The Rising Storm

by Dennis Wheatley

  At midnight Lafayette arrived. In one breath he assured the King that he would rather have died than appear before him in such circumstances as the present; but he had been forced to it and had covered the last few miles only because his men were pushing their bayonets into his back. In the next he said that all his men wanted was to see the King, vouched for their complete loyalty, and offered to be personally responsible for the safety of the Royal Family and everyone within the palace.

  The King listened without comment to these heroics, and accepted the guarantee of protection for himself, his family and his servants. Others were not so sanguine. Their Majesties then retired. Lafayette posted detachments of his men round the palace; then went to bed and to sleep.

  Meanwhile de Vaudreuil collected Monsieur de Beauveau, de la Marck, Monsieur de Chevenne, Roger, and several other gentlemen, and said to them that he believed the Queen’s life to be in extreme danger. The Marquise de Tourzel, who had succeeded Madame de Polignac as governess to the royal children, had told him that during the course of the evening Her Majesty had received not one but several warnings.

  One note, from a Minister of the Crown, had contained the words: “Madame, make your plans; or tomorrow morning at six o’clock you will be murdered.”

  A group of loyal deputies from the National Assembly had sought an audience, and assured her that she would be murdered during the night unless she saved herself by immediate flight. She had replied: “If the Parisians have come here to assassinate me it shall be at the feet of my husband. I will not fly.”

  They had then asked permission to remain with her; but she said that they needed rest more than she did, and giving them her hand to kiss, had bid them leave her.

  As a last resort they had begged her to pass the night with the King; but, knowing that the plot was directed against herself, she refused, and ordered Madame de Tourzel, in the event of trouble, to take the children to the King, in order that she might face the danger alone, and keep it away from those she loved.

  Finally, when her women besought her to take heed of these warnings, she had said: “I learned from my mother not to fear death. I shall await it with firmness.”

  When de Vaudreuil had finished telling of these sinister threats and superb courage, none of his hearers had a thought of sleep, in spite of the long day they had been through, and they arranged to post themselves in the various apartments which led to that of the Queen.

  Roger was allotted the Œil de Bœuf, one of the principal salons of the palace, so named from being lit by one large circular window. If the mob did break in it was most unlikely that they would come that way, as it did not contain any of the regularly used approaches to the Queen’s apartments; but it was a good central post from which he could be called on for help from two directions.

  It was now getting on for two o’clock in the morning. Most of the candles in the big room had been doused and the wood-fires flickered fitfully on the gilded carving of panel surrounds and door pediments. As Roger threw some more logs on one of the fires it flared up, lighting for a moment the pictures in the nearest panels, but the lights in the great crystal chandeliers had been put out and the painted ceiling was lost in shadow.

  For a time he sat by the fire and idly followed the chain of events that had led to his being there. This was not his quarrel, and he wondered now at the impulse that had sent him galloping to Versailles in the middle of the day. In part it had been curiosity to see at first hand the outcome of this new crisis; but it had also been something more than that. He recognised that as a class the nobles and prelates were now getting no more than they deserved as a result of generations of indolence and avarice, but many of the present generation were liberal-minded men and quite a number of them had shown him friendship. The cause of the people might be just, but the great bulk of them would also become sufferers in the long run unless order could be maintained; so it was fitting that every man, whatever his nationality, should lend his hand to resist violence.

  Above all there was the Queen. As he thought of her innocence, kindheartedness and courage, he was glad to be sitting there; and knew that if the attack matured, and he lived through it, he would always feel proud and honoured at having drawn his sword in her defence.

  Each time he found his thoughts drifting he stood up and walked about for a little to keep himself awake. An officer and two gentlemen of the bodyguard came through the apartment on their rounds every hour, otherwise the palace now seemed sunk in exhausted sleep. But it was not so with a large part of the 30,000 troops and 10,000 brigands massed outside. The drums beat all night and, sodden with the rain, gave out a hollow menacing note.

  It was half-past four in the morning when Roger started up from his reverie at the sound of a musket-shot. There followed a dull clamour pierced with yells and more firing, but muffled by the passages and walls. Roger had been asked to remain at his post, unless called on for help, so he eased his sword in its scabbard and with straining ears listened to the tumult that had broken out somewhere on the ground-floor of the palace.

  After a few minutes there suddenly came a sharp rapping on the wall near which he stood, and a voice cried: “Open! Open! Let us through! Let us through!”

  Moving quickly to the place from which the sounds were coming, he stared at it. Only then, in the dim light, did he perceive the crack of a small doorway, which had been skilfully concealed. It was barely five feet high and two and a half across; the upper part of it cut through the corner of a panel that contained a picture, and it followed so exactly the moulding of the wall as to be imperceptible to the casual glance. De Vaudreuil had not told him of its existence when posting him in the Œil de Bœuf, and he had no idea where it led.

  The banging and shouts on the far side of the door had now reached a crescendo. Roger thought that it was the mob who were trying to break through, and he hastily looked to either side along the dim passages for help to defend it when it gave way. But both the long corridors leading from the room were deserted. From the distance, shouts, shots, shrieks and the trampling of many feet could be heard.

  Suddenly he realised that the voices beyond the panel held an imploring note and were those of women. It was possible that some of the inmates of the palace were endeavouring to escape that way from an attack on a range of apartments that lay beyond the door. Yet he could not be certain, and if he opened it he might be overwhelmed by the mob in a matter of seconds.

  Still he stared at the door, desperately uncertain what to do; then he caught a cry above the rest: “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Ouvre la porte ou nous sommes mortes!”

  Hesitating no longer, he found the small catch lock and, inserting his finger in the shallow slot, pulled it back. The door burst open, and the Queen almost fell into his arms.

  She was in her nightdress with only a petticoat pulled loosely over it, and clutched her stockings in her hand. Stumbling past him, and followed by two of her women, she ran across the wide parquet of the Œil de Bœuf, wrenched open another low, concealed door on the far side of it and disappeared.

  Later Roger learned that the door he had opened gave on to her dressing-room, and was used only as a private means of communication between her and the King, the similar door through which she had disappeared giving on to his apartments. And that normally the little door was kept locked only on her side of it, so that night some murderous hand must have locked it on the side of the Œil de Bœuf to prevent her escaping that way from her assassins.

  He learnt too that had it not been for the loyalty of her women she would certainly have been murdered. Madame Auguié and Madame Thibaut, with their two femmes de chambre, had ignored her orders to go to bed, and the four of them had sat up with their backs against her bedroom door. At the first sounds of commotion Madame Auguié had run to the door of the ante-chamber and found one of the bodyguard, Monsieur de St. Marie, his face covered with blood, defending it against a horde of poissardes, who were screaming: “We have come in our white aprons to get the
Queen’s bowels, that we may make red cockades out of them!”

  Slamming and relocking the door Madame Auguié had rushed back to the bedroom. Madame Thibaut had in those few seconds roused the Queen; and they had succeeded in getting her away before the doors of the ante-room were broken in.

  The Queen had hardly entered the King’s apartments when a dozen Garde du Corps and other gentlemen came running into the Œil de Bœuf with drawn swords. Among them was Madame de Tourzel with the Royal children. When they had followed the Queen, their escort drew themselves up in front of the door, ready to defend it with their lives.

  Pandemonium had now broken loose in the Queen’s apartments. Drawing his sword Roger ran through the dressing-room. He found the bedroom empty, but in the ante-chamber beyond it a fierce struggle was taking place. Some of Lafayette’s National Guard had arrived upon the scene and were fighting with the members of the bodyguard, whom they had been told were plotting to surprise and massacre them.

  De Vaudreuil was there standing on a table, shouting that they had been told a pack of lies, and begging both sides to put up their weapons. His Liberal sentiments were known, so some notice was taken of him. Then Monsieur de Chevanne ran forward and, baring his breast, offered himself as a victim if the citizen soldiers demanded one. With the swift change of sentiment so typical of the French the attackers immediately acclaimed him a hero, embraced the members of the bodyguard and swore to defend them from their comrades.

  But all was not yet over. The mob had fought its way up the great marble staircase and penetrated to the Œil de Bœuf. By another entrance Lafayette had arrived and reached the King, whose only reproach to him was: “Monsieur, had I foreseen that you would be obliged to sleep, I should have remained awake.”

  Although belatedly, Lafayette now showed both loyalty and considerable courage. Out in the courtyard he saved the lives of ten bodyguards by offering his life for theirs; then declared that he would no longer command cannibals, and would resign his post unless his men would accept his orders. This turned the tide and his troops began to clear the palace of the sans-culottes.

  They were assisted in their task by the bodyguards and courtiers. In a hundred rooms, scores of corridors and on a dozen staircases, altercations and scuffles were going on. The majority of the rabble, now finding the National Guards against them, offered no resistance and slouched off, hurling curses over their shoulders; but, here and there, groups put up a fight and could not be turned out without bloodshed. In one such group, Roger saw a tall fishwife slash at a soldier with a hatchet, wound him in the arm, duck under the guard of another and run from the room. Sword in hand, he went after her.

  The clothes of the poissardes amounted almost to a uniform, so it was easy to distinguish them. Most of the women were great muscular creatures, coarse-mouthed and brutal-faced; but Roger had been surprised to see that many of them were much above the average height. The one that he was chasing looked as tall as himself.

  Seeing two Swiss guards approaching along the corridor, she darted up a service staircase. Roger dashed after her and caught sight of her again on the next floor. Shouting at her that if she halted and agreed to leave the palace quietly he would not harm her, he pursued her down the passage. At its end she came to a door and, finding it locked, turned at bay.

  As Roger came pounding up he saw her face clearly for the first time. It was not that of a woman, but of a man. Next second he realised that his quarry was de Roubec.

  Instantly there recurred to his mind the words he had overheard in the Palais Royal a few nights before—about not giving out the women’s clothes until a first-class opportunity presented itself. This, then, explained why so many of the poissardes were much taller than the average woman. The Orleanists had taken advantage of the ancient liberty accorded to the fishwives of Paris to approach the King and Queen without formality, to disguise a number of assassins in the type of garments the poissardes always wore, so that they could mingle with the real poissardes and under that cover commit the heinous task they had been given.

  The revelation of this new piece of treachery added fuel to Roger’s wrath. He had no thought now of settling his old score by slicing off the villain’s ears and nose. With a cry of rage he rushed forward, intent to kill. De Roubec was half-crouching against the locked door with his hatchet raised to strike, but he never delivered the blow. It had been only a second before that he had recognised his pursuer. The knowledge that it was Roger now seemed to paralyse him with fear. The blood drained from his face. His unshaven chin showed blue in the early-morning light, making his lean visage more than ever incongruous under its woman’s bonnet. His mouth dropped open, showing his yellowed teeth. It seemed that he was about to scream for mercy; but there was time neither for him to ask nor receive it. Roger leapt the last few paces that separated them. His feet landed with a thud upon the floor. At the same instant he drove his sword through the cowering man’s body.

  De Roubec’s eyes started from his head, a long low moan issued from his lips; suddenly he slid sideways and collapsed in a heap. Roger put his foot on the torso, gave his sword a twist, drew it out, and wiped it on the hem of the dark skirt beneath the poissarde’s white apron.

  For a moment he stood there frowning down upon the man who had caused Isabella and himself so much misery. They might by now be married and gloriously happy together in England had it not been for de Roubec’s evil activities in Florence. Roger felt not an atom of compunction at having struck him down like a rat in a corner. To his mind the self-styled Chevalier had earned death thrice over; twice for having wrecked Isabella’s life, and his own, by bringing about their separation, and a third time for having participated in the attempt to assassinate the Queen.

  The sound of more firing and fresh tumult down below recalled Roger to the present, and while he was still staring at de Roubec’s body an idea flashed into his mind.

  It was by no means certain yet that Lafayette would succeed in clearing the palace of the insurgents. The National Guards were not to be relied on; at any moment some incident might turn them from their grudging obedience to renewed fraternisation with the mob, then support of it. Should that happen the bodyguard would be overwhelmed and the Royal Family again in dire peril. Even if Lafayette’s men did continue to obey him for the next few hours there was still the persistent rumour that they meant to take the King to Paris, and if they did it was certain that the Queen would refuse to be separated from him. In either case, it seemed to Roger, if things went well his presence would be redundant, but if they went badly he would stand a better chance of keeping near the Queen and, perhaps, being able to defend her in an emergency, if he disguised himself as a poissarde than if he remained in his ordinary clothes.

  Hastily pulling off his coat and unbuckling his sword-belt, he began to strip de Roubec of the coarse female garments he was wearing. On stepping into the petticoats and ragged skirt he found that they came to within an inch of the floor, hiding his riding-boots. Untying the queue at the back of his neck he shook his head hard, and ran his fingers through his medium-long brown hair until it was sticking out wildly in all directions; then he put on the bonnet and pulled its frill low down over his forehead. To his grim amusement he found that de Roubec had been wearing breast-pads, so he put on this false bosom and over it the high-necked cotton blouse. His sword he picked up to carry in his hand, as most of the poissardes were armed and one of them might easily have taken it from a fallen bodyguard.

  Looking out of a window he saw that the mob was now steadily being ejected from the front entrances of the palace, and decided that he had better join it; but in his new role he knew it might go hard with him if he fell foul of a group of angry Loyalists, so, hiding from time to time, he cautiously made his way down a back staircase and out through a side entrance.

  As he mingled with the mob no one took any notice of him, and he gradually worked through the crush till he got to its densest part, which was swaying in a tightly packed mass th
at jammed the whole of the Cour de Marbre. From time to time there were sporadic shouts for the King, and in the course of an hour they steadily increased till they became a loud, imperative demand to see him.

  At length he came out on the balcony, and the fickle populace cheered him; but after a few moments the cries of “Vive le Roi!” died away and the crowd began to call for the Queen.

  The King retired and the Queen appeared; she led Madame Royale by the hand and carried the Dauphin in her arms. The crowd hissed and booed, then a shout went up: “We want you without your children! No children! No children!”

  Madame Marie Antoinette withdrew. A moment later she reappeared on the balcony alone. Her eyes were lifted to Heaven and she held her beautiful hands shoulder high, in an attitude of surrender.

  Roger’s heart missed a beat and he closed his eyes. The same thought had leapt into his mind as was already in hers. The conspirators had demanded her presence alone because they did not wish to risk harming the children, but intended to shoot her.

  She was standing no more than twenty feet above the crowd, so an easy target, even for a pistol-shot; but her extraordinary courage seemed to stun her enemies. The vast crowd suddenly fell completely silent, then, forced to it by admiration, they began to cry, “Vive la Reine!’

  After the Queen had gone in, the crowd called for the King again. When he came out there were more cheers, but a few voices started up the cry: “To Paris! To Paris!”

  He went in, but they had him out again, a dozen times in the next hour; and every time the voices grew more insistent, until the cry became a chant: “To Paris! To Paris! To Paris!”

  Afterwards Roger heard from de la Marck that each time the King had gone in, he had flung himself down in an elbow-chair, moaning: “I know not what to do! I know not what to do!”