Napoleon's Last Island (35 page)

Delayed letters, and the fact they had been violated, cast the Emperor down again – my father saw it on his daily visit to Longwood. The delay in correspondence and the rats in the wainscot, raiding for crumbs in darker corners, sitting on sideboards, imitating his bicorn hat and tempting him into the absurdity of trying to don it with them still slithering from it, impinged more upon him, and the nankeen-clad walls crept in in dim alliance with them.

We next visited OGF for his birthday on 15 August. He was forty-eight years. There was a supper of all the French, and Bertrand and de Montholon proposed toasts. The Emperor came to me, eyes gleaming, and said, ‘I went for a ride today.'

‘That's good for you,' I told him.

‘Do you know the valley beyond?' He hitched his head in a southerly direction. ‘The one with the spring and all the ferns?'

‘Geranium Valley,' I said.

‘If the Fiend has his way and I perish here,' said the Emperor quite cheerily, ‘that is the place for burial, don't you think? It's the only pretty place. We could transform it from Geranium
Valley into the Valley of the Tomb. And geraniums … there are worse weeds to lie amidst.'

‘The world will have set you free by then,' I asserted. ‘You will lie somewhere better than that little notch.'

He thanked me for my assurance and kissed my hand. I barely saw him for the rest of that night, though I noticed him speaking to my mother with brotherly animation.

I was not as aware as I might have been of how the reports of events overtaking his family elevated and cast down the spirits of Our Great Friend, even as he made a little room for our visits. He felt betrayed by Marshal Murat, married to his own sister Caroline. He had elevated the couple to the stature of king and queen of Naples, and Caroline had sought to retain that stature by renouncing Napoleon. It had been a comfort to OGF that Madame
Mère
, his mother, a shadowy goddess to us, had denounced her daughter. He was nonetheless upset that Murat had been executed by firing squad by the restored French monarchy. Yet all we heard of his distress was what O'Meara told my father during a drinking session. Apparently OGF considered the execution (an echo, I felt, of the fabled d'Enghien's) an infraction of the rules of public decorum: a king (the talentless French restored king) had caused another king, acknowledged by all the others, to be shot. But through pure graciousness, he did not impose grief about the collapse of his great world upon us in his shrunken one.

When we were leaving Longwood I saw the young Las Cases amongst the barren trees in the garden, striking the trunks idly with a dropped branch, uttering an occasional word to himself. All around him the French house mourned – doubly because of Murat's double-dealing, a man lost by both betrayal and death. And there had been a terrible pathos in his brave cry at the end, facing his firing squad clear-eyed and calling, ‘Straight to the heart but spare the face. Fire!'

I was consumed by thoughts of Murat. What impact must his fate have had on Emmanuel, whose hair had no doubt been ruffled by that cavalry man and king? And then what acid from
Vienna splashed down on him from the treaty signed by grand men in that city, men whom the Emperor had once dominated? And what reflected vitriol came down to him from the intention of the Minister of State for England, the dreaded Castlereagh, to declare OGF not a fallen Emperor but a usurper?

Emmanuel saw me and stopped and tried to direct his gaze at me. But he did not quite have the spirit for it today and hung his head. I saw Gourgaud emerge from the side door of Longwood, as if on his way to the stables or to visit his bête noire, de Montholon. He was dressed in the uniform of a General of the Ordnance and when he saw the boy, he came striding towards him, though Emmanuel was not conscious of it and stayed on his dawdling tangent. Gourgaud had gloves in his hand and, drawing level, turned the boy by the shoulders and began striking him with the gloves. This was very French, but it also looked worse than a blow from the hand itself, and seemed as if young Emmanuel had not merited flesh upon flesh. The boy took it with lowered head, taking only one step backwards, enduring. I ran from where I was and cried, ‘General Gourgaud, what are you doing?'

There was no doubting Gourgaud was discomforted to see me, but not enough to cease. He got in three more swipes before I reached them, and only then stood back.

‘This is something you do not know about,' he said in French.

‘He is mad,' said Emmanuel in English. ‘One day I shall take a whip to him.'

Gourgaud walked away five paces, rather like a duellist, turned and declared, ‘His father presumes to be the Emperor's especial familiar and to exclude me from the presence, and this brat sits smirking! But where were the Las Cases when we were crossing the Berezina, this toad of a chamberlain and his abnormal son?'

‘He is more normal than you,' I told Gourgaud. ‘Are you going to hit me?'

For I could tell he was tempted, and that it would destroy him somehow with the Emperor.

‘Does the Emperor know you're treating Emmanuel in this way?' I asked.

I could see a most uncomplicated, unworldly gratitude in Emmanuel's eyes, and I did not want that, for it presumed too much.

‘His family is a family of thieves. He has stolen the Emperor from me without the Emperor's having made an attempt to recompense me for moneys I have outlaid. My mother … my mother is sick in France. My fortune has been spent by the Emperor, and this child's father says no one can repay me. I left the meeting with a sense that I would strike the father, but I met the son and struck him. And God knows, miss, that's normal enough.'

‘Look,' I said. ‘Your knuckle clipped the corner of his lip. The boy is bleeding.' For some reason it seemed to me the most pathetic blood of all time.

Gourgaud turned to Emmanuel. ‘You are the child of a plunderer. Give me back my money.' And then he trudged away, his boots emphatic on the barren ground of Longwood.

‘What a brute,' I said to Emmanuel. ‘Doesn't he find it adequate to hate Sir Hudson?'

‘He hates me more than he hates Sir Hudson.'

‘But why?'

Emmanuel's eyes rolled. ‘On the retreat across France, we needed francs and the Emperor borrowed them from Gourgaud. Now Gourgaud has a letter from his relatives saying that his mother is in need of money. He asked my father and de Montholon for his money back but how can we get a hundred thousand francs in a lump from Europe? And so he hits me to match the damage done to his mother.' Emmanuel shrugged. ‘Perhaps there is a justice in it.'

I cannot define what impulse led me to touch the bloodied corner of his mouth. I could see with horror that all at once he was contemplating attacking my mouth with his, but my alarm caused him to drop his head and cover my hand with kisses.

‘That's enough,' I said. ‘I'm sorry you were hurt. Well, goodbye!'

And with that I mounted Old Tom and galloped off.

On a clear morning in this period, when the vise of Sir Hudson's administration was beginning to straighten the souls and indeed the bodies of the French at Longwood, the Emperor woke feeling fresh and went around knocking on the doors of each of the exiles and demanding their presence at breakfast in the garden at Longwood. Bertrand was already in the house, having come from Hutt's Gate, and so was quickly alerted. Only Madame Bertrand was missing, and a servant was sent, and she arrived during the breakfast.

The first roses were trying to grow in that hard soil of Longwood, struggling against the killing draughts of salt that came off the sea on the south-east trade. The table was placed in the scattered shade of a few pines and of a sail Admiral Malcolm had had the sailors erect, and amidst the contorted gumwoods coffee was taken in the clear air, and everyone was invigorated by this amalgam of conditions, including the condition of the Emperor's will in bringing them together. When the conversation began with the predictable complaints against Plantation House, OGF held up his hand and told them, ‘None of that. For when you are restored to the world one day, you have to think of yourselves as brothers, on my account.'

But the Emperor was not talking about his death. The good news had come in the British newspapers that Lord Holland and
the Duke of Sussex had moved a remonstrance in the House of Lords against what they called the illegal imprisonment of Napoleon. The Lords would not in the end vote to accept it, but OGF did not know that. It had for now been eloquently argued with plentiful accusations of ill will against Castlereagh and Bathurst, men who had sent troops to shoot down protesters in England and had also set them to cramp the soul of OGF.

De Montholon looked at Las Cases, whose prissiness he hated, whose air of being the Emperor's confidant, said Fanny, irked him. Las Cases simply gazed back at him with transparent eyes and bowed his head in the simplest goodwill that de Montholon was won over. Bertrand, seeing it, smiled and held out his hand to de Montholon, and Gourgaud sat in his place, rocking his head back and forth, as if saying, ‘Very well. But have you assessed all the elements? And what about the money I loaned you?'

‘Help each other?' Fanny asked us later. ‘They are nearer to murdering each other. And the Emperor himself thinks he is the sun and shines equally on all, and wonders why I'm careful about exposing myself to his rays.

‘He has got feeble again, turning back from walks, and of all things eating his dinner in the bath from that device that straddles it, with a small table placed by the side for Las Cases to eat from. Which means that Gourgaud is moping all the more at the table in the dining room and has – if you can believe it – challenged de Montholon to a duel. To a duel! How Sir Hudson would enjoy that. Two Frenchmen killing each other and saving him the trouble.'

The Emperor had observed to Madame de Montholon and Fanny Bertrand at dinner – as Fanny Bertrand said wryly, ‘just to win us over' – that their garments would soon resemble those of the old misers who buy their wardrobes in second-hand clothes. ‘For once,' said Fanny, ‘Albine de Montholon looked at me with a wan face, as if we were sisters in our misery. And we were. I must say she dotes on her little girl, Napoléone, and wonders if she will live. Though the child's so healthy − a true little barbarian – and I think there's another in progress. Lately Albine's been worried
about looking old – she believes the island ages us at twice the rate – so now her misery is deeper. I told him, “We take all the care we can, sire.” And he said, “But your clothes no longer show the freshness of Leroi or Despeaux or Herbault.” Imagine how dowdy we all felt.'

Moved by an impulse to succour the big, square-shouldered woman, I said, ‘I think he was teasing you, Fanny.' I wanted to push that gracious lie. ‘You are still,' I insisted, ‘the most sumptuous and comely of women within thousands of square miles.'

‘No, Betsy, my darling. He criticised his own hunting coat and now they have thrown Santini off the island he has lost his most skilled repairer.' Santini, the assassin, had been the expert at maintaining uniforms, reversing cloth, and producing a new suit from an old grey frockcoat. He made the Emperor a pair of shoes from the leather of old boots, and could always make something plausible out of the irreparable.

To help accommodate Gourgaud's valid desire for money for his mother, and perhaps to avoid a duel with him, Count de Montholon had made an earnest submission to Plantation House. It said that the Emperor was ready to pay all the expenses of the establishment if any mercantile or banking house in St Helena, London or Paris, chosen by the British Government, could serve as intermediaries through which the Emperor could send sealed letters, and receive sealed answers. The Emperor would pledge his honour that the letters should relate solely to pecuniary matters. De Montholon explained his reasonable proposition to my father. The secret, smuggled money bills were not working so well. Bankers in France did not know whether they were forgeries, for example.

Two mornings later, Sir Thomas was delighted to announce to de Montholon that no sealed letters were permitted to leave Longwood.

Balmain had told O'Meara that his own instructions were not to trouble OGF but to simply report to his master the Tsar on
how he was held. So Balmain was content with island life and the gathering of sightings of the Emperor from Poppleton and other officers at Longwood to include in his elegant reports. But de Montchenu in particular, and even the Austrian von Stürmer, believed regular sightings of the Emperor were part of their instructions. And being prevented from seeing him by restrictions placed by Sir Hudson and by OGF himself, they lived in a sort of frustrated nullity.

It was later discovered that Las Cases secretly and regularly wrote to the Frenchwoman Madame von Stürmer, him having when young been a tutor to her brothers, but it was said her husband, who was a fairly straight and narrow Austrian diplomat, forbade her to answer. This young lady came one afternoon, sombrely dressed, to The Briars and introduced herself to us. Jane and I loved visitors to whom we could show off our passable French, and we strolled with her as she made her solemn circuit of the garden and the Pavilion.

She asked gravely, looking pale, ‘Was he inconsolable while living here?'

‘No,' Jane said. ‘It suited him. He seemed lively.'

And we told her the family stories – the carriage with the mouse, the occasional impudence, the bonbon poisoning and all the rest, the tales that would recur throughout our family's existence, and that even now I tell virtually to myself.

After inspecting the empty Pavilion, Madam Sturmer stalked our garden, where the trace of the crown the Emperor's servants had drawn in the lawn was still vaguely visible, not by way of the scoring of the ground but in the grass. I wondered if she was snooping for her husband, but it was with an authentic teary-cheeked reverence that she walked the crown outline with us. Was she mourning for her own surrender to the Austrians, or OGF's? For her to fail to meet the Emperor was a great loss, and yet she was also terrified of such a confrontation.

Count Balmain and the von Stürmers were sharing Rosemary Hall, a rambling two-storey house inland. With the help of ship carpenters and many porters they had made it habitable. My
father dealt there with the commissioners over their household supplies and the unsatisfactory warrants with which they paid for their requirements, warrants issued in the name of far-off treasuries in Vienna, Paris and Moscow. All three of the commissioners were exercised by the cost of living on the island, all three of them were writing to their masters saying ‘You must not let your delegate be embarrassed by the ample resources of the other commissioners.'

One day at The Briars I saw a paper addressed to Count Balmain and written in my father's hand. It said, ‘Beef 22 pence per pound, pork 30 pence per pound, stock of the smallest kind 40–60 shillings, duck or chicken 10–15 shillings each, turkey 40–60 shillings.' These prices impressed even me. The silver at Longwood had by now been melted down and sold as Sir Tom had ordered, en bloc without imperial insignia, and what it had earned for the Emperor was being consumed by turkeys worth their weight in gold.

It was O'Meara's mode to be quite whimsical and open in recounting what he said to OGF. ‘Don't think I'm a spy for Sir Hudson. I'm not permitted to be. I'm a spy for my friend Finlaison at the Admiralty,' O'Meara told OGF one day. And the Emperor laughed and said with a strange kind of complacency, ‘Well, of course. You're a sailor under orders. And I don't mind the Admiralty. Honest men, by and large. But what do you report to that appalling Reade and to the Fiend himself?'

O'Meara replied with Hippocratic purity, ‘I am here as your surgeon, and to attend upon you and your suite. I have received no other orders than to make reports on your health but I do so in general terms except in the case of your being taken seriously ill, when I need to receive promptly the advice and assistance of other physicians.'

‘First obtaining my consent to call in those accursed others, is that not so?'

O'Meara agreed, perhaps more glibly than he should have. OGF said with sudden lack of humour, ‘If you are appointed
as a surgeon to a prison and to report my conversations to the governor, I want never to see you again.'

Then perhaps even for OGF this axe of a sentence seemed too extreme for the conversation in progress. ‘Do not suppose that I take you for a spy,' he rushed to tell the Irishman. ‘On the contrary I have never had the least occasion to find fault with you, and I have a friendship for you on this
isola maledetta
, without which I would be poorer, and an esteem for your character, a greater proof of which I could not give you than asking you candidly your own opinion on your situation.'

But this was another sign that suspicion pervaded all. It became known, as things did on the island, that Name and Nature had sent an order to the shopkeepers of the town that they were not to give any credit to the French, or to sell them any article, unless for ready money, under pain of not only losing the amount of the sum credited, but of suffering such punishment as being turned off the island.

Many of the 53 officers who were in the habit of calling to see Madame Bertrand at Hutt's Gate received hints from Sir Tom and Major Gorrequer that their visits were not pleasing to the authorities. The officer of the Hutt's Gate guard was ordered to report the names of all persons entering the Bertrands' house. Several of the officers of the 53rd went to Hutt's Gate to say goodbye to Countess Bertrand. They explained to Fanny that since they would be ordered to make a report of any conversations they had with her to the governor or to Sir Thomas Reade, they could not as men of honour allow themselves to comply with that regulation.

‘Sir Name and Nature,' O'Meara narrated, ‘intends to have a ditch dug around the house, to prevent cattle from trespassing into the Emperor's garden. So he walks it out with me, this notional ditch of his, and we come to a rare low-branched tree with foliage near to the ground. “This has to go!” he cries, and he asks me to send one of the servants down to the port for Mr Porteous, who it turns out amongst other glorious honours is the superintendent of the Company's gardens. And I have to
wait with him making conversation until Porteous is back, none too happy at being dragged up there from his establishment. And Name and Nature orders him to send some men instantly and have the tree grubbed out. It blotted the terrain and introduced the chance of intolerable subterfuge, you see!'

When O'Meara left, my mother asked my father, ‘Do you think O'Meara protests too much?'

‘In what sense?' asked my bibulous father with a soft hiccough.

‘In the sense that he may be closer to Name and Nature than he says,' said my mother with a new kind of speculation in her voice.

‘Why would he be so mischievous?' my father asked, and tears appeared at his soft lids.