Elysium

by Diane Scott Lewis

  “May we prosper,” Amélie whispered as she picked up the dessert plates.

  “They’re a house full of vipers,” she said to Saint-Denis when they entered the preparation area with trays of empty dishes. “Why did these people come here with the emperor when they just want to snipe at one another?”

  “They each want something from His Majesty: money, or the glory of being near him.” The valet winked at her. “I suspect some needed to slip away from disagreeable situations in France.”

  “His Majesty deserves more respect.” Amélie stacked plates together by size. She dipped her finger into the cake platter and tasted the sweet buttery sauce. “Madame de Montholon has little shame.”

  “Do you enjoy being critical like the rest of them?” Her father turned from his tidying up. “You must have picked up some bad habits in Lyon when I wasn’t there to guide you. Now let us finish up here, ma petite.”

  “I see nothing wrong with speaking the truth, Papa.”

  Perrault motioned her out the back door. Amélie snatched up a tray of dishes and carried them across the courtyard. In the kitchen, she rattled the tray down on the table and wondered when someone stopped being petite, and at what point did a father’s guidance become unnecessary?

  She picked up her discarded book, Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. It disappointed her that the author still touted marriage as the ultimate goal. From father to husband seemed a woman’s fate.

  The book set aside, she snatched up her water can and walked out to the courtyard. A rat nibbled at her plants. She stomped her foot to chase it off. The plants looked wilted, even after she broke up crates and anchored them with rocks to shield them from the elements. The breeze ruffling through their leaves brought a damp, earthy smell that made her smile. What kind of herb potions could she prepare to cure the ills of this household?

  At the barrel near the kitchen wall, Amélie dipped her can in the murky water. Chinese laborers hauled their water in used wine casks from a stream a mile off. It smelled foul.

  Bent to her garden, she trickled water over the plants. Her fingers working the moist dirt, she rummaged through her memory for a showy opera song. She had attended several operas in Lyon. When living with her brother and his family, she’d discovered her sister-in-law had been a frustrated opera singer before her marriage. Suzanne took Amélie to the cheap seats at the opera matinees and insisted that she had sung far better than the performer on stage, but she begged her not to tell Théo, as it wasn’t considered proper in decent society. Suzanne urged her to sing along at home when she played diva, Théo away in his bakery. Amélie never thought her voice added much to the harmony, but Saint-Denis praised her singing.

  The emperor enjoyed hearing girls sing? She cleared her throat, intending to practice here in the wind. She’d call to Odysseus with the haunting, determined voice of the Sirens.

  Chapter Five

  A new Prometheus, I am nailed to a rock to be gnawed by a vulture—N.B.

  The gumwoods’ narrow leaves rattled above, giving sparse dapples of shade as Amélie strolled through. Comprised mainly of skinny gums, she found it ironic that anyone would call these three acres in front of their residence the Park. The islanders named this entire area Long Wood because of these trees, the only ones left on the plain.

  She closed her eyes and tried to remember what it felt like to walk in the beauty of the Tuileries gardens. Footsteps crunching over dead leaves behind her shattered that image. Clarice still followed. Turning, Amélie watched her plod along the dirt path.

  “Why are you tagging after me?” Amélie stopped to pluck a white flower with a dark purple center from one of the few blackwood ebony trees. The petals flew from her hand, their scent piquant, and scattered like snowflakes.

  “I’m so bored with washing laundry and scrubbing chamber pots. I wondered where you were going.” Clarice tugged her spencer jacket around her plump bosom. “I thought a walk would refresh me. I hate this weather. The mornings are freezing, but in the afternoon the heat makes the tar paper in our attic stink.”

  “I hoped to walk down to the Sane Valley. I’d like to look for the herbs I hear grow near the stream, fennel, Jamaica pepper.” Amélie strode on, but allowed Clarice to keep pace beside her. She inhaled the air into her lungs and rubbed a hand across her throat. The thought of the last two months saddened her, since her singing hadn’t attracted Napoleon in the least. She stuffed down her disappointment, wondering how else to lure him. He was obviously a sad man who might benefit from her company—someone who didn’t whine. To give up wasn’t an option she cared for. “The scenery there is supposed to be beautiful.”

  “Will that fussy new governor permit us to go to the valley? I’d rather he let me attend one of the regimental balls at the Deadwood Camp. Merde!” Clarice jumped and Amélie almost tripped over a tree root. She looked up. A huge spider, black with white bars, hung upside down on an orb of web stretched between two trees. The spider drooped low enough for the girls to bump into, and they gave it a wide swath.

  “This island is full of amazing life.” Amélie stepped backwards for a moment to watch, fascinated by the spider’s many legs spinning over the orb like a frantic weaver.

  “This island is horrible. I wish I’d never come here.” Clarice tossed her head and stomped down the trail. “Saint Helena? What’s saintly about this putrid rock?”

  “Saint Helena was discovered by a Portuguese navigator on the birthday of the Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena.” Amélie didn’t know why she bothered to enrich Clarice’s knowledge, but liked to poke at her superior air.

  “You read too much. You get all your experience from books. It doesn’t matter to you not being back home. You might’ve gained a little weight, but you’re still too thin.” Clarice’s smug grin spread out her cheeks even farther. “I could attract plenty of beaux.”

  Amélie slowed, not surprised this rare camaraderie hadn’t lasted. “There are other attractions besides appearance. If you found interests of your own you’d have less time to ridicule.” She did miss home. The busy streets of Lyon and Paris. The bookshops and bustling markets. The luxury of having everything you needed at your fingertips, even if you couldn’t afford most of it. She increased her stride to shake off Clarice. “Living here is for the strong, a challenge to survive.”

  “I have no time for challenges or interests with all my duties. The courtiers complain about everything we do in the house. As if they act any better.” Clarice’s strident tone changed to conspiratorial as she kept up. “The Countess de Montholon is wanton with the emperor, and her husband doesn’t seem to care.”

  “It is just a flirtation?” Amélie tensed and slowed again, irritated at her curiosity.

  “She’s the emperor’s mistress, everyone knows it. She was married twice before, divorced for cheating, and pregnant with the count’s child when they married. Of course, His Majesty has always had affairs. My mother was Empress Josephine’s chambermaid, and the poor woman wept from his whoring.”

  Amélie’s heart lurched and she walked faster, stirring up dry leaves, the smell of decay, to be tossed by the wind. Their emperor’s liaisons were legendary, but she didn’t wish to hear about them. Why couldn’t one woman satisfy him? What was this enticement of the flesh besides the vague whispers that naïve girls shared?

  “After the empress’s death, we joined the emperor on Elba. Even when His Majesty waited for the Austrian there, he wasn’t without a woman.” Clarice grinned and shifted in her dress as if she knew every carnal secret since birth.

  Amélie hid her envy at Clarice’s long proximity to Napoleon, but Madame Cloubert might have been the reason Empress Josephine had suffered from migraines.

  They neared the Park’s end. A flock of gaunt sheep with broad tails bleated from a field in the distance. Diana’s Peak, the island’s h
ighest mountain, loomed to the west shrouded in fog.

  A sheet of paper nailed to one of the last tree trunks flapped in the breeze. Amélie ripped it down, glaring at the English words, but she knew what was written. “It’s those directives warning the island inhabitants not to speak to us, nor offer us any kindness. We can’t even shop in Jamestown anymore because the shopkeepers are forbidden to sell to us.”

  “You’re in trouble now,” Clarice whispered with a snicker.

  “Put that back, missy!” A sentry stalked toward them. He snatched the paper from Amélie’s hands. “I could arrest you for damaging British property. Get back to your quarters, both of you. No Frenchie is allowed to leave the road without escorts.”

  Amélie stifled a gasp and stared at her empty fingers; any reply would put her in deeper difficulty. She and Clarice headed toward the road, the sentry glaring after them. Clarice threw him a broad smile and exaggerated the wiggle of her hips.

  “Behave yourself,” Amélie snapped, then halted at the edge of the road. A group of people approached from the direction of Hutt’s Gate. “Attends, there’s the emperor with the new governor.”

  Napoleon strode with the Countess de Montholon and the Count de Las Cases. The governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, who’d arrived the previous month, brought up the rear.

  “That finicky man is the cause of our problems.” Clarice smoothed her hair under her white cap. “He keeps all those soldiers from courting me.”

  “Shhh. His Majesty looks upset.” Amélie studied the emperor’s grim expression, his face pale under his cocked hat. “I wonder what else we’re being forced to submit to.”

  * * * *

  Napoleon stopped and turned around. He struggled to remain calm. “You invade my privacy, open my letters, treat my retinue with disrespect. I can’t receive visitors without your express permission. The soldiers swarm about the house every night. How should I feel under such tyranny?”

  “Sir, I must object. I do want to render your situation agreeable as it’s within my power.” Governor Lowe, a reed-thin man with rusty hair, tightened his lips. “These are my government’s instructions, as I have stated before.”

  “Those were also the instructions of your Admiral Cockburn, but you carry them out fifty times as rigorously!” Napoleon lost his composure and blustered into Lowe’s face. A face that resembled a hyena caught in a trap. His aggravation pricked like needles along his neck and shoulders. “You bring me this edict stating the Allied sovereigns have officially declared me their prisoner. They have no authority to do this in law or fact. It’s cowardice to imprison me in this unhealthy climate. Everything here breathes a mortal boredom and death.”

  “Give me a list of anything you may require. My government is shipping out material for a grander house to be built for you. You will be more comfortable then.” Lowe’s left eyelid twitched.

  “I want nothing like that. I desire no permanent home.” Napoleon threw up his hands. He refused to resign himself to the idea he may never depart this island. Such a notion would drag him into a misery he couldn’t afford. He had to remain confident in his supporters in France, keep his name alive, and reiterate England’s maltreatment. “I can’t even ride as I used to before you arrived. Your Lord Castlereagh sent you here to be my executioner. Mon bourreau!”

  “Not at all, sir. Cockburn was just too lenient with you. From now on the orderly officer, Captain Poppleton, must escort you if you leave this immediate area.”

  “Then I won’t ride anymore with your spies all over me. Only six miles from here to Jamestown and over fifteen posts of sentries. They’re in every hole, behind every rock.” Napoleon stepped away. Two young women watched this degrading exchange. Aware he couldn’t desert the battlefield, his attention snapped back to Lowe. “I flattered myself that because you were an army officer, who witnessed the struggles on the continent, you would behave with propriety towards me, but there’s no talking with you. You don’t know how to command men. You suspect everyone and behave like a warden.”

  “Gentlemen, if I may interject, and I hope I may.” Las Cases put his hands together like a supplicating priest. “This might be just a matter of different temperaments, third party errors. You cannot trust minions to handle such matters. If we start over and tried again, I—”

  “You held back a book meant for me, simply because it was addressed to the emperor. You British refuse to recognize my title, when I was anointed by the Pope himself!” Napoleon marched back toward Lowe, picturing him as something sticky to scuff from the bottom of his shoe. He needed such images to douse the fury that burned up his throat. “You told Bertrand you think it’s insufferable that I wish to be treated as an emperor.”

  “British Parliament has laid down our terms and…and Lord Bathurst’s dictates will be followed to the letter.” Lowe trembled before him—just the reaction Napoleon hoped for. “I do not abuse my power here, as your General Bertrand had the audacity to charge me with.”

  “Bah! You’re a man who cannot be trusted!” Napoleon glared, intending his fierce gaze to bore through this petty official. “I am not General Bonaparte for you, sir. You have no more right than any other person on Earth to take from me the qualifications that are mine! In a few years your Lord Bathurst, Lord Castlereagh, and you will be buried in oblivion, or you’ll only be known by the indignities you have committed against me.”

  “I won’t stand here and suffer these rude outbursts and insults, this attack on my character.” Lowe’s skin stretched tight on angular cheeks, his eyes bulging from their narrow sockets. “Slander is the last resort when other weapons fail. Good day, sir!” He whirled about and strode off toward Hutt’s Gate, his red coat slapping in the wind.

  “I must never speak with that man again,” Napoleon said to Las Cases as they walked toward the house. He massaged the ache from the back of his neck. “He forces me to lose my temper and he makes me forget myself. It isn’t a proper show before my jailers.” He couldn’t allow such public humiliation. All that remained was his tenuous self-respect.

  Las Cases flicked his fingers at the two girls still standing close, motioning them away. The countess glowered at them before smiling for Napoleon, but he was in no mood for her coquettishness. To salvage his dignity, he nodded as the girls dropped into curtsies. The blond one looked familiar, and they at least thought of him as their emperor.

  * * * *

  Amélie concentrated on rubbing basil leaves into a bowl on the kitchen table. “Let me prepare a tea with this for His Majesty. Basil tea is supposed to chase away sorrow and make men merry.” She placed a pot of water over the fire on the stove, the warmth chasing away the morning’s chill, their autumn in March. Her twentieth birthday was only days away.

  Marchand looked at her with a kind smile after setting down the emperor’s breakfast tray. “I’m sure you have good intentions, but our emperor doesn’t take well to doctoring.”

  “I’m afraid I need the doctoring.” Chef Gascon dragged into the kitchen and slumped at the little table. He removed a cloth from a pan of dough and poked at it.

  “I pity His Majesty with this new governor. We’re all tormented by his restrictions, and verbal weapons are all we have left.” Amélie identified with Napoleon about being shoved into an ill-fitting role. Her heart had thumped at his every word during the argument. When he nodded, she’d felt a part of his ordeal and not someone pushed to the side.

  “Verbal weapons…that’s true, and if it makes you feel better, I think your father is being a little harsh with you.” Marchand squeezed her shoulder, pulling her from her thoughts.

  “The Count de Las Cases probably complained to him.” Amélie filled her spice jars with the dill and marjoram she’d already dried and ground. The sharp smell made her stifle a sneeze.

  “I think it might have been the countess.” The valet glanced away from her.

/>   “Vraiment?” Her resentment toward that woman festered. “Now I’m not to leave this area. Papa said I needed to mind my own business and stay out of the court’s. I’m a young woman and shouldn’t be treated in this way.”

  Marchand sighed. “The emperor told me to give away his carriage and horse. He won’t ride anymore with an escort. Cockburn allowed him to ride into the Geranium Vale, but Lowe decided, after a previous dispute, that the orderly officer must follow. Then he changed his mind and allowed His Majesty to ride in the valley unescorted. We’re confused about what regulation to follow. I worry about him, but it’s humiliating for His Majesty to have his freedom taken away. Sadly, his and the governor’s personalities clashed on their second meeting.”

  “The governor’s actions have been insulting, but His Majesty can’t afford to be indolent.” Amélie picked at the spice granules in her cuticles, stained red and brown. “Maybe His Majesty should pretend to appease Governor Lowe to make things favorable.”

  “Would you enjoy being peacemaker, Amélie?” Marchand studied her, but not with the gravity she wished for. “That would be unique, a female ambassador to the court of St. James.”

  “I could do no worse than you men.” Men, she fumed, dictated her life, but a woman had betrayed her to her father. “I know His Majesty suffers. I feel so sorry for him, but sometimes diplomacy has to be forced, even when it’s not deserved...yet necessary for survival.”

  “His Majesty has tried that, but some cuts go too deep. You don’t understand the emperor’s pride.” The valet shook his head as if she spoke the impossible. He rocked on his feet, a habit she’d noticed when he was vexed. “Now the emperor wants to sit in his quarters and read, losing interest in events around him.”

  “We’re all losing interest.” Chef Gascon massaged his temples, moving his loose skin about. “This new governor wants to isolate us. As if this island isn’t isolating enough.”