The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte (37 page)

THREE MONTHS LATER, Betsy stood at the window of her parents’ bedroom, staring down at the carriages driving on South Street. A woman in a muslin gown exited the house across the way, and a warm May breeze wafted floral scents through the open window, but those signs of spring seemed like a cruel mockery to Betsy. On the bed behind her, her mother lay dying.

Just days earlier, Betsy had received a letter from Caroline asking her to come at once. Their mother’s kidney ailment had returned, and Dorcas was deteriorating rapidly. Betsy hurried to Baltimore to find the house in an uproar. As she climbed the steps to the front door, she could hear angry shouting through the open drawing-room windows. From the recriminations Edward was making, it was clear that he had discovered their father with the housekeeper and forced the old man to turn Nancy Todd out of the house.

“Stop it!” Betsy cried, rushing into the drawing room. “I could hear you from the street. Do you want all of Baltimore to know of this sordid affair?”

Edward turned to her. “I went looking for him because Mother was in distress and found him with his whore. He had dressed her in one of Mother’s gowns.”

The image revolted Betsy, but she forced it from her mind. Grabbing her brother’s arm, she demanded, “Who is with Mother now? Does she know about this?”

Edward squeezed his eyes shut in pain. “I don’t know.”

“I am going to her,” Patterson said and started toward the doorway, but Betsy blocked his way.

“No, sir. I will deal with her.”

“Do not try to come between your mother and me.”

“I would not dream of it.” Betsy allowed contempt to turn her voice as grating as a rusty saw. “Not because you deserve any consideration but because I will not have Mother know how you dishonored her in her last days. I am going up now to say you dismissed Nancy Todd for stealing. And I expect every person in this family to support that story so she can die in peace.”

Remembering the scene now, Betsy clenched her fists in rage. Her father had used her mother like a brood mare until she was too sick to receive his attentions, and then he sought other objects for his lust as casually as he would buy a new horse. A married woman had few ways to protect herself from the toll of constant childbearing. By the law of the land, she had to submit to her husband as often as he demanded it even if she had been told that to go through labor again would kill her. According to clergymen, it was God’s will for men to have pleasure and women to have pain because Eve had tempted Adam.

Well, Betsy no longer believed that. Jerome might think it was his right as a king to bed every woman in Westphalia, and her father might think it was his prerogative as head of the house to couple with the servants, but the only reason they got away with such behavior was that they had power and women had none. Not every man betrayed his vows—Robert was true to Marianne, and even Jerome had been faithful when he lived with Betsy—but Betsy thought that women inevitably got the worst of marriage.

Hearing her mother moan in her sleep, Betsy turned from the window and returned to her chair at the bedside. Dorcas’s whole body was swollen, her breathing was labored, and when awake, she was in terrible pain. Betsy prayed for her mother to find relief and then picked up her sewing. She was altering one of Octavius’s old shirts for Bo. As she considered how much to take in the side seams, Dorcas woke up and asked, “How are you, dear?”

“Fine.”

“Are you? You do not seem happy.”

Betsy pushed a pin into the linen and said, “I am worried about you.”

“No need. I am content to die.” Dorcas paused to catch her breath. “William and your sisters are waiting for me.”

“Oh, Mother.” As tears flooded her eyes, Betsy wiped her face with the shirt. “Please try to get well. I cannot bear the thought of losing you.”

Her mother gave a deep sigh. Then she plucked at the sheet to pull it closer to her chin. “I wish you would marry again, Betsy. You would not be so alone.”

“No, I daresay I would never be alone. I would have a husband to order me about, spend my money, and pester me to satisfy his appetites. Then I would have who knows how many children until my body was ruined.” Dorcas flinched, and Betsy repented of her angry words. “Mother, forgive me. I said that only because I am distraught. When I think that you could still be strong and vibrant like Aunt Nancy—”

“And which of your brothers and sisters do you wish had never been born?”

Lowering her gaze, Betsy picked up a stray thread that had fallen onto the bedcovers. “I am not like you. Even as a child, I knew I did not want a large family.”

“But darling, it is not natural for a woman to be alone.”

“I am not alone. I have Bo.”

“You know that I meant a husband.”

Betsy blushed. This was an aspect of her life she never discussed, but knowing that her mother’s time was running out made honesty seem imperative. “Mother, I have never met another man who inspires me with the passion I had for Jerome. When I think of sharing my bed with someone for whom I have only tepid affection, I feel repugnance.”

Her mother sighed. “There was a time that I hoped Charles Oakeley—”

Betsy shook her head. “I admit that I was more drawn to him than any of the others, but in the end, I could not bring myself to do it.”

“Are you certain you have not hardened your heart to prevent more hurt?” Dorcas lay a hand on her chest as she struggled to breathe. “If you married a good man whom you like, passion might follow.”

Pushing the last pin into the seam, Betsy said, “Who can tell in advance if a man is trustworthy? In my experience, it is impossible.”

“Please do not say such bitter things.”

Betsy reached out for her mother’s hand. “Do not worry about me. I love my son, and fighting for him has become my purpose in life. I can make that be enough.”

Dorcas smiled sadly. “Then you will never have a daughter.”

As she resumed sewing, Betsy said, “There are many things I will never have. But I am doing what I can to attain that which is possible.”

DORCAS PATTERSON DIED on May 20, 1814. Betsy was at her side when her breathing stopped. After sitting quietly for several minutes holding her hand, Betsy cut a lock of her mother’s faded auburn hair and stowed it in her workbasket until she could put it inside her gold locket. Then she went to tell her father that his wife was gone.

After allowing herself one night of tears, Betsy put her sorrow away until later. With no housekeeper in the Patterson home, someone had to oversee the planning for the after-funeral luncheon, and fifteen-year-old Caroline was too heartbroken to do it. So Betsy spent the next two days making arrangements at South Street and returning to her own house at night.

She asked her father for the painting of herself and her mother that hung above the fireplace, but he said absolutely not, he wanted it to remember his wife. Then he brusquely ordered Betsy to get him tea. In the pantry, she took down her mother’s good English china teapot but then set it aside and used the everyday brown-glazed teapot instead. That night, she wrapped the china teapot in a towel and took it home with her.

While Betsy prepared for the funeral, Edward drove to Emmitsburg to fetch her son. Bo was devastated when he arrived. He had believed that “Mother” would get well and could not understand why praying for her during chapel had failed. At the age of eight he thought himself too old to cry, yet he gave way to tears once he and Betsy were alone in their little house.

After he cried himself out, Betsy let him lay his head in her lap while she stroked his hair. Remembering her last conversation with her mother, she realized that Bo would be a grown man and on his own in little more than a decade. Betsy dreaded being alone, but she feared being trapped in marriage to a cruel or disreputable husband even more. Perhaps one day Bo would give her grandchildren, and then her life would have new sources of love.

XXIX

A
FEW days after Dorcas’s burial, Betsy learned that Napoleon was no longer emperor. The European war had turned against the French—more disastrously than Betsy had realized during the months she was preoccupied with her mother’s health. The previous fall at Leipzig, an allied force of more than 320,000 men had attacked a French army of 185,000. Napoleon suffered one of the worst defeats of his career. Nearly 40,000 French soldiers—a number almost equal to the population of Baltimore—were wounded or killed, and the allies captured another 30,000. The allies themselves lost some 55,000 men. Betsy found the numbers horrifying, even more so when she recalled the high losses of the Russia campaign.

The allies soon invaded France itself, and throughout the early months of 1814, a force of nearly half a million closed in on Paris, slowly strangling Napoleon’s hope of remaining on the throne. By then he could field barely 30,000 men—and not all of those were adults. The decades of warfare had so thoroughly destroyed France’s male population that Napoleon called for teenage boys of fourteen and fifteen to join the army. These conscripts were known as “Marie Louises” after the youthful empress. Betsy realized with dismay that, if the war had continued another few years, Napoleon almost certainly would have sent Bo into battle.

The allies had reached Paris at the end of March 1814. Even though Napoleon was still fighting, the Parisian authorities, led by the former foreign minister Talleyrand, negotiated separately to surrender. In April, Napoleon abdicated, hoping that his crown would pass to his three-year-old son, but the allies restored the monarchy and put a brother of the guillotined Louis XVI on the throne.

The reports left Betsy wondering why she had had to endure so much loneliness and deprivation. The omnipotent titan who had plucked her from her chosen path and flung her back to Baltimore was now toppled like the character of Humpty Dumpty in the book of verses she used to read to Bo. For years, she had believed that she was forced to suffer so he could keep France safe, but now even that morsel of comfort was snatched from her.

For Betsy, the worst of the news was that Napoleon’s downfall shattered her hopes for Bo to become a prince. Whenever she looked at her son, who so resembled the emperor, she wondered what his future would hold now that the Bonapartes had fallen from power. Perhaps, she told herself fervently, her son could still become a man of importance if she persevered in her plan of getting him the best education and introducing him to the right people.

A month later, the papers reported that Napoleon was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba. Marie Louise and their son had taken refuge in Vienna, where her father dissuaded her from rejoining her husband. The allies gave her a duchy to rule instead. Betsy felt nothing but scorn for the weak-willed young empress, who seemingly had taken a bribe for agreeing to be used as an instrument to punish her husband.

Shaking her head over the report, Betsy folded up the newspaper she had been reading. “Now Napoleon knows how it feels to lose his wife and child. I hope it makes him realize what a bitter thing he did to Jerome.”

Bo looked up from the French sentences she had given him to copy. “Mama, if Uncle Napoleon is not emperor anymore, does that mean he cannot give us titles?”

“No, we will not receive titles. I am sorry.”

Shrugging, Bo wrote his initials J.N.B. sideways on the margin of his paper. “I like my name the way it is: Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte. It sounds like an important person.”

Betsy covered her mouth to hide her amusement. “Does that mean you no longer want me to call you Bo?”

“No, I meant my formal name for when I grow up, not your special name for me.”

“Good.” She watched him work awhile. “This most likely means my pension will cease. I have saved as much as I can, so I hope we will have enough to live on.”

Bo chewed the end of his pencil and then asked, “Can we stay in America?”

“No. I still want you to receive a European education, and I plan to seek advice about the best schools.” As she spoke, a happy thought occurred to her. “In fact, Napoleon can no longer prevent me from going to France to investigate matters.”

Rising, Bo came to stand by her chair. He put an arm around her and laid his head on her shoulder. “Mama, please do not sail to France. We are at war. What would become of me if your ship were sunk?”

“Don’t worry. I will not go until it is safe.”

After a moment, Bo murmured, “I wonder what happened to my father.”

“I do not know, but I am sure he is all right. Your father has an astonishing way of surviving trouble unscathed. When we go to Europe, you might finally meet him.”

“I don’t think he wants to meet me. He never answered my letter.”

Betsy gave him a one-armed hug. “Sweetheart, a war was going on, and oftentimes the mails get lost. Your father is a very loving man, so I am certain he wants to meet you.”

“I hope so.” He sighed and trudged back to his chair. “I wish I did not have to study French during my summer holiday.”

“A man with an important-sounding name needs to be able to speak French.”

Bo looked up and, seeing her smile, laughed. “Mama, sometimes you are very silly.”

THAT SUMMER BETSY wrote to her acquaintances requesting letters of introduction to European society and asking if anyone knew of respectable people planning a journey to Europe with whom she could travel. On learning her plans, Robert urged her to reconsider. “I understand that the Bonapartes have been banished from France. Might not this exclusion apply to you?”

“I hardly think so. I was not deemed a member of the imperial family while married to Jerome. Why should I share their punishment now?” Still, she agreed to find out—a concession that posed a dilemma. Betsy worried that if she were to write the new royal government asking special permission to visit France, it would convey an unwarranted degree of self-importance. Instead, she asked Minister Sérurier’s secretary to make discreet inquiries.

By then it was August 1814. The United States was barely holding its own in the war with Great Britain. America had won a few notable victories—the defeat of the
Guerrière
by the USS
Constitution,
the capture of a British squadron on Lake Erie by Oliver Hazard Perry—but for more than a year, the British navy had blockaded the Atlantic coast and raided communities along Chesapeake Bay at will. Now, Napoleon’s defeat had released thousands of battle-hardened veterans to fight in the Americas, and Baltimore feared that its day of reckoning was coming. The British had denounced the city as a “nest of pirates” because it was home to many of the privateers that marauded English shipping. Despite the widespread fear, few people from the city took up arms. Earlier that summer, a thirty-nine-year-old Baltimorean, General William Winder, was put in charge of defending a new military district that comprised Baltimore and Washington. He called for 3,000 Maryland militia, yet only a fraction of that number reported for duty.

On August 16, a lookout stationed near Cape Henry, Virginia, reported that a British fleet of more than twenty vessels had entered Chesapeake Bay. No one knew whether the target was Washington, Baltimore, or Annapolis. When William Patterson heard the news at his Springfield estate, he decided that he and his sons needed to be in town to look after their property. Betsy also returned to Baltimore because she feared what might happen if invading soldiers found her alone in the country with only servants and a nine-year-old child.

On the 19th, British soldiers disembarked on the shore of the Patuxent River sixty miles south of Baltimore. The landing indicated an attack on Washington, so additional Maryland militia marched to the capital. On the 22nd, word came that the British fleet had bottled up Commodore Barney’s flotilla high up the Patuxent. Barney blew up his ships rather than let them be captured.

It was the hottest August in memory, and tempers frayed under the triple irritants of heat, frustration, and fear. Contradictory rumors circulated through Baltimore all day on the 24th. About ten o’clock that night, a loud knock on her door startled Betsy. A minute later, Sadie entered announcing, “Your brother, madam,” followed by Edward.

“Father wants you and Bo at South Street. We think Washington has been taken.”

Betsy’s heart lurched at the thought of Dolley Madison in danger. Laying aside the shirt she was mending, she rose. “Let me put together a few items of clothing and wake Bo.”

She took one of the lighted candles from the mantel, went upstairs with the maid, and found a small valise in her storeroom. Betsy handed it to Sadie and told her to pack for two or three days. “Once you have done that, fetch my jewelry casket.”

Then Betsy entered her son’s room, put the candlestick on the bedside table, and shook him. He groaned, made a shooing gesture, and curled up on his side. Betsy called his name.

“What?” he muttered, burrowing his face into his pillow.

“Wake up now. We have to go to your grandfather’s house.”

Slowly, he opened his eyes and squinted at her. “Is it morning?”

“No, darling. There is trouble, and we will be safer there.”

Bo sat up. “Are the British coming?”

“Not yet. They are still in Washington, but—” Betsy hesitated, then realized it would be impossible to keep the truth from him. “Grandfather thinks the capital may have fallen.”

“Oh.” He made no move to get out of bed.

“Please get up and put on your clothes.”

“Not until you leave the room, Mama.”

Betsy raised her eyebrows at this sign that he was acquiring an adult sense of modesty. “Hurry. If you are not downstairs in five minutes, I will send up your uncle Edward.”

When they reached the South Street house half an hour later, it seemed deserted. “Where is everyone?” Betsy asked.

“Watching from the roof of the back building.”

“May I go too, Mama?”

“Yes.” They walked through to the rear staircase and climbed to the third floor. Then they went to the end of the hall and ascended the ladder to an open trapdoor. Betsy insisted on going first to keep Bo from rushing onto the dark roof, which was flat with a low parapet.

Once on the roof, she moved to where her father and brothers stood near one corner and gazed to the southwest. An angry orange glare lit the horizon. “Merciful heavens! Is that fire?”

Patterson lowered his telescope and handed it to Edward. “Yes. Washington is burning.”

Bo crept up beside her and grasped her skirt as he had when he was very little. “Mama, did the British soldiers do that?”

“So it would seem,” she said, putting an arm around his shoulder.

“Do you think they shot President Madison?”

“I don’t see why they would. They did not shoot Napoleon, and he had been at war with them for twenty years.” To her father, she said, “Where is Caroline?”

“In bed. She has had a cold all summer.”

Betsy frowned. Her sister had worn herself out during the prolonged stint of nursing their mother, and Betsy feared this “cold” might be the onset of something more serious.

Glancing to where her brothers stood, Betsy saw the telescope being passed from one to the other. Octavius called, “Come on, Bo.”

“Mama?”

“Go ahead, but stay back from the edge.”

As Bo moved away, Betsy asked her father, “Have they torched the entire city?”

“No, the blaze seems concentrated in three or four spots. Probably the public buildings.”

At the thought of the President’s Mansion, Betsy felt hatred well up inside her. “Why should the British wreak such destruction? They did not burn Paris when they overthrew Napoleon.”

“Reports have come in that they seek retaliation for the burning of Port Dover, but I think it more than that. They mean to punish us for presuming to claim our independence.”

Just like you,
she thought bitterly.
You have never forgiven me for not being submissive.

She walked over to her brothers and asked for the glass. Staring through it, she saw what her father meant about the glow emanating from a few places. As she watched, a tongue of flame leapt toward the sky. Bo crept to her side and wrapped the fabric of her skirt around his fist. Betsy realized that the destruction of the city that was his second home was upsetting him. She longed to hug him, but she refrained from embarrassing him in front of his uncles. “You should go back to bed.”

“Not yet, Mama. I want to see what happens.”

Even though she knew it was unlikely they would receive any word that night, Betsy gave him permission to remain. After an hour, she went downstairs to make tea and sandwiches. As Betsy found a loaf of bread in the pantry, she heard a door open and close. A moment later, the new housekeeper entered the kitchen. “What are you doing, madam?”

Providence Summers was twenty-four, with blonde hair, a freckled face, and a buxom figure. She was married to a captain who was often away at sea. Although Betsy suspected that her father had bedded the woman, she had decided to ignore the situation since he was now a widower. “The British are burning Washington, and my family are on the roof watching,” Betsy said as she sliced the bread. “They want some refreshment, but I did not like to disturb your rest.”

“I always hear when someone is in my kitchen.”

Laying down the knife, Betsy looked at her. “Your kitchen?”

Providence flushed but did not answer.

“Since you are up, get the cheese and make sandwiches while I brew tea.”

Fifteen minutes later, Betsy carried a tray of food to her father and brothers, who ate gratefully. Toward dawn, a violent thunderstorm chased the family inside. As Betsy tucked Bo into bed, he asked, “Are the British going to burn our house?”

“I hope not, but no one can say what will happen in a war.”

He frowned. “I wish I had a pistol so I could protect you.”

“Heavens, Bo, you are much too young for such things. If things grow dangerous here, we can go to your uncle John in Virginia.”

His scowl grew fiercer. “I am not a baby anymore.”

“I know, but you are not a man yet either.” Betsy stroked his smooth cheek. “Allow me to be your mother a little longer.”