The Josephine B. Trilogy (74 page)

February 10.

Bonaparte departed this morning with Eugène and Louis for an inspection tour of the coast. I stood waving until the carriage was out of sight. Bonaparte will be gone for three weeks—time enough.

[Undated]

Barras has agreed to one per cent, but the Minister of War will expect more, he warned me. “And what about General Berthier?” Bonaparte’s former chief of staff was now Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy.

“Him, too,” he said.

Everyone expects a piece of the pie.
Bien.
So long as there is a piece for me.

February 18.

I was preparing to go to the Luxembourg Palace to meet with Barras when Bonaparte’s carriage pulled up the narrow laneway, the horses steaming in the chilly air. He leapt out while the carriage was still moving.

“You’re back early,” I said, embracing him—but thinking, I confess, that I had a meeting to get to, and now…

“I saw what I needed to see.”

“It was not a good trip?” He smelled of the sea.

“The Directors are dreaming. We’re in no position to attack England.”

His new secretary, Fauvelet Bourrienne, stumbled as he climbed down out of the coach. Then young Louis Bonaparte emerged, yawning and blinking, followed by Eugène, his hair sticking up like a haystack.

“Welcome home!” I said, kissing my son’s cheek (stubble?), but worrying about how I would get word to Barras. The Bodin Company business would have to wait.

February 23.

Every afternoon Citoyen Talleyrand, the poker-faced Minister of Foreign Affairs, calls and he and Bonaparte disappear into the study. Then I
disappear as well—to go to the riding school, I tell my husband. Or to the dressmaker’s. Or to visit Thérèse.

All lies. It is “to work” I go—to the Bodin Company office on Rue Honoré. There, over a table covered with parchment and counting machines, we—Captain Charles, Hugo Bodin and I—work out the final details of the proposal: the suppliers, transportation, delivery schedules, but most important, the finances.

I confess that I enjoy this vocation, in spite of my sex. I feel a certain thrill, as if I were visiting a lover. But it is money I court, money that woos me, and the intoxicating power to earn a very great deal.

February 24.

I put down the draft of the proposal. Captain Charles’s eyes seemed huge in the lantern light, black ink spots. “It’s clear, well documented. I think it’s ready.”

He stood behind me, leafed through to the third page. He smelled of water of roses. “What about this?” He pointed at a paragraph.

“It’s fine.” His hand was only inches from my breast. He gathered up the papers with exaggerated, busy movements and put them in his blotting book.

I pulled on my gloves, my heart skittering like a leaf in a tempest.

Late afternoon, around 4:00.

At last, the Bodin Company proposal is finished. Captain Charles copied it out two times in his neat and tiny script. I’m to deliver it to Barras in the morning. “Wait,” the captain called out as I was leaving. He did a handspring and landed on his feet in front of me.

“Yes?” I asked, amused.

He wiggled his fingers over the envelope as if casting a spell.

February 25.

“Voilà, the Bodin Company proposal,” I told Barras, presenting the portfolio.

Barras pointed his gold-braided hat at the stack of papers on a side table. “Put it there, along with all the others.” With a weary, long-suffering look.

I put it on top of the pile and smiled my persuasive best. “The first to be considered, Père Barras?”

Now all we can do is wait. Everything depends on the approval of Schérer, the Minister of War.

Late afternoon (just before 5:00), still raining.

“Does the Minister of War ever attend your salon, Fortunée?” I asked, dealing out the cards.

“Citoyen Schérer? Every week.”

“Oh, there she goes bragging again,” Thérèse said.

“I thought you knew him, Josephine.”

“I’ve conversed with him at Barras’s, and I know his wife, but he has yet to come to my salon.”

“The Minister of the Interior came to my salon last week.
And
four deputies,” Madame de Crény said, swinging her feet.

“Deputies will go to anything.”

“I’ve been trying for months to get the Minister of Foreign Affairs to come to mine and at last I succeeded.”

“So I heard.”

“You mean you actually lured Talleyrand away from Josephine’s salon?”

“All the important men go to
her
salon.”

All but Schérer, the Minister of War, I thought—the one man who mattered.

“Invite Geneviève Payan,” Fortunée Hamelin told me later, as she was leaving.

The opera singer? “I’m in your debt,” I said, embracing her.

February 26.

At noon Lisette brought me the calling cards that had been dropped off
over the course of the morning. I sorted through the names, placing them in three piles—those to whom I would send a card, those who required a call, those I would invite to return.

The last card gave me pause. Bordered in black, it was of common design.
La veuve Hoche.
Lazare’s widow.

After 10:00
P.M.
(a guess).

It was dark, the narrow streets muddy. “Are you sure, Madame?” My coachman let down the step, gave me his hand. The house was small, without a courtyard. I nodded. “I won’t be long.”

“Citoyenne Beauharnais,” the widow Hoche said, addressing me by the name of my first husband, by the name Lazare would have called me. Her dark eyes, hidden under the fluted ruffle of a plain linen cap, had a frightened look. She dropped a dutiful curtsy, much as a schoolgirl might greet a teacher, lifting the hem of her stained white apron at each corner. She seemed a wounded bird, a foundling, her shoulders painfully thin. I could not imagine her in Lazare’s arms, could not imagine that
this
was the woman he’d loved, the wife he’d betrayed. I had imagined Lazare’s wife as a well-made farmgirl, blushing and buxom, with apple cheeks and a hearty laugh. Not this ethereal creature with thin fingers more suited to lace work than to pulling on a cow’s teat.

“My profound condolences,” I said.

She pushed a wisp of hair back under her cap, blinking. I followed her upstairs to a small sitting room at the end of a dark and narrow passage. A portrait of Lazare hung over a coal fireplace—it made him appear stern. I was surprised to see a crucifix on the wall next to it. I accepted the offer of a chair, clearly the best chair in the room, the place of honour. His young widow took the seat opposite, her hands clasped in her lap. I heard a child’s laugh, then little footsteps, hard leather shoes on a bare wooden floor. “Your daughter?” I asked.

The door creaked on its hinges. “This lady was a friend of your father’s.” Adélaïde Hoche’s voice quavered.

The child poked one finger in her ear, and then pointed to the portrait. She was not yet three, I estimated, but a big girl for her age. “She has her father’s eyes,” I said. And his mouth.

An old woman appeared, scooped up the child. The door closed with a slam that shook the thin walls. I wondered if she was the aunt who had raised Lazare, the peddler of vegetables who went without vegetables in order to save every sou, so determined was she that Lazare would learn to read and write.

We sat for a moment in silence, Adélaïde Hoche sitting on her hands, staring at the floor. From somewhere I could hear a cat meowing plaintively. I was about to make a comment on the indifferent weather when she blurted out, “He said you would help me if I ever needed it.”

“General Hoche?”
Should anything happen to me, please, I beg you, help my wife and child.

“He said I could trust you.”

I nodded, yes!

In the other room the child began to cry; the widow tilted her head, assessing the degree of distress. The crying stopped, turned to chatter. “It has to do with Père Hoche…” The knuckles of her clasped hands were white.

“General Hoche’s father?”

“He’s gone back to Thionville to look after things, so I took the chance to talk to you. I’m glad you came. He’s coming back tomorrow.” She stared at a blue crockery urn on the mantel. “He’s in a bad way,” she said finally, her chin trembling.

I looked away. I feared she might begin to weep and then we would both be crying, I knew. “It must be terribly hard. Is there anything I can do?”

She paused before saying, “If you could just get the report. Père Hoche tried, but they won’t let him see it.”

“I don’t understand.” The autopsy report?

“Père Hoche has become—” She twisted her fingers together. “Maybe if he could just see the report on how his son died, maybe it would help.”

“But is there any doubt? Were you not with your husband?”

“He died in my arms,” she said with pride.

A sob burst from me. “Forgive me,” I said, wiping my cheeks. I’d vowed I would not let it happen.

“I do forgive you,” she said with a look of ancient wisdom.

“I understand why he loved you so very much,” I said, my eyes brimming.

Immediately after I called on Barras. I was relieved to find him alone. “I’ve just been to see the widow Hoche,” I told him, attempting a casual tone.

He pulled out his lorgnon, looked at me with surprise. “
You
went to see her?”

“She initiated it. She is concerned about her father-in-law.”

“Hoche’s father? He broke down at the funeral, did you know? It was terrible.”

Yes, I’d heard. “The widow feels that Père Hoche has become obsessed, I guess one would say, with his son’s death, with trying to find out how he died.”

“He knows perfectly well how Lazare died—of consumption. The autopsy made it perfectly clear. It was in all the journals. I don’t understand what the problem is.”

“Perhaps if he could just see the report.”

“That’s classified information.”

“Paul, you know the rumours,” I said softly. “If the autopsy report states that Lazare died of consumption, then why not make it public? It would help—”

“I’ll tell you why!” he said, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. “Because there is nothing to hide. I’ve
had
it with these ignorant, suspicious…” He sputtered, seeking yet another invective.

February 27.

The door to chez Hoche was ajar. I pulled the bell rope, waited. I heard the child chattering. A tall white-haired man in a heavy wool coat and ribbed stockings came to the door. Lazare’s father, Père Hoche—it was
easy to see from his bushy eyebrows, the set of his jutting jaw, his proud stance. The child peeked out from between his legs. I introduced myself, handing him my card. “Citoyenne Bonaparte.”

“The wife of General Bonaparte?” Père Hoche asked with respect in his voice.

“I knew your son, in the Carmes prison.”

“Yes, he told me.” With an appraising look.

I flushed. “My profound condolences, Citoyen Hoche.”

“Hoche is
my
name,” the child said from between her grandpapa’s legs.

“Yes, I believe we have been introduced.” I smiled.

Squealing, she ran back into the depths of the house.

The old man waved me into the house. “You’re here to see Adélaïde?”

“She is expecting me, I believe.”

“She told me she was expecting somebody, but she didn’t tell me it was the wife of that rascal Bonaparte,” he said, lighting a candle enclosed in oiled paper.

I followed his slow progression up the narrow stairs to the dark sitting room. “Sit. I’ll tell her you’re here.” I waited in the spare little room, feeling Lazare’s eyes staring down at me. A silk flower had been placed under the portrait, next to the blue urn. I heard a door, footsteps. Adélaïde Hoche appeared, dressed entirely in black, a widow’s veil draped around her shoulders. “Père Hoche, please join us. I believe it regards Lazare,” she said over her shoulder. She touched the urn on the mantelpiece, crossed herself and sat down.

The old man appeared in the door, filling it. “Oh?”

I glanced from one to the other uneasily. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I wasn’t able to obtain the report. I was told that the law prevents making it public and—”

“The autopsy report?” Père Hoche asked, stepping into the room.

“But Director Barras assured me himself that the results are clear—your son died of consumption.”

Père Hoche slammed his fist against the wall. “Don’t you dare speak the name Barras in this house!”

I started, my heart pounding.

“Père Hoche, please,” the young widow hissed, but her father-in-law ignored her.

“Yes, my son had consumption, but that wasn’t what killed him. You don’t get convulsions from consumption. Lazare was
poisoned.
”

With the appearance of calm the widow stood, straightened Lazare’s portrait. “It is not a good likeness,” she said.

In which I am accused

February 28, 1798.

Bonaparte is in a meeting with Talleyrand again. They closet themselves in the study every afternoon. It has become a bit mysterious, for now Bonaparte has forbidden anyone from entering that room. “Even the servants, Bonaparte?” I asked, perplexed. For the study was in shambles.

“Even
you,
” he said, tweaking my ear.

[Undated]

Books stacked by Bonaparte’s bedside—Ossian, Plutarch, the Koran.

[Undated]

I felt like a thief in my own house. I lit a candle, looked about. Bonaparte’s study was in that familiar state of disarray, that look of volcanic activity. Every surface was covered with papers, journals, scrolls. I picked up a plate with chicken bones on it, to clear it, then put it back exactly where I found it. I held the candle down over the map that was spread out over the carpet—
Egypt.

March 1.

Minister Schérer has yet to even read the Bodin Company proposal. “Why is he taking so long?” I asked Barras. We were standing in an
alcove of his palatial salon, ostensibly to admire a painting that had recently been hung there.