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Two Empresses

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

My life truly began when a letter arrived from my aunt Edmée in Paris. Before that I had just been treading water for fifteen years, biding my time, sleeping till noon, lazing the days away in loose cotton dresses, unfettered by stays, walking barefoot, living on and breathing in sugar, avoiding lessons like the plague, and occasionally donning white satin, like all the other unmarried girls, to attend balls at the Governor's mansion in Fort Royal where I aimlessly flirted with handsome, diverting boys my heart truly cared nothing for.

I remember it vividly, my true birthday. At first, it seemed just like any other ordinary, ho-hum humid lazy day on the tropical, sugar-scented island of Martinique. I, Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, was sitting, petulant and idle, on a window seat, my detested embroidery cast impatiently aside in a tangle of hopeless purple silk knots only a miracle could hope to untie. I was watching one of the sudden summer rains wash the veranda clean and pouting over an unfortunate raspberry jam stain marring the frothy white flounces of my new muslin gown with the double row of heart-shaped mother-of-pearl buttons marching down the bodice neat as soldiers. I had been careless at breakfast. My maid Rosette, always honest even in the face of my tears, said she didn't think the stain would ever come out. Money was dear and I had ruined the new dress I had spent weeks weeping and wheedling Father for the very first time I had worn it.

There was a little green lizard climbing the window glass, so close I could see his tiny scales and beady black eyes and even count his long, spindly toes if I had a mind to. But I wasn't interested in lizards; I was dreaming of Paris and handsome young men who thought I was the most beautiful and fascinating creature alive, men who would fight duels to be the one to lay the moon at my feet and hang the stars around my neck like a diamond necklace until one special man, a man above all other men, placed an empress's crown on my head.

My mother, the still-beautiful Marie-Rose Claire Tascher de la Pagerie, was reclining wretchedly on the sofa, still wearing her ball gown, a shimmering mulberry silk festooned with black lace, now badly wilted and sodden with sweat beneath the armpits. She had been wearing it for three days. She had put it on to attend a party at a neighboring plantation.

Papa had insisted it was just the thing to chase her woes away. Besides, her presence would ensure he didn't drink too much rum punch and make an ass of himself in front of our neighbors again. Papa was quick to remind her that the last time he had attended a ball without her he had picked up the punch bowl, guzzling like a parched fieldhand until he had drained it to the dregs, then run giddily about giggling and squeezing the breasts of every woman he could catch and comparing them to passion fruits and mangoes until the Governor had finally ordered the footmen to dunk Papa's head in a basin of cold water and throw him out into the street. So Mama had reluctantly agreed, put on her best gown and a brave smile, and gone to the ball to ensure her husband's good behavior.

When they returned, a slave had met them at the door with the sad news that my sister Catherine was much worse. She was delirious, burning with fever and coughing up blood. Mama had rushed straight upstairs to her and hadn't left her side until this morning. Her high-piled pompadour of powdered hair was listing badly to the left and the silk roses and black lace garnishing it hung slovenly and slack, but Mama was too weary and worried to care. She hadn't even thought to loosen her stays. She was lying back on the hard, torturously uncomfortable ancient green brocade sofa. Its badly frayed gold embroidery, as prickly as a porcupine's needles, had been known to draw blood upon occasion, but today Mama didn't seem to even feel it. She had a cold compress pressed tight over her tired, swollen eyes and a tear-soaked handkerchief and her black onyx rosary beads clutched tight in her other hand. She hadn't even touched the cup of steaming black coffee her maid had brought her. She was just too tired to do anything.

My sweet, fun-loving ne'er-do-well papa, Joseph Gaspard Tascher de la Pagerie, was at his desk stealing fast, furtive sips of rum from his silver flask when he thought no one was looking and brooding over a stack of bills he had no hope of paying. He was longing, no doubt, to escape to Fort Royal and the comforting arms and bountiful bosoms and hips of his dusky-skinned mistresses, and the eternally springing hope that he might finally turn a lucky card or bet on the winning cock. Papa was a dreamer, not a doer, and one of the few plantation holders who had actually failed to make a profit from the sugar everyone called "white gold." He loved to put on his white frock coat with the big gold buttons and his buff nankeen breeches and tan-topped butter-soft black leather riding boots and stride around the plantation like he was the supreme lord and master of all he surveyed, but everyone knew he didn't know the first thing about running a plantation.

Thus were we arranged in the faded, threadbare grandeur of the best parlor at Trois-Ilets when Le Grande Jacques, our giant black footman, came in bearing the letter on a little silver tray.

I clamped a hand over my mouth, trying to hold back my laughter. Though Jacques had readily acquiesced to the stifling splendor of a gilt-buttoned and braid-trimmed burgundy velvet frock coat with tails that hung down to his knees and a matching waistcoat, a white shirt drowning in ruffles, ice-blue satin knee breeches so tight they might have been painted on, and even a white powdered wig, his big plank-flat feet just could not bear the prison of the sturdy black leather shoes with big shiny buckles and white cotton stockings. I think he would have gone barefoot even at Versailles in the presence of royalty. Jacques just could not abide shoes and stockings and always managed to "lose" every pair he was given. "'Dem is fo' the white folks that has been bred to such things, but nobody never tried to put 'dem on me till I was already a man growed, an' by den it was long too late fo' my feet to take to 'dem," he always said.

When Papa opened the letter and began to read I felt the world tremble beneath my feet. Here was my destiny come to meet me at last and I must let nothing stop me from rushing out to embrace it. I was ready to fly into the arms of the husband who would "cover the world with glory" and me with diamonds and ardent kisses. I felt my heart and heels grow wings. I knew that this letter was the first step along the path to the palace and crown Euphemia David had seen in my palm.

The letter was from Aunt Edmée. I had grown up relishing tales of Papa's scandalous sister who had astonished everyone when one day, right after a most civilized and unremarkable breakfast, she just up and left her husband to go and live openly with her lover, our former governor the Marquis de Beauharnais, and his most amicable and obliging wife. The three of them had left Martinique and sailed back to Paris and set up house together and remained a happy trio until the Marquise's death. Aunt Edmée was now seeking a bride, an island-born beauty, for her paramour's son, Alexandre, the handsome young Vicomte de Beauharnais.

Since her own brother was blessed, or cursed to hear him tell it, with three daughters she had naturally thought of us first. They were even willing to overlook the fact that not a one of us had even a pittance for a dowry. Of course it was not an act of benevolence but calculated shrewdness on Aunt Edmée's part. Hers was hardly an altruistic soul; her sharp eyes saw clearly the sense of keeping things in the family. Her lover was sixty-two and sickly, doughy fleshed and gouty by all accounts, and she was no spring chicken herself, hardly alluring enough to attract a new love when the old one was in his coffin. Aristocratic only in his titles and pretensions, not in his bank balances, the Marquis would leave her nothing but the debts they had acquired together. As a mistress rather than a wife, she could not rely upon his pension, that reliable though meager source of funds would die when he did, and her estranged husband was unlikely to welcome her back or offer to support her, all things considered. But if Alexandre and his bride were indebted to Edmée for bringing them together, gratitude would surely endure and they would provide her with a home and all the necessary comforts for the rest of her life.

"Let me go, Papa! Please! Let me go!" I cried, interrupting Papa midsentence and clinging to his arm, staring up at him with my most heartrending expression as I bounced excitedly on my toes. "Let me go to Paris and marry Alexandre!"

Paris was the dream of all dreams. By rights, my sisters and I should have been sent there to be educated long ago, but years of bad harvests, the devastation wreaked by hurricanes, and Papa's gambling debts, combined with a blockade by the British that had prevented us from exporting our sugar, had made this impossible. Thus we had all had to make do with what little the nuns at the convent in Fort Royal could teach us, though I for one found dancing with the soldiers at the Governor's balls and sneaking out into the garden or to walk on moonlit beaches, sometimes even daring to strip for a midnight swim with them, much more educational than anything the nuns ever taught me. The Sisters were for the most part sweet, but clearly they knew nothing of life and even less about love.

"Rose, I have not even finished reading your aunt's letter. ..." Papa shook me off, and from the sofa, over the rustle of wilting mulberry silk, Mama sighed, "Have patience, Rose. ..." Sometimes it seemed that was the only thing she ever said to me. "Have patience, Rose; have patience. ..."

Well, I was tired of having patience or pretending that I did! I didn't want to have patience! As a virtue I thought it was vastly overrated and I didn't give a fig what the nuns or Mama thought about it! I wanted to dance, and have fun, and live and love while I was young enough to enjoy it all. How could they expect me to act like an old woman and bide my time and sit by the fire embroidering flowers or placid platitudes when I was so full of vitality and passion? I was bursting at the seams; why couldn't they see that?

As Papa continued to read, my heart plummeted. Alexandre wanted Catherine. Of course he did; she was the youngest and prettiest of the three Tascher de la Pagerie sisters. I was the eldest and the least likely a man so exacting as Alexandre de Beauharnais would choose to marry.

My teeth were already rotting, full of cavities and stained an ugly yellow-brown. My wet nurse had weaned me from her breast with sugared milk and I had been in love with sugar ever since. I ate it raw and put it in everything I ate or drank; I simply could not go a day without it. Although I spent hours at my mirror perfecting a charming closemouthed smile, to lure and pleasure a man I must open my mouth sometime, and I couldn't hide behind my fan all the time. And things like that really mattered to a man like Alexandre.

"But Catherine can't go; she's dying!" I blurted without stopping first to think. I clamped a hand over my mouth, too late to stop the cruel, if honest, words from flying out, and glanced worriedly over at Mama. She just could not admit, poor dear, that all hope was gone and Catherine would die long before she ever had a chance to live. But Mama had already turned her face away and was fingering her rosary, still praying for a miracle that we all knew would never come; Euphemia David said so.

"I'll just go and check on Catherine," Mama murmured as she hurried out before we could see the first tear fall.

Catherine had the wasting sickness. Her golden hair was as dry and brittle as straw and her skin yellow as bananas and there was a persistent rattling in her chest like peas inside a gourd. The nuns had sent her home to die. The doctors could do nothing for her except bleed her, which only made her weaker, and she could rarely keep down the bread and milk and mushed bananas Mama diligently spooned into her mouth. No tonics, prayers, voodoo charms, or magic spells could save Catherine.

Though Mama was a staunch Catholic and unwilling to risk her daughter's soul, or her own, by consorting with witches, Papa had sent for the voodoo queen in secret one morning while Mama was at Mass. He had tremendous faith in her and knew if anyone could save Catherine, Euphemia David could.

She had once given him a bone from a mean old black cat's tail and a single precious hair from her head and told him to go to the cemetery and sit all night on the grave of the richest person buried there — a widow woman who had been just as ornery as that old black cat had been. She told him to put that bone in a little green velvet bag filled with dirt from the freshest and oldest graves in the cemetery, and his last gold coin polished till it shone like the sun, and sew it shut tight using a new needle threaded with her hair. But just before he made the last three stitches he was to stab his finger deep as he could bear with the needle and stick it inside the bag, right up against the bone, and leave it there until the bleeding stopped and the sun rose full in the sky. The next night with the little green bag nestled right over his heart, he walked backward all the way from Trois-Ilets to Fort Royal and into the gaming den with a slice of pepper hot enough to make his eyes stream tucked under his tongue, kept his back to the pit the whole time, placed his bet sight unseen on the red cock with the blue-black tail feathers, and won enough to prevent the plantation from being seized by creditors.

Of course, he did catch a terrible cold sitting up all night in that graveyard, the doctors came and bled him and put mustard plasters on his back and chest, and he was at death's door for nearly six weeks, but Papa said it was worth it. Mama said he got just what he deserved for dabbling with such deviltry. She had the priest in every day to pray for his tarnished soul and said if he ever had dealings with voodoo and Euphemia David again she would leave him so he would just have to choose between his own bad luck and her and that black voodoo witch and Satan-sent riches. Of course, Papa chose the former, but he was always sniffing and sneaking around the latter like a poor dog outside a locked door behind which a bitch in heat is kept.

But Euphemia David could do nothing for Catherine. She came and laid her snake on Catherine's chest and it stared my poor, frightened sister right in the face and flicked out its tongue to lick her chin, then slithered back to Euphemia David, right up onto her shoulder, and whispered in her ear that the loas had seen Catherine and decided that she was too beautiful for this world; they wanted her for themselves. She was doomed; there was nothing anyone could do. Death already rattled in her lungs and her heart was withering away fast, growing more sluggish with every hard-won beat, and soon it would stop altogether.

Papa flashed me a warning look, took another sip from his flask, and pointedly turned his back on me as he finished reading Aunt Edmée's letter in silence so loud it screamed. When he finally turned back around he shook his head. "I'm sorry, Rose, your Aunt Edmée says if for some reason we cannot send Catherine, your little sister, Manette, will do. ... I'm sorry, Rose, she says nothing of you."

"No!" I wailed. "It must be me; it simply must!" I stamped my foot, though I instantly regretted it when I felt the worn, paper-thin sole of my slipper split. I flung myself weeping onto the sofa, crying all the harder when the gilt threads stabbed through my gown, making me feel as though I had thrown myself down in a cactus patch. "I'll die if I can't go to Paris! I'll simply die! I'll wither away to nothing just like Catherine, then you'll all be sorry, and it'll be doubly worse for you, Papa, because you'll know that you are to blame for not letting me go to Paris and marry Alexandre! You'll be so brokenhearted you'll never be able to turn a lucky card again, you'll lose the plantation, and all your women will leave you because you have no money to give them, and all because you denied me this chance!"

"Really, Rose?" Papa rolled his eyes and took another sip of rum. "My, my, I had no idea you were so passionately fond of Alexandre! When he visited the island you put a black wax conjure ball one of the slaves made for you in his bed and said he was a thoroughly nasty little boy and you hoped someone chopped off his head just like a chicken's."

"Oh, Papa!" I cried, and rolled my eyes. "That was only because he kept putting on airs, grand as a little English lord, and calling me stupid and provincial and pulling my hair hard enough to bring tears to my eyes! And I was only five at the time! But now ... everything's different! Papa, I would endure anything, even hateful Alexandre, and having my hair pulled, to get to Paris!"

"Are you so eager to leave us then?" Papa teased.

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Excerpted from Two Empresses by BRANDY PURDY. Copyright © 2017 Brandy Purdy. Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
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