Authors: Marcus Sedgwick
Even before the Elbans knew he was coming, there’d been riots against French rule. Yet, when he’d stepped onto the quayside in May he’d won the crowd over in under an hour. Six months later and they loved him, yet even in this success there was danger, and Napoleon knew from his spies that his ultimate jailers, the allied powers, were planning a more permanent solution for him. There was some talk of exile to some remote British rock in the South Atlantic, while other informers whispered over a drink that his fate lay in a short drop with a rope around his neck.
Napoleon had laughed at that, and his spy had choked on his drink. “If they can’t give me the honour of the guillotine,” he said, “I won’t give them the satisfaction of dangling for them.” He fished inside his tunic and pulled out a small black taffeta bag held on a thin gold chain about his neck. “I’ve always had this with me, and if the time comes to use it, then use it I shall.”
The spy had gawped at the bag, his thoughts racing at exactly what hideous poison lay within.
No, thought Napoleon, it was not exactly imprisonment to rule over twenty thousand peasants from a well-appointed house, with a stipend of two million francs, and with a court containing, among others, a treasurer, four chamberlains, a military governor, a doctor, a chemist, a butler, eight chefs, two valets, two equerries, twenty-seven stable hands, a director of music, two rather pretty singers, two washerwomen, a porter, footmen, and various young servants, even if one of them was the dreadful Mathilde. It was not jail, he knew that, for he had experienced true imprisonment: two weeks in the Chateau d’Antibes in the wake of Robespierre’s downfall.
Thoughts of Robespierre begat memories of the days of blood, and his mind drifted back to the revolution. The revolution had given him everything. With the old order swept away, a man like him, with a decisive, military mind, had risen to the top so very easily. He took the revolution for what it was; he neither loved it nor hated it: he had used it.
And yet, as fortunes unwound and people’s stars rose and fell, he had tasted the best of it and the worst. There had been so much death, so many men sent to the guillotine, and for what? For ideals? For noble causes? No! For treachery and fear. He saw things like no one else did, that many executions were so very pointless, but in those days, before he became First Consul, there was nothing he could do, except watch with the crowd as men made their way up the short flight of steps to the high, hanging blade. Men like the King himself, Louis; poets and writers like Chénier and de Gouges; men like Saint-Just and Robespierre and Danton, who had started the thing in the first place; and truly great men, like the genius scientist Lavoisier. Napoleon remembered what Lagrange, the mathematician, had said: “It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it in a century.”
Too bad. There were many headless corpses in the cemeteries of Paris.
Napoleon Bonaparte rose from his steaming hot bath, an addiction he still fed, and pulled the bell rope. It would take at least five minutes for either of his ageing valets to make it from the servants’ quarters up to his rooms, and he contemplated his naked self in the full-length mirror in his dressing room. It was not a superb sight, and the corners of his mouth turned down ever so slightly. It was true he had lost some weight recently, and for what he had in mind for his future, that was just as well. If he was to command loyalty and passion in his men once again, he would need to cut a dashing figure; and with his lack of height the last thing he could afford was to be overweight. Still, there was a way to go yet: a few months, perhaps; he would have to speak to the chef. He would need to spend more time riding. Then maybe he’d recapture the looks of his youth.
But, oh God, his hair was thinner than ever. Once, it had been long and flowing; now the remaining strands clung to his head like thin black cotton. He reached for the small green bottle of hair tonic and began to massage a good dollop into his scalp.
There was a brief tap at the door, and the elder of the valets crept into the room and, apparently unmoved by the corpulent nudity before him, began to lay out items of clothing for the former Emperor of the French. Napoleon ignored the man, but then was surprised to realize that the old stone was actually speaking to him.
“Your Imperial Majesty, I am to inform you that we have received word that your visitor will be arriving tonight.”
“What? What? So soon?”
“Yes, sir. This evening. Shall it please your majesty to receive the monsieur for dinner?”
Napoleon spoke to the room, not to the man. “Indeed. It shall. It shall please me very much.”
“Very good, sir. And may I inform the footmen and the butler of the gentleman’s name?”
“No,” hissed Napoleon. “You may not.”
“Sir?”
“He has no name here. Do you understand me? No name.”
The old valet nodded. He knew better than to do anything other than back out of the room, still nodding, bowing as low as his old bones would let him.
No name, though in Napoleon’s mind the monsieur had only one name: Salvation.
But as the day passed, it looked unlikely that Monsieur Salvation would arrive that evening, as the weather turned up a petulant storm that threatened to keep all but the largest ships at bay.
Napoleon sulked. He’d lost interest in Elba already. It was a rock in the Mediterranean, of little consequence, not a major trading post as he’d been led to believe. The people might love him but they refused to pay their taxes; his retinue, his Lilliputian court and his guardsmen were costing him a fortune; and there was no sign of his two million francs from “King” Louis. The allies had set up the puppet king to rule in his place; surely the fop wouldn’t have the nerve to go against British orders and not pay Napoleon his money? To think he’d left lands worth a hundred and sixty million francs to come to this crap hole!
In a fug of unhappiness he did what he always did these days and called for his doctor, the treasurer, the grand marshal of the palace, and a pack of cards. They played vingt-et-un all morning. Napoleon cheated terribly, everyone pretended not to notice, he lost anyway, and then sulked even worse.
“Pah!” he exclaimed, turning the elegant card table upside down with one swing of his left riding boot. Three pairs of eyes rolled in their sockets and then watched the retreating back of the “Emperor”, who stole off into the depths of the house.
“He needs a woman,” declared the grand marshal, picking up cards.
“He’s had too many of those,” said the treasurer, thinking of the expense.
“What he needs,” said the doctor, “is a war.”
The other two looked at him, slightly appalled.
“It’s all he knows how to do well,” the doctor said, shrugging to excuse himself. It wasn’t
his
fault the man was a maniac.
Napoleon’s way led him blind into the domestic quarters of the servants, where he joylessly pinched the bottom of the prettiest chambermaid, who screamed because she knew she was expected to, not because she felt like it, and then he found himself standing in the kitchens. It was mid-morning; there was no one around, but various ingredients for the day’s meals lay at hand: fresh bread from the market, some jugs of milk still warm from whatever fetid cow had been assaulted that morning, some palm-sized fish that from their smell were not as fresh as the fishmonger had claimed, eggs and fruit and vegetables. He smiled, then, hearing someone coming, slipped something into his pocket and stole out into the courtyard, wiping the smile from his face.
He hurried through the rain and into the house by the main entrance, sweeping up the steps.
“Bertrand!” he called. “Bertrand! Where is that man?”
Footmen began scurrying around, and within minutes Napoleon’s most loyal aide, the Comte Henri-Gratien Bertrand, was hurrying down from his room.
“Sir?” he said, brushing his greying hair back over his head with a furtive gesture and tucking his shirt tails in.
Napoleon seemed not to know or care. “Walk with me, Henri,” he said. “My heart is heavy. All this waiting – I cannot bear this inaction! It is death.”
Napoleon threw a brotherly arm round Bertrand’s shoulder, an unfamiliar gesture on his part, but Bertrand knew better than to question anything. They walked around the house twice and then turned into the drawing room, where the doctor and his friends were still playing cards.
“Ah, gentlemen!” Napoleon declared as they came up to watch the game. “Bertrand and I were just discussing this awful weather. I fear it will last all week, but Bertrand assures me it will pass by this evening. What do you think?”
“Oh,” said the treasurer, a dimwit, and even shorter than Napoleon. “Well, I … that is…”
“It may continue,” pronounced the grand marshal with great deliberation, “or then again, it may not.”
The doctor sighed.
“Quite so, quite so,” said Napoleon, “but whatever, this atmosphere has given me dreadful rheum.”
The doctor sighed even louder. “Dreadful
what
?” he asked.
“Rheum! My nose. Sniffles and what all. And I have come down without a kerchief. Bertrand, lend me yours, will you?”
“Hmm, yes, of course,” said Bertrand, who, rummaging in his pocket, pulled out not only a crumpled handkerchief, but a small smelly fish that fell neatly onto the middle of the card table.
Napoleon began to make strange strangled snuffling sounds, which is what he did to show he was laughing. The doctor sighed, the grand marshal rolled his eyes, and only Bertrand had the sense to start laughing too.
“Oh, very good, sir,” he said. “Very funny. Indeed.”
It wasn’t quite enough, and Napoleon stomped away again in a worse mood than ever.
“Bloody, bloody hell,” said Bertrand. ‘What are we going to do? That man once ruled half the known world…”
“Perhaps,” said the doctor, as if he knew more than he did, “this mysterious visitor will lift his spirits?”
Bertrand turned to the rain-lashed window. “Perhaps. If he ever gets here.”
“Who is he anyway?”
“I don’t know. Napoleon refers to him only as ‘L’.”
“What kind of bloody name is that?”
Bertrand almost smiled. “It’s the name of someone who doesn’t exist.”
But that evening, the rain suddenly vanished as if by an act of God, and the stars were reflected on the bay, which was as calm as a bird bath. Napoleon stood at his window, gazing out into the darkness, when the elder valet appeared.
“He will be here tonight, sir. But rather late.”
“Very well, very well. Get them to put out a cold supper. Light a fire. And then everyone can go to bed.”
He said it as if he were saying “Go to hell”, but the valet merely bowed, grateful for the rest of the evening off.
Two hours later, the Emperor of Elba sat in near darkness in the long dining room, at one head of the table. Before him a place was set, matched at the far end of the table. Between the two plates lay fifteen feet of cold cuts, jellies, egg dishes, cheeses, breads, wine and water.
He was thinking about his women. His wives, Joséphine and Marie Louise, now both gone; and Marie Walewska, his Polish mistress, perhaps the only one who’d ever really loved him.
There was a tap at the door. A footman opened it without waiting to be called, and then ducked out of sight, leaving a tall caped figure standing in the shadows of the doorway.
Napoleon rose slowly to his feet. “So,” he said. “It is true.” Then a doubt crossed his mind. “I cannot see you there. Come in. Come and sit down.”
The figure moved into the room, automatically closing the door behind him. Napoleon noticed the action. Good! This is a man with a cautious mind, he thought.
The figure moved slowly down the room, passing the five-sticked candelabra in the middle of the table, giving the Emperor a chance to see if he’d been fooled. He made a quick calculation in his head. My God! Had it been twenty years? That would make him…
“Seventy? No! Seventy-one.”
The figure stopped in its slow progress along the length of the room. “Correct.”
His voice was as Napoleon remembered, precise and economic, though you could hear the extra years in it now.
“Please,” Napoleon said, not a word he had much use for, “please, sit down.”
“Thank you, I shall, for I am an old man.”
“You were old when they killed you.”
“Only six years older than you are now. Does that feel old to you?” There was bitterness in the man’s voice; anger at the waste. “I was at my prime. Not physically. But my work, my great work, was just beginning.”
Napoleon felt a shiver travel down his spine. “Lavoisier,” he breathed, “it is truly you.”
“At your service.”
“What did the judge say at your trial? The old fool! Something about ‘We have no need—’”
“‘—of genius.’ Yes, I have heard those words in my mind every day. Every day, for twenty years, Napoleon. But here I am. And in all those twenty years, I never had the chance to thank you. I suppose I should.”
Napoleon felt the remark cut him. “You suppose?” he said. “Most men would be grateful for their lives. Are you not?”
“For my life, yes. Thank you. But what kind of life is worth living? I have spent twenty years on the run; I have lived in sixteen different countries in that time. I have not put one foot in France since the day after my ‘execution’. Your man smuggled me to the coast, to England first. It was clear I could not stay there long. Then to Ireland. My God! What an awful wet place that was. Two years! Then back to the Continent, always moving when the rumours started again, heading into more and more remote regions. And my work! Once, I had three laboratories in Paris. For these twenty years I have dragged my laboratory behind me in horse and cart, through the mud and snows of Europe. What have I done in that time, apart from spend the fortune you sent me away with? Almost nothing! So, my Emperor, you will forgive me if sometimes I wish that I had died under the guillotine that day, instead of that poor stooge you disguised as me.”
He fell silent, the rapid fire of his speech having spent itself, and coughed gently into an old silk handkerchief.