Ribbons of Scarlet

by Kate Quinn

  “Your Gracious Majesty!” he exclaims.

  We are undone. Not by an act of cruelty or bad intentions, but by a man showing a deep love and respect for his king. There is a wicked irony in this so strong that my eyes prick with tears.

  Louis holds out his hand to raise the man up. “And you are?”

  “Jacques Destez, Your Majesty. My wife is from Versailles where, when we were both younger men, it was my honor to see you there—but never so close as this.”

  Louis turns to the others. “Messieurs et madame, it is true,” he says, smiling gently. “I am your king. I have come to live among you, my faithful children. I hope that you will welcome me.”

  My cheeks flush with pride at my brother’s calm, heartfelt words. Without a moment’s hesitation he embraces each villager in turn. Then stepping back, he nods.

  “You have heard much about me lately that does me no credit. And perhaps, seeing me here, so far from Paris, you will believe the worst—believe that I make plans with France’s enemies and would cross the border to wage war on her. Not true.

  “What is the truth?” His hand sweeps out. “This is my beloved family. A handful of radicals have stirred Paris into a stew of violence, mistrust, and hatred, so that the city is no longer safe for us.”

  Madame Sauce gives a small sob, clearly moved by my brother’s candor, and lays a hand on her husband’s arm.

  “Having been forced to live in the midst of daggers and bayonets, I have come to this beautiful part of France to seek the same freedom and tranquility you yourselves enjoy. I am headed to the citadel of Montmédy from which I will strive to restore the public calm and the rightful institutions of this nation.”

  “Your Majesty,” the tallest of the men asks, “how can we aid you?”

  “Let me go.”

  The men look at each other. Monsieur Sauce opens and shuts his mouth several times, but cannot seem to make a sound. And I hold my breath. Will these people be with us, or against us?

  It is the tall man who manages, at last, to speak. “Your Majesty, we shall do better. The Municipal Council, which I am honored to head, will escort you to Montmédy at dawn. I will awaken the others immediately that we may organize matters.”

  Whereas tears only threatened me before, now they stream down my cheeks. These are tears of pure joy. My faith in mankind, and the divine order, is restored. The poison of the revolutionary thinkers has not, as I earlier feared, corrupted my brother’s entire kingdom.

  “I am grateful for your loyalty,” Louis says. “Your honorable behavior and aid to me in this time of distress will never be forgotten.”

  Three of the men beam. But the face of the last—the member of the Municipal Council who has never spoken—is very different. His eyes are wary, considering. I do not like their look. I push that unworthy thought away. We have a fair promise from the council’s head. Oh, how I wish dawn were minutes, not hours, away!

  Madame Sauce brings cold meats and serves us with a self-effacing kindness. She is smitten with little Louis-Charles, watching with a dreamy smile as the queen covers him with a blanket.

  “Do you have children?” Antoinette asks.

  “Alas, Your Majesty, I have not been blessed.”

  “Well, after today you must think of my children as also yours. For you have made all of us comfortable here, and in caring for the dauphin, you care for the future of France.” The lady is so clearly moved that for a moment she cannot speak, and I know in her we have a true friend.

  At last we are alone. I should sleep, but there are disturbing noises from below—voices shout the sorts of slurs and threats that we grew all too accustomed to hearing through the windows of the Tuileries. I try to tamp down my anxiety by remembering the promise of the council members, and the proud devotion of our hostess. They are all good, true subjects of my brother, and in the morning, they will come and see us on our way. As I begin to drift off there is a knock at the door.

  The king springs to his feet, calling, “Enter.”

  The Duc de Choiseul strides in with another officer behind him. Both men are flustered, and both have hands on swords.

  “Your Majesty,” the disgraced duc says as he bows. “I am mortified by my own failure. I ought never to have left Somme-Vesle. I was a fool and a knave, and when we reach Montmédy you may dispose of me as you will. But for now, I am here, as is the commander of your hussars. We have between us a fraction of your loyal troops, as speed seemed more essential than numbers. But there are enough, I assure you on my life, to take you from this place. On route to Montmédy more will join us. You will be safe.”

  “We are safe now,” the king responds. “Men of consequence in this village, including the mayor in whose house you now stand, have assured me so, and say I may depart at dawn.”

  “Majesty,” Choiseul stammers, “are you . . . certain? There is a gathering crowd. They are armed and snarling.”

  Louis moves to the window, and the queen and I follow. Below, five or six score people, some with pikes and axes, mill about. They are nothing compared to the crowds that have filled the streets of Paris, but they must represent a significant proportion of the village populace.

  “There he is, traitorous king!” a man shouts. “Following his Austrian whore into the arms of the Swedes and the Germans! Leaving us to die on their sword points!”

  The king raises a hand for quiet and tries to speak, but those below have no interest in hearing him. They are nothing like the good mayor and his tall friend. And suddenly in my mind’s eye I see the cold eyes of the third councilor. Eyes I would not willingly trust.

  “Remark, brother, many of them wear those horrible bonnets rouges,” I say.

  Choiseul adds, “Your Majesty, I do not know whether you should trust the assurances of those you spoke with here, but you may trust mine.”

  Can he? Can any of us have faith when you left us defenseless?

  “Look beyond the rabble,” Choiseul continues. “There are my men, your men.”

  Sure enough, a mix of dragoons and hussars are neatly assembled in rows, swords gleaming in the light of the rioters’ torches.

  “Give the order and we will harness your horses and part the crowd so that you can reach your carriage.”

  “And if they should rush you?” Louis asks.

  “What are axes and pikes in the face of trained soldiers? If they are the sort to attack their king, we will answer them with force.”

  “And I will give Your Majesty my own sword”—Choiseul’s companion pulls his weapon from its scabbard—“so that you may defend yourself if necessary.”

  “Strike down my own people?” Louis’s dismay is palpable. “But they are my children.”

  I want to shake my brother. I want to point to Marie-Thérèse and Louis-Charles and shout: These are your children! But I cannot—to behave in such a manner before the duc, to show disrespect for my brother as king, would only demean us both.

  So instead, I say quietly, “Your Majesty, surely being a king, as being a parent, sometimes means punishing. Sometimes a child cries because it is truly hurt, and if someone has hurt your subjects then, yes, you must right that wrong. But sometimes a child cries simply because it does not get its own way. This is true even when what it clamors for would be harmful to it. Your people do not know their own interests.”

  Both Choiseul and Antoinette nod vigorously.

  And you do them no favor by coddling them.

  “Majesty,” Choiseul urges, “give the order, and we will be on the road north.”

  Louis puts his hand on the hilt of the proffered sword. I will him to grasp it. Indeed, were I king I would surely take it. But instead, Louis pushes it away. “No, gentlemen. I am moved by your devotion, but I cannot allow my poor subjects, however misled, to be injured—perhaps slaughtered—merely to be on a road that I have been assured I shall be allowed to take once daylight comes.”

  The dismay and disappointment that I feel are mirrored in Choiseul’s eyes,
and because of this I forgive his earlier failure. As the duc stands, at an obvious loss for what to say or do next, Louis arranges himself in a chair and closes his eyes. In only a short time he is snoring.

  But I cannot sleep, nor can the rest. Choiseul and his companion sit on the floor at either side of the door, their backs against the wall. Glances pass between them, especially as the noise outside swells, but they do not speak.

  Antoinette and I likewise exchange looks. I sense we are in accord: were the decision ours, the party would go on immediately. Frustration rolls over me in waves, leaving me equally nauseated and angry. I consider rising, shaking my brother awake and trying to reason with him—suggesting that since the majority of us believe we ought to proceed at once to Montmédy, perhaps that is the better course of action. Then my cheeks grow hot with shame. The divine order is the divine order; if I forget that, I become no better than the pompous Assembly members and misguided mobs we left behind in Paris who boast about how they are wise enough to rule themselves.

  As man, as husband, as brother, as king, Louis’s will governs our various fates.

  That is God’s law, and therefore it is as it should be.

  AS DAWN ARRIVES, so does Madame Sauce with water for washing. She says little. And when the king thanks her, she bursts into tears and runs from the room.

  “Overwrought by my attention,” Louis says confidently. “It won’t be long before the good mayor returns with the members of the council and we are on our way. Perhaps the National Guard is assembled to escort us already.”

  I’m not so sure. For the rumble of the mob has grown louder outside. When the king goes to look and I join him at the window, I see my worst fears manifested. There are men wearing the uniform of the National Guard below, but they stand facing the royal troops! And the crowd is no longer to be counted in scores but in hundreds!

  “Look who’s awake!” a familiar voice calls. The post-master who so proudly denounced his king stands below the window with . . . Monsieur Sauce!

  A little tremor moves my brother’s hand where it rests on the windowsill. “I do not understand,” he murmurs.

  But I do. I have never been as good-natured or good-hearted as Louis, so I understand immediately, the mayor and the council are not coming to see us on our way. Why? What has diverted them from their honorable intentions?

  Shouts and the sound of horses moving at speed send a frenzied wave through the crowd. People turn this way and that, some run into side alleys or flatten themselves against buildings.

  Please, God, let it be our royal troops; then despite my brother’s miscalculation we will be saved.

  Antoinette joins us at the casement, and our soldiers press in behind, discarding formality in their eagerness to have a view.

  Half a dozen riders clatter down the steep street, dressed in the uniform of the National Guard. What a terrible sight, made the more so when Antoinette proclaims, “Monsieur Romeuf rides at the front.”

  Sure enough, there is Lafayette’s aide-de-camp, a man we saw nearly every day of our captivity at the Tuileries. Like Lafayette, Romeuf—all earnest, youthful foolishness and democratic fancy—is a traitor to his noble family’s history. As they draw close, I recognize the man beside him as another of Lafayette’s minions, and in my stomach, more so even than in my heart, I know that the brief period when we might have gone onward—might have reached Montmédy and freedom—has closed.

  Dismounting, Romeuf speaks with Sauce. The mayor points to where we stand, and surely Louis must notice how studiously he keeps his eyes from following the direction of his finger.

  “Let us receive them with dignity,” the king commands.

  The queen sits, pulling the dauphin into her lap. The king stands behind her with his hand on her shoulder. The rest of us fall in about them. It is a marvelous tableau of family, royalty, and power. But a pretty picture is not much in the way of a defense.

  Romeuf speaks the moment he crosses the threshold, “Your Majesty, we come with an official decree from the Constituent Assembly ordering your return to Paris.”

  Ordering! This puppy, this boy younger than I, presumes to give his king orders!

  My brother takes the piece of paper Romeuf holds and glances over it. “There is no longer a king in France,” Louis says solemnly.

  Antoinette is less collected. Snatching the order from Louis, she jumps to her feet, leaving little Louis-Charles scrambling to find his. “Insolence!” she cries, casting the order to the floor and pointedly putting a foot on it. “What audacity, what cruelty! How dare the Assembly write such a thing, and how dare you present it without blushing in shame?”

  Romeuf’s cheeks do color, but he does not respond to the queen. Instead, looking pointedly past her, he says to Louis, “General Lafayette asked me to tell Your Majesty that Paris is in uproar over your departure. Rioters are everywhere, and accusations as to who may have helped you run wild. Property is being destroyed, but he fears greater violence—fears that women and even children might be killed.”

  “But not by royal troops!” Marie-Antoinette is not done with Romeuf. “Monsieur Lafayette worries about women who have taken to the streets armed. But who fears for your mother’s children, Baron?”

  Romeuf winces at his title as if it is an insult.

  “Who fears for me and for my children? Am I not a mother also? And the king is a father, yet you ask him to carry his children back into the jaws of the mad dog that Paris has become.”

  “I ask only that the king acknowledge the authority of the Assembly and understand that his place is with them in calming Paris.”

  “We will need time to make ready,” Louis says.

  My stomach lurches, and tears course down the cheeks of the queen’s ladies.

  “Perhaps you could wait downstairs,” Louis continues. “Surely neither your authority, nor the authority you insist the Assembly has, requires you to watch my family perform its morning toilet.”

  The moment the pair has withdrawn, Antoinette says, “Louis, I beg you, do not go with them! It will be the end of everything.”

  My brother gathers his shaking wife into his arms. “Calme-toi,” he says softly. “Calm yourself, my love.”

  “We must delay as long as we can,” I say, collecting my thoughts, looking for the one chance that may yet save us. “With luck our dragoons will arrive, and the balance will shift in our favor.”

  Then the streets of Varennes will run with blood—blood of a quantity that might have been avoided had you ordered us on the road last night when Choiseul urged it. I am not fool enough to say it aloud. Not that I personally will regret such deaths—the members of the crowd have shown themselves implacable enemies of their king—but because Louis may well reject my plan if I say it. As it is, I worry he will not agree to delay.

  But at last he nods.

  “Perhaps I can play the invalid,” I suggest. Louis does not dissuade me, so when the impatient Romeuf returns to press our departure, I put on a performance: swooning, shaking, and collapsing. The queen calls for wine and cool cloths for my head, then sits beside me on the settee, murmuring soothing words. And all the while Choiseul stands at the window.

  When we are momentarily alone, he reports grimly, “There is no end to the crowd now, Majesty.”

  The door swings open without warning. Startled, I sit bolt upright.

  Romeuf strides in. “I am glad to see Madame Élisabeth is recovered.” His tone suggests he suspects the truth. “Because, Your Majesty, there must be no more delay. The crowds outnumber my men, your dragoons, and your hussars combined. Soon you will not be safe. It is time to go to the carriages.”

  He does not ask, he commands.

  Louis nods. “Gentleman,” he says to Choiseul and the commander, “stay close to Her Majesty and my children. I shall take my chances, but do not let them be harmed.”

  “We will die if that is necessary to protect them,” Choiseul replies.

  “I am afraid, Duc, that I must hav
e one of you with me,” the puppy says. “The hussars and dragoons will not take orders from me.”

  “Why should they?” Choiseul gives the aide-de-camp a withering look.

  “The salient fact,” Romeuf replies coldly, “is royal troops are needed to provide a path for Their Majesties to safely reach their carriage. On the point of the king’s safety I do not believe we are enemies.”

  “Sir,” Choiseul replies with conviction, “from this day forward we are enemies on every point until one of us is lowered to the grave.”

  At seven thirty in the morning on June the 22nd, we emerge from the home of the duplicitous mayor of Varennes, making our way along a narrow path, bounded on each side by hussars holding back the angry mob. I make a point of looking at my watch, knowing this moment marks the turning point between bold action and retreat.

  The crowd shouts, shoves, and spits, but I pay them no mind. To do so would be to dignify these ugly, ungrateful, and treasonous people, to give them power. No, I concede as I mount the carriage step, they have power already—and having snatched it, they will not give it back.

  What will become of us?

  * * *

  Palace of the Tuileries, Paris, July 15, 1791

  I sweep into the queen’s bedchamber. “Dear sister, I must burden you with a delicate matter of my health.” Antoinette offers a convincing look of concern, though she knows I lie. We simply need to be rid of the guard standing inside her doorway.

  The number of guards placed upon us has more than doubled since our forced return. They stand beneath our windows as if we would fly down into the gardens, despite the fact those gardens themselves are so carefully watched that I do not believe a kitchen cat could escape them. The king and queen are required to sleep with their doors open, their beds visible to guards stationed just beyond their thresholds. These soldiers cannot be ordered out, and even the fiercest of Antoinette’s glares does nothing to intimidate them. But we have discovered nothing frightens them away faster than allusions to women’s private matters. Sure enough, the present spy steps gingerly into the antechamber, pulling the door shut behind him.