My Heart Laid Bare (25 page)

He then returned to the castle, and gave his innocent sister the elixir to drink, telling her it was a delicious liqueur an old woman had given him back in the marsh, it was made of peach brandy and black currants and molasses, and his unsuspecting sister drank of it, and declared it delicious indeed, and smiling upon him bade him drink of it too, but he declined, saying there was no need, he had had his share beforehand, and even as they spoke the princess fell in love with him, her eyes blazed, her heart leapt in her breast, and there was no help for it, the poor child fell in love . . . and very soon she and her wicked brother became lovers . . . and loved each other in secret . . . and the princess's love was greater than the prince's . . . and nothing would do but that he love her every minute of the day, and every minute of the night . . . and he began to fear she would suck all his strength from him for her love was so very powerful, there was no end to it, there could never be any end to it, even when the prince grew weary and the princess became great with child . . . but this little Esther does
not
understand, does she!
don't pretend!
. . . and finally the princess grew so jealous of the prince, she berated him for not loving her, and wept, and tore at her fair skin, and wished aloud that they both might die, and sink to the bottom of the marsh where no one would know them, and the
princess's beauty was faded now with anguish, her lips were parched and blistered, her eyes rolled in her head, with love, with love so terrible it could never be undone, never except by death . . . .

So one day, not a year after he had given his beloved the elixir to drink, the wicked prince, fearing his sister would betray him to the king, lured her into the marsh and killed her: strangled her with his bare hands: even as the wretched girl caressed him madly in love of
him.

And, seeing that his beloved was dead, and that the world had no meaning for him any longer, the wicked prince soon died: and there was no one to lament him in all the kingdom.

So it was, the king's son and the king's daughter died for love of each other, and were buried at the bottom of the marsh, long ago, long before you were born, in this very place.

ESTHER, EARNEST PLAIN-FEATURED
Esther, Esther who stares too hard and listens too intensely, why does she sit hunched over, two or three fingers jammed into her mouth, her child's forehead vexed with thought . . . .She says, O Katrina, it will not happen to Millie and 'Lisha, will it? and Katrina turns from the stove and looks at her, and says carefully, What do you mean, Millie and 'Lisha? and Esther says, Because I saw them together, Katrina, her voice faltering, not wanting to say that she had seen them touch, hadn't she, in a strange way, she had seen them kiss, for it
was
a kiss, wasn't it, a strange sort of half-angry biting kiss, Millie and 'Lisha, blond Millie and dark-skinned 'Lisha, stealing away in the beech grove on the far side of the churchyard where no one would see them . . . except their little sister of whom they took no notice; for no one did.

What do you mean, like Millie and 'Lisha? Katrina asks, her voice rising, her eyes gray as steel wool, and Esther sees something in her face that frightens her, and all she can murmur is, O Katrina please it will
not
happen, will it, before she rises clumsily to her feet and runs out of the room.

Unsuited for The Game, Father has said, sadly, with finality, but what, wonders the girl, is The Game for which she is unsuited . . . ?

By stealth, by night, making her way along the deserted country road . . . down the long hill by the cider mill, across the bridge that rattles . . . the creek below, the vaporous sky above, a moon made of bone, something fierce and wet and sharp rising from the grass . . . and now she gallops noiselessly past the darkened rear of the livery stable . . . past the darkened rear of the icehouse . . . and here is the Methodist church and here is the pharmacy and here is the school to which she will be going in the fall and here is the new Woolworth's five-and-dime with the magnificent red and gold signboard, the magnificent show windows (“any article in this window 5
CENTS
”) and here is the library with its noble portico and broad sprawling steps and here is the Congregational Church and here the houses of the men and women the boys and girls whom she hates and adores, whom she envies so that her heart lurches in her breast, the lamplight behind the thin gauzy curtains, the glimpse of an arm, a profile, a blurred movement, how do these people live, what are the secret words that pass between them, do they know of The Game, do they know they are doomed never to play The Game, what are the things that pass between them when no stranger is close at hand? The clapboard houses of lower Main Street, the tall brick houses of Muirkirk Avenue, the houses of High Street, Elm Street, Bay Street, the Woodcocks' residence behind the gray stone Lutheran church, the Ewings' house, the Oakeses', the Deerfields' corner house on Bay, white shingle board, black shutters, a veranda with four elegantly carved white posts, one brick walk leading to the front door and one brick walk leading to the doctor's office at the rear, the rusted wrought-iron fence Esther's fingers idly brush, the crooked little gate that can be closed but not locked, a half dozen windows facing the street, lamplight
within, firelight within, through the filmy curtains it is possible to see figures inside . . . yet not to be seen by them, never to be seen by
them
: the doctor in his shirtsleeves, the doctor's son (whom Esther does not love because she loves no one), the doctor's wife in the very act of slowly drawing the blinds shut.

By night, by stealth, noiseless, invisible,
here
and
not-here
, now stamping her hooves in the wet grass, now flying drunken and elated into the night sky, no one can see her at such privileged moments, no one can name her.
My baby?
the dead woman had whispered but she is no one's baby now.

I
n Corvsgate, in Allentown and in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania . . . in the more affluent suburbs of Philadelphia . . . in New Jersey, in Far Hills, Waterboro, Paterson and the better residential neighborhoods of Newark and New Brunswick . . . there appeared in the winter of 1912–13, a Mr. Gaymead, a Mr. Lichtman, a Mr. Bramier, solicitors as they called themselves for a Wall Street brokerage firm authorized to represent, in North America, the secret Society for the Reclamation & Restoration of E. Auguste Napoléon Bonaparte.

“E. Auguste Napoléon Bonaparte”?—the illegitimate son of the great Emperor, born 1821, the year of the Emperor's death. And the lost heir to a great fortune.

Which fortune has grown a thousandfold, as one might imagine, since 1821, until at the present time, in the autumn of 1912, it is estimated to be in excess of $300 million—according to a confidential report of the prestigious New York accounting firm Price, Waterhouse.

Messrs. Gaymead, Lichtman and Bramier were all three gentlemen of robust middle age, with muttonchop whiskers (Gaymead), flashing pince-nez (Lichtman) and a pencil-thin moustache (Bramier); each dressed like a Wall Street banker, in conservative three-piece suits, though Bramier sometimes sported a pink carnation in his buttonhole and Lichtman sometimes wore a checked silk Ascot tie. One wore a signet ring on his smallest finger stamped with the coat of arms of the House of Bonaparte; another wore a gold watch chain; one cleared his throat officiously; another was in the lawyerly habit of gravely repeating his sentences, as if for a stenographer's ear. All three were completely devoted, above and beyond their salaries, to the (secret) Society for the Reclamation & Restoration of E. Auguste Napoléon Bonaparte.

Inclined, perhaps, to be rather overpunctilious regarding such matters as birth certificates, genealogies, legal records, deeds of ownership of property, life insurance policies, savings accounts, and the like, these three solicitors could not resist now and then revealing their natural sympathies . . . for though the Society's negotiations were a matter of the highest confidentiality, and would, in time, provide descendants of Auguste Bonaparte with considerable sums of money (hundreds of thousands of dollars for some, as much as $1 million for others), it was nevertheless the case that Mr. Lichtman could not always resist informing a client about irregular steps being taken by certain not-to-be-named relatives of his, in advancing
their
claim to the inheritance; and Mr. Gaymead, though stiff and disconcertingly “British” in his manner, might sometimes
break into a delighted smile, when surprised by a client's especially perceptive remark.

Good-hearted Mr. Bramier, never one to raise false hopes, felt that he would rather err on the side of doubt than inspire in his clients an unreasonable hope that the lawsuit might be settled soon. Authorized to pass along the president's words, in effect, Mr. Bramier would tell a small roomful of his clients that the legal situation in which the Society found itself was unparalleled in the history of inheritance claims. “But we will not rest until Napoléon Bonaparte's rightful heir is restored to his legitimacy, and the hundreds of millions of francs—that is,
dollars
—honestly divided among his descendants; not for purposes of crass mercenary gain, but for reasons of honor. ‘Honor is the subject of my story'—as the great Bard has said,” Bramier would declare, stroking his moustache, and fixing his steel-gray eyes upon his listeners' faces. “Yet I must state sub rosa that the French are no less duplicitous at the present time than they were in 1821, when so many efforts were made to murder the infant Auguste, by agents of the ‘legitimate' son and Louis Napoléon alike; and it is hardly a secret that their civilization has, in the past century, lapsed into extreme decadence . . . which only war, I am afraid, and this time a cataclysmic war, will purge. Their Gallic pride and honor are at stake in this matter, yet, even more, their infamous Gallic greed, for it would be disastrous to their national treasury if upwards of $200 million dollars were taken from them . . . especially if it were surrendered to citizens of North America, whom, you know, they scorn as barbarians. The difficulty is, our own government, led by an unholy coalition of Democrats and Republicans, in aiding the French government in its suppression of the case, doubtless because certain high-ranking politicians are accepting ‘fees' for their trouble. Already, gentlemen, the Society has been hounded, and threatened, and denounced on the very floor of the Senate, as being
not in the best interests of French-American relations
!” (At which outburst the little audience would exclaim in surprise and perplexity. For things were so much more convoluted
than anyone might have thought.) “Thus, our need to remain entirely underground,” Bramier said severely, “pledged to secrecy; indefatigable in our efforts to legitimize the lost Auguste, and his many descendants; and faithful to the death in our willingness to underwrite the lawsuit. For though it
is
proving costly, only think, when it is settled, what rewards will follow: for Auguste's honor will be restored, after so many years;
and all his living descendants will be wealthy men.
”

THE HISTORICAL FACTS
were: the great Napoléon Bonaparte, exiled on St. Helena after the defeat of Waterloo, sired, in the final year of his life, an illegitimate son with a woman (of noble birth, it was believed, though unrecorded national identity) many years his junior; though the love affair and the subsequent birth were clandestine, the child was eventually baptized in the Catholic faith, as “Emanuel Auguste,” sometime in the autumn of 1821; and, as the mother rightfully feared for his life, he was taken away immediately following his father's death—to reside, in secrecy, in one or another Mediterranean country. (Speculation had it that the Emperor's last
inamorata
was a surpassingly beautiful girl of scarcely sixteen years of age, of richly mixed ancestry—Spanish, Greek, Moroccan.) In exile, so to speak, the boy grew to his maturity, being aware of his parentage yet resigned to a bastard's fate; until at the age of twenty-one, he dared venture to Paris, under an assumed name, where he learned that Napoléon had provided for him in his will, and very handsomely too; but that it would be his death to pursue the issue. (For all of France was united by this time under the stern rule of Napoleon III, the late Emperor's nephew.) Being a youth of some equanimity, ill-inclined to greed, Emanuel Auguste resolved to forget his patrimony, and to seek his fortune in Germany (1844–1852), and in England (1852–1879), where he died in a London suburb, known to his neighbors and associates as “E. August Armstrong,” a well-respected gentleman in the business of cotton imports. Following his death it became known
that, since leaving France, he had taken on a number of pseudonyms, out of necessity—among them Schneider, Shaffer, Reichard, Paige, Osgood, Brown, and of course Armstrong. Thus, the record of his progeny, and his progeny's progeny, was complex indeed.

For many years following Auguste's death in 1879, he and his mysterious patrimony were forgotten and his inheritance remained untouched in the vaults of the Bank of Paris. The original sum was said to be $43 million in francs; with the passage of decades, by way of investments, interest and the like, under the canny manipulations of the officers of the bank, this prodigious sum gradually increased tenfold. How long the fortune would have remained unclaimed no one would have known except for the dramatic intervention of a gentleman named François-Leon Claudel, an American citizen of French extraction who was himself a Manhattan broker and who, following his discovery of a blood relationship with E. Auguste Napoléon Bonaparte in 1909, decided to organize the Society. An elder, wealthy man, Claudel could afford to hire a small army of lawyers, historians and professional genealogists to ascertain the identities of Auguste's descendants throughout the world; and to initiate a legal suit against the Bank of Paris under terms of international law. “It isn't for the sake of mere gold that we undertake this campaign,” Claudel was quoted as saying, “but for the lost honor of our ancestor Auguste. We, his blood descendants, his heirs, are obliged to claim our rightful patrimony
in his name
—else we're dishonored indeed.”

It was no surprise to the idealistic Americans that the Frenchmen who harbored the fortune proved immediately hostile to their efforts. Though Claudel was gratified to be told by way of French informants (friends, as they identified themselves, of the “late wronged heir”) that there had long been a tale of a forsaken inheritance locked away in the Bank of Paris and guarded by bank officials, as closely bound up with the sacred memory of the Emperor. The task of tracing the many North American
heirs was less difficult than Claudel had feared, for, recognizing the altruistic impulses behind his effort, people were eager to cooperate.

By the winter of 1912, approximately three hundred heirs had been located in the United States and Canada, and it was estimated that another one hundred remained. For E. Auguste had, it seemed, sired many a child himself by way of numerous wives and mistresses, under his several pseudonyms. “It's neither curse nor virtue,” Claudel commented wryly, “that we Bonapartes are a little lustier than our neighbors.” At the start, Claudel wanted to restrict the Society to those individuals directly descended from Auguste, but, in time, as more eager parties took up the cause, membership requirements were relaxed somewhat, though all were sworn to absolute secrecy and all were required to forward dues, legal fees and various surcharges, payable in cash, by messenger (and not the U.S. Mail) to Claudel, as president of the Society, or to his authorized agents. It was carefully explained to the legitimate heirs as they were individually interviewed in their homes, that the Society, which eventually grew to more than three thousand members, was composed not only of blood relations like themselves but of parties sworn to pursue Justice; these were primarily well-to-do gentlemen of the law, religious leaders and historians who were inspired by François-Leon Claudel's mission. As the legal struggle that lay ahead would demand great sacrifices, these gentlemen were willing to donate their time, money and encouragement, though when the suit was settled, in 1915 perhaps, or 1916 at the latest,
they would not receive a penny of the fortune.

Authorized as agents for the Society, for the Mid-Atlantic sector, were Messrs. Gaymead, Lichtman, Bramier and others, all men of the highest personal integrity with excellent legal and financial backgrounds. It was their task to contact the missing heirs and to lay out before them the various documents (genealogical maps, birth and baptismal certificates, facsimiles of legal records, etc.) pertaining to E. Auguste and to themselves; and to present them the opportunity of joining the Society under its necessarily
severe terms of absolute secrecy, $2,000 payable within thirty days, and regular dues, fees, surcharges, etc. of various sums (depending upon the progress of the lawsuit) from time to time.

Of the numerous heirs who were interviewed by Society agents, all but a few skeptical individuals were enthusiastic; more than enthusiastic, elated; for the salient facts were very convincingly presented. The altruism of François-Leon Claudel and his professional associates was seen to be extraordinary; and the somewhat faint or smudged daguerreotypes of Emanuel Auguste (as a babe in arms, as a toddler, as a haughty young gentleman of perhaps twenty-one) never failed to excite special interest. (Indeed, it was remarkable how citizens in such diverse regions of the Mid-Atlantic sector as metropolitan Philadelphia, southeastern New Jersey, and the remote reaches of the upper Delaware Valley were struck by family resemblances between the lost heir, as Auguste was frequently called, and themselves or relatives. Again and again young Auguste, though pictured nearly in profile, and with his hooded eyes turned arrogantly away from the camera, was realized as the “living image” of a cousin, an uncle, a grandfather, a father, a child: and poor patient Mr. Gaymead, no less than his colleagues Lichtman, Bramier, Hynd, and Glücklicht, had to endure many a lengthy session, seated on a sofa, being shown a copious family album, with much animated commentary to the effect that the “royal blood” of the Bonapartes had always been evident, though unrecognized as such, in the client's family. It might be a look about the eyes—or the shape of the nose, the ears, the chin—the set of the jaw—the cheekbones, the bones of the forehead, etc.—but the visual evidence was unmistakable.)

“Yes, it is so,” Mr. Gaymead or one of his colleagues would say, studying a photograph, or the facial bones of a living child presented blushing before him, “—yes, I believe it
is
so. I wonder that your family did not come to the conclusion, some time ago, that you were not quite of common clay like your neighbors; but clearly possessed of an exceptional history—and a no less exceptional future.”

A curious predicament: that Abraham Licht's passion for any of his business ventures was in precise
disproportion,
as Elisha had long ago learned, to its
success.

For where plans proceeded smoothly, and clients were persuaded to surrender gratifying sums of money to his pockets, passion quickly waned; and it seemed to the restless entrepreneur that, for all his genius, for all his willingness to risk safety, he must not be playing for high enough stakes. He frequently confided to Elisha, alone of his children, that difficulties—challenges—obstacles—outright dangers—were what most stirred his spirit, and provided a fit contest for his powers, whose depths (he believed) had not yet been plumbed.

So it happened that “Little Moses” was forced into retirement earlier than seemed absolutely necessary (for Elisha quite delighted in the masquerade, knowing himself, though disguised in the skin of a “darky,”
not a Negro at all
). Similarly, “The Panama Canal, Ltd.,” closed its doors to further investors, after so wondrous a six-month showing Abraham Licht halfway feared J. P. Morgan would want to buy him out; likewise “X. X. Anson & Sons Copper, Ltd.,” and “North American Liberty Bonds, Inc.,” and “Zicht's Etheric Massage” (whereby the afflicted patient, suffering from such ailments as rheumatism, arthritis, migraine, stomach upsets, and mysterious illnesses of all kinds, lay upon a table, in absolute darkness, to be massaged by the “magnetic etheric waves” produced by an “osteophonic” machine of Dr. Zicht's invention); and, not least, the enterprise of the astrological sportsman “A. Washburn Frelicht, Ph.D.,” who had triumphed at Chautauqua, and was talked of, still, in racing circles. (It was a measure of Abraham Licht's indifference to past success, or his actual generosity regarding fellow entrepreneurs, that he cared not a whit that tout sheets, or tipster sheets, were now sold openly at American racecourses; and that their indebtedness to the pioneering
Frelicht's Tips
went unacknowledged.)