The General's Mistress (35 page)

He ran his hand over my golden hair, a strange and rueful expression on his face. “You are running far ahead of me. I think there are not any Amazons. But if there were, I am sure you would be one.”

He did not know the half of it, I thought. He did not know Charles. He did not know how thoroughly I could be him.

Instead of a hot retort, I put my arms around him, feeling the solidity, as though he were the realest thing in the world. “Love me again,” I said.

His eyebrows rose. “Politics is an aphrodisiac?”

“Yes,” I said, and drew him down to me.

Fama Volat

I
n the morning he was awake a few minutes after five, something I was less than enthusiastic about, since we had not slept until after two. I was generally an early riser, but this was ridiculous. I moaned and pulled the sheet back over my head, not stopping to consider that he was the head of state, and that it was probably a severe breach of etiquette.

He laughed at me and hurried into the adjoining dressing room. The sounds of very noisy bathing drifted out to me. It was impossible to sleep through all the splashing and talking with his valet and the singing of random Italian comedy songs. By the time he returned, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, wrapped in the sheet. He wore a cream-colored dressing gown and was toweling his hair dry.

“Do you never sleep?” I asked.

“As little as possible,” Bonaparte said, shaking out his hair like a dog. “Whatever is taken from sleep is added to real life. And there are never enough hours for everything.”

His valet followed him in, and I pulled the sheet more tightly around me. Bonaparte ignored it, and continued talking while being handed smallclothes and breeches, shirt and waistcoat and stockings. “And now especially there is no time. I have written the Austrian Emperor to begin negotiations, and we must gain as much as we can before a treaty is proposed.”

“Why?” I asked.

“To keep what we have won.” He looked at me sharply, in
the midst of shrugging into his coat. “Politics, Madame. It may interest you to follow it.”

I flushed, still wrapped in the sheet. My dress was on the floor some little distance away.

The valet picked up the wet towels and carried them out.

Bonaparte walked over to me, lifted my chin, and smiled. “I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow, so I won’t see you again now. I will be interested in seeing what you do with money and liberty both.”

“I am sorry to hear that, sir,” I said, rather stiffly. I had not expected more. I had not expected anything of longer standing. But I felt a real reluctance to say good-bye that had less to do with money than I had thought. I wanted to know more. My fascination was not quenched.

He picked up my dress and brought it to me, smoothing out the folds and tucking a bulging purse into it.
“Fama volat,”
he said.

I took it from him. “Do you always spend so much money on women?”

He lifted the dress and held it for me to duck into it. My head emerged. He gave me a half smile. “It stimulates the economy of France.”

“Ah,” I said, slipping my arms into the sleeves, “I’m glad to know that’s what it stimulates.”

Bonaparte laughed. “Good-bye, Madame. I will see you again.” He did up the buttons on my dress with deft fingers, planted a kiss at the base of my neck, and went off about his work whistling, all before six in the morning. I watched from the hall as his trim form went down the wide marble staircase, his cocked hat in his hand.

I went back to my lodgings and fell sound asleep almost before my head hit the pillow.

I
t was late afternoon when I awoke, almost time to be at the theater. I got up, splashed my face with tepid water, changed clothes, and ran. I made the curtain, but it was a rather breathless Sébastien in the first scene.

Isabella passed me in the wings during the first comic interlude with the servants. “Are you all right?” she whispered, her long purple wrapper drifting around her trailing feathers. She was about to go on as the beauty who sought the hero’s hand and would be sadly disappointed.

I nodded. “He was fine. But he leaves for France tomorrow.”

Isabella rolled her eyes. “Well, a small windfall is better than none.”

“Yes,” I said. And of course it was. While the money wasn’t enough to set me up in style, it was more than enough to live on for a few months. Enough to rent an apartment of my own when I got back to Paris, without having to worry how I should pay for it for a while. By the time the money ran out, I would have had time to find a new patron. Or succeed as a great lady of the theater. Or something.

T
he next morning I went in search of Colonel Meynier at the Hotel Battachio, where he had said he was staying. I arrived not a moment too soon. Meynier was in the courtyard saddling a lean ebony gelding, its tail clubbed with green ribbons.

“Madame St. Elme!” He took both my hands in his and kissed each, his pleasure in seeing me evident on his face. “I hoped you would come before I left.”

“Where are you going?” I asked. “I thought you would be in Milan for a while.”

“The First Consul is going to Paris,” he said. “And I am with Bonaparte’s staff, as I told you.”

“You leave today?”

“Almost this moment,” he said. “I had hoped for the pleasure of your company at dinner, but I fear that we will have to postpone that reunion.”

“We will,” I said. “And I am terribly sorry. I had no idea you would be leaving so soon.”

“Nor did I,” Meynier said. “But Bonaparte moves fast. If you have an hour to prepare, you’re lucky.” He grinned at me, and took hold of the reins. “Do you mind if I tell my friend Ney where you are? He thought you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.”

I felt my heart quicken. “Surely he would not wonder so much.”

“He might,” Meynier said. With one smooth motion he mounted. “May I ask a personal question? Are you presently . . . engaged?”

“No,” I said, and hoped he didn’t see the flush rising in my cheeks. “No, I am alone at present.”

Meynier bowed from the saddle. “Then until we meet again, Madame.”

I
did not really expect anything to come of it. I did not expect him to write to his friend and tell him of a chance meeting, and still less for Ney to write to me. It was nearly a month later when the letter came.

We were still in Milan.
The Comical Romance
was still a great hit, but we had been obliged to learn a new history,
Antony and Cleopatra,
so that we could leaven our standard fare with
something new for officers who had now seen
Alexander in Asia
half a dozen times.

Of course, we were the only play in town in French, so they might have seen it twenty times yet, but it helped the box office to expand a bit. Isabella was a lovely Cleopatra, all melting warmth. I was her handmaiden. I had all the sharp lines, which I thought was interesting, if not quite as I imagined the character.

The letter came right before the opening curtain on a sweltering night in July. I considered waiting to open it, but I didn’t. I couldn’t go on not knowing.

His handwriting was slanted and legible, like a schoolboy with a ledger that he would be graded on.

17 Messidor, Year VIII

Dear Madame St. Elme,

I have had the Pleasure of Mail from Colonel Meynier, who is known to us both. He said that he had greeted you in Milan. I am happy to hear that you are well. He said that you were the very picture of Health. I am glad the climate of Italy agrees with you. He said that it did. I am pleased that you suffer no ill effects and that you are comfortable.

He suggests that I should write to you and renew our Acquaintance, distant as it may be. And that moreover I should tell you some Interesting Military Anecdotes that are Revealing of my Character. I am uncertain of the wisdom of this, but I bow to his Superior Understanding of Women.

We are currently in Munich, having won at the Field of Oberhausen on 9 Messidor, and marched into the City without further Resistance. The Bavarians, for their part, are not eager to support the Austrians, and do not seem Dismayed at the Change in their Fortune.

The enemy flies whenever we are near. We have taken more than 20,000 prisoners in these Late Months, and widespread desertion makes the Fearful Plight of the Austrians worse. Ulm, which had only a weak garrison, surrendered Without A Shot, to my satisfaction. I hope that Victory, which is with our arms everywhere, will soon end this Struggle and give us Peace. Then I shall hasten home to Enjoy Her Blessings.

Your Obedient Servant,

Michel Ney

I
read and reread the letter in my dressing room. I just had time to tuck it in my bosom as I heard my cue. I hurried onstage.

“My dear lady,” I said to Isabella-as-Cleopatra, “must you give this Roman such credit?” I knelt beside her throne and spread my hands. “Antony is not Caesar, and the gods did not sire him.”

Isabella looked down at me, her voice scathing. “How can you know whom the gods begot, you who were gotten on a slave? Antony is the noblest man who ever walked the Earth, and into his hands I place my safety.”

“Dear lady,” I said, “he is a hero, of this I have no doubt. But the fire of genius is not his, to command where others fail, to win love and renown together. He is not Fortune’s darling, as Caesar was.”

She rose, gathering her robes about her, one hand opening to the audience. “Antony is true and brave, and none gainsay it.” She swept from the stage.

I looked round, still kneeling, into the footlights. “He is not Caesar,” I said, dropping my voice. “Lady, I fear for you. I fear for us all.”