Napoleon's Last Island Read Free

acquaintance. But even now these missives are a peril to them. Even here, I believe I am subject to a degree of scrutiny.’
    Barry O’Meara nodded ponderously and, with vividness typical of him, said, ‘I understand well the methods of those who clipped our wings but yet still want to be fully acquainted with what we do in the chicken yard!’
    â€˜You mentioned the Corsican doctor,’ my mother reminded him.
    â€˜I did. Now that Corsican, the supposed doctor Antommarchi, is a prosector, a cutter of corpses! Our friend Fanny Bertrandtold me that he laughs wildly when the idea of death is mentioned because he has private theories about what death is and he won’t share them with others. Likewise pain. They are both some sort of human delusion, it seems. If the man would share the secret, it would bring a large saving in opiates.’
    Both men chuckled acridly while my mother frowned and let a shiver move through her.
    â€˜In any case, this Corsican administered a blistering to Our Great Friend without first shaving the flesh. And to both arms simultaneously! When the man was limp with disease! That barbarous torture brought on a burning rash and OGF cried, “Am I not yet free of assassins?” But our Corsican quack – what does he do but get the giggles and call in Surgeon Arnott, of the infantry, a fellow I happen to know. Now Arnott was in Spain with the 53rd Regiment when they were more than decimated by OGF’s Polish cavalry, with only some fifty-two men left standing at the end. And thus, you see, that is his measure of an emergency, and though an amiable fellow, he is so sanguine a man that he is likely to stand right at the lip of a soldier’s grave and declare the poor fellow’s condition temporary. And so it was Arnott who was brought to see OGF and afterwards reported to Governor Lowe at Plantation House that the Emperor was surprisingly well, given all rumours to the contrary. He said that OGF was suffering from hypochondria. He assured Name and Nature that if a seventy-four-gun warship were to arrive from England suddenly to take the Emperor away from the island, it would instantly put him on his legs again.’
    My mother made a sound of incredulity and O’Meara went on.
    â€˜In fact, even had such a mercy been considered by the grand Tories of the Cabinet, he would have died at sea before he reached this shore. Our friends at Longwood had long since written to the Cabinet via the Fiend to ask that the Emperor should be removed to another climate, and be permitted to take the waters at some health spa. But Sir Name and Nature refused to allow the letter to be transmitted, all under the old pretext that the suite had used the term “Emperor” in their appeal.’
    I remembered that the Dr Arnott O’Meara spoke of had once paid a visit to Longwood while my father was there, and OGF had greeted him with a jocose question: ‘How many patients have you killed so far, Mr Arnott?’ The surgeon replied, ‘Most of my patients happen to have been killed by you, General.’
    Already now I saw my sister beside me beginning to tremble. Her father’s daughter, she was overborne by the idea of the ruthless pain to whose ambush humanity was subject, and the onset of her own congestive ailments, signs of which had become visible in the past year, sharpened that. She was more at ease with death than she could ever manage to be with pain. She had become more given to tears, though she had never considered them an enemy or a self-betrayal, even in the years we were on the island. I heard the pace of her wheeze increase now, and I saw her habitual pressing of a handkerchief to her lips. I put my arm around her and enclosed her shoulders. They were almost as thin as they had been six years earlier, when OGF first descended on our garden on the island. Her undeserved affliction was settling in, and the Fiend and great men in England were guilty