By 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. Outside drums beat rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat.