Chapter 4

Marseille

1794

THE BUONAPARTE BROTHERS CONTINUED TO appear regularly at our home. They were nothing if not men of their word.

Maman complained of a headache all that afternoon, so overwhelmed was she by the events of the recent days. “What a disagreeable fellow, the younger one,” she said after they departed. “Joseph is blustery, but at least he has a certain charm. Gregarious. But that younger one is surly in his demeanor and uncouth in his manners. But I suppose we mustn’t spurn his friendship….” She sighed. “He’ll move on, soon enough, to some other port, if he’s truly the general he claims to be. Soldiers always move on.” She took to her bed for the rest of the day, and since Nicolas hadn’t yet returned from the workhouses, it was only Julie and me to receive Joseph and Napoleone when they called after supper.

It wasn’t improper, given that Maman was at home and we were a group of four in the salon, surrounded by servants buzzing throughout the house, and given the fact that Julie, six years my senior, carried herself with the decorum of someone twice her age.

“You are welcome, citizens.” Julie stepped naturally into the role of hostess, beckoning the men into the salon, where the last rays of the long evening mixed with candlelight to give the large room a cozy glow. “Maman is not receiving this evening, but she begs us to offer her sincere apologies, and her blessing that we may receive you both on her behalf.”

I sat beside my sister on the silk settee, trying my best not to smile too broadly. It was all so unexpected, so dizzyingly exhilarating to have these men suddenly paying such ardent attention to us. They’d offered themselves as protectors, and yet now they seemed as intent on becoming suitors. My first suitors, I thought, my mind swirling with the languid evening breeze. I’d dressed with care before dinner—hoping that, in fact, Napoleone would return as he’d promised—selecting a flattering gown of soft lilac muslin, my brunette curls swept loosely back from my face and trimmed with pearls. Julie, I noted, had also dressed with care, selecting for herself a gown of pale green.

“Napoleone is unpleasant—I have to agree with Maman on that,” Julie had said earlier as we dressed together. I didn’t feel that way at all, but I didn’t say so aloud. What she and Maman called surly, I found intriguing. What she considered uncouth, I considered a refreshing candor, a disregard for meaningless form and custom. It was funny, a bit odd even, that yesterday I had felt so shy under the gaze and attention of Joseph, and yet the following day, I longed to see more of his brother. Napoleone.

“But Joseph, he’s awfully kind, is he not?” Julie continued. I turned my gaze sideways toward her. It was so unlike my sister to prattle about a man, to linger before the long mirror, fussing over the fall of her hair. Never, as long as I’d known her, had practical and proud Julie ever sought or welcomed the attentions of a gentleman caller—and there had been several interested suitors, given the size of her dowry.

And yet here she stood now, looking every inch the coquette, an unmistakable flush tinting her cheeks as she welcomed our guests, and I was certain it had little to do with the warm evening air.

“Can we offer you something to drink?” She leaned her head to the side, speaking to Joseph. My sister and I requested sherry, and the footman brought Napoleone and Joseph each a glass of port. Napoleone nodded a clipped thanks to the servant before his gaze swept the room, and I got the sense that he was capable of seeing things—noticing details with his intent green-eyed gaze—that none of the rest of us did.

The night was a pleasant one, and we opened the doors that led out to the terrace, where the sounds of the late-spring evening seeped in from the darkened gardens. “Might I suggest we take these outside?” Napoleone raised his glass. “The request of a soldier, you’ll have to forgive me. I’m always more comfortable out of doors than inside these posh drawing rooms.”

“I thought perhaps we could have some music,” Julie said, gesturing toward the pianoforte. Diligent in her practicing, she was an admirably skilled player. I smirked, guessing that she wished to show this off to a certain older brother in our midst.

“But the sounds of a southern evening provide an accompaniment far more agreeable than anything we humans can produce,” Napoleone said. My sister frowned; a gentleman should have picked up on the preference of his female hostess and quickly capitulated, but Napoleone either didn’t understand her hint or didn’t care to oblige it. “Joseph, shall we?” Napoleone gestured toward the terrace once more.

Julie blinked away her frown only when Joseph offered his arm to escort her toward the door. “Indeed.” She nodded, slipping her arm through his, her music forgotten.

Napoleone offered me his arm, and I accepted it with a checked smile, wondering if he could feel the slight tremble in my frame. We walked out to the terrace in silence. “It is a good match, is it not?” Napoleone leaned closer to me, gesturing toward our older siblings, their backs turned to us and already making their way farther into the gardens. “I told Joseph that he would be well-advised to go after the elder sister.” Napoleone said it with complete candor. “I have a knack for matters such as these. Probably because I understand human nature so well.”

I looked at Napoleone, words evading me as I studied him closer. His features were delicate, his eyes alert and almond-shaped. His skin had a warm, honeyed complexion, the result of both his Italian heritage and a lifetime spent in the southern sun.

Was Napoleone di Buonaparte handsome? Perhaps not conventionally so—his frame was too narrow, his hair too long and unkempt. Though he kept his uniform immaculate, there was something unpolished, even a bit feral about his bearing. And yet, looking into his eyes, I found his features to be striking and expressive; I decided that his face was one that I would not easily grow tired of studying.

Realizing in that moment that I was staring too brazenly, I looked away, back toward my sister. Her figure glided along beside Joseph’s into the dark evening, head tipped toward her companion in some conversation to which we were not privy.

“His agreeableness pairs well with her sincerity. And their ages match up better,” Napoleone said matter-of-factly. I turned back toward him. His gaze was direct, determined, unabashedly so. “As do ours.”

I felt my heart leap in my chest. I broke from his eye contact, staring instead around the terrace. The smell of jasmine floated on the night air, its perfume intoxicating, as a ship from the nearby harbor let loose its low, sonorous drone. Napoleone guided me off the terrace, and we stepped onto the soft grass.

“Do you play?” he asked.

“Pardon?”

“Piano. Your sister clearly wished to show her skills at the piano.” So then, he had noticed. “How about you?”

“I play…though not very well.”

“Then you must practice,” he said.

I let out a small puff of a laugh, answering, “I suppose you are right.”

He guided us, side by side, along a narrow path bordered by low shrubbery. “Mediocrity is never a desirable destination,” he added. “At least, not when practice might transform mediocrity to competence, or even skill.”

I nodded, considering my answer. I prefer drawing, I thought. Rather than the hours of technical practice required to master an instrument, I could take my parchments and chalks or watercolors to the seaside and draw for hours, sketching with only the colors of the landscape and my instincts as my guides. I wanted to share this fact of myself with Napoleone, and I was about to do so, but he continued before I could speak: “Of course, in some matters, all the effort in the world cannot make something of nothing. Like if one is simply bereft of intelligence. Or beauty. Or character. But even in matters such as those—intelligence, appearance, strength of character—a bit of effort applied might go a long way toward rectifying nature’s deficiencies.”

He was speaking so quickly, so decisively. “Joseph is a good man,” he said.

“He does seem kind,” I agreed.

“Your sister could not do better. He is kind. Agreeable. For most of our childhood he longed to be a priest. Until he learned what a hardship it would be never to marry. So now he longs to be a farmer instead.”

I couldn’t envision it—Joseph di Buonaparte tending olive trees in a vast field, sweating alone under a hot southern sun. No, a man like that belonged in a city, surrounded by crowds, flirting with the ladies and charming the men.

“He’s nothing like me. He has no desire to be the soldier,” Napoleone said. I enjoyed the velvety sound of his voice. I liked the way his lips rolled over the words, his accent foreign and pleasing. He made his sounds long and loose, his tongue as lilting with his vowels as the Mediterranean waves that lapped against the shores of his island home.

“He is older than you, isn’t he?” I wondered why Joseph seemed to take his orders from Napoleone, if their birth order was what it appeared to be.

“By one year,” Napoleone said, “but that has never meant anything.”

“Oh?”

“No.” He shook his head. “When Papa died, Mamma called me to his deathbed. She took my hand in hers, her face dry of tears. She looked me in the eye and said: ‘Napoleone, you are the head of the family now.’ That’s the way it’s always been between Joseph and me.”

“How old were you when that happened?”

“Sixteen,” he answered.

Sixteen. My age.

“I began my career as a soldier after that, graduating from the École Militaire here in France, finishing two years of study in just one year. I knew it would fall on me to take care of them all. Not only Mamma, but my sisters and brothers, too. Even Joseph.”

“Was it always what you wanted—a soldier’s life?” I asked, noticing the eager quality of my voice. I was fascinated by this young man, this Napoleone di Buonaparte, whose presence loomed so much larger over the space around him than his lean stature would have indicated.

“There was no other way for me,” he answered. “It was clear from the very beginning: I was made for battle. In fact, I was conceived in battle.”

“Oh?” I was highly aware of the way the bare flesh of my arm pressed against his own, covered under his uniform jacket.

“Papa and Mamma were both Corsican rebel fighters, part of the forces that in those days were encamped in the mountains, fighting against French rule of our island. I was conceived up in those hills. Mamma and Papa kept fighting until the very end. When it was my time to come, Mamma barely made it down from the hills and into our house, and she had no time to get to the birthing bed. I arrived on the rug by the front door, as she always tells me.”

I gasped, lifting my hand to my mouth, grateful for the dark evening that hid my flush. “I’ve never been patient,” he added, and I could tell from the way he said it that he smiled.

“And so you were born to a soldier in Corsica.”

“Two Corsican soldiers. Mamma is as fierce as Papa.”

“Two Corsican soldiers. But now you’re in France.”

“Yes. Papa eventually made peace with the French government on the island and we settled back on our family farm in Ajaccio. But I never lost the desire to fight. As a young boy, I would read everything I could on the great heroes—Julius Caesar, Alexander, Hannibal.”

I nodded, vaguely familiar with those names, if not with the specific feats carried out by each of them. They were names of war. Names of men who had fought, long ago, just as men still fought in our day.

“Someday I will have my name in that list,” he said.

I assumed this to be in jest, and I laughed, but I cut myself short when he continued to speak, with no hint of humor in his voice: “Only I won’t hide like Caesar or Alexander did, behind the safety of my men and the lines. I will lead from the front, within the range of bullet fire.”

“That sounds dangerous,” I said. I had lost track of Julie in the large, shadowed gardens, but I didn’t mind. Nor did she seem particularly concerned with acting as my chaperone.

“It is. But that’s the idea. Fortune favors the bold. One doesn’t win glory by hiding behind the lines. Why, during the Siege of Toulon, a British sailor ran a pike through my left knee in hand-to-hand combat.”

I gasped, looking instinctively toward his narrow thigh, noting how he didn’t appear to walk with a limp.

“Did that stop me? No. I killed the man just the same. Then I took a bloodied ramrod out of the hands of a dead man beside me and fired the cannon that would break the British chokehold on the port.”

I blinked, my stomach going slightly queasy at such talk. And yet, I was undeniably intrigued. “But…how? How could you focus on the siege with a gash from a pike in your leg?”

He paused, considering his answer. “I have an extraordinary mind.” I supposed that this, too, was meant as a jest, coming as such a flagrant declaration of his own aptitude. “I mean no humor in it,” he said, as if perceiving my thoughts. “I do have a singular mind. I always have. In addition to my memory, I have this ability to be exceptionally focused. I can really only explain it like the drawers in a cupboard; I can open one drawer, deal with the matter to be found there, regardless of how large or small, and then set that aside, close that drawer, and move on to the next one.”

We paused now, standing before the fountain in the backyard, its water bubbling in a soft gurgle, shimmering with a thousand fleeting diamonds as the moon shone down over its fractured surface. I turned to stare at the shadowed face of the man before me, this Napoleone di Buonaparte.

He returned my stare, his olive eyes alight in the glow of the evening. “That is how I know what needs to be done, and I do it.”

I swallowed, unsure of whether he still spoke about his skills as a general, or perhaps something else. He said, “That is how I am able to focus, now, on my conversation with you, while I am in the middle of planning a major military operation.”

“You…you are?” I said, trying to keep apace with his thoughts, even if he did make me feel as though I was caught standing on my back foot.

“Yes, that’s why I was in such a hurry to get to the government offices this morning. I’m awaiting word from Paris. I’ve proposed a plan to unite the Army of Italy with the Army of the Alps and march into the Italian territories. After we’ve conquered those provinces, we will take Spain. It can be done. It should be done, for the glory of France. I’m the one who can do it; I await only the response from the Committee of Public Safety.”

It was quite unusual to hear a man speak this way, laying forth the plans for such a vast military campaign—and, indeed, speaking about the very people who made decisions for our nation—in such a casual manner. “But until I hear from them,” he continued, “I am stationed here. And I am going to court you, Desiree Clary.” He said it as a statement, a matter of fact. As I was quickly learning, Napoleone di Buonaparte did not ask permission, nor did he make requests. He declared his intent and then he saw to it that his will became reality.

I was aware of some line that we were approaching. Or rather, Napoleone was approaching it, marching determinedly toward it, pulling me along. Did I wish for Napoleone di Buonaparte to court me? Yes, I did. Did it matter that I wished for it? Probably not. As I would come to realize, Napoleone was going to do what Napoleone decided to do. Those of us who occupied his orbit would soon learn that he had a pull to overpower all others; any challenge to his plans would only sharpen the blade of his will.

“But you are wondering why I’ve chosen you,” he said, observing me, his fixed gaze probing my features, his eyes apparently seeing directly into the realm of my own swirling mind. I nodded, realizing that it was futile to try to hide anything from the inquiry of his stare.

“You are good, Desiree. You are earnest, you are pure. Do you realize how refreshing that is to a soldier? How rare that is in our world of revolution and discord? You are so many of the things I am not. I know myself, and I know what I need. And I need someone like you.”

He took my hand in his, and I felt the ripple that passed from his flesh into my own. He smiled at me, a look as full with intention and purpose as it was with joy, and he raised my hand high in his own, gesturing skyward. My gaze inevitably followed the arc of our grip, and I stared up at a dark southern sky sewn with stars.

Then, as if on cue—as if the heavens themselves obeyed the commands of Napoleone di Buonaparte, the twenty-four-year-old Corsican refugee, the Boy General in the French army, a man with a plan to conquer much of Europe—a star careened across the sky, its tail scorching a crescent through the black firmament. Napoleone leaned closer, his whisper skittering along the rippled skin of my neck. “You see that?” he asked. “You see that flame that flies past, spreading light across its path? I am not a romantic man. I cannot offer you Joseph’s constant chatter or easy laughter. I won’t compose you poetry or woo you with sweet words. But come with me, Desiree, and you see how that star flies? You shall have the chance to do the same.”