Ribbons of Scarlet

by Kate Quinn

  “After the opening ceremonies, all three estates should become one national assembly,” Condorcet argued. “As soon as this comes to pass, we can draw up a new constitution and change a whole nation.”

  “I argue this every day,” Lafayette said, with a sigh. “You know that my heart is with the people. But my constituents—”

  “Are wrong,” I interrupted, willing to give up every dubious honor nobility had ever conferred upon me. “Your constituents are nobles who wish to hold on to their privileges and those days are over. They must be over if we’re to bring liberty and equality to France. You were elected to represent your constituents, not bow to them.”

  “What does it mean to represent them?” Lafayette asked. “To violate the instructions of the people who sent you to be their voice—how can that be honorable? A thousand times in America I saw General Washington obey Congress despite how often they were wrong.”

  This was a fair point, but George Washington was a slave owner whose deference to Congress, or at least his own interests, resulted in the continuation of slavery. I didn’t say this. Lafayette, too, was an abolitionist. But our friend worshipped Washington as a father and would hear nothing against him. I was frustrated. Lafayette was still the most influential man in France. More than the king, I believed. Certainly more popular. I wanted him to be bolder.

  “I hope you won’t judge him too harshly for his caution,” Condorcet said as we snuffed out candles before bed. “I know you admire courage, but don’t mistake heat of the head for heat of the soul. Because what you want is not heat but force. Not violence but steadfastness.”

  He’d described his own virtues, and he was right about what I wanted. I wanted him. I still wanted his child too. He must have sensed it when we made love, because afterward he said, “Sophie, I won’t be a tyrant of a husband who says this is how it must be, and that is the end of it. I’ll never tell you what you must do with your body. And you don’t need me to make a child with it.”

  This remark was, of course, the natural product of his honorable heart and the promises he’d made me. I know that now, and I knew it even then. Nevertheless, I took powerful offense. “Are you suggesting I take a lover?” We’d agreed that if we couldn’t be happy together we might seek happiness with others, but everything had changed. Or so I thought. For him to suggest this now infected me with rage. “Or do you think I’ve already taken one?”

  “I don’t permit myself to think anything of the sort—”

  “If you think I’m bedding Lafayette, you’re a perfect idiot.”

  I would regret stooping to insult. But the more rational Nicolas remained, sitting there quietly in thought, the more I burned. I wanted to tell him how foolish it would be to think that any child of mine would not also be his, if only by law. Instead, I snapped, “Have you taken a mistress, then? Is it Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe? She once suggested you were a libertine and that if I gambled with you I’d lose my petticoats. Which is true—in a fashion, I did. Still, she spoke of you with the intimacy of a lover, of which she has several. Are you one?”

  His mouth twisted as if he couldn’t decide to be angry or absolutely delighted by my jealousy. Thankfully, his hesitation gave me the necessary pause to recover my senses.

  My hands went to my cheeks. “I’m sorry. That was beneath my dignity and yours.”

  “Nevertheless, I’ll answer you, quite happily. First, it’s Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe’s vocation to pretend at intimacy. Second, my connection to her is a long friendship formed after having won a fortune at her gambling tables by employing mathematics to guess which cards my opponent might play. Third, I don’t have a mistress or desire one. And, finally, it confounds me that you don’t realize there’s no one else for me but you, nor could there ever be.”

  Relief, love, and wretchedness all warred in my breast. “As it confounds me that when I say I want a child, you don’t realize I want your child. No matter what you hear whispered outside the Palais-Royal, I’m not a harlot.”

  That made him offer his arms. “I’ve never believed that.” Once I was soothed, both of us embracing and murmuring apologies, he said, “It seems that in the matter of children, one of us needs to decide. You should have the first turn. Like a Roman, I’ll abide by your decision.”

  This concession was irrefutable proof that I’d always been right to trust in him. Still, the thrill of his surrender was temporary as I considered that he was surrendering to me the use of his body for a purpose he didn’t approve—and not for the first time. Having resented, all my life, the power men had over my person, I simply couldn’t exercise it over him. Not when he’d told me I could break him, and I’d promised I never would.

  “We’ll simply leave it an open question,” I said. “Reasonable people can change their minds . . .”

  * * *

  Versailles, Spring 1789

  My husband was chosen as one of the six who would prepare the complaints of the nobles to the king, an elector for the Luxembourg district, and a commissaire in the Paris General Assembly.

  He was, overnight, a politician. And I was a politician’s wife. Which meant we must go to Versailles.

  Everyone was excited. Joyous, even. Even those who would later oppose the changes in France would later admit it was the most joyous time in our lives. The roads were clogged with the traffic of horses, wagons, carriages, and litters. So crowded was the king’s capital that none of our friends could host us and we were forced to take rooms at La Boule d’Or Inn to witness the festivities that opened the Estates General.

  I woke early, bright-eyed, filled with nervous excitement, chattering away with my lady’s maid as she fastened my mother’s pearls at my throat. Condorcet, too, donned his best. Silk stockings I’d chosen for him to wear beneath his culottes because they showed off his calves. A black coat embroidered with gray, worn in sympathy with common people—for the deputies of the Third Estate were ordered to dress in the traditional black of the lower class.

  “It’s getting off on the wrong foot,” I fretted. “The people’s deputies and the nobles should all dress the same. Instead, the Third Estate has to march in black sackcloth like beggars with leprosy.”

  “Surely that’s to exaggerate a little,” Condorcet said, taking his place beside me at the balcony rail. But I knew he agreed such distinctions were harmful.

  Along the route onlookers pressed together at every window and beneath every awning, craning their necks to see the parade. From bejeweled aristocrats to plain-faced scullery maids and sooty chimney sweeps, it seemed as if every person held their breath in anticipation of the march of the deputies. The trumpets announced them.

  The king was at the head of the procession with the Swiss Guard in his wake, their gold-hilted swords glinting beneath red coats with braiding. And the people shouted Vive le roi!

  In later years, when I took up my pen to call for the end of the monarchy in favor of a republic, I’d be accused of harboring hatred for the king and perverting my husband’s formidable mind with that same hatred. The truth is, I never hated the king. Especially not that day when he’d called together the people to remake the laws under which we all lived. That act was the king’s greatest and most noble.

  So I, too, shouted, “Vive le roi!”

  Fewer people shouted for the queen. For my part, I waved to the king’s sister, Madame Élisabeth, though I doubted she could see me through the crowd. Nor did she look up, as her gaze remained always on her brother the king, her expression pinched with submission to the public role he expected her to play.

  The royal court was followed by diamond-bedecked nobles in plumed hats, then bishops in violet robes, and then, at last, the Third Estate in black. Lawyers and clerks, but also merchants and farmers, too—men who had come to take up the glorious mantle of governing their nation.

  But not a woman amongst them, I thought.

  Condorcet didn’t laugh when I mentioned this. “You’re right. In all my writings about election pro
cedures and expanding suffrage, I’ve overlooked half the earth.”

  “So has everyone else. I think it’s because women have so long been denied our natural rights that even we aren’t conscious of it.”

  But I was conscious of it now. So was Olympe de Gouges and many of the women who held forth in my salons. Now my husband, the most brilliant mind in France, was conscious of it too. One day he’d call for the enfranchisement of women, echoing my words. But that day, we were still awakening.

  The Estates were greeted in the Salle des Menus, and we witnessed the pomp and circumstance from the galleries with American friends. Together we watched one deputy of the Third Estate applauded for refusing to wear black. The representatives of the common people were all seated far from the king when he took his place upon a throne of gold and purple—and many took insult.

  As the king gave his speech, he still seemed, to me, more marionette than man. Trapped upon this national stage. Perhaps it would’ve been better to replace him with one of the automatas that Nicolas sometimes spoke of, a mechanical king that could be wheeled out for public occasions. Then maybe everyone—even the king—would be happier. And Madame Élisabeth could lead whatever life she chose.

  After all, despite my enjoyment of this pageantry at Versailles—what was the cost of it all? In teaching in our school, I’d learned how difficult it was for people struggling to survive; with hungry bellies, they had little time to reflect upon finer sentiments like sympathy. I wondered if we might not all be better served with less pomp. Whether the sharing of our wealth, instead of the display of it, would result in a kinder society . . .

  When it was announced that each estate should get a single vote, instead of each deputy having an equal vote, the Third Estate erupted in protest. It meant that the nobles and the clergy could always outvote the people’s representatives, and so it all came to a messy impasse during which several deputies came to prominence.

  Maximilien Robespierre, for one.

  ARGUMENTS RAGED FOR weeks. Debate spilled into the taverns and coffeehouses where, one afternoon when Nicolas was closeted away with colleagues, I stopped for refreshments with Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe and her daughter, the latter of whom cried in greeting, “Grouchette!”

  Once an adorable child, Émilie had since grown to be the prettiest girl in Paris, just as her mother had predicted.

  In truth, she was much more than pretty. With flaxen hair, angelic blue eyes, and luminescent skin, Émilie was a moon-kissed beauty who enchanted everyone whose gaze fell upon her. Having learned the practiced art of charm, she was now collecting expensive gifts from various suitors, to her mother’s delight. But at a recent outing at the opera, Émilie confided in me a tenderness for a penniless young singer she kept secret from her mother—delighting me with the knowledge that she was a less biddable girl than she pretended to be.

  As we entered the café together, we saw Robespierre, drawing notice to himself in tinted green spectacles, striped coat, and a fastidiously tied cravat. Except for some pockmark scars and a sallow complexion, Robespierre cut a fine and self-possessed figure amongst the gaggle debating the day’s events.

  And yet, at the sight of Émilie, he fell silent.

  “It’s the queen’s fault,” someone else was saying. “She doesn’t want to give up her diamond necklaces.”

  Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe scowled at this as we took our seats. Émilie sighed, then whispered, “It’s always the queen’s fault somehow . . .”

  The Sainte-Amaranthes were staunch royalists who held polite disdain for the reforms we were trying to bring about. Still, Émilie had a point. From market women to princes of the blood, everyone blamed the queen for everything. They called her Madame Deficit, and I won’t say that Marie-Antoinette was blameless. But that day, we couldn’t bear to hear it, for the little dauphin, heir to the throne, had only recently perished at the age of seven, stricken by tuberculosis. How cruel it seemed to speak ill of the queen while she grieved for her child, so I couldn’t help but turn to the crowd to interject, “Can we not spare just a few days’ pity for the queen, who has a mother’s broken heart?”

  “Madame la Marquise.” It was Robespierre himself who addressed me, while methodically peeling an orange. “Whatever the private sorrows of the royal family, the business of the nation must go on. And insofar as pity interferes with the nation’s business, then pity is treason.”

  His words were chilling, but in those days he wasn’t anyone to fear, so I argued, “What is the business of the nation if it is not easing the suffering of every French person, man, woman, and child?”

  “The queen’s not French!” someone cried. “She’s Austrian.”

  Robespierre simply took a bite of orange and smiled at Émilie, as if he hoped to impress.

  “You mustn’t let him trouble you,” Condorcet said when I recounted this later. “I’ve listened to him speak these past weeks. His sole mission is to preach his religion of reform, and this he does almost constantly. But it is only talk. Robespierre aspires to be a priest and will never be anything else.”

  ONE RAINY DAY in June, not long after, Condorcet rushed into our rented rooms, damp and disheveled. I assumed he’d returned for his umbrella, which he’d forgotten in the morning.

  I was half right.

  “The Third Estate has been locked out of their chambers,” he said, breathlessly, his eyes on the windows overlooking the avenue.

  “By the king?” I asked. “To keep them from meeting?”

  “Perhaps an accident.” He moved the curtain aside, no doubt looking for the royal cavalry, for we had no idea if this meant some kind of war. “The guards said it was only to make repairs to the hall. Yet it looks ill-intended, given that the king has been demanding that they meet separately and remember their place as inferiors. Either way, the Assembly has made its way through the rain to the tennis courts.”

  “To do what?” I asked.

  Condorcet turned and met my eyes. “To write a constitution. They’re going to do it. With or without the king.”

  Reassured the king’s dragoons weren’t galloping toward the tennis courts to put a stop to it all, he crossed the room and kissed me full on the mouth. Then he reached for his umbrella and started for the door.

  Abandoning everything—paper, quill pen, and book—I grabbed my shawl and followed.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To witness a revolution,” I said, feeling the impact of my own words in my bones.

  He nearly smiled, but then his brow furrowed. “Sophie, it might be dangerous. There’s no telling how the king will react, whether he’ll surrender to the will of the people or have his Swiss Guards blast the tennis court to smithereens with cannon.”

  “All the more reason to go,” I said. “To be with you. Whatever may come. Now, more than ever.”

  It was, after all, my revolution too.

  A different sort of man would have flatly refused. Condorcet held out his hand to me. My heart pounding with thrill, I put my hand into his and together we splashed through the streets of Versailles, joining the gathering crowd to watch as the nearly six hundred brave, rain-drenched deputies swore a solemn oath “never to separate”—not even if the king should send an army against them—until they’d drawn up for France a true constitution and a Declaration of Rights for every citizen.

  I was terrified. I was terrified for the deputies. I was terrified for myself in bearing witness. I was exhilarated too. Because I knew—we all knew—it was a defining moment. The moment that would change everything. And I believed, like a kind of faith, that we would prevail. That after all the pamphlets and debates and societies and all the years of calling for reform, we could, as a people, simply claim our natural right to self-determination through reason, courage, and legislation, without war . . .

  Not even the Americans had done that!

  It wasn’t seemly for a husband and wife to hold hands in public. I didn’t care. I clutched my husband’s h
and, marveling at his steadiness. Remembering, too, how steady his hands had been a different summer in a different rainstorm in this very place, during a moment that had liberated me as much as this one . . .

  Tears misted my eyes. I wasn’t alone in the emotion. My husband’s voice was thick when he murmured, “I’ve been wrong.”

  “About?”

  “You.” He stared with those arresting dark eyes and I felt his joy. “I’ve worried to bring a child into this world, imagining that she’d be left without guidance or protection or strength without me. Now I know she’ll have her courageous mother. I’ve given power to my fears instead of my hopes, but no more after today.” He gestured at the oath-taking deputies, every one of them glowing with hope, courage, and determination. “Here is proof that we’re remaking the whole world for her. Right here and now.”

  “Do you mean it?” I asked, almost afraid to believe.

  He took my face in his hands and nodded. “Sometimes minds, governments, and marriages do change.”

  Ours was a marriage, I realized. No mummery or farce. Not defined by religious tradition or constrained by social rules or tainted by the tyranny of his sex over mine. It was a beautiful creation of our own self-determination, just as the nation would soon be.

  And it was, indeed, a glorious time to be alive.

  Part II

  The Revolutionary

  Men took the royal Bastille, women took royalty itself.

  —Jules Michelet

  Paris, June 27, 1789

  A westerly wind swept across the rooftops, turning the weather vanes in a new direction.

  The sun had long since set, yet the streets were alive with errand boys, blacksmiths, and fishmongers heading to their favorite tavern, and women scampering home after a long day at the shops. The heavy air hung about my shoulders like a damp blanket. Hot as a circle of hell, it was, and after a long day of selling fruit, I wanted nothing more than to collapse by the river’s edge—after this last mission. I pushed the hair out of my eyes as the steady flow of gilded carriages carted their powdered and bejeweled cargo to the evening salons. I muttered foul words under my breath. Not a single carriage paused so I might cross the street. Neither did their passengers look at pedestrians with anything but disdain. And we were to believe they felt differently about us, we commoners.