The Josephine B. Trilogy (36 page)

“I got it by the Luxembourg gates. A young man in a toga was selling them. He had a basketful.” She paused. “Apparently it’s Alexandre’s last statement—to you.”

Goodbye, dear friend
…

Console yourself for the sake of our children
…

I was having difficulty breathing. I stood and went to the window. How like Alexandre to arrange to have his last words
published,
I thought.

“Rose, he was thinking of the family honour, of the children.”

“I understand,” I said. Two women were helping a drunken man walk down the street. “He’d fallen in love with Madame Custine—General Custine’s daughter-in-law.”

“Delphine Custine? That silly blonde thing?” Fanny scoffed. “That couldn’t have been pleasant for you.”

I lowered myself onto the little upholstered stool in front of the fireplace. “I can’t recall,” I said.

6:00
P.M.

Eugène was withdrawn this afternoon—he remained silent throughout supper. “It’s nothing!” he insisted.

I followed him to his room. “Something is weighing on you.” I sat down next to his table of military figurines.

He shrugged, repositioning four cannon, kneeling to assess the angles.

“Eugène, please, talk to me. It’s something to do with your father, isn’t it?” No response. “Did anything happen at the workshop this morning? Did Citoyen Quinette say something?” Citoyen Quinette is an excellent cabinetmaker, but known for his temper.

Eugène shook his head.

“Who then? The other lads who work there?”

He would not look at me.

“Did they say something to you?”

I reached to touch his shoulder. Abruptly, he twisted away. “They call me the son of a traitor!” He hid his face in his hands.

“Do you believe them, Eugène?”

“He lost Mainz! He never attacked—instead, he ran!”

“Is that what they say?”

He nodded, tears bursting from him. He wiped them away, embarrassed by his weakness.

“And what do you tell
them?
”

“What
can
I say!”

I studied my son’s face. His father—a man he revered, a man who had stood for all that was noble and good—had been put in prison, tried, found guilty, condemned to death. “I will tell you, then,” I said, taking a breath. “In war, as in love, it is always complex. You are old enough to begin to understand.” I told him of the condition of his father’s troops—farmboys without training, without food. I told him of the enemy—professionals outnumbering his father’s troops ten to one. I told him of Alexandre’s reluctance to lead his men to slaughter.

“To many, to be a hero, one must bask in the blood of others. To many, your father should have led his men to death, risked their lives for the sake of glory. But to me, it proved your father’s courage—his courage to risk condemnation, arrest, death even, in order to stand by what he knew to be right. Is
this
not heroic?”

Eugène looked at me with a steady expression.

“You are the son of a good man, Eugène, a man who loved you very much, a man who loved his
country.
A man who lived—and died—for what he believed in. A
hero.
You must never forget that. Your father’s memory will be cleared—I promised him that—but it must begin in
your
own heart.”

And in my own.

August 9.

I don the clothes of the widow Beauharnais. The dull black suits my soul, reflects the death I feel within. Even my children cannot wake me from this slumber. Stiff white gauze tickles my throat. A veil of taffeta covers my boyish curls. I am a ghost. I am a survivor.

I set out for the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. “Place du Trône renversé,” I tell the driver.

He puts me down at a corner. I instruct him to wait. I walk the edges. This is where my husband died.

It is a cloudy, hot day. Everywhere children are playing. Did they skip around the guillotine? Did they sing?

I dodge horses, carriages—make my way to the centre. There, despite the curses of the carters, the threat of their whips, I stand. Is
this
the spot?
I am only a moment, waiting. Only a moment, long enough to know that he is not there.

I return to the carriage, instruct my driver once again. This time we head out to the country, outside the city walls. I have been told the way; in any case, my driver seems to know.

He regards my dark robes, my short-cropped hair. “I go often, myself,” he tells me. He is wearing a tall hat with yellow tassels. “My son is there. My wife went once, but no more.” He needs to talk.

At last, we stop. It is only a farmer’s field. It has been dug, mounded, turned. But for that, one would not guess its use.

“The King and Queen are here,” the driver tells me. He is proud of this. “It is said they share a pit with Robespierre.” He takes down the step. I accept the offer of his rough hand. He wants to be helpful. He has been too much alone in this place.

There are others in the field, four diggers, a pile of lime, a cart nearby. Bodies. Heads.

“Still?” Still more to bury?

“The mountain meets the earth.” The driver laughs at his joke. He nods toward an old woman in a spotted muslin dress, sitting in the dirt. “She’s always here,” he says. He twirls a finger at his temple, meaning: crazy.

Unlike the rest of us, I think with irony.

I scan the broken earth, the weeds. So this is where Alexandre lies. And the others—Lazare? Frédéric? The dear old puppeteers? It comforts me to think of them all together.

I head out across the field. I do not have a plan. At the centre I pick up three stones. One for Hortense, one for Eugène, one for myself. I feel the smooth surfaces. Tokens.

Is that all there is? Is it true, what the Jacobins say—that death is eternal sleep, no more, no less.

The soothsayer said:
You will be unhappily married. You will be widowed.

I watch as two birds fly through the air—a pair. I wait for some sense of meaning. But there are no answers, only this…this awful emptiness.

In which ghosts come to life

August 10, 1794.

The dawn was breaking when I set out, accompanied by Jacques. The beggars on the Rue de Vaugirard were still asleep. In front of the Luxembourg a grocer was whipping a donkey in an effort to make the old creature move. We made our way around the quarrelsome pair.

It was a short walk to the Carmes, I knew, but one which bridged two worlds. There are degrees of courage, and I was unsure if I had the will to enter those prison gates again. I was thankful Jacques was with me.

A guard I didn’t recognize opened the gate. Jacques knocked on the heavy plank door to the turnkey’s office. I heard someone coughing inside. Within, by the light of one tallow candle, the turnkey was hunched over a journal, scowling. A very pregnant Lucie was slumped sleepily on a chair, bursting her seams. Aimée was sitting in the far corner. I was struck by the animal look in her eyes.

She burst into a crazy laugh, which in turn gave way to a rattling cough that stole her very breath. “Am I so very frightful?” she gasped, when she could breathe again.

Jacques took her basket, her meagre possessions. “Ready?”

“What about Jean-Henri?” I asked.

“Croisoeuil?” The turnkey leafed through his papers. “No.” Lucie shrugged.

Out on the street an old man came up to us. “Welcome.” He handed Lucie a flower.

“How does he know?” She watched the man hobble away.

I took Aimée’s hand. I could feel the bones. “We are staying at my Aunt Fanny’s on Rue de Tournon,” I told her. “It’s a short walk from here. Are you strong enough?”

“We’re not going to Rue Saint-Dominique?”

“It’s been sealed.”

“I can’t go home?” I saw something crumble within her.

“Come,” I said.

Evening.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked Aimée as I helped her to bed. She seemed strange to me yet.

“I pretend,” she said.

I sat down on the bed beside her. It seemed a curious thing to say.

“You’re pretending, too. Only you’ve convinced yourself,” she said.

Tears came to my eyes. She was right. I did pretend. I did not speak of the horror I have known. “It’s different out here, Aimée.
We’re
different.”

“The craziness, you mean.”

“More than that.” I pulled the covering sheet over her, kissed her forehead. “Sleep.” I closed the drapes, blew out the candle on the mantle.

“You didn’t say what it was, Rose,” she said, in the dark.

I stood for a moment. What
was
it? “Shame,” I said. In the dark, one word. Shame that we broke down, grovelled,
begged.
Shame for crying out, weeping, beating our heads against the stones. Shame for losing hope, faith, for being willing to forsake everything,
anything,
in barter for life. Shame for knowing fear, its sickening grip.

The shame of the survivor.

“Yes,” Aimée whispered. “That too.”

August 11.

This morning I met with Citoyen Dunnkirk, my banker, attempting to put my finances in order. The news is not good. Martinico has threatened to go over to the English rather than submit to the revolutionary government in France. Citoyen Dunnkirk has reason to believe that Mother has
opened her home to the English forces, offered support to the enemy.

“To the
English?”
I thought of Father, of a life spent in battle against “les Goddams.” Had Mother offered English officers my father’s bed? I was thankful he was dead.

“I assure you that this information will be held in strict confidence. I am aware of the dishonour this could cause you, the suspicion—”

“She is well?” I interrupted. “The plantation—is it…?”

“I don’t know if you are aware that your father left a substantial debt—one hundred thousand livres.” Citoyen Dunnkirk sneezed into an ugly green kerchief.

“Why was I not—”

“We just found out ourselves. Your mother—a resourceful woman, by all accounts—made an arrangement with her creditors whereby the debt would be paid off over a period of time. Fortunately, the crop was good this year, in spite of the civic turmoil. So good, in fact, she was able to pay off the debt and is reported to have hosted a celebration party for everyone in the village.”

“
Mother?
” Surely he was talking about another woman.

“Quite sure, Citoyenne. In fact, we are given to believe that your mother is comfortable, perhaps even well-off. She should have no difficulty providing you with the interest on your holdings—if she can get it to you, that is. Due to the war,
any
correspondence will prove difficult, of course.”

“I can’t write to her?”

“You could
try,
” he shrugged. “Is she aware of your…situation?”

“She knows nothing.” Nothing of prison, nothing of Alexandre’s death.

We reviewed my accounts. I have a sizeable (and growing) debt to Citoyen Dunnkirk, who so kindly advanced funds for the care of the children while Alexandre and I were in prison. “I will repay you,” I assured him—but
how?
“I have gems hidden in my rooms on Rue Saint-Dominique. I can sell them, when…”

When
…When the seals were removed. When would
that
be?

“It will take time,” Citoyen Dunnkirk warned, sneezing again. “The wheels of bureaucracy have always moved slowly—and now…” He threw up his hands.

“What about La Ferté?” I asked. Alexandre had invested all of his inheritance in his country estate.

“Your husband’s properties have been sequestered. Items of any value have been sold by the government at auction.”

“Sold?” There was a painting of Alexandre as a child—I had wanted it for Hortense and Eugène. “And when might
that
sequester be lifted?”

Citoyen Dunnkirk looked at me uncomfortably. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, Citoyenne, but the law gives the government full possession of the property of the condemned. Even if the sequester were to be lifted today, the estate would not accrue to you
or
your children.”

Slowly I grasped the situation. According to law, Alexandre died a criminal. The children have been robbed of their inheritance. They face their future with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a blackened name.

I returned to Rue de Tournon shortly before noon. There were a number of people gathered on the street. A woman with a hurdy-gurdy was standing in front of the door to Fanny’s hôtel.

“Something is happening,” I told Fanny, putting my handbasket down in the foyer. Crowds frightened me.

“They’re releasing prisoners at the Luxembourg today.” Fanny was holding a stack of books in one arm. “And making a spectacle of it—speeches, a parade apparently.”

“Where are the children?” I asked.

“Up at the corner.”

I sighed. Watching prisoners being released had become a form of entertainment. “Lucie as well?”

“She consented to go, in spite of the fact that the dress I provided was not judged suitably flattering.”

“Neither prison nor pregnancy have dampened that child’s vanity,” I said. “And Aimée?”

Fanny nodded toward the double doors leading out onto the balcony. “She only just got up. Were you able to get coach tickets to Fontainebleau?”

“I’ll try again in the morning.” Two times already I’d tried to get a pass.

I stepped outside onto the balcony. Aimée was leaning out over the
edge, her hair hanging down loose and long. I thought to say something to her, to caution her against immodesty, but held my tongue. What did it matter, any more?

I put my arm around her shoulders, kissed her forehead. She’d slept for over twenty hours, the sleep of the dead, but even so, she looked exhausted.

“Good,” she said, answering a question I had not voiced. She put her hand to her mouth to still a cough.

I looked out over the throng. A woman with a child at her breast was wearing a dress made from a flag. Four young men dressed in togas were making their way slowly down the street carrying a banner proclaiming “la nation.” Everyone cheered as they passed.