Chapter 41
Max could barely believe he’d said it aloud for the first time in his life, in this dark room.
His mother. Marie-Joseph-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie, later Madame la Vicomtesse de Beauharnais, and now Josephine Bonaparte, Empress of France. Napoleon’s wife.
The thought was so huge and terrifying that, even after knowing it for eight years, he had only ever taken a grip on it before now by letting it into his mind when he was alone and undisturbed.
It really was a tiger staring through the bars of a cage at him and growling with unavoidable menace.
He simply couldn’t walk about the streets of London, hearing people of all ranks talking about the wars, vilifying his stepfather, gossiping about his mother’s supposed lovers, about her failure to give Bonaparte a legitimate child, with this poisonous knowledge knocking about loose in his head.
He was afraid people would somehow see it written on his face.
In those damn distinctive, betraying eyes… Josephine’s bastard son.
It wasn’t as though there’d never been any suspicion cast on her during her turbulent life.
Her first husband, whom Max was excessively glad he’d never met, had gone to Martinique once with the express purpose of finding out his estranged wife’s disreputable secrets, presumably so that he could use them to torment her and cast her off.
Alexandre de Beauharnais, who was a man who’d deserved a good punch or two in the face if any man ever had, seemed to know Rose had something to conceal – perhaps she’d let a word or two slip in an incautious moment early in their marriage, before she’d fully taken his measure and learned to guard her tongue or suffer the consequences.
The vicomte had rampaged about the island cajoling, bribing and threatening violence.
Violence to slaves, to make them talk; what an exemplary gentleman.
It had caused a huge uproar, his adoptive mother had told him – she’d had letters about it – but nobody had revealed a thing to the furious Frenchman. Thank God.
Madame Severin had not known, and Max too could not tell, whether people had kept the scandalous truth hidden out of stubbornness, out of loyalty – to his mother, to Celestine, or even to his mysterious father – or whether they’d never known it in the first place.
Rose’s family must have done – her mother, her father – but of course they of all people would never, never tell.
Now De Beauharnais was dead by guillotine, and good riddance.
But his mother’s present husband was a far more dangerous man, and would not be so easily put off if he heard so much as a whisper of rumour.
And he of all people had the resources to learn the truth, if he had to imprison and torture hundreds to do it.
He would not merely threaten, he would act, and who could doubt that he was entirely without scruples?
It was said now that he too would be glad of an excuse to rid himself of the wife who had not given him an heir. Max was that excuse in human form.
There must be French émigrés in London, plenty of them, who’d known Josephine as Madame de Beauharnais, before the Terror.
Men and women who’d seen those distinctive eyes and might recognise them if they saw them in another face, might wonder how such a strange resemblance had come about, especially in a man with Caribbean origins just like her.
Her reputation was such, he knew, that people would be all too willing to believe scandal of her.
And that was without worrying about her husband’s spies, who must be everywhere.
Everyone had seen portraits of her, and read descriptions of her fading beauty.
It had been bad enough eight years ago when they’d first told him.
General Bonaparte had already invaded Italy and Egypt – his was the name on everyone’s lips, the young upstart military genius who was turning the world upside-down.
But in late 1799, when Max was still struggling to come to terms with all that, Bonaparte had overthrown the Directory government and become first consul – king in all but name.
Then two years ago he’d taken the final step and crowned himself Emperor, and Rose – whom he called Josephine – Empress.
He was Britain’s great enemy, the most hated and admired man in Europe, and she was always at his side.
She was easily the most famous woman in the world. Who could compete?
It was too much. It made his head spin and his stomach lurch. Max shied away from it, and sought desperately for something else to push away the intrusive thought and the inevitable sense of overwhelming panic it brought in its wake. Anything. He was a drowning man and he needed a spar to cling to.
Allegra, Allegra… Might she save him, or was it true that nobody could? But, tempting though it was to imagine a future with her, a life together, he could not put her at such risk.
As far as he was aware, there was no one else in England now living who knew who he was, and he must do all he could to keep it that way.
He had never dared even to think before that he could take the terrible risk of sharing any part of his burden, for the sake of his life, and his mother’s too, and even possibly the lives of the half-siblings he had never met and never would meet, Hortense and Eugène.
He hadn’t needed the Severins to spell it out for him, because it was so obvious.
If the violently despotic ruler of half the known world ever discovered that his wife had given birth to him and kept it secret all these years, her life at his side would be over.
Exile and disgrace would be the best she could hope for, and death fast or slow the worst. There were no limits to his power or his cruelty.
And if the British government ever discovered who he was, God knows what they’d do with him, but it wouldn’t be anything pleasant.
At the very least, he’d be paraded around like an animal in a menagerie or a circus, under close guard.
But that wasn’t even the end of it. If Bonaparte’s supporters in England – there must be many, in secret, biding their time – got to him first, they’d kill him without blinking, just to rid their idol of an embarrassment.
Though Max himself wouldn’t want to be the person who’d tell him the news, even if it was accompanied by the fact that the inconvenient bastard child was dead now.
The Emperor was a man who slaughtered his wife’s pets when she gave them too much attention.
He destroyed bloody plants she liked in displays of insane rage if he was displeased with her, as apparently he often was these days.
In sober truth, there was barely a person with a sword or pistol or guillotine, on the continent of Europe and far beyond, who wouldn’t wish Max dead and take steps to make him so, once they knew the extraordinary truth.
So, that was it. Now she knew everything. There was no going back from this.