Before the Storm

by Melanie Clegg

  ‘No, not foolish,’ Clementine protested, not knowing what else to say. ‘Versailles was like a prison too, in its own way.’

  Marie Antoinette smiled sadly. ‘Do you know that I was the youngest of eight sisters, Madame la Duchesse?’ she said. ‘All I ever wanted was a quiet life with children, dogs, a loving husband and a rose garden of my own to tend. That should have been my fate, but when two of my sisters died of smallpox, everything changed and here I am.’ She picked up a blue bound book that lay on the table beside her and handed it to Clementine. ‘If I die today it will be with the full and certain knowledge that I’ve never had the life that I wanted, madame,’ she said with a mirthless laugh. ‘Isn’t that funny?’

  Clementine shook her head. ‘I often wonder, madame, if anyone has the life they wanted,’ she replied.

  Her mistress looked at her shrewdly. ‘Now, when a young wife says something like that, you know that all is not well in the world,’ she remarked with a shrug.

  Clementine gave a faint smile and opened the book, a novel by Miss Burney and prepared to read. Outside the sitting room she could hear the other ladies in waiting chatting to each other in low voices as they went past the door, their silk skirts whispering against the panelled walls. ‘More gentlemen of the court have arrived with weapons,’ one of them was saying rather excitedly, her voice trailing away as they carried on down the corridor. ‘I haven’t seen the palace so busy since we first arrived here. ’

  ‘That’s not necessarily a good thing,’ another cautioned her as Clementine strained her ears to hear more. ‘Something is in the air, my dear and it doesn’t bode well for any of us.’

  After she had finished reading to the Queen and the other ladies had arrived to take over, Clementine hastened from the room and hurried down busy corridors to the main reception rooms which were filled with ardent young men, flourishing swords that had not seen action since their fathers had fought against the English in America.

  ‘This won’t end well,’ one of the older ladies remarked in an undertone as some of the ladies in waiting sauntered amongst the young men, giving them flirtatious looks from behind their painted fans and even fashioning crude garlands from roses taken from vases around the room, which they placed airily on top of their powdered wigs.

  Clementine sighed but did not reply. It was almost like being back at Versailles again, when the air was full of flirtation, optimism and the old courtly panache that had seemed lost forever. She shrank back into a window embrasure and enviously watched a pretty lady in waiting blushing and smiling as she placed a rose garland onto the dark hair of a crimson cheeked young man, who then caught her hand and fervently brought it to his lips.

  ‘I would consider it an honour to lay down my life for the royal family,’ another young man was saying to a small group of applauding, simpering women. ‘My father, grandfather and great grandfather all died in battle and I long to emulate their glorious sacrifice.’ He couldn’t be more than twenty and Clementine imagined a childhood in which the portrait of his dead father, bedecked with black silk and a wreath of laurels presided over the family salon.

  ‘They don’t know what they are saying,’ the older lady in waiting whispered to Clementine. ‘This is madness and the King is a fool to allow this. It’s over for us all and these young idiots would be better advised to flee for their lives than die for the sake of a long dead cause.’

  Clementine looked at her with interest. ‘Do you really think so?’ she asked simply.

  ‘They’ll all be dead by nightfall tomorrow,’ the other woman said curtly before sweeping away, her dark blue skirts rustling angrily as she went.

  Another lady in waiting sidled up to Clementine with a gentle smile. ‘Her son died while defending Versailles in 1789,’ she whispered with a tiny shrug of her shoulders. ‘I think that she must have been sent half mad with grief.’

  ‘Mad?’ Clementine repeated. ‘I think she might well be the only sane person here.’

  The rest of the day dragged on and in the end even Clementine, who spent most of it sitting reading and sewing with the other ladies in waiting began to believe the whispers that there was to be no coup after all and that there was no danger of an attack upon the Tuileries. However, as night fell the news reached them that for the first time since his accession to the throne in May 1774, the King was not going to have an official coucher when his courtiers ceremoniously put him to bed. In fact the King, it was said, was not going to bed at all but had instead opted to remain fully dressed and booted in case they needed to be evacuated.

  When this news was brought to the ladies, they all dropped their embroidery and stared at each other in horror. ‘So it is true after all,’ one whispered. ‘They are going to kill us.’

  ‘You are always free to leave,’ an older lady remarked not a little sourly. ‘I’m sure that your presence will not be missed by their Majesties.’

  The other laughed and flounced to the window, where the heavy pink brocade curtains had not yet been drawn. ‘Have you seen the size of the mob out there?’ she asked, pointing down to the sight that they’d all been trying their best to ignore. ‘I’d be ripped to pieces as soon as I set foot outside the palace.’

  ‘We should go to the Queen,’ another said, standing up purposefully and going to the door. ‘The poor woman must be beside herself.’ Clementine and a few others rose and followed her.

  ‘Remember how much the Queen used to complain about the coucher and lever at Versailles?’ one of them whispered with a low laugh. ‘My mother told me that one time, when she was still Dauphine, she had to wait for almost an hour naked while the ladies argued about who was to hand her a shift to cover herself.’

  The Queen was standing alone and fully dressed in the centre of her bedchamber when they entered. ‘It is all true,’ she said dramatically as they walked in. ‘We are finished. All of Paris has turned on us.’

  Her sister in law rose from the rose and cornflower printed sofa beside the window and went to take her hand. ‘Do not say so, my dear,’ she said gently. ‘The Swiss Guard are with us and many brave men are even now gathering at the palace to defend us.’

  Always aware of the guardsmen standing outside the door, Clementine softly closed it behind her then leaned back against the panelled wood and closed her eyes. ‘Why don’t you take a chance and leave?’ Juliette whispered to her. ‘You’re English so no one would reproach you for not staying.’ She sounded a little wistful.

  ‘I would always reproach myself,’ Clementine replied with a sigh. She had been longing to leave all day but had decided that not only was it her duty to remain at the palace but also that despite the danger, she would rather be there than with the Duc at the Hôtel de Coulanges.

  Hours passed as more people crammed themselves into the chambers of the King and Queen, determined to show their loyalty and support in what looked to be the final hours of the Bourbon monarchy. Clementine was not altogether surprised when her husband arrived at almost eleven, looking dishevelled and distressed with an askew wig on his sandy hair and an old sword in his hand. ‘I thought that I wasn’t going to get here in time,’ he explained to the Queen, patting his wig into place before bending over her outstretched hand. ‘The crowds around the Tuileries are immense and must number several thousand people by now.’

  ‘We are grateful that you came,’ she said with a mournful smile before turning away and resuming her anxious pacing of the room, her lips moving all the while.

  Darkness had fallen on the Tuileries and after the royal children had gone to bed as usual and the royal family and their advisors had vanished into the council chamber to discuss plans for the next day, the rest of the court made themselves as comfortable as they could either by sitting on the hard wooden parquet floors or settling down for uneasy sleep on the spindly elegant sofas and chairs of the royal apartments while some court officials pointed out in vain that it was against etiquette to sit down in the King’s chambers. Clementine managed to evade her
husband and found a quiet spot in a small sitting room on the first floor, where she stretched out fully dressed on a red and white striped sofa and rested her head on her arm, listening to the sounds of a palace under siege and like everyone else wondering what the morning would bring.

  A second later, all thoughts of sleep fled when church bells all across the city suddenly began to ring, sending peal after peal out into the warm summer air, alerting all of Paris to danger and calling the faubourgs to arms. Clementine sat up in shock and rubbed her weary eyes as she peered through the dim light at the small porcelain and gilt clock that stood on the red marble mantelpiece. ‘Midnight,’ she whispered, feeling a sudden chill go up her spine. ‘Something is starting.’

  Chapter Thirty Three

  A crimson dawn rose over Paris the next morning. Only the royal children, unaware of the danger that swirled around them had managed to get any sleep, while the rest of the court dozed fitfully on their makeshift beds, disturbed by the incessant ringing of the tocsin bell and terrible fears of what might happen the following day.

  By dawn, Clementine had long since abandoned any attempt to sleep and so she was standing by a window when the first crimson streaks appeared in the sky. ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight,’ she whispered to herself, recalling an old rhyme one of her nursemaids had told her. ‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.’

  ‘It’s so lovely,’ she heard someone exclaim in the next room and guessed that most of the palace inhabitants must also be standing at the windows, soiled and weary and watching the morning break after a sleepless night.

  ‘It’s the colour of blood,’ another voice cried before they were quickly hushed by several other voices.

  Clementine did her best to tidy herself up then went in search of the Queen, who looked dazed, red eyed and pale after spending an uneasy night with her sister in law, Madame Élisabeth. She nodded silently and unsmilingly to her ladies as they filed into her beautiful bedchamber before passively allowing them to dress her in a fresh gown of sprigged lilac cotton. The Queen’s morning levée ceremony was usually a lighthearted time with the monarch laughing and joking with her ladies and taking an interest in all the latest news and gossip. Today, however, everything was different, some of the women openly wept as they performed their duties and no one dared smile or speak until they had left her presence.

  All of the ladies in waiting, once the very flower of exquisite Parisian fashionable artifice looked dreadful in stained, crumpled clothes, faded rouge and untidy hair and the already oppressively heavy summer air was sour with the odour of stale sweat. Clementine tried to hide her shamefully grimy fingernails before she realised that everyone looked just as bad and there was a polite silent agreement not to notice such things about each other. In fact they smiled ruefully at each other’s frizzy hair and grubby cheeks and when one lady produced a bottle of iris and rose water from within her reticule, they all silently passed it between them, closing their eyes in pleasure as they dabbed the precious scent on their collarbones.

  By this time over ten thousand people had gathered outside the Tuileries and it was impossible to escape the raucous shouts and screams that floated up to the royal apartments where everyone gathered together around the King, Queen and rest of the royal family. Clementine and the other ladies hid behind the curtains and stared curiously down at the huge crowd, while the young men who had stalked the palace so confidently the previous evening now looked pale and quiet.

  ‘Madame,’ Citizen Roederer, the Procurator-General of Paris who was in charge of the defence of the Tuileries stepped forward from the group of gentlemen who stood at the fringes of the room and boldly addressed the Queen, who looked him over indifferently and looked as though she would have liked to turn away. ‘Madame, your family must leave the Tuileries and take refuge in the National Assembly at once. They alone can guarantee your safety.’

  Dubouchage, the blustering, red faced Minister of the Navy stepped forward as the Queen shook her head. ‘Nonsense,’ he exclaimed, his lips frothing with rage. ‘Monsieur, you are proposing to hand the King over to his enemies!

  ‘Not so,’ Roederer retorted, clearly irritated and speaking very slowly as if explaining matters to a child or simpleton. ‘It is by the far the least dangerous course of action.’

  Again the Queen shook her head, desperate to avoid placing them all in the hands of people that she had always openly despised. ‘Monsieur, we have forces here. It is time to find out who will overcome: the King and the constitution or the Revolutionaries.’

  Roederer sighed ‘Madame, in that case, let us see,’ he said, clearly thinking of the enormous mob that had surrounded the palace and which outnumbered the defence ten to one. ‘However, do you really want to make yourself responsible for the massacre of the King, your children, yourself, to say nothing of the faithful servants that surround you?’

  Marie Antoinette looked up at him in stonily. ‘On the contrary,’ she replied softly and with absolute sincerity, ‘what would I not do to be the only victim?’

  Clementine did not wait to hear more and decided to slip from the room and take a walk around the royal apartments, which were in considerable disarray and full of exhausted, downcast people who leaned against the walls and tried to make themselves comfortable while doing their best to ignore the howls of rage and hatred from outside, where the crowd was increasing by the moment. The church bells were still ringing over the city and all of the faubourgs of the city had now been mobilised and were marching on the palace.

  ‘How long must we wait here?’ One woman whimpered as she stared down in mesmerised horror at the mob beyond the palace gates. ‘We’re just sitting here waiting to be slaughtered.’

  ‘Clementine.’ She reluctantly turned at the sound of her husband’s voice and waited patiently for him to come up to her. ‘Clementine, the royal family have agreed to take shelter at the Ménage,’ he said in a low voice, closing the door behind him so that they were alone. ‘The rest of us must remain here at the palace and take our chances.’

  She stared up at him in horror. ‘They are leaving us here to die?’ she whispered.

  Her husband looked impatient. ‘They have no choice, Clementine,’ he said. ‘Do not blame them for going without us. I would willingly give my life in their service and consider myself honoured to be able to do so.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, ‘ Clementine said, turning away from him. ‘No one is worth giving your life for, Charles.’

  He flushed. ‘I am sorry that you feel that way,’ he whispered before clearing his throat awkwardly. ‘I want you to know reproach myself daily for what happened.’

  She looked at him then. ‘You should do more than reproach yourself,’ she said coldly.

  ‘I know and I do,’ he replied, beginning to stammer. ‘I could die today and to have such a horror on my conscience...’

  She looked away, feeling sick and wishing that he would go away and leave her alone. ‘I can’t forgive you,’ she interrupted, shivering as she remembered that terrible night when everything had fallen apart. ‘I know that I should, but I can’t.’

  ‘Damn you, Clementine!’ he burst out angrily. ‘You killed our child or have you conveniently forgotten about that?’ He jabbed a finger into her flinching face as she backed away from him, knocking over a chair as she went. ‘I will endure this no more, madame! Your hostility, insolence and lack of gratitude for the position which I have bestowed upon you defies comprehension and I will tolerate no more of it.’

  Clementine stared at her husband, hardly able to recognise the gentle boy that she had married in this red faced raging man with his talk of gratitude and insolence. ‘You don’t know what you are saying,’ she said. ‘Charles, please recollect yourself.’

  ‘I know exactly what I am saying,’ he replied, grasping hold of her arm and trying to pull her towards him, crushing the delicate silk of her dress beneath his fingers. ‘You will behave as my wife or suffer the consequences, madame
.’

  ‘You can’t ask the King for a lettre de cachet and have me imprisoned in some mouldering, provincial convent any more,’ she hissed, struggling to release herself. ‘Those days are gone now.’ She took a deep breath and shoved the thought of her mother’s disapproving face from her mind. ‘It is my intention to return to England as soon as possible and remain there.’

  He looked shocked. ‘You can’t.’

  She looked him in the eyes then. ‘I can and will.’ She managed to wrench her arm out of his grasp and gently pressed a hand to her sore flesh. ‘There’s nothing you can do to stop me.’

  He opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted from a shout from the royal apartments, where the royal family had taken their leave of their courtiers before slowly making their way down the staircase for the last time. As the great doors of the palace closed behind them, a great cry of fear and despair swept through the splendid rooms from the hundreds of courtiers who had been left behind.

  Clementine immediately went to the window and looked down on the vast crowd that howled and surged against the palace gates. ‘It’s only a matter of time before they get inside,’ she said.

  ‘You should leave,’ her husband said in a low voice. ‘It’s not safe here and I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you.’ He turned away to the fireplace and stared down into the empty grate. ‘After all, it is because of me that you are here.’

  ‘How can I leave?’ She turned to him impatiently. ‘There’s no way out.’