The Josephine B. Trilogy (107 page)

“
Senator
Fouché.” He spoke the title with contempt. “A perfectly useless position.”

“I can’t believe that!” Fouché is the best Minister of Police imaginable. How can Bonaparte manage without him? If there is trouble, Fouché knows of it. If there are assassins plotting, Fouché finds them. “Bonaparte did this?” Fouché is the only one of Bonaparte’s ministers who has the courage to speak truthfully to him. He has often angered Bonaparte—true!—but Bonaparte owes his life to him.

“Apparently my services are no longer needed.”

“I don’t understand.” But I suspected the reason. Fouché argued against Bonaparte’s being made First Consul for Life, and this enraged Bonaparte’s family. Too, Fouché is my ally.

“Another clan victory,” Fouché said with a smirk.

Early morning.

Last night I tried to talk to Bonaparte about Fouché, but it proved difficult. “I was advised,” was all he would say. I dared not broach the subject of his family’s influence, their greedy nature—their hatred of
me.
Bonaparte is master of Europe—but when it comes to his family, he weakens dangerously.
Blood is everything
, his mother often says.
Blood is our only strength.
Blood is your only weakness, I want to tell him—but do not dare.

September 18
—
Saint-Cloud.

Exhausted! We moved in the rain. The rooms at Saint-Cloud are spacious, but cold. As soon as it clears, Bonaparte and I are going for a ride in the park.

Sunday, September 19.

The midwife estimates that Hortense’s baby could come as early as the first of October, several weeks before previously thought. She told Hortense that it is easy to miscalculate with a boy.

“She thinks it’s a boy? That’s wonderful!” A girl grandchild I would love—with all my heart—but a boy would solve so much.

“But Maman, that would be three days
short
of nine months since we married,” she said, looking up from a drawing she was working on, a copy of an infant by Greuze. “What would Louis think?” Louis, who was expected home from the spa any day soon.

And what would the English scandalmongers write, I thought—but did not say.

September 21
—
Saint-Cloud, sunny and bright.

Louis returned from the spa yesterday, but alas, all is
not
well. His health, unfortunately, is not improved, to judge by his extreme disability. (His right hand is so crippled he can’t use it.) His spirits are tormented, as well, for he threatens to drown himself if the baby is born early!

“But Louis knows that you are virtuous,” I told my daughter, looking for a way to make peace between them.

“Of course he knows, Maman, but all he cares about is how it would
look
, what people would think.”

“He loves you—you know that.” If Louis heard the rumours circulating in England, it would inflame him, no doubt. That he had not said anything to Hortense was to his credit. “Periods of separation are difficult.”

We talked as we walked along the rutted cart paths edging the fields. I eased my daughter’s fiery spirit—or tried to—by urging her to be gentle with herself, as well as with her husband. “Louis has been away for seven months—a very long time. There’s often a period of turmoil on the return.” I know this all too well. “It’s best not to allow yourself to become heated, especially in your condition.” I put my arm around my poor lumbering daughter. It will certainly not help matters if this child
does
come early.

October 7
—
Saint-Cloud.

It is now nine months plus three days since Hortense and Louis married. “I’m saved,” Hortense said, her hands clasped as if in prayer.

Hortense has always been given to drama, to melodrama—but in truth, we are all relieved.

October 10.

Late this morning a horse cantered up the drive and into the courtyard. I headed out to the terrace to see who it might be, but even as I opened the door, Eugène came bounding up the steps, yelling at me to hurry.

“Is it Hortense?” I cried out, made fearful by his state of alarm.

“It’s happening, Maman—I was with her when it started! Louis says to come
quickly.
”

I didn’t think the drive from Saint-Cloud into the heart of Paris could be made in under two hours: now I know that it can. We left Saint-Cloud at 10:05, and at exactly 11:48 Eugène and I were at the door of Hortense and Louis’s town house, pulling impatiently on the bell rope.

“Yoo-hoo!” We turned to see a woman dressed in an old-fashioned red gown covered by an apron festooned with ribbons. She was balancing what looked to be a birthing stool on top of her head with one hand and holding a leather portmanteau with the other. “I can’t unlatch the gate.”

“Madame Frangeau!”

“The midwife?” Eugène hurried to let her in.

I greeted the good woman, but just then the front door opened. “Madame Frangeau?” Louis said, his afflicted right hand clawed over his heart. (Awful.) “At last.”

“Louis, how is Hortense?” And then, from within the house, I heard a cry. Oh no!

Louis held up the index finger of his good hand to silence me, examining a pocket watch that he clutched with the other, counting off the seconds. “Good,” he said, dropping the watch into his pocket.

“Dr. Jean-Louis Baudelocque will be here after he finishes his meal, Citoyen,” the midwife informed Louis, untying a kerchief.

“
After
?” Louis asked anxiously.

“Truth is, he just gets in the way,” she hissed in my direction, stepping
aside as the hall porter carried the stool and portmanteau up the stairs.

Louis hurried after the porter, talking over his shoulder to Madame Frangeau. “My wife’s pains are coming often now. I think she’s near.”

“Someone should let Bonaparte know what’s happening,” I suggested to Eugène, who was standing in the courtyard looking bewildered.

“I will!” he said, relieved to have a task.

“He’s working at the palace today,” I called out, but my son was already on his way out the gate.

The lying-in room smelled strongly of cloves. Madame Frangeau was closing the windows, barking instructions to the two maids.

“Maman!” Hortense gasped when she saw me. Louis was seated beside her, stroking her hand.

“How are you, darling?” My sweet, my treasure, my heart! She looked like a girl in the big bed, a girl with golden locks, her big blue eyes peeking out from under the lace frill of her nightcap. A frail slip of a girl with an enormous belly.

“She’s splendid,” Madame Frangeau said. “Now, Madame Josephine, if you could sit yourself here, out of the way, while I take your daughter’s measures.”

Obediently I sat down on the opposite side of the bed. Hortense writhed as a wave of pain came over her. “Dear God,” she cried out.

I swallowed, took a breath as the midwife cheered her on. “That’s the way! The louder the better. Let the neighbours know. Let all of Paris know!”

Dr. Jean-Louis Baudelocque didn’t arrive until shortly before three. The child—the most perfect I’ve ever seen—was born shortly before nine. Although it was not a long labour—eight hours in all?—it was not an easy one. My daughter suffered!

I will never forget that beautiful sound—the baby’s first lusty wail. “It’s a boy,” Louis whispered, as if in disbelief at his good fortune.

A
boy.
I felt light-headed, blessed.

“A boy!” I heard a maid yell in the hall.

“A boy!” I heard someone call outside in the courtyard—the coachman likely. Somewhere in the house a bell was rung. Oh, the excitement!
I wanted to run out into the street, ring the bells of Notre-Dame.

“Good work, Madame Louis. You’ve given your husband a healthy baby boy,” Madame Frangeau said, holding the red and screaming infant up for Hortense to see. (
Careful!
I wanted to cry out.) “Wash him up, measure and swaddle him,” she told the nursemaid. “He’s perfectly well-made,” she added, as if speaking of an object, “not a flaw that I can see.” Louis followed the nursemaid out of the room in a daze.

Dr. Baudelocque tapped my daughter’s knee through the covering sheet. “One more push, Madame Louis, and the business will be done.”

“We don’t want the womb climbing back up!” the midwife said, as if it were a thing alive.

Hortense winced, but did not cry out. I stroked her damp forehead with a cloth dipped in rosewater. It is early yet, I know, the danger not yet past. Heaven’s gates stay open nine days for a woman in childbed.

Louis reappeared with a proud look in his eyes. He knelt beside the bed and kissed Hortense’s hand. I was moved to tears—his simple action was so noble.

“He is well,
our son
?” my daughter asked.

“Six pounds, two ounces, and eighteen inches long,” he said, his eyes glistening.

“That’s an excellent weight,” I said.

“He looks small to me,” Louis said excitedly, “but the nursemaid told me he’s big—and very well made.”

The nursemaid appeared with the baby in her arms, tightly swaddled and peaceful now. “Oh, Hortense, he’s an angel,” I said, a lump rising in my throat. Napoleon-Charles he will be named—so it has already been decreed. Little Napoleon.

“Our Dauphin,” the nursemaid said, putting him into Hortense’s arms.

“Hold your tongue,” I heard Louis hiss at the nurse.

“Bonjour, little Napoleon,” Hortense whispered, gazing into the eyes of her son, her cheeks wet with tears.

In which I have suspicions

October 13, 1802
—
Saint-Cloud, a chilly day.

Hortense is being treated like royalty for having produced the first male Bonaparte grandchild. Even Signora Letizia conferred begrudging congratulations on the mother of “her son’s son.” And now Eugène has been made Colonel of the Guards (quite an honour—he’s only twenty-one), although the title “Uncle” excites him more, in truth.

Unfortunately, such Beauharnais glory has excited clan jealousy—further aggravated by today’s birth notice in
Le Moniteur.
Hortense’s name is printed in small capitals. “They don’t do that for any of
us
,” Caroline said, clutching baby Letizia in petticoats, little Achille sitting beside her sucking his thumb. “Don’t we count?” She is with child again, but it does not seem to calm her. If anything, becoming a mother has turned Caroline into a lioness.

“Make sure you contact
Le Moniteur
,” I suggested to Bonaparte’s secretary later. “All family members must be treated
exactly
the same.”

October 14
—
in Paris for a few days with Hortense.

Madame Frangeau (
General
Frangeau, Eugène calls her) has ordered Hortense to be wrapped in a feather comforter and the fires in her room kept blazing, “to sweat the poisons out,” she said.

“Of course,” I agreed, but tactfully suggested that the maids put branches of apple on the fire, for the air in the lying-in chamber has become heavy.

“I’m
drowning
in my bodily fluids,” Hortense complained. She maintains her good humour in spite of Madame Frangeau’s insistence that she lie flat for one full week, not moving even to allow the bed to be made, or to change her underclothes.

“It would be certain death,” Madame Frangeau informed us.

“Only a few more days,” I comforted my daughter, gazing upon the precious face of the newborn in my arms (falling in love). “It’s wise to be cautious.”

October 15—still in Paris.

Nine days. Madame Frangeau has allowed Hortense to sit up—but she’s not to get out of bed for another five. “If I hear that your feet have so much as
touched
the floor, there will be hell to pay.”

October 20
—
Saint-Cloud.

“I’ve come to bid you farewell, Madame Josephine.” Bonaparte’s secretary stood forlornly before me.

“Farewell, Fauvelet?” I asked, pulling off my gloves, my thoughts on Hortense and the baby. Little Napoleon is sleeping better now that his wet-nurse has agreed to abstain from fruit and vegetables.

“I’ve…I’ve been let go.”

“Pardon?”

He repeated what he’d said, but even then I could not comprehend. Let go? Fauvelet Bourrienne was not only an excellent secretary, he was Bonaparte’s oldest friend. “But why?”

He waggled his fingers. “Oh, I made some investments, and…” He shrugged, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his redingote. “
Indiscretions
, the First Consul said.”

“But Fauvelet, everybody plays the Funds.”

Fauvelet flushed. “I guess I took advantage of my position.”

“I still don’t understand.” Doesn’t everyone “take advantage”? What about the investments that Bonaparte’s brothers and sisters have made—even his mother? What about those made by Minister Talleyrand, for that matter, who regularly profits from knowledge of
international developments, who considers such “income” his due? “Did Bonaparte’s family have anything to do with this?” I demanded. Fauvelet is my ally—something the clan holds against him.

He hunched his shoulders. “Well…”

November 15
—
still at Saint-Cloud (chilly).

Little Napoleon was christened this morning. Bonaparte and I, as godparents, held him proudly. He was an angel—not even a whimper. (“Everyone knows that if a baby doesn’t cry at his christening he will die,” Caroline said later. That girl!)

We returned to Louis and Hortense’s house where Louis, entirely on his own and much to my daughter’s surprise, had arranged a fête in her honour. Hortense’s closest friends were there—her cousin Émilie, the three Auguié sisters and Caroline.

Soon after, Hortense’s former schoolmistress, Madame Campan, arrived and then all the other members of the Bonaparte clan. Lucien came with his two girls. Elisa appeared in a bizarre ensemble she’d designed herself, a composite of Egyptian, Roman and Greek styles that she expects every woman in Paris to adopt. “Joseph sends regrets,” she announced (but later disclosed that he felt it disrespectful of Louis to celebrate the birth of a son so soon after he himself had suffered such a grievous disappointment in the birth of yet another daughter—a second). And last, jolly Uncle “Bishop” Fesch arrived with Bonaparte’s mother. Signora Letizia stood in the centre of the room refusing all offers until Bonaparte led her to the chair of honour on the right of the hearth.