The Second Empress (5 page)

“My God, Paul, I’m so happy I could weep! No, I’m so happy I could
dance
. In fact”—she rises from the mirror, and I know from the way her eyes have grown large that she has hit on something she considers great—“tonight I shall host a ball!”

I do not move from my chair. It is here, on this chaise at the far end of her boudoir, that I spend each morning listening to her plans while Aubree curls onto my lap and falls asleep. “And you think that is wise?”

But whenever this mood takes her, she is impossible to reason with. “He’s my
brother
. Why shouldn’t he know that I love him?”

“Because there are those who still love the empress as well. And she has just lost it all. This palace, her husband, the imperial crown—”

“Which should never have been hers to begin with!” She turns back to her mirror and brushes her hair frantically. If she continues this habit whenever she’s upset, she’ll be bald by forty. “I am hosting a
fête
, Paul, and not even you can change my mind.”

“Your devotion to him is clear,” I say.
It is also unhealthy
, but I do not add this. She craves his attention. In all of France, there have never been two siblings with such raw ambition. They goad each other on. “And the empress?” I ask. “What will become of her?”

She walks to the commode and considers her silk robes. “He will banish her,” she guesses, choosing the red. “Then she will know how it feels to lose the man she wants.”

Although she already has my attention, she drops her chemise to the floor. For all the prostitutes on the Boulevard du Temple, I have never seen another woman’s body but Pauline’s. And she is utterly without shame. After she married her wealthy Italian prince, she gifted him a statue by Antonio Canova, who sculpted her in the nude as the goddess Venus. When the emperor saw it, he flew into a rage, forbidding any future statues. So in the Château de Neuilly, her private residence in Paris, she has modeled the serving bowls on her breasts instead. I have seen her brother eat nuts out of them. “Why should I hide them away?” she told me, enjoying her little joke. “The ancient Egyptians were proud to bare them.”

When she has fastened her robe, she crosses the bedchamber into the salon. “Are you coming? I have a story to tell you about Joséphine.”

I follow her into my favorite room in the Tuileries. The doors to the balcony have been thrown open, and fresh light illuminates the gilded walls where an artist has painted scenes from the temples of Egypt. Women in white sheaths raise their arms to the sun, and strange gods
with the heads of jackals and bulls carry powerful insignias: crooks, flails, a golden key to life—all symbols of rule. I sit across from her on a padded chair while she arranges herself on the divan.

“I was only fifteen when I met Fréron, but I knew what I wanted. We were set to marry in Martinique until Joséphine …” Tears redden her eyes, and I am shocked. I had no idea she felt so strongly about Fréron, whose name she has mentioned briefly in the past. “Until Joséphine told my brother that Fréron would never be good enough for me.”

I sit forward. “Then you loved him?”

“Of course! I was fifteen.”

“But he wasn’t a soldier,” I point out. Nearly all of Pauline’s affairs have been with men in French uniforms.

“No.” She closes her eyes. “I almost tied my fortunes to a lowly deputy. Can you imagine? I would have lived in poverty, clinging to the hope that the government might increase his salary one day! But Joséphine was not to know that,” she adds heatedly.

“So she saved you from penury,” I reply, and the look she gives me is thunderous.

“I was a sensitive girl! He was going to save me. You don’t know—”

But I do. I know exactly how it is with Pauline Borghese, the princess of Guastalla who was raised in poverty on the little Italian island of Corsica and vowed with her brother to conquer the world. I wish I had known her then, before the world gave her so much pain and grief. She wipes away real tears with the back of her hand, and this rare show of tenderness presses at my heart. Then, as if on cue, Aubree arrives, curling herself on the divan next to her mistress. There is nothing in the world the princess loves as this dog. She is tiny, weighing only ten pounds, but her eyes are filled with a world of expectation and play. “Tell me what you’ve heard about the divorce,” Pauline says, tracing the delicate, folded ears of her Italian greyhound.
Tell me something cheerful
is what she means.

“I heard the empress fainted when he told her the news, and that
the emperor had to carry her up to her chamber because she was too weak to walk.”

“What an actress!” she exclaims. “I’ve never asked to be carried by the emperor, and
I’m
the one who’s always in pain. Do you remember how terrible it was last week?”

“Your Highness couldn’t move from the divan for two days.”

“And did I ask my brother to come and carry me? Did I stand up and pretend to faint at his feet?”

“No, you are far more subtle than that.”

She stares at me, but my face betrays nothing.

“I told him to have
Hortense
tell her,” she continues. “He could have spared himself the theatrics. What else? I know my brother confides in you. Have you heard anything about how she’s to be treated?” She sits up on her divan, forcing Aubree to readjust her position.

It would be easier for us both if I lied, but I will not. “The emperor has offered her a kingdom in Italy, including”—I exhale—“the city of Rome.”

There is a tense moment of silence, and even Aubree knows what is coming; the little greyhound buries her nose in her paws.

“
Rome
,” Pauline repeats, as if she can’t believe it. “How can he offer her the greatest jewel in Italy without any thought for me?” And then she cries, “I am the Princess Borghese, and Rome should be
mine
!”

I spread my hands, as if it’s a mystery. But the truth is, her brother feels guilty. He has cast off a wife he still loves for a woman who will be able to give him sons. It is cruel. Especially since he has already gotten a child on his Polish mistress and might easily make the young boy his heir and keep his wife.

“And what did she tell him?” the princess demands.

What any woman of dignity would have said. “That love cannot be bought and sold,” I reply. “The empress refused the offer.”

She sinks back on the divan. “Thank God.”

A knock on the door sends Aubree rushing across the salon. She is
practically dancing in anticipation, twisting her charcoal-colored body back and forth. “Look at her!” The princess laughs. “Calm down,
mon chou
, it’s only a visitor.”

I cross the salon to open the double doors, but when Aubree sees who it is, she hurries back to the divan. “Her Majesty Queen Caroline,” I announce without enthusiasm.

The youngest of the Bonaparte sisters pushes past me, and I am in full agreement with the dog. I cannot imagine a less likely woman for the queen of Naples. She is short and ungainly, with eyes that are forever darting about and the complexion of someone stricken with fever.

“I have news.” She seats herself across from her sister and arranges her velvet cap so that the feathers are tilting jauntily to the side. The emperor may have made her shifty husband, Joachim Murat, the king of Naples, but he can never buy either one of them style. She is a dim star to Pauline’s sun, and there are a hundred petty jealousies between the sisters.

“I know,” Pauline says smugly. “Paul’s already told me. He’s going to divorce her!”

But Caroline, who should look dismayed that I’ve gotten to this news first, keeps smiling.

“What?” Pauline presses. “Is there something else? Is he officially announcing it?”

Now her sister plays coy. “I don’t know. Perhaps
His Highness
can tell you.” Her eyes cut toward me. “He seems to know everything.”

Pauline shrugs. “If you can’t say—”

“He’s drawn up a list of names!” she blurts. “All foreign princesses. And not a single one’s French.”

Pauline’s voice rises. “For
marriage
?”

Caroline, satisfied with this reaction, nods sagely. “Including Maria Lucia of Austria and Anna Paulowna, the Russian czar’s sister.”

“I don’t believe you,” Pauline says flatly.

“Then I suppose Maman didn’t show it to me. Perhaps I was dreaming—”

“He would never marry an Austrian!” Pauline exclaims. “The last Hapsburg queen of France lost her head.”

“That was sixteen years ago. Who even remembers Marie-Antoinette now?”

All of Haiti
, I think. She is the reason that Toussaint declared an end to slavery on behalf of every
personne de couleur
. If not for her, there would never have been a revolution. And if not for the Revolution, with its Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, Toussaint would never have been inspired to declare Haiti free from slavery and oppression. It took thirteen years and a hundred thousand lives before the French were removed from Haiti, but four times this number were slaughtered after Marie-Antoinette lost her head.
So surely they will not want another Austrian for their throne
?

“Then again,” Caroline adds lightly, “it could be the Russian. Or any number of minor princesses.” She is torturing Pauline.

“He will not remarry yet,” Pauline counters, but she seems uncertain. She is twenty-nine to Caroline’s twenty-seven, but she might as well have been the younger sibling. I study her in the morning light: the graceful curve of her neck, the deep chestnut of her hair, the new lines etched by worry between her brows. I remember the afternoons we shared together in Haiti, the air heavy with orange blossoms and the scent of summer rain. Now that world is gone, lost in the savagery of war that took my family along with my home. But the island remains. My mother’s songs remain. And someday Pauline must see that all this is futile, must realize that life was simpler and sweeter when it was the two of us in my country.

“And the announcement?” she asks, bringing me back to the present. “Has Maman said—”

“The fifteenth.” Caroline adds meaningfully, “Of December. He won’t decide on a new wife before then.”

Their eyes meet, and they are like a pair of jackals working together for the success of the hunt.

C
HAPTER
4

MARIA LUCIA, ARCHDUCHESS OF AUSTRIA

Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna December 1809

A
S SOON AS THE SUMMONS COMES FROM MY FATHER
, I know. In eighteen years, my presence has never been requested in my father’s Council Chamber without my brother. I put on my muff for the walk across the palace, then call Sigi from his cozy bed near the fire. If I am to face the news that the Ogre of France, or
der Menschenfresser
as the Austrians call him, wishes for my hand in marriage, then I will do it with a friend at my side.

I scoop up my little spaniel, and he rides in the crook of my arm as I make my way through the icy halls. Every winter my father spends a fortune to warm the palace, but it is never enough. The guards can see their breath on the air, and the courtiers’ wives, despite their vanity, are wearing thick cloaks and wide fur hats. “Your Royal Highness.” The men bow to me as I pass, but I don’t see the one I am looking for. When I reach the Blue Salon, where my father holds his council, I pause before the doors. I want to glimpse Adam Neipperg’s face, to see the conviction in his eyes as he tells me—as he certainly will—that I have nothing to fear from this meeting, that my father will never marry me to an ogre, not for all the money in the world. But he is nowhere to be
found. So I stand before my father’s Council Chamber, and the guards wait for my nod. When I give it, the doors are thrown open.

“Archduchess Maria Lucia of Austria,” they announce.

I step forward and halt immediately. Everyone is inside, including Adam Neipperg and my stepmother, Maria Ludovika. Maria passes me a warning look as I approach the table, and suddenly the room is silent. My father indicates a chair across from him.