Josephine's Garden Read online

  Dear Hortense frowned in sympathy. ‘Should we leave?’

  Rose stood and the room fell into silence. She waited for Bonaparte. When he took her arm she smiled for him, lifting her chin. As they walked the length of the banquet hall she banished the urge to look for Hippolyte Charles. She felt his presence as she passed his table with her head held stiffly, facing ahead to the grand doorway. Oh, how she wanted to catch his eyes! To know that she was still loved. She gripped Hortense and Bonaparte’s arms, walking between them as though she needed them to carry her. Her love for Hippolyte was reckless. She breathed in sharply. The doors of the banquet hall opened. I will not look back, she promised, I will not let love ruin me. The doors slammed behind them.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Summer 1798

  Félix Lahaie fizzed like a firecracker as he burst out of the doors and skittered down the steps of the Ministry of Marine into the bright sun. Not since his wedding day had he felt this joyous. What a year it had been! The sky was clear and blue and it felt as though nothing would hold him back now. A full year had passed since he had last left these offices with his future gloomy and his steps heavy. How much his life had changed in one year! Félix could scarcely believe it. He thought of Anne, his wife Anne—it still gave him a thrill to think of her as his wife—and longed to tell her his news.

  In front of his eyes a monstrous hot-air balloon lifted from the centre of the Place de la Révolution. Félix stopped and stared in awe. He watched it rise, his heart full, and tears sprang to the corners of his eyes. With a roar of flames, the billowing fabric puffed tight like a giant peach. He saw a basket dangling beneath with two men waving to the crowd below. Ropes tethered the magnificent behemoth as it pushed up towards the sun, ribbons flowing. Félix found himself smiling wide, tears streaming down his face. Around him, people tilted their heads back in wonder. He had forgotten about the parade, forgotten that today the Directoire celebrated the return of the commissioners with their treasures for the Louvre.

  Wagons lined the circular Place de la Révolution loaded with crates filled with the treasures of Italy—the works of art, the volumes of books. The sheer number of these wagons astounded Félix. Inside those crates, Félix had been told, there were collections of natural history, stuffed animals, herbaria, minerals, alongside the great paintings and sculptures. Félix saw wagons of antiquities, carved Greek gods, busts of emperors and the bronze horses that had come from San Marco basilica in Venice and before that had stood in Constantinople for hundreds of years. Wonders from all of France’s colonies were included in the parade. Lions growled from their cages and camels waited patiently in the line. There were carts festooned with palm trees and banana plants from the Caribbean. It was a spectacle designed to startle and impress.

  A pity General Bonaparte himself was not here to see it, thought Félix. News had reached Paris that the General had taken Malta and was now en route to fight the Mamelukes in Egypt.

  Félix bobbed on his toes, eager to make his way through the crowd. His meeting that morning had given him a glimpse of a future that was more than he had ever dared to dream. Now he was thinking only of rushing home to Anne.

  André Thouin, the director of the Jardin des Plantes, had returned to Paris. Thouin had embraced Félix warmly. ‘You have enriched us with the precious breadfruit tree,’ Thouin had said, clasping Félix’s hand. ‘You gardeners have done more for the happiness of men than all the savants of the world.’

  Félix blushed at the memory.

  He glimpsed Thouin in the huddle of important-looking men making their way down to a waiting carriage. These were the commissioners, he presumed, and Félix searched their faces, looking for the naturalist, Labillardière. Surely, he would be here with the commissioners. To spy him from a distance would be enough; it would be enough to know he had returned in health.

  Until this moment, Félix had not realised how much it meant to him to find his old friend again. He even allowed himself to imagine some sort of tearful reunion. It was a fanciful thought, and he shook his head. The emotion of attachment was not in Labillardière’s nature.

  With the strike of a horseman’s whip, the procession began to move. The mules leaned into their yokes and took up the strain. Félix could scarcely imagine how this weight of treasure was carried through the Alps. The wagons began to roll and the rumble of the carriage wheels was soon drowned out by the cheering crowd. Children and dogs ran between women’s skirts. Drummers struck up a stirring rhythm as the procession circled the Place de la Révolution with the hot-air balloon presiding above it all.

  On any other day Félix would have joined the revelry, but today these crowds were a hindrance. The streets were seething with people. It would be a slow journey home, Félix thought, feeling the first pangs of annoyance. He tried to move forward but found that he was wedged fast.

  Today the masses were gathered in celebration, but Félix now wondered as the crowd pressed around him if these same people had gathered here to watch the heads of their friends and neighbours fall onto these cobblestones. It was a dark turn to his thoughts. You were not here, people had said to him. You cannot know what we went through. If you didn’t rejoice in the death of the tyrants then you were assumed to be one of them. That was how people tried to describe those days of the Terror. You would’ve done the same to save yourself, they said. He wondered if he would.

  Trumpets interrupted his thoughts. The procession was leaving, marching off towards the Champs de Mars to circle the city before delivering the bounty to the Louvre. The crowd was milling, uncertain whether to follow or disperse, caught in that moment of hesitation. But Félix was certain of his direction for the first time in many years. He had to get home to Anne.

  Anne had helped him prepare for the interview that morning. Together they recited the Latin names of the plants in his herbarium. He had collected more than two thousand specimens from his travels; he had seeds from seven hundred new species from the jungles of Java. And it had all been worth it, for now their lives were about to change impossibly. Moments ago, Thouin had appointed him to rebuild the gardens of the Trianon at Versailles. The Palace of Versailles. The magnificent gardens of Versailles! Félix had blinked in shock at the news. He listened as Thouin explained that he was to lead the construction of a garden dedicated to the plants of New Holland. All his dreams were coming true. He pictured Anne, how happy she would be when he told her of his appointment. They would soon be moving to a new home away from the crowded streets, the river rats and the cold fogs. It would be like moving back to the country. The Trianon. Félix loved the sound of it. Marie-Antoinette’s fantasy farm, where she had milked cows and created an imaginary countryside far removed from failed crops and poverty. Instead, he would build a garden that would bring the world to France, to the people. All the wondrous plants and flowers they could never hope to see themselves. He would bring them a living museum. A collection of life.

  They were going to Versailles!

  The crowd was at last moving and Félix spied a route through the thinning crowd. He cast one look back behind him and there, above the sea of heads, he caught sight of a familiar hat. Tall and black, its brim was curled and the high top flared outwards to a sharp, flat plane. Félix thrust his hand into the air. He called out. He could never mistake that hat. He had followed it into forests, up mountains and across the belly of the world.

  Félix turned and pushed back through the crowd, apologising, stepping on feet, receiving elbows and sharp curses. The hat was moving.

  Damn him.

  Félix murmured apologies as he pushed and elbowed his way against the tide of people, his eyes fixed on the hat. He tripped, struck his knee on the stone and swore loudly. The crowd parted for him, making up its collective mind to disperse. When he rose, Félix could see no sign of the beaver hat.

  The emotion of the day overwhelmed him. To be so close to Labillardière and then lose him again seemed cruel. He knew it was fanciful to hope that they might share s
ome of their former relationship. No doubt both men had changed.

  ‘Gardener,’ a voice said from behind.

  Félix turned and threw his arms around the naturalist. He felt him stiffen, but he didn’t care. He gripped Labillardière like his life depended on it. Gradually, he felt the naturalist relax into the embrace. Félix drew back, holding him by the arms, and grinning like a fool.

  ‘It is good to see you!’ Félix said. The naturalist seemed little changed in the four years since they were parted. His face was perhaps more lined and his hair had greyed at the temples. ‘I had hoped you might be here. Why are you not with the other commissioners?’

  ‘This ludicrous display of pomp and ceremony is not to my taste. And I returned early.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘I arrived back last autumn and managed to deliver six wagons of Bonaparte’s trophies with minimal fuss.’ He curled a lip to the crowds following the procession.

  ‘I wish I had known you were back in Paris.’ Félix still had hold of Labillardière’s arms. He felt deeply saddened that the botanist had been here all along and he had not known. He squeezed his friend’s forearms, not wanting to let go.

  ‘What happened to you in Batavia? Is there news of Piron?’ Félix asked.

  ‘We were imprisoned in Fort Ankee, a miserable place in the middle of marshes swarming with alligators and boa constrictors as long as ten metres. There we both fell sick with dysentery.’ Labillardière looked away over the heads of the crowd. ‘Piron was too ill to sail. I have had no further word of him.’

  Félix loosened his grip on Labillardière’s arms, his hands falling away to his sides. He had already heard that their friend Ventenat had succumbed to dysentery and died in Isle de France on the return journey. This voyage had exacted such a cruel price.

  Labillardière gestured towards the ministry. ‘I fight to reclaim my collections from the English. It has become my sole occupation.’

  ‘Our collections were captured by the English?’ Félix was shocked. ‘I am truly distressed to hear that.’ Félix remembered all the days and nights spent exploring forests, sleeping on the hard earth, sipping water from mud puddles, eating only the birds they had shot. Had it all been for nothing?

  An awkward silence grew between them and Félix looked away into the crowd. He caught sight of a woman watching them. Plain features, her face weary and hollowed, no special beauty to mark her out from the crowd, except he recognised that clear, blue stare. A faint smile turned the corners of her mouth and as he caught her eye Félix fancied that he saw the barest nod of her head.

  The woman held fast to a small boy of about seven years of age. The lad was blond and dressed in a scarlet waistcoat that put Félix in mind of a performing monkey. He pulled at her, eager to follow the procession. The woman kept looking at Félix. Her stare was direct, her chin high, and she looked somehow satisfied as she gripped the child’s hand, careful not to let the crowd swallow him up.

  Félix frowned. He recognised her face. He touched Labillardière. ‘Look there.’ He pointed back to the woman with the child as she turned her head away. ‘Did you see her?’

  He thought of the steward Louis Girardin, who had helped them collect and categorise their specimens. A mistaken identity, he thought, shaking his head. How could it be? Louis Girardin was dead.

  Yet Félix tugged at Labillardière’s arm. ‘Come! Do you remember our companion from the Recherche, the steward Girardin?’ Félix pulled Labillardière down the steps after the woman. ‘That’s her!’

  The woman was moving quickly now, her clothes—a dull blue skirt and sable blouse—indistinguishable among the masses. But the boy was a bright flash weaving through the crowd.

  ‘Impossible.’ Labillardière resisted. ‘The steward died. We heard word from the ship’s surgeon.’

  Félix took a few steps further and then halted. He shook his head softly, knowing it to be true. ‘I was positive—the look was so familiar.’ He had lost sight of them both.

  ‘I read the letter myself. Succumbed to dysentery. The surgeon examined her after death and determined the truth of her sex.’

  Félix looked for the woman and her child again. Could it be possible that she had cheated death? Would the surgeon have lied for her? He hoped so. He liked to think that the woman who had dared to fool them once with her disguise would dare to fool them all again and live.

  ‘Did you know, all that time she spent with us, her true sex?’

  ‘Of course.’

  But Félix doubted it. In some things, the naturalist was plainly, astonishingly, unobservant. He searched the crowds again in hope, wishing for this reunion to be complete. The woman with the resemblance to their former companion had disappeared.

  ‘I heard you brought back the breadfruit,’ Labillardière said.

  Félix nodded.

  ‘Those plants will feed so many. Well done.’

  Félix was disconcerted to hear his praise. The two men stared at one another. They had somehow kept those breadfruit plants alive while all around them were falling to consumption, scurvy and dysentery. There seemed to be nothing left to say.

  ‘I am married now,’ Félix blurted. ‘Why don’t you come home with me? Meet my Anne.’

  ‘I don’t think that is necessary.’

  Félix laughed and looped his arm through Labillardière’s. He held it tight, like the ropes tethering the hot-air balloon in the air above them, allowing no escape. ‘Come! A friend once lost and then found is not to be relinquished lightly.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Summer 1798

  ‘Hold him, will you?’ Anne passed the baby to her husband’s unexpected visitor.

  The gentleman received her crying babe and held him out at arm’s length, with poor Abraham’s bare legs kicking. Who was he to hold her dear boy like he had the pox?

  Anne swept a pile of cloths from a chair and gestured for the gentleman to sit. He unnerved her, hovering like a coat stand in the corner, all long-limbed and looming and wearing that oversized hat. Félix had never brought a friend to visit their home. She wiped her hands on her skirt.

  The visitor thrust her baby back to Anne before he sat. Her son still screamed, red-faced and as unsettled as she was by this visitor.

  Félix beamed. ‘Anne, allow me to introduce you to my dear friend, the esteemed savant Jacques Labillardière.’

  Anne hoisted Abraham over her shoulder, letting him spew milk onto her dress. She patted his back soothingly. She had been interrupted while feeding him and he hadn’t had her second breast. She stared at Félix and his friend, uncertain what to say. She had never met a gentleman savant before so she said nothing.

  Félix looked as excited as a boy with his first-caught fish. ‘I have news,’ he whispered in her ear as he bent to kiss her cheek and then the crown of his son’s head. His eyes were oil-bright as he drew back. She would’ve demanded to know what news, except for the stranger now sitting straight-backed in their only chair.

  Félix took a perch on their sagging bed and she wished she could curl up beside him, cradling Abraham between them. She wanted to ask him everything about the meeting that morning. It must be good news, she thought, to have brought him home grinning like this.

  All morning she had been on edge and Abraham had felt it too; he had been fractious and mewling, exhausting her with his grizzles. How did her mother manage with so many children? Anne had been one of the youngest and blissfully unaware of the duties of childcare. She was always minded by her older sisters, and even when her two younger siblings came along, there were always plenty of older brothers and sisters.

  Her childhood was idyllic. She remembered the madness of her family, tumbling with so many children and animals, she was never without a playmate. Paris was lonely by comparison. She had arrived shortly before she met Félix and had made only a few friends at the bistro. Now she was cooped up by herself in their single-room apartment for long hours of the day. She loved her son and husband, but s
ometimes she longed for country air, longed for the days when she could run through fields of waving grass and gardens filled with floral scents.

  The apartment stank of the baby’s soiled cloths boiling on the stove. She would’ve opened a window except the air rising up from the street below smelled just as foul. If she’d had warning that her husband was bringing home a gentleman she would’ve tied some lavender above the pots to release their fragrant oils. Would’ve tidied the room or swept the floors. But even with only one babe, there never seemed to be a moment to tend to such things. Yet if Félix was not ashamed to be bringing this learned man into their home she wouldn’t be ashamed either. There was no call to pretend they were better than they were. She walked her babe backwards and forwards, rubbing his back as he hiccupped. He was still hungry and she needed to sit and feed him.

  For his part, this gentleman did not look at her or take notice of their child. Anne thought it strange, but then she was not much familiar with learned men. He had a distracted air, as if he were thinking of far greater concerns in far distant places. He had fixed his eyes on a spider’s web in the corner of her room and she wished then for a broom.

  ‘Anne, we have much to celebrate!’ Félix’s eyes twinkled. ‘But first, to old friends, we must drink to that!’ Félix searched for a bottle of brandy and poured a shot each into three earthenware cups.

  They joined their cups with a solid clunk and drank, Anne with her son lolling over her shoulder. She found she was becoming adept at doing everything with only one arm.

  ‘This man is the finest naturalist in all of France,’ Félix enthused. ‘A man of indefatigable zeal.’

  Anne had never heard such foreign words from her husband’s lips. She did not think she liked this odd behaviour. Was he drunk? The gentleman looked warmed by his words, however, and his lips now carried the trace of a smile.

  ‘We have been reunited at long last.’ Félix raised his cup again to Labillardière. ‘I am overjoyed to have found you today, for we are on the cusp of great change.’ Her husband paused and looked at her. ‘My new appointment takes us from this city.’