Napoleon's Rosebud

by Humphry Knipe

  Charlotte’s sharp eyes caught just a glimpse of Napoleon before he snapped the curtain shut. Here was a man who had been the center of the world’s attention, reduced to a Peeping Tom! But perhaps she could change that, if Daniel far away in starving Britain would help her.

  At nine the dance party, in high spirits, left Napoleon sulking with his servants and was transported in a cavalcade of little buggies down the winding precipitous road to the Castle that wasn’t a castle. Gaspard invited Charlotte to ride with him and then annoyed her by going on about Laura’s charms.

  The Admiral’s Ball, as by now everyone on the island was calling it, was the social event of the new century. Almost two hundred guests, every person of any respectability, were invited. The men were mostly in uniform, the women in their finest. Charlotte wore a pink ball gown, the best Jamestown could provide at short notice. It was paid for by rich Uncle Samuel, because the Knipe name, he told her with a tear or two in his eyes, was now in her hands. Those who weren’t invited, which included all of Charlotte’s Yamstock relatives, gawked between the redcoats lined up to keep rabble like them at bay. When she was helped out of the buggy by Gaspard, epaulets and medals glittering, Uncle Samuel waved his stick at her approvingly, and a loud lout in the crowd yelled, “Rosebud! Rosebud! Hello, Rosebud! Lovely dress! Bet that one going to come off soon!”

  The lout was her brother John, drunk, of course, the one who had announced Napoleon’s arrival when she’d been bottling peaches.

  Their mother, dressed in her best widow’s weeds, elbowed him in the ribs. “Shh!” she hissed. “Don’t spoil it for her! She’s with gentry!”

  “No need to hit so ’ard! You tink I be one dawg?”

  Charlotte pretended she hadn’t heard this vulgar interaction, and fortunately General Gaspard Gourgaud had trouble understanding John’s thick Yamstock accent. A few springy steps across the courtyard on Gaspard’s arm and they were inside. The high table was already seated, Admiral Cockburn of course at the center. Mrs. Wilks, the governor’s wife, sat on his right, Madame Bertrand on his left, and so on all the way to lovely Laura Wilks, who sat with an officer as decorated as a Christmas tree.

  Charlotte felt Gaspard stiffen. “Mon Dieu!”

  “What’s the matter, Gaspard?” she said, because she was calling him that by now.

  “Look what the canaille have done! They’ve placed the governor’s wife on the admiral’s right! A barefaced insult! That’s where Madame Bertrand, as wife of the grand marshal of the palace, should be!”

  Charlotte felt like reminding him that there was no palace anymore. “Why?” she asked instead.

  He stared at her with genuine astonishment. “You don’t know? Because Madame Bertrand outranks her, of course! Wait until the emperor hears about this. He will be furious!”

  Gaspard was equally unhappy about the table he and Charlotte were shown to, because they were to share it with the Balcombes, already seated, with Betsy an eyesore in an absurd gown plastered with faux roses.

  Admiral Cockburn, flush with brandy, made Gaspard dance with both of the Balcombe girls, although the dashing young general’s attention was elsewhere—on Laura Wilks, as she went through her paces with partners from the endless supply of lovelorn young officers prepared to throw themselves on their swords for the privilege of being seen with the ex-governor’s lovely daughter. Charlotte did her best to ignore her rival. She had several dances. She pretended to listen intently to kilted Henry Porteous going into too much detail about the correspondence he was having with Mr. Burchell about the proper classification of Saint Helena cabbage trees. She danced with Gaspard.

  “Rosebud, I am suffocating in this stuffy tropical heat of yours,” he said. “Please do me the honor of taking the air in the garden with me.”

  Charlotte, who saw that Laura Wilks was watching out of the corner of her eye, was delighted to say yes.

  It was a moonless night. The stars in the pristine Saint Helena sky twinkled like Gaspard’s medals.

  “May I kiss you now?” asked Gaspard.

  Charlotte smiled, because the garden was full of social spies and this would certainly get back to Laura. “You may kiss my hand,” she said.

  Sunday dinner at her mother’s.

  “That fancy Frenchie done gone and kissed her in the Castle garden! Everyone seed it!” Charlotte’s loutish brother, John, blurted through a mouthful of boiled yams.

  “The same prince charming that done gone and helped Charlotte out of the carriage just like a regular princess!” cried her youngest brother, Bill, seventeen and just signed up with the Saint Helena Regiment.

  Everyone was laughing, and everyone was there. All Charlotte’s siblings, as always on a Sunday after church. When her father, Richard Knipe, died ten years ago, her mother and the younger children had moved from desolate Half Moon Farm into this little bungalow in Jamestown. Here her mother struggled to make ends meet on a widow’s pension and the meager earnings from Half Moon’s vegetables, mostly potatoes and yams and citrus, intermittently provided by John and sold off the front porch.

  Today, the Sunday after the ball, the gathering was larger than usual. Twenty people nearly, including Porteous House landlord and company gardener Henry Porteous in his kilt; Joseph Cole, the rotund postmaster recently recruited into the shadowy world of espionage; and rich Uncle Samuel Knipe, who had supplied the fresh leg of lamb—a luxury on a tiny, poverty-stricken blob of rock where you needed permission from the Company to kill an ox, and even the slaughter of a sheep was cause for universal comment.

  But this was a celebration. A celebration of the honor that Charlotte had brought to the Knipe family name. She’d been a guest of the great man who brooded in the mountains. She’d danced with a general. What a sight she had been, their own Charlotte, dressed in a ball gown, helped out of a carriage by a French general spangled with medals!

  “He started with your hand, but I wonder what else you let him kiss!” howled John, washing down his words with so much beer that it ran down his tangled beard and dripped onto the table.

  “Don’t be so crude, you’ve just been in church!” snapped their mother.

  “All that was missing was the glass slipper,” John blundered on.

  “General Gourgaud was just being polite,” Charlotte said, patience already worn thin but making a point of watching her language. “Thanking me for a pleasant evening.”

  “Exactly, but how pleasant?” Henry, a year older than Charlotte, chimed in and then bit his tongue, because he was the studious one, Mr. Porteous’s apprentice at the Botanical Gardens, who should have known better.

  “Your idea of pleasant is wearing nothing under your kilt!” Charlotte shot back, her fair cheeks flushed, because young Henry wore a kilt on Sundays like his master Mr. Porteous, who had adopted him, in an informal way, after his father died. “I wonder why!”

  “Mine your moufs, there be little ones ’ere!” screeched Florella, another of Charlotte’s siblings, whose brats were slyly throwing food at one another under the table.

  “Look who be talking!” belched John, who had sparked the ruckus. “You got a mouth sumpin’ like a latrine when you ain’t pretending to be a lady!”

  Charlotte let her thoughts wander. She was thinking of Cinderella.

  The roar of an Alarm Hill cannon told Saint Helena that a ship had been sighted. Hours later the flutter of signal flags announced it was a packet ship. It was February 10, 1816, high time for a response from Daniel. High time to read whether he had the courage to serve liberty. Not that Napoleon would care if he was too afraid to help. The emperor had other conduits, she was sure. But she would care. If Daniel refused to be part of the chain, she was very afraid that it would be the end of their relationship.

  When the ship came in that afternoon, Charlotte was at the wharf, watching the mailbags being loaded onto a barrow bound for the post office. She fumed with impatience as she waited at the Almond Tree, chatting with friends and warding off officers for what se
emed like hours as she gave Mr. Cole the postmaster time to sort through the mail.

  When she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer, she walked in on him and sang out, “Anything for me?” as if she didn’t have a care in the world. But she did. She cared about what was going on in Mr. Cole’s head. She cared that since she sent the first secret scroll to Daniel there had been a tightness in the rotund little man’s smile, a sly glint in his eyes. Or was it her imagination? It had to be there somewhere in her mind, impossible to root out, a vestigial sense of guilt, a weed of doubt, that whispered she was betraying her government and could be hanged for it.

  “I saw you hovering, so I looked for it,” he called out, a little too cheerfully. “Voilà, as they say up the hill. I have it right here safe and sound on my desk. A love letter!”

  That afternoon she took Daniel’s letter up the mountain to Longwood, the ex-cowshed where Napoleon had been transplanted exactly a month ago. In spite of the ghostly curtains of fog chased in from the sea by the relentless southeaster, it was hot and humid. Napoleon sat her down in the shade of his favorite tree, a banyan with wide-spreading branches close to the house, the only tree that gave it any shade. A redcoat leaning on his musket peered at them. If he bothered to look farther, Napoleon knew, he could pick out more soldiers, circling the house night and day, the noose around his neck.

  Instead he listened to the girl read Daniel’s letter to him in her cool, clear voice, translating it for him as she went along.

  December 5, 1815

  Dearest Charlotte,

  I have received your latest packet with its most interesting enclosure. Many of your samples are plants I have never seen before and may be new to science. Mr. Burchell will know. I miss you more than I can find words to tell. Just imagining you alone among those misty crags, drinking up the sounds and sweet airs of our enchanted little island without me, makes my heart ache!

  But no one except for me and Mr. Burchell is interested in the plants. Napoleon, that’s all everybody asks me about. Does he have eyes like saucers? Does he really have teeth like daggers? You can’t believe the number of silly questions I’ve been asked! My problem is I have so few answers. In your next letter, please tell me everything you’ve heard about him. What does he wear? What does he eat? How does he pass the day? Even more important, how does he pass the night! I hope he doesn’t keep a rosebud in a vase next to his bed!

  “Ha!” barked Napoleon. “I think I am beginning to like this Daniel of yours. He has seductive ideas!”

  Charlotte ignored the coarse quip and read on:

  Has Byron’s “Ode to Napoleon” found its way to you yet? I look at it often and every time it makes me weep. Here are my favorite lines:

  Is this the man of thousand thrones,

  Who strew’d our earth with hostile bones,

  And can he thus survive?

  Since he, miscalled the Morning Star,

  Nor man nor fiend hath fall’n so far.

  But Napoleon will rise again. I feel it in my bones. We await your packets eagerly, but nothing could be as eager as my desire to hold you in my arms!

  Much, much love, my darling,

  Your very own Daniel.

  “You see!” said Charlotte. “He’ll do it!”

  Napoleon waved away an impertinent fly. “Of course he’ll do it,” he said. “He’s under your spell.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s under yours! He believes—”

  “What is ‘fiend’? Is it similar to ‘friend’?”

  “No! Just the opposite. It means a devil. Like Lucifer. The angel who was cast down from heaven because he challenged God.”

  He surprised her by smiling. “Like I do,” he said, pinching her cheek. “It’s time to send your Daniel another letter.”

  Chapter 4: Secret Letters

  On Friday, March 26, 1816, a messenger boy called at Kew Gardens to tell Daniel that there was a packet for him at the Black Dog. This time there was no George Edwards and no hard man with a squint. All the same he hurried home without drinking his customary bitter and waited until he found a secluded park bench before opening Charlotte’s latest. It was dated February 11, 1816.

  My dearest, dearest darling Daniel,

  How very happy we all were to receive your brave letter! Our new friend has set himself to learn English, from me, can you believe it? He laughed when I told him that he would end up with a Yamstock accent. So I went further and taught him some Yamstock phrases, which he parrots proudly to his entourage, much to their annoyance. They believe I am mocking his imperial dignity. But when I mentioned this to him, he roared with laughter. Said they had no sense of humor, if I understood him correctly. But he was being perfectly serious when he said that you are writing yourself a footnote to history, although I think you deserve much more than that—a whole chapter, at least!

  A few weeks ago, I ran into your mother at the wharf, where she reads sailors’ palms for a penny. She and her girls are well and she sends her love. I’m sure she would write to you if she knew how but is too proud to dictate to someone else, especially me! For the first time, we sat down and talked, which is high time since someday soon, I hope, she will be my mother-in-law. For a woman with no education, she has an extraordinary mind, like yours. But her thinking is all on the occult side, while yours is of course all on the scientific. She asked me a curious question, whether I ever looked at something, especially after dark, thought it to be one thing, often something frightening, and then found it was something else. I said yes, because of course it happens to everyone. Then she told me the most extraordinary thing. She said that first impression we get is reality while the second is a hasty fabrication constructed by reality to hide itself. The trick, she says, is not to blink but to hold on to that first impression, because that’s a doorway into the real world. I thought this to be nonsense and was rude enough to tell her so. But the idea stayed with me. Now when I mistake a trick of the light for you, I do my best to hold the impression, which consoles me a little. I do so wish I didn’t have to play this silly game and had the real flesh and blood person back here in my arms!

  I love you so very much,

  Charlotte

  The next afternoon, dressed in his best, Daniel set out for Mayfair to deliver the slender roll of papers that had been hidden among the herbs. Like the previous one, it was sealed with the imperial French eagle stamped onto a generous blob of red wax.

  Although it was not yet evening, the Cock tavern was already noisy and foggy with the fumes of the long-stem clay pipes being puffed and chewed everywhere. If it was true that you could tell a short temper by a short pipe stem, as common knowledge claimed, there were enough angry men present to make a quorum. What with the yapping of dogs playing between the tables and the wailing of a single fiddle being sawed to pieces on a tiny stage, Daniel had to mime that he wanted a beer and point to which kind he wanted. He was taking his first long swallow, because he was thirsty after his long walk from Kew, when he felt a light tap on his shoulder. It was George Edwards, beaked and black eyed, happy as a vulture that had just swooped down on a well-ripened corpse.

  “Well met, if a little late,” the small man said in his big voice. “You have it?”

  Daniel nodded. “I’d forgotten how far Mayfair was from Kew.”

  “It’s never too far to go in pursuit of freedom!” Edwards said. He took Daniel into a little back room in which stood a darkly complexioned man. He was dressed in a blue long coat with trousers to match, which altogether looked very much like a uniform, an impression reinforced by his military bearing. He was slender, above average height, his long face topped with arched eyebrows, which gave the impression that he found everything about the world astonishing. He was quite alone, reading what looked like notes, for his speech perhaps.

  “Mr. Thistlewood, I’d like you to meet young Daniel. He’s the one from Saint Helena.”

  Thistlewood’s surprised eyebrows arched even higher. Wide brown eyes examined Daniel carefu
lly. “Ah, yes, I’ve heard all about you! Liberty thanks you for your service. The emperor and I are very good friends, you know.”

  Edwards nodded in enthusiastic confirmation. “The emperor has sent Mr. Thistlewood a gift, hasn’t he, Daniel?”

  “Yes,” said Daniel. He passed the sealed scroll to Thistlewood, who took it with a polite nod, examined the red eagle seal, and kissed it.

  “Mon empereur,” Thistlewood said, breaking the seal and unrolling the paper. His eyebrows shot up, even more surprised by life than usual. He reverently rolled up the paper before tucking it away in an inside pocket, so it would be close to his heart, perhaps.

  Edwards led the way back through the fuming crowd in the barroom. Behind him Thistlewood shook as many hands as he could, often two at a time. Edwards silenced the sawing fiddler with a tap on the shoulder. To Daniel’s surprise it was suddenly very still. Even the dogs stopped yapping. All eyes were on the man who was making his way to the stage.

  Thistlewood’s voice was loud, and his introductory remarks were long. Then he carved his way into the meat of his speech:

  “You should see how they live in America, because I have!” he said, dark eyes wide with wonder. “No man is born great, but there is the opportunity for every man to achieve greatness. The American Revolutionary leader George Washington began life as a humble lumberjack but ended up having the capital city named after him! He was offered the American throne but refused it. Would anyone refuse the throne in England? Oh, how I wish they would! If its current occupant spent as much time on statecraft as on his clothes, England would be the best-governed country in the world. No more oligarchs! Britain should be ruled by the people, for the people. A society that keeps its people hungry while its rulers live in luxury is a society that should not exist. A society that takes honest labor away from hungry people and feeds it to machines should not exist. Labor-saving devices? No, labor-stealing devices, I call them!”