The Game of Hope
Sandra Gulland
ALSO BY SANDRA GULLAND
The Josephine B. Trilogy
The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe
The Last Great Dance on Earth
The Sun Court Duet
Mistress of the Sun
The Shadow Queen
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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New York, New York 10014
First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018
Text copyright © 2018 by Sandra Gulland
Jacket painting by Marie Denise Villers, courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac D. Fletcher Collection, Bequest of Isaac D. Fletcher, 1917 | Go to http://bit.ly/Hopecover for more details.
Map by Jean-Claude Dezauche (ca. 1750–1824)/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain
The Lenormand cards © The Trustees of the British Museum.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Gulland, Sandra, author.
Title: The game of hope / Sandra Gulland.
Description: New York : Viking Books for Young Readers, 2018. | Summary: In 1798, fifteen-year-old Hortense de Beauharnais, Napoleon Bonaparte’s stepdaughter, attends an exclusive boarding school, dreaming of her brother’s fellow officer Christophe, unaware of the role she is fated to play. Identifiers: LCCN 2017058340 (print) | LCCN 2018004014 (ebook) ISBN 9780425291023 (ebook) | ISBN 9780425291016 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Hortense, Queen, consort of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, 1783–1837—Childhood and youth—Juvenile fiction. | France—History—1789–1799—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Hortense, Queen, consort of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, 1783–1837—Fiction. | Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Conduct of life—Fiction. | France—History—1789–1799—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.G874 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.G874 Gam 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017058340
Version_1
For Ellie, Kiki and Estelle, my Fearsome Threesome
* * *
“Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.”
—VOLTAIRE, FROM Candide
* * *
CONTENTS
Also by Sandra Gulland
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
A Historical Note
I: Refuge
II: Life Force
III: Deceit
IV: Transformation
V: Happy Times
VI: Change
VII: New Possibilities
VIII: Romantic Fantasies
Afterword
The Revolutionary Calendar
Cast of Characters
Glossary
Map
The Game of Hope
Acknowledgements
About the Author
A HISTORICAL NOTE
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .”
In his novel A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens wrote about the French Revolution, a revolution that began in a fever of idealism and goodwill (the best of times), and devolved over time into the period known as the Terror (the worst of times).
The Terror began when Robespierre—sometimes referred to as “the Tyrant”—gained power. During his rule, thousands of innocent men and women, many of them aristocrats, were imprisoned. Most were subsequently executed, beheaded by a contraption named after Dr. Guillotin, who had invented it as a humanitarian alternative to hanging. He regretted the association of his name with a machine that came to be used with shocking frequency during the Terror.
This was the world of Hortense’s childhood. After Robespierre was overthrown and guillotined, many prisoners were released, including Hortense’s mother, Josephine, who escaped death by only a day. Her father was not so fortunate.
Although fiction, Hortense’s story is based on historical fact. For example, the letters from Maîtresse Campan, the head of her boarding school, are based on letters Campan wrote. Also, the young composer Hyacinthe Jadin was indeed Hortense’s teacher. (See the notes at the end of this novel for details.)
The Game of Hope opens in 1798, four years after the end of the Terror. France is in shambles, many grieving the death of someone they loved—especially Hortense, who mourns her beloved father, executed by guillotine.
I
REFUGE
26 Fructidor – Jour du génie, An 6
(12 September – 18 September, 1798)
THE HOUSE CARD: REFUGE
THE DREAM
I saw a man approaching. Cloaked and hooded, he moved with grace in the flickering candlelight.
My heart soared. Father!
He put out one hand, gloved in white leather. Hope was aglow all around him.
But then—as always—his hood fell back, and there was only a bloody stump where his head should have been.
I screamed, gasping for air, my heart pounding.
* * *
—
Mouse and Ém tried to calm me, but I only wept all the harder.
What did my father want?
Why was he haunting me?
Maîtresse rushed into our room in rumpled nightclothes, a shawl thrown haphazardly over her shoulders. “Such screaming, angel! You’ll terrify the Little Geniuses,” she said, putting down her candle. The shadows made her face look like that of a ghoul.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed, slipping the miniature enamel portrait of my father from under my pillow. Father: so handsome, so elegant, to have died like that, the crowd cheering as his head fell into a basket of wood shavings.
“It’s that same night-fright she always has,” Mouse told her aunt, her voice tremulous.
“That scary dream of her father,” my cousin Ém said.
I looked into Maîtresse’s eyes. She was mistress of our boarding school, quite strict and demanding, yet we all loved her. “With his—” I winced, making a slashing motion across my neck.
“Come here, my sweets,” Maîtresse said, opening her arms.
Dragging their blankets, Ém and Mouse huddled in close. I could feel Mouse trembling. We called ourselves the Fearsome Threesome, but in the dead of night, Fearful Threesome might have been more apt.
“Repeat after me,” Maîtresse said, pulling the blankets snugly around us. She smelled deliciously of vanilla. “We are safe now.”
“We are safe now,” we whispered in unison.
Safe now, safe now, safe now.
But were we? It had been four years since the tyrant Robespierre had been executed, bringing an end to the Terror—but what if it were to happen again? Practically every girl in our school was of the nobility. What was to keep us from being hunted down, having our heads cut off?
I bit my lip, recalling the stench of the dead, heaped like garbage in the square.
Maîtresse clasped my shoulder. The strength of her grip brought me back. “You grew up in a violent time,” she said, her voice soft. “You witnessed things no child should
ever have to see. But memories are like words on a wax tablet: they can be erased. You are smart, and creative, and talented. You can become whatever you wish, but first, you must learn to direct your thoughts—even your dreams.” She tucked a stray strand of my hair back up under my nightcap. “Remember: you are safe now.”
Safe now.
* * *
—
I woke before dawn, my thoughts in disarray, my heart aching.
Father, must you frighten me so?
Was I the cause of your death?
I whispered my morning devotions curled up under my blankets, praying that I would never have that dream again.
Praying for the safety of my big brother Eugène, who was a soldier now, fighting with our stepfather’s army in far-away Egypt.
Praying that my stepfather, General Bonaparte, would somehow disappear from my life, lost to the sands of that barbaric country.
Praying that I would become a better person and not have such evil thoughts.
Praying that my mother would stop trying to find a husband for me.
Praying for a horse of my own.
Praying for one of Maîtresse’s delicious chocolate madeleines.
And then, especially heartfelt, praying—sinfully, I know—for the safety of A Certain Someone who was also with the General’s army in Egypt.
* * *
—
Dawn breaking, I slipped shivering out of bed and wrapped myself in a shawl. Quietly, so as not to wake Ém and Mouse, I put kindling and a few sticks of wood on the embers in the fireplace, blowing until they caught fire. I heard a rooster crow and tiptoed to the window to unlatch the shutters. It was cold for early fall—there was a shimmer of frost on the courtyard cobbles.
My thick notebooks were stacked to one side on the study table I shared with Ém and Mouse. I’d been away for three months, tending my injured mother. I had missed the Institute so much! I had been enrolled at only twelve, shortly after my father was executed and Maman released from prison. Now I was fifteen, Maman was married to General Bonaparte, and my brother was on the General’s staff in Egypt.
Time passed so quickly. And death came quickly, too.
Safe now?
I heard a maid walking the halls, clanging her iron triangle with a metal beater, a grating, high-pitched ringing sound. Six o’clock: time for everyone to wake.
Ém groaned, pulling her covers up over her head.
“Did you sleep, Hortense?” Mouse asked, her voice groggy.
“A bit,” I said, yawning. It had taken me time to get back to sleep after the fright of my dream.
Ém chuckled from under her covers. “You kept me awake the rest of the night,” she said, poking her head out. “Talking lovey.”
“No!” I said—yet flushing. I shared everything with Ém and Mouse, everything except one secret, which I’d not had the courage to reveal, knowing how foolish they would find me. Me, fifteen, not pretty, not rich, moonsick for the most handsome of the General’s aides. A man I’d only seen a few times and who was now far away in Egypt. A man who hardly knew my name.
“You have a beau?” Mouse asked with that funny little squeak her voice sometimes got.
“I’d tell you if I did,” I said, pulling my clothes out of my travel trunk, yet to be unpacked. It wasn’t a lie, not really. I didn’t have a beau. I only wished I did. One beau in particular.
The triangle sounded a second time, in warning: Get up!
“Your turn to go first, Ém,” Mouse said, not wanting to leave the warmth of her bed. Soon we would be on our winter schedule and not have to rise until seven.
Ém, sighing in protest, slipped from under her covers, grabbed her chamber pot and disappeared behind the screen. “Ah me,” she said, “the reds.”
“Do you have what you need?” I asked.
“There are cloths here,” Ém said.
There was a rap at our door. “Citoyenne Hortense, you’re back,” maid Flor said, surprised to see me.
“She arrived last night,” Mouse said from under her covers. “In the dark.”
“How is your lovely mother?” Flor asked, filling each of our porcelain wash basins with steaming water.
“Improved.” Grâce à Dieu. “She can stand up now.”
As soon as Flor left, the triangle clanged a third time: Get dressed!
Mouse sat up, groping for her spectacles on the table beside her bed.
“It’s a bit chilly,” I said, slipping on my flannel chemise and a wool school gown over it. The long white dress was starting to feel small for me around the chest. (Yes.)
I was arranging my multicolored sash—the sash worn by those of us who had completed all the levels (the Multis, we were called)—when another servant appeared, the country girl who worked in the laundry room. “A frosty morning, girls. Émilie, you will want your lovely shawl. I stitched on your initials and number.” She closed the door behind her.
“It’s new, Ém?” I asked, passing the shawl over to her. A delicate shade of rose, the thick, luxurious cashmere was well beyond our means.
“It was a gift from her husband,” Mouse said with a giggle.
Her husband. That sounded so strange to me. Ém had been introduced to Captain Antoine Lavalette only sixteen days before marrying him, all arranged by the General and my mother. A few days later, Lavalette had left for Egypt, and shortly after that, I had gone south, and I’d not seen my cousin since.
“It’s beautiful,” I said with envy.
Ém looked stricken, her doe eyes glistening. “I prefer my old one,” she said, pulling her moth-eaten, itchy wool shawl out of her trunk.
I caught Mouse’s eye. She raised her eyebrows as if to say, I don’t understand either.
“Don’t look like that,” Ém said with a flare of surprising emotion. She was usually placid (unlike Mouse and me). “I hate how everyone goes on about me being a married woman.”
“But Ém, you are a—”
“I’m not,” she said, cutting me off. “Not really.”
How could she say that? I had been present at the ceremony in our grandparents’ house here in Montagne-du-Bon-Air.
“What do you mean, Ém?” Mouse asked, pushing up her heavy glasses.
“It’s just that I’m still . . .” Ém flushed.
“Chaste?” I whispered.
Ém answered with a slight nod.
I was surprised. It was common for girls who married young to wait until puberty before consummating their union, but Ém was seventeen, and womanly besides.
CAROLINE
When the seven o’clock triangle sounded, Mouse, Ém and I rushed down the stone stairs to the rooms where the Little Geniuses slept, some of them only four years old. One of our duties as Multis was to help a youngster get washed, dressed and to the dining hall each morning. I hadn’t seen my charge, Nelly, since early summer, and I missed her.
Ém and Mouse headed for the first room, and I carried on to the second, a warm south-facing chamber with a good-sized fireplace. The six little beds were lined up along one wall, basins for washing at each foot. On a platform at the end of the room was the tidy bed of the night monitor, Citoyenne Florentine—who was nowhere to be seen.
I waved a greeting to the other Multis, busy with their charges.
“Hortense!” Nelly hugged my legs.
“You’re so big now!” She looked irresistibly sweet in her long-sleeved nightdress and cap.
“I’m going to be five,” she boasted, holding up one hand, fingers splayed.
Her friend Fru-fru was sitting on the bed next to Nelly’s, looking forlorn.
“Where’s your helper?” I asked, nodding to three Multis who were already leaving for the dining hall with their charges.
Fru-fru scowled. “I don’t know.”
“What’s her na
me?”
“Citoyenne Caroline.”
Who was Caroline? I didn’t know one.
“I can dress myself,” Nelly boasted, trying to heft open her trunk. I propped the lid so that it wouldn’t crash down on her hands. “Citoyenne Florentine told us to wear our wool smock,” she said. “Because it’s so cold.”
The fire had died down, and I didn’t see any wood. “Where is she?” Usually, the monitor was hovering.
“She went to find Caroline,” Fru-fru said.
“Petticoat,” Nelly demanded, making a shivering motion.
“Petticoat, please,” I said, checking the contents of Nelly’s trunk, making sure that everything was properly labeled: NC (for Nelly Castille) 276 (her student number).
“Petticoat, please,” Nelly said, pulling off her night stockings. I slipped a flannel petticoat on over her head. “Somebody saw the ghost last night,” she said excitedly.
The ghost? “There is no such thing.” Maîtresse warned us against superstitions born of ignorance. My mother believed in ghosts, but she was unschooled.
“There is! It has a beard. A girl upstairs saw it.”
“We heard her screaming,” Fru-fru said, hugging her pillow.
“That was me,” I told them with a laugh.
“You saw the ghost with a beard?” Nelly’s eyes were round as wagon wheels.
“It wasn’t a ghost,” I said, fastening Nelly’s green school sash. “It was a dream I had that frightened me.”
“I want a purple sash,” Nelly said.
“You’ll get to go up to the Purple level when you know the difference between an M and an N.”
“But M and N look the same.”
“You’ll learn. In three months everyone in the school will take an exam to see who is ready to move up a level. If you don’t pass, you can try again three months later. Can you say your letters for me?” I asked, to distract her while I combed out her fine hair, in need of a trim.
