricate embroidery and practical sewing that allowed me to create beautiful things with my own hands. To ease as well as express my homesickness, I embroidered the flora and fauna of my homeland: bunches of yellow bananas and gilt-thread pineapples on an apple-green skirt; flocks of tropical birds spreading their wings and flying across a turquoise gown; vines of honeysuckle twisting and twining all over a dress of virgin’s-blush pink. I even embroidered the dreaded fer-de-lance coiled around the hem of a nutbrown gown. I enjoyed music as well; I learned to play the harpsichord and to sing. And I liked to read, though I preferred to choose my own books rather than the endless tomes of etiquette and saints’ lives and bland but pretty poetry that the nuns assigned. I liked to lose myself in tales of romance, adventure, history, and fabulous journeys to far-off, exotic lands.

  I thought often of Rose and looked forward to her letters even though they were full of excuses about why she could not come to see me and grew fewer and briefer as the years passed until they stopped altogether. I longed to see her, but I was not one to beg, and I feared an outright request, or a forthright reminder of all the promises she had made, would stop her letters completely.

  Girls who had family to go home to on holidays, or for special occasions, told me that the true story of the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Beauharnais was far from the happy romance Rose recounted in her letters. Their union was sorely troubled, Alexandre was certainly untrue, and perhaps Rose was too. They eventually separated and rumors of immorality continued to dog Rose. Some of the bolder girls said she had become a courtesan, selling her favors to any man who was willing to support her.

  It made me very sad. I remembered with what happiness and high hopes Rose had set sail for France. She had been so eager and excited and had left Martinique with the spirit of a conqueror, determined that within a year she would be the toast of Paris. Now it seemed, if gossip could be believed, that all her dreams had turned to ashes. I prayed that she would rise, like a phoenix, from them. I didn’t like to think of Rose defeated, knocked and beaten down by life and her own perfidious husband.

  I wish she hadn’t stopped writing, and even more that she had come to see me and let me be her friend again. Though I had often tried to fetter it with common sense, she had the freest spirit I had ever known, and a part of me always secretly admired her and wished I could be more like her. Perhaps she felt the seven years between us more in sophisticated Paris than she did in Martinique? And if we met it would be awkward, she would be a grown woman with children, and I a little girl still, and we would have nothing to say to each other. But in my heart I think Rose feared most that I would judge her, or the image of herself she would see reflected back at her when she looked in my eyes.

  Whatever you have become, whatever you have done, I still love you and remember you fondly, I wanted to write to her. It is one of the great regrets of my life that I never did. But with only gossip to guide me, and no actual knowledge, I feared my words would seem like a presumption of her guilt. I didn’t want to make Rose cry, I loved her too much, so I let the silence between us remain unbroken.

  CHAPTER 15

  As I approached eighteen I was more eager than ever to go home. I sat for a portrait painter, Monsieur Frobisuer, and had miniatures painted for Papa and Mama and my little sister Marthe, to show them how grown-up I was. The artist made me look like a porcelain doll but somehow also managed to convey maturity; a certain frankness, and just a hint of mischief, in my blue eyes.

  As he plied his brushes and applied his paints, he shamelessly flirted with and flattered me. He said my skin was like the finest Sèvres porcelain painted with pink roses, my mouth was a pink rosebud, my eyes perfectly matched sapphires, neither too pallid nor too dark, and my hair like spun gold.

  I wore a sapphire-blue silk gown to complement my eyes, and my golden hair caught up loosely with a band of matching blue silk and white flowers, with long curls cascading down my back, and one over my shoulder, like a finger pointing down, indicating my now womanly bosom framed by deep ruffles of white lace. I was so eager for them to see that I was not a little girl anymore. I wanted to go home!

  * * *

  Paris conspired with me to make my dreams come true. There was so much unrest in the city. The King and especially the Queen were more unpopular than ever. All those with aristocratic blood were reviled, and as the days passed the poor seemed to hunger for blood as well as bread. There was much talk of the war the Americans had fought to free themselves from “the yoke of British tyranny,” and the word revolution was heard with increasing frequency in Paris. These men who made speeches on street corners and in coffeehouses wanted to pull the King and Queen down from their thrones and erect a democracy in place of the monarchy. They wanted to create a new world where liberty, equality, and freedom held sway and no man was better than his neighbor.

  The situation seemed to me to be like a coin, with two sides, one idealistic romance, the other violent bloodbath. It was an exciting time to be alive and in Paris, to see a new world being born, but it was also very dangerous and frightening. I could not help but feel sorry for King Louis. He seemed like such a gentle soul, a shy fat man, lost without his spectacles, who would far rather have been a locksmith or a clock-maker than a king, but Fate had decreed that he play that role. And I thought his giddy butterfly wife more sinned against than sinner; she reminded me in some ways of Rose. I hoped neither the King nor the Queen would be harmed. If they must step down from t
heir thrones, I hoped they would be allowed to live out the rest of their lives peacefully in comfort and unmolested.

  Mama and Papa heard the news from France and were frightened too. They had always tried to shelter me from the evil of the world; now I was right in the middle of this maelstrom. They were afraid something terrible might happen to me. The convent was filled with girls from the best aristocratic families in France and Mama began to suffer blood-drenched dreams of an angry mob making us the target of their vengeance. She saw such terrible things in her sleep she could not bear to put them down on paper for fear it might make them come true.

  * * *

  A passage was swiftly booked for me on the next ship bound for Martinique, a sturdy but swift little vessel named Lazarus.

  I all but danced through my last remaining days at the convent. I was going home! I sang the old island song of farewell, “Adieu Madras, Adieu Foulards!” as I helped my old da, Marianne, pack my things. I kept stopping to smile and reach out and squeeze her hand. “We are going home, Marianne, home!”

  I could not wait to see Papa and Mama and my home, La Trinité, again. I could see it shining white in the sun; I wanted to run to it and fling open the doors and throw myself into my parents’ loving arms. I wondered if little Marthe would even remember me. And Euphemia David. I clutched the serpent charm I wore alongside my pearl cross; I wondered if she was still alive, as feared and powerful as ever.

  At last everything was ready. My trunks were already aboard the Lazarus. I was leaving with so many beautiful things. I had a gold-tasseled pink taffeta ball gown, with yards of billowing skirts and panniers to support them, packed safely in its own trunk with sachets of lavender and rose petals. I would wear it to the ball Papa and Mama would give to welcome me home and introduce me to the sons of the neighboring plantations amongst whom I was sure to find a beau and, eventually, a husband. I had three more trunks filled with beautiful satins, silk, velvets, and laces that would, in time, form my trousseau, and all the things I had made, embroidered with my memories of Martinique, including gifts for all my family. I could not wait to show them to Mama; I was certain she would be proud of me and see my love for my island home in every stitch and make sure I never had to leave it again. And I had a big box full of books to occupy me on the journey, including Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which I had by then read several times.