by C. S. Quinn
‘This may not be entirely an English mission,’ I tell Jemmy, ‘but the day I need to call on the help of French militia is the day I die.’
‘Good to know your pride doesn’t interfere with your judgement.’
‘It’s not about pride,’ I say crossly. ‘Finding Lafayette would do nothing but slow our pace. Our best hope of preventing Marie Antoinette’s death is getting to her apartments fast.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
ROBESPIERRE DESCENDS THE MANY SHALLOW STEPS INTO the great gardens of Versailles. Excitement is growing in his chest. He can see the messenger Danton spoke of. The man is walking, not especially fast, along the tree-lined boulevard that passes the Versailles canal.
Naturally the gardens are of a preposterous scale. Robespierre has had his fill of the outsized environs as surely as a man who has lived on sweetmeats for days. His feet, in their smart buckled shoes, ache with the distances. The cross-shaped canal, stretching long enough to be entirely out of sight, can house hundreds of boats. It is said the Sun King decorated the expanse of water with enormous vessels rowed by teams of sweating convicts hidden away in the hull.
Trying not to look as though he is running, Robespierre hurries after the man in a strangely jogging stride. He passes large fountains, several of which depict famous classical scenes: the vanquished giant Enceladus being consumed by the lava of Mount Etna, Neptune rising from the deep, Apollo riding his chariot.
Robespierre noted the irony of this to Danton earlier that day. Rome and Greece with their democracies and senates hold a model of virtue that all societies might follow, yet naturally nobles idolise the tyrannical gods, the wars and the victories. He has no time for such observations now.
‘Hi there!’ Robespierre raises a hand, shouts up the lantern-lit path. He notices a gaggle of women have waded into one of the fountains on the far side, the one with the golden turtles. Robespierre shakes his head briefly and readdresses his efforts.
‘You there!’ he calls, his nasal voice raising a few octaves. The messenger is just vanishing around the corner of the first great canal, at the point where it extends to a majestic cross of flat water. Then he turns, the pale oval of his face now visible in the middle distance. It is all Robespierre can do not to sob with relief.
‘You are the messenger?’ Robespierre calls, moving at the same jerky stride. He is closing the gap. It is difficult to tell, but it looks as though the man nods. As Robespierre gets closer, the messenger lifts his arm, and in it … a paper.
‘You are Monsieur Robespierre?’ he confirms, as the lawyer closes in.
Robespierre bows in acknowledgement, the anticipation unbearable now.
‘From Monsieur Salvatore, yes?’ he demands, moving closer.
‘From Marquis de Salvatore,’ says the messenger pointedly, jerking the letter slightly higher like a school-boyish game.
‘Yes, yes,’ says Robespierre tersely. Then noting the servant’s expression, he rearranges his features with effort. ‘Forgive the omission,’ he says, bowing even lower. ‘I have been with blunt and mannerless men in the National Assembly and their lack of grace must have rubbed off.’ He manages a smile.
Appeased, the messenger lowers the note. ‘Just so long as we don’t forget our places,’ he says haughtily, as Robespierre’s fingers close gratefully on the missive. ‘The King is still the King, for all the disruption.’
Robespierre is no longer listening. He is opening the letter.
‘I’ll inform the Marquis the letter has been delivered, then,’ says the messenger.
Robespierre turns his back. There are shrieks from the far fountain. Several women are trying to disengage the head of a golden turtle. Robespierre doesn’t look up as the messenger retreats, scanning the writing as fast as he can.
He crushes the paper to his chest, lips moving in disbelief, then brings it to his eyes again. The low lantern light of the grounds make it hard to read, but the meaning is certain.
Salvatore has done it. That brutish despot has actually captured the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Robespierre lowers the paper, his heart beating fast. Part of him doesn’t want to believe it. That nasty aristocrat with his hideous arrogance has succeeded where Robespierre couldn’t.
Such things aren’t important, Robespierre counsels himself severely. The humble man serves France.
He permits himself a glimmer of sheer glee, imagining the country that will emerge from this night’s work. For surely now, everything is perfect.
One thing, however, is missing. Robespierre’s lips curl into a thin smile. How like Salvatore. The ruffian has omitted to name the Pimpernel in the paper and only given the location as the waterwheels at Marly-de-Roi as the place where Robespierre might finally discover the identity of his nemesis.
Robespierre taps the paper to his chest, deciding the next best course of action.
It could be a trick. Salvatore might have understood the real implications of assassinating Marie Antoinette, and is luring Robespierre to his doom.
He turns over these thoughts, walking back towards the palace, when a strange noise attracts his attention. An ugly sound, like the hissing of steam. It is the nearest fountain, he realises, stepping towards it, in a kind of a daze.
Something is wrong. It fits and starts as though the pressure is being tampered with. In fact, now he looks around, it seems the same thing is happening with all the fountains.
What could it mean? His eyes switch back to the women, who had previously been gallivanting with the golden turtles. They have vacated now, and stand frightened at the edge of the far side, watching the water buck and rear unnaturally. The women look at Robespierre as though he might have the answer.
Perhaps some crucial business has not taken place with the running of the water, Robespierre theorises. An order missed.
As he is considering this possibility, a great jet of water erupts from the mouth of a golden water nymph, who stands in the centre of the fountain. Then one by one, each gilded turtle’s small mouth explodes. The dainty sprays become jets, then a surge, shooting straight out horizontally.
Robespierre stands back, appalled, brushing water drops from his coat, then retires even further to be free of the spray. All around the grounds he can hear the sound of tinny explosions as fountains erupt and fall apart, water breaks its bonds.
This, Robespierre thinks, surely cannot be a simple matter of faulty overseeing. He dismisses the strange event with a slight shake of his head. But as he is about to leave, something strikes him.
The Marly machine. That was where Salvatore claims to hold the Pimpernel.
A horrible thought dawns.
The Pimpernel. The Marly machine. The destroyed fountains.
There is something about this he doesn’t like at all. Turning on his heel, he makes for the palace.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
OUTSIDE VERSAILLES PALACE, THE WORD IS SPREADING. A door has been opened. There is a way inside.
It went something like this: Ovette had fallen asleep for a few exhausted moments, on the cold cobbles of the Versailles courtyard. She awoke to a clanging like a tocsin. Initially, she assumed an alarm had been sounded, they were under attack. Then Greta knelt unsteadily beside her.
‘Psst,’ she whispered, breathing wine fumes. ‘Get up. The door is open. Someone is letting us in.’
Ovette rises, rubbing her stiff legs. Her gaze falls on the gate. Greta is right. Women are drifting through it, trancelike, as if they, like her, have not fully woken up. It feels so much like a dream that Ovette doesn’t think to feel afraid.
She follows along behind. At first it is innocent. They enter in awe, gazing up at the specular ceilings, the marble floor, the incalculable wealth that put it all here. The women fan out, uncertain which direction to go. It is inevitable that they will eventually find a guard.
When they do, he stands between them and a large door, a young man with a nervous air, despite his Versailles finery.
‘Hold!�
�� His voice rings out along the corridors. It does not have the effect he hoped for. The uncertainty in his tone seems to galvanise the disparate group. Women begin to linger behind Ovette and Greta, wondering what is happening.
Sweat breaks out on the young man’s brow.
‘Get back, I say!’ he announces. ‘This is the way to the Queen’s apartment. Not for the likes of you.’
It is, of course, exactly the wrong thing to say. Women begin to crowd in now. The uncertain drifts have a focal point. Not to mention many have awoken to empty bellies, thick heads and cold bodies. They are spoiling for a fight, and this foolish young man is in the wrong place at the wrong time.
‘Stand back!’ says Greta. ‘We have business with Madame-Fucking Deficit, who will not deign to meet her own subjects.’
The young guard, compounding his ill luck, makes a badly judged attempt to reply.
‘The Queen has been very concerned about the situation in Paris,’ he says helplessly. ‘She loves all her subjects.’
‘Oh ho!’ booms Greta. ‘So she knows we starve, then? Knows and does nothing but buy more pretty ribbons?’
The guard is unable to answer.
‘Stand aside,’ says Greta. ‘Stand aside or you’re a traitor to the people.’
The guard adjusts his sword, but does not look confident.
‘I cannot let you pass,’ he says. ‘The royal children are sleeping. It is unthinkable—’
He stops speaking and looks down in horror. A pikestaff has been insinuated between his ribs. At the other end is Ovette. She stares into the guard’s face, a hard look of pain in her eyes.
‘If only my son might be awoken,’ she says.
They stand there for a moment, no one quite able to believe what has happened. At the back of the crowd, women are clambering, wanting to know what’s going on. It is only when Ovette pulls the pike free that the guard sinks to his knees, and a great river of blood pools out on to the marble floor.
It floods past the feet of the market women. Barely shod feet. Bare feet. Feet with missing toes.
‘Who is it?’ mutter the ones at the back. ‘Is it one of ours?’
Then they hear Greta’s roar.
‘A blow for the revolution!’ she screams. ‘Death to the aristos!’
The young guard, not yet dead, drops glassy-eyed to the cold marble. The blood-soaked feet form a circle around him.
A frenzied woman in grisly rags drops to his side. He registers the hatred in her eyes as she grasps his hair and exposes his neck. Vaguely he notices she carries a rusty-looking kitchen knife, with several notches where it has been badly sharpened.
He would like to tell her she should use a better steel. His own father was a butcher, and he knows some of the trade. But he feels too warm and absent to trouble himself. The crowd of scrawny women is fading away.
Workmanlike, the squatting woman sets her blade to his neck, and roughly hacks away his head. She lifts it to a final cascade of blood, and roars of approbation from the crowd.
In the bloody frenzy that follows, something changes in the attitude of the women. Greta sums it up. She takes the bloody pikestaff from Ovette and issues an awful screech that reverberates around the gilded corridors.
‘Where is Marie Antoinette?’ demands Greta, loud enough to rattle the carved windows. ‘I’ll cut out her liver and have it for a fricassee!’
CHAPTER SEVENTY
JEMMY AND I HAVE TRACKED AROUND THE VAST GARDENS AT a run, to reach the great Palace of Versailles.
Protestors and rioting people have spilled out on to the grounds, and are attacking the fountains and topiary.
There is an impossible number. People are crammed in the fountains, stampeding the manicured lawns and walkways.
The stark incongruousness of these thin-legged ragged people romping in the finest gardens of Europe is like an impossible dream. It’s joyous and awful at the same time, this huge-scale invasion of the privileged site.
A man has climbed a perfectly clipped orange tree and is tearing out the branches one by one. A young woman with a gleeful expression is smashing a statue of Apollo with a heavy stone. Two boys, old enough to know better, stand at one of the long, long palace windows, hurling stone after stone through the outsized glass panes and laughing as they break in turn.
Jemmy is staring up at a vast building. He appears completely lost for words. It is gloriously lit by lanterns, every side of the white stone bathed in warm orange flame.
‘Well now,’ he manages eventually. ‘They said it was grand. But nothing prepares you for seeing it, does it? All that stone. All that gilding. No wonder it took a hundred years to complete.’
I follow his gaze, over the glittering candles that flicker on the carved white stone.
‘This is the stables,’ I tell him. ‘Versailles Palace is over there.’
Jemmy turns to where the palace is set a little way back. The thousands of candles and torches that illuminate the windows and exterior like stars lost in a vast night sky. His mouth drops open.
I have to admit, it is an impressive sight. From left to right, as far as the eye can see, are the mighty white wings of Versailles, fanning out as if to envelop the town beyond in a proprietary embrace.
Jemmy is muttering, trying to take in the scale of it, then shaking his head when the attempt defeats him.
‘It’s their own kingdom they’ve made here,’ he manages finally. ‘A different country to France entirely.’
‘Not much of a kingdom with no guard,’ I point out.
Our eyes switch to the long run of windows. Lights flash. Candles.
‘We need to get to the front,’ I tell Jemmy.
‘Attica,’ Jemmy is shaking his head, looking at the devastation, ‘we are much too late.’
I shake my head. ‘See how large it is? The palace is overwhelming. It doesn’t look like they have reached the royal wing yet.’
I point to one side of the palace, the internal lighting of which suggests an altogether more sedate and royal affair than the frenzied jiggling flames in other parts.
‘This way,’ I say, tracking the candlelight.
We round the half-built structure of an orangery and make it to the front of Versailles. The expanse of cobbled courtyard alone, lined by gate after wrought-iron gate, is large enough to hold Notre Dame.
The courtyard I remember as a girl has been emptied of its coaches and sumptuously dressed guests. But unlike the thickly populated gardens, the protestors have mostly dispersed from here, drawn to the alluring depths of the palace.
Instead, pockets of ragged drunken people stagger about. But there is no large mob, no army of protestors. I estimate a hundred or so people, too old or crippled or drunk to join the main force of the attack.
The front gates, towering structures that run to twenty feet of decoratively wrought iron, hang ominously open.
‘Through the Princes’ Court,’ I say, leading Jemmy to a side entrance. ‘There’s a reception room and I think the Queen’s staircase is beyond.’
A drunken woman is propped against a wall.
‘Fucking aristos!’ she slurs. ‘Burn in hell, the lot of yers.’
‘I am a sailor,’ says Jemmy, offended. ‘Whore for a mammy and mystery for a daddy. You’ll not find any lower.’
The woman eyes me, but must see something in my stance, for she says nothing more, only muttering to herself.
A blood-curdling scream sounds from somewhere near.
We break into a run.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
JEMMY AND I ENTER THE PRINCES’ COURT TO COMPLETE chaos. It’s an elbow-deep scrum of people, pushing and shoving to get through the wide door beyond. We shoulder our way in, into the first marble reception room, only to meet with an even denser wall of thickly packed peasants, a heady stink of rain-soaked sweaty wool and ill-gotten wine humming on the air.
There is a bizarre carnival feel to it all, with people chanting and singing. The strains of the Parisians’ revo
lutionary favourite, ‘Ça Ira’ –‘It’ll Be Fine’ – break out intermittently, accompanied by a new tune. Something about the women who sell fish, and hanging nobles from lamp-posts.
But through all the seeming disarray, the crowd are of one mind. They want to find the Queen. It is announced in every song and every war cry from a pitchfork-waving market trader.
The marchers assure themselves of the route, call back directions, and are moving as one great wave towards the back, where the Queen’s staircase has been identified.
‘It’s no good!’ shouts Jemmy over the mêlée ‘We can’t walk a step in here. There’s no way we can get ahead of this crowd.’
‘We don’t need to,’ I tell him. ‘We only need to break free of it. The King’s apartments are in another part entirely and these people care only for finding the Queen. Over there!’ I point to a corner that seems less thickly populated and we make for it. As we get nearer it becomes clear why this part is not well attended.
On the white marble floor is a great pool of blood, dappled with footprints that have trodden it outwards. It runs in a wide circle, stretching many feet in either direction. In the centre of it is some kind of strangely shaped dog or bear, lifeless and grotesquely dressed in human clothes. Then I realise. It’s a corpse. The head has been hacked off at the neck, giving the sad remains an oddly animal appearance.
I swallow, glancing at Jemmy. ‘They took his head,’ I say, feeling unexpectedly grief-stricken by this act of barbarity. ‘Like a trophy.’
‘Against pirate lore, to be sure, to desecrate remains,’ says Jemmy, holding his hat to his chest, his voice unusually gravelly. ‘He’s a mother’s son, whatever side he chose.’
‘The crowd have not moved beyond him,’ I say, pointing to the corridors that run east. ‘We can go that way to the King’s apartments.’
We step around the pool of blood, moving deeper inside the palace. Shrieks and chants rent the air, and the sound of footsteps pounding stairways echoes around the corridors. In this part are barely a handful of rioters, only opportunists or falling-down drunks, who pay us not the least mind as we pass through.