On rambled Thistlewood. But Daniel was hardly listening. He was watching Edwards in his dark corner, scribbling away on a long strip of narrow paper that was by now snaking down to the floor. He stopped writing when Thistlewood paused. Began again when he rambled on. Clearly he was taking down everything what was being said, word for word, taking it down in the most inconspicuous way he could, smiling and nodding all the time as if he was drinking at the font of wisdom.
Daniel was exhausted by his eight-mile walk from Mayfair back home to Kew. It was past midnight, but he couldn’t sleep. He lay on his right side, sweating in the leaky little loft he shared with two other Kew apprentices, the cold sweat of fear. He turned onto his left side and tried to think of Charlotte. Of mountain walks on their enchanted island. Her wild delight as she skipped down a steep slope inside a rolling bank of mist, arms outstretched, pretending she was flying.
But she wasn’t the child he remembered any longer. She was five years older, nineteen already. A woman now, with needs he was so eager to satisfy that he had to wrestle with the devil to resist the temptation of trollops on paydays.
Would they execute her for treason if they found out?
First they would torture her to find out what she knew. Then they would hang her without the consolation of clergy, that chilling phrase. Yamstocks shrieking with laughter as those beautiful feet of hers searched for stairs that weren’t there…
“Follow your heart, not your fear.” The words came from the Friar’s lips. Daniel woke from the shallow dream with his mind made up. He held the night-light to the portrait of an exquisite creature with long, curly blonde locks, a portrait of Charlotte done by Mr. Burchell just three months ago, when his ship stopped at Saint Helena on its way back from the Cape with thousands of specimens.
“She’s waiting for you, Daniel, you lucky dog,” Mr. Burchell had said. “As you can see, she’s worth the wait. Much taller than me. Lithe. High-spirited. The Yamstocks say that she’s the most beautiful woman on the island.”
First thing tomorrow he would call on Mr. Burchell, who was busy cataloging his African collection. He would tell him everything. Mr. Burchell would know what to do.
William Burchell was in a dusty little room in Kew crammed with specimens animal, vegetable, and mineral. He was working on a sketch of his Cape zebra, Equus burchelli, when Daniel knocked faintly on the open door and came in pale and puffy eyed from lack of sleep.
“Daniel!” said the little man in his cultured voice. “How nice to see you, but why so distraught?”
Daniel, whose Yamstock accent tended to return when he was upset, began at the beginning. He told the little botanist about the sealed scroll in the herb packet. About Thistlewood kissing Napoleon’s seal. About Edwards making secret notes of Thistlewood’s speech.
And then he came to the point that was tormenting him. “Edwards didn’t wait to discover what surprised Thistlewood about Napoleon’s letter. He seemed, well, not interested and in a hurry. I had hardly had time to sip the beer Edwards bought me when he told me he had other business to attend to and left. I don’t know what possessed me, but something did. I followed him, making sure to keep well hidden. He was heading eastward but he didn’t go far. Only as far as number four Bow Street. He visited the Runners.”
Burchell’s eyes widened. He had been listening to Daniel’s story with half an ear as he examined the stripes on his zebra, thinking that he hadn’t gotten them quite right. Suddenly the boy had his full attention. “What business could Edwards have with the police?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.
“His ribbon of notes, the ones he made on Thistlewood’s speech. He handed them over. I saw him do it.”
“Very strange.”
“I lay awake and thought that through until my head hurt,” said Daniel. “Edwards delivers a copy of Thistlewood’s speech to the police but doesn’t seem to be interested in knowing what’s in Napoleon’s scroll. Seems to me that could only mean that Edwards knew the police already had a copy of that.”
Burchell nodded. “Very astute. But how is that possible? The seal was intact when you delivered it to Thistlewood, you say?”
“Yes, but could it have been broken and then replaced?”
“Yes,” said Burchell. “As long as someone took an impression of the seal before breaking it and then made a copy.”
“The publican at the Black Dog is too clumsy to do that.”
Burchell said, “It wasn’t him. My guess is that it was done in Saint Helena.”
“But why reseal the correspondence? Why not confiscate it?”
“Because then Napoleon would know his scheme had been penetrated. He would find another courier, and the government would lose access to a priceless wellspring of secret information.”
“I’m afraid, Mr. Burchell,” said Daniel. “I’m even more afraid for Charlotte.”
Burchell sighed. In nature there was such a thing as defensive mimicry. The plant hopper imitates a leaf for protection, he was thinking. Harmless flies imitate stinging wasps. The milk snake imitates the deadly coral snake. And then there was aggressive mimicry, the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Nature was full of deception, so why not man?
“Seems to me that Charlotte is being manipulated by the world’s greatest manipulator.” Burchell said. “She loves adventure, fears nothing. If you refuse to receive her packages, Napoleon’s packages, she will find someone else, someone who would then have a hold over her.”
“So what am I to do?”
One of the benefits of being educated at Raleigh House Academy was that it gave one some very powerful connections. Burchell was pondering one of these right now, a man who, thanks to his family connections, already occupied an important position in the government, although he was a Liberal. A man who would relish being involved in an intrigue with his hero, the great Napoleon Bonaparte. “I know someone at the Home Office. Someone I can talk to,” he said, picking up his brush. “Someone who is on our side.”
“Oh, thank you sir! Thank you so much!” said Daniel as he backed out the door.
The little botanist tried to go back to painting stripes on his zebra, but his hand was shaking too much.
Women, were they worth it? Burchell pondered as his rented horse plodded the lengthy way to London and the Home Office.
A woman had broken his heart seven years ago, and he was sure, by now, that it would never heal. The femme fatale was Lucia Green, the niece of that thief Balcombe’s wife—he should have been warned by the Balcombe connection, because nothing good could ever come of anything to do with that devious drunk.
The diminutive botanist had paid for Lucia’s passage to the island, paid (courtesy of his father) for the most luxurious passage the Walmer Castle could provide. And what did she do, the stone-hearted trollop? She had an affair in her fancy stateroom with the ship’s captain, a beefy blackguard named Luke Dodds! Unforgivable! But he would have forgiven her, if she’d repented, because Lucia was a passionate young woman and the voyage was long and lonely. But repentant she was not. She simply told him that she’d changed her mind, as if that was a mere trifle, like changing your order in a restaurant from a plate of pigeon to one of pork. While the ship rode at anchor, Lucia stayed with her aunt and was royally entertained by Balcombe, who reveled in his ex-partner’s humiliation, even going to the lengths of entertaining the rough seaman in his house! Of course Burchell should have challenged the captain to a duel—he would have, in fact, if he hadn’t fallen so ill with despondency that he could barely get out of bed. Would Charlotte break Daniel’s heart like Lucia had broken his?
The botanist got back to Kew in the late afternoon and had a supper of boiled bacon washed down with good claret. Then he sent for Daniel and told him the news. “I’m happy to say that rather as I expected, everything is already very much under control. You are instructed to encourage Charlotte to write to you often. You are instructed to continue delivering the scrolls promptly. The government has known about th
em from the start. You are also instructed to tell no one, no one at all, of the government’s penetration of this smuggling scheme, especially not Charlotte. If you obey these instructions, both she and you will be safe.”
“But I will be betraying the emperor!” Daniel whispered. “To keep her safe. Won’t I?”
“I don’t believe you have been betraying him. As usual, he has outthought everyone. I’m told by my friend in the Home Office that he has seduced the government into believing that it has penetrated his smuggling operation. That its agents are reading top-secret correspondence when what they’re actually reading is a stew of exaggerations and outright inventions. Fret not, my boy, I am certain you are doing precisely what Napoleon wants you to do.”
The expression of relief on Daniel’s face was glorious to behold. Burchell jumped up and kissed him on both glowing cheeks. This time Daniel didn’t flinch.
That evening Burchell wrote a letter that he sealed within another letter addressed to Henry Porteous. It went out in the convoy carrying no lesser a personage than Sir Hudson Lowe, who was to replace Admiral Cockburn as the governor of Saint Helena and Napoleon’s jailer. Burchell had met Hudson Lowe at Holland House, where Lowe was being courted after it was announced that he had been given the Saint Helena assignment, as he called it. A short conversation with him had confirmed the rumors that Lowe was a martinet with the charm of a porcupine. But he was an even harder man than Cockburn, which was why he was appointed. Napoleon would want to know about that as well.
The letter within a letter was entrusted to a young lieutenant on a fast sloop, which would alert the island of the convoy’s imminent arrival. The young officer, who had an interest in botany, promised to deliver the letter immediately he made landfall to Henry Porteous, superintendent of the Saint Helena Botanical Gardens, owner of Porteous House, where Napoleon had spent his first flea-bitten night. Henry Porteous, father of Charlotte’s best friend, Mary, the man who, as a true Scotsman, wore his kilt whenever there was the least excuse to do so, including his daughter’s funeral.
Chapter 5: Devilish Cunning
Charlotte was at the wharf when the young lieutenant, who didn’t know he was smuggling a secret letter for Napoleon inside the letter for the botanist, came ashore on the first longboat. Happy to see such a pretty face after eight weeks at sea, he made a point of approaching her for directions to the botanist Henry Porteous. She laughed, a lovely sound, and said of course she knew where he lived, because he was her uncle, although that wasn’t exactly true, and that she would be very happy to walk him to Porteous House. Like almost everyone else, all the officer seemed interested in was Bonaparte, where he was staying, how he passed his time, had she met him, what kind of person he was.
“Depends who you ask,” said Charlotte. “We had someone called Raffles here who got permission to see him.”
“Not Sir Stamford Raffles!”
“Yes, do you know him?”
“No, but I know of him, of course. He’s a legend. Founder of Singapore. One of the original promoters of the Zoological Society. How did the two of them get on?”
“Terribly! Napoleon was in one of his high moods, you see. Tore Raffles apart. Raffles told Mr. Porteous afterward that Napoleon was vindictive, had no soul, that he was totally selfish, that his only talent was to enslave mankind, that he looked on everyone as his inferiors, and that all his energy was devoted to himself and his supremacy.”
“Is that all true?”
Charlotte laughed. “Not entirely. Raffles also said he was a wild animal, caught but not tamed. That’s true. But Raffles said that Napoleon can command respect but never affection, which is not.” This took the young officer a moment to digest, which gave her the opportunity to change the subject. “You’re not carrying any mail, by any chance?” she asked.
He seemed surprised by the question. “Why, no,” he lied. “That will come with the packet ship, with the convoy bringing Sir Hudson Lowe. Should be here by nightfall. Are you expecting something?”
“Yes, a letter from a friend of mine. A botanist. He’s apprenticed at Kew. But then, I expect a letter from him on every ship that comes in from England.”
“The lucky dog!” said the officer, making it very clear the way he said it that it was not the apprenticeship he was talking about.
Henry Porteous received the letter from Burchell shortly after eleven and made polite botanical conversation with the lieutenant for an hour before bidding him good day. Then he read the note in the outer envelope. It said, “Dear friend, as a special favor, please see that the enclosure is delivered immediately to the emperor. It concerns a matter of the highest importance.” There were no salutations.
Henry Porteous walked briskly to the Almond Tree. As he expected, Young Las Cases, the sickly sixteen-year-old son of Napoleon’s biographer, was there keeping his sharp ears open for gossip to feed his news-starved father, who was seldom allowed to leave the emperor’s side. With the sealed letter, which was addressed simply to N, tucked into a secret pocket in case he was searched by the perimeter guards, the boy sweated his way up to Longwood. Napoleon broke the seal and read the letter himself, because it was written in Burchell’s impeccable French.
“You are a clever man, Burchell, you have worked it out,” he said out loud, because he had fallen into the habit of talking to himself since there was no one else worth talking to on this pile of dung. “Thank you also for confirmation that they are sending me that pinheaded martinet Hudson Lowe as my jailer. Of all the officers in Wellington’s army, who will be easier to drive insane? You think you are going to be my keeper, General Sir Hudson Lowe,” he growled, “but you are destined to be my liberator!”
Sir Hudson Lowe, KBE, knighted by the prince regent for his service to the nation, was forty-six, red haired and freckled faced, of average height, slim and gaunt thanks to the relentless worm of worry that gnawed at him day and night. Suspicious by instinct, he seldom looked anyone full in the face but instead peered at them out of the corners of eyes that were eager to pounce on every nefarious move from behind their cover of bushy red eyebrows.
Because secret enemies were certain to be watching for any sign of weakness, he stepped ashore on April 14, 1816 with all the swagger of a man who had been a soldier since the age of twelve, who had worked his way up to the position of major general and now, his crowning achievement, the governorship of the Crown Colony of Saint Helena and guardian of Napoleon Bonaparte, the wiliest villain on earth. There were advantages to being famous for your suspicious nature. It had won him this promotion on the recommendation of Wellington himself.
The former governor, Mark Wilks, was there to greet him with his very pretty daughter Laura. Wilks was pleasant enough, Sir Hudson Lowe thought, though only a colonel and far too soft and bookish to put a tyrant like Bonaparte in his place. Also at the wharf touching his hat was Admiral Cockburn, commander of the fleet blockading the island, the man who had eaten President Madison’s lunch. Admiral Cockburn had aspired to the promotion, since guarding Bonaparte was much more honorable than guarding Cape Town, his next assignment, but was judged to be too inexperienced an administrator, compared to Sir Hudson Lowe, who had been Wellington’s quartermaster and was famous for his fierce eye for detail.
It was a snub that Cockburn planned to avenge. “When do you mean to see Bonaparte?” the admiral asked Sir Hudson Lowe, to whom he had taken an instant dislike. “You don’t want to show hesitation with a man like this, you know.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” said Lowe curtly. “I was planning to beard the rascal first thing tomorrow.”
Governor Wilks did his best to come to the rescue. “General Bonaparte can be very irritable, as you can imagine, under the circumstances,” he said. “As the admiral knows, he does not normally receive in the mornings. He also insists on setting the day and time.”
“Insists!” crowed Cockburn. “I keep my hat on in his presence,” he lied, “and sit without asking. In my humble opinion, that
criminal doesn’t have the right to insist on anything.”
Sir Hudson Lowe swallowed the bait. “I was aiming at nine,” he said. “Strike while the iron is hot, I say. I’ve dealt with enough Corsicans in my time to know the type. They respect an iron fist.”
“It’s been customary for us to request meetings with the general, as a common courtesy, you know,” persisted Wilks the bookish ex-governor.
“Courtesy!” said Sir Hudson Lowe. “Did Bonaparte have the courtesy to ask for invitations to Berlin and Moscow?”
“Indeed not,” said the ex-governor. “But I must warn you that the prisoner remains a formidable man who has retained every inch of his pride. He is easily…annoyed.”
“Fah!” spat Lowe. “Sounds like the blackguard needs a whip taken to him! I shall call on him at nine o’clock sharp tomorrow morning. Not a minute before and not a minute after. Please be so kind as to tell him so.”
That night Sir Hudson Lowe slept alone in a cramped room in the rambling bungalow that was laughably called the Castle. Or at least tried to sleep, in spite of the predations of mosquitoes that simply ignored the ample net hanging around the bed. Thank God he had left his wife, Lady Susan DeLancey Lowe, on board or he wouldn’t have heard the end of it. She was a formidable woman, his wife, especially after the bottle of sherry she drank at bedtime, a necessary supplement to the generous amounts of claret she drank at lunch and dinner. He had remonstrated with her only once about her drinking but regretted it immediately, when she took the opportunity to inform him that she imbibed to console herself for marrying below her station to a stiff back with a limp unmentionable. Should he by any chance have forgotten, she was a DeLancey, who had a New York street named after them, and did he know of any streets named Lowe? Indeed, if her father, Stephen DeLancey, scourge of that traitor Washington, chief justice of the Bahamas, governor of Tobago, had not had his property sequestered by the American thieves, her ample dowry would have secured her a much more suitable arrangement than marriage to a rough, penniless soldier. Why couldn’t he be a real man like her brother, Sir William Howe DeLancey, KCB, hero of Waterloo? The dashing young officer everyone called “the American,” because, like her, he was born in New York? Plotting with Wellington during the heat of the battle when he was hit by a ricocheting cannonball. Dying in the arms of his bride. A tragedy that was already the stuff of legend. Bonaparte was a murderer, she screeched when the liquor finally mastered her. A common criminal. He deserved to be shot!
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