Mistress of the Revolution: A Novel

by Delors, Catherine

  MISTRESS of the REVOLUTION

  MISTRESS of the REVOLUTION

  CATHERINE DELORS

  DUTTON

  Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) · Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England · Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) · Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) · Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India · Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) · Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © 2008 by Laborderie, Inc.

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Delors, Catherine.

  Mistress of the Revolution / Catherine Delors.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 1-4295-9363-6

  1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Aristocracy (Social class)—France—Fiction. 3. France—Social life and customs—18th century—Fiction. 4. France—History—Revolution, 1789–1799—Fiction. 5. Forced marriage—Fiction. 6. Widows—Fiction. 7. First loves—Fiction. 8. Exiles—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3604.E4473M57 2008

  813' . 6—dc22 2007034494

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  For William

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It is beautiful to meet someone. It can happen anywhere in the world. Anytime. But the strangest thing is that one does not only meet the living, and that meeting a dead person can change your life.

  —ALAIN JOUFFROY

  MISTRESS of the REVOLUTION

  LONDON, THIS 25TH OF JANUARY 1815

  I read this morning in the papers that the corpses of the late King and Queen of France, by order of their brother, the restored Louis the Eighteenth, were exhumed from their graves in the former graveyard of La Madeleine, which has since become a private garden. The remains were removed with royal honours to the Basilica of Saint-Denis, the resting place of the Kings and Queens of France for twelve centuries.

  Queen Marie-Antoinette was found soon after the workmen began digging, and the remains of King Louis the Sixteenth were located the next day. A search for the bones of the King’s youngest sister, Madame Elisabeth, was also conducted at the cemetery of Les Errancis. The guillotine had filled La Madeleine by the spring of 1794, and the authorities had opened the new graveyard to accommodate its increasing output. That second investigation was unsuccessful. While the King and Queen had each been granted an individual execution and a coffin, Madame Elisabeth had been guillotined towards the end of the Terror as one in a cart of twenty-five prisoners. The remains had been thrown together into a common grave. The bodies, as required by law, had been stripped of all clothing, which, along with their other property, was forfeited to the Nation upon the imposition of the death sentence. Any identification would have become impossible very soon after the burial. Nevertheless, I trust that God will overlook the lack of proper funeral rites, which were denied to many in those days.

  Other victims of the guillotine, some of whom I knew and loved, also remain buried at La Madeleine and Les Errancis, royalists and revolutionaries alike, commingled for all eternity in their unmarked graves.

  These tidings from Paris have affected my spirits today. I never cry anymore, yet feel tears choking me. I know that I must not allow myself this indulgence, for it is far easier to keep from crying than to quit. Nevertheless, over twenty years have passed since the great Revolution, and it is time for me at last to exhume my own dead and attempt to revive them, however feebly, under my pen.

  Some of the events related here are now known only to me, and possibly my daughter. I am not aware of the extent of her recollection because, out of shyness or shame, or a desire not to acknowledge to each other the shared sorrows of the past, we have never talked about those things since our arrival in England in 1794. She was a child then,
and may not have understood or remembered much of what she saw or heard. It causes me pain to recall those events, and still more to write about them, but secrecy has been a heavy burden.

  1

  “Mademoiselle, your cheeks are again smeared with ink,” said Sister Suzanne. “What will My Lord the Marquis think when he sees you like this? You are incorrigible. Remember, child, every time you misbehave, you pound the nails of the Good Saviour’s cross deeper into His flesh.”

  I looked up. A drop of ink dripped from my quill and splattered on the shaky capital H that had given me so much trouble. I rose and held my hands straight in front of me for Sister Suzanne to hit them with her wooden rule. She ignored them and seized me by the arm to lead me out of the classroom.

  “Go clean your face,” she said. “Mother Louise needs to see you.”

  Never before had Sister Suzanne let pass an opportunity to use her rod on my fingers. I was also puzzled by her reference to my brother the Marquis. He visited only during the school holidays, which I spent at the convent. It was late October of the year 1780, and I did not expect any visit from him until Christmas.

  I washed my face in the chilly water of the courtyard fountain and, my heart beating fast, went to the Mother Superior’s study. There my brother and guardian, Géraud de Montserrat, Marquis de Castel, waited for me. The Marquis, fifteen years my senior, was the embodiment of kindness, elegance and learning. Side curls framed his regular, well-defined features. His hair was powdered and tied by a black silk ribbon. I curtseyed to him. He took me in his arms and kissed me on both cheeks.

  “My goodness, Gabrielle,” he said, stepping back to look at me, “you have grown much since the summer. You are almost a lady now.”

  “Yes, My Lord,” said Mother Louise, “Mademoiselle de Montserrat is well in advance of her age in many regards. She has made great progress since joining us five years ago. She can now play the harpsichord, read, write and speak French. She knows the rudiments of dancing. She also has a pretty singing voice, the best in our choir, and Sister Béatrice will miss her. I can praise her to her face, for she has no vanity. It is a pity she cannot stay with us a few more years. She has yet much to learn. But of course you are the best judge of that and I understand that Her Ladyship cannot spare her any longer.”

  So I was going to leave the convent! I was astonished: I was only eleven. The other girls would remain there until their marriage and many would wed in the chapel.

  As was customary in all families of any means, I had been taken at birth to a wet nurse, Marie Labro, just outside the town of Vic-en-Carladez, in the province of Auvergne. Mamé Labro had five boys, the youngest of whom, Jacques, was my frère de lait, “milk brother,” meaning that we had been nursed together. I remained with my nurse until the age of six and shed many tears when my brother announced that I would be taken away from her, not to return to my family, but to become a boarder in the convent of the Benedictine nuns in Vic.

  Upon my arrival there, I had the manners of a peasant and faced the contempt of the other schoolgirls, all young ladies of the local nobility and bourgeoisie. I could only speak la lengo Romano, the ancient idiom of those parts, and the twenty words of French known to Mamé Labro. The Roman tongue had been the language of poetry in the Middle Ages, but sadly it was no longer taught in schools. Although it was my first language, I never learned to read or write it. It can be harsh and guttural when spoken by men, but in females, in Mamé’s mouth in particular, its accents, soft and high-pitched, sounded like a song. I liked them better than the nasal tones of French.

  After a month or so at the convent, I had become fluent in the more formal language, but the stigma of my country manners clung to me. Also, as Sister Suzanne liked to say, I shared with Judas, the betrayer of Our Lord Jesus-Christ, at least one characteristic: red hair.

  I felt no regrets when my brother handed me into the carriage. I was on my way to the château of Fontfreyde, my birthplace, to meet my mother for the first time in eleven years. I remembered neither her nor my father, who had died when I was still in the care of Mamé Labro.

  I asked my brother many questions, but was unable to gather much information beyond assurances that our mother would be delighted to make my acquaintance. We crossed the village of Lavigerie, located in the middle of the Marquis’s lands, and passed the gallows. I looked away from the grim wooden structure.

  “You see, Gabrielle,” said my brother, “I keep my gallows in excellent repair. They serve as a reminder to my vassals that I have the right of high justice over my estates, though I am content to let the royal Baillage court in Vic punish the many scoundrels who infest my land. But we must never let others forget who we are, Gabrielle, or forget it ourselves.”

  This meant that the Marquis could sentence anyone to death, or to any lesser penalty, for crimes committed within his jurisdiction. I recalled the day when Mamé Labro had taken me, along with her sons, to watch a hanging in the main square of Vic. I must have been five. A thief, whose crime had been to pick a merchant’s pocket at the Michael-mas cattle fair, had climbed the rungs of a ladder backwards. The noose tight around his neck, he had been pushed to his death. For long minutes he had grimaced and thrashed in agony. Finally the executioner had seized the wretch’s legs and pulled sharply to break his neck. Then his accomplice, stripped to his waist, bound to a post of the gallows, had been flogged, then branded on the shoulder with a hot iron. That second thief had been sentenced to two years of hard labour. Mamé had pointed to the mounted constables who were waiting to take him away once the first part of his punishment was over. The sight of the execution, she had assured us, would teach us right from wrong. It would show us what happened to the wicked in this world and give us a hint of what awaited them in the next. She had insisted that I keep my eyes open and not turn away.

  Though my milk brother Jacques had held my hand for comfort, that display of cruelty had horrified me. The body of the dead man had been taken down and hung again, this time out of town, from the gallows at the pass of Curebourse, whence it could be seen decaying from miles around. I had been unable to turn my eyes in that direction for weeks, until Jacques had assured me that nothing remained of the corpse and that it was safe to look.

  I was relieved to hear that my brother had chosen not to exercise his prerogatives. A man of his kindness could not have anything to do with the gruesome business of justice.

  We were soon in sight of the château of Fontfreyde. My brother explained that the current building had replaced the old fortress that had controlled the valley of the Goul River and made our family powerful long before the time of the Crusades. The château, in the traditional style of the high country, had walls of dark stone cemented in white mortar. The steep roofs, designed for the snows of winter, were made of a different kind of stone, resembling the scales of a giant fish. The twin flights of a monumental exterior staircase, decorated with urns and busts, graced the front of the building.

  The château was situated in a low spot, in the middle of green meadows, for it rains a great deal in those parts. Oak and birch woods, which had turned gold at the time of my arrival, covered the surrounding mountains. Such was my birthplace and ancestral home, seat of the noble and ancient family of Montserrat. My true name, which I alone remember nowadays, is Marie Gabrielle Aliénor de Montserrat de Castel, or, as most people called me then, Gabrielle de Montserrat.