The Last Great Dance on Earth Read online

  “We do not need to follow quite so quickly,” I instructed our driver as Hortense and Caroline were handed in. I was about to follow them when Colonel Rapp suggested that my shawl, which is embroidered with an Egyptian motif, would look lovely arranged in the Egyptian manner, tied at the waist. I paused to change it. We owe our lives to this delay!

  This next part is painful to recount. As our carriage turned the corner onto Rue Nicaise, we were thrown into the air by an explosion. Colonel Rapp yelled at us to cover our heads. I remember the sound of timbers cracking, the strong smell of gunpowder.

  “It’s a plot to murder Bonaparte!” I cried out. (I’m ashamed to admit that I lost my head.) There was rubble all over the street, and what seemed to be a very great number of people, some writhing, some lying still—bodies, I realized with a shock. And then, slowly, a chorus of cries filled the air.

  Suddenly our coach was flying pell-mell. “Stop!” I heard myself scream. The horses had bolted, taken the bit. “Turn back, they’ve killed him!” The memory of it makes me tremble even now.

  Our carriage finally pulled to a stop in the Tuileries courtyard. “You will excuse me, ladies?” Colonel Rapp said, struggling with the carriage door mechanism. He hit it with his fist and jumped out.

  It seems a dream to me now—much of it in fog, yet other scenes sharp, the memory painful. “There has been an explosion on the Rue Nicaise,” I heard the coachman say. “Grand Dieu, things were flying!”

  I recall someone asking if the First Consul had been injured.

  “I don’t think so,” our driver answered. “He went on ahead.”

  “Are you all right?” I asked the girls, my voice shaky. Hortense appeared calm, though pale. “Caroline?” What a terrible thing to happen to a young woman in her delicate condition!

  “Where’s a footman?” Caroline said, looking out the shattered window. “Why doesn’t someone come to hand us down?”

  Hortense pulled a handkerchief out of her reticule. “Imagine what would have happened if we had left a few seconds earlier!”

  If I hadn’t stopped to rearrange my shawl, if I hadn’t …

  “It was just a house on fire,” Caroline said.

  A footman came running. Limping after him was a cavalier with a gash under his chin, leading his horse by the reins. “The First Consul was not injured!” the cavalier said, his voice quavering.

  “Thank God,” Hortense whispered.

  “Are you sure?” I demanded. “Did you see him?”

  “He is at the Opéra, Madame Bonaparte—you are to join him there. Another carriage is being prepared for you.”

  I was to go to the Opéra? I wasn’t sure I could even walk! “Of course,” I said, pulling my shawl around me, as if this was what one did after a violent explosion: one proceeded to the Opéra. A prick of pain reminded me that there was glass everywhere. “What happened? Do you know?” I asked as he handed me down. I felt tremulous, but I could stand.

  “Apparently a barrel of gunpowder exploded.”

  “A barrel?” The explosion had lifted our carriage into the air! “Were many people hurt?” Killed.

  “I suggest you take a different route,” the soldier said over his shoulder, giving Caroline a hand.

  People were crowding into the courtyard. I saw Mimi making her way through to us, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “There’s been an explosion!” Hortense cried out to her.

  “Bonaparte’s all right. I’m to join him at the Opéra.”

  “You’re going, Yeyette?” Mimi asked, frowning.

  “I’m fine.” I needed to see Bonaparte; I needed to know he was safe.

  “I’m coming with you, Maman,” Hortense said, her blue eyes swimming.

  “What’s happened to your hand?” There was blood on her left thumb.

  “It’s just a little cut, from the glass.”

  “It has stopped bleeding,” Mimi said, examining the wound. She withdrew a patch of plaster from her pocket and secured it to Hortense’s hand with a handkerchief. “Stay close to your mother,” I heard her whisper as a carriage pulled up beside us.

  “What about me?”

  “Caroline, you really must—”

  “I’ll look after Madame Caroline,” Mimi assured me, her hand firmly on Caroline’s shoulder.

  “Best send for the midwife, just to be sure,” I called out as we pulled away. “Madame …” My mind was in a fog.

  “Madame Frangeau,” Hortense called back as our carriage pulled into the roadway, the soldier escort riding alongside, his horse wild-eyed.

  Bonaparte was sitting in the theatre box drinking an amber liquor. “Josephine,” he said, standing and removing his hat. And then, with a little bow, “Is something the matter?”

  Did he not know? Talleyrand caught my eye, made a gesture with his hand behind Bonaparte’s back: Be quiet, stay calm, the First Consul knows, the audience is watching.

  “You’re just in time,” Bonaparte said, turning toward the stage. Madame Barbier-Walbonne’s voice filled the hall—the oratorio had begun.

  I wrapped my shawl around me, as if by bundling myself tightly, I might stop the trembling. Hortense put her bandaged hand on my shoulder, to calm. I stroked her fingertips. How close death had come.

  Once we were back in the privacy of our suite at the Tuileries, Bonaparte’s calm gave way to fury. “Every time I turn around, someone’s trying to kill me,” he raged at Talleyrand. “Têtes des mules! It’s all these bomb-making Revolutionaries, longing for the days of anarchy and violence, the same fanatics who were responsible for the explosion at the Salpêtrière convent, no doubt.”

  “And the Opéra plot,” Talleyrand observed, propping his gold-tipped walking stick against the arm of the chair. “And likely the snuffbox plot, too, for all we know.”

  “This is intolerable.” Bonaparte threw a log on the flaming fire, sending sparks flying.

  “Did the Minister of Police ever convict any of these Revolutionaries?” Talleyrand asked. “His friends and colleagues, one might note.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” Bonaparte demanded, his fists on his hips.

  “It means that Fouché should be arrested and shot, in my opinion.” Shot! Talleyrand’s words shocked me.

  “There has been enough bloodshed tonight, Minister Talleyrand,” I was relieved to hear Bonaparte say, passing off Talleyrand’s remark as a joke.

  Shortly after Talleyrand left, Fouché himself was announced. “Where have you been?” Bonaparte demanded.

  “At the site of the explosion, First Consul,” Fouché said, touching the brim of his battered hat. “Seven killed and over twenty injured.” Mon Dieu!

  “I suggest you give your drunken coachman a réward, First Consul,” Fouché continued, tugging at his stained linen cuffs. “Had he not been so reckless, you would be dead. The keg of gunpowder appears to have been set intentionally.”

  “Damned Revolutionaries!”

  “They would like to murder you, certainly, but they are not guilty of this act.”

  “Surely you’re not going to claim that it was the work of the Royalists,” Bonaparte scoffed. “Royalists may intrigue, but they do not stoop to violence.”

  “I say it, and what’s more, I will prove it.”

  January 2, 1801—Malmaison.

  “I’m so relieved you’re all right, darling!” Thérèse exclaimed, removing a leather mask,* a cloak, a hat and a wig. “I very nearly died when I read the news-sheets.” She embraced me vigorously, enveloping me in a cloud of neroli oil. “How terrifying it must have been!”

  “I’m at the end of my strength,” I confessed. Fouché insists that Bonaparte’s Mameluke bodyguard follow him everywhere. Roustam even sleeps outside our bedchamber door at night. “As well, Fouché has posted two guards inside our bedroom,” I told her. Every few hours they wake Bonaparte, who assigns a new password. Accustomed to sleeping on the battlefield, Bonaparte falls quickly back to sleep. I, however, lie awake all
night, fears swirling, trying to ignore the presence of the guards.

  Thérèse tapped a flower-shaped beauty patch stuck to her chin. “Make sure you have your doctor bleed you, but not much, just a bit. Cooling laxatives are called for—an infusion of senna with salts. It will be over soon, won’t it? I heard that the police have discovered the owner of that cart.”

  A cart with a barrel of gunpowder in it: the “infernal machine” everyone is calling it. “They know who he is, but they can’t find him, Thérèse!” Petit François—a man with a scar over his left eye. “So long as he walks free, I cannot feel safe, no matter how many guards watch over us.”

  January 6—Tuileries Palace.

  Given that human temperament is composed of four humours—blood, bile, phlegm and melancholy—I’d say that the members of Bonaparte’s family have an excess of bile.

  Oh, how uncharitable of me! But truly, sometimes they are too much even for Bonaparte. “I turn into a wet hen around them,” he told me last night after Kings’ Day with the clan—or rather Cake Day, as we’re to call it now.

  After sharing the latest news (the scar-faced man has yet to be found), plans for the season, and the usual discussion regarding status, money and bowels, we got onto that other clan favourite: my fertility—or lack thereof.

  It began innocently enough, with Caroline announcing that her midwife had told her that her baby-soon-to-be-born is a boy.

  “Because of all that red wine you’ve been drinking,” Pauline said, resplendent in a revealing gown of white satin.

  “It’s the man who is supposed to drink the wine,” Bonaparte said.

  “That’s what I thought.” Hortense blushed.

  “What would you know about such things?” Caroline said. Swathed in ruffles and sequins, her big belly prominent, she looked like a carnival balloon.

  “What does it matter whether your child is a boy or not?” Elisa asked Caroline. “It won’t be a Bonaparte. It will only be a Murat.”

  “At least that’s better than a Bacchiochi,” Caroline retorted.

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

  “Blood is everything,” Signora Letizia said, frowning at her knitting.

  “Speaking of Bonaparte offspring, I have an announcement to make.” Joseph pressed his hands between his knees. “My wife is expecting a child.”

  “Our prayers have been answered,” Uncle Fesch sang cheerily, swirling wine in his goblet and then holding it to the light.

  “Cin-cin! Cin-cin!” Everyone raised a glass.

  “That’s wonderful news, Julie.” I caught Bonaparte’s eye. If Julie and Joseph could conceive a child after years of trying, then perhaps we could, too.

  “I credit the waters of Plombières,” Julie told me.

  “Not my waters?” Joseph looked pleased with his bad jest.

  “Aunt Josephine already went to Plombières—in 1796,” Caroline said. “It didn’t help her.”

  “That’s likely because of her age,” Elisa said, holding her breath to prevent a paroxysm of hiccuping.

  “Spa waters can be dangerously exciting,” Uncle Fesch observed, his cheeks heated by the fumes of the wine.

  “Pauline has been unable to have a child since our son was born almost three years ago,” Victor Leclerc said, adjusting the set of his tricorne hat—an exact replica of Bonaparte’s.

  “And we’ve tried everything,” Pauline said, languorously fanning herself with a peacock feather. “The doctors say I’m a mystery.”

  “Mystery, dear sister? Erotomaniacs are often unable to procreate.” Caroline shot her sister a gloating look.

  “Erotomaniacs?” Hortense looked confused.

  “I’ll explain later,” I mouthed to her.

  “Or it could be due to an abnormal state of the blood,” Caroline observed. (Addressing me!) “Certain diseases—which I will not mention in front of Mother—are believed to inhibit conception.”

  “How long before dinner, Josephine?” Bonaparte asked, pacing again.

  “I had thirteen children,” Signora Letizia said, twirling yarn around her stiff index finger.* “Five of them died.”

  “A wife has a Christian obligation to produce children,” Uncle Fesch said.

  “Sons,” Joseph said, giving his wife a tight smile.

  January 22.

  Caroline has had her baby—a boy, just as the midwife predicted. I’ve sent over one of our cooks. Caroline’s cook has resigned in protest because Signora Letizia insists on keeping a live frog in the kitchen in case the baby shows symptoms of thrush. I pray that this does not happen, for if it does, the infant will be induced to suck on the live frog’s head.

  [Undated]

  Can’t sleep. Still no sign of the scar-faced man.

  January 31—Paris.

  At last! This morning, the police discovered the scar-faced man asleep in a bed in a garret. He confessed, revealing the name of the man who had paid him to explode the bomb—the name of the man who had paid him to murder Bonaparte. “Georges Cadoudal,” Fouché said with a slow (smug) smile. “Safely in England, regrettably.”

  The Royalist agent! “So you were right, Fouché—it was a Royalist plot,” I said.

  “It is proverbial,” Fouché said, offering Bonaparte a pinch of snuff before taking one himself. “The Seine flows and Royalists intrigue. It is the nature of things.”

  “Intrigue and murder are not the same, Minister Fouché.” Bonaparte paced in front of the fireplace with his hands clasped behind his back. “The devil!” he cursed, halting abruptly. “England’s behind this.”

  * It was not uncommon for a woman to wear a leather mask to protect her skin from the weather.

  * Due to an injury, Signora Letizia could not bend her index finger.

  In which my daughter is impossible to please

  July 5, 1801—a hot Sunday morning at Malmaison.

  It’s confirmed: Hortense, her cousin Emilie and Bonaparte’s mother are coming with me to Plombières. Colonel Rapp, who is to accompany us, has just informed me that we are to be escorted by a detachment of cavalry and three aides. The last time I went to the spa, I had only Mimi for company. My life has become so complex—now we require a carriage just for our trunks of ball gowns.

  July 8 (I think)—Toul, very hot.

  We have stopped for a few moments at an inn while the horses are changed and the wheels cooled—tempers cooled. The girls are lively, Signora Letizia disapproving, Colonel Rapp ill. I endure.

  July 10—Plombières-les-Bains.

  We’ve arrived, at last—the trip was harrowing.*

  July 13—Plombières-les-Bains.

  “Madame Bonaparte,” the spa doctor said, regarding me with rheumy eyes, “I, more than anyone, understand the delicate nature of this subject. When the reproductive powers are defective, few women have the courage to speak to a physician. It is evidence of your sincere wish to give your husband the fruit of your love that you have returned to Plombières. The condition can be rectified, but first you must tell me everything.”

  “Everything?” Flushing, I recounted the efforts Bonaparte and I had made to produce a child—the periods of abstinence followed by periods of coital activity, the techniques Bonaparte had undertaken in order to expel slowly, the herbs I’d taken to increase my “receptivity.”

  “And yet nothing.” Dr. Martinet studied the thick file of papers. “From what your doctor in Paris indicates, there hasn’t been a show since …”

  “For over a year,” I admitted. And that merely a hint.

  “On your previous visit, we ruled out malformation of the canal. As well, the feminine characteristics are clearly in evidence.” He pushed his spectacles onto the bridge of his nose. “It’s therefore likely that a morbid condition of the blood is to blame.”

  I felt my cheeks becoming heated. Did he think I might have some shameful disease?

  “A chronic decline! When the blood has become bankrupt, there often follows a failure of the
reproductive function, leading to derangement.” His spectacles magnified his eyes. “It is generally believed that an enfeebled uterus is the cause, but I am of the opinion that that organ is entirely dependent.”

  “Oh?” I said, confused.

  “The causes of a uterine decline are indolence, nutritional perversion or the taking of drastic medicines.”

  Did he suspect me of indolence? “I eat well,” I said, wondering what constituted nutritional perversion and whether Mimi’s rabbit-bone remedy might be considered a drastic medicine. Three knife-tips of bone shaved off the ankle of a rabbit shot on one of the first three Fridays in March were believed to stimulate the uterus. (But had failed to stimulate mine, alas.)

  “Of course you do, Madame Bonaparte! In your case, acute suppression of the menses was caused by a violent disturbance, suffered due to imprisonment during the Terror. Such derangement of the blood calls for baths: foot baths, sitz baths, even vapour baths are proven to be beneficial.”

  “I take baths daily, Dr. Martinet.” A practice Mimi considered ruinous.

  “And you’ve been ingesting the uterine tonic I prescribed?”

  “The viburnum? Dutifully.” I sat forward on the hard oak chair. “Dr. Martinet, may I ask you something?” I ventured hesitantly, clutching my fan. “I’m thirty-seven years old, as you know—far from young, admittedly, but not yet what one could call …” I paused, not knowing what word to use. “You once suggested it possible that I was in the turn of life.”* And if so, could I please turn back?

  July 17.

  When not taking the waters and all manner of remedies, I’m entirely occupied with delicate and time-consuming discussions sounding out the parents of prospective husbands for my lovely but persnickety daughter. There are a few excellent possibilities. I am hopeful.

  Sunday afternoon, July 26.

  “I don’t like him.” Hortense crossed her arms over her chest.