Napoleon: The Escape (Kindle Single)

by Jan Needle

  Madame pulled down her clothing delicately. She was ever ladylike.

  ‘That surprises me, chérie,’ she said. ‘I understood one died in agony.’ She tittered. ‘Perhaps it is not the poison we require after all!’

  ‘It depends on what you want the most, I suppose. A fitting punishment for Napoleon, or to bring it off without suspicion. I have no doubt what my choice would be.’

  They talked it over many times, and each time they talked with more serious intent. At first it may have been a joke, a pleasantry at least. But Madame de Montholon convinced herself quite easily that she had suffered an egregious wrong. Like Joséphine had been, she was a lover of the highest skill. And she was prettier than Joséphine, even Napoleon (under pressure) admitted that.

  O’Meara, though, was not a poisons man, which is to say it was not his expertise. He was loath to ask around the island, for the most obvious of reasons. To have a secret on this tedious little rock was virtually impossible. And however popular the idea of killing “the Emperor” might be in principle, anyone going into details would be holding up a red rag to the bull of gossip. O’Meara read the books, searched the meagre library in James Town, and went back to his Dublin student days. And to experiment.

  Thus it came about that one of Madame’s best maids, a slave called Eleanor Dias, sadly died from an ‘inflammation of the bowels.’ Two more servants mysteriously became ill, but after both survived, the daughter of another slave expired in appalling agony. O’Meara refined his studying.

  When Cipriani, waiting at table in the main hall of Longwood House, fell to the floor clutching his stomach and howling like an animal in a trap, O’Meara moved swiftly to point out he had been complaining of a bellyache for several days before he had collapsed. There was, he added, ‘a lot of it about.’

  The man fell ill on Monday and died on Friday, so the doctor’s final diagnosis was “corruption of the intestines, rapid”. He told the governor formally in his report, ‘Liver complaints, dysentery, and inflammation of the bowels carry off many victims amongst the natives, as you know, sir, but more especially among the Europeans.’

  Most tragically, Madame de Montholon’s new baby died two days later, but fortunately while under the care of a wet nurse in the town. For the doctor and his lover, suspicions of complicity in the mysterious outbreaks of deadly illness were thus easier to rebut. But Albine did not escape unscathed.

  Like so many men before him, Barry O’Meara dropped her like a red-hot brick — to be comforted by her hapless husband. Who was then, inevitably, tarred with the same brush. De Montholon became “fundamentally a pervert, and the greatest criminal genius of all time”, and as a couple they were “infernal”, “diabolical”, and a “couple of perverts.” St Helena was a very small society.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On the American side of the South Atlantic, talk of the coming rendezvous was the main business on board of Thomas Cochrane’s frigate, the O’Higgins. He and Cockburn had different opinions on the best way to get men ashore on St Helena, but they agreed it should be left until they met with Johnson and the English brig before they made the final plan.

  ‘This Captain Armstrong,’ Cockburn asked, ‘do you trust him? I think that he is honest, but how about his navigation? It is a rather tiny spot upon a mighty ocean where we are to link with him.’

  The Sea Wolf laughed.

  ‘He was many years with the East India. The trackless wastes between Blackwall and Pondicherry, including Cape Town and St Helena itself, will be as familiar as Ratcliffe Highway to him. I expect his brig could sniff her way to James Town without human agency, in extremis.’

  ‘Many years employed by them, but then he gets his papers,’ Cockburn replied. ‘If he’s so excellent, why’s he on the beach?’

  It was a pointless question, and they both knew it. When trade was bad, even the best must fall. Armstrong’s vessel was as tight and smart as paint.

  ‘And Tom Johnson is no one’s lost soul neither,’ Cochrane said. ‘To him a trackless waste is just a challenge. Do you want to wager on it?’

  It was agreed, in the end, that Cockburn would leave the frigate, and set off on his own account. They had a Yankee schooner in the convoy, built by the New England shipwrights who had proved their worth in the late war. She was fast and handy, drew little water, and could go to windward like a dream.

  ‘I will take it very bad in you, however,’ said Lord Cochrane, ‘if you reach the island rendezvous too far before me and decide to go off on some venture of your own. Bernardo O’Higgins has sunk much into this, and intends Napoleon as the emperor of South America. His brother Joseph lives in the North with thirty millions of francs at least, calls himself the King of Spain, and still hopes, apparently, to see his family rule the world.’

  Cockburn merely smiled and kept his counsel. He it was who had burned down the White House fighting the rebels of the Thirteen Colonies, and he kept a finger now in every pie. They parted, and took separate tracks to St Helena. Neither of them, had they been truly honest, was certain what exactly they would do.

  On Armstrong’s Tamarind, tensions were rising as they approached the rendezvous, that had little to do with rescuing Napoleon. Lucy Balcombe, dogged with ocean sickness as she had never been before, was wild with worry concerning baby Jules. It seemed to her that he was getting weaker, it seemed to her he was refusing to put on weight. She and Eliza fussed and coddled, fed and tickled, almost smothered him with love. And all the time there was the problem of Ledru.

  The Frenchman, since transferring from the submarine, had made it very clear that Lucy — whom he called Betsy for reasons of his own — was the object of deep longing. He had stopped speaking English to everyone on board save her, and, indifferent to what others thought, he dressed up in his Paris best, attempted to feed her titbits at the table, and leered and mowed and tried to touch her, however hard she fought against it.

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ he told her, cornered one afternoon upon the sunny deck, ‘this island is full of secrets known to only you and I. You need me there for your survival. M’selle Betsy, I will protect you. I am the only one.’

  Lucy, in her years on St Helena, had mainly seen him as a shadow of Napoleon, a blackmailer and schemer. She knew him as a spy, but a spy whose eyes were bright with lust. A spy who disappeared from time to time, went back to Europe, it was said. Which, of course, could not have happened. None of the French, officially, could ever leave.

  At one stage, sick with worry over Jules, angry with these never-ending attentions on the sunny, rolling sea, Lucy had snapped. Ledru had sneaked round the foremast scuttle, and before she could prevent it, had wrapped his arms around her. Worse, three deckhands on the foredeck had seen, and laughed their dirty laughs. Springing back with a cry, Lucy had struck the Frenchman a ringing blow. As he had raised his arm in fury, the sailors had laughed again.

  ‘Go it, Miss!’ they shouted. ‘Show the dirty little crapaud what an English doxy’s made of!’

  Doxy! That made it ten times worse! That common sailors should dare —

  But she turned her rage on him.

  ‘Lord Napoleon, you filthy scum, is my lover and the father of my child. He will have you executed!’

  Ledru pulled back, his anger transformed.

  ‘By now,’ he sneered, ‘he is the father of another’s also. Perhaps his Excellency will do you the honour of arranging a meeting of the brats.’

  Lucy Balcombe looked as if a fist had struck her.

  ‘No.’ She tried to speak, but her breathing failed. ‘No. No. No.’ She gasped, and almost choked. ‘He loves me. He would never … he does not have another child!’

  ‘Zut! You are correct indeed in that, M’selle, not just another one. Charles Léon must be twelve years old by now, to say nothing of Karl Eugin and la petite Hélène, who was born just before you yourself were shipped off back to England in disgrace. Hélène de Montholon they called her. Her name in truth is Bonaparte.’


  ‘Hélène? No, no that cannot be. I have held that child, I have kissed her. She is the daughter of the Marquis. You lie, monsieur, you lie.’

  ‘I tell nothing but the truth, the truth unvarnished. Who knows how many more the great man has fathered? In Egypt there was Pauline de Something-or-the-other, whom he chose to call Cleopatra, he was ever fulsome when it came to naming whores. I can’t even remember what their bye-blow was named. Joséphine, you see, was safe, for she was barren. Her affairs were done to make him jealous.’

  Lucy said faintly, ‘But Joséphine had children. Oh, you beast, you lie.’

  ‘She was tortured by Robespierre. Her life was saved only in the nick of time. After the Terror, she had no more children, it was finished. So Napoleon got no heir by her. And your little Jules won’t be one, will he? My lord remarried, into the royal blood, his Empress Across the Water. You are English, you love irony. It is amusing, is it not? Très marrant.’

  The English deckhands were moving in on them, for Lucy was visibly near collapse. Ledru, as was his way, slipped into obscurity, faded. Leaving her to tears.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Captain Armstrong was told of these problems by Eliza, but they came as no surprise to him. From the moment the assassin had joined them from the Eagle he had expected trouble, of whatever kind. The Frenchman seemed to trail a cloud with him, and he was hated by both afterguard and crew. Samson had watched the strange happenings from his position at the con, and went below the moment his wife sent him a message.

  All others had been cleared from the saloon, and Lucy was sitting in an armchair with the baby bundled on her bosom. The child, as ever, was pale and listless, not crying as a healthy child would do. His mother was weeping noisily, her throat and body racked by sobs.

  ‘It is Ledru, husband,’ Eliza told him. ‘I think he intends to do Lucy some harm. He taunts her with island secrets she won’t tell me, but I think his aim is clear. I want you to lock the man in irons. I am certain he plans violation.’

  Armstrong shook his head.

  ‘I cannot do that, Mrs Armstrong. He is on this expedition lawfully. He has not offered Lucy any harm. He —’

  ‘He has, sir! He —’

  ‘I watched it from the quarterdeck, madam. There was one blow struck, and that by Mistress Balcombe. She was surrounded by my foredeck men. There was no danger, I promise you. I would have acted else.’

  The sobs rose for a breath or two, then subsided. Lucy buried her face into her baby, used him as a sort of mask or muffle. Eliza touched her briefly on the head, then drew Armstrong to one side and dropped her voice to almost nothing.

  She told him that she feared rape, she told him that Ledru would blackmail the English girl. She told him Lucy was balancing her future and her happiness on the conviction that Napoleon was waiting for her, and would welcome her with open arms. She brushed a hand across her eyes.

  ‘Is it likely, husband? Samson, you know about this Corsican. Every ship of the Company that passes through St Helena brings new tales of his debauchery, she is but fixed upon a chimera which Ledru is feeding. When she reaches James Town and meets the real life man — her heart is broken. I implore you, put this villain in chains.’

  Above them, at that moment, the lookout’s cry went up. ‘Sail ho! Fine on the larboard bow! By her topsails she’s a frigate, English rigged!’

  A frigate surely, and commanded by an Englishman. But she flew the colours of O’Higgins and Peru. The rendezvous was made.

  Over many hours, the outline of the rescue plot was defined, refined, invigorated. The Sea Wolf had to beat up to them from the west and south, and as he neared the Tamarind, he reduced his canvas and ran out his guns in case. By the time the two vessels were in hailing distance, Tom Johnson’s more unwieldy craft were heaving into view. Signals were exchanged, identities confirmed. As dark was falling, the main participants foregathered on the brig. Although she was the lesser vessel, it was a concession Cochrane was pleased to make. Without the good offices of Captain Armstrong, he said with broad politeness, ‘This whole damn venture would never have come off.’

  Ledru was part of the discussion, his desired confinement for the women’s sake no longer possible, if it ever had been. He represented Napoleon himself, he claimed, and was the only man who knew the landing places, the routes to climb Mount Diana, and the faces of the guards, both open and clandestine. From his pocket he pulled out a folded chart which no one else had ever seen.

  ‘This is where we land,’ he said, stabbing at the paper with a finger long and elegant. ‘Captain Johnson, your Eagle has to lie out here, at two leagues distant, with your Arthur Preece commanding, and awaiting your return.’

  ‘My return from where, sir? I return from nowhere. Both Arthur and myself are needed on the Etna or we cannot guarantee she’ll get away. We lie against the rocks at this point here —’ he in turn jabbed at the paper — ‘while I climb up the path. I take it you have a man on shore who knows what is to do?’

  Preece was behind his master.

  ‘We’ve went through all this on the voyage ten hundred times,’ he said. ‘There ain’t nothing in the world that Tom can’t manage, so leave it all to us, Mooshure. You’re wittering like a bloody Kerry man!’

  Ledru ignored the insult. With the smell of action in his nostrils, his mood had changed. He was no longer sullen, no longer lost in bitterness. It was as if his soul was going to be renewed.

  ‘My man’s called Cipriani,’ he said. ‘We have discussed it down to the minutest detail. There is nothing, on the French side, that can possibly go wrong.’

  Except, he would find out, that Cipriani was already dead. Victim perhaps, of another Irishman, who had experimented with a dash of arsenic.

  The Sea Wolf had been listening intently. He would be lying off a few miles further than the bigger submarine, quite close to the Tamarind. It would be regretful if Captain Armstrong had a hidden plan, but if he did he was outgunned, and Cochrane, although with much regret, would destroy him and his ship if necessary. He did not think it likely, though. Cockburn was more likely to be the source of any treachery.

  ‘The last one in our rendezvous,’ he said, ‘is Admiral Cockburn. His schooner is much faster than my frigate, yet we have seen neither hide nor hair of him since we went our separate ways. He is an English gentleman, and an officer. I leave it up to you if we can trust him.’

  This caused small laughter, although of a nervous kind. It had occurred to Armstrong and his wife in several bedtime musings that Cockburn’s involvement had been strange right from the start. Up the Trinco chimney, he had mistrusted him for his voice, then for his disappearance, then for his arrival on the Tamarind out of the blue, the double-barrelled pistol like a field-piece in his hand.

  ‘The question is,’ he said, ‘if he is a traitor, what could he do? Lord Cochrane is the Sea Wolf. As a man who likes a wager, no secret where my money is between them two! And anyway —’

  ‘Whatever else,’ said Cochrane, ‘he is not a traitor, just the opposite. Boney once called him “rough, overbearing, vain, choleric and capricious,” which from Napoleon — well, no more! The danger I can see is from the other side completely: that he takes our English rescue of a French dictator as an act of treachery itself. If he prevented us from doing it, the gratitude of England would be guaranteed. Good God, they may even have placed him amongst us to that end!’

  They mulled this over, with a grave concern. All lookouts would be warned on pain of flogging to raise the schooner whenever and wherever she came into sight, and if she tried to seize Napoleon once he was captured, all able men were sworn to stop her, or to damage her rigging or her hull to destroy her speed advantage.

  Food was taken then, served and prepared by Eliza and a chastened Lucy. It was expected the squadron would approach St Helena by late afternoon next day, with the submarines prepared to make the last approach, while ready at a moment’s notice to drop below the surface out of sight.

  As
the early darkness fell, Johnson and Preece were rowed back to their craft, while the Sea Wolf was whisked to the O’Higgins by a boat’s crew in full uniform of the Navy of Peru. Ledru, despite many exhortations, refused to take up his berth on board the Eagle for Lucy’s peace of mind, but agreed to retire before the night was black. He was exhausted, he said, and had a long day’s work ahead. He also needed to sharpen up his favourite knife.

  Jules went quietly to sleep for once, but his mother, despite Eliza’s pleading, said she could not bear to go to bed without a sight of home. St Helena, on this night without a moon, was little more than a soft blur on the pale horizon, but with her baby sleeping at her breast she gazed at it and dreamed of the moment Napoleon would take her in his arms.

  Was she asleep? She did not know, but the words slipped into her brain like a gently moving stream. She thought she knew the voice, she was not sure. It sounded like a letter being read.

  ‘I shall be alone and far, far away. But you are coming, aren’t you? You are going to be here beside me, in my arms, on my breast, on my mouth. Take wing and come, come! A kiss on your heart, and one much lower down, much lower!’

  It was a letter being read, whispered out aloud. It was a letter Bonaparte had written long ago to Joséphine, one of a secret store Ledru had stolen for purposes like this. He gazed at the human bundle on the deck, then stared out of the shadows to see if he was observed. The vessel was lying-to, sails loosely brailed, the look-outs on the topmasts scanning only the horizon, for sight of Admiral Cockburn’s schooner.

  Ledru folded the letter, and pushed it into his bosom. He felt the handle of his knife, squeezed it with affection. He thought he’d stab her, then his idea changed. He stepped forward smartly to grab the baby from its mother’s arms. Four more steps and he would throw it overboard. To Napoleon, that might be worth another sack of gold.

  How do you test a mother’s love? How do you gauge a woman’s desperation? Lucy Balcombe came to life like a demon from the Pit and flew at Ledru’s face with a claw like a shipwright’s adze. He could not get the baby free, however hard he dragged, and within a moment the mingled screams were fit to wake the dead.