Napoleon's Rosebud

by Humphry Knipe

  “You are also to deliver a verbal message to Lady Holland, hostess to England’s Liberal establishment.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  Napoleon lowered his voice, although the only living thing within earshot was the lamenting wind. “My jailer has instructed Dr. O’Meara, my own doctor, to murder me.”

  Charlotte held Napoleon’s gaze. She knew the jovial Irish doctor well. He loved to talk, and she was very happy to listen. He had laughed when he told her that anecdote about the hemorrhoid-hungry leeches, which had later caused such a sensation when she had mentioned it at Sir Hudson Lowe’s dinner. Trying to turn this kindly man into an assassin? Unspeakable !

  “If that leaked out!” she said.

  “Of course. It’s a bigger mountain of gunpowder than the Russians tried to blow me up with when I called on the Kremlin. The revelation must be a mighty explosion, not a feeble series of damp squibs. That’s why Gaspard can’t be trusted with it, why no one can, except for you. It must be delivered to Lady Holland as a secret that she must keep secret at all costs. Only then will she put all her energy into betraying it.”

  After their Grecian tableau at Nymph’s Pond, Gaspard had parted company with Daniel at the Botanical Gardens. As arranged young Basil Jackson, whom Gaspard had moved in with a few days before, supposedly because he could no longer stand the sight of Napoleon, kept a seat for him at the Almond Tree. Gaspard was on his second fruit cocktail laced with tungi when Marchand, chief valet and keeper of the imperial purse, passed by with a curt nod and continued on to the run-down offices of Balcombe, Fowler, and Cole. When Balcombe heard Marchand was outside asking to see him, he found inspiration in the bottle of brandy he kept in his drawer, because he knew Marchand was a hard man and so he needed to be at his best.

  The bag Marchand fished out of his pocket made a pleasant chinking sound when he dropped it on the desk. “As agreed with General Gaspard, the equivalent of three thousand English pounds in gold napoleons for Virgin Hall,” he said. “You have the title deed?”

  “Yes, and as requested I have made young Daniel Hamilton the new owner,” said Balcombe, “although, as requested, Daniel is not to know at this time. Is that still so?”

  “Yes. The house is to be a gift. When the time comes.”

  “May I know why?” said Balcombe.

  Marchand, who was a master at imitating his betters, ignored the question as he ran his eyes over the title deed. “It says here, ‘in full and sufficient payment,’ but it does not say the amount.”

  The brandy began to work its magic, so Balcombe was ready with the riposte. “That’s the custom here in Saint Helena. It’s thought to be vulgar to specify amounts.”

  “How extraordinary,” said the valet, “for the island is vulgar in every other way. Gossip, for example. Gossip has it that Samuel Knipe sold Virgin Hall for two thousand pounds, not three.”

  Balcombe’s mouth was suddenly very dry. He itched to wet it with another medicinal dose. “There may have been the matter of a commission, but I don’t recall the details.” He tried to brush off Marchand with a superior smile, but what limped onto his lips was crippled and sickly. “As I’m sure you can appreciate, I have so many large transactions passing through this office that the details of the small ones tend to escape me.”

  “Really?” said Napoleon’s valet, looking around at the peeling wallpaper. “And here I was thinking that your business was slow! Never mind, the buyer has instructed me to ignore wagging tongues in exchange for your doing him a favor.”

  Balcombe of course knew perfectly well who the buyer was. “A favor? Certainly, if it’s in my power.”

  “It certainly is,” Marchand said taking a bundle of sealed letters out of his pocket. “These are letters the buyer urgently needs delivered to London. The Dragon sails this evening . I believe your company has been supplying her?”

  “Indeed. I go on board frequently. The captain is a friend.”

  “Is he reliable?”

  “Very!”

  “That’s what we heard. And to ensure security, you would hand the letters over to him personally?”

  “Of course.”

  “And immediately,” said the valet. “A longboat is waiting for you.”

  Marchand left with the title deed and headed for the Almond Tree. He touched his hat to Gaspard and nodded as he passed by. Gaspard paid his bill and walked over the road to the Castle, where he demanded to see the governor immediately because he was bringing urgent news.

  “Urgent?” said Governor Lowe when Gaspard was shown in.

  “Letters, Your Excellency, inflammatory letters from Napoleon denouncing you to the Liberals in England. Balcombe is about to deliver them to the Dragon.”

  Lowe narrowed his eyes. “How do you know?”

  “Although I am estranged from General Bonaparte, I still have my sources. His valet Marchand is in my pocket.”

  The governor examined Gaspard carefully with his sideways look. The young general’s uniform was becoming noticeably threadbare, but he still knew how to stand to attention. “You have moved in with young Basil Jackson, I believe?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency, a few days ago. I can no longer stand Napoleon or his French entourage. They sicken me. I prefer British company.”

  “That’s why you have become close friends with Daniel Hamilton, I suppose.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. I have grown to like the boy. He proved his courage by accepting my challenge to a duel. Just as well I didn’t kill him. He’s helping me improve my English.”

  A ghost of a smile made a fleeting appearance on Lowe’s thin lips. “I hear you want to go to London to denounce Bonaparte. What I don’t know is whether I can trust you.”

  “That’s why I’m here, sir. To earn your trust.”

  “Tell me more about the letters.”

  Neither Balcombe nor the letters he carried reached the Dragon. The longboat carrying both purveyor and package was visited by harbor police before it even cast off, police who seemed to know exactly what they were looking for. Balcombe, in spite of his loud protests, was arrested and thrown into prison, where he shared a cell with a drunken sailor who was as desperate for a drink as he was.

  While Balcombe was doing his best to shut his ears to the drunken old salt’s demented rants, Sir Hudson Lowe was reading the confiscated letters. They were a nightmare revisited. The more Lowe read, the more furious he became. The worst thing was that they were not downright falsehoods. They were half-truths spiced with lies, a treat that would be caviar to England’s Liberal circles. How fortunate that General Gaspard Gourgaud had tipped him off! How brave of the young cockerel to march into his office and betray his emperor! He had just proved himself. The emperor must already have a price on Gaspard’s head. The cockerel had to be protected, kept alive so he could set the record straight in England. So he could testify to the vast web of lies being spun by the black spider lurking in that dark, damp house on Deadwood Plain! He must arrange it so Gaspard Gourgaud started right at the top, with Holland House, Liberal England’s Vatican, presided over by Lord and Lady Holland, who worshipped the French Satan and invited the cream of Liberal society to worship with them. Dangerous traitors the Hollands were, traitors who would go to any lengths to promote the interests of their dark master, Napoleon.

  Lowe knew all he needed to know about the Hollands from personal experience. When they heard that Lowe was to be Napoleon’s jailer, they had tried to overawe Lowe by inviting him, a simple officer, to their heady functions. He had rubbed shoulders with the likes of Talleyrand and Wellington and that degenerate Lord Byron, no less! Not once but eight times he was invited to walk the hallowed halls of Holland House, basking in the obsequious attention of the mighty, everyone by word or sigh begging him to loosen the bite of the shackles binding his prisoner-to-be.

  They were wasting their time. When he got to Saint Helena, he had done the opposite. He had tightened Napoleon’s shackles. The beast had escaped from captivity
once, from polite confinement on the island of Elba. A hundred days of war followed that had cost Europe another fifty thousand brave young men. Bonaparte must not be allowed to kill again!

  Lowe consigned the lying letters to the flames. His toes curled with pleasure inside his boots as he imagined the faces of the Bonapartist sheep hearing the truth about Napoleon from Napoleon’s favorite general! At the same moment, Lowe heard the whistle of an assassin’s bullet, felt the stab of the knife in the back, the spreading agony of deadly poison in the gut. The brave young general had already been poisoned once. The sooner this apostle for the cause of peace was sent off this treacherous rock to spread the truth in England the better. Lowe would command the Dragon to sweep him to safety!

  In the grip of a frenzied decision, Lowe hurried up the steps to a balcony with a view of the sea. But the Dragon, which had long ago set sail, was nothing more than a white fleck on the horizon.

  Lowe took his fury out on Balcombe, still in prison. The failed trader was soon reduced to a tearful wreck.

  “What is the next passenger ship going home?” Lowe asked him, his voice seething with contempt.

  Balcombe pulled himself together with a painful effort, looked Lowe in the eye. “Should be the Winchelsea, Your Excellency. She’s due in soon.”

  “You will settle your affairs, and you and your family will be aboard her. You are fortunate I am not indicting you for treason.”

  Balcombe’s resolution deserted him with alarming speed. “Please, Sir Hudson,” he begged, “I have helped the government once. With the matter of the smuggled scrolls.”

  “By demanding money for exposing that Rosebud wench’s poisonous letters? Hardly patriotism.”

  Balcombe didn’t contest the point. “May I at least say, for my family’s sake, that we are leaving because of my wife’s illness? It is true that her hepatitis is being aggravated by our long stay in this tropical climate.”

  To protract the villain’s agony, Lowe made a point of giving the request lengthy consideration. Eventually he said, “Yes, you may say that.”

  Balcombe was so pathetically grateful that it inspired Lowe with another brilliant idea. “In fact, I will go a step farther. I am going to supply you with lively company. General Gaspard Gourgaud.”

  Chapter 11: Mission to England

  Only the southeaster flies faster than gossip in Saint Helena. Charlotte, on her way back from Longwood late that afternoon, heard all about Gaspard’s betrayal and poor Mr. Balcombe’s exile before she found Daniel sequestered in the Botanical Gardens.

  “Did you enjoy your swim in Nymph’s Pond this morning?” said Charlotte, as cool as the fresh mountain water must have been.

  “Well enough,” Daniel said with a cheerful laugh. “Except Gaspard tried to embrace me—can you believe it! The man’s a goat!”

  “Embrace you? You’re teasing me!”

  “You didn’t see? Mary did.”

  She searched his eyes. “And exactly what did Mary see?”

  “We were standing there, ankle deep, drying off, when Gaspard pretended a biting fly had landed on my back. He made as if he was going to slap it, but instead he threw both arms around me and blubbered something about passion into my ear. I pushed him away, of course.”

  “Of course!” said Charlotte—somewhat archly, Daniel thought.

  “He apologized immediately, said he was really sorry. But he wasn’t really—that was obvious. Don’t tell Mary, but you could have run a flag up his mast, if you know what I mean! I went looking for you. Found Mary had locked herself in her bedroom. I asked her where you were, through the door, but all that did was make her howl all the louder. Where have you been? Even your mother didn’t know.”

  “I was upset too, seeing you in flagrante. So I went to see Boney. For advice.”

  “And opened your heart to him, I suppose. Do tell, what did the great man say?”

  “Not much. He seemed to know all about it. He had more important matters on his mind.”

  “I should hope so.”

  “You obviously haven’t heard. It’s the talk of the Almond Tree. Governor Lowe is sending Gaspard to England.”

  Daniel stared at her in blank amazement. “What?”

  “Poor Mr. Balcombe has been caught trying to smuggle out a batch of Napoleon’s letters. They say he’s been exiled. Everybody’s saying it was Gaspard who tipped off the governor, because he was seen going into the Castle before Mr. Balcombe’s arrest, and then a couple of hours later Gaspard was given permission to go back to Europe.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Daniel, clearly astonished by the news.

  “There’s more, my darling,” she said. “I know this is going to hurt because if it doesn’t you wouldn’t love me. When Gaspard goes Boney wants me to go with him.”

  Daniel stared at her, sure she was teasing and then sure she wasn’t. “With him?” he croaked.

  “The Balcombes will be sailing on the same boat as Gaspard, they say. The story will be put about that I’m to be the Balcombe girls’ companion.”

  “No one will believe that! Everybody knows you hate the Balcombe girls, and that includes Governor Lowe.”

  “Lowe will be told that the real reason I want to go is that I’m eloping with Gaspard. The governor will like to hear that, because he thinks it will hurt Boney.”

  For a long moment, Daniel was speechless. “Charlotte, how can you? We have only just reunited. Now you want to abandon me?”

  “Darling you must know it’s the last thing I want to do. It’s tearing my heart in two. But I must do this for Boney, he needs me to go. It will only be for a few months, I promise. What’s that in a lifetime together? Boney says Gaspard needs someone to keep an eye on him, to anchor him, someone presentable who can accompany him everywhere. A Saint Helena native who can confirm what he says about the island is the truth.”

  They held each other’s eyes, his troubled, hers filling with tears. “Do you want to go?” Daniel asked.

  “I must! Boney’s helpless. He’s depending on me! I feel it’s my duty. Please say yes because I won’t go if you say no!”

  “And you’ll make me regret it forever after. You can’t wait to spread your wings, can you? And since when have you needed my permission to do anything you please?”

  She threw her arms around him, kissed him so hard it hurt. “Oh, I do love you so much!”

  “Eloping with a young French general! You can’t do that! What about Daniel?” piped Samuel Knipe in a voice that was growing weaker by the month.

  Charlotte was alone with her frail uncle, who was propped up in what everyone was already calling his deathbed. “Uncle Samuel, I’m only pretending to elope with him, to pull the wool over the governor’s eyes! Daniel understands. I detest Gaspard Gourgaud, but the emperor wants me to help him get the news out. It’s only for a month or two, I promise. You’ll be better by the time I get back.”

  Samuel had more strength in his wits than in his body. “Nonsense, I’ll probably be dead. Exactly why does he need your help?”

  Charlotte looked at the drawn, wrinkled face, tying to divine how much her uncle knew and how much she needed to tell him. “To confirm that Governor Lowe is a cruel tyrant, of course.”

  “You seem to be fishing in very troubled waters,” the old man said with a sigh. His thoughts drifted. A smile courted his thin lips. “You will rub shoulders with the aristocracy,” he rambled. “Visit stately homes. Attend grand receptions. Just think, a Knipe might even be presented to the prince regent!” He held out his skeletal hand. It was cold to the touch. “You will have the honor of our name in your hands. I will make sure you have enough money to be dependent on no one. But I do worry about Daniel. What does he think of all this…this espionage? When will you return to him? I want you to marry and live together at Virgin Hall. It’s what I promised Daniel’s father.”

  “Soon, very soon. As soon as I’ve done my duty. Daniel understands that.”

  There were tear
s in her uncle’s eyes. “Soon, then. Or I’m afraid it will not be soon enough for me.”

  “What?” screeched Mary, thrusting four fingers of her right hand into her mouth. She’d confined herself to bed, looked awful, hair unbrushed, face unwashed except by a perpetual stream of tears.

  Charlotte had put off giving her the news. Told everyone likely to see Mary to do the same. But eventually one of the black chambermaids had whispered just enough to get Mary screaming, and so here she was, facing the fury of the storm.

  “Why are you going with him? Why not me? You’re running off together, aren’t you? This excuse that the reason you’re going is to chaperone the Balcombe brats is just a damnable lie, isn’t it? You’re eloping with the man I love, with the only man I’ve ever loved. How could you do this to me? You, of all people, my very best friend, my only friend in the world, betraying me! You have no idea what it’s like to be in love with someone who you know is too good for you. Go fetch Gaspard—I want to hear this from his own lips! Coldly, heartlessly abandoning me and running off with you! Go fetch him, because if he doesn’t come to me I will most certainly go to him.”

  Charlotte was surprised how calm she felt, like she heard it was in the eye of a hurricane, as she walked a slippery tightrope of lies. “You and I, two young Yamstock girls,” she said to Mary, “have been caught up in great matters. We are mere pawns in a game. I hate Gaspard for insulting me in public, calling me horrible names—you know that. But the governor needs someone to keep an eye on him. To make sure he accomplishes his mission. Can Mr. Balcombe keep an eye on Gaspard in London? Of course he can’t!”

  “Why not? Is there something wrong with Gaspard like there’s obviously something wrong with me?” said Mary, choking on a sob.

  “Because Gaspard needs to travel in the best social circles to get his message out. Mr. Balcombe is a trader. Little better than a shopkeeper. He won’t be admitted anywhere.”

  “But you will, that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? Why not me? It’s because I’m not beautiful like you, isn’t it? Not beautiful!” she howled.