Napoleon's Rosebud

by Humphry Knipe

  “Is that all I am to you?”

  “How can you even think that? You are a gift from the other great man of the century!”

  With a tired creak, Napoleon’s carriage drew up outside the consulate. Byron, eyes fixed on the moon, didn’t seem to notice.

  “Thank you,” Charlotte said. He didn’t seem to hear. He was motionless. So was the coachman. It was as if a toy had wound down. The show was over. She let herself out.

  As the carriage rattled off, he gave a mad laugh. “Forget about me—if you can!”

  She couldn’t forget about him. She lay awake thinking of passion. It was a monstrous wave that swept everything before it, expectations, good intentions, promises, vows. Every superstructure of orderly life annihilated, leaving a wasteland in its path. But what an exquisite sensation to be caught up in that torrent! To be thrown skyward like the mists chased up the sheer mountains of Saint Helena by the exuberant southeaster! What could be more painful than a love like hers, an undecided love? Yes, she was in love, but she was torn to shreds trying to decide with whom.

  It was dawn before she finally fell asleep. When she woke toward the middle of the day, she put on the emerald dress Lady Holland had bought her, touched up her face.

  “The Palazzo Mocenigo,” she told the consul’s gondolier.

  The man grinned slyly. “I hear Lord Byron is a popular destination today,” he said.

  She told him to wait. She had no intention of staying long. She wanted Byron to see her as a woman, even if it was just once.

  Two huge, baying black dogs guarded the open door. When they noticed that she wasn’t afraid of them, they licked her hand. Somewhere inside two women were screaming at each other in Italian. She went in, followed by the dogs. The place was a zoo. Caged animals were everywhere. A pair of monkeys. A fox and a wolf in the same cage. Ravens chuckled as they examined her with one eye and then another. Guinea fowl, an Egyptian crane, a sad-looking ostrich, a large snake—perhaps a python. The most curious exhibit of all was a blonde child, a girl by her clothes, who sat placidly in a cage sucking her thumb. She looked like one of the exhibits.

  The screeching stopped. A black-haired woman hurried in, frowned when she saw Charlotte, opened the cage, took out the toddler, and planted a kiss on her fat cheek. The kiss was rewarded by a piercing shriek.

  “She’s just sixteen months. We lock her away when we have to do something,” the black-haired woman explained in a German accent. “She sticks her hands in the cages. She’s been bitten once already by a monkey. But she goes into a tantrum when we take her away. They’re her only friends, poor thing. She hates going home to the consulate.”

  “Who is she?” Charlotte suspected she already knew.

  “Allegra. Lord Byron’s daughter. I am Elise, her nurse. You’re here so see him.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Still in bed. Upstairs. The door’s open—he’s expecting you,” she said with a flat intonation, as if visits from women walking in off the street into his bedroom were an everyday occurrence, which no doubt they were.

  Charlotte looked in the direction pointed out by the nanny’s jabbing thumb. A massive marble staircase led up to Byron’s lair. She should have turned around right then. But she couldn’t. The drumming of the six horses pulling Napoleon’s blue-black carriage thundered in her temples. She was climbing the stairs. At some point the cries of the infant below were drowned by the cries of a woman above. Still she went up, step after step, through a lofty billiard room to a heavy wooden door, as wide open as the gates of hell.

  When he had seen her she would leave. She stood at the open bedroom door for what seemed long minutes before he noticed her. He stopped his business under the covers. “Ah, it’s Napoleon’s Rosebud in full regimentals!” he said with a smirk that ended in an ironic pout. “What a beauty you are. No wonder mon empereur sent you to me! Please meet Margharita, who is known as the Furnace for good reason.” With a quick movement, he pulled aside the covers, which made the Furnace scream with mock modesty. “See, she has legs as long as yours and not an ounce of fat on her belly. What a brace of beauties you make! Come and join us in our labor of love, caro. You know you can’t resist!”

  Charlotte must have grown wings, she fled down the marble staircase so fast. “The consulate, hurry!” she told the gondolier, as if she was being pursued by the devil himself.

  She couldn’t resist looking up at the balcony that must have led off the bedroom. Byron was there, draped in a flowing silk gown. “Adieu, Rosebud! Give my love to Napoleon because he has just given his love to me!” he called out. He knew she would take the next ship back to England.

  The first night out at sea, she went on deck. The moon was still nearly full, lighting the caps of the sleepy waves. Her lips moved:

  So, we’ll go no more a-roving

  So late into the night,

  Though the heart be still as loving,

  And the moon be still as bright.

  A flood of tears flushed Byron away. He was a monster as twisted as his foot.

  Chapter 18: The Submarine

  A letter was waiting for her on a little silver tray in her bedroom at Holland House. It was from Daniel. She felt too travel stained to touch it.

  A junior lady’s maid helped her wash off the grime of the journey in a luxurious bath. A senior maid dressed her in a new but very modest gray outfit she said Lady Holland wanted her to wear.

  “Why?” asked Charlotte. “It’s nicely cut but awfully plain. Not Lady Holland’s taste at all, I would have thought. I look like a servant.”

  The maid let loose a barely audible sniff. “My lady, I’m simply following instructions.”

  Her hair, still short, was being shaped by a hairdresser, the third servant to attend to her before she was ready to face the world. Charlotte snapped her fingers at the junior maid and pointed at the letter. The junior maid, oozing deference, brought it to her, tray and all, like a sacred offering.

  Saint Helena

  April 18, 1818

  My darling Charlotte:

  By the time you receive this letter I hope you will be reconciled to the death of your very dear friend Mary. I also hope that you did not find it offensive that I didn’t inform you of the tragedy but left that sad duty to Mr. Burchell in the hope that it would be kinder coming from a loving person than from words scratched on paper. Alas, I have more sad news that I must share with you directly because it is a family matter. Following so soon after the tragic death of Mary, I have to tell you that your dear uncle Samuel was at last relieved of his suffering when he passed on to a better world yesterday evening. It is meager consolation, I know, but it is widely held that he died the wealthiest planter on the island, which is in mourning as if we Yamstocks have lost our king.

  Charlotte stopped reading because her eyes were filling with tears. Dear, gentle Uncle Samuel! He had been like a father to her since she had lost hers. It was he who had given her the material and moral support to get where she was now, wherever that was, playing the part of spy or traitor or adventuress, she wasn’t sure which.

  And Mary! It wasn’t that she’d stopped mourning her and hating Gaspard for taking advantage of her. The rush of events had tidied away both of them into the dusty corners of her mind, from which they ventured out like spiders only when she lay awake on her midnight pillow, haunted by the thundering of Napoleon’s carriage in the moonlight, the cackle of Byron’s mad laughter.

  No! No more! She must never think of what happened with Byron!

  She went back to Daniel’s letter.

  As so often happens, dear Charlotte, this bad news comes yoked to the good. I am now the owner of Virgin Hall! I am pinching myself black and blue to make sure I’m not dreaming. It’s unbelievable, but it’s true. This morning Napoleon’s valet, that cool customer Marchand, called on me with the title deed already in my name. He said the gift was a consideration from the emperor for services both rendered and to be rendered. It app
ears Napoleon has owned Virgin Hall for some time but is making the transfer now, so it appears that Uncle Samuel gave me the property. Gave us the property, for you will very soon, I fervently hope, be sharing it with me as its beautiful mistress. I suspect that this astonishing stroke of luck is more about you than about me. Napoleon wants to lure you back home with a feathered nest, in which hope he is second only to me!

  I lie half-awake at night dreaming that we are sitting at the Friar’s feet together, as we have done so many times since we were children. I dream we are going on one of those mad Saint Helena walks where we pass into a new climate every half an hour, as if we were flying around the world on the back of a meteor. I still do those walks, collecting specimens for the Gardens, but miss you terribly because I have nothing to kiss but the empty sky. Put me out of my misery, my darling. Come home to Virgin Hall!

  There was a polite knock at the door. Yet another lady’s maid appeared.

  “Lady Holland requests the pleasure of your company at your earliest convenience in her private drawing room,” she squeaked.

  Lady Holland, enthroned in a large comfortable chair because her arthritis was still playing up, was writing a letter in her shrine. Charlotte couldn’t resist glancing at Byron’s portraits, feeling a guilty shard of pleasure strike at her as she did so.

  She could tell by a quick flicker of emotion on Her Ladyship’s face, by the way she turned her best ear toward her, that she had noticed. “So do tell me, how did you get on with our famous poet?” she said in the teasing way of someone who already knows the answer to her question.

  “Very well, Your Ladyship,” Charlotte said, although this was both the truth and a lie. “He is an extraordinary man.”

  “Does he still support our cause?”

  “Yes, Your Ladyship. He says Napoleon is the greatest man of the age.”

  “After Byron, I suppose?”

  “He does seem to have a very high opinion of himself. But he says the emperor created him.”

  “And so he did. Like that scientist Frankenstein created his monster. Byron does think of himself as a monster, doesn’t he?” she added as a whimsical afterthought.

  “Sometimes I think he does, because of his deformed foot. He claims to be reminded he’s a monster every step he takes.”

  Lady Holland winced as she flexed her swollen right ankle. “Yes, of course. I know exactly what that’s like. Well, what else did he have to say? I know you are absolutely brimming with wicked secrets that are dying to be told.”

  “He did have an awful lot to say, Your Ladyship. He talks all the time. Or else he says nothing at all, just glowers and bites his nails.”

  Lady Holland flicked her wrist impatiently, as if she were brushing off a fly of a thought. “Your boy. Daniel. You’ve read his letter?”

  “Yes. He is well.”

  “Well be damned, girl!” Lady Holland snapped. “No one cares about his health! Does he send news of Napoleon?”

  “Yes, Your Ladyship. He says that Napoleon has given us an estate for a wedding gift. It’s called Virgin Hall.”

  “Ha! Virgin Hall. An ironical gift for someone who has just been tumbled by Lord Byron!”

  “Lady Holland, I am still a virgin!” Charlotte said a lot more hotly than what was polite.

  The old woman’s hard eyes glittered with amusement. “However, I hear it was a damn near-run thing, as Wellington would have put it. Wouldn’t it have been priceless if you lost your virginity in the same carriage that Napoleon lost Waterloo! But fortunately for you, Byron prefers…Oh, enough of him and his little perversions. Let’s talk about something big.”

  “Your Ladyship?” said Charlotte, not at all sure that there wasn’t some sort of wicked innuendo in play.

  But Lady Holland’s thoughts had taken flight. “I have a glorious plan to rescue the emperor from that damned island of yours! A special boat will spirit him off to the Americas so he can reestablish his empire, in Mexico, perhaps. Then he will forge a grand alliance with the United States. Europe will rise up, cast off its chains, and join in. The alliance will rule the world! The end of deference! Liberty, justice, and equality for all! Now isn’t that something worth risking your life for?”

  Charlotte kept her feet on the ground. “Your Ladyship, there is a small problem. From the lookout post on Diana’s Peak, the highest point on Saint Helena, you can see a ship sixty miles away. If your rescue vessel approaches without authorization, it will be blown out of the water.”

  Lady Holland stared at her, the joy of triumph lighting up her eyes. “Not if it travels under the water!”

  Charlotte was so astonished by this outlandish idea that she forgot her manners. “That’s impossible!”

  “Apparently not. It’s a newfangled American invention. It’s called a submarine. This is where you come in. You must see this machine with your own eyes so you can describe it to the emperor, confirm that it exists. You have survived his interrogations before, I am told. You know what to expect.”

  “Your Ladyship, I am not mechanical.”

  “You may not be James Watt, but you are the best we have. Balcombe is banned from the island. General Gaspard Gourgaud won’t be allowed to go back, either. It’s all up to you. Will you do it?”

  Charlotte nodded, dumbfounded.

  “Excellent! No time like the present, I always say. An unmarked buggy waits for you outside. In the buggy is a young Cockney girl called Polly. She is one of our operatives. She will take you to the submarine. That is why I have dressed you more as a maid than a lady. So you do not attract unwelcome attention at the docks. However,” she went on with a little smile, “I’m afraid I have not succeeded. You look even more eye catching in plain clothes!”

  The unmarked one-horse buggy was waiting at a servants’ entrance. Polly was pretty in a vulgar way. She looked like a trollop, Charlotte thought.

  “Oh, I recognize you!” the girl cooed when Charlotte slid in next to her. “Daniel showed me a picture.”

  “Really? How well do you know him?” Charlotte couldn’t resist asking.

  “Dearie, we got on like ’ouses on fire! Good lad, that one, if you know what I mean!”

  Charlotte felt her eyes narrow. Get back to business, she counseled herself. “What do you know of this submarine thing?”

  “It really is somefink from anuvver world. Wouldn’t have believed it if I ’adn’t seen it for meself. That’s why we need to show you, so you can pass it on to you know who.”

  “We?”

  “I work for Lady Holland, like you do, I s’pose.”

  Charlotte sensed that underneath the overdone cosmetics and garish clothes there was much more to this girl that met the eye. “So you know Lady Holland?”

  “Behind the curtain!”

  “What?”

  Polly rolled her eyes at Charlotte’s ignorance of Cockney rhyming slang. “Means ‘for certain.’”

  “Oh.”

  “You excited?” said Polly.

  “Mystified,” said Charlotte. “How does the driver know where to go?”

  “He ought to by now. Lady Holland has sent loads of toffs to see it. Well, at least three or four. Rich Frenchies, mostly. Building a submarine ain’t cheap.”

  “You’ve seen it yourself, you said?”

  “You bet. It’s called the Eagle. In ’onor of the emperor. It’s somefink special, it really is.”

  “Who’s building it?”

  “A sea captain. Bit of a devil, in and out of bed, if you know what I mean!”

  Charlotte felt herself color. “Really?”

  “Oh, yes, is the answer. Over six foot and ’andsome as Lucifer, he is. Children, horses, and dogs adore him. But he drives us women crazy. Best tighten your chastity belt!”

  “What else do you know about him?”

  “That he’s England’s most famous smuggler an’ escape ar’ist. He’s been thrown in the clink more times than he’s gone to church. Got out every time, one way or anuvver. Even escape
d from Napoleon hisself. Who be’er to spring the emperor and smuggle him away than a professional?”

  The dock in Blackwall Reach was surrounded by high wooden walls and a tall floating gate on the river side, which could be closed for complete privacy. At the gate was a freshly painted shack, and in the shack, behind a desk, which was covered by a large map, sat Captain Thomas Johnson, the man who had paid for her dress in Bond Street and whom Gaspard had wanted to fight at Holland House.

  “Miss Charlotte Knipe,” he said with a dangerous twinkle in his startling blue eyes. “We meet again!”

  Charlotte fought to regain her composure. “I didn’t know…”

  “Lady Holland loves her little surprises. Her Ladyship tells me that Napoleon sent you.”

  “Yes,” said Charlotte. “To help secure his release.”

  “Oh, we’ll soon take care of that! I know His Majesty personally, did he mention it?”

  “No. It was Lady Holland who sent me to you.”

  “He asked me to pilot the invasion of England back in ’03. I refused, because I knew he simply didn’t have enough ships. He thought it was because I favored England over France, flew into one of his famous rages, threw me into prison. I escaped, of course, and made my way to America. That’s where I hooked up with Robert Fulton, a very clever American engineer—fearfully inventive, those Yankees. He introduced me to submarines. Submarines! A smuggler’s dream come true!”

  “Tell her about the Eagle, love,” said Polly, who sounded quite breathless with excitement.

  “Ha!” exclaimed the captain. He tapped the unrolled map on his desk with a powerful hand. “First you’ve got to find her. Clue: she looks like an overgrown porpoise. Come closer, Miss Charlotte. I don’t bite, except very gently. Find the Eagle!”

  “Yes, find it if you can!” teased Polly, who seemed to have played this game before. “She’s big enough!”

  Charlotte walked round the desk and stood next to Captain Johnson. As tall as she was he towered over her, his large, athletic body exuding the pleasant smell of salt perfumed with tobacco. He relit the clay pipe he’d been smoking and watched her with a quizzical expression as she examined the map.