Revolution

by Jennifer Donnelly

  But before he did, it had felt to me as if the fall of Versailles was happening all over again. I was there, back at my job as valet to Louis-Charles. When the mob began streaming in, the queen had told her guards to take Louis-Charles and Marie-Thérèse to her bedchamber and lock them in. She told me to go with them. I played with Louis-Charles throughout the day as Marie-Thérèse did her needlework. I did my best to show the children a face both cheerful and unconcerned—all while expecting the mob to break down the door at any second and murder us all.

  In July, the Prussian Duke of Brunswick promised that if there was another assault on the king, all of Paris would pay for it, and dearly. His words were printed in every newspaper for us to read, and talked about on every street corner, and we knew they were no idle threat, for his armies were daily advancing through France. Even so, Paris was not cowed. On August 10, spurred on by the hot words of Danton, maddened by the howlings of the gutter press, the people attacked the Tuileries again.

  I had not gone back to the Palais the night of the ninth. I was afraid for Louis-Charles and begged to be allowed to stay with him. Alarm bells had been ringing throughout the night, calling together the people of Paris. I heard them and again I remembered Versailles and how the fishwives had run shouting into the palace with murder in their hearts.

  The king heard them, too. His own troops were mobilized and the palace fortified, but by morning he could see that it was hopeless. All of Paris had come out to march against him. I dressed Louis-Charles quickly and got him breakfast and then we were hurried out of his rooms, and out of the palace, to the Assembly House.

  The king had decided to seek sanctuary for himself and his family with the Assembly, and its deputies, after some consideration, gave it to them—by confining them in the Temple, an ancient and ugly stone fortress.

  I was ordered to go with them, as manservant to the king and Louis-Charles. I helped make up their rooms that night. I put sheets on their beds, served them a hasty supper, and then again refused to leave them, for I had heard the gunfire at the Tuileries and knew it was not so far from there to the Temple. I slept on the floor next to Louis-Charles’ bed. Someone offered me nightclothes but I did not take them. I said I wished to be dressed and ready for whatever might occur, but the truth was I could hardly undress in that place. The other servants, or a guard, would find out I was no boy. They would haul me off to the warden. He would know I was a spy and then I would find myself in prison, too.

  By the time I did go back to the Palais, late the next night, I was certain the violence was ended. The Tuileries had been taken. The king’s guard had been slaughtered. The king himself was powerless now. What more could they do to him? I hoped they would send him to the country, to his house at St-Cloud. There he could hunt and fiddle with locks, both of which he loved. The queen and Marie-Thérèse could stroll in the gardens. Louis-Charles could run free.

  Orléans was waiting for me at the Palais. He grabbed me the second I entered his apartments and marched me to his study.

  Where the devil have you been? he shouted.

  I told him all that had happened. He would not sit while I spoke, but paced about the room.

  Their ordeal is ended now. It must be, I said when I’d finished my story. Surely now the fighting is over?

  If I expected an answer from him, I did not get it. Instead he said, I’m pleased you were ordered to the Temple. Do your work there and do it well, as you did at the Tuileries. Give the warden no reason to get rid of you. Give me no reason to doubt you. Come here at night after you finish, no matter how late, and give me your report. Whom the king sees. To whom he writes. When he sleeps, eats, and shits.

  But why? I said. I thought it was over now. I thought that—

  He wheeled on me. You thought wrong! he thundered. The king has fallen, yes, but who will take his place? Who will rule? The hothead Danton? The serpent Robespierre? They will fight each other for the privilege, and whoever wins might well rule Paris but he will never rule France. In Lyons, in Nantes, in the whole of the Vendée, the people clamor for their king. Over? My God, what a fool you are. It’s not over. It’s barely begun.

  Orléans was right in this, as in many things. After the Tuileries fell, the alarm bells never stopped ringing. The Prussians battled their way through France. The city gates were closed. Citizens were ordered to stay in their homes. Brigades from the St-Antoine patrolled the streets, rounding up anyone suspected of being an enemy of the revolution. Thousands were thrown in jail. Nobles were arrested simply because they were noble. Priests because they would not put the revolution before God. They joined forgers, thieves, beggars, and prostitutes in the rat-ridden cells of Paris’s prisons.

  Late in August, the fortress at Valmy, the last defense between Brunswick’s armies and the capital, fell. Citizen volunteers armed themselves and hurried out of Paris to the front. The people left behind, wild with fear, took up whatever weapons they could find, certain the Prussians would march through the city gates at any moment and slaughter them all.

  And then it came. Not the Prussians. Or the English. Or the Austrians.

  Something far worse.

  The second of September, 1792.

  25 May 1795

  It was as if someone had gone down into the graveyards of Paris, down into the bowels of the catacombs and farther still, to the gates of Hell itself to release Lucifer’s demons upon us.

  Who had done it? I wondered as I stumbled to my room, sick with the horror of it. Who had opened the gates of Hell?

  It started with a hoarse and fearful whisper. On the streets. In the cafés. Over walls. At the market stalls. The prisoners are plotting an uprising—the royalists, the priests, all the enemies of the revolution, the whisperers said. When Brunswick’s armies get here, they will join with them and murder everyone in the city. The whispering grew louder and louder until it became a battle cry.

  I was at the Temple serving supper when first I heard the shouting. A mob had gathered under the windows in the room where the king and his family dined. A smirking guard looked out, then said the queen must come to the window to see her friend, the Princesse de Lamballe. As he did, we saw a head go by—a blond head, floating along on top of a pole. The queen fainted. I rushed to the window to draw the curtains and saw the mob below, howling and laughing, and I hoped dearly that the walls of the Temple were stronger than those of the Tuileries.

  For hours they stayed, singing their songs, drinking, calling down death upon the king, threatening to invade the Temple and kill him themselves. The warden finally went out to them, his guards about him, and warned them off. They told him that they, the good people of Paris, were emptying the city’s prisons of traitors to the revolution and that the king was the greatest traitor of all. The warden told them that many of the king’s misdeeds had yet to be uncovered and that they themselves would end up in prison if they dared to rob the French people of proper justice against him.

  This sobered them. They stopped their threats and marched off and the warden came back inside. They are not the good people of Paris, he said to one of his men. There are many among them I recognize, many who’ve spent time in prisons themselves.

  He gave orders to double the number of guards at the gates, then sent me, a maid, and three who worked in the kitchens home. I walked south down the smallest streets in hopes of avoiding the market halls and anywhere else crowds might gather. But I went down one with a wine shop on it and they were there—some of the mob. I tried to turn back before I was seen but it was too late. A woman had spied me.

  Ah, what a pretty lad! she shouted. Come here, my fine fellow! The princess would like a kiss from you!

  They had pulled the head off its pole and had placed it on a table. A drunken man pinched its bloodless cheeks. Another kissed its slack lips. A third caressed its hair. I wanted to scream. To cover my eyes. To run. But I dared not. I knew they would chase me.

  Are you not a player? I whispered to myself. Play.

&
nbsp; Fie! I will kiss no damned aristocrat! I shouted back. The princess can kiss me instead. Right here! I turned and slapped my ass. They screeched with laughter. One clapped me on the back. Another gave me wine to drink. One, not drunk, not shouting, questioned me. Who are you, boy? Where were you going? he asked.

  I told him I was a servant at the Temple on my way to my room to sleep. He asked was I a patriot and I told him yes. I had the tricolor pinned on me and buttons on my jacket with words on them that said Live Free or Die. Seeing this, he called me a true son of France. He told me his name—it was Jean—and bade me stay. For more than an hour, I drank with them, laughed with them, sang with them.

  And then he, Jean, said it was time to go back to the nation’s work. He roused the others, promising there would be more wine but first work. I tried to leave but he would not hear of it.

  I must sleep, I told him.

  Enemies of the revolution never sleep, he said. Its defenders must not either.

  Where are we going? I asked as we walked along.

  Back to La Force.

  He turned then to talk with another and I was glad of it, for I could playact no longer. A desperate fear had gripped me. I knew what La Force was—a prison, the very one where the Princesse de Lamballe had been held. I tried to hang back, to break away, but I was carried along by the mob. I first heard the screaming as we neared the prison wall.

  Come, boy! Jean shouted, pulling me through the gates. We will water the tree of liberty with the blood of her enemies!

  There were men inside the yard already. A huge bonfire was burning. Next to it were piled the bodies of men and women, all dead. As I stood there, dumb with shock, a woman ran by me. Her dress was torn. Three men chased her, laughing. She cried out as one grabbed her. Please, she screamed. Help me! And then a club came down on her head and she screamed no more.

  Jean pressed something into my hands. I looked at it. It was a barrel stave, stuck with nails. To work, citizen! he shouted.

  I threw it down. He grabbed me by the scruff of my neck. Bade me pick it up. Punched me in the face when I refused. I was struggling against him, shouting and kicking, certain I would be the next one killed when I heard someone yell, Jean! Hold off! He is one of the duke’s!

  It was Rotonde. I’d seen him in Orléans’ rooms. Many times.

  Why should I? I do not trust him, Jean said. He is no patriot. He’s soft as a woman and a traitor.

  I tell you, he is one of Orléans’. Kill him and you answer to the man himself, Rotonde said.

  Jean spat. Go, boy, he snarled, shoving me so hard I went sprawling onto the cobbles. Go back to your master. Tell him our work goes well.

  Wild with fear, barely hearing him, I scrambled to my feet and ran off. The streets I stumbled down were dark and so were the houses along them. I knocked on doors, hoping someone would let me in, for I did not know if I could make my legs carry me all the way to the Palais. No one answered. The decent people of Paris had hidden themselves behind closed doors as decent people always do. Massacres could not happen if it were not for decent people.

  I stayed in the shadows as I ran, ducked into alleys whenever I heard voices or footsteps. When I arrived at the Palais, I staggered upstairs and collapsed on my bed. A minute later, Nicolas came to fetch me.

  Tell me, Orléans said as I walked into his bedchamber.

  So I did. In a dull, hollow voice, I told him all I had seen. The princess’s head. The mob at the Temple. And at La Force.

  There were so many bodies, I said. Bodies with their arms and legs hacked off. Some with their heads gone. Men’s bodies. Women’s bodies. One was a boy’s. He couldn’t have been more than twelve.

  Orléans was readying himself to go out, dressing in his mirror. He chose not his usual rich attire but plainer things. He put on a gray coat and a simple felt hat and looked a different man entirely. A man I might pass in any Paris street. A man who could go amongst the people unnoticed. The hat’s brim threw a shadow across his face, but I could still see his eyes in the mirror, glinting in the candlelight, darker than midnight.

  And suddenly, I could not breathe.

  I had seen this same man before. On another terrible night, the night Versailles fell. I remembered one who went among the crowd then, his hat pulled low on his brow, handing out gold coins, spreading devilry and murder. His eyes, too, had been darker than midnight.

  Orléans turned to me. Ah, sparrow, he said. What times we live in.

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  I believe that Paris has gone mad.

  Yes, I whispered. I believe it has.

  He came close, cocked his head. You look unwell, he said. He poured a glass of brandy and handed it to me. Drink it, he said. It will do you good.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, my legs began to shake. The glass fell from my hand and smashed against the marble. For I knew then who’d unleashed hell upon us.

  Why? I whispered, in the stillness of the room. Why?

  As if in answer, voices pressed in upon me. Voices in my head. I pressed my hands to my ears, but could not silence them.

  Jean the murderer’s—Go back to your master. Tell him the work goes well.

  My grandmother’s—One day you’ll go walking with the devil, my girl.

  Louis-Charles’—Mama does not like him. She says he plays the rebel but wishes to be king.

  And his, Orléans’—The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  All along, he had lied to me. He had never wanted to help the king. The king was his enemy, and the king’s enemy—the revolutionaries—were his friends. His gold had paid for their marches and their riots. His gold had paid for the things I’d seen tonight.

  I drove the heels of my hands against my head, wanting to drive the knowledge from my brain. Why? I shrieked in the silence of his room. Why, damn you, why?

  A violent rage took hold of me. I grabbed a candlestick and threw it at the wall. I smashed a vase. Swept bottles and brushes off a table.

  Suddenly, I felt hands upon me, heard a voice yelling, Stop it! Stop, I tell you!

  It was Nicolas. I shook him off and kept at it—rending Orleans’ clothing, chucking handfuls of his jewels—until the old man slapped me across my face.

  What is it? What has happened? he asked me.

  It is him, Orléans, I said. He is the one behind the massacres. He has paid for them.

  Hold your tongue, he said. You speak of things you do not understand.

  All this time, I believed I was helping him to help the king, I said. That is what he told me—that he wished to help the king.

  Nicolas laughed. Believed, child? Or merely wished to believe? I suppose it does not matter. Either way it is the player who has been played, he said. There is only one thing the duke wishes—to rule France. Tonight he helps the revolution’s leaders rid themselves of their enemies. His gold pays the scum of Paris for their ugly work. The revolutionaries owe him a great debt and soon they will make good upon it. Soon they will make him king.

  I do not believe you. The revolutionaries want to do away with kings. They have said so a million times.

  What the revolutionaries want to do and what they must do are two different things. The revolution teeters at the edge of an abyss. If the Prussians don’t destroy it, the royalists will. We must have a strong man to rule us. One whom all can accept. Orléans is that man. He is the rarest of creatures—a Jacobin Prince of the Blood, both royal and revolutionary. Who better to unite a divided France?

  But France has a king. Louis is still king, I said.

  Not for much longer.

  You mean that they will send him away. To the country.

  They will send him away, yes, but not to the country. There will be a trial first. For appearance’s sake. Then the guillotine.

  The rage I’d felt trickled away. Fear took its place. But the king has a son, I said, grabbing hold of Nicolas’ sleeve.

  He nodded. Yes, he does, and it is he, Louis-Charles, who will b
e declared king, but the duke will rule for him, as regent.

  Until Louis-Charles comes of age. He can only rule until Louis-Charles becomes king himself, I said. My voice sounded like a beggar’s, desperate and pleading.

  The dauphin is a delicate boy as his brother was before him. Many believe he will not see his tenth year, never mind manhood.

  No, I said, shaking my head, not wanting to hear anymore.

  All along, Orléans had been working against the king, plotting his downfall. Every mistake the king had made had helped him. Every victory for the revolutionaries helped him. Bad harvests helped him. Cold winters. Bread shortages. Foreign threats. Civil war. It all helped him.