Jo Graham - [Numinous World 05] Read online

  I did. I had been there in those days, on Moreau's arm. "He went to Italy with his paladins. And you stayed in Paris. And then?" I cut my eyes toward the garden, to the undistinguished ashes in the gardener's can.

  "And then. He was begging me to come to Italy, writing me every day. He was threatening to resign his command if I would not come. I needed Therese's help. Not a word could ever get back to him. Therese can get things done discreetly when money is no object."

  My throat was dry. "Because it was not your husband's child."

  "No." She lifted her eyes to mine. "Because it was."

  A swirl of wind threw the rain against the window and I felt the world still.

  "Do not you see? If I gave him a child he would never let me go! All I wanted was to be free to marry Lazare. If I had his child, son or daughter, he would never divorce me." She paced away, her cashmere wrap dragging against the floor where it had fallen from one arm. "And therein lies the irony, of course." She took a deep breath, and I saw her shoulders square. No doubt she had never told this whole story to anyone, but I of all people would understand. And if I repeated it, no one would ever believe it. "Lazare lost interest. It was one of those things, he said. People feel very passionately when they're in danger. Lazare fell out of love. And I fell into love. With my husband." She turned, her face in shadow. "Surely you can understand that."

  "I do not see how anyone could fail to love your husband whom he wished to," I said, remembering Milan and the man I had known there.

  "He did not trust me. He didn't know what had happened, but he knew something had. He thought it was about some flirtation with Hippolyte Charles, or something like that. Some minor indiscretion, some harmless game that meant nothing. He forgave me. He forgave me completely. But he has never entirely trusted me since. I lost that." Her voice was unflinching. "And I lost the thing that he needs most of all. A son. An heir. I have never been able to conceive since."

  "And an emperor must have an heir," I said.

  She stood against the window, the darkening garden behind her. "His family wants him to divorce me. And Fouché wants to own me. If he had that, he would. I should do whatever he wanted for the rest of my life."

  "And through you rule France," I said, and cautiously wet my lips. It was worth it, I thought, this thing I did. It was worth it if it kept that evil man from ruling France, though no one would ever know what I did or what I died for. I had come so far from that heedless mistress of Moreau's to stand here, grim and cold and certain. Valor in the face of danger is easy, I thought. It is this that is hard. To know what will come – the prison, the extradition, the chains, the drugs for my own good….

  Joséphine nodded. "And now…."

  "Now it is gone," I said.

  "I will be Empress," she said.

  "Our Lady of Victories," I said. "France's sacred queen, crowning the victor with her love."

  She looked up at me, startled.

  I smiled. "I am glad to have been of service," I said, and made my bow like a man. "I bid you good evening, as I have far to go tonight."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Paris," I said. "To my own apartment. I cannot evade Fouché, and there is little point in having him hunt all over town for me. It will simply put him in a worse temper when he finds me."

  I made my farewells and went out to find Nestor. I led him out in the evening drizzle, mounted as soon as we were past the gates. We were a kilometer down the road when I heard the escort approaching and pulled to the side to let the carriage pass. I caught a swift glimpse of him in profile in the carriage lights, lit like a cameo against the dark, Bonaparte going home in the gathering night.

  I rode on to Paris.

  I went home. I sent the letters to my friends, knowing that I would not be able to write later. I did not write to Michel. What could I possibly say?

  I waited for the knock in on the door.

  Night turned into morning. I drank coffee dressed in a sensible blue broadcloth dress that I thought would wear well in prison. It felt a bit surreal, like picking out one's own funeral clothes. No one came.

  Morning turned into noon. The sun came in through the window, making patterns of light across the floor. There was no sound. It was so quiet that an enterprising mouse came out and wandered about, freezing when he saw me.

  I could hang myself, I thought, and at least spare myself some of the pain of what was to come.

  Yet my heart misgave me. I thought there were yet cards to play. I would not do that except at the last turn of the dice, as the final gambit.

  Afternoon came. I was starting to get irritated. How entirely ridiculous, to leave me hanging about all day waiting to be arrested! If I had known it would take so long, I should have gone out to lunch and enjoyed one last day in the clean air.

  There was a heavy knock on the door.

  Prepared for it as I was, I nearly wet myself when it came. It was nothing but pride that enabled me to cross the room and calmly open it.

  An officer of dragoons stood outside. "Madame St. Elme?"

  "I am," I said. Why was Fouché using soldiers, rather than his usual thugs? I was hardly in a position to resist arrest.

  He bowed over my hand politely. "If Madame will accompany me?"

  "I would," I said, and picked up my bonnet and overstuffed reticule. I had no idea when it would be taken from me, but until then the bread and fruit packed within could save my life.

  He was joined in the street by two privates standing beside a waiting carriage, a plain affair with matched horses. He opened the door for me, then sat opposite me while the two privates swung up behind.

  His hat was on his knees, and I saw that one of his gloves had been ripped and neatly stitched. His moustache had a few threads of gray, though he didn't look more than thirty. Was his face the last I would see in freedom?

  "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" he said.

  "Yes," I said.

  He glanced out the window. "It's nice for this weather to hold. I'm not looking forward to the cold, let me tell you."

  "No, not at all," I said, wondering why in the world he was trying to make conversation. If this was Fouché's newest brand of intimidation, it was baffling rather than threatening.

  The carriage drew up. "Checkpoint," he said, and I glanced out the window in utter surprise.

  We had only gone a few minutes from my apartment.

  We stood at the main gate of the Palace of the Tuileries, and the driver was presenting his papers to the guard at the gate.

  "Oh Jesus Christ," I said. I had gotten it all wrong.

  I should have worn another dress. The blue broadcloth was dowdy as hell. The soldier stared at me as I madly hunted through my reticule for a comb.

  We were led in through a side door under a portico, and along a lengthy mirrored gallery into a waiting room. Three or four men stood about, one in uniform. There were chairs, a small bookcase, and an abundance of gilt tables. On a plinth under a swag of crimson velvet was, life-size, a beautifully rendered copy of a classical bust of Alexander the Great.

  All the men looked up when I entered, but none spoke.

  The soldier vanished, no doubt to report that his errand was accomplished.

  I paced about the room, wandering over to the bust, my exceedingly heavy reticule banging against my legs, clad beneath the dress in sturdy half boots of leather treated with garlic to make them unattractive to rats.

  Alexander seemed to give me a curious half-smile.

  "Madame St. Elme."

  I spun about to see a tall man in splendid livery beside the doors. "This way, if you please, Madame?"

  I nodded and followed him mutely into the room beyond.

  Napoleon was seated at a huge desk with a green blotter, wearing the dark blue uniform coat of the chasseurs with a white waistcoat. His hair fell forward over his eyes as though he had been working and had not noticed. At the window, thin curtains of white silk embroidered with bees swayed in the wind.


  "Come in, Madame," he said. "You may go, Duroc."

  I took a deep breath.

  Napoleon stood up, his face transformed by a brilliant smile. "Good afternoon, Madame. I understand that you have done my wife a very great service."

  "It was nothing, sire," I said with a courtesy, trying to guess what in the world Joséphine had told him I had done, since she could not possibly have told him the truth.

  "It does not seem nothing to me to save her from Fouché's blackmail when he has you by the throat," Napoleon observed, perching on the edge of his desk.

  I must have gaped, for he waved a hand. "Yes, I know you are loyal to her and do not wish to say that you had some silly letters she had written to Hippolyte Charles years ago. That is all in the past. I have forgiven my Joséphine long since and there are no secrets between us."

  "I am relieved to hear that, sire," I said. He did not know. She had told him it was about the Charles affair. And I would say nothing.

  "It puts you in a very bad position to say the least."

  "It does," I said evenly. "Fouché has me, as you said, by the throat. At best I expect to be deported to my former husband's family in Holland, where I will spend the rest of my life locked in an asylum."

  "At best."

  "As you say, sire."

  He put his head to the side, considering. "Joséphine said you had never been a close friend. Why did you do this for her?"

  "For her, or for you?"

  At that he broke into a broad smile. "I see what you have made of yourself, then."

  "You gave me money," I said, "And let me go, saying you were curious what I would become. Four years have passed, sire. This is what I have become."

  He nodded. "You asked me what the price of a general was."

  "And you said, the same as a companion."

  His dark eyes were alight with amusement. "And so you are, Madame. Your wits are too sharp for me to allow you to remain Fouché's agent." He forestalled my reply with a gesture. "No, don't bother to say you aren't. I have already had my conversation with him this morning. A private conversation. I have in the past relieved him of being Minister of Police, but clearly that was insufficient, if he then turned to blackmailing the Empress upon his reinstatement."

  "Sire…."

  He rested his chin on his hand, his head to the side. "So here is my proposition for you, Madame. You do not wish to return to Holland. You wish to be a French citizen, safe forever behind our laws. You wish for the powerful friends to make it so, and you do not want to work for Fouché. And yet you make an ideal agent, clever, loyal, equally capable in the ballroom or the battlefield. A pretty woman who is not afraid to kill." One eyebrow rose. "Perhaps a clairvoyant, if the rumors are to be believed."

  A blush rose on my face.

  "You are rash, yes. Daring to a fault, which is not an uncommon flaw among my paladins. And you are a little too fond of sleeping with generals."

  In my confusion I dropped my reticule. Three apples and a bun rolled out, stopping just short of his feet.

  Napoleon bent down and picked up the bun. "And prepared," he said, his eyes lively.

  "It was for…."

  "I am not mocking you, Madame. Or if so only a little!"

  "I see that, sire," I said, and smiled back. "Believe me, I am grateful if you are offering to intervene with Fouché for me, but I do not know what good there can be for you in it."

  "I have already spoken with Fouché, as I said, Madame. You have nothing more to fear from him. I give you my word on that. I will not have it said that service to me or to Joséphine is rewarded so badly."

  I had not thought it was possible to be more relieved. "Thank you, sire."

  He got up from the desk and stood opposite me, exactly of a height. "I want you to be my agent."

  "Your agent, sire?"

  "I sometimes employ special agents of my own, outside of the parameters of the Minister of Police, agents who are loyal to me alone with no Fouché as intermediary. They report directly to me, or to whomever I deputize as necessary. I must be able to trust them absolutely." His eyes searched mine. "Your personal oath, Madame. Irrevocable. You may think on it."

  "I do not need to think," I said, my eyes squarely on his. "I have known for a long time. I, Elzelina Johanna Van Aylde Versfelt Ringeling, do swear to you, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, my undying loyalty and service, that I may in all things serve you and France, waking and sleeping, in danger and luxury, in omission and commission, as a true Companion in all things, until death or you release me." I knelt and took his hand in mine, my lips to his finger where a ring should go.

  He gripped my hand and raised me up, and there was nothing but a knowing half smile in his eyes. "Welcome to my service, Elzelina. I shall act as your liege in all things, and shall in no way disappoint your expectations while life and breath last." His eyes fluttered shut for a moment.

  Did he remember? I did not know. I remembered the humid garden, the sound of the water playing in the bathhouse in Babylon, the fever in his flesh when he had taken my hand. I barely remembered myself. And yet it was there, like celestial music barely heard.

  "I am yours, sire," I said.

  An Education for an Adventuress

  I had expected the life of the Emperor's private agent to be much more exciting. For the first few weeks I waited with bated breath for the messenger that would come to give me my first assignment. As much as I had dreaded the idea of a summons from Fouché's minions, now I eagerly awaited one.

  And yet no summons came.

  Surely there must be a use for a private agent as the coronation approached! The eyes of Europe were on Paris, where in a short time Bonaparte would be crowned Emperor of the French in a grand ceremony lasting most of a day at Notre Dame Cathedral. Surely there would be assassins seeking his life, both Royalists as Cadoudal had been, and British and Austrian agents alike. Surely those assassins needed thwarting!

  But apparently not by me. No summons came, no messengers left anything for me.

  At last, the week before the coronation, I sent a short note to the Tuileries, reiterating in neutral terms my desire to be of service. I received no reply. Nor did I hear a word from Fouché. If at least Napoleon had freed me from Fouché's domination, that was something. There were no threats, no communications at all.

  The coronation procession closed streets and businesses alike, a holiday of the sort few people in France could remember. After all, France had had no monarch for nearly thirteen years, and all in all it had been thirty years since the coronation of the unfortunate Louis XVI, two years before my birth. Napoleon was determined this should be an event to remember, and like a great many others I waited in the freezing December morning to watch the processions, cheering and shouting with the rest, watching the carriages pass and the guardsmen with their prancing parade mounts.

  Michel, of course, had a part in the ceremony. His wife was one of the ladies in waiting who carried Joséphine's train. I wondered how she liked that, Joséphine who had not wished for this office at all and now took on the role that history gave her. I had some part in that, and I could warm myself with that knowledge despite the day's cold.

  And yet no word came for me as the year turned.

  But if there was no money in being a secret agent, I did have a job. The company patronized by Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angely was doing a production of Alexander the Great, and I had the role of Cleofile, an altogether imaginary Indian princess whose love for the king is thwarted by her brother. I had a great many high blown lines in the style of the 17th century, beautiful as one expects Racine to be, but not in any way close to my love for his later work, Phedre. Cleofile was a pale precursor of Phedre.

  With the coronation, there were fetes and balls and plays almost every night, and we gave the play a dozen times to thunderous applause that I felt I had not quite earned. I could manage the mannered and exaggerated diction necessary to play Racine only because it was not supposed to be
quite believable. I did a very good job of being a grand actress pretending to be an Indian princess. I should have made an abominable Indian princess.

  Once, I saw Michel. I was arriving at Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angely's house, wrapped warmly in a cloak with a fur collar, waiting as a lady should for the line of carriages to move so that I might get out near the door where the ice along the curb had been melted. I was part of the evening's entertainment, but only in the most respectable way. Delacroix, who was playing my brother Taxilus, and I were to do a scene after dinner by way of a change from the usual harpists and girls on the pianoforte. We were doing Alexander the Great, and also a scene from Racine's Andromache as an encore.

  It was late, and dinner had ended, though the windows of the house were blazing with the light of a hundred candles reflecting on the ice that had accumulated on the topiary trees outside. Delacroix was opposite me, running over his lines as Orestes. I glanced out the window and there was Michel.

  He stood at the bottom of the steps wearing a dark coat with a fox fur collar, reaching up to help a lady down. She was petite and dark, with a white dress ornamented with crystals beneath a white cloak trimmed in fur, and her delicate white kid slippers gave her no purchase on the slippery steps. He took her arm and she clutched the rail with the other hand, stepping carefully on the ice. The candles illuminated his broad forehead, one strand of red hair escaping from his hat.

  It went through me like a dart, seizing my chest so I could hardly breathe. This, then, must be Aglae Auguié. His wife. The Empress' goddaughter. She was twenty-two, tiny and fragile looking.

  And there was Michel, so close I could see his breath steaming in the winter air.

  In a moment he helped her up into the carriage, folding in the hem of her cloak as though he were the footman. He straightened, then, looking back at the door and about, as though he had heard someone call his name.