Josephine's Garden Page 13
It rankled that, the year before, General Bonaparte had been elected to the Institut de France, an august scientific society, while Labillardière’s own application to the Institut had again been denied. This Egyptian campaign angered him. Was it necessary to subdue a nation in order to make scientific discoveries? He and his fellow savants who travelled the world were living proof that it was not. He slapped the rolled newspaper against his leg.
He crossed the Pont au Change towards the Conciergerie. Today, the slate-grey turrets of the medieval prison were stark against the bone sky. The prison’s crumbling blockwork was stained with mould and moss. As he passed beneath the galleries, he wondered how many of the prisoners left alive after the Terror, the supporters of Robespierre, were watching him from the slotted windows. If he had been here in Paris then, would he now be among them?
He left the Île de la Cité and followed the Seine, passing the coach-house where he had delivered Félix and Anne to their carriage just days before. Since meeting the gardener in the Place de la Révolution last summer, he found he had returned often to their company, even following them out to see the gardens at Versailles. Each time, Anne begged him to bring his wife. He didn’t know why he did not care to do so. Now, Anne’s parting words outside the coach came back to him.
‘You know she wants a child.’
‘Nonsense,’ he scoffed. He had thought her too old. Besides, her family had hinted that she was incapable.
‘The crocheted bonnets, the baby’s booties, the christening gown—did you not think that strange?’ Anne looked at him with laughter in her eyes.
He had not bothered to see what kept his wife so intent by the window in her rocking chair. ‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘You know how I feel about procreation. Children dull the mind.’
Félix paused, about to heave his pregnant wife up the steps. ‘Children give you perspective, my friend. Work isn’t everything.’ He placed his hands on Anne’s buttocks and pushed.
‘My work is everything! I have twenty-two cases of plant specimens to study!’ Labillardière felt the heat explode in his face. Félix should know better than this. All they had endured, all the sacrifices of the expedition, the lives lost, was it all for nothing? He had laboured to have these cases returned to him. He had triumphed despite this futile war with England. His friends in Britain had seen sense. Banks, an explorer himself, had understood his position. The pursuit of knowledge should be put above wars of glory and territory. The British had at long last sent his collections back to him and he could not waste this opportunity.
Anne had leaned out in farewell. ‘Just give Marthe her child. Make her happy.’
Labillardière strode along the riverside. The city was waking. The hawkers called out to him with baguettes on offer. He shrugged them away. If only the Institut would agree to make him a full member, allow him a stipend, then he could devote himself fully to his studies. He had argued that no one else would understand his system of nomenclature, and it was true. Labillardière walked faster, dashing across the road and between two carriages. All the details of species habitats and growth forms were in his head. He had to work quickly before it was all forgotten.
At the edge of the Jardin des Plantes, Labillardière paused to admire the orderly rows of medicinal plants neatly categorised according to use. Exotic species collected here, in one place, to help the savants understand the connections between all living things. This order was necessary for learning. He had never yet seen a child that did not bring chaos. Rousseau would have agreed. He had given all his five children up to the foundling hospitals rather than interrupt his work. A necessary sacrifice to achieve greatness.
He took the long avenue towards the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. He wished for an office within those halls to escape to each day. He wished he was coming here to work and not to escape his own home. He would talk to Thouin; something must be arranged. The rising sun had burned off the high cloud and Labillardière removed his jacket. He folded it across his arm. Once he published his account of the voyage, it would all be different. He imagined a small measure of fame, perhaps invitations to speak about his travels. Surely such an admired researcher would be accepted to the Institut.
But he needed time to prove himself, to make his studies known. To dedicate himself wholly to the classification of his collections. Sweat began to trickle down his spine. What was the point of knowledge if it could not be shared with fellow intellectuals? He needed a place within the museum where he would be appreciated.
He began to think his marriage had been a mistake. He had thought it made him seem respectable. It was what was expected, after all. She had seemed a pleasant enough companion, interested in his endeavours, and he had thought she had been made aware of what their arrangement was to be. Why must she make it difficult for him? The idea of intimate relations with a woman had often induced a repugnance in him that he didn’t understand nor care to question. It was simply so unnecessary. If one did not wish to procreate, why debase oneself with lurid intimacies? He felt a gagging scent catch in his throat, like the pungency of rotting fruit. He had believed his wife beyond such desires. But it was also a kind of dread that made him shudder from her, a fear difficult to admit. He knew it came from a primal, irrational place. An image popped into his mind of the slight triangular shape to her head, the wide brow and narrow chin, of her long, elegant neck. He remembered with a sickening turn to his stomach his studies in the Levant. On the slopes of a Syrian mountain he had observed a mantis he had named Mantis sordida after he had watched the foul habits of the female of the species. He had watched her rip the head from the poor male and mate with his lifeless body.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Summer 1799
Rose twirled her daughter around and around in the light-filled entrance hall, singing, ‘I am the luckiest woman alive!’ Hortense squealed as they spun on the tiled floor, hand in hand.
Rose had taken possession of Château de Malmaison almost before the ink had been blotted dry on the contract. She couldn’t wait to leave the gloomy house in Paris and make Malmaison her home.
Rose dragged her daughter through all the ground-floor rooms. ‘Oh, Hortense, is this not the most beautiful room, with the most beautiful outlook? I thought of you the moment I saw it. This shall be your music room and I shall listen to you perform Haydn and Mozart!’
Hortense moved to the old piano in the corner of the room, lifting the dust sheet and plunking at the tuneless keys, unconvinced.
‘Not on that,’ Rose scoffed. ‘We shall bring you the very best.’
Rose walked the length of the room, her hands clasped above her heart. ‘The walls I shall cover with great works of art. The Parisians will clamour to see what masterpieces I have amassed!’ She laughed with the delight of it.
Hortense explored the next chamber and called out in breathless tones, ‘Maman! There is a library!’
Rose smiled. My daughter is so different from me, she thought. At age sixteen, I had no room in my head for books. At age sixteen, I was sailing off to be married.
‘Look at this view!’ Rose stood at her terrace windows. Hortense hurried back to her mother’s side. Rose slipped an arm around her as they gazed out through the tall windows to the rambling garden. ‘Pinch me, Hortense. Can this be real?’ Rose was a landowner. She had acres of lawns and woods and farmland and vineyards to call her own. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she breathed.
Hortense was growing into a tall young woman. In these last months since Rose had seen her daughter she seemed to have lost more of her childlike softness. She was taller than Rose now and bent her head to rest it against her mother’s. Rose gripped her daughter’s waist.
‘Come, let us camp here the night!’ Rose wanted to keep Hortense a child for a little longer. How fun it would be to camp like the Bedouin, like Bonaparte in his Egyptian desert. ‘Now that we are finally here in our own home, I cannot bear to leave.’
Together, mother and daughter stri
pped the sheets from the furniture and ran out into the garden, shaking the dust in great clouds and sneezing violently. Fortu II bounced on the spot, barking and twirling about. This little pug had been a gift from Hippolyte Charles when her own brave Fortu, the little dog who had once brought them together, was savaged by the cook’s hunting dog. Rose snapped a sheet like a whip crack.
In the room that would be her chamber the furniture was awful, heavy and old-fashioned. It will all have to go, Rose decided. But for tonight, all she wanted was to make a nest for herself and Hortense. They shook out the coverlets, pounded the pillows and draped the dust sheets over the four-posted bed like a tent.
‘We can pretend we are like Papa and Eugene!’ Hortense cried, climbing up on the high bed and leaning back against the pillows with Fortu II leaping onto her lap. Rose climbed up beside her and the pug nestled between them.
‘If only Eugene were here that would make my heart complete.’ Rose wrapped her arms around Hortense and kissed her cheek.
‘And Papa?’ Hortense asked.
Rose loosened the pins from her daughter’s hair, letting her ringlets fall free. ‘Of course,’ she murmured, stroking Hortense’s curls. ‘Papa too.’ She longed for this campaign in Egypt to end and to see her son come home safely, but she was terrified of facing Bonaparte. It was easier to pretend none of it had ever happened.
Eugene’s letter to her had been sobering. He warned her that rumours had reached Bonaparte about her affair with Hippolyte Charles, that she had been seen with him on their return from Italy, that even now Bonaparte suspected she was with him. Bonaparte was inconsolable, Eugene wrote. But Eugene would not believe the rumours. He lobbied for her, convinced these were lies put about by her enemies. What a lucky mother I am to have such a son, she thought. She squeezed her eyes closed. What a terrible mother I am to lie to all of them.
When the scandal broke in Paris, revealing the depths of Bonaparte’s despair at her betrayal, Rose had thought herself ruined. Deny everything, Thérésa had told her. Say nothing.
Rose wrote Bonaparte long and adoring letters, not knowing if any would reach him. She told him the scandalous rumours about her were the lies of her enemies. She received no response. News finally reached her that he was alive and well and that he had taken the nineteen-year-old wife of one of his captains as a lover.
Rose was shocked at the jealousy this news had aroused in her. Her stomach heaved and she spent the afternoon in her bed, feeling wretched. Had she truly lost him? Once she made up her mind to choose Bonaparte over Hippolyte Charles, she almost convinced herself she had never loved another. Now she thought only of her husband’s many kindnesses to her, remembering his obsessive ardour fondly, and not with the contempt she once felt at his crude pawing of her in public. ‘It is a special talent I have,’ she sobbed to Thérésa, ‘of only remembering the best of a person, and forgetting their weaknesses.’
She remembered their time together as a family after Bonaparte returned from Italy in the house on Rue de la Victoire, before this cursed attempt at conquering Egypt. He was kind to her children; she should have noticed that and valued it for its rarity. He listened to Hortense’s lessons at the piano and clapped heartily after every recital. He brought home painted lead soldiers for Eugene’s collection after every battle. Rose railed at her stupidity. She was not young, there was no excuse for acting like a teenage girl with no more wisdom than an unripe plum. She had risked her children’s security for this love affair with a handsome young man. A handsome man who made her laugh. A man who had filled her heart with love.
No more. A second marriage was one she could not afford to lose. Her future, her children’s future, depended on it. She pulled the covers up to tuck her daughter in. ‘Sleep well, mon petit lapin.’
Rose was wide awake. She had found new clarity in this house of hers. Now she had more to lose than ever before. On this first night in her own home, she vowed to devote herself to Bonaparte and no other. She would win her husband back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Autumn 1799
Thérésa turned slowly about, surveying the decor and giving no hint of her opinion.
‘Do you think he will like it?’ Rose asked.
Thérésa gave a short pout and shrugged. ‘It is your boudoir, cherie—do you like it?’
The room still smelled of fresh paint. It was now light and white, with tall multipaned windows that opened out above her garden. Outside, the leaves of her woods were beginning to turn gold and Rose was delighted that the change of the season gave a wonderful cohesion to her colour scheme. Her redecorations were classical, white walls with gold trims. She was sure Bonaparte would approve of the simplicity.
‘Come and see.’ She pulled Thérésa through the door into the bedroom she would share with Bonaparte. Here she had chosen a far more lusty shade of red. The walls were draped in crimson fabrics and the bed, dressed with red sheets, was raised on a dais and surrounded by a sumptuous tent.
‘I hope it will remind him of his Egyptian conquests.’
Thérésa snorted. ‘What if it reminds him of the slut he has taken for his mistress?’
Rose turned away. Again the turmoil of her stomach. What if this nineteen-year-old could indeed take him from her? Good teeth, she fumed, grinding her own damaged ones. Bonaparte’s brother Joseph had delighted in telling her what beautiful teeth the lovely Pauline was reputed to have.
A throbbing ache began behind her eyes. She rubbed her temples. Her pug sensed her pain and jumped off his stool to press his nose against her knee. She bent to pick him up. This pup was dull-witted and pleasant enough, but no replacement for her clever, loyal Fortu. She scratched underneath his chin and he narrowed his eyes in pleasure.
‘His family keep news of him from me,’ Rose said. A stabbing pain struck her forehead and she groaned. ‘They poison him against me.’ Months had passed since the scandal flared and she had kept out of the public eye by retiring here to Malmaison and busying herself with redecorations. She still had not received word from Bonaparte. It was the longest time without a letter from him. He punished her with his silence.
‘Let’s go out into the garden,’ Thérésa said, her face concerned. ‘You need some air. The garden will revive you.’ Thérésa looped her arm through Rose’s and held her close to her side, and Rose realised she missed the warmth of her friend. Somehow these past years as Bonaparte’s wife and Hippolyte’s lover had eased them slowly apart. She clutched Thérésa’s arm as they descended the stairs.
‘Do you think he will like these portraits?’ Rose asked.
‘How could he not?’ Thérésa murmured. ‘Appiani has caught his glare perfectly.’
‘And these marble busts,’ Rose enthused, pointing to a row of plinths with carved heads and blank eyes. ‘They have come all the way from Rome.’
‘I adore them,’ her friend said, giving her a reassuring smile.
It was good to be out in the garden, away from the dust and fumes of the redecorations. Rose breathed deep. The day was so still and the colours of the turning leaves so rich, that the distant woods looked like a scene from a medieval tapestry. They walked out onto the lawn and Rose kicked off her slippers, feeling the cool grass gently spike her soles as they strolled.
‘He won’t like the English garden.’ Rose plucked an errant bloom. ‘He likes a formal garden. I suppose it will have to be changed.’
Thérésa sighed noisily. ‘But what do you like, dear Rose? What do you want?’
Rose paused. Already she had fallen in love with this garden. She liked the wildness of the style. Those stiff gardens that Bonaparte preferred had no appeal for Rose with their clipped green hedges and topiary in unnatural shapes. She hated that a formal garden must remain untouched by the seasons. Rose liked to see the brilliance of autumn come and go, to walk in drifts of crunching bronze leaves with winter’s cold breath on her cheeks, to glimpse the first pink buds of spring and be grateful for the shade of spreading boughs in summer.
But it was foolish to give her heart to a pretty landscape. What if Bonaparte were to return, enraged at her infidelity and determined to tear her from his heart? She must think of what would please him.
‘Make the garden your own, dear Rose,’ Thérésa said, as if reading her thoughts, ‘or I fear I will lose you completely.’
‘Maman!’
Rose swung about. Hortense ran out from the house and skidded to a halt on the stones, remembering that she was a lady now and should not run. She picked her way hurriedly across the lawn. ‘Maman! A courier is here!’
Rose shot a panicked glance at Thérésa.
Hortense reached her mother’s side. ‘There has been a semaphore message. Papa has landed in the south of France!’
Rose bundled Hortense into the carriage, wrapped in a cashmere shawl.
‘We must travel like Bonaparte,’ Rose called to the driver. ‘Like the hounds of hell are at our heels.’ She threw her arms around Hortense. They must reach Bonaparte before his brother Joseph. He would make a case against her, of that she was certain.
At Fontainebleau she was dismayed to learn that Joseph and all the Bonaparte brothers had already passed through. They were three hours ahead.
‘We cannot stop! We must ride through the night if we have to.’
‘Madame, it is a journey of three hundred miles, we will need to rest the horses.’