The Second Empress (12 page)

PAULINE BORGHESE

Tuileries Palace, Paris March 1810

I
WANT YOU TO TEACH ME HOW TO WALTZ
.”

I stare at my brother in his military coat and black riding boots, and I’m sure I’ve heard wrong. “Since when have you wanted to waltz?” I ask. It’s ludicrous. No, it’s laughable. In forty years he has never danced, not even with me.

“My wife will expect it,” Napoleon says, and immediately I feel my temperature rise. So
that’s
why I was called to his study! Not for any great purpose, but to help him impress an Austrian whore.

“Absolutely not.”

“What do you mean?” He rises from his desk, but I’m not intimidated.

“I can’t teach you to dance. I’m not an instructor.”

“You’re the finest dancer in Paris.”

“And that comes naturally.” I smile. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about teaching someone else.”

“You’re lying.”

Yes. But he doesn’t know that. “Ask Hortense,” I suggest. Hortense is fool enough to do whatever she’s told. After all, she’s Joséphine’s daughter.

He studies me for a moment, hoping that I’ll blush or that my lie will come out in some other small way. But Talma always says I was
destined for the stage, and my face betrays nothing. “Then I want you to see this,” he says instead. “Everything must be perfect for her arrival, Pauline.
Everything
.”

I see the fifteen chests Paul told me about three months ago and I realize he is truly concerned about this. A nineteen-year-old girl intimidates him because of her name. It is as if he has forgotten that God protects the Bonaparte clan. Look how far we’ve risen! God
chose
us for greatness, and there’s no reason to suspect He will disappoint us now. But my brother’s eyes are full of worry, and I wish I could make him understand that even without this palace and his crown, he is a king.

“Look closely,” he instructs. “If there’s anything I’ve missed, Méneval will get it.”

“Is there a list?” I ask. For all his talk about equality and common blood, I know the truth. He wishes he were royal, too.

He hands me two pages filled from top to bottom with Méneval’s writing. There are a hundred and fifty pairs of stockings, thirty-six petticoats, a hundred and forty-four embroidered chemises, eleven silk dressing gowns, eighty lace nightcaps, countless handkerchiefs, and sixty-four—sixty-four!—dresses tailored by Leroy.

“There’s a third page as well,” he says anxiously. “On the back.”

“You have ordered her
underwear
?” I imagine my imbecilic husband Camillo Borghese daring to purchase my undergarments for me, and I am horrified.

“You don’t think she can choose these things herself,” he says. “She’s a child.”

“She’s nineteen.”

“Exactly. Old enough for motherhood, young enough for obedience.” My brother slips his hand beneath his coat in a gesture that’s become so familiar that artists have begun painting his portraits this way. But I wonder suddenly if his stomach ails him, too. He has never mentioned it, but then he has never mentioned the medicines he takes for his seizures.

I sit on the edge of his desk and ask quietly, “Are you well?”

“What makes you think otherwise?” he asks. Then he follows the direction of my gaze, and withdraws his hand from his coat. “Of course.”

“You would tell me if you were sick—”

“Why?” He sits next to me. “Are you a doctor?”

“No, but I would find the best for you.”

He takes my hand tenderly in his and squeezes softly. “You are a good sister, Paoletta.”

I look back at the chests filled with swan’s-down cloaks and lilac chemises, and my envy is unbearable. I would look far better in these clothes than any Hapsburg ever will.
What’s the point of wearing a russet silk gown when you are a waddling sausage
? “I hear she’s fat,” I say, knowing he hates fat women as passionately as he does tall ones.

“Who said that of her?” he demands. There is an edge in his voice, and I counter it with indifference.

“No one.” I give a little shrug. “It’s evident from her picture.”

And we have all seen that. Sitting like a shrine in the middle of the Throne Room, elevated on steps like an image of the Virgin Mother.

“I suppose we’ll know soon enough.” I stand. “At least Caroline will. Paul says you’re sending her to Compiègne because she’s a queen?”

“It’s a matter of rank. And when she arrives, you will not insult her.” He rises. “She’s a Hapsburg princess.”

“Or what? You’ll banish me?”

He grabs my arm. Suddenly he’s so close, I can feel the desire in his breeches. “You will behave yourself,” he warns through clenched teeth. “At the church, at every
fête
, even in the birthing room when she gives me a son. This is not a game.”

I pull my arm away. But his eyes are dark, and I wonder if I have pushed him too far. He has ordered men killed for less. He does not do it himself. He sends them to the fronts, to the most dangerous fighting, and when they fail to return, he is all polished speeches and feigned
regret. I’ve had lovers die this way. “What is that?” I ask quickly, turning his attention to the miniature city re-created with clay models on his desk.

“The streets of Paris,” he says irritably. “I instructed Méneval to prepare it.”

Just as he had Méneval prepare half a dozen models, each the height of my hand, for his coronation. My brother leaves nothing to chance. He is dangerous to cross, but anyone must admire a man who can plan a wedding like a military campaign. I move closer to the model of our city. The route to the Louvre has been traced with string, and next week, on the first of April, the wedding procession will pass through my brother’s unfinished Arc de Triomphe, down the Champs-Élysées, and through the Tuileries Gardens. I have already picked out my dress for the ride. Yellow satin and tulle with a rabbit’s-fur muff.

“What do you think of the Louvre chapel?” my brother asks. “I had it renovated.”

Yes, and even looking at it in miniature, it’s possible to see just how beautiful it is. I think of how young I’ll look in the soft light of the nave, with the silvery light of the stained glass on all sides of me. “Pretty.” Then I notice that Méneval has found some entertaining figures to represent those who will be in attendance. There is Napoleon, painted in red and black, with a bicorne hat and black knee-high boots. And Marie-Louise, with hair made of old straw. My figure is dressed in the purest white, and someone has even remembered my cameo necklace. I am standing behind the bride, and though I have the urge to point out that she will be taller and more ungainly in real life, I do not.

My brother’s shoulders grow tense. “I want an heir, Pauline.”

Paul told me he called her a
walking womb
. “What happens if she isn’t fertile?”

He turns to me and his eyes are wild. “Why would you say that?”

“Because it happens—sometimes.”

“It will not happen to me.”

“If she fails to give you a son, you could always dismiss her,” I say.
“Then you could find someone else.” Only it wouldn’t be me. My child-bearing days are finished. The doctors told me this after the birth of my son. So if it’s not Marie-Louise, it will only be someone else.

“She will give me an heir,” my brother says firmly.

I nod, suspecting he’s right. Then perhaps he will grow tired of her, the way he grew tired of Joséphine, who, delightfully, has been told to leave Paris for the Château de Navarre when Marie-Louise arrives. The press has been forbidden to mention Joséphine’s name. Imagine having to move to Normandy. That far north, you might as well be dead.

“I want you and my new wife to become good friends,” my brother says.

“Oh, we’ll be very close, I’m sure.”

He gives me a sideways glance. “You will not bait her, Pauline. You will not treat her the way you treated Joséphine.”

“Beauharnaille was a liar.”

“And Marie-Louise is a princess. A
real
princess, with eight centuries of Hapsburg blood in her veins. And if it’s a choice between her and you,” he warns, “then I will choose her.”

C
HAPTER
9

PAUL MOREAU

Braunau, Austria

“
[With Caroline] I have always had to fight a pitched battle
.”

—NAPOLEON ON HIS SISTER

T
HE
COCHER
SAYS WE ARE TO REACH THE
A
USTRIAN BORDER
in an hour. If he’s lying, I will take my chances in the driving rain and walk to Braunau rather than listen to Queen Caroline complain any longer. Yes, the ride has been unbearable. Yes, it has been rough. But at least we are not horses. They have had to swim most of the way from Paris in all this melting snow and mud.

The emperor gave instructions that we are to bring the princess back by the twenty-eighth of March. But like most things the emperor wants, it’s a near impossible task. It’s meant driving for eight days through the rain and sleet with just a single break, then riding again until well after nightfall. Everyone is in a foul mood, especially the women, who aren’t used to such journeys. But only Queen Caroline feels the need to express her discontent.

“I can’t understand how these Austrians can eat
Spätzle
,” she complains. “Can you imagine eating that dish, day in, day out? It’s no wonder they’re all so fat.”

“That’s what my father says,” Collette replies. Of the seven ladies-in-waiting who have come on this trip, she’s the queen’s favorite, a
seventeen-year-old raised in a country château and brought to court for an education. And it is some education she’s getting. I have not seen a dress anywhere in Paris as low-cut as hers, or shoes so high. “That our new empress will be as large and stupid as an ox.”

“Well, I’m not bringing home some farm animal to my brother. If we have to starve her from here to Compiègne, then that’s what we’ll do.”

The talk in the carriage continues like this until we arrive in Braunau an hour before sunset, and I begin to regret accepting the emperor’s request to act as his ears and eyes on this trip. Nothing is good enough for Her Highness. The beer served to us at dinner is too strong, the food is too bland, the people have no sense of fashion. But as soon as the horses slow to a trot, the mood in the carriage lifts. For days it’s been nothing but rolling hills and mist. The scent of fire has lingered with us everywhere, yet now, as a castle’s towers appear in the distance, there’s the smell of a bustling city as well—of cooking, and horses, and brewers making ale. I look out across the lake to the palace beyond, where the new empress will be waiting for us with her Austrian escort. I wonder if her portraits are accurate, or whether the painter has flattered her, as artists often do.

“The second empress of France,” Queen Caroline says as the carriages roll to a stop before Schloss Hagenau. “I’ll bet her French isn’t half as good as Metternich promised.” From the fur trimming on her cloak to the silk lining of her boots, the queen is dressed almost entirely in black. It is an outfit suited to a funeral.