The Josephine B. Trilogy (83 page)

April 23, 1799—Malmaison!

It is late afternoon. I’m writing these words at my little desk in the boudoir of my country château. A spirit of rebelliousness has come over me. I’ve not dressed my hair, not painted my face, I’m wearing old “rags”—a cosy déshabillé. A feeling of peace fills me as I look out over the hills, my four hundred acres of woodland and fields dotted with grazing sheep, cows, a few horses. A bull with a ring through its nose is lowing plaintively next to the cowshed. This morning I’ll ride the bay mare over every dell and glen, and in the afternoon the gardener and I will lay out an herb garden.

And this evening? This evening I’ll listen to the night silence. This evening, I’ll sleep content.

This is my home. I will grow old here, die here.

April 24, morning.

I have just had a report from my steward. With his face turning red as a turkey-cock and his battered straw hat clutched in his hands, he informed me that the chickens haven’t been laying, the clover in the far field is overgrown with hemlock and the winnowing machine is in need of a part (forty francs). Such “problems” are a balm to my battered spirit.

April 27.

More and more I retreat from the civilized world. I rise with the sun,
spend my day in the company of the servants, the peasants, the animals. In the early morning I work in the kitchen garden, planting, pulling up weeds, thinning. I think of Paris, of the ferment that is always there, the glitter and wit, with something akin to revulsion.

[Undated]

Twice I have set out to go to Paris; twice I have turned back. I have become a country savage.

May 20.

Frustrated by my absence, the Glories have descended!

“Ah, darling, now you have everything: a harp, a coach and a château. What more is there?”

“My harp lacks three strings, my coach needs a new shaft and as for my château…!” I laughed.

“Don’t despair, you can have it repaired,” Minerva said to comfort me.

“I confess I love it just as it is,” I said, checking under the table to make sure that Pugdog was getting along with my guests’ pets. We were five women, four pugs—a zoo.

“The grounds
are
lovely.”

“It’s perfect,” Thérèse said, embracing me. She looked a little plump, I thought. “You might as well know. I’m going to have a baby,” she announced sheepishly to the group.

“Oh!”

“Oh?” And Tallien, her husband, in Egypt. And Ouvrard, her lover, married.

“Don’t look at me like that!”

We played cards and talked all afternoon, catching up on the news: the assassination of the French envoys in Germany; the depressing military losses in Italy; how one of the Directors had accused Fesch, Lucien and Joseph Bonaparte of pilfering public funds. But most important, the wonderful news that an attempt was going to be made for an Egyptian rescue.

May 24.

The rescue attempt failed. Our ships were unable to get through the English blockade. I’ve been all day in bed.

June 16.

A courier came cantering into the courtyard this morning. A letter from Bonaparte? I thought hopefully, recalling the early days of the Italian campaign. But no, of course not. The envelope contained a current issue of the journal
La Feuille du Jour.
Attached to it was a note, unsigned, but in Captain Charles’s tidy script—
page 4, top left. I must see you.
On page four there was an article reporting the delivery of unsound horses to the Army of Italy—by the Bodin Company. Apparently, the soldiers had been forced to cross the Alps on lame and feeble mounts, cursing the name Bodin.

Captain Charles’s basement rooms at one hundred Rue Honoré are dark. The porter squinted to make out the printing on my card. “Madame Tascher?”

I nodded, giving him my cloak. I was asked to wait in a small drawing room. (I remember wondering whether I heard barking.) I made myself comfortable, taking in the tasteful simplicity of the furnishings—the paintings on the walls, the bouquets of flowers, a side table covered with books (Montesquieu’s
Persian Letters
open
,
face down), a bronze sculpture of a horse—the pleasing clutter of a room much lived in.

“He’s receiving,” the porter informed me, then led me down a dark passage. We stopped before an antique oak door with a brass knob. I heard a dog barking again. The porter rapped three times.

“Come on in, Claude,” I heard a voice call out—Captain Charles.

The porter swung the door open. There, in the centre of a mass of dogs was Captain Charles wearing an artist’s frock coat of coarse linen. In his arms was a beagle with one ear missing. “Madame—”

“
Tascher.
”

Gently he lowered the beagle onto the floor and stepped over a longhaired mutt, wiping his hands on his frock coat. His braids had been tied
back with a scarlet and black striped ribbon. “You’ve discovered my secret life,” he said shyly, glancing down at his flock.

“Where did they all come from?” How many were there? Eight? Ten?

“I claim them from the streets,” he said, removing his coat and ushering me out the door. Underneath he was wearing a scarlet wool cutaway coat with white satin lapels. He closed the door behind him, muffling the yelping.

“And then what do you do with them?” I asked, following him back into the drawing room.

“And then I can’t bear to part with them!” he said, pushing forward an upholstered chair. “You’ve come about the article in
La Feuille du Jour
?”

“It alarmed me.”

“The horses that the Bodin Company bought were sound, I assure you. But the horses that were shipped were apparently slaughterhouse animals. The problem appears to be with the dealer.”

“Louis and Hugo Bodin are both in Lyons?”

The captain nodded. “I just received a letter from them. There is talk of an inquiry.”

This could be the end of us, I thought—the end of
me.
“There’s only one person who can help us.”

“Grand Dieu,” Barras exclaimed when he saw me. “I was beginning to think we’d never see you in Paris again. You’re just in time for the celebration.” He did a little dance and then winced, his hand on the small of his back. “At last, that braggart Director Treilhard’s out—his election as director has been disqualified.”

“Ha, ha.” The parrot, chuckling like Barras.

“Oh?” Trying to remember who Director Treilhard was. I’d been living in another world. “Why?”

“He’s four days too young to be eligible.”

“Only four days?”

“Four, four hundred, what does it matter? The law is the law,” intoned Barras in a mock deep voice. “The irony is that it was your brother-in-law Lucien Bonaparte who discovered the discrepancy and demanded
justice. He himself is four hundred days short of being eligible to be a deputy, and he started screaming about Treilhard’s four days. All this at one in the morning. It’s a good thing I have a sense of humour.”

“Barras, please, have you read that article about the Bodin Company in the—”

“
La Feuille du Jour?
Ah yes, the latest little scandal. The Legislative Councils are outraged, calling for an investigation, of course.” He held his hands up, as if under arrest. “And they’re just dying to pin it on me. This place is as explosive as a powder keg.”

Barras’s secretary Botot appeared at the door. “Another deputation to see you, Director.”

“That’s the third group already today.” Barras took me by the elbow, ushering me out.

“Paul, what’s going on?”

He kissed me on both cheeks. “Just another coup d’état, a little milkand-water revolution.” He waved gaily, disappearing from view, his words echoing in the vast chamber—
coup d’état, coup d’état, coup d’état.

“So he can’t do anything?” Captain Charles asked, keeping his eyes on the six balls he was juggling.

“I never had a chance to ask him. Things are…tense. The last thing he’ll want to align himself with right now is the Bodin Company. Maybe later.”

“Later will be too late,” the captain said, letting the balls drop.

June 21.

With a sinking heart, I have written to Barras, begging him to defend the interests of the Bodin Company.

June 29.

I was working in the herb garden with Mimi when a hired fiacre pulled through the gates. I squinted to see who it might be. “I think it’s that
funny man,” Mimi said, for her eyesight is better than mine.

Captain Charles? I untied my apron.

“And a mess of dogs, sounds like,” she said.

“We’ve been turned out,” the captain explained as his porter picked the dog hairs off his red shooting jacket. The beagle and a spotted dog pressed their damp, black noses out the carriage window, sniffing. From the variety of barks, I suspected he had brought them all.

“Because of the investigation?” Government payments to the Bodin Company had been withheld until the investigation was complete.

He nodded. “I put all the office files in safe keeping, but as for the dogs—I know it is a lot to ask, but…?”

I started to turn him away, thinking of what might be said, fearing the consequences. But then I thought: how can I let down a friend in such desperate need? Were it not for Captain Charles, I wouldn’t even own Malmaison. And who would ever know he was there? I lived in such isolation. “There’s a suite of rooms empty in the farmhouse,” I told him, wondering as I said the words if I were doing the right thing. “My daughter comes only on the weekends. I’ll tell the servants you are my accountant.” In fact, I could use his help.

“It won’t be for long,” he assured me, opening the carriage door and standing back as all the barking, bounding dogs leapt out.

July 7
—
Paris.

Although the Bodin Company contract is still under review, at least we will not be charged. “That’s the best I can do,” Barras told me. He seemed distant, harassed. I dared not ask him for yet another loan, as I’d intended.

July 10.

What a night. Now all is topsy-turvy. Where do I begin? I suppose it was inevitable that the captain and I would become…well, perhaps I am being misleading.

It began with inviting the captain to join me in sampling the first bottle of our Malmaison wine. It was, after all, an occasion. We’d learned that the investigation had been dropped. The Bodin Company was going to survive. And besides, the pheasants that a neighbour had been kind enough to give me had been splendidly prepared by my cook and required a “full-bodied” (the captain’s words) red.

The first bottle revealed that the wine was, indeed, ready. The captain and I settled into the game room, where, after I noisily beat him at backgammon
^*
(three times!), we propped our stockinged feet up on the big leather hassock and talked: of his family and their need; of his ambition (to own a stud farm, raise horses). I asked him once again why he had never married.

“The woman I love is spoken for,” he confessed.

“You won’t tell me who she is?” I asked, wondering, I confess, if he was telling the truth. Wondering if the rumours about the captain were true. I took my wineglass in my hand, holding it by the stem. I looked at the captain, held his eye as I raised my glass, emptied it. It is an old-fashioned ritual, this “taking a glass”; I doubted whether he was even familiar with it, young as he is. But gamely he followed suit, holding my eye, downing his glass. I leaned over and filled his glass again. I was conscious of the revealing cut of my gown.

“I’ll give you a hint,” he said, standing abruptly and propping his hands on the arms of my chair. I could smell the sweet scent of pistachio on his breath. Before I could protest, his lips were upon mine, his tongue soft, seeking. I pulled away. “Why did you do that!” (Shocked, I confess, by his ardour. I’d always considered the captain to be “safe.”)

Captain Charles fell back on his haunches. “
Why
is not the question a lady usually asks when she is kissed,” he said, rising to his feet, pulling at his coat to try to disguise the rather obvious fact that he was in the manly state. I looked away, a flush heating my cheeks. Perhaps I should take a lover, I thought, thinking of my husband in the arms of another. But was that lover funny little Captain Charles?

The night was foggy. I felt my way cautiously, holding onto Captain Charles’s arm for support. We were both of us giggling like schoolchildren, stumbling in the dark, starting at the slightest sound. A snort and low rumble made me jump. “It’s just my manservant snoring,” he whispered, leading me up the narrow path to the old farmhouse. Inside, two dogs began to bark. “Quiet,” Captain Charles hissed through the open window.

I put my hand on his shoulder to keep from swaying. Then he hiccupped and I fell against the wall, trying not to laugh. I remember thinking, I’m in a state, I’m going to regret this.

Captain Charles opened the creaky door to his bedchamber. The room smelled of dog. He lit a lantern and stumbled about the room making it tidy, throwing a woven cloth over the bed. “There.” Then he kissed me, pulling me against him. “Please don’t change your mind,” he whispered, sensing that I might. He pulled at my bodice strings, his fingertips on my breast, his lips, his tongue. I moaned, my hands in his hair. We fell onto the bed. Kiss him, I thought—before you think better of it.

He stood and untied his pantaloons, pulling down his breeches, his drawers. Demurely, I looked away. He stepped towards the bed, and I believe he must have lost his balance, for he began to hop about the room, his ankles tangled in his breeches, the light of the single lantern gleaming off his exposed buttocks, his rather large and bouncing manhood.

And then, I could not help it—I began to laugh. And then the dogs began to bark. Captain Charles pulled up his breeches and ran downstairs to silence them. When he returned I was sitting cross-legged on his bed, drying my cheeks, laughing still but contained, my sides aching. He sat down beside me, confused and shy. “My valet’s still snoring,” he said.