‘For Hilde,’ he said. ‘She needs her strength.’ Dante put the long, jointed thumb of the roasted monkey hand in his mouth, showed Krüger how to suck the meat off the bone. ‘Like this,’ he said, with a loud, slurping sound.

Krüger’s nostrils filled with the putrid stink, his stomach clenched. He turned on his side and retched bile and river silt.

The Bible and the gold coins were gone, but Mr Hendrik’s obia was still around his neck.

Book VII

BOOK VII

THE KING OF ROME

Word eventually reached Bonaparte that Général de Brigade Michel François Fourés had been arrested by the Portuguese in Cayenne and imprisoned in Rio de Janeiro. The Emperor frowned upon hearing the news (he only vaguely recalled Fourés) and then shrugged.

‘There is a Madame Fourés?’

‘Yes, my Emperor,’ the aide-de-camp said.

‘A hero of France,’ Bonaparte said, ‘et cetera, et cetera. With great respect.’ He leaned over the table and signed a blank piece of paper and handed it to the aide-de-camp. ‘Be sure to maintain a formal but respectful tone.’ The Emperor walked off. ‘I will be with the King of Rome.’

When he arrived at his wife’s chambers, he heard voices inside and paused at the door. He leaned in and listened, recognised the Duchesse de Montebello, dame d’honneur to the new Empress Marie-Louise.

He heard her say, ‘I don’t know, Empress.’

‘Oh, she is very old now,’ Marie-Louise said. ‘All of her beauty, if she ever really had any, is gone.’

Bonaparte heard rustling and footsteps.

‘And she is fat,’ the Empress Marie-Louise said. ‘She has ordered at least a dozen corsets, can you imagine? But they won’t help her.’

‘A dozen?’

‘You cannot hide your origins behind whalebone.’ (Marie-Louise had only just turned twenty and thought I will never be fat.)

‘Her father owned a sugar plantation in Martinique.’

‘And mine is just a king.’ The Empress laughed sharply and when she stopped there was silence for a few moments. ‘Show me the blue one again,’ she said.

Bonaparte looked nervously up and down the hall. He wasn’t sure if he should go in. Last night he’d been writing Josephine a letter and Marie-Louise had glimpsed the page over his shoulder.

‘Again!’ she’d said.

‘I’ve told you, ma chérie. It’s regarding her spending.’

‘Ma chérie, ma chérie!’ the Empress had shouted. ‘My son is the King of Rome!’

In the next room, the boy woke and began to cry. Bonaparte put his ear right up to the door.

‘Where is she now?’ Marie-Louise said. ‘The old woman my husband was so infatuated with?’

‘At Malmaison, I believe, my Empress.’

‘Of course she is. Strolling her magnificent gardens. With her corsets.’

Bonaparte heard a knock and then a door open in the room. The crying grew louder.

‘The King of Rome, Empress,’ a voice said. ‘He is awake.’