She blusht & reply’d, She supposed I had meant to say “before the rest of Napoleon’s own family,” whereof she consider’d herself as rightful a member as any not of the Corsican’s very blood. As for her sources, she would say only that I might rely upon their veracity, & that I was not the only American player at the Game of Governments.
She then apprised me of her intended move to Europe in the Autumn, to reacquaint her son, now 15, with his relatives. While there she would determine & report to me the truth of Napoleon’s circumstances & desires — for no one need tell her that Metternich might have fabricated that “intercepted letter” to discourage rescue attempts. And she would advise me then whether to proceed with the Girod/Girard plan or bid Joseph order it cancel’d, as against his brother’s wishes.
Much imprest by her determination & her canny sense of the world, very rare in so handsome & handsomely fixt a woman, I thankt her. But privately I thot of any such report from her, what she thot of Metternich’s; & so I determined Jean & I should make ready & sail as early as possible, not apprising Mme B. or Joseph or any soul else of our journey until its object was attain’d, when they would surely put their houses & other facilities at our disposal. On the Solstice, therefore, I vanisht from Point Breeze; on my 44th birthday I was in Galvez-Town, where I found Jean bored with his New Barataria & ready for adventure. The more so when I described & demonstrated to him what, after much soul-searching, I had resolved upon: Plan A-4.
It is, briefly, to determine Napoleon’s sentiments regarding rescue, not in Rome or Paris or London, but on St. Helena itself, by sailing directly to that island, slipping ashore with the aid of that “local knowledge” Lafitte is so confident the fishermen will sell him, and infiltrating Longwood. Then, if the emperor should in fact prove more interested in inventing le bonapartisme on St. Helena than in forging a new empire in the American southwest, to drug and abduct him secretly from the island, leaving an impostor in his place. Once whisked to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, he could not return to St. Helena without publicly pleading for reincarceration, which would reveal the inauthenticity of his “martyrdom.” They would offer him either a life of anonymous freedom or the directorship of the 2nd Revolution, with or without Betsy Patterson Bonaparte as his consort.
But what impostor?
That was the question that had most vext me since A-2, our ancestor writes. Napoleon was 7 years my senior, several inches shorter than I, and gone rather potbelly’d, but the fact was I could take him off to a T, down to his Corsican accent, his walk, & his table-manners. I could not hope to fool his aides, whose consent & cooperation therefore I would have to enlist (I had a plan for doing so); but I was reasonably confident I could fool the British, whom Bonaparte had rarely dealt with in person even before his health declined — which last circumstance I could also employ to aid the imposture. And so, having searcht in vain for alternatives, and daring wait no longer lest Mme B.‘s people or someone else’s get to St. Helena before me, I shall sail with Jean two days hence, on the Emperor’s name-day, to take his place in captivity until (the final article of A-4) I can with the assistance of Napoleon’s suite feign illness & death, and then disappear among the fishermen till Jean comes back to fetch me from a disarm’d St. Helena.
’Tis a considerable risk: if I am found out, either before or after N.‘s removal, the British will clap me in jail forever; and my rescue depends on Jean’s good seamanship, good faith, & good luck. But if all goes per plan, by the time the meteors next shower out from Perseus (which are showering over Jean Blanque’s yards as I pen this letter), I shall have died again & been re-resurrected, to take my place beside the man whose place I took, at the head of our 2nd Revolution.
Will you be there with me, long-lost wife? Whether or no, may you hear from me next August of the success of another plan, whereof I have spoken not even to Jean Lafitte, & cannot yet speak to you: I mean Plan B, and bid you adieu.
He closes and, on August 15, sails. I likewise, Henry, and on 8/15 will fly in pursuit of an “A-1” of my own: not without a “B” up my sleeve, or in my bonnet, learned from our forebear’s final lettre posthume. And when I take my place, dear son, at the head of our etc., will you be with me?
Whether or no, this time next week you shall hear again from
Your father
E: A. B. Cook VI to his son. The fifth and final posthumous letter of A. B. Cook IV: Napoleon “rescued.”
Castines Hundred
Ontario, Canada
August 20, 1969
My dear Henry,
Except that you are not here, all is as it should be (i.e., as it ever has been) at Castines Hundred. A grand hatch of “American soldiers” fills the air — in which already one feels a premonitory autumn chill — as they have done every latter August since the species, and Lake Ontario, evolved. I write this by paraffin lantern in the library, not to attract them to the windows; took dinner by candlelight for the same reason, as our ancestors have done since that species evolved. A fit and pleasing mise en scène for retailing the last of my namesake’s lettres posthumes: dated August 20, 1821, addressed to “My dear, my darling wife,” and delivered here at that year’s close.
Be assured of my proper disappointment not to find you here; a disappointment for which, however, I was prepared. Be even more so of my proper tantalization by the report (from our new caretakers, who seem satisfactory) that you apparently stopped by—even spent a few days here? — in the interval between caretakers! Were here as I was writing to you off Bermuda! Left only upon the Bertrands’ assuming their duties, as I was writing to you from my Baratarian! Indicated that you would “be back,” but did not say when, or whence you came, or whither vanished!
Heartless Henry! True and only son! But so be it: I have been as heartless in my time, as have all our line. I restrained my urge to badger the Bertrands with questions — How does he appear? Did he speak of his father? — lest they think their new employer’s relation with his son as odd as in fact it is. I shall leave sealed copies here, against your return, of both the “prenatal” and the “posthumous” letters of Andrew Cook IV, as well as that one of mine reviewing our history from him to myself. And I shall hope, no longer quite against hope!
But how I wish I could report to you, Henry, confer with you, solicit your opinion now. So many opportunities lie at hand; so many large decisions must be made quite soon, affecting our future and the Revolution’s! Last night, for example, I drove up here from the Fort Erie establishment, where I had stopped to assess Joseph Morgan’s resalvageability. I am satisfied that he is too gone in his “repetition compulsion” to be of future use to us. What I advanced as a kind of lure when I first rescued him for our cause has become an obsession; he is now addicted to his medication, as it were; the only obstacle to disestablishing him altogether is that he happens to be related, through the Patterson line, to Jane Mack. But we must think of something; he is a liability.