CHAPTER 9

The moment I set foot off the Sensible a crowd surrounded me. “Citizeness Beauharnais?” asked those who did not know me. “Citizeness Beauharnais!” cried those who recognized me, their eyes lighting up at the sight of me despite my bedraggled, woebegone appearance with my crude patchwork gown, straggling, unwashed hair, and bare feet.

Suddenly I found myself being hefted up high onto the shoulders of strong men and carried in triumph to the inn. All around me people waved and cheered and blew kisses and threw flowers at me. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why, unless it had something to do with my escape from Martinique. But how could they have known about that? Still, I smiled and waved back; I didn’t want to appear standoffish or rude.

Scipion trailed along behind us, the lone frowning face in the jubilant crowd, with Hortense clutched protectively against his chest and Fortune scampering along beside him, barking and nipping at the ankles of anyone who threatened to tread on him.

* * *

At the inn I was given the best room. The first thing I asked for was a bath. A tub was brought without delay and placed by the fire along with perfumed soap and towels, and a hearty meal and strengthening red wine were laid out on a table nearby.

An assortment of dresses, shoes, hats, and all the other garments necessary to equip the wife of the Revolution’s brightest shining star—Alexandre Beauharnais (he had doffed the aristocratic “de” along with his title)—lay spread out upon the bed, most in the requisite revolutionary red, white, and blue.

There was also a bound copy of Alexandre’s speeches, which I found so boring I regretted in years to come that I had not saved it to use as a sort of literary sleeping potion on all the long, restless nights that lay before me.

Alexandre was now the darling of Paris. With his blond hair tied back with a black ribbon, natural and unpowdered, in his austere black suit and plain white neck cloth, with a tricolor rosette blooming from his lapel, and steel instead of silver buckles on his black shoes, he shunned and distanced himself from his aristocratic birthright. Every time he stood up in the National Assembly, which now ruled the nation while the King and Queen languished in prison, people poured in, crushing and falling over one another, and spilling out of every door and window, to hear Alexandre’s rousing speeches. They hung on his every word as though their very lives depended on what he would say.

I attended one of his speeches once—once was enough. I was given a seat of honor away from the crush of worshipful humanity screaming his name. I must admit I was not impressed. I hid my yawns behind my fan and had to jab myself with a pin to stay awake. It seemed to me that he talked a great deal but never really said anything. But every time he uttered one of the magic words—liberty, fraternity, equality—the crowd stood up and cheered and threw their hats in the air. In the speech I heard, Alexandre must have used those words at least fifty times.

Afterward, crude, dirty men in the clothes of the common man—loose, ragged striped trousers, red carmagnole jackets, liberty caps, and clogs—carried him from the Assembly on their shoulders into the nearest tavern. Women followed, pelting him with flowers. While he sat inside and drank his beer and ate sausages, hundreds of people gathered in the street outside, swaying and holding hands, singing songs about liberty and brotherhood, hymns of freedom and equality.

I thought the whole spectacle was absurd, but I forced myself to keep smiling. I pretended that I was proud and adored my husband just as much as those people in the street did.

Even though we were estranged and parted, I, rather than whatever woman was his mistress of the moment—and apparently there were many mistresses and many moments, but who was I to judge?—was the one the public had chosen to adore alongside Alexandre.

* * *

I had left Paris deeply in debt and dependent on the generosity of aged gentlemen, but I had come back to find myself famous, celebrated, and adored, without my having done a single thing to deserve it. Everyone knew my name and wanted to know me. Everyone wanted to hear about my daring escape from the slave uprising in Martinique and to see my scars. My picture was sold on every street corner, often framed alongside Alexandre’s as though we still cared for each other; our estrangement never penetrated the public’s imagination. Women were avid to know, and then imitate, what I was wearing, and more men than I could count wanted to be nice to me and pay my bills. I was able to pay for a dancing master and music lessons for Hortense and a lovely white-haired spinster with steel-framed spectacles came twice a week to teach her to paint roses on teacups—her future husband would be so pleased! When I took up residence in an elegant white house on the rue Saint Dominique everyone wanted to be invited to dine at my table and dance in my ballroom. People climbed the fences just to pluck roses from my garden, to take home and press to have a souvenir of me. They fought just to touch my hand or the hem of my gown and to hear my soft, husky voice addressing them; men told me they could die happy now that they had heard me speak their name. If I dropped my handkerchief, rather than gallantly returning it someone would run away with it, calling back over their shoulder that they would cherish it like a holy relic until their dying day. When I rode out in my carriage handsome young men would unhitch the horses and put themselves into harness and pull me through the city streets, even out into the country for a picnic if that was where I wished to go. I loved being famous! And to think I owed it all to Alexandre!

Maybe Euphemia David had not been wrong after all? Alexandre was so popular perhaps the Parisians, even though they said they were done with kings and queens, would elect him their emperor and we would reconcile and he would cover me with diamonds and ardent kisses and set upon my head the crown of empress. I was certain I could see my future unfolding before me like the regal purple velvet carpet I would walk upon on the day of my coronation, leading right up to the altar where I would be, at long last, crowned. Every night, before sleep closed my eyes, I lay awake planning my coronation gown. It would have to be red, white, and blue of course, to pay homage to the revolution that had paved the way to my throne.

* * *

I was so caught up in my newfound fame that I forgot all about Scipion. I didn’t even have a chance to thank him and say good-bye before he sailed back to Martinique.

“Safe voyage and happy life, my love,” I whispered when I realized that he had gone.

I tried to be stoic, but I couldn’t quite manage it.

“Why didn’t he come to see me one last time?” I wailed to Fortune, and flung myself weeping onto my bed, supremely conscious of the fact that the one man I truly wanted was not there to share it with me.

For the first time, I had a tiny niggling feeling that perhaps fame wasn’t everything. I had the sudden sad realization that even if I pulled myself together, dried my tears, painted my face, and put on my prettiest gown and went out to dance and let the masses adore me, no matter how many people surrounded me I would still be lonely. I found such thoughts so disturbing that I quickly banished them from my mind.

I roused myself from my bed of sorrow and hastily scrawled a note to the midwife I knew who could void my womb of its mistake.

She was prompt in coming to my aid the next day. She had a sure and steady hand with her long bone knitting needle. I trusted her and was certain I would soon recover. After she had left me and I lay in bed, atop an old quilt to spare the fine linen sheets, with my womb racked by cramps and still seeping blood, I read the letter that had come that morning from Martinique.

Mama was alive, thank God, but Papa and Manette were dead, of disease and no will to live, not, thankfully, murdered in their beds or tortured by the slaves. There was nothing left but ashes, debts, and graves. Papa could leave nothing to me. What little he hadn’t squandered had gone up in flames. Mama was determined to rebuild Trois-Ilets, to manage it herself, and make it into the fine plantation it should have been all along. But it would take years before all the debts and loans were repaid and Trois-Ilets began to yield a true profit. I wished her luck, but that was all I could give her. I felt like I had suddenly become an orphan; the place I had always thought of as home wasn’t home anymore. There was no going back anymore, only forward. I had become a true daughter of Paris.