The Last Great Dance on Earth Page 2

  “Voilà, the perfect bow,” Citoyen Despréaux said, touching his lavender handkerchief to the outside corner of each eye. “Merci, Citoyen Eugène, you may be seated.”

  “It’s a good thing he didn’t call attention to my walk,” Eugène whispered, taking the seat beside me. I smiled—his lumbering walk, Bonaparte and I call it.

  Overall, the recital went well—Hortense performed brillantly. Eugène and I were so proud! Even Caroline and Joachim managed, although Joachim made too many circles and ended up at the wrong end of the room—a common error, certainly, but one Citoyen Despréaux unfortunately felt called upon to note.

  After, Caroline, Joachim, Hortense and Eugène went out for ices. I pleaded fatigue and returned to the Tuileries Palace, only to find Bonaparte in a temper, pacing back and forth in front of a blazing fire. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was sitting in front of the fire screen, watching him with a bored expression.

  “Madame Bonaparte,” Talleyrand said with a catlike purr. “It is always a pleasure to see you, but especially this evening. The First Consul is in need of your calming influence.”

  “Do not mock me, Talleyrand,” Bonaparte barked. “It’s not your life on the line.”

  I put my hands on Bonaparte’s shoulders (to calm, yes) as I kissed each cheek. “The meeting with Citoyen Cadoudal did not go well?”

  “He would strangle me with his own hands given half the chance.”

  “I don’t know why this comes as a surprise to you, First Consul,” Talleyrand said. “Citoyen Cadoudal wants a Bourbon king back on the throne and you’re rather inconveniently in the way.”

  “The French people are standing in the way—not me. Two hundred years of Bourbon rule was two hundred years too many.” Bonaparte threw himself into the chair closest to the fire, his chin buried in his hand.

  “The Bourbons, of course, argue that two hundred years of rule confers permanence,” Talleyrand said, lacing his long fingers together with a fluid motion. “They created that red-velvet-upholstered symbol of power in the throne room; they consider it theirs. And so long as it remains empty, I venture they will do everything in their power to get it back.”

  “And England will do everything in its power to help them.” “Correct.”

  “You both make it sound so hopeless,” I said, taking up my basket of needlework. “Is peace an impossibility?”

  “‘Impossible’ is not a French word,” Bonaparte said.

  “There is peace, and there is lasting peace,” Talleyrand observed philosophically. “History has proven that the only lasting peace is a blood knot, the mingling of enemy blood—and not on the battlefield, First Consul, but in the boudoir. Peace through marriage: a time-honoured tradition.”

  “What are you getting at, Minister Talleyrand?” Bonaparte demanded. “You know I don’t have a son or daughter to marry off to some lout.”

  “You have a stepson, the comely and honourable Eugène Beauharnais—”

  “A boy yet, only eighteen.”

  “—and a stepdaughter, the virtuous and accomplished Mademoiselle Hortense.” Talleyrand tipped his head in my direction. “Who, being female and nearing her seventeenth birthday, is at an ideal age to marry.”

  “I’m beginning to think you are serious, Minister Talleyrand,” Bonaparte said. “Marry Hortense to an Englishman? The English would never condescend to join one of their blue-blooded ilk to anyone even remotely related to me. Have you not read the English journals?” He grabbed a paper from a pile on the floor and tossed it to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. “Top right. It will tell you who I am in the eyes of ‘Les Goddamns.’”

  “Ah, yes. ‘An indefinable being,’” Talleyrand read out loud in English, a hint of a smile playing about his mouth, ‘“half-African, half-European, a Mediterranean mulatto.’”

  “Basta!” Bonaparte grabbed the news-sheet and threw it into the fire, watching as it burst into flames.

  “I wasn’t thinking of mating your daughter to the English, frankly,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs said evenly. “I was thinking of Georges Cadoudal.”

  “Oh, Minister Talleyrand, I trust you jest,” I said faintly, my embroidery thread knotting.

  In which we have reason to fear

  April 9, 1800, 2:20 P.M.—in the downstairs drawing room at Malmaison, a lovely afternoon.

  We made the four-hour journey out to Malmaison seeking country quiet—only to find everything in a state of chaos. The hothouse is almost but not quite roofed, the drapes almost but not quite hung, the fireplace mantel in Bonaparte’s cabinet almost but not quite completed. And now, as if all that isn’t enough, the first cook is upset because the second cook put away a jelly-bag wet, and the second cook is upset because the first cook expects him to empty the hog pails. (It’s a sign of what my life has become that I have two angry cooks to contend with—and this at our country château.) Then my flower gardener—not the kitchen gardener or the groundskeeper—tremulously informed me that three cartloads of lilac bushes had been delivered: could he leave them in the front courtyard? Put them behind the farmhouse, I told him. “We’re expecting guests.”

  As soon as he left, Hortense and Caroline came into the room with their fête gowns on, which they paraded for me to admire.

  “How much did Hortense’s gown cost?” Caroline wanted to know, swishing the gold fringe at the hem to reveal a spangled satin petticoat underneath. “Mine was four hundred and twenty-three francs.”

  “I believe Hortense’s gown was less,” I lied, to satisfy Caroline. Hortense’s simple gown of fine ivory cotton was draped to imitate a toga.

  “Your gown is beautiful, Caroline,” Hortense said, in an attempt to appease.

  You are beautiful, I wanted to tell my daughter. Slender, graceful, her head crowned in golden curls, Hortense reminds me of an angel.

  “Madame Frangeau says I have the look of a boy-producing woman.” Caroline positioned herself in front of the full-length mirror and pushed up her bosom.

  “Madame Frangeau, the midwife?” Hortense asked, her voice filled with awe. Caroline is only one year older than she, but Caroline is married and knows the secrets of women—secrets that mystify (and frighten) my daughter.

  “But just to be sure, I drink plenty of red wine.” Caroline leaned close to the mirror to examine her face—that flawless rosebud complexion that gives her a girlish countenance quite at odds with her masculine neck and shoulders.

  “But isn’t it the man who is supposed to drink wine?” Hortense asked. “Before …” She flushed.

  “I’m not convinced one can determine the sex of a child.” Four years of trying to conceive had made me a reluctant expert on the subject.

  “Madame Frangeau says you can,” Caroline said. “She knows all sorts of tricks. She says it’s a wife’s duty to produce a child, that a woman who fails to do so has been cursed. Maybe you should talk to her about your problem, Aunt Josephine.”

  My problem. “I already have,” I said, chagrined, leaving the room to get my basket of embroidery threads.

  “Maybe it’s not my mother’s fault,” I overheard Hortense say on my return. I paused at the door. “After all, she had me and Eugène.”

  “There’s one way to find out,” Caroline said. “If Napoleon got another woman pregnant, then it would be clear that—” (The gall of that girl!)

  “Caroline!” my loyal daughter objected.

  “I didn’t say Napoleon should do it, just that that’s how one could make a determination. And speaking of making a determination, now that you’re going to be seventeen, don’t you think it’s time you married?”

  My cue to enter. “I happen to know a few young men who would love to be considered by Hortense—Citoyen Mun for one.”

  Caroline made duck-lips. “He’s a gabbler and a boor.”

  “There are other qualities to consider,” I suggested, but thinking, I confess, that gabbler and boor well described Caroline’s own husband, Joachim Murat.

  “I
am going to marry for love,” Hortense said, clasping her hands to her heart.

  “There are many forms of love,” I said cautiously. Hortense’s romantic notions concern me. “An arranged marriage will often blossom into sincere devotion, while a romantic union withers with age.”

  “My husband loves me,” Caroline said. “He does anything I tell him.”

  I heard footsteps approaching, a rustle of silk. Mimi appeared in the door, her hands on her wide hips. “Yeyette,” she said, addressing me by my childhood name,* “the architects said to tell you the hothouse will be finished next week.” She rolled her eyes up, as if to the heavens. “But it won’t be finished for two months, I’ll wager you.”

  “And we know that Mimi can tell the future,” Hortense said, smiling at her former nanny.

  “But can she say when someone’s going to die?” Caroline demanded. “In Corsica, there are women who go out at night and kill an animal, but before the animal dies, they look into the animal’s eyes and see someone’s face and then that person dies. It’s true! Any Corsican will tell you.”

  “No doubt, but that’s not the type of thing Mimi does,” I said, with an apologetic look at Mimi.

  “So what does she do? My mother had a Negress who could predict the weather with sticks.” Caroline took the last three macaroons on the plate.

  “Mimi predicts the future from cards,” I said.

  “Then get her to tell us our futures,” Caroline persisted. “I want to find out if Joachim and I will make a you know before he leaves on campaign in two days. Hortense could find out if she’s ever going to marry, and—who knows, Aunt Josephine—maybe you could find out if you’re ever going to be able to—”

  “Do you have your cards with you?” I asked Mimi, interrupting.

  “First, the birthday girl,” Mimi said with a good-natured grin, pulling the worn pack out of her apron pocket.

  “Oh no,” Hortense said, as if faced with her doom.

  We watched in silence as Mimi laid out the cards in rows, seven cards wide. The Death card with its ghoulish skeleton turned up in the fifth row—but that can mean many things, I thought: transformation, change. The Lovers card was in the row above it. “I see a husband, and I see love,” I said. But not necessarily together.

  Mimi nodded slowly, pulling at her lower lip. “You will have four babies.”

  Hortense beamed.

  “By two men,” Mimi added, frowning.

  “Aha!” Caroline opened her snuffbox and inhaled a pinch.

  “Two marriages?” I asked. How did Mimi see that?

  But Mimi had already pulled in the cards and handed me the deck to shuffle. “How about I do yours now, Yeyette?”

  “Why am I always last?” Caroline brushed snuff off her bodice.

  “Patience, Madame Caroline, we’ll get to you,” Mimi said, taking the cards back and laying them out. “Oh-oh—there she is again.”

  “You jest.” But there it was: the Empress card, the Empress with her weary, unhappy eyes.

  “My mother is often told she will be queen,” Hortense explained to Caroline. “Even when she was a girl in Martinico she was told that—by a voodoo priestess.”

  “Oh, let’s not talk of it!” The memory of that afternoon disturbs me still.

  Caroline shrugged. “She lives in the Palace of Kings. That’s almost like being a queen.”

  I heard a horse approaching at a gallop. “Palace of the Government, we call it now,” I reminded Caroline, going to the window. “It’s Bonaparte,” I said, relieved to see his little white Arabian racing through the gate.

  “I was accosted by hooligans,” Bonaparte exclaimed, sliding off his horse.

  Mon Dieu, no! “Near the quarry?” His hat was askew and there was dust on his uniform—but then, Bonaparte always looks a shambles. “Did you outrace them?” I asked, brushing off his frayed jacket. Bonaparte’s horse is small, but fast.

  He laughed and tweaked my ear. “Bandits wouldn’t dare lay a hand on me. Don’t you know that? Where is everyone?”

  Everyone: the Bonapartes, he meant—his Corsican clan. Mother Signora Letizia, jolly Uncle Fesch and all his brothers and sisters: Joseph “the Elder” and his wife Julie, Elisa “the intellectual” and her husband Félix, Pauline “the beauty” and her husband Victor—and Caroline and Joachim, of course. Is that everyone? Oh, how could I forget young Jérôme—”the scamp”? (Bonaparte has decided to send the rambunctious fifteen-year-old to sea soon because of his extravagant debts, inclination to duel and absolute disregard for any form of study.)

  Lucien “the fireball” is at his country estate and Louis “the poet” is in Brest, so that makes eleven Bonapartes. Hortense, Eugène and I bring the total to fifteen. I’ll have a word with my quarrelling cooks.

  April 10—a balmy spring morning at Malmaison, cows lowing,

  lambs bleating.

  My daughter is seventeen today! “Now you are a woman,” I told her. Her eyes filled with apprehension. I pulled back the bed-curtains to reveal a mountain of parcels, an entire wardrobe in the latest fashion—a wardrobe such as a woman wears.

  My chatterbox girl was momentarily speechless. Then oh, what pleasure, opening one parcel after another, exclaiming over the laces and trimmings, the flounces and frills on all the gowns. There were quite a number: three for morning wear, two for afternoon (but suitable for receiving), two silk gowns for evening, a walking gown, a ball gown and even a lovely riding habit—accompanied, of course, by a parasol and numerous bonnets, gloves and slippers.

  “This is like a trousseau, Maman,” Hortense said, overwhelmed. “One would think I was getting married.”

  “As you will soon, no doubt.” At this her expression darkened.

  6:20 P.M.

  It was a beautiful afternoon for a birthday fête—we dined off tables set up on the lawn. We had just finished sherbet and syrup when who should canter up the driveway but Bonaparte’s young brother Louis, holding a bouquet of hyacinths aloft like a torch.

  “Louis is back from Brest already?” Bonaparte asked, squinting.

  Louis dismounted his lathered horse and presented the flowers to Hortense. “Love is nature’s cloth, embroidered by imagination,” he said, bowing like an old-fashioned knight.

  “Have you been reading romantic novels, Louis?” Hortense gave him a mocking look.

  “Voltaire,” he said, flushing. He looked comely in a bottle-green riding jacket, his wavy chestnut hair cut to shoulder length in the style now popular with the young.

  “Who is Voltaire?” Jérôme “the scamp” asked, throwing a bread roll at one of the pugs, hitting it hard on the head.

  “Maybe if you listened to your tutors once in a while you’d learn,” Elisa said, between hiccups.

  “The flowers are lovely, Louis,” I exclaimed, to soften my daughter’s teasing—and divert the argumentative Bonapartes.

  “You made excellent time,” Bonaparte said, embracing his brother.

  “Louis is a good rider,” my ever-cheerful Eugène said.

  “When he’s not falling off,” Caroline said, helping herself to the last of the cream.

  “Magnifico!” Elisa’s husband Félix exclaimed. (Why?)

  “A fearless-rider,” Bonaparte said. “I owe my life to him.”

  “Blood is everything,” Signora Letizia said, taking out her knitting.

  “Salúte!” pink-cheeked Uncle Fesch said in Italian, emptying his wine glass before a servant refilled it.

  “Louis has a fast horse,” Joachim Murat said, twirling a pink silk tassel. “He paid a lot of money for it—several thousand francs.”

  “I love a horse with a big chest,” Pauline said, pulling down her sleeves to better display her perfect white shoulders, “and strong flanks.”

  “I have dispatches for you, Napoleon,” Louis said, pleased to have met with his older brother’s approval. “As you thought, English warships are blockading Brest. Our ships can’t get out to sea.”

  “Mau
dits anglais,” Bonaparte swore under his breath.

  “Maudits anglais,” Pauline’s husband Victor echoed.

  “You’ve arrived just in time,” I said, inviting Louis to take a seat between me and Hortense. “We’re having a ball tonight.”

  “At which even Papa will dance,” Hortense said.

  “Napoleon?” Louis asked with a sceptical look.

  “I can dance perfectly well.” Bonaparte looked disconcerted when we all burst into laughter.

  “Other than country dances?” Hortense teased.

  “Bah! What’s wrong with country dances? They’re jolly—and at least one gets a little exercise,” Bonaparte said, and with that he pulled Hortense to her feet and spun her about the lawn, humming loudly (but tunelessly), while two pugs scurried after. I turned to see the servants hiding behind the bushes, doubled over laughing.

  April 11, early evening (beautiful weather).

  Proudly, we bid our soldiers adieu this morning—Eugène, Louis and Joachim, each sitting on his horse so proudly, riding off to join their regiments. (Joachim has embellished his uniform with pink gewgaws—even his horse’s saddle blanket is pink. Bizarre.)

  It is sad to see so many empty chairs around the table. Bonaparte mopes. He wishes he were riding out with the men. He will be joining them soon enough, I know.

  April 12—back in Paris (alas).

  Caroline has been miserable, stomping from one room to the next. I have been trying to console her, assuming that she was melancholy because her husband was gone, but it turned out she is furious because he hasn’t been assigned an army of his own.

  “Maybe she’s a little sensitive right now because she’s … you know,? Hortense whispered to me from the harpsichord bench.

  “Is she?”

  “She must be. She told me they … you know, all night long.” Hortense struck a chord, flushing furiously.

  April 28—Malmaison.

  I am writing this at the breakfast table to the sound of Caroline retching.

  Noyon

  Chère Maman,

  We were days in the rain from Corbeil. Soon I expect we’ll be setting out over the Alps to Italy.*