Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

I wrote several cards to the various Bonaparte homes, hoping to find out that Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte had not yet left for Paris and would speak with me, even though I presumed he would not remember our brief meeting at the dress ball with Monsieur Montor. I had questions. Though they might not do me any good in particular, I wanted the answers anyway.

Meanwhile, many onlookers came to court to see the continuation of my earlier humiliations. It seemed unfortunate to them, I suppose, that my previous appearances in the press had been inconclusive and had not reached an appropriate climax. Fortunately, many spectators were eventually driven away by the tedium of the technical matters that filled most of the opening days of the trial. It was around this time that I was surprised to receive a note with the Bonaparte seal, assigning me a time to come to one of their residences.

It was a larger house than the one I had seen the rogues in; it was more secluded, surrounded by wild trees and uncultivated grassy hills. I was ushered inside by a very willing servant, and on the grand stairway met at least two other servants (it was a long stairway), whose shared trait was their nervousness undertaking some task or another. The mansion was grand and in no way subdued or timid in its grandeur-showing the most marvelous chandeliers and gold-bordered tapestries, which always kept the eye looking up.

I was surprised to find seated in a massive chair burnished with silver not Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte-the leading male of the Baltimore branch of the family-but his mother, Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte. As a young girl she had captured the heart of Napoleon's brother and was married to him for two years before Napoleon, through various machinations, including calling in the pope to annul it, ended the relationship. Though she was not now costumed as a queen, as the first time I'd met her, the regal attitude remained.

This matron, now in her sixties, had bare arms with the most luminous bracelets, too many to count, spiraling up and down her wrists. Upon her head she wore a black velvet bonnet from which orange feathers jutted out, giving her a frightening and wild aspect. Several tables of jewels and garish garments surrounded her. On the other side of her chambers, a girl I took to be a servant rocked in a chair like an invalid.

"Madame Bonaparte." I bowed, feeling for a moment that I should lean down on one knee. "You would not remember meeting me, but I was at a ball where you were dressed as a queen and I was not in a costume."

"You are right, young man. I do not remember meeting you. But it was I who answered your card."

"And Monsieur Bonaparte, your son…?"

"Bo is already on his way to meet the new emperor of France," she said, as though it were the most pedestrian reason for a tour abroad.

"I understand. I have read in the papers of the prospects for such a meeting. Perhaps monsieur could be kindly informed that I should be most obliged to arrange an interview upon his return."

She nodded but seemed to forget the request as soon as I had spoken it. "I would not quarrel with an attorney," she said, "but I wonder that you should have time to be here when you are quite occupied each day at court, Mr. Clark."

I was surprised that she knew anything of my situation, though I reminded myself of the interest taken by the press. Still, though my claim to sanity and my life's fortune was hanging in the balance, for a woman whose son was reported by the newspapers as journeying to meet an emperor, my troubles seemed rather trifling business. I sat in a particular armchair as instructed. I surveyed the rest of the room and noticed a bright red parasol, gleaming as brilliantly as her jewels, leaning against the side of a large chest. Underneath was a mostly dried puddle of water, indicating its recent use. In my mind, I saw again the scene before me at the Baron's doomed lecture hall, and the indistinct lady under a bejeweled red parasol.

Had it been she?

I realized, with a sudden chill, why this woman must have come to the lecture. As a witness not to the Baron's revelations on Poe's death, but to the revelation of a new death.

I thought I had understood most of the history of events when I'd read of the recent tales of power and death in Paris in the newspapers. Louis-Napoleon, when told of Duponte's re-emergence in Paris, a re-emergence I had stimulated, thought back to the legends of the analyst's abilities. He and the leaders of his plan for a secret coup must have believed Duponte could jeopardize it, could ratiocinate and expose their goals of a coup too early. Napoleon had ordered Duponte eliminated at about the time we were leaving for Baltimore. It was meant to be an easy task for one of the men of abandoned character known to the police, with whom they sometimes made mutually advantageous arrangements.

They missed their opportunity while Duponte was still in Paris, and soon he was leaving with me. Many years later, I heard reports that they had thoroughly raided and torn apart all of Duponte's rooms while we were on the way to the harbor. Frantic, they planned his elimination at sea, only to find the expulsion of their assassin, the stowaway, one of whose aliases was Rollin. They had lost us to America.

Yet there were Bonapartes in Baltimore; indeed, there was Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been denied his birthright. Bo had been waiting his whole life to realign himself with the branch of his family in France, to be royalty. Now came his chance to prove his worth to the heir to the power of their ancestor, to this soon-to-be emperor. The men following the Baron Dupin, the men who killed him under the guidance of the original stowaway, had not come for him at all. Rollin had hidden himself in Baltimore because he knew Duponte might recognize him from that incident on board the ship. I had seen him in my poison-induced haze in prison, where he had been incarcerated briefly for some involvement with a local criminal element. The stowaway Rollin-and his two henchmen-had been here to kill Duponte. For the sake of the future of France.

Except the Baron had made the mistake of disguising himself as his rival. And had been killed in his stead.

That was how I had come to understand the events since encountering the stowaway Rollin at the house of the Bonapartes. But now, meeting this woman, I had to wonder: what had she done in all this?

I turned from the parasol back to its keeper. "You knew the part of the plot your son was designing?"

"Bo?" She let out a chirp of amusement. "He is too busy with his garden and his books for such things. He is a member of the bar but never saw fit to practice. He is a true man of the world. Certainly, he wishes to assume his proper place, to regain our property and our rights as Bonapartes, but he has not the strength of spirit to be a leader."

"Then who?" I asked. "Who saw to it that you would hunt Duponte to win favor back with Napoleon?"

"I would not expect such a want of courtesy in my home from a strikingly handsome young gentleman as yourself." But her reprimand seemed light. Indeed, she leisurely passed a glance up and down my body in a way that gave me discomfort. She had been grinning, but now her face became flat and serious as she talked about her son. "Bo…I had endeavored to instill in my son that he was too high in birth to ever marry an American woman. Yet he disgraced himself by doing so. I wished for him in his youth to take the hand of Charlotte Bonaparte, a cousin of his, to return us to the seat of influence, but he refused."

"You refused the wishes of your parents, too, when a girl," I noted.

"I did so to be brought under the wings of an eagle!" she said passionately. "Yes, the emperor had dealt with me in a hard fashion, but I long ago forgave him. What did he say of me to Marshal Bertrand before he died? ‘Those whom I have wronged have forgiven me; those whom I have loaded with kindness have forsaken me.' Ah, Napoleon, I have not let my grandsons forget that their grand-uncle was the Great Emperor!"