Letters (123 page)

Andrew and Jean go ashore (Andrew mimics the island dialect in half an hour); they make the dizzy climb from a precarious landing ledge just behind a surf-breaking rock on the island’s sea-fogged northwest shore, entirely concealed from the official landing at St. James’s Bay. A fortnight’s reconnoitering among the villagers and the garrison discovers the same variety of opinion, in more detail: the prisoner is dying of undulant fever, of venereal complications, of pyloric cancer, of boredom and inaction, of arsenic, of dysentery or hepatitis or typhus. He has gone mad, believes himself an ordinary conscript arrested and exiled by an accident of resemblance. He
is
that hapless conscript. He is an impostor, Metternich’s creature. He is dead.

They ascend through subtropical greenery to the temperate middle elevations, thick with cedars and willows, through Geranium Valley to the fishermen’s trysting and viewing spot, a dense bower of shrubs, withes, and creepers overlooking the tidy château of Longwood. Supplied by their hired comrades with food, wine, and blankets for the chill nights, they make a little encampment. Andrew identifies Count and Mme Bertrand, the Count de Montholon. One evening a short tubby chap in military uniform steps into the gardens (modeled in miniature after those of Malmaison) and pops desultorily with dueling pistols at a nearby goat and chicken, striking neither. A bored attendant reloads the weapons. The hidden onlookers turn from their spyglasses: Andrew nods.

I was fairly satisfy’d it was he,
he reports to Andrée,
tho indeed
much changed
since Rochefort & Tor Bay. What most gratify’d me was that Jean was less sure, and must take my word for it. Also, that one glance assured me I could manage the counterfeit, once the substitution had been arranged. Our plan was that Jean would take
Jean Blanque
up to the newly establisht Republic of Liberia for provisioning, & perhaps seize a Spaniard or two along the way for profit’s sake, returning at the Vernal Equinox. He would leave with me, “for my assistance,” his 2nd mate, Maurice Shomberg, a Pyrenean Sephardic Jew call’d by the Baratarians “le Maure” for his dark skin, great size & strength, and ferocity in combat: a man much given to the slicing & dicing of his enemies, and utterly loyal to the brothers Lafitte. Whilst le Maure watcht & waited in the bush, I was to install myself among the gardeners & grounds keepers of Longwood, recruit if I could the confidence of Mme Bertrand (who was known to be impatient with her exile & jealous of Mme de Montholon), verify that the Emperor was the Emperor, sound his temper on the matter of escaping, present our (forged) credentials from Joseph B. & Mayor Girod, & cet. & cet., finally delivering him to le Maure upon Jean’s return & taking his place at Longwood. In fact, I meant to do all of those save the last two, and was both reassured, by Jean’s leaving with me his trusty “Moor,” that he would probably return for us in March; and confirm’d that he no longer trusted me to do the job alone. Le Maure’s great size and visibility were no aid to concealment; he was fit only for hauling & killing, and might well be assign’d to dispatch me to the sharks, once Napoleon was in our hands.

Lafitte leaves. Andrew befriends one or two of the gardeners, is put to work spading, manuring, terracing. He converses in Sicilian with Vignali, the auxiliary priest sent out only a few months before in the party from Rome, who declares that Napoleon is Napoleon but won’t be for long: the Count de Montholon is poisoning him from jealousy of Count Bertrand. He speaks Corsican French with Montholon’s valet: the British doctors are feeding arsenic to the lot of them. He peddles a pilchard to Ortini, the emperor’s own footman: the new Italian doctor, Antommarchi, is the villain, assisted by Mme Bertrand. The French and Italians agree that Napoleon is Napoleon, and that he is nowise interested in escape. But among the fishermen and farmers who provision Longwood, and with whom both le Maure and Andrew carefully converse, there is more general suspicion that the French are conspiring to trick and/or to blame the English, an opinion shared in some measure by the British physicians on Sir Hudson Lowe’s staff: some believe Bonaparte—“if that’s who the rascal is”—to be poisoning himself, in order to consummate his martyrdom and inspire sympathy for his son’s succession. The only hypothesis not seriously entertained on the island is the one Andrew Cook more and more inclines to as his deadline nears: that while the ailing fellow who ever less frequently ventures outdoors (and in March takes to his bed almost constantly) just might be an impostor, and just might be being poisoned by one or a number of “interests,” he is most probably Napoleon Bonaparte dying in his fifty-second year of a variety of natural physical and psychological complaints.

So mutual are everyone’s suspicions among the Longwood entourage, so clear (however mixed with grief for their leader) their eagerness to begone, Andrew dares take none into his confidence; and there is no use in relaying his “credentials” to an obviously dying man. It becomes his job to persuade le Maure that he has already made contact with the emperor, who looks forward eagerly to rescue and who is feigning illness the better to isolate himself from English surveillance and mislead suspected traitors in his own household. The equinox approaches, but Andrew’s inventiveness fails him: how on earth to get himself delivered to Lafitte and le Maure as the emperor of the French, and at the same time persuade them that “André Castine” is ensconced in Longwood, composing the emperor’s last will and testament? He had not anticipated so universal and profound distrust, such general assumptions of conspiracy, counterconspiracy, double- and triple-agentry!

Word comes from le Maure that
Jean Blanque
has returned on schedule. Lafitte himself slips ashore, cool and smiling. With not the slightest notion how to manage it, Andrew assures him that all is arranged: after moonset next night, two of Bonaparte’s household—the lamplighter Rousseau and the usher Chauvin—will deliver their master to the trysting place. Bonaparte will be harmlessly narcotized, to exculpate him from charges of complicity should the escape be foiled by the British. He is in mild ill health, but expects to recover, the more rapidly for a bracing ocean voyage and release from captivity. He has reservations about the Louisiana Project, but is open to persuasion. Rousseau and Chauvin are acting in their master’s best interest, but will not refuse a just reward for their risk. Et cetera! Andrew even invites the Baratarian to slip back to Longwood next day and receive a signal from himself that the substitution has been successful; that he will carry through the charade of dying, return to the ranks of the fishermen, and confidently await his own rescue.

Desperate improvisation! He expects many questions, whether anxious or suspicious: Lafitte merely embraces him with a light smile, wishes him
bonne chance,
promises to be in the appointed place at the appointed hour on the morrow.

Throughout the 21st Cook conjures “shift after desperate shift,” and can hit upon nothing even remotely likely. He has not got through to the invalid prisoner. He has no confidence in Rousseau, Chauvin, Ortini; barely knows them. Beyond bribing a suit of Napoleon’s clothes from a laundry girl (the loss causes little stir; souvenir pilfering and counterfeiting are an industry on the island), he has been able to make no arrangements whatever. In a lifetime of stratagems and ruses he has never been so nonplussed.

At moondown he dons those clothes, assumes his “private,” “true” imposture of Napoleon, modified by what little he has seen and learned on the island. He conceals himself in the Longwood gardens, in the vague hope that Rousseau or Chauvin might wander by and be impressed into service. The hour arrives; no one is about except the regular British sentries. Feeling more nakedly foolhardy than at any moment since that night a quarter-century past when he donned Joel Barlow’s clothes and rode out to a certain Algerian headland, to enter a certain dark carriage, Andrew works through the cypresses and privet, past the sentries, toward where le Maure and Lafitte await. Can he perhaps feign detection, mimic several alarmed voices, simulate the thrash of two servants fleeing, bring the sentries running, and then stumble as if dazed into the rendezvous?
Faute de mieux,
he gathers himself to it…

And somewhile later woke half-tranced, knowing neither where I was nor how I came there! Bloodsworth Island? 1812? Husht urgent voices all about, in a medley of accents: French, Corsican, Italian, German, English, St. Helenish, even Yankee! A thunder of surf, & the damp rock under me, bespoke that ledge we had barely fetcht up on two months past. I guesst I had either swoon’d again, as at New Orleans & Fort Bowyer, or been knockt senseless by “friend” or “foe,” & carry’d down that terrific cliff. I heard Jean’s voice, unalarm’d, giving orders to le Maure & the fishermen. Who was that German? That New Englander? Was that a British female whisper’d?

He conceals regaining consciousness in hopes of making out his situation; permits himself to be rowed like a dead man for hours out to sea, hoisted easily over a shoulder he recognizes as le Maure’s, and put to bed in a familiar aft cabin of the
Jean Blanque
—but nothing he can overhear tells him what he craves to know. Now there is a lantern-light to peek by: he sees Lafitte
tête-à-tête
with a cloaked stranger; whispers are exchanged, papers, a small pouch or box? They examine a map. They agree. The stranger leaves; Lafitte also; one can hear orders given on deck, sail made. The schooner swings about and settles under way.

Andrew considers the possibilities. His ruse has perhaps been anticipated by Lafitte, by the U.S. Secret Service, by Metternich, the British, the French. They know he is Andrew Cook, but see fit to support his imposture? Or they
don’t
know; the imposture has for the moment succeeded! In the first case he must be candid with Lafitte or lose what trust after all remains; in the second, such candor might be fatal—and both suppositions could be incorrect. Should he pretend to be a willing Napoleon? An outraged, resentful one? An unperturbed Andrew Cook?

He feels his way carefully: “wakes” as if uncertain himself who and where he is; is greeted politely but ambiguously by Jean’s body-servant, by Lafitte himself, whose ironical courtesies fit either hypothesis. On deck the Baratarians receive him as the ailing Bonaparte he pretends to be, but are under obvious and sensible orders not to address him by any name. With Jean, in private, he hazards maintaining that imposture, and is puzzled: the man’s half-mocking deference suits neither the belief that he has rescued his emperor nor the knowledge that his erstwhile comrade has deceived him. He begins to suspect that Lafitte believes him to be neither Napoleon Bonaparte nor Andrew Cook, but the impostor alleged to have been substituted for Napoleon in January 1820—and that this state of affairs is for some reason acceptable to him!

But he cannot be certain, and so the voyage proceeds in an extraordinary equivocality, every gesture and remark a potential test, or sign. Where are they bound? “To America.” And to where in America? “To that place arranged for Your Majesty by his friends there.” Andrew is greatly encouraged to be presented after all, however ironically, with the agreed-upon ultimatum: to live incognito under Joseph’s protection (Lafitte does not say “your brother’s”) or, as General Bonaparte (Lafitte says neither “as yourself” nor “as the Emperor Napoleon I”), to lead a movement organized by American Bonapartists “both exiled and native, of great wealth and influence.”

He will choose, Andrew declares, when he has spoken to Joseph and the movement’s leaders and heard more details. Meanwhile it is surely best to remain incognito, if only officially, even between themselves.

Jean smiles. “I shall call you Baron Castine.”

Andrew smiles the same smile. “That is a name I know. It will quite do.”

Then he takes a great gamble. In a tone he hopes appropriate to whatever might be Lafitte’s understanding of him, he observes that no matter what fate awaits him in America, it is unlikely he will see again the land of his birth or, as it were, the theater of his life’s first cycle (the phrase is Andrew’s). Though he has a brother in America, the rest of his family are elsewhere. He does not expect to see his wife again; as for his son, that is too delicate a matter to venture upon at present. And his brothers and sisters are too various, either in their loyalty or in their good judgment, to place overmuch faith in just now. (Andrew speaks in these epithets rather than in proper names, watching Jean’s face.) But his mother, he declares, while less ill than himself, is old and cannot be expected either to live a great while longer or to undertake a transatlantic voyage. He would therefore like to pay her a call—incognito, if necessary—and bid her a last farewell before commencing his new career.

Lafiite seem’d genuinely astonisht, & without apparent guile demanded, Did I really propose a voyage into European waters under the flag of Cartagena? I took heart & breath, & told him (with just enough smile to cover my tracks), I was sure that a vessel & captain able to spirit Napoleon Bonaparte from St. Helena were able to sail him thro the Pillars of Hercules, pass him within sight of Corsica, whisk him straight up the Tiber, and land him on the steps of the Palazzo Rinuccini. That he could, if he did not trust me, keep me every moment in his view, & impose what conditions and disguises seem’d to him advisable. But that I was resolved to have a last word with my mother ere I was fetcht to my next destiny. He appear’d to consider. I made bold to enquire at once whether he was under someone’s orders to the contrary, or regarded my proposal as too audacious…

The fact is, Lafitte then acknowledges, his men have been at sea for above half a year without shore liberty, and a vessel in the
Jean Blanque’s
trade never lacks for alternative colors, name boards, and registry papers. But can it be true that “Baron Castine” has nothing in mind beyond bidding his mother adieu?

Not quite, I reply’d, in as level a tone as I could manage: I hoped also to have a word with her confessor. I heard him mutter:
Nom de Dieu!