Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe (11 page)

“I like that,” I lied.

“I’m not sure about the word handsome,” Joseph said. “Virile might be better.”

Captain Charles put down the book he was reading (Voltaire’s
Lettres philosophiques).
“Are we staying in Lanslebourg?”

“That’s where our mules and porters will be,” Joseph said.

“We are crossing the mountains on mules?” I asked, alarmed.

“Perhaps you would prefer to be dragged over on a litter. My heroine is going to do it that way, packed in straw.”

“Your heroine is going to cross the Alps?”

“The poor girl.” Joseph looked up at a towering precipice. “She is exceedingly frightened.”

Entering the tiny village of Lanslebourg, I felt we had come upon a new species of human. Everyone seemed deformed in appearance, enormous wens protruding from their necks. The growths are called goiters, I am told, caused by the water.

July 11, dawn.

We depart in a half hour. We’ve been given bear-fur blankets to wrap ourselves in, beaver-skin masks to go over our heads, taffeta eye-shades to protect our eyes from the blinding glare.

The mountains tower above us like giants. A trembling has come over me that has little to do with fever. I’ve put my miniatures of Hortense and Eugène in the little velvet jewel bag sewn to my petticoat, for heart. Lazare’s Saint Michael medal I’ve tucked into my bodice, for courage.

Benedictine Abbazia di Novalesa.

We’re over. We were carried in chairs across perilous cliffs by ancient little men. It was even more terrifying than I thought it would be.

July 12—Turin.

We were late departing this morning due to a problem with the way our carriage had been reassembled. (It had been carried over the Pass in pieces, on the backs of mules shod with spiked shoes.) Consequently Junot forbade any stops, so by the time we rolled into the tiny but stately city of Turin, I was rather desperate for relief. My heart sank when I saw a regiment of French cavaliers led by a young man in the uniform of an aide-de-camp.

“August!” Junot jumped out of our carriage while it was yet in motion. “What’s all this about?”

“The General sent me to escort Madame Bonaparte to Milan.” The aide glanced at me, tipped his hat. “But first the King of Sardinia has requested an audience.”

Junot cracked his knuckles, grinning. “The King of the Dormice is learning to bow, is he? To us Republicans? That’s a good one. Well, I wonder if I should be kind enough to grant his Highness the honour?”

“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” the young aide stuttered. “His Highness has requested an audience with the General’s
wife.”

Lisette has mended the train on my ivory silk gown and unstitched my pearls, which we’d sewn into the hem of a petticoat for security. I’ve bathed, my hair has been dressed, I’ve been rouged and powdered. “There,” Lisette said, adjusting a pearl-studded ornament in my hair. “You look beautiful.” I studied my face in the looking glass, pulling at a curl so that it fell forward. Lisette had plucked my brows into a graceful arc. Yes, by candlelight the King of Sardinia might find me pleasing.

If I didn’t melt first, I thought, wiping the perspiration from my brow. Already my gown was damp. I opened the double-sash doors onto the balcony overlooking the piazza. I could see the treetops of the ramparts beyond, and beyond that, in the blue horizon, the icy peaks of Mont Cenis, glittering like an enormous diamond in the sun.

Church bells rang for afternoon vespers. I’d forgotten how lovely bells sound. I watched as a veiled woman in black made her way to church, her eyes fixed on the ground. What will they think of me, these women? Me, the Parisian merveilleuse in her revealing Parisian gown, enjoying her Parisian pleasures … her Parisian freedom, I was beginning to understand.

Fortuné yelped at a rapping on the door. “Oh, it’s you,” Lisette said.

“Please, Mademoiselle,” Captain Charles said, “refrain from such an unseemly expression of unrestrained joy.” He scooped up Fortuné and rubbed his face in the dog’s fur. Then, releasing the delighted dog, he informed me that we would not be going to the palace for another hour.

“An hour!” I’d been waiting forever, it seemed. Waiting to be taken to the palace, waiting to be presented to the king of this realm. Waiting for the laudanum I took for pain to take effect. “Forgive me, Captain Charles. I’m nervous, I confess.” I’d never met a king before.

“Why should
you
be nervous?” The captain brushed off a footstool, flipped up his tails and sat down. “I should think it would be the King who has reason to be uneasy. After all, your husband rather badly trounced him.”

What was it I feared? That I might do something foolish. That I might become faint, with pain and with fever. That I might embarrass Bonaparte, the Republic. “It’s just that I never expected …”

“La Gloire?”

La Gloire, indeed! Fame was the last thing I’d expected from marriage to Bonaparte. Strange, intense little Napoleon, the ill-mannered Corsican—a hero now, the Liberator of Italy. The man to whom kings bowed.

Lisette held out a glass of orange water. “I put a little ether in it, Madame. You look pale.”

Late, I’m not sure of the time.

I survived. It was horrible. (The King fell asleep on his throne!) Barras was right—I should have brought a hoop.

July 13—Milan.

Approaching Milan I could hear cheering—it sounded like a lot of people. Bonaparte’s brother Joseph stuck his head out the window, holding onto his tricorne hat. A band struck up the
Marseillaise. Amour sacrée de la patrie,
I hummed along, a lump rising in my throat. I wanted to look out, but I didn’t think it would be ladylike to be seen hanging out a carriage window. “We should wake Colonel Junot,” I said, waving to a gang of urchin boys who were racing beside us.

“What?” Junot sputtered, running his fingers through his hair. “We’re in Milan? Already?”

“Is my plume straight?” Joseph asked, adjusting the tilt of his hat. “How do I look?”

“Fine,” I said, popping an aniseed comfit into my mouth to sweeten my breath. In fact, all of us looked as if we’d been travelling in rough circumstances for two weeks: rumpled, worn and irritable. It had been a gruelling trip.

The crowd was chanting
Evviva la Francia! Evviva la libertà! I
caught sight of an immense Roman arch festooned with bright banners. “Nervous?” Captain Charles whispered. I answered by widening my eyes. Yes!

There
was
a crowd—men in powdered wigs and old-fashioned court-style jackets, women (the few I could see) in wide-hooped gowns, their heads covered with black scarves. Behind the aristocrats were the peasants in rags, quite a number, a sea of faces. A column of
gendarmes stood at attention, the sun glittering off their muskets. I thought of my children, Aunt Désirée. They would have thrilled to see such a crowd.

I recognized Bonaparte’s young brother Louis on horseback with the aides. But where was Bonaparte? My stomach felt queasy. I must not be sick, I told myself. Not now.

We came to an abrupt halt. “We’re here,” Joseph said, with his annoying giggle.

“Finally,” Junot said, cracking his knuckles.

A footman in lilac livery opened the carriage door. A breeze blew dust in. I did my best to ignore it—to blink and to smile—for there, standing before me, was my husband, Napoleon Bonaparte.

His face was bronzed by the sun. Backed by the cheering crowd, his soldiers at attention all around him, he had a regal air. “Welcome,” he said without smiling. “What took you so long?” he barked at Junot, stepping back so that the footman could let down the step.

Evviva la libertà!
a man yelled. Fortuné, in his travelling basket, whimpered to be let out.

“Your wife has not been well,” Joseph told his brother contritely, his hands pressed between his knees. “We had to make stops.”

Bonaparte looked at me, his big grey eyes sombre. The footman was having trouble getting the step down. I felt I was in a dream. The man standing before me seemed a stranger—this man, my husband, the Liberator of Italy.

“May I help?” Captain Charles asked the footman, for the step mechanism had jammed again. “I have had to wrestle that latch many times over the last weeks,” he rushed on, aware of his presumption, “and consequently have come to have an intimate knowledge of its perverse ways.”

Bonaparte stared at the captain. “You must be Charles, the aide-decamp.”

“General Bonaparte, sir!” The captain saluted.

Evviva la Francia!
a child cried out.

“Be quick then, Captain—I wish to embrace my wife.”

The footman stood back. Captain Charles pressed down on the left side of the step and it gave way with a clatter. Bonaparte took my hand. “Careful!” he said—as if, I realized (heart heavy), I were a woman with child. I stepped down onto the dusty road. He put his hand under my chin. “I have been starved for you.”

I smiled, speechless, overcome by the dust, the bright sun, the crowd. Overcome by the intensity of Bonaparte’s eyes. “Bonaparte, I—”

He placed his right hand at the nape of my neck, his thumb pressing against my skull. Then he kissed me—without modesty, without restraint, as if, man and woman, husband and wife, we were the only two people on earth. For a moment I resisted, the roar of the crowd in my ears. And then I gave way to him.

My hat slipped off. I grabbed for it, then I stood back, pressing Bonaparte’s hand to my heart. Distantly I heard people cheering. He stared at me, his eyes glistening. “We came as quickly as we could,” I assured him, but my voice was drowned out by a trumpet blare. “I’m feeling a bit faint.” Everything looked bleached. The crowd seemed to shimmer in the heat. I took hold of his arm. The other carriages in our caravan pulled into view: Hamelin’s wreck of a hired fiacre, the servants’ carriage, the baggage wagon.

A man in yellow-striped rags ran through the line of soldiers.
“Evviva Napoleone!”
he cried out as they pulled him away.
“Evviva la libertà!”

Bonaparte led me to a carriage harnessed to four grey horses, their brass bells jingling. The ornate berlin was festooned with red, white and blue ribbons; it looked like a feast-day cake. “To cover the Austrian royal insignias,” Bonaparte said, lifting a bow to reveal a royal emblem underneath.

“Aren’t the others coming with us?” I asked as he handed me in. The upholstery was a pale cream-coloured brocade. I sat down uneasily. My periodic sickness had become unpredictable. I could never be sure what to expect—or when. “What about your brother?” And Junot, for that matter?

“This reception is in
your
honour,” Bonaparte said, settling himself
beside me and taking my hand. He was thinking of kissing me again, I knew. I opened my fan and fluttered it, leaning my head against the tufted upholstery. The heat was oppressive.

“Perhaps a little air,” Bonaparte said, letting down the glass. A bouquet came flying through. He put the glass back up. The crowd was chanting
Evviva la Francia! Evviva Napoleone!
Their fervour frightened me—frightened and amazed me.

I heard the postillion cry out something in Italian. Our carriage swung gently as the team of horses pulled it forward. I put my hand to my side, against the pain.

Crowds cheered as we wound our way through narrow, rutted streets, along waterways and canals thick with barges. The air was filled with the pungent smell of potatoes, chestnuts, aubergines cooking, fish frying. “This is a beautiful city,” Bonaparte said, stroking my hand. “You will love it here.”

“Yes,” I said, although I felt disappointed, in truth. Milan was smaller than I’d expected, and it seemed curiously vacant in spite of the crowds. The few women I saw on the street were dressed entirely in black. The shops had no windows; even the residences were shuttered.

Bonaparte pointed to a sign in the shape of a cardinal’s red hat: “A hatter.” A pair of scissors signified a tailor; a snake, a chemist; a bleeding foot, leeches. “But the water is unclean,” he went on as we crossed over a stinking canal. “We have much to do installing a new sanitation system.” A man in a banditti hat, defecating by the side of the road, raised his hand in salute. “And educating the inhabitants,” he added.

At one intersection we were obliged to wait for the passage of a cart loaded with an enormous barrel of water. Chained prisoners followed behind, swinging long leather tubes out of which water came, dampening the dust.

We came upon a great square where five goats were grazing. “This must be the famous cathedral,” I said, astonished by its grandeur. The church looked even bigger than Notre Dame and far more ornate.

“Three murderers live in there and I can’t do a thing about it.”
^*
Masons stopped their work on one of the turrets to cheer as we passed. I smiled at them and waved. (Like a queen, I thought.) “The façade has been under construction for five centuries,” Bonaparte said. “I intend to finish it.” His statements surprised me. This wasn’t a soldier speaking—this was a ruler.

We pulled through a broad portico into the courtyard of a villa of glittering pink granite. In the centre was a fountain, spurting brown water. The footman opened our carriage door, his lilac jacket stained from running ahead of our carriage. I stepped down, lifting my skirt up out of the dust. An enormous number of servants dressed in black bowed at our approach.

I hung on Bonaparte’s arm as he strode up the steps and through two majestic colonnades into a vast marble hall. I glanced back over my shoulder. We were being followed by a crowd of noisy, clattering “help.” Everywhere I looked there were men in uniform, standing at attention. “This is your home,” Bonaparte said proudly, sweeping his arm aloft.

Lisette blew dust from her hands. “Our trunks will be brought up soon, Madame—or so they say.” She rolled her eyes. The rigours of travel had brought out a feisty humour in my maid.

A clock chimed nine bells. Nine? “Do you know the time?” I guessed it to be around three in the afternoon.