Napoleon's Rosebud

by Humphry Knipe

  Charlotte and Daniel stood there, rooted to the spot like the gumwoods, as exposed to the storm of words as Deadwood Plain was exposed to the ceaseless southeaster.

  The tirade ceased abruptly. “Oh, do say something interesting enough to make me stop talking!” Napoleon said.

  “No, Your Majesty,” said Charlotte with a blush coloring her cheeks. “We have not…not consummated our relationship.”

  “Don’t stutter, girl, out with it. Nothing but the truth now!”

  “When we marry we are going to move into a house called—”

  “What house? Where?”

  “Sandy Bay, sire. It’s called Virgin Hall—”

  A coarse Corsican laugh. “Ha! Is that why you guard your virginity? Because you have to be a virgin to move in there?”

  “No, Your Majesty—”

  “What? Not a virgin?”

  “First Daniel has to establish himself.”

  “Can he talk, this boy of yours?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” said Daniel. “I just don’t—”

  “Enough!” Napoleon snapped. “Save your pretty speeches for this raging beauty of yours. I used to share in the most intimate pillow talk imaginable. I remember telling Josephine, after one of our bouts, that she had the prettiest little cunny in the world.” He looked straight at Charlotte. “Pardon my language, mademoiselle. That wasn’t meant for a lady’s ear. Please excuse us for a few minutes. I need to have a man-to-man conversation with your young swain.”

  Charlotte couldn’t resist a disapproving sniff, but she did discover a sudden interest in the flower beds that surrounded the lawn.

  “Walk with me, Daniel,” said Napoleon, hands clasped behind his back, heading in the opposite direction Charlotte had taken. “We have a strategy. It is to goad this fool of a governor, this coarse Caliban of a creature, until he makes the conditions of our imprisonment so harsh that it will provoke an international incident. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes, sire. I think—”

  Napoleon wasn’t interested in what Daniel thought. “When I handed myself over to the English,” he charged on, “in exchange for terminating my political career, hospitality was the word I used, not imprisonment, and especially not incarceration of such unspeakable cruelty.” He dropped his voice to a whisper, although the nearest redcoat in the noose that encircled Longwood house night and day was a hundred yards away. “Strategy. I win all my battles with strategy. We will strive to become the victims of cruel and unusual punishment that is specifically forbidden by the Eighth Amendment to the American Constitution. Although America is a French idea, it is not a place I particularly care for. It’s raw and savage—so says my brother Joseph, who’s over there. I’d prefer to be a prisoner here in Saint Helena than a free man in America!”

  Napoleon graced Daniel with his cupid’s bow of a smile, made delightful by its upturned corners. “I jest, of course. What I do not jest about is General Gaspard Gourgaud. He is a fearless man and a fine munitions officer, tactically brilliant but with no head for strategy. He complains like a woman about the petty inconveniences caused by our plan, which he knows nothing about, of goading the governor toward the precipice, and God knows this place has enough of those! The truth is that Gaspard does not want his little pleasures taken away. He is self-indulgent, petty, and vain. He is fierce, but it is the fierceness of a rooster! I say it to his face often enough, although I wouldn’t repeat that if I were you. Tact is what is required. Tact. Is it true that there is some ill feeling between Rosebud and the general in question? Don’t answer, because I know there is. This means that you, Daniel, must watch your step, as you English say. Keep out of Gaspard’s way. We are at war. We use both strategy and tactics. Our overarching strategy is to arouse universal contempt for my jailer. Our specific tactic is to fool my jailer into shipping Gaspard to Europe to promote our cause. Of course, it would ruin everything if you shot my messenger.” That bark of a laugh admitted the absurdity of the idea. “It would also be inconvenient for us to have to put up with Rosebud’s lamentations if perchance Gaspard missed your shoulder and put a ball through your head, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” mumbled Daniel, whose heart had taken up residence in his boots. “It would.”

  “Ha! You have a sense of humor! Back to business. I will tell Rosebud to repeat my wildest accusations to you and you alone. Then you must pass these on to my jailer without her knowing it.”

  “I must deceive her, Majesty?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. You’ve deceived her before with the help of our spy Edweeds.”

  Although his name was mispronounced, the skeletal vulture George Edwards hopped out of a haunted corner of Daniel’s mind and made a birdish bow. “May I know why I have to deceive her, sire?”

  “Because Rosebud has no business talking to the governor. Let alone frequently. There would be gossip. Suspicion. You work for the company, in their gardens. You would be expected to discuss horticultural matters with my jailer. If he finds out the truth, that we are intentionally provoking him, there will be retribution against the bringer of false tidings. Painful retribution. A charge of treason, perhaps. A hanging offence. You want to save Rosebud from the rope, don’t you?”

  “Well, out with it! What did you two talk about?” asked Charlotte as they rode back to town down the winding narrow track from Longwood in a silence that became awkwardly long. “Or are you too overawed to say anything?”

  “I was wondering what he said to you first. It was about Gaspard, wasn’t it?”

  “Nothing of consequence,” said Charlotte with just a hint of evasiveness. “He wanted my assurance you could be trusted, that’s all.”

  “Well of course he talked and I listened,” said Daniel, who was thinking that the only reassuring thing about the interview was that Napoleon had given him an assignment, to pass on gossip, which meant that the emperor expected him to stay alive, at least for a while. “Mostly he talked about you.”

  “Really! What did he say?”

  “He said that he was expecting to see a lot of you at Longwood. That you were bound to pick up wild gossip. That you should discuss it with me before repeating it. In case it was dangerous.”

  Charlotte didn’t try to hide her annoyance. “That’s not very flattering. He obviously trusts your judgment more than mine!”

  “Don’t take it personally. You told me that he thinks that women have more going on between their legs than between their ears.”

  Charlotte lashed out at Daniel’s horse with her riding whip, laughing as Daniel fought to control it. “That’s what you think, too!”

  Daniel lived on his nerves but the rest of the week passed uneventfully. Charlotte sold fruit and vegetables on her mother’s porch. Gaspard took Napoleon’s dictation and went on rides with him. Henry Porteous familiarized Daniel with the Botanical Gardens. Daniel avoided Gaspard like the plague. He always found an excuse not to take Charlotte to the Almond Tree. He no longer took the sea air with her down at the wharf. But he knew the reprieve couldn’t last for long. There were occasions when he was tempted to get it all over with. To confront Gaspard, take his bullet, and hope it wasn’t fatal. But somehow he always changed his mind.

  “Surely you’re not afraid?” Charlotte asked Daniel suddenly one Sunday as he was planting breadfruit seedlings in the Botanical Gardens.

  Daniel knew what she meant but pretended not to. “Of what?”

  “Of your own shadow, it seems. You never take me to the Almond Tree anymore.”

  “As you can see, I’m very busy right now. The breadfruit seeds have to be planted immediately you wash them free from the fruit. They can’t be allowed to dry out.”

  “Too busy to call on me? So busy gardening that I have to come and pull you out like a weed to get you to walk with me?”

  “Napoleon’s orders!” Daniel said a little too hotly. “He told me to stay out of the general’s way until things cool down.”

  She examined h
im with her startling emerald eyes. “During your little man-to-man tête-à-tête?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what am I to tell people who say you are hiding under your bed with nothing but your chamber pot for company? Everyone knows about you and Gaspard. How he insulted you at the Almond Tree by dropping our passes at his feet.”

  “So what do you want me to do? Go charging into a duel with a marksman? I’ve never fired a pistol in my life. I’m not a bombardier, I’m a botanist!”

  Tears swelled in Charlotte’s eyes. “I know this is all my fault. But he called me a trollop in front of everybody. Oh, how I wish I had someone to defend my honor!”

  Daniel sighed. “All right, then, let’s get it over with. We’ll go to the Almond. He’ll soon be told I’m there.”

  Charlotte surprised Daniel by kissing him. “Brave darling! Let’s do it tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll be there at lunchtime.”

  He was. Charlotte and Daniel had barely started picking at their food in the dining room when General Baron Gaspard Gourgaud walked in. With his red jacket and tight white pantaloons and beak of a hat, he looked every inch the strutting rooster. At his side was young Basil Jackson, first lieutenant, who looked like he was attending a funeral. He exchanged anxious glances with Charlotte, gave her a curt nod. Everyone else was looking at Daniel, not wanting to miss the sight of him running for the door. Unobserved in the kitchen was Daniel’s mother, Anne Isaack, scullery maid, who as usual made sure her son didn’t know she was there.

  Gaspard took a table on the far side of the room. The Almond’s occupants seemed not to interest him at all, especially not Charlotte and Daniel. Instead he stared out the open window, apparently deep in thought.

  “The usual,” said Basil Jackson. The waitress brought their drinks. Two different tropical creations. Besides Jackson’s few words, the room, which had been buzzing with loud whispers about Daniel’s sudden appearance, was so silent you could hear the two officers sipping their drinks.

  It seemed as if an hour passed, although it was only a few minutes, before Gaspard made his move. He raised his nose in the air and sniffed loudly, looking everywhere except for where Daniel sat frozen to his chair.

  “Do you smell it?” he asked the silence.

  “What?” said Basil Jackson, ill at ease in the role he was being forced to play.

  “Fear! I swear this place is reeking with the acrid smell of fear. Now I wonder where it could be coming from. Have you any idea?”

  “No,” said Jackson, moving his empty drink like a chess piece.

  “Unless it’s coming from outside,” said Gaspard. “Or at least it would be if a certain coward had his way!”

  A voice came from the opposite side of the room. It was Charlotte. “That’s funny! I don’t smell fear,” she said. “But I do smell a bully. Coming from your side of the room. I wonder who he could be!”

  “A pity,” said Gaspard, “that they allow loudmouthed harlots onto the premises. This is clearly a place to which a decent man can no longer bring his wife.”

  “General, we all know you bugger Basil Jackson,” crowed Charlotte, who seemed to be having the time of her life. “But I never thought you’d admit it in public that he was your wife!”

  Gaspard bolted to his feet, and so did Daniel. In five quick strides, they were nose to nose. “Stand aside, coward,” he hissed. “There’s a face itching to be slapped.”

  “No!” shouted Daniel, and this time the sound came all the way from his gut.

  The details of the duel were arranged in the street just out of earshot of the tavern’s clientele, who already had enough gossip to last them a week. It was to be pistols at dawn the next morning in the graveyard behind Saint James’s Church so that, Gaspard said, Daniel wouldn’t have far to go after he was finished with him. Gaspard would supply the pistols, a fine set that had been well blooded. Lieutenant Basil Jackson would be his second.

  Charlotte, who was alarmingly calm through these portentous arrangements, as if duels were fought over her every day, suggested her brother Henry as Daniel’s second.

  “He has an old pistol,” she said as she examined Daniel’s stricken face with her large, liquid green eyes, “which he uses to chase rabbits out of the garden. I’m sure that he’ll even give you a lesson on how to fire it.”

  They were hurrying down the high street to inform Henry of the fateful duty that had just been thrust upon him. There wasn’t a clock anywhere near, but Daniel could hear one ticking loudly, counting the seconds to tomorrow. “Rabbits!” he said. “I’m the rabbit, a cornered rabbit, and I’m going to be shot like one. How can you be so damned calm? You’ve murdered me!”

  The pain in her eyes was completely convincing. “You’re saving my honor, Daniel. Isn’t that worth anything to you?”

  Henry Porteous Knipe, as Charlotte’s brother now styled himself, just a year older than Charlotte, was so excited by the prospect of being a second at a duel that he didn’t check the flint in his battered old pistol, so the first time Daniel pulled the trigger it didn’t fire.

  “Careful!” yelled Henry when Daniel waved the muzzle in his direction. “Sometimes it takes a few seconds for the gunpowder to catch. “No,” he went on when he had counted to five. “Flint must be napped. We need to change it.”

  So it was quite a while before Daniel got off his first shot. The recoil numbed his hand. He declined a second. One more shot tomorrow, and that would be the end of it. And of him, almost certainly. All he could wish for was a quick ending. He’d heard of men who received a bullet in the gut taking days to die.

  Daniel couldn’t sleep that night. He paced up, cursing General Gaspard Gourgaud, and paced down, cursing Charlotte Knipe. How could she do this to him? Quite clearly she didn’t love him anymore, if she ever had. She was in love with Gaspard. She had set up the duel, he was sure of it now. She had slapped Gaspard’s face at the ball so that the strutting rooster would be obliged to challenge him, even though he had absolutely nothing to do with their quarrel, wasn’t even on the island. He was in the Azores when it happened, thousands of miles away! Quite clearly she was trying to flush him out of her life in a way that brought her fame. From now on, she would have the reputation that she was a beauty whom men had fought and died over. This wasn’t a duel. It was human sacrifice on the altar of her vanity!

  But a force much stronger than his own will, the fear of being called a coward, had Daniel striding manfully into the gray dawn the short distance—oh, too short—to the churchyard where the already dead stirred in their graves, getting ready to welcome him into their silent community.

  He had refused breakfast because he’d heard that an empty stomach fares better with a bullet in it than one full of eggs and bacon. It didn’t help at all that young Henry, his second, was wearing his kilt as he walked at his side. The kilt he had taken to wearing at weddings and funerals.

  Daniel caught himself reading the inscriptions on the cold stones. He wondered what they would write on his. What they should write was: “Here lies a young man in his prime, hounded to his death by a vain and selfish young woman.”

  The only thing missing from making his misery complete was that there was no sign of the Gallic rooster General Gaspard Gourgaud. The rising sun was just about to sever the throat of the night when the Frenchman’s second arrived, Basil Jackson, conspicuously alone and obviously distressed.

  “The general sends his sincerest apologies,” he said. “He was taken sick late yesterday afternoon. Some kind of food poisoning. Vomited all night. In spite of Dr. O’Meara’s orders, he dragged himself to the stables this morning. But he was so weak he couldn’t mount his horse. I can’t tell you how much he was looking forward to being here and how earnestly he wishes to reschedule as soon as he is strong enough to hold a pistol.”

  Daniel gaped at Basil Jackson as if he were Jesus Christ riding in on clouds of glory. “Sick?” he said, because that’s how he felt. Sick with relief.

  “Yes,” said L
ieutenant Jackson, “but he will give you satisfaction as soon as he stops vomiting, I can assure you of that.”

  Daniel wanted to say that he was satisfied enough already—or words to that effect—but his response didn’t come out right, because he was distracted by a figure that was approaching with long strides out of the dove-gray dawn. It was Charlotte.

  “My brave, brave darling!” she whispered as she crushed his lips with hers.

  Chapter 9: Deception

  “You are sure Rosebud poisoned you?” Napoleon asked Gaspard.

  “Yes, but not personally. Through an agent, that young coward’s mother. Everybody knows she’s a witch. When she’s not casting spells or concocting potions, she works as a scullery maid at the tavern. I will not be drinking at the Almond Tree next time we fight.”

  “There will be no next time.”

  “Majesty? Then how will my honor be satisfied? People will say I am a coward.”

  “All the better. It explains why you hate me.”

  “Hate you, sire?” A dreadful thought struck Gaspard. “Was it you…”

  “I knew of it,” said Napoleon. “I know everything that happens on this pile of dung.”

  “But I don’t hate you, sire. I love you.”

  “Love is war’s little sister—she must always take second place. You are a brilliant tactician, but you know nothing of strategy. Let me explain.”

  They were walking, leaning forward into the southeaster, their hats in their hands, the emperor because he didn’t want his famous black hat swept away—he only had forty of them—Gaspard because no one wore a hat in Napoleon’s presence. Napoleon reached out and pinched Gaspard’s wind-chilled cheek. “You’ve just had a remarkable change of heart,” he said. “Instead of wanting to kill this Daniel boy, you have taken a passionate liking to him. You may bugger him, for all I care—he’s certainly young and handsome enough! These are your instructions: you will persuade Daniel that I have besmirched your honor by forbidding you to reschedule the duel. You will tell Daniel that you are tired of my autocratic ways. Convince him, so he convinces everyone else, that you are seriously thinking of taking revenge on me by siding with my jailer. In fact, you wish you were in England to denounce me to the British government in person. The British will relish your betrayal, because everybody knows that we are so close that I chose you to take the notice of my abdication to the prince regent. Those are your orders.”