Josephine's Garden Page 12

  Rose, with her pretty, curly-haired boy, was soon a favourite with the women. They gathered to give her their advice.

  ‘Stand up straight.’ A sharp finger poked Rose between her shoulder blades. ‘You must inspire confidence.’

  Rose drew her shoulders back, afraid to fail under the scrutiny of the circle of women.

  ‘You must act like you deserve respect,’ said a woman with a long neck bound tightly with several strands of pearls. ‘Never accept inferior quality. Live like you are a queen and you will be treated so.’ She gave her opinion in a manner that did not encourage disagreement.

  An elegant older woman walked slowly around her, appraising. ‘You are fortunate. You have a natural sensuality. And you have that certain something that inspires a man to protect you.’ The woman smiled at her. Her name, Rose later learned, was Marguerite.

  Another pursed her lips. ‘But your manners are coarse. A man does not feel superior to other men by bedding the ugly duckling. You must learn to use your charms to stand above your rivals. It is your gift to your pursuer. He is made stronger by having conquered you.’

  Rose blinked back her tears. She didn’t understand what these women demanded of her. Why, if they had all the answers, were they trapped here in this convent, without homes of their own or the means to support themselves?

  ‘Enough for today.’ Marguerite shooed the women from her chamber. She touched Rose’s hand. ‘Don’t worry: we will make you into a swan, my darling.’

  In the two years Rose lived at the Penthémont convent, she came to know all the women well. Patient Angelique who tried to engage Rose in classical literature. ‘If you cannot be clever, dear, then be sympathetic,’ she said, leaning across to take the volume of poetry from Rose’s limp fingers. ‘Every bore loves a listener.’

  Plump Henriette piped up from beside the fire: ‘Flatter a man’s ego and you shall have his heart.’

  And wise Marguerite: ‘Learn to be whoever the person you are with needs you to be: a confidante, a comforter or a flatterer. Learn this and the world will eat from your palm.’

  ‘But, Marguerite,’ Rose said, sitting forward in her chair to ask the question that had been plaguing her, ‘if you know all this, why are you here?’

  The women all fell silent, smiles sliding from their faces.

  ‘I grew tired of the pretence, my child,’ Marguerite had said while the other women nodded. ‘My tongue grew careless. Men do not like women who contradict them and I could no longer appear stupid when I was not.’

  Rose triumphed in court. She won her case against Alexandre and emerged from the convent with a legal separation, restoration of her reputation and a formidable collection of dresses. Rose never spoke about those years. She was thankful Eugene and Hortense could not remember them. By now, all those beloved, inspirational women had likely passed on without knowing what had become of their ugly duckling. But Rose carried their words in her heart. And what she learned most from her time in the convent was the importance of a home. A home that could be hers alone, one that no one could take from her.

  That’s the spirit. She heard the voice of dear, wise Marguerite in her head like a guiding angel.

  Rose turned back to Barras. He knew very well what she had been forced to do to survive in those years after Alexandre’s death. Rose sweetened her voice. ‘Won’t you help an old friend who knows so much about your—’ she paused ‘—appetites? Proclivities that would cause embarrassment if they were more generally known?’

  Barras growled. ‘Careful, Madame, I do not respond well to blackmail.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she said coolly, ‘what other means do I have to support myself? I have only my jewels and my connections.’

  ‘Keep your jewels,’ Barras said contemptuously.

  She waited, knowing now that a deal was about to be made.

  ‘I will fund your hobby house.’

  Rose sucked in a triumphant breath, but braced herself for the conditions of the offer. ‘And in return?’

  ‘We shall see. Your husband is a great man, but he is also a dangerous man. He defied me with this Egypt campaign when he should have attacked Britain. He invaded Egypt purely because it was a country never before taken by any European nation! He has become seduced by his ambitions, imagines himself an Alexander the Great or Charlemagne.’ Barras licked his lips, struggling to recover his composure. ‘One day, there may come a time when you are of use to me.’

  Rose felt nauseous. Was she to be Barras’s spy now? These were dangerous games she was playing. How much did she want her own home? Could it really be worth aligning herself with the devil once again? But then she thought of Hortense and Eugene. They had nothing: a father executed during the Revolution and his estate frittered away into the coffers of this new Republic. Barras grew fat off the riches of the dead. He owed her this house.

  She inclined her head. ‘Very well.’

  ‘I’m glad we understand each other.’

  They kissed farewell, her cheeks now dry. Barras smelled of stale sweat and bergamot. When she reached the doors, Barras called after her.

  ‘Bonaparte will not forgive him, your Hippolyte Charles. He never forgets an insult. You have condemned the boy. Wherever he is, tell him to sleep with a sword at his side.’

  She slammed the doors to his laughter.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Summer 1799

  ‘I am expecting visitors today,’ Jacques said.

  Marthe looked up from her crochet. She removed her spectacles to see her husband more clearly, wondering if she had heard him correctly. In the six months they had been together he had never once received any visitors. She bit her tongue, resisting a snide comment. These were coming to her mind more frequently of late.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Friends of mine. Félix Lahaie and his wife.’

  Marthe sat up. A woman. She looked around the embarrassing state of her parlour. This was too cruel. How was she to entertain a woman, someone who would take one look at their domestic arrangements and pass judgement?

  Marthe shot to her feet. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? When will they be here?’ Her voice was screeching, she hated the sound. Instinctively, she went to ring for the servants before she remembered. She had no household to manage. She was a mistress of nothing.

  ‘I expect them soon.’

  Jacques had his back to her. He couldn’t see her trembling.

  ‘I must go down for cakes. We have nothing to offer them!’ Marthe reached for her purse.

  Jacques cocked his head to one side, listening. ‘Too late, they’re here.’

  Marthe stood in the centre of their threadbare rug, clasping the bones of her elbows. She was breathing fast, tiny frantic breaths. Jacques swung open the door before his friend could knock. With surprise she saw her husband stiffly accept an embrace from the shorter man, and then they clasped hands.

  ‘Married life agrees with you, Labillardière,’ Félix said. ‘You look well.’

  Jacques stepped back. ‘Let me introduce you to my wife, Marthe.’

  Marthe sank into a curtsy. So this was Félix Lahaie, gardener and travelling companion of her husband. When she rose her smile was fixed into place.

  Félix’s wife had appeared at his side. Her cheeks were flushed. ‘That’s quite a climb,’ she panted.

  Marthe bristled. Was this a veiled insult? Everyone knew the apartments on top floors were the cheapest to rent. The woman was young and pretty and smiling happily. Golden curls fell around her face. She looked like a Swiss milkmaid, or how Marthe imagined one would look. And why wouldn’t she be happy? Marthe’s eyes fell to her full, pregnant belly.

  ‘And this is my Anne,’ Félix said, looping his arm behind her back to support her.

  ‘Come in, you must sit down.’ Marthe gestured to the little hard sofa.

  ‘Perfect,’ Anne said with a smile.

  What did she mean by that? Marthe couldn’t read her tone. Meeting strangers was always exhausting; she had
never known the right things to say, never been good at easy discourse. And there were not enough seats, she realised. Félix and Anne took the sofa while Jacques disappeared into his room to retrieve his desk chair. Marthe perched on the edge of her rocking chair, feeling the same sense of unease she’d had when meeting visitors to Claude’s family estate. Then her drawing room had been a grand salon with a high ceiling and couches of perfumed leather. She had servants to bring refreshments.

  ‘You have an enchanting view,’ Félix said, looking out into the leafy plane trees.

  ‘Yes. We prefer the top floor. For the view.’ Marthe tried to sit up straight, but the rocking chair kept tipping her backwards. She clasped her hands on her knees.

  ‘How are you finding it here?’ Félix asked.

  ‘Oh, I love Paris,’ she answered truthfully.

  ‘We are pleased to meet you at last.’ Anne beamed at her. ‘And sorry to have missed your wedding.’

  Marthe returned a tight smile.

  Jacques brought his chair into the room. ‘Have you offered our guests some tea, coffee?’

  Marthe sat frozen, shaking her head. Jacques took a pot of water to the coal stove in his room.

  ‘We apologise for taking so long to come and meet you, but it is often difficult to travel away from Versailles,’ Félix said, taking his wife’s hand in his. ‘We have a young boy who delights in mischief!’

  Marthe smiled airily, keeping her gaze above the swell of Anne’s stomach. There was something obscene about seeing a woman so heavily pregnant. No wonder men had begun to complain about the freedoms women now had to walk in public in such a state.

  ‘You are at the Trianon, I believe,’ Marthe said to Félix. She had just remembered some conversation, some reference to the gardener taking over the former estate of Marie-Antoinette. ‘It was once a model Swiss dairy, is that right?’ She glanced at Anne’s flushed and milky bosom. She couldn’t help herself.

  ‘At long last the Directoire have seen sense,’ Jacques said as he entered the room, ‘and are returning the garden to scientific inquiry.’

  ‘A botanical garden, yes.’ Félix nodded. ‘Seeds collected from New Holland.’

  Marthe gasped, suddenly remembering the teacups. She leaped to her feet and found a tray from the distressed bureau in the corner of the room. Her eyes felt hot as she reached for the cups. The ones pushed to the back had chips in the rims. She didn’t even have four teacups in the same pattern. Her eyes filled with tears. She once had such beautiful things. Delicate eggshell cups with gold rims. A full tea service with plates and tiny golden forks. But she had taken them for granted, never imagining a time when she wouldn’t have them. Blinking rapidly, she turned and reached for the teapot. A solid ugly thing.

  Félix and Jacques were reminiscing, telling stories of sharing tea with the savages of New Holland. Meeting young girls, entirely naked. Her husband, who had not touched her in six months of marriage. Marthe’s hands were shaking.

  ‘I don’t trust you, Labillardière,’ Félix accused light-heartedly. ‘I demand to read a copy of this exposé before it goes to print.’

  ‘Too late!’ Her husband was grinning. Actually grinning. ‘The publishers are working on the English translations as we speak.’

  She took the tray into the middle of the room and stood there, momentarily lost. She had nowhere to set the tray down. Félix saw her stranded and got to his feet. He took the tray from her hands. Her lips were held so tight together, she couldn’t even smile her thanks.

  It wasn’t fair! She had to quickly turn away as her vision began to swim. She excused herself and sought the sanctuary of her narrow room. Why was her husband warm with others and not with her? What was wrong with her?

  She sank onto her bed.

  As the months had passed she had tried everything to attract him, even dressing in inflaming colours, but she suspected that only further repulsed him. At night she always left her door ajar. She had never had to seduce a man before. When she tried stroking his ego with flattering comments on his accomplishments, he simply left her company feeling bolstered and confident and rushed back to his work, no more interested in her than before. She tried letting her hand linger on his arm and even traced her fingers across his shoulders. She raised the hems of her skirts by an inch and folded her legs in such a way that showed her ankles to best advantage. She knew that he appreciated the graceful women of the Friendly Isles, she had read about their shapely arms, and she tried to emulate how their graceful motions might be performed, passing by her husband with exaggerated grace. He did not notice. It was embarrassing, humiliating. She would’ve laughed at her stupidity if it didn’t make her so despairing.

  She had sought the advice of her priest. And then an apothecary. Both had suggested she eat more. Perhaps she was too thin to arouse his passions? ‘Some men can’t resist a pair of fulsome buttocks,’ the priest had added from behind his confessional screen. ‘Have you tried bending over before him?’

  From the salon, she heard laughter. Was that her husband’s laugh? It was the first time she had heard any expression of humour other than a contemptuous snort. He was fond of those. But this laughter was genuine and warm. Deep and rolling, slow to burst.

  Enough. She sniffed and pressed a handkerchief beneath her nose. She had waited long enough. If he would not come to her after dark, then she would go to him.

  A gentle tap at the door roused Marthe to her feet. A woman’s knock. She swept out, closing the bedroom door quickly behind her, ignoring the look of pity on Anne’s face.

  It was a full moon and the Seine glistened slick and silver through the silhouetted trees. Marthe tiptoed across the salon to her husband’s door. She listened hard with her cheek against the ageing paintwork. No light escaped from beneath the door. Her hand rested on the handle. A snore startled her and she almost lost her nerve. He was asleep; he would not take kindly to being woken.

  She put a hand to her breast and opened a few more buttons of her nightdress. If he was asleep, perhaps she could more easily slide under the covers and press herself against him. She was no virgin bride—she knew how to pleasure a man. All she needed to do was to convince him of her readiness.

  The door opened silently, but the floorboards groaned as she stepped inside. She froze, counting her heartbeats, not ready to have him wake startled and angry. Moonlight flooded in from the high window, casting a grey light over her husband’s desk and books. His bed was in darkness. There was no sign that he had heard her. She moved closer, holding her breath.

  Jacques was splayed out on his back across the mattress. She watched his chest rise and fall. His limbs seemed so long and ungainly on the narrow bed. One foot pushed out beneath the covers, and one arm hung over the edge. His face was gentle, relaxed in a way she had never seen before. His full lips were soft and inviting.

  She could pull back the sheet and straddle him. Lower herself onto him. She could lie there, feeling his muscle harden beneath her and wait for him to wake.

  Suddenly, Jacques snored, a violent intake of breath. Marthe fled from the room, closing the door behind her.

  The following night, Marthe tried again. There was candlelight still flickering beneath the closed door. This time she would speak with him, let her husband know that she was ready to share his bed. She knocked but heard no reply. She loosened her nightgown around her neck until the points of her shoulders could be seen and shook her unpinned hair. She wished she had Anne’s golden curls. Never mind. She would do her best with her thinning, brittle locks.

  When she entered his bedroom, Jacques was slumped over his desk, his head lying among his papers. The candle stuttered, the flame nearly drowned in wax as the stump of candle burned away. She went over to him. Jacques was asleep; she heard his breathing rattle at the back of his throat. She bent and blew out the candle. Immediately, she was lost in the darkness. She swayed. The scent of waxy smoke was strong. Perhaps it might wake him. She placed her fingertips on the desk and stood still
, waiting.

  As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Marthe considered her husband’s bed. She could climb under the covers and slide over against the wall. She could wait for him to wake, cramped and sore, to stretch and rub his neck, then remove his clothes and grope for the bed. She would be there warm and soft. She would take him in her arms.

  His bed was tightly made as she prised apart the sheets. It was cold at first and strange to smell the scent of him on the pillowslip. She felt no fear. This was what she had to do. She couldn’t wait for him forever; her time was running out.

  Marthe listened to the soft sound of her husband’s breathing for so long that she must have fallen asleep, for in the morning when she woke she was confused at where she was. The angles of the ceiling were all wrong. When she remembered her audacity she gasped and sat up. The chair at Jacques’s desk was empty.

  Labillardière knew his wife was stalking him, but he was at a loss as to what to do about it. Whenever he returned home, she would be there staring at him with her globe-like eyes and her hands pressed together. He couldn’t help but think of her as a praying mantis with her sharp elbows and pointed wrists, lying in wait for him. The day she wore a dress of spring green nearly made him drop a pot of precious ink.

  Labillardière strode quickly towards the Jardin des Plantes, anxious to stretch out his long legs. He had spent a cramped night on their small sofa. The woman was insatiable. He had feigned sleep until he was sure she was snoring and then snuck out. Of his own bedroom, no less. Never again. He would buy a lock.

  He had fled the house before she woke. Were all women lusting and deceitful? He had hoped to find a modest woman of mature years, no longer driven by disgusting desires. Her tricks to lure him in had not gone unnoticed. The demure way she licked the end of her thread in needlework, her soft singing from her boudoir in the mornings, the way she held her coffee cup to her lips and pouted to blow the heat away.

  On the corner, he passed a newsboy tempting him to buy a paper with some salacious gossip about the General’s wife. Still the papers wrote of the scandal. Had they not tired of the woman yet? It was not a surprise to him, of course—he had seen the woman cavorting with that Hussar in Italy. It was only a surprise that it had taken the General so long to find out. Women had no self-restraint. He reached into his pocket for some coins. He opened the paper. The news was filled with the General’s Egyptian conquest. It still stung that he had been overlooked for this campaign in Egypt. Thirteen naturalists they took. The best naturalists in France, the papers had reported erroneously. He rolled the pamphlet and swung it by his side as he walked.