The General's Mistress (51 page)

A
few days later the news came that Richepanse had defeated the Austrians again, at Herdorf on 24 Frimaire, which people out here in the rest of the world called the 15th of December. The Austrians withdrew again toward Vienna, with Richepanse still in pursuit.

Ostensibly, it was to celebrate the season, not our victory, that the Duke decided to hold a ball at the Residence in Moreau’s honor. Michel, of course, was to go. I, of course, was not.

Madame Kuller could have gone and indeed was included verbally in the invitation, but it would be tempting fate for me to go. Moreau would expect to meet General Ney’s lady. Instead, Madame Kuller pled a heavy cold, and I had to spend several days stuck in the house.

Michel went to the ball. I saw him off with good grace, though admittedly it was with seething resentment that Moreau once again prevented me from doing what I liked. It would have been something to attend a duke’s ball at Michel’s side, in a palace all aglitter for Christmas.

I
t snowed in Munich on Christmas Eve. Michel did not want to impose on the Doctor and his family, who had a family dinner planned and would have felt that they must make room for half a dozen semi-welcome guests. Also, there were other officers quartered around town who were at loose ends, so Michel had Corbineau and Ruffin arrange a dinner for his officers at a guildhall rented out for the occasion. I was there, as were nearly all of the women who had traveled in the baggage train.

The guildhall was gorgeous, decorated with holly and evergreen, not that it needed any decoration over the lovely carvings and bright paint that adorned every inch of wood. There were candles everywhere. The scent of roast pork filled the hall, with apples and plenty besides. There were also several casks of brandy. I had no idea where Michel had found them.

“Moreau’s contribution to the feast,” Michel said quietly. “He’s at the Residence with the Duke, keeping Christmas.” Hardly a more secular man than Moreau had ever lived, but I’m sure he found it good politics.

Michel, on the other hand, was in his element, toasting everyone, clapping shoulders, and generally behaving like a feudal lord in his hall. I lurked in a corner with a glass of brandy while Michel led a straggling version of a Christmas song in French and German at the same time. A bunch of Bavarian officers had joined us, and Michel seemed to be making them feel very welcome indeed. Corbineau kept pressing brandy on them.

Yes, there was something of the brigand chief in him, I thought. He was standing on a chair, waving a glass of brandy and singing, his hair escaping from its tail. It had been nearly ten years since the Church was expelled from France, but almost everyone knew the song except me and a few die-hard Republicans who also lurked in the corners drinking. Even they looked
reasonably convivial. As for the rest, perhaps they were happy to have Christmas back.

The party broke up just short of midnight. Wrapped in my cloak, I followed Michel out into the street. Snow was falling, sticking to roofs and trees, big, puffy white flakes so thick you could almost hear them whispering as they landed. The cobbles were wet but not snowy yet. I felt warm and cheerful from the brandy. Michel was a little flushed. It took a lot of drink to make him unsteady, but his redhead’s complexion showed every glass.

Michel took my arm. “Let’s go to midnight Mass,” he said.

I looked at him doubtfully. “Mass?”

“At the Frauenkirche,” he said. The snow was sticking on his hat, lying across the shoulders of his cloak.

“I . . .” I began uncertainly. I hadn’t set foot in a church since the day my son was christened. I wasn’t sure I wanted to, or what would happen if I did. “I’m not sure I’m Catholic.”

Michel blinked. “Dutch Reformed? I should have thought that since you’re Dutch, you’re probably Protestant. I don’t know why it never occurred to me.”

“Maybe?” I said doubtfully. “My mother was Dutch Reformed. My father was an atheist, and I was baptized Catholic in Italy when I was a baby because they were afraid I’d die, and my mother wanted me christened by somebody. I don’t really believe in anything. Unless it’s the Olympians,” I said, trying to make a joke of it.

Michel smiled at me through the snow. “It’s Christmas Eve. No one will care. It’s special.” He held out his arm to me again. “Come on, Elza. I promise no one will check your catechism at the door.”

“If you put it that way . . .” I took his arm. I wasn’t sure it was right to go, but Michel was the one who actually believed, and if he didn’t mind, then perhaps it really didn’t matter.

Lots of people were making their way to the Frauenkirche. It was the largest church in the city, old and severe compared to many, with their Baroque ornamentation and organs. It was big and plain, and at first seemed almost austere.

Michel stopped just inside the doorway and crossed himself, looking toward the altar.

One of the several priests waiting about made his way toward us, drawn no doubt by the excess of gold braid Michel wore, and the fact he towered over nearly everyone. He spoke to Michel in good French. “You are welcome in the Church of Our Lady, my son. Would you like to confess before the Mass?”

Michel glanced at me sideways, then gave the priest a thin, rueful smile. “I’m afraid not, Father,” he said. “You see, I’m not sorry.”

The priest’s mouth twitched, and for a moment I thought he would laugh. “Very well,” he said. “But you know that if you have sins on your conscience, you may not approach the altar.”

“I understand,” Michel said gravely.

We went and waited toward the back for the Mass to begin. Above us the plain walls soared into blackness. The light of the candles did not reach the dim ceiling.

“Michel, I shouldn’t have come with you,” I said. I didn’t belong here. I was not part of this, part of his life this way. I could only embarrass him. It frightened me.

“It’s not your fault,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I’m not hypocrite enough to repent conveniently.”

And then the music began.

I could almost forget myself in it. Perhaps I had heard the Mass sung before, as a child. Perhaps my nurse had taken me in Italy. It was familiar and lovely at the same time, warm and quiet and sad at once. Michel bent his head and closed his eyes.
I wasn’t sure if I should too, so I didn’t, but just waited, listening, letting the music soar around me.

I stopped being frightened. Somewhere in the words I didn’t understand, in the counterpoint of Kyrie Eleison sung by a boys’ choir, a warm thread ran through me, quiet and still.
This, too, is magic. These too, these white walls, belong to the world. The Frauenkirche does not sit in heaven, but in Munich, the work of men’s hands, the labor of their lives. Not separate, but love made manifest. It surrounds Her people like a mother’s arms, sheltering them from the cold, singing to them on a snowy night, the church of Mary, Queen of Heaven, Lady of the Stars, a young mother who had borne a son long ago, strangers sheltering in a barn.

I had borne my sons in fear and resignation, in anything but love. I had never sheltered them, never even given them the vague unformed memory of perfect safety. And the last child, the one I had not even borne . . . I blinked, then closed my eyes on my tears.

I was everything they thought I was, an abomination, all my dreams of freedom no more than a convict’s desire for escape. I squeezed my eyes shut on my guilt and pain. What was I thinking, to imagine that I had any right to love and liberty?

The music wrapped around me, voice to all I felt.
Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison.

Rage and pain and grief, tangled and entwined. And then, like a child’s gale of tears, it passed, soaring with the music into tentative peace. Presence. Love. Understanding. Love that knew me as I was, needed me as I was, changing pain into purpose, some faint sense of deep-held contentment I barely remembered.

A
little later, walking out, Michel took my arm again, a look of concern on his face. “Was this a bad idea?” he asked. “I’m sorry if it was. I—”

“No,” I said. “Not a bad idea.” I tucked my hand into the crook of his arm. I had no words, nothing I could say that would share it with him. The snow was sticking on the street now.

We walked in the falling snow blowing pale in the lights from people’s windows, the sounds of laughter coming out into the street, Munich on Christmas Eve. Every gable, every stone, sang of love, of joy, of the beauty of the world. Under their Gothic arcades, some of the shops around the Marienplatz were still open for the last late-night revelers, the scent of chocolate and ginger coming out into the streets.

Michel was beside me, earnest and complicated and beautiful, angel of death, ardent as a schoolboy, cruel as a captain must be, devout as a child. Surely if anything were proof of love made manifest, it was he. Blasphemy, perhaps, or simply my nature.

“Look!” Michel said, dragging me toward one of the still open shops. The sweet smell of baking poured out, cloves and cinnamon and nutmeg, the round cookies only made in Bavaria. “Lebkuchen!” Michel pulled me over to a shelf of cunningly made containers, tin and cartonnage, formed in the shapes of animals and buildings, eggs and angels. One gorgeous painted one was in the form of a castle. Each battlement sported a tiny tin flag snapping in an imagined breeze.

“It’s lovely,” I said, and it truly was, intricate and delightful.

Nothing would do but he had to buy it immediately for me, though I protested. “It’s Christmas Eve,” he said, looking at me sideways, as though he were embarrassed. “I haven’t gotten anything for you yet. I meant to, but I haven’t had much time.”

“You wanted to get me a Christmas present?” I looked at
him blankly. It had been five years since I had imagined anything of the kind.

“My family always did presents on Christmas Eve,” he said, “when we were growing up. After Mass. I suppose . . . I mean, if you mind—”

“No,” I said, smiling at him in the falling snow, clutching my painted castle. “No, I don’t mind. It’s beautiful. It’s wonderful. It’s just that I haven’t anything for you. I haven’t done this in years, you see, and I . . . I never gave Moreau anything.”

“You’re all the present I need,” he said with a grin. “Unless you’d like to share some of those lebkuchen with me.”

Quietly, my hand in his, we walked back to the doctor’s house. We did not speak. There was nothing more we needed to say. The snow whispered down, catching in my eyelashes.

A tall carving of an angel looked down from a Baroque building, stern and cold and nothing like the angel I imagined.
Thank you,
I thought.
If you are here, thank you.

I almost heard a laugh behind me.—
Anytime,
he said.
Anytime, my dear ones.—

I looked up at the sky, watching the snow falling. Michel laughed and held me up when the falling flakes’ swirls made me dizzy. I almost fell over when the bells began, first the high notes from a church near the Residence, then the lighter bells in the valley, then the rich dark notes from the Frauenkirche, followed by all the bells of Munich.

“What is it?” I said. “Is it midnight?”

“Long after,” Michel said, grabbing the sleeve of a man hurrying by and speaking to him quickly in German. I didn’t understand a word, but the man seemed pleased and in a hurry. He answered rapidly, then dashed off through the snow toward the Marienplatz.

“What?” I said, reaching for Michel.

He turned back, a broad grin on his face. “The Austrians have signed an armistice with Moreau. It’s peace!” He picked me up and swung me around. “The Austrians surrendered! Victory!”

I swirled around, caught in his arms, caught in happiness, as around us all the bells of Munich rang out for peace. “I don’t want this to ever end,” I said. Snowflakes were sticking to his hair, and for a moment I felt as though I might lift into the sky, borne on wings of joy.

“It never will,” Michel said. “I promised that I would love you until the end of the world.”

“So you did,” I said, and kissed him amid the falling snow.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The General’s Mistress
is a work of fiction, but it is based on the memoirs of Ida St. Elme, courtesan, soldier, and ultimately author of a dozen books. Chatty, scandalous, entertaining, and heart-wrenching by turns, her memoirs provide a unique view of the people and places she knew and loved. Many of the incidents described in
The General’s Mistress
really happened, and often I have been able to use original dialogue, as in her first meeting with Napoleon. Hers was a fascinating and turbulent life.
The General’s Mistress
only scratches the surface, the first twenty-four years of an amazing adventure that a mere writer of fiction could never hope to invent.