Into the World

by Stephanie Parkyn

  Marie-Louise was exhilarated. She felt their anger, heard them rattle their pikes against the gilded gates, calling for the bitch, the Austrian whore. The gates held out against the mob and the rain continued to pound the cobblestones. The royal guards spread out along the fenceline, facing down the screaming women.

  Her elbow was tapped and a note pressed into her hand. It was from Hébert and simply said: Tomorrow, at dawn.

  That night, Marie-Louise could not sleep. She was excited, nervous and horrified in turns. What if she failed? This was the moment the revolution had been waiting for, she could feel it. The women, the mothers of France, were going to change their world for the better.

  The gate she had chosen was near the southern wing of the château. All was quiet here, away from the main palace gates. On the other side of this wall was the shack she had grown up in. She knew the streets of the town, remembered running through them on a night as dark as this to find the midwife.

  She led the guard away from the lamplight and into the shadows, heart pounding. It was real, it was now, it was happening. He said nothing, but grunted while fumbling with his ornate uniform. He lifted her skirts and pressed her back against the stone wall.

  It was more painful than she remembered. She squeezed her eyes shut at the sharp stabbing of his penis. What am I doing? What have I become?

  His thrusting became more urgent, slamming her spine against the wall. She recovered her wits. ‘Please, remember to withdraw,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘My position, I will lose my place here, please withdraw!’ She felt him slide from her and press himself against her thigh, and a hot rush of fluid run down her leg. He collapsed against her, breathing heavily.

  Hébert had the women waiting and they roared as they charged the gate. The guard pulled himself off her. She sensed his panic as he looked around for his superiors, the realisation dawning that he had left the gate, that he had failed in his duty. The shadows beckoned. She saw him hesitate, but the distant whistle of his fellow guardsmen seemed to steel his resolve and he launched himself into the fray, weaponless.

  Marie-Louise pushed herself from the palace wall, her whole body trembling. Her hands were white against her dress. Still the people came through the broken gate, an endless stream of fury. Many thousands trampled the carefully tended grass of the orangerie. The exotic citrus plants were overturned. The pots cracked open. Not just the women of Paris now, but some of the National Guardsmen too, still in uniform. She saw poor townsfolk and farmers together, charging towards the palace, scaling the stone staircase with their pikes lowered. Well-dressed young men, brandishing bottles of liquor, were whipping the crowd on. The women were wild-eyed, hair loose, clothing ragged. Some had torn their bodices and bared their breasts to show the strength of their despair. She heard glass smashing and knew they had entered the palace.

  She stumbled after the mob. She saw the body of the guard lying in the dirt, his neck twisted fully around, his eyes staring at her. She doubled over, retching. I have done this. His semen was still wet on her leg.

  By the time she reached the courtyard the royal family had been dragged out to the balcony. The heads of the Queen’s bodyguards were raised on pikes. Beside Marie-Louise, a mother hugged the clothing of her dead baby. Another was hysterical, chanting, ‘Kill the bitch! Kill the bitch! Kill the bitch!’ These were her people; this was her revolution.

  ‘Come to Paris, Louis, and see what we endure! Be the people’s king!’

  ‘She has blinded you!’

  ‘Kill the whore!’

  The crowd demanded the Queen. Marie-Louise stood transfixed, watching the Queen reach for the hand of the Dauphin.

  ‘Not with your child,’ jeered the crowd.

  Marie-Antoinette stepped forwards alone, her face serene. The crowd grew quiet. Muskets were raised and levelled at her breast.

  Oh God. Marie-Louise crossed herself. She remembered the face of the guard, twisted around in the dirt. I have already sacrificed the life of one man today; must I have the death of a queen on my soul?

  Perhaps the crowd had begun to think the same. There was hesitation. The Queen stood alone.

  A voice rang out from the mob. ‘Vive la Reine!’ Long live the Queen!

  Chapter 56

  Sourabaya, Java, 27 October 1793

  THE PASSAGE DOWN THE TREACHEROUS STRAIT TO SOURABAYA was slow and careful. But as the town drew closer, Girardin’s heart beat stronger, each beat bringing her closer to her son.

  ‘We shall soon be home,’ Félix muttered to himself. ‘Another voyage of eight months at most. I will take my box of seeds and my breadfruit back to André Thouin at the Jardin du Roi. I will be a success.’

  She wondered if he knew he spoke this mantra aloud.

  She sat with the naturalists as she did each afternoon. Labillardière nursed his three remaining breadfruit plants back to health, keeping them close in a pail beside him. He scowled at Raoul whenever he came near.

  Raoul strutted about the deck. He had taken to wearing a tricorn hat and a blue frockcoat, unbuttoned, over his rough sailor’s clothes. He styled himself a leader among the crew, someone d’Auribeau could rely upon to keep the men in line.

  As the ship made its final tack towards Sourabaya, she stood and went to the bow, feeling the breeze cool her clammy face. The town was split in half by a river. On one side were jumbled Chinese- and Malay-style homes and mosques. On the other were orderly streets, stone mansions and the Calvinist chapels of the Dutch East India Company. She felt uplifted by the sight of the port. It was exactly like Amboyna. All the provisions for a long sea journey would be found here. They could buy salted meat and flour. They had not baked bread in months. Even the hated ship’s biscuit would be a joy to behold. They would have brandy, coffee and wine. The holds would be full again for the journey home.

  When they at last laid anchor in the soft mud of the bay, she was surprised to see a boat laden with armed Dutch guards approach the ship.

  Ventenat came to stand with her. ‘What is this about?’ he murmured.

  The guards filed onto the ship and spread out, their weapons held ready.

  Captain d’Auribeau left the helm and addressed the guards. Girardin watched as a letter was presented to the captain.

  D’Auribeau read, his lips moving with barely a whisper. She watched his face lose colour and begin to spasm. His voice was soft when he spoke.

  ‘France is at war with the Dutch.’

  At war! What did that mean? What did it mean for them?

  She saw the same incomprehension on other faces.

  ‘We are prisoners.’

  Prisoners. The word reverberated in her head.

  ‘That is outrageous! We are on a mission of science, not warmongery!’ Labillardière cried. ‘The Dutch have signed a passage of safe conduct.’

  ‘The problem is that our agreements of safe conduct were made with Louis as our king,’ d’Auribeau snarled, recovering himself. ‘Your revolution has declared France a republic, not a monarchy, and our agreements are no longer valid!’

  Shocked voices rose in a clamour. D’Auribeau silenced them with a gesture.

  He continued to read. ‘In France, an immense disorder reigns.’ Tears rolled down his cheeks. ‘The King has been executed.’

  Pandemonium broke out. Girardin staggered back in shock. Shouts were hurled around her. Instantly the men separated into revolutionary and royalist factions. With those final words, the fragile bonds of kinship, of shared endeavour, hardships and sacrifice, were stretched and torn apart.

  Ventenat leaped up to the quarterdeck, suddenly infused with energy. ‘The King is dead! The tyrant is dead!’

  D’Auribeau’s voice cracked like a whip. ‘Get that traitor down!’

  Raoul tackled Ventenat, pushing him down the stairs and pressing the chaplain’s face into the tarred grooves of the deck. The royalist sailors jumped on him. She screamed out as they began to kick his ribs. Labillardière and Félix fought their way through
and helped to pull the chaplain to his feet.

  Stunned, Girardin listened as more of the letter was read out. France was at war with all the major countries of Europe: England, Prussia, Austria and Spain. There was civil war; the western provinces supported the nobility. Foreign armies threatened Paris.

  What has happened in these past two years? Fear escalated around her as the men thought of their families, their wives and children.

  Helpless, she watched as the Dutch towed the ships into port and bound them against the dock.

  Chapter 57

  GIRARDIN FELT SWEATY AND FEVERISH, ROLLING OVER IN HER hammock, unable to sleep. She longed for news of home. When she’d left France she had thought the revolution was over: the National Assembly was in power, they had won. Louis XVI was a king in name only. Her friends had wanted a constitutional monarchy; they’d never wanted to kill the King.

  Images of Louis as a boy would not leave her. She saw him standing on the golden statue of Apollo riding his chariot out of the water, running through the labyrinth. She saw the letters he scratched into the gravel for her, the words he taught her. This lonely boy, avoiding his minders and his tutors, had been murdered by his own people. The King was dead. Beheaded.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she whispered aloud to the boy who had taught her to write her own name.

  After the mob had stormed Versailles, the royal family were taken to Paris and imprisoned at the Tuileries Palace. Marie-Louise was proud. She had done that. She had given them to the National Assembly. To the people.

  When Hébert had told her to follow the King to Paris, she obeyed without hesitation. By then, they had been lovers for many months. She no longer kept in touch with Olympe de Gouges and Sophie de Condorcet or any of the Girondists from Sophie’s salon. All was Hébert. No one knew what she had done that night at Versailles.

  Hébert paid off a chambermaid and Marie-Louise took her place, a nondescript face in maid’s clothes, lining up to enter the palace. Her father believed her to be lodged in the Parisian abode of some noble family.

  Under house arrest, Louis had no power. No courtiers quarrelled for the honour of removing his chamber-pot. It was Marie-Louise who threw the King’s excrement onto the streets of Paris.

  ‘We need someone to keep a close eye on him,’ Hébert had told her. ‘Make sure he does not plan an escape.’

  But Hébert had not told her the truth…

  There was a knock at her cabin door. Her heart flipped. She reached for her knife.

  ‘It’s me,’ Félix hissed. ‘I have news.’

  She unlocked her door and he passed her a roll of papers. ‘They were smuggled on board,’ he whispered.

  She closed the door. Her hands were shaking as she unrolled the bundle. Sickened, she recognised the caricature of Père Duchesne. The old man stood in his long coat and liberty cap in front of his furnace, smoking his pipe. One hand clutched a cone of tobacco, the other his crotch. The caption beneath read: ‘I am the true fucking Père Duchesne!’

  Hébert the hypocrite.

  ‘Yes, fuck it, I am again going to declare war on all aristocrats.’

  ‘I am painting a picture in a language they understand,’ Hébert had told her. ‘I am not preaching to them and telling them how they should think and act.’

  ‘But you are deceiving them!’ She propped herself up on one elbow and poked his bare chest playfully. They lay in bed, her naked legs entwined with his. ‘There is no Père Duchesne.’

  ‘These people do not want to be told the truth,’ Hébert rose suddenly and walked to the window. ‘They want to feel it.’ He clenched his fists beside his naked thighs. ‘When Père Duchesne slaps the face of the whingeing aristocrat and wrings the balls of the whoring bishop, they wish it were them doing it. They want to be Père Duchesne! The more outrage they feel, the more they feel alive.’ He turned to the fire, grasped a poker and prodded the smouldering logs, sending a shower of sparks onto the hearth. ‘Did I invent the injustice?’ he raged. ‘Are there not royalist pamphleteers doing exactly the same as I?’

  ‘Of course there are!’ Marie-Louise rushed to wrap her arms around him and laid her cheek on his back. He shrugged her off.

  She had believed Hébert. There would be no power among the people if they were not roused by their passions. He saw himself as a conductor. Without him the instruments were nothing more than discordant sounds; with his direction they were transcendent. Hébert gave them focus. He gave them an enemy. He gave them Marie-Antoinette.

  ‘What news do you have for me?’ he said, reaching for a robe to wrap around himself.

  ‘Nothing,’ she stammered, feeling the coldness of the room on her goose-pimpled skin now that Hébert blocked the fire.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘The King signs whatever the National Assembly ask him to. The Queen plays with her children. All is quiet.’

  ‘The Austrian whore is close to her children? Is that natural?’

  ‘Of course it is natural for a mother to love her son and daughter.’

  Hébert had smiled at her. ‘So tender-hearted.’ He had opened the robe he wore and wrapped her in his warmth.

  Now, in his persecution of Marie-Antoinette, Hébert excelled himself.

  Girardin read on as Hébert accused the Queen of incest with her seven-year-old son. Girardin felt sick. She tried not to think of the things she had told him. The things he had twisted into perversities. How much of this was her fault?

  She flicked through the papers and found a cartoon of Olympe de Gouges. She cried aloud in shock. Hébert now attacked her friends. Olympe’s trademark white headdress was held aloft by a mob and she stood as bald as a baby.

  In black and white he ranted: The contamination of the old regime lives on, if courtesans and mistresses are allowed to manipulate free men. Fuck, go home! Cease littering our streets with your pamphlets on the rights of bastard children, slaves and other lost causes!

  Olympe spoke out for mercy for the King; the Girondists wanted him disempowered, not made into a martyr. But the Jacobins were in power now. Hébert ridiculed her. Those fucking meddling women, he wrote. Those toothless, lascivious hags. Père Duchesne brayed for the King’s head.

  She read of the invention of the guillotine, a beheading machine. How many heads did they need to remove? She was breathless. If they were ever to return to France, what in God’s name would they find?

  There were royalist papers in among the copies of Le Père Duchesne. She read of massacres where the mobs of Paris stormed the prisons with axes, pikes and sabres. With grim purpose, they hacked to death priests, aristocrats and prostitutes. Women were raped before being torn to pieces. She searched for the date…September 1792, more than a year ago now. Could it be true? This was horrific.

  Girardin rifled through the papers to see what Père Duchesne would say of the massacres. Madame de Lamballe, the Queen’s close friend, had been imprisoned because Hébert had accused her of lesbian orgies with the Queen. Hébert had drawn her dead body in caricature, paraded outside the prison where the royal family were held so that the Queen might see her friend with her head hacked off, her guts worn as a belt and her genitals exhibited as a trophy.

  Girardin felt nauseated. She had told Hébert that Madame de Lamballe was a confidante of Marie-Antoinette.

  Hébert had chosen well. He did not want an enlightened woman; he wanted someone who would do as she was told. Someone who would not ask too many questions. She had been a fool. At the time, she had seen what he was about but had not wanted to believe it. She had seen the Duc d’Orléans step out of Hébert’s carriage while she waited in the shadows of the street. He rode about with a member of the royal family and she had never questioned him about it. Now she read these papers and could see the truth. Père Duchesne called Philippe, Duc d’Orléans a true patriot. It was obvious to her now. Hébert was in the pay of the duke. He had orchestrated the downfall of the King not to bring democracy for the people, but so he could install another tyrant in
his place.

  Marie-Louise had wanted to be like Olympe. She’d wanted to be brave and fearless. She had wanted to act. But instead she had let herself be used by Hébert, had danced like a puppet on a string. He cared only for himself. Men like Hébert were opportunists, revelling in the disorder. They saw an opportunity for power and influence and took it. Olympe would never have fallen for his flattery.

  She was disgusted by her own weakness. The failings of her character were laid bare. In her need to please him, she had lost all trace of herself.

  Girardin was haunted by the look on Louis’s face as he gazed up at a painting of two ships in full sail. The windows of the King’s chamber were covered, and his face was lit by candlelight. Imprisoned in his chambers at the Tuileries, he had just signed the decree for the mission to rescue La Pérouse. Marie-Louise had watched the minister and his naval officers leave the palace.

  ‘I once thought I could sail around the world,’ he said, his voice full of longing. ‘Do you remember?’

  Marie-Louise had not expected the King to recognise her. They had been children, only seven years old, when they played together in the gardens of Versailles. She paused, motionless.

  ‘But I never made it to the sea.’

  Chapter 58

  CAPTAIN D’AURIBEAU LEFT THE SHIP TO NEGOTIATE WITH THE Dutch for their release. Mérite was optimistic that the captain would prevail, that the Dutch would honour the agreements of safe conduct and let them sail. He wanted her to have hope and she had tried to appear persuaded, for his sake. But she was filled with dread. Sourabaya. The town drew its name from a mythical battle between a giant white crocodile and a great white shark.