The Second Empress (31 page)

“Your Highness, it’s time.”

Time
. The Egyptians understood that we aren’t given much time on this earth. From the moment they were old enough to earn, they began collecting precious items for their tombs: linens, bowls, jars for makeup, religious scrolls. Those who could afford it added expensive sandals and heavy jewels. You must greet the afterlife prepared. After all, none of us know how much time we are given. Seven months ago I promised Paul we would return to Haiti. Yet look at us now—praying like monks in Hautecombe Abbey. Of course, Paul understands that we can’t possibly leave my brother like this. When we return to Haiti, it must be as conquerors. He as its king, and me as his consort.

Paul offers me his arm, and we cross the fields to the abbey together. “Any news?” I ask him. The setting sun has turned his skin deep bronze, and his eyes are almost black in the fading light.

“None. The messengers say we shouldn’t expect anything for at least three days.”

“Three days?” I repeat.
That’s impossible
! “What will we do?”

“Wait,” he says simply.

But I can’t accept it. “There has to be someone who knows what’s happening in Moscow.”

“Yes, and they’re going to the Tuileries to report to the empress.”

I think of Marie-Louise in Napoleon’s chair, seated like the Queen of the World in his Council Chamber, and a fire burns in my stomach. There is no one more loyal to Napoleon than me. The moment I heard he was making that child—an
Austrian
, no less—the regent of France, I packed my bags and was gone the next morning. The rest of my family can do as they please, but at least there will be one female Bonaparte with some pride. Did he really think we would all sit in that chamber while
Her Majesty
issues her commands? When he might have made me regent?

We reach the abbey, and I exhale.

“Tired?” Paul asks.

“A little.”

He glances behind us, and I know what he’s thinking. It’s a short walk from here to the lighthouse. “Perhaps we should sit by the fire and read.”

Inside, I follow him into the library, with its warm, plush carpets and crackling fire. I seat myself on the widest divan, and he takes a stool, opening
Cinna
to the page where we left off. My brother has seen this tragedy performed twelve times, and I have gone to at least half a dozen. It is a story of mercy and gratitude, of ruling prudently and watching your enemies.
He who forgives readily only invites offense
. It is the greatest line from Pierre Corneille’s play, in my opinion. Yet my brother prefers
Ambition displeases when it has been sated … having reached the peak, it aspires to descend
.

I hope it is not descending now.

C
HAPTER
24

PAUL MOREAU

Saint-Cloud, outside Paris October 1812

I
LOOK AT THE COURTIER, IN HIS MUDDIED BOOTS AND
rain-drenched coat, and I wonder if it was her brother who sent him, or some kind-hearted general who discovered the silver locket with her picture inside. “I’m sorry, monsieur, but I cannot be the one to tell her.”

The young man loses some of his coloring, but I will not be the one to deliver this news. “Should I …” He looks past my shoulder into the hall. “Do I—”

“I can take you to her. She’s in the salon.” He follows me down the candlelit hall, and the sound of our boots echoes against the stones.

“Does she come here often?” he asks.

He’s wondering if the princess makes a habit of living in such gloomy places. “Only when she’s truly ill.”

I open the door to the salon, and the princess is curled up on the chaise near the fire. She’s been in the same position all day, suffering from her stomach pains and nausea. But as soon as she sees the soldier, she rises.

“Napoleon?”

The young man lowers his eyes. “Your Highness,” he begins. “The honorable Captain Armand-Jules-Élisabeth de Canouville has died.”

She screams, and I grab her hands before she can reach for his eyes.
“You’re lying. He’s lying! He isn’t dead. Show me the proof. I want proof!”

The courtier reaches a trembling hand into his vest and produces the locket. “He was wearing this when he died, Your Highness. I’m sorry.”

She grabs the locket from his hand and forces it open. Inside is a portrait of Pauline, beautiful and vivid. “It isn’t happening.” She begins to shake. I take the locket from her hands and guide her to the chaise, wondering about the other man she condemned to death. Will his fiancée be given anything to remember him by, or will he die a nameless death like so many soldiers do? I look to the courtier and nod for him to go.

“
No
! Tell me what’s happening on the fronts!”

The courtier looks down, and Pauline clutches her stomach.

He doesn’t know how to tell her that France’s Grande Armée, which arrived in Russia nearly seven hundred thousand strong, is now a little more than a hundred thousand men. Three months, and half a million men are either captured or dead. Another hundred thousand have fled for their lives. When I heard this from a soldier outside the abbey, I hadn’t believed it, either.

“Your Highness,” he starts bravely, “Moscow has been won—”

She looks from me to the courtier, then back again. “So why—”

“The city has been burned by the Russians, and what remains of your brother’s army is waiting for word from the czar.”

“Why do you say ‘what remains’?” she whispers.

The courtier hesitates. “Only a seventh of his army remains.” He reaches into his coat and pulls out a letter. “From a Württemberg cavalry officer,” he says. His voice is shaking, but he reads aloud. “ ‘From Lieutenant Heinrich August Vossler,’ ” he begins.

The ravages of cold are equaled only by those of hunger. No food is so rotten or disgusting as to not find someone to relish it. No fallen horse or cattle remains uneaten. No dog, no cat, no carrion, nor, indeed, the corpses of those that died of cold or hunger, go untouched. It is not unknown for men to gnaw at their own famished bodies. But it’s not only men’s bodies which are suffering unspeakably. Their minds, too, have become deeply affected by the combined assault of extreme cold and hunger. All human compassion seems to have vanished; we care only for ourselves and our comrades be damned. I have actually watched men lie down and die with complete indifference, and I’ve witnessed other men sit on the corpses of the fallen so they won’t have to touch the snow near the fireside. Dull despair or raving madness has taken possession of many, and they die muttering, with their last breath, the most horrible imprecations against God and man
.

There is no consoling her. She collapses to the floor.

C
HAPTER
25

MARIE-LOUISE

Tuileries Palace, Paris December 1812

T
HERE IS SNOW IN
P
ARIS
. I
LOOK OUT THE WINDOW OF THE
Council Chamber, and everything is white: the benches, the fountains, even the trees. My son is outside with Sigi, so his tutor can explain the origin of ice. In three months, Franz will be two years old. Monsieur Laurent tells me that he already has a few hundred words, including
garden
and
paint
.

Behind me, the Duc de Feltre clears his throat. “Is Your Majesty ready?”

The daily meeting of the Regency Council is set to begin, and the men at the table are waiting on me. I glance one last time at the winter gardens. “Yes, I am ready.”

I follow my husband’s Minister of War to the long council table and take my place in the emperor’s seat. In this chair, with its soft velvet arms and padded back, I learned of the deaths of nearly half a million men. Some died of the war plague, others of starvation, but most of them were blown to pieces in battle. And when all of it was done, and Moscow was burned to the ground, the wreckage belonged to my husband.

He waited five weeks to hear from the czar. Thirty-five days in disease-infested encampments, while winter crept like the specter of
death all around. And when no word came, he instructed his soldiers to begin the trek home.

Reports from the march have been too chilling to comprehend. Sick soldiers abandoned on the sides of the roads, left for the Russians to mutilate and torture. Men crying for their mothers as they expire from hunger, delirious. They tell us it’s twenty below zero in Moscow, and that when a soldier speaks, his breath freezes in the air. This is what my husband conjured with his lust for war. This is what I did nothing to prevent. I look around the chamber. None of these men wanted a fight with Russia. My husband took no one’s counsel but his own.

“There is news, Your Majesty,” the
duc
informs me. But there is always news, and it is always dismal. “The emperor of France is returning home.” The Minister of War looks sheepish. “He is coming ahead of his men by sleigh.”

I rise from the table. “He’s abandoning our army?”
My father would sooner die than flee from his own decimated army
.

The
duc
raises his hands. “Never, Your Majesty.”

I picture the scene. Napoleon, creeping in the dead of night toward a sleigh hitched to a dozen dogs.
The coward. The arrogant, selfish coward
 … “He sent five hundred thousand men to their deaths—”

“Not quite five hundred thousand.”

“I have seen the lists!” I shout. “Every day. The missing, the casualties, the wounded.”
He is traveling across the ice by sleigh. The emperor of France
! The image is ludicrous. “What will you tell him when he arrives?”

The
duc
clears his throat. “That if he hopes to keep his crown, he will act swiftly. There is talk of a coup in Paris.”

“A revolution?” My aunt’s greatest error was in not believing the meaning of this word.

“I wouldn’t say
revolution
 … yet.”