Two Empresses

by Brandy Purdy

  Bonaparte had tried to appease his sisters by giving them each a diamond diadem and trainbearers of their own to follow behind them, but nothing could mollify their hate. As I approached the altar, where Bonaparte awaited me, and my foot rose to ascend the first step, they threw my train down in disgust. “Shift for yourself, old woman!” I heard a venomous whisper behind me; I’m certain it was Pauline. I staggered, praying that I would not disgrace myself by falling as my arms flailed and I fought to steady myself as I felt myself being pulled backward by my train’s weight. Fortunately, Bonaparte saw and gave his sisters such a stern, admonishing stare that they paled beneath their rouge and hurried to pick it up again.

  Our two crowns sat glittering upon the altar. Pope Pius blessed them as we knelt before him. But when the Holy Father lifted the larger of the two and started to hold it aloft, high above Bonaparte’s head, my husband leapt up and took it from him. Turning around boldly to face the crowd, he defiantly set it upon his own head.

  “He has crowned himself!” That one astonished whisper rippled throughout the vast cathedral and out into the street, being passed from person to person.

  I didn’t dare move. I remained as I was, kneeling, hands clasped in a prayerful attitude at my husband’s feet. Bonaparte betrayed no sign that he was even aware of the sensation his audacious act had caused and brazenly brushed past the Pope and took the other crown from the altar. He held it high in the air, then lowered it and set it gently upon my head, within the diamond circle of my diadem.

  “No one else could ever wear a crown with more grace,” he whispered.

  But I could take no pleasure in the compliment; there was something about his voice that told me that he was already thinking about the next woman who would wear it after I was gone.

  It was done. I was now an empress, exactly as Euphemia David had foretold when I was fourteen years old. But for how long? I couldn’t escape the silent, frightened whisper ricocheting inside my head like a poor, scared little bird trapped and unable to find its way out. I was so afraid I burst into tears.

  Everyone thought I was overjoyed and overwhelmed by the honor my husband had just bestowed upon me. Only I knew the truth; I felt it all slipping through my fingers like water and I was powerless to hold on to it. Everything is lost! a little voice in the back of my head whispered as I watched my husband waver, like a dream about to disappear, through the thick veil of my tears.

  Put me back up on my pedestal; let me be your goddess again! I stared up at him with beseeching eyes. I will be worthy of the honor this time!

  I reached out and caught the hem of his white satin robe and raised it to my lips. The gold embroidery was rough and scratched my lips as I whispered, “I love you.” For the first time in my life, I actually meant it. But it was too late. Bonaparte didn’t even look down at me. He was looking forward to the future . . . a future that I would not be a part of. His love, like everything else, had fallen through my fingers.

  CHAPTER 30

  Conquered nations, like enemies, seldom lie docile and silent for long. The Austrians had joined Russia in an alliance with Britain against Bonaparte. Of course, he was determined to quash them all.

  “Rest easy,” he said when he left my bed at four o’clock in the morning, ignoring my tears as I clung to him and begged him to take me with him, “I promise you the shortest and most brilliant of campaigns.”

  So I was left alone, “Our Lady of Victories” again, visiting hospitals, giving comfort where I could, and letting the people see me kneeling in Notre Dame, praying for my husband and his men, all of whom were some woman’s husband, beloved, or brother, and some mother’s son. When I grew restless and annoyed Bonaparte with my letters—I was now the one who bombarded him with too many passionate and beseeching words—he ordered me to La Plombières again to take the waters, to rejuvenate my womb in readiness for his return.

  * * *

  There were great victories, the Austrians were again defeated and the Russians retreated, but there were also great losses. After one battle, twenty thousand Frenchmen lay dead covered in blood, mud, and rain. But my husband was happy: What after all are 20,000 lost for a great battle? He was now the most hated and feared man in Europe. When he conquered Vienna, he took up residence in Schönbrunn Palace and toyed with the idea of marrying a Hapsburg archduchess, as they were renowned for their fertility. It didn’t bother him at all that they thought him “The Beast of the Apocalypse”; he was more concerned that the memory of Marie Antoinette is too recent and marriage to one of her nieces might worry and provoke the French people.

  * * *

  Back in Paris after another fruitless and miserable stay at La Plombières, I was consumed by loneliness and despair. Both my children, my truest allies, were separated from me. When he was carving up Europe, doling out crowns and thrones amongst his family, Bonaparte did not neglect his stepchildren. Unhappy Hortense became the most wretched Queen of Holland and Eugène was married to the pretty young daughter of the Elector of Bavaria; luckily, the match proved a happy one that soon ripened into true love.

  You must be brave and remember that you are an Empress, Bonaparte scolded when I bewailed their absence. You should have more fortitude and confidence, you must be cheerful and amuse yourself. He was busy with his army and had no time or patience for my tears and fears.

  I slept poorly, tormented by strange recurring dreams in which I saw a fair-haired angel holding up a bouquet of flowers. I was terrified of what it might mean, but Bonaparte scoffed at my superstitious fancies and preened, delighted by my jealousy. The winter nights are long, all alone, I hinted, but he refused to let me come to him; Paris needed “Our Lady of Victories” more than he did.

  Be worthy of me, he commanded, show more character; I don’t like cowards.

  As the Prussians joined forces with the Russians and Bonaparte marched through frozen Poland, determined to crush them, my greatest fear came true at last—my husband found a flesh-and-blood woman who could rival the dream of Josephine.

  * * *

  The Polish people looked upon Bonaparte as their savior. They turned to him with hope, not fear, in their eyes. Above all else they wanted their freedom from Russia, and Bonaparte had the power to break those shackles. The people sang and danced in the streets of Warsaw to welcome him. Women ran out to minister to the wounded and to offer them food and hospitality.

  As he rode through a sea of hopeful faces, hands reaching up reverently to touch his boots and legs, Bonaparte noticed a young woman with long, flowing flaxen hair. In her white dress she looked as beautiful as an angel. Fearlessly she approached my husband and handed him a bouquet of flowers.

  “We have been waiting for you to save us,” she said matter-of-factly, without a trace of awe or fear in her voice.

  When he looked into her blue eyes, Bonaparte fell deep in love, so deep he thought he would drown if he did not possess her.

  But this flesh-and-blood angel was a virtuous woman. She acted bored instead of honored when he asked her to dance at a ball that night where she appeared again all in white. It nearly drove my husband mad. He was wild to win her. He could not sleep for thinking about her.

  I saw no one but you, I admired only you; I want no one but you. He rose from his restless bed to write to her, sending along a ruby and diamond necklace in a red leather case to accompany his letter. Both were promptly returned without a word in answer.

  The next night he sent flowers. Your country will be dearer to me when you take pity on my poor heart, he declared, adding a warning: Whenever I have thought a thing impossible to obtain I have desired it all the more. Nothing discourages me!

  Devoted to her country, her seventy-two-year-old husband, and their little son, the Countess Maria Walewska possessed a wisdom and gravity far beyond her nineteen years. When her husband and a group of Polish patriots came to her and said the lives and freedom of all her countrymen depended on her surrender, she resigned herself to making the necessary sacrif
ice, though in private she wept in her husband’s arms at the thought of betraying him. But it was for the good of Poland, he reminded her, so she dried her tears, summoned up every ounce of courage she possessed, and in her pure white nightgown and unbound hair she went, like a lamb going to slaughter, to Bonaparte’s bed. What she didn’t reckon on was falling in love there.

  She was ethereally beautiful yet practical as a bourgeois shopkeeper; a young woman with an old soul, who spoke fluent French and was well versed in history and geography; she dressed elegantly, danced and walked gracefully, and was a talented singer and musician; she was the perfect chatelaine of her husband’s vast estates, a dutiful and devoted wife and loving mother with an unexpectedly sensual nature that had been slumbering dormant until Bonaparte woke it up. Maria Walewska set my husband’s soul on fire. She was everything I wasn’t and should have been. She made all my flaws stand out stark naked against the brilliant, blinding light of day and made Bonaparte question how he could ever have fallen in love with me in the first place.

  As the long-forgotten Bellilotte Fourès had been “Napoleon’s Cleopatra,” Maria Walewska became “Napoleon’s Polish Wife.” He took her everywhere. She tended to his every need like the most devoted wife, equally at home in an army tent as she was in a palace. She listened to his worries, nursed his bellyaches and migraines, delighted him in bed, and evinced a genuine interest in his campaigns. And when she became pregnant she delighted him even more—here, at long last, was clear and certain proof that Bonaparte was not sterile; the barrenness that had afflicted our marriage was no one’s fault but mine.

  It was disastrous timing. No sooner had Maria Walewska conceived than Hortense lost her son to a virulent attack of measles. Bonaparte was again without an heir, but not without hope. His “Polish Wife” had given him that.

  * * *

  In Paris, Bonaparte’s popularity was floundering, army bulletins were greeted with boos instead of hurrahs, and the people were beginning to question and even curse their emperor. Even their reaction to victories was now lukewarm in the face of so many fatalities. When the lists of the fallen were read it was hard to tell which was greater, the outrage or the tears. Men fled the draft in terror, willfully maiming and mutilating themselves or contracting syphilis rather than join La Grande Armée. Families conspired to conceal dodgers and deserters rather than sacrifice their sons to Bonaparte’s overweening vanity. Even the court sat around looking tired and downcast.

  I was constantly close to tears and fraught with worry; I gnawed my nails and slept poorly. I knew that the end was coming. The court was constantly unkind to me. I hated my life and longed as I never thought possible for the peaceful, easy pace of the life I had shunned and left behind me in Martinique. Not even a new suitor could make me smile.

  The brother of the Queen of Prussia, kind, handsome, and so very sweet, Crown Prince Frederick of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was madly in love with me. Though he was a widower and prematurely silver haired, he was fifteen years younger than me. He didn’t care, but I did. I had grown timid in my forties and I was too afraid to let love in, and even more afraid of offending Bonaparte and giving him fresh cause to doubt me. He was livid and cursed me to the ends of the earth when he heard that I had been seen at the theater with Prince Frederick. My only defense, I wrote sadly to my son, is to lead a perfectly blameless life. I no longer go out. I have no pleasures. How unhappy do thrones make people, my dear Eugène! I would resign mine tomorrow without a moment’s regret! For me the love of the Emperor is everything; I resign myself to Providence and his will. So I sacrificed what might have been my last chance at happiness, God opening a window after closing a door, and sent Frederick away.

  Life in the gilded, stifling splendor of our imperial court now reminded me of the days I had spent in the prison of Les Carmes where everyone sat wary and tense each evening waiting to see if their names would appear on the list for tomorrow’s executions. We were all waiting now—waiting to see who would come after me; waiting for Destiny to write the last page of the story; waiting to see how it would all end.

  Crafty as ever, Bonaparte decided the time was right to make peace with Russia. He met Tsar Alexander on a raft in the middle of the Niemen River. They discovered that they had one thing in common; they both hated the British, and that was enough for them to swiftly reach an armistice. And there was something else to consider: The Tsar had a pretty and intelligent sister, the Grand Duchess Catherine, and Bonaparte fancied that she would make the perfect royal wife, though he was still mulling over an Austrian archduchess; the Hapsburgs’ famous fertility was impossible to ignore—the Empress Maria Theresa had borne sixteen children.

  CHAPTER 31

  Bonaparte came back to me colder than ever before. He brought his Polish countess with him and installed her in a house conveniently near the Tuileries. He visited her every day and often late at night. Sometimes they went out together disguised as a middle-class married couple and made small talk with shopkeepers. They had been seen several times sitting in the park eating roasted chestnuts or sausages they bought from a street vendor. When the Sultan of Turkey sent lavish gifts, Bonaparte took them to Maria Walewska first and let her take her pick of them. To her credit, she considered this inappropriate and, after selecting one cashmere shawl—the most modest one—for herself to quiet his protests, insisted that the rest be sent to me directly.

  It amused Bonaparte that Turkey had a new sultan and sultana, crowned almost at the same time as ourselves, though it was the Sultan’s mother, not one of his numerous wives, who ruled alongside him as his empress. The Turkish ambassador presented me with a portrait of her. She looked to be younger than me, with masses of golden hair, hanging down in shimmering waves, scattered with diamonds, reaching almost to her knees. How curious, I thought. I had always imagined harem girls as exotic creatures with dusky skin, black hair, and dark, almond-shaped eyes, but this woman’s skin was white, it looked as though it had never known the kiss of the sun, and her eyes were blue as the finest sapphires. Her stance was proud and there was a mysterious yet almost mischievous air about her, like she alone knew a secret, and was savoring it, laughing at the rest of the world’s ignorance. Her headdress reminded me of the island women’s tignons; it was a rich blue-green satin crowned with peacock feathers held by a brooch of sapphires and emeralds, and diaphanous veils, layered in shades of blue and green, deep and pale, trailed down her back, to touch the floor. Her gown seemed to be of the same resplendent peacock color, but it was so thickly encrusted with gold embroidery I could barely see the teasing wink of blue-green beneath. The full skirt was slit open to reveal a pair of baggy satin trousers that were gathered in at the ankles, and golden slippers with toes that curled up and in upon themselves. At her waist was a jeweled dagger, its crescent-shaped blade sheathed in a golden scabbard covered with a rainbow of cabochon rubies, sapphires, and emeralds interspersed with tiny, twinkling diamond brilliants. A great yellow diamond, with rays made of smaller white stones, shone like the sun above her bodice. A long necklace of white diamonds, set in the shape of eyes, with irises of various-colored gems, hung around her neck and down past her waist, a talisman I recognized to ward off the evil eye. An immense cabochon sapphire was on the ring finger of her left hand, and her arms, folded across her breasts, were layered in jeweled bracelets all shaped like serpents swallowing their own tails, no end and no beginning. It made me think at once of Euphemia David and her snake; she was said to have had a tattoo of the same motif on the small of her back, though I never saw it. Of course when I thought of Euphemia David I also thought of Aimee and our secret midnight visit to have our fortunes told. But poor Aimee was dead now, bleached white bones at the bottom of the sea, and I, though an empress as Euphemia David foretold, wasn’t any happier. I wondered if the Sultana of the Turks beneath all her splendor was truly a happy woman. I doubted it; happiness I was certain never accompanied crowns.

  For the time being, Bonaparte’s “Polish Wife” wa
s the happy one. But he would betray her too in the end. When there were rumblings about vengeance from Austria, Bonaparte struck a bargain with the Tsar—France would not interfere if Russia invaded Finland or Turkey and the Tsar could do as he pleased with Poland; it was a matter of complete indifference to Bonaparte.

  Maria Walewska’s sacrifice had been in vain. After the birth of her son, Florian, she went back to her husband. He still loved her. He absolved her of all blame and shouldered the burden himself. He had been amongst the party of patriots who had pushed her into Bonaparte’s bed in the hope of liberating Poland; she had not succumbed of her own free will. Count Walewski acknowledged my husband’s bastard as his own and gave him his name. He truly was a noble man.

  * * *

  At thirty-eight, my husband was more impatient than ever to lay the foundation for his imperial dynasty. For that he needed a royal wife and a legitimate heir. Neither my barren self nor his fertile “Polish Wife” would do; we both lacked the necessary pedigree. Though his brother Louis had shown a rare and unexpected kindness to Hortense after they lost their firstborn and she had quickly conceived again, another son, this time Bonaparte was unwilling to consider any heir except one sired by his own loins in a royal womb. He knew that he could do it now; I was the one who had held him back from the happy state of fatherhood. It was all my fault. So I had to go; I had to clear the path to make way for the woman who could make all his dreams come true.

  After Mass one Sunday Bonaparte hinted that it was time for me to make “the inevitable sacrifice.”

  Stubbornly, I shook my head. I played the only card I had left—Bonaparte’s steadfast belief in destiny.

  I touched the medallion engraved with the words To Destiny! that still hung between my breasts like a talisman.