Finding napoleon, p.1
Finding Napoleon, page 1
Praise for Finding Napoleon
“Rodenberg inventively uses Bonaparte’s own unfinished novel to tell the story of the despot’s rise to power juxtaposed against the story of his last love affair. Told creatively and with excellent research!”
STEPHANIE DRAY, New York Times & USA Today best-selling author of Historical Fiction, including America’s First Daughter and The Women of Chateau Lafayette
“Napoleon’s last years, awash in intrigue and poignant with loss . . . by Rodenberg, who deserves kudos as a rigorous researcher and gifted writer . . . this intricate tapestry . . . brings to life the twilight years of a captivating historical figure.”
KIRKUS REVIEWS
“Vive l’Empereur! In Finding Napoleon, the Bonaparte endgame becomes a new beginning—and a rousing, delightfully peopled adventure. Margaret Rodenberg’s superior scholarship, exquisite scene-setting and crackling storytelling mark her as a historical novelist to watch.”
LOUIS BAYARD, New York Times notable author of best-selling Historical Fiction, including Courting Mr. Lincoln, and The Black Tower
“From the first words, Finding Napoleon by Margaret Rodenberg enchanted me. Exceptionally well researched, the writing is vibrant, the details evocative. The story of Napoleon’s final years is conveyed with moving compassion, humor and wit. I love Margaret Rodenberg’s writing and I look forward to reading more by her. Highly recommended!”
SANDRA GULLAND, author of The Josephine B. Trilogy and The Game of Hope
“Napoleon Bonaparte’s life was an incredible, inspiring, and ultimately tragic epic. In Finding Napoleon, readers enter deep into both the beginning and the end of that exceptional drama, as Margaret Rodenberg brings to life the inner circle of the ailing emperor as he spends his final years in exile on the remote island of St. Helena. No one is more qualified to tell this sweeping tale than Margaret Rodenberg — her research is in a league of its own, and her writing is beautiful and poignant.”
ALLISON PATAKI, New York Times best-selling author of The Queen’s Fortune
“Margaret Rodenberg has an outstanding knowledge of and empathy for the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, especially his time in exile on St. Helena. And unlike many, she has actually visited that remote island and seen the actual conditions of his captivity. In Finding Napoleon, she combines that knowledge and empathy with her exceptional ability to weave her imaginative story of Napoleon and Albine de Montholon. In so doing she leaves readers greatly entertained and, I hope, wanting to read more about one of history’s most fascinating personalities. I highly recommend this fine book by an outstanding author.”
J. DAVID MARKHAM, President, International Napoleonic Society; Knight, Order of the French Academic Palms; Author of Napoleon for Dummies, and The Road to St. Helena: Napoleon After Waterloo
“Finding Napoleon is a fascinating look at Napoleon as a writer of romance, a tender father, and a mature lover examining happier times amid the trials of his life in St. Helena—a side to him not often explored, and one I found completely enrapturing. His forgotten lover, Albine de Montholon, adds an intriguing dimension. Rodenberg’s sense of revolutionary culture and period detail sparkle and her storytelling is truly absorbing. A winner!”
HEATHER WEBB, coauthor of Ribbons of Scarlet and author of Becoming Josephine and Rodin’s Lover
“A tale within a tale, Finding Napoleon by Margaret Rodenberg creates three vivid characters - Napoleon in exile, Napoleon becoming a young military hero, and Albine de Montholon, the emperor’s last love. Through superb writing, the author brings history to life while offering insights into the passions that drove this man to greatness. Highly recommended.”
M.K. TOD, author of Time and Regret, and the blog, www.awriterofhistory.com
“In her haunting historical novel, Finding Napoleon, Margaret Rodenberg bookends the Emperor’s life. She enlarges upon his own semi-autobiographical novel, giving us insight into his early days, contrasting them with the contracted, duplicitous court that accompanied him into captivity on St. Helena after Waterloo. And yet, it is through unexpected friendships forged on the island, his tumultuous final love affair with Albine de Montholon, and a longing for the son he’s lost that we truly do find Napoleon during these, his last days. Highly recommended.”
MICHELLE CAMERON, award-winning author of Beyond the Ghetto Gates
“Finding Napoleon reimagines three powerful turning points in the romantic life of Napoleon Bonaparte—childhood, the young military hero, the still-passionate man in exile. With finesse and deep insight, Margaret Rodenberg delivers a masterful tour de force. A must for historical fiction bibliophiles.”
KATHRYN JOHNSON, author of The Gentleman Poet: A Novel of Love, Danger, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest
“With a cast of authentic and vibrant characters, including a heroine who is every bit Napoleon’s match, Finding Napoleon explores the gray landscapes of interpersonal relationships. This, the reader will feel, was Napoleon, and these were the characters who populated his later years. Finding Napoleon belongs among the best of historical fiction—present, alive and real, rendered with the touch of a poet and masterful storyteller. A delightful, informative page-turner.”
SCOTT G. HIBBARD, author of Beyond the Rio Gila
FINDING
NAPOLEON
Copyright © 2021, Margaret Rodenberg
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.
Published 2021
Printed in the United States of America
Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-016-1
E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-017-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020919842
For information, address:
She Writes Press
1569 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707
Interior design by Tabitha Lahr
She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.
All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
“Gaston the Eccentric,” from Bratsk Station and Other New Poems, by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, copyright © 1966 by Sun Books Pty. Ltd. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
To my beloved husband, Bert Helfinstein
Without whom these pages would be blank and my heart empty
Power is only
a small blessing,
bad for the nerves,
We should be creating masterpieces,
masterpieces!
YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO
A note to readers
Years ago, when I learned that Napoleon Bonaparte tried to write a novel, I vowed to finish it for him. That brief handwritten manuscript still exists. In the “Clisson” sections of Finding Napoleon, I draw upon its words, ideas, and characters and expand it fivefold. So, while the story herein is mine, I like to imagine young Napoleon, all elbows, lanky hair, and ambition, in a cold, candlelit apartment near Notre Dame, scribbling my source material.
MARGARET RODENBERG
Prologue
Albine
UNLESS YOU TOO STITCHED A white gown for the guillotine, do not judge me. But if you’d faced the terrors I have—if you were Empress Josephine herself—I’d accept your judgment on my morals. If you were Napoleon’s second wife . . . No, let’s not talk of Marie Louise more than we must.
Since you’re not Josephine (and likely an ember to her bonfire), I beg you to listen. Within these pages, learn secrets about Emperor Napoleon, whom I loved. He and I were of a piece, our hungers rooted in a bog of family, ambition, treason. We both had children to lose. We both had trust to betray. We both had seen better days. I expose our frailties for your entertainment.
Oh, I don’t pretend to be his equal. The Emperor inhabited a grand stage. I was a creature of the boudoir. History will remember me as a tendril in the forest of his life. Yet when we intertwined, one could break the other.
I warn you: some of this is hearsay from people with tarnished reputations. Much came from the Great Man’s lips when his body lay naked at my side. Part is from a novel Napoleon wrote about himself. I add spice to the stew.
So know my Napoleon, know me, and I shall love you for it. For what but love matters? It is the holiest, costliest, easiest thing to give. I gave mine freely, as Napoleon gave his to me. I was the last woman he loved.
Vive l’Empereur!
ALBINE, COUNTESS DE MONTHOLON
Chapter 1
Napoleon
JANUARY 1814
TUILERIES PALACE
PARIS, FRANCE
“BORN FOR WAR, MY SON.” Napoleon Bonaparte buried his nose in his boy’s auburn curls, feasting on child scent, milk and mash, perspiration and chamomile.
Outside in the Tuileries courtyard, a drummer beat rat-tat-tat. Another, another, dozens more joined in, until the call to arms rattled the windows that ran the length of his son’s cavernous bedchamber.
A shiver, absent in war, twitched the Emperor’s shoulders. Fifty-four battles, and he’d never been afraid to die. Until he had this child. Until he had his Eaglet.
The boy squirmed. “Papa-Papa?”
He kissed the Eaglet’s fingertips one by one. “Born for war. Come, I’ll read you what that means.” He shifted his manuscript out of the shadows. Not that he needed light. He’d memorized his faded scribbles years ago. He deepened his tone to an army timbre. “Once more, you seize the tattered battle flag. You yell, ‘Hoorah!’ from smoke-seared lungs. The cavalry, sabers drawn, thunders in your wake into the cannon fire. Your horse’s hooves crush bones of fallen men. All at once, a musket blows a thousand arrows through your chest. Your horse wheels, collapses. Earth soaks in your blood.”
His voice broke.
Around him, the palace bedroom loomed, desolate as an empty church. A crib occupied a corner, but his wife, always the proper empress, insisted their three-year-old sleep in the gold-draperied bed. How far from the straw pallet the Emperor and his brother had once shared. He stroked his child’s linen gown. “When I come home from war, mon petit, we’ll play outside. I’ll get the two of us good and dirty.”
The Eaglet giggled, his cheeks tiny peaches. “Now, Papa-Papa? Play now?”
A gangly schoolboy clutching a toy soldier scrambled from behind the sofa. “Moi aussi, mon cher oncle? I play, too?” Louis-Napoleon asked.
The Emperor straightened an epaulet on his nephew’s uniform. “But of course, Louis-N.”
Outside drums beat rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat.
The Emperor twisted his stiff bulk, bound though it was with ornamental sashes and stuffed into the lucky green military jacket that had grown too tight. He squinted through a window into the palace courtyard, where soldiers gathered under the winter sun. He counted the gold eagle standards held aloft.
All the troops hadn’t arrived. But even with the stragglers, he’d never have enough. And every day more foreign soldiers surged over France’s border, screaming for his blood. He hugged the wriggling Eaglet to his chest. “Be still, royal squirmer. Don’t you want to hear more of Papa’s story? Before I say goodbye?”
“Bye? Bye, Papa?” The Eaglet’s heart-shaped mouth, a miniature of the Emperor’s, quivered, gaped, and exploded in a howl. Louis-N covered his ears. The Emperor leaned in, absorbing the wail. He lifted the screaming child above his head and lowered him bit by bit until they met nose to nose, openmouthed, swallowing each other’s breath.
“No bye, no bye-bye,” the Eaglet whimpered.
The Emperor slumped into the velvet cushions, the Eaglet pressed between his knees and chest. There he rocked, his body aching to absorb the child, like a mother in reverse. Anything to hold him always. Louis-N huddled at his side.
The chamber door opened. Marie Louise, the Emperor’s young wife, swept in, centuries of imperial ancestors floating in the wake of her silk shawl. Her auburn hair twisted beneath a diadem, emeralds swathed her regal neck, and her china-blue eyes glared down her thin nose. On a table beyond her husband’s reach, she tossed a folded paper, its imperial Austrian seal broken.
“News?” he said. “From your father?”
She pointed at Louis-N. “You—out!”
Louis-N shrank against the sofa cushions.
The Emperor tousled his nephew’s hair. “Find Marchand. He’ll take you to admire the soldiers.” He waited until the door shut behind the boy. “That’s beneath you, Marie Louise.”
“The brat carries tales to his mother.” She reached for their child.
The Eaglet batted her away. “Eaglet stay with Papa-Papa.”
The Empress’s pretty dimples hardened. “Colonel von Neipperg brought the message.”
“What? Him again?” The Emperor plopped the Eaglet on the carpet among his toys. “Stay away from that one-eyed Don Juan.”
“Too late, my dear. I’ve passed an amusing hour listening to his gossip. Everyone in Austria thinks you’re sure to lose.” Marie Louise tapped the letter. “As one emperor to another, Father demands your surrender.”
The Emperor half rose from the sofa, but the twinge in his side recalled the odds against him. His anger faded. Anyway, they were wrong. He had a chance if he could catch the enemy unaware, divide them up, skirmish them into chaos.
Outside, drumming rose, fell, peaked again.
The Eaglet lifted his plump hand in salute. “Papa-Papa! Play soldiers?”
The Emperor returned the salute. “Mon Dieu, Marie Louise, some French empress you are. Think of those men outside. Josephine would have—”
“Josephine? Bah!” She bared her perfect white teeth, a stark contrast to his first wife’s blackened nubs.
He grabbed a fistful of her silk shawl. “Look at you, mimicking her style. Toothless, divorced, Josephine’s still more France’s empress than you’ll ever be.” A petty attack, instantly regretted, but he’d had so little sleep and his stomach ached. He released the shawl and retreated. Everywhere he was on the defensive—with his wife, with his ministers, with his enemies swarming the French borders. Now the Eaglet was crying. He caressed the child’s hands. When he looked up, Marie Louise had crossed to the fireplace.
She threw the shawl onto the flames. “So much for Josephine and her fashions. I’ll be in Vienna for the spring balls. Where will you be, eh?”
“Go ahead. Run home to Austria, but you’re not taking my son.”
“Of course I am. I’m his mother.”
“You’re also a monarch. Bred, reared, sold to be a queen.” He lifted the child and stalked to the door. “Now, leave this room with dignity, like the empress I made you.”
She raised her mulish chin.
He wondered if she might kiss him farewell, but no. He’d lost her months earlier, when the tide had first reversed against him. Strange he felt so little. They’d been in love. Or so he had thought. He waited on the threshold.
Her gaze lingered on their son. For once, her voice was soft. “When you’re around, he doesn’t want me.”
He touched her bare arm. “You are young, and I am sorry.” He shut the door behind her.
The Eaglet patted his cheek. “Maman mad at Papa?”
“Yes, mon petit. Maman, the British Empire, the Russians, the Austrians . . . The whole world’s mad at Papa.” He brushed a curl from the boy’s forehead. The skin seemed too delicate. Did they give him the right things to eat?
In the courtyard, voices shouted. The last of the soldiers must have arrived. He scooped up his manuscript. He’d have it sent to Josephine at Malmaison. Still loyal, she could be trusted to hide it until he returned—and to destroy it if he didn’t. He smoothed his uniform, put on his bicorne hat, and stepped onto the balcony with the Eaglet perched against his shoulder.
“Vive l’Empereur!” The cry traveled through the field of men. “Vive le petit roi!”
He scanned the troops, calculating. The Old Guard, the V Cavalry, the raw recruits of the Young Guard. Red jackets of the Hussars, green of the Chasseurs, blue and white of the infantry. Tattered plumes on tall hats, proud sheen on worn boots. Everywhere ferocious mustaches. More horses than he’d expected. The odds were moving in his favor. They had a chance.
He was still Napoleon, after all.
A fresh cry erupted from his soldiers. “Vive l’Impératrice! Vive Marie Louise!”
His wife stood next to him, her graceful head on its long neck tilted to his army. She pulled the screaming Eaglet from his shoulder and backed away.
He stood alone on the balcony, empty arms locked to his sides. Still the soldiers cheered. They hadn’t seen. They didn’t know. They thought he wept for them.
Albine
NO DWELLING ON BATTLES, IF you please. Suffice it to say, my Emperor plunged into desperate war against foreign troops on French soil. At first, he won. Then he didn’t. For pity’s sake, even Napoleon couldn’t hold all Europe’s armies at bay. You probably know what happened. They exiled him to the Isle of Elba, two days’ sail from France’s southern coast. Now, whoever thought he’d stay put?
