Do you? I wonder, he said. I wonder if you do.
I did. All of the mysteries of my arrangement with both men were finally clear to me. I was something the Prince had bought for his favorite. I waited, saying nothing. I wanted us to arrive at the next moment, the one where he told me what I needed to do. I was sure it was next.
For love of him, I cannot destroy you. But perhaps we can cooperate. You want to leave, and I also want this. I will give you your freedom on the condition you act as if you were escaping. The reward is rich. Will you hear me out?
Very well, Your Highness, I said.
Excellent, he said. Let us plan your escape.
The reward was rich. The apartment on the avenue de l’Opéra would finally belong to me outright, papers drawn up to that effect. An account also would be created in my name, with an annual income to be drawn until my death.
He handed me a Paris banker’s card with the sum of 500,000 francs, written in pen.
Was this the Comtesse’s secret, then? I nearly laughed.
It would offend me greatly if a hero of this war was to live the life so many of your kind do, he said. I would not want to pass the rue des Martyrs and see you eating in that little café for impoverished singers. If you should still end up there, at least hide if you should ever see my retinue.
I promised I would.
He will speak to you the next morning of how we hope to honor you as a hero, the Prince said. When he does, you will see, right then, what you must do, what I am asking you to do. You will then depart, and a horse or a train or anything you like will be provided. Simply tell me now. Do this one thing more for me, then, he said. And all will be as you wish.
No one who had ever had my life in their hands had tired of it yet except for me. But I’d met the author of the tenor’s strategies—he as eager to keep the tenor as the tenor was to keep me—and so as I left his presence, a wild hope ran through me like a fever.
If anyone could free me from the tenor, it was the Prince.
§
The tenor came in the morning, as promised. I had not slept long, but deeply all the same. He brought a tray of coffee with cream as well as bread and butter with gooseberry jam. He set it down and went about the room opening windows. Good morning, comprimaria, he said.
Good morning, I said.
He cleared his throat as he sat down on the bed and began spreading jam on the bread for both of us. He set mine in front of me.
This is a breakfast my mother used to make for me, he said. He pointed to the gooseberry jam. She made this from a tree that still grows in her Garten. If I was very good, she brought the jam out. We used it very sparingly. It was precious.
I brought the bread to my lips. The flavor was sweet and tart. All food was still too rich for me, but I was slowly getting used to it. I didn’t want to retch up my hero’s breakfast, though, so I took just a nibble, and smiled.
We owe you a great debt. You were instrumental in our victory. You began as an important ally in the service of the Comtesse, bringing crucial information to us on the activities of the imperial consort. We had suspected that the affairs of state were more and more her responsibility—the Emperor was in the grip of a nervous decline, in increasingly great pain. Thanks to you, we were able to know just how often she met with visiting heads of state during an important period diplomatically.
I was still in my nightgown, still in bed. I could smell the wind coming off the river, the freshness of it commanding me like a spell. I longed to leap from edge of the castle into the river in one long dive, to feel the relief of the water taking me in, down to the bottom. A Rhinemaiden at last. I would never survive it, though it would be a beautiful death, but I no longer wanted death. I wanted to live again, stupid as that had seemed even just the day before. I wanted my freedom. And, I understood, I nearly had it. I had only to pass this last test the Prince had set.
There was always a last test and never any guarantee this would truly be the last. And yet I had to try once more.
Did you ever guess what the Comtesse did with that weekly accounting of her clothes?
He smiled, his hands behind his back, as if the answer to his question were there.
I shook my head—half a lie. I knew whatever he had in mind would go better for me if he believed I knew nothing. I also wanted to hear what he would say.
She asked me to never speak of it to you until after we had succeeded, he said. When the secret would not matter. Her plan was to make the Emperor believe your mission frivolous, a bit of theater concocted from her desire to know the Empress’s styles so as to imitate her first and best. Instead, your little lists told a tale of how often Eugénie sat with the Emperor, or even in place of him, and sometimes even with whom she met and for how long.
This cheered him to think of it, and he spoke it all through a smile.
When I found you at Compiègne, hidden in that disguise, I did not suspect your mission, and I admit I was furious at your escape. But even though each of us did not guess the other’s purpose that afternoon, we helped each other even then. When you told me of those angry ladies waiting for their tea invitations and how the Empress kept them waiting, I knew then the Empress sat on the council for war. Nothing less would have kept her from those teas. This confirmed that our actions in Spain would bait France into war—when we chose a new king for Spain.
He hesitated here.
Yes. We were set to do it, but when we knew Eugénie held the command, we knew she, a Spaniard, would take it as a powerful slight and would act. And so she did. This woman who could not even manage the affairs of the Tuileries Palace set France on the path to war. You gave us the ability to strike without doubt.
These Napoléons, they just play at being emperors. They think it is all clothes and jewels, parties and parades. I am sure she was the one who sent the Emperor and the Prince to the front. This put the entire imperial line of descent at risk. When we captured the Emperor and the heir, we had everything. The only person who did not or would not understand this was the Empress, who believed she still held power back in Paris—she was only ever the vessel for an heir no matter how much of the statecraft he let her play at. She believed in her power until she was chased from the palace, I think.
Her mocked her, his hands twirling by his head, as if running while wearing a very heavy wig.
When I did not laugh, he said, We should make her a present. Send her flowers. He laughed at this as if to laugh for us both.
How I longed to surprise him, to shock him—him and the Prince both. I wanted to do the one thing they did not expect or plan for, even as I knew I couldn’t be certain of what that might be—it seemed they had planned for everything.
The tenor continued to speak, certain of his goal, whatever it was.
Only after you escaped and I returned to Paris, and the Comtesse contacted me to arrange for our reunion, only then did I know you’d left precisely because I’d interrupted you. She explained you had to return to her with your report despite your desire to return with me. I was amazed. I think I laughed in terror for an entire day at what could have happened if I had succeeded that day in taking you with me. I was so angry at you, but you were right. You were right to escape me. Please forgive me.
This little lie of hers was strangely poignant to hear as he took my hand in his and kissed it gently, kneeling before me. When he looked up, though I knew he meant to be impish, his face was only a mask for the hurt; I could see he still felt to think of that time when he had nearly failed his mission. And the love he had for me there, protected by that same lie.
He did not know, then. He still believed I had returned because I loved him.