The Second Empress (18 page)

So the five of us move from room to room, and Marie-Louise exclaims over all of Pauline’s treasures. Her pleasure seems genuine. We visit the guest chamber, with its tub so large you could bathe an elephant, and Pauline’s bed, so tiny it might be for a porcelain doll.

“You
sleep
here?” Marie-Louise has no idea how happy this question will make Pauline.

“Her Highness is a
petite fleur
,” de Canouville answers. “A delicate bed for a delicate princess.”

Napoleon lowers his brows, but de Canouville is already making his way toward the salon. “Feel this,” he says, pointing to the blue velvet couches. “There’s nothing finer in all of France. Our emperor himself gifted these to Pauline. And out there is the grotto.” He opens a pair of double doors and inhales deeply of the fresh air. “Have you ever seen a grotto like this? Fountains, statues, flowers, urns.”

Despite herself, the new empress laughs.

“Shall we take her to the Egyptian galleries?” de Canouville asks. He looks from face to face, but only Marie-Louise is smiling.

We pass through a hall filled with portraits of Aubree, and the empress halts. “Who did these?” she wants to know.

Napoleon is incredulous. “The
dog
paintings?”

“They’re
wonderful
.” Tears fill the empress’s eyes, but she blinks them away and inspects one depicting Aubree in the grotto.

“Richard Cosway.” Pauline’s smile is genuine. “He’s my favorite artist. No one captures Aubree like he does.”

“They’re very good.” The empress steps closer, to get a better view. “Is she a greyhound?”

“An Italian greyhound. It’s a smaller breed. I can bring her out if—”

“We’re here to see the galleries, not a zoo,” Napoleon says shortly.

I’ve often thought he is jealous of his sister’s dog.

Pauline’s voice turns to ice. “The galleries are in here.”

As we enter the first chamber, Marie-Louise seems overwhelmed. In a château filled with opulence, these galleries are the finest. The walls are covered in paintings taken from Cairo, and innumerable treasures fill endless polished-glass cabinets and wooden shelves. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” the empress whispers.

I remember how astounded I was the first time I saw the hundreds of figurines lining the walls, some lapis, others alabaster. Oil lamps, combs, golden necklaces, and bejeweled boxes dizzy the senses. And then there are the sarcophagi. The empress reaches out to touch the painted face on a woman’s coffin. Slowly, with an artist’s hand, she traces the ancient features of the young doomed girl.

“That is from a tomb in Egypt,” Napoleon says proudly. “Their temples,” he adds, “were incredible. Unbelievable. Carved gods stood from this ceiling to the floor.” He indicates their height, and when his wife is duly impressed, he adds meaningfully, “Had I stayed, I might have made myself pharaoh.”

“You still could,” Pauline replies swiftly.

A moment passes between brother and sister that makes Marie-Louise hesitate.

But not de Canouville. “And these?” he wants to know. He points to a pair of alabaster vessels on the tallest bookcase.

“Canopic jars,” Pauline explains. “For storing your organs after you die.”

De Canouville doesn’t ask about anything else as we pass through the next two galleries.

I watch the empress marvel over numerous artifacts—some of which are encrusted with jewels or made of precious metals. I am touched to see that it is the artist’s palette that fascinates Marie-Louise the most. The ancient wooden tray is still stained with ochre, malachite, and lapis. She touches each color, and I imagine she’s thinking about the last hands that held this—a painter’s hands, living more than two thousand years ago. Was he old? Young? How did he die? Did he have a family? Or was the artist a woman?

“Stunning,” she says. “I have no words.”

W
HEN WE EMERGE
from the galleries, a waiter appears offering wine. “For Your Highness?”

Pauline is the first to take a glass. “Always.”

Downstairs in the salon, the Austrian musicians have stopped playing, and scantily dressed women have taken their place on a small stage. The actor Talma is among them, singing something I can’t understand and holding up a heavy glass of wine. “Is it time?” he shouts when Pauline appears.

She holds up her own glass in an imaginary toast. “Why not?” She turns to Napoleon and Marie-Louise. “Just for you.”

She has kept this a secret from everyone, including me, and I’m afraid she is going to do something so offensive that the emperor will never forgive her. She takes the stage, and my muscles tense. But the performance she gives is actually tender—a song from Jean-Baptiste Lully’s mesmerizing
tragédie lyrique
. The moment she opens her mouth,
Pauline becomes the temptress Armide, and as she sings of her unrequited love for the hero, every guest is riveted.

“
I have not triumphed over the bravest of all …
”

“There’s no one like her in the world,” de Canouville murmurs.

I am loath to agree with him on anything, but I have to nod.

“
The entire enemy camp is vulnerable to me …
”

“You’re nothing more than a chamberlain to her,” he warns me. “Just remember that,
mon ami
. I am the man she
wishes
she married.”

I feel a moment of intense hatred for this man, who thinks he knows Pauline. “Then I would be careful,” I say spitefully. “The men she wishes she married have very short lives. Fournier got sent to Italy, and no one knows where the others have gone. Dead on the fronts somewhere.”

I can see that I have shocked him, and I’m glad.

“
And he alone, always invincible … prides himself on looking upon me with indifferent eyes
.”

We both look toward the emperor. Though he is holding Marie-Louise’s arm, he is utterly fixated on Pauline’s performance.

“
He is of an age ready for loving, when one loves without effort … No, I cannot fail, without extreme vexation, to conquer a heart so proud and so great
.”

“Bravo!” de Canouville shouts wildly when it’s over. “Bravo!” He holds out his hands to embrace her, but it’s Napoleon she goes to.

“I didn’t know you would be performing
Armide
,” the emperor says, and his look is not brotherly.

“It’s your favorite,” Pauline says, and Marie-Louise’s eyes narrow.

A
S THE HOURS
pass, I watch our second empress strolling from guest to guest on the arm of the emperor and wonder what she must make of all of this—the half-clothed women, the wild musicians, the suggestive lyrics delivered onstage from a sister to a brother. I do not know if she has yet realized that the serving bowls that guests are choosing tidbits
from are modeled on Pauline’s breasts. Marie-Louise appears to be taking it all in good grace, but I have seen my share of royalty, and I know what their pleasant exteriors can hide.

When everyone has gathered outside for their carriages, I find the empress standing alone. “Did Your Majesty enjoy herself this evening?”

Marie-Louise glances around her, and though she sees that Napoleon is speaking with his sister at the steps of the château, her expression is guarded. “My sister-in-law is very … enthusiastic,” she says carefully.

“Yes,” I reply, showing equal discretion. “The Bonapartes have a great zest for life.”

“And festivities. I hear there’s to be another event tomorrow, hosted by the minister of war. And after that, a
fête
thrown by the Imperial Guard.”

I look over her shoulder at Napoleon, who is laughing so intimately with Pauline that anyone would think she was the new bride.

“Tell me,” she adds, and her voice drops low. “When does he govern?”

“I expect it’s the excitement of a new marriage,” I reply. But I can’t stop watching him with Pauline; the way he brushes back her hair and touches her arm.

She follows my gaze. “You love her, don’t you?”

I am so shocked by the question that I step back.

“My father taught me how to observe people. He believes it is the first skill of any diplomat, which is what every queen must be.”

It takes several moments to regain my composure. “I met her in Haiti,” I admit, though I wonder why I am telling her this. “She was … different then.”

She nods. “You’re the perfect courtier then. I doubt the rest of them can see it. Thank you for warning me about Compiègne.”

I study our tall, golden-haired empress and wonder if the emperor will ever know just how extraordinary his young bride really is. “It was a great sacrifice for Your Majesty to leave Austria behind.”

“Yes,” she admits quietly. “But I suspect that sacrifice is something you understand.”

In seven years no one has ever said this to me. Not even Pauline.

“Do you ever wish to go home?” she asks.

I close my eyes briefly. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it.”

“But she keeps you here.”

It’s not a question, but a statement, and I don’t deny it.

C
HAPTER
13

MARIE-LOUISE

Fontainebleau Palace

“
I am not like other men. The commonly accepted rules of morality and propriety do not apply to me
.”

—NAPOLEON

I
T IS DONE
. I
AM MARRIED, AND THOUGH
I
KNOW MY FATHER
doesn’t mean it when he writes, “I wish nothing but great joy for you and your husband,” I still feel sick when I read his words.

From the writing table in my new chamber at Fontainebleau, I look down again at my father’s letter and begin to weep.
Nothing but great joy for you and your husband
. There would have been joy if I had married Adam and stayed in Austria to take care of Ferdinand. But there was no joy in lying down for a man twice my age; a man who warned me when our business was over that he was “an emperor with great appetites” and that I should expect to see him daily, “maybe twice daily even.”