Isabel goes to the door and asks the guard for a cup.
“Thirsty work?” He laughs.
She does not laugh with him. “It is for the plaster. A bowl will do as well.”
I am finished in a few minutes. I replace the king’s head between his legs—there is no room for it anywhere else in the coffin—then wrap the plaster death mask in a cotton shawl.
“I thought it would take longer,” the guard remarks. He takes the toothpick from his mouth and casually investigates what he’s pulled from his teeth.
“I am taking the cast to my workshop,” I reply. “The wax head will be created there.”
“As long as it’s somewhere. Those men from the Convention were eager to have it done.”
“And the body?” I ask quietly. “What will happen to it?”
“Quicklime, I suppose. That way there’s nothing left to dig up. We’re not looking to have his bones made into relics.”
“And it will be an anonymous grave?”
“Of course. He was a tyrant.” The guard smiles. “That mask is the last that anyone shall see of him.”
Chapter 52
JANUARY 25, 1793
I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long.
—MARIE ANTOINETTE
THE GUARDS SCRUTINIZE MY PAPERS AND ASK ME AGAIN WHAT I am doing here.
“I am visiting on the orders of Robespierre. I am to report on the conditions of the royal family.”
“I can read that,” the younger one snaps. But he has searched my basket and discovered the wax miniature of Saint Denis, the patron saint of Paris, and become suspicious. “And what business does Robespierre have in sending a woman? Did he ask that you bring a headless saint?”
I raise my chin. “I am here on Robespierre’s request,” I repeat. “I brought this as a warning,” I lie. Saint Denis was beheaded with a sword on Montmartre. He was the only saint I could plausibly bring. Although he is holding his head in his hands, like his image outside the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, he will give Madame Élisabeth comfort. “I am here to serve the Convention,” I tell him.
“Not to convey a message, or warn her of an uprising?”
“My uncle is a captain of the National Guard.”
“And Lafayette was their commander. That means nothing, Citizeness.”
The guard watches me, and I return his stare. I don’t know what they want from me. I have a pass with the words Officier Municipal written diagonally. It is obviously official. Clearly, it was a mistake to convince Robespierre that I should come. But if the guard is looking for tears, he will not find them. I have no more.
“You may go,” he says at last. Then adds threateningly, “My men will be watching.”
Four soldiers escort me into the Temple, and I follow them through the halls. Unlike the Tuileries, this is not a palace. It is a fortress built by the Knights Templars with cold, damp walls and rising turrets. Somewhere, far beneath my feet, the victims of the Inquisition were once imprisoned. Now this is where the royal family must live.
We reach a wooden door, and the guard pushes it open. “A guest!” he shouts, and inside the chamber a woman with white hair and a black taffeta gown rises to greet me. My God, it is the queen. I remind myself that I must not curtsy. She is Madame Capet now, not Queen Marie Antoinette.
“Thank you, Thomas,” she says kindly, but the soldier warns her that I shall not be staying long. The door is left open, and the queen takes my hands. “Mademoiselle Grosholtz.” After so many years, she still remembers me. “Or is it Madame now?”
I think of Henri and swallow my hurt. “No, still Mademoiselle.”
She guides me to a chair, and it feels very much like I am walking through a dream. Her children are sitting before the fireplace, reading books from the vast library spread along the walls. They look up at me, and while the boy smiles, the girl watches me with open suspicion. There is a small dog warming itself by the fire. I think of Madame Élisabeth’s little greyhounds. There is no sign of them here, and I wonder if they have been sent away.
“Marie-Thérèse, would you go and find your aunt? She will be very glad to see Mademoiselle Grosholtz.”
“Just Marie,” I correct her.
The princesse stands. “I don’t see why Louis can’t do it.”
The queen smiles self-consciously at me before turning to her daughter. “Because you are the one I asked.”
She doesn’t argue further. She stalks through the door, and I think to myself, What an unfortunate child. How is it fair to heap such losses on a child? The moment Madame Élisabeth appears I stand, but we do not embrace, since the guards are watching. She looks me over. “Marie, how did you come here?”
Unlike the queen, who has aged into an old woman, Madame Élisabeth is still in the full bloom of youth. But her eyes tell the truth. We sit across from each other near the fire, and the queen takes a chair next to her sister-in-law. The guard is lost in conversation with his friend.
“I begged a pass from Robespierre,” I say quietly. “I told him we were old friends and that if anyone could learn of an escape plan in the making, it would be me.”
“A spy?” Madame Élisabeth whispers.
“How clever,” the queen says. “And do you know, that’s what these men believe. We are imprisoned in a Templar fortress and they think that hordes of men are rushing to save us. If that were the case, wouldn’t someone have saved my husband?”
A deep heaviness settles over the room.
“That is what I came to tell you, Madame. Your husband met with an easy death.”
Madame Élisabeth stifles a sob.
“There was no pain,” I promise them. “No suffering.”
Both the dauphin—who is now Louis XVII—and Madame Royale are listening intently. The queen’s gaze is hollow. She is a shadow of herself. Pale and thin with sunken eyes. Around her neck, she wears her husband’s wedding ring on a simple ribbon. It is likely the only jewel she has left in the world. They have taken everything from her. “Do you know what they plan for us?” she whispers in German.
I look over my shoulder. But the guard has obviously heard enough weeping in this room to no longer be concerned by it.
“Life in a convent,” I mouth wordlessly. I have heard this news from Robespierre.
“And my children?”
Both of them are watching me. Louis-Charles, who looks like an angel, and Marie-Thérèse, whose future is uncertain. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.” I reach into my basket and take out the miniature of Saint Denis. I give it to Madame Élisabeth, and she puts a hand to her heart.
“Oh, Marie.”
Marie-Thérèse rises from the fireside. “Won’t you get in trouble for bringing that?” she asks curiously.
I meet Madame Royale’s narrowed eyes. “It is a miniature of a saint.”
“No one else brings gifts.” She watches me with a strange expression.
Madame Élisabeth reaches forward to take my hands. “You have no idea what this means to me. Please, will you pray for us?” she asks.
I am taken aback by the princesse’s request. What good will my prayers do? My brothers are dead, just like her brother. The National Guard murdered Yachin for nothing more than a square of silk. And Henri is gone. If God is listening, it is not to me.
Chapter 53
JANUARY 31, 1793
I shall be an autocrat, that’s my trade; and the good Lord will forgive me, that’s His.
—CATHERINE THE GREAT
EVERY COUNTRY ON EARTH HAS TURNED AGAINST US. ENGLAND, Russia, Holland, Austria. When their monarchs hear of King Louis’s murder, they unite in their horror and condemnation.
Empress Catherine the Great has declared mourning for all of Russia, and in England the prime minister, William Pitt, has called the king’s death “the foulest and most atrocious deed which the history of the world
” has ever seen. I can find nothing in the papers to indicate what America’s President Washington believes. Perhaps he is neutral. But whatever he feels, we have made more enemies than we can fight.
On the first of February, the Convention declares war on both England and the Dutch Republic. Curtius says this is a preemptive strike, that England would declare war on us anyway. But I think it is pride. The hulking figure of Georges Danton stands before the Convention and swears that the limits of France will someday reach “the ocean, the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees.” When I ask my uncle what he thinks of this, he closes his eyes and shakes his head.
I imagine Wolfgang and Henri reading this news, and I wonder what will happen to them now. What will happen to us all? Their letters have stopped. Nothing arrives in or leaves from Paris except for soldiers. At night, the patrols go from house to house, searching for weapons, powder, illegal flour. Anyone caught hoarding is sent to prison. Then on the fifth of October, to cheer the populace, we are given a new calendar. From this day forward, no one is to celebrate the Catholic festivals or use the calendar that dates from Christ’s birth. “We are a nation of thinkers,” Danton declares, “and as such, we shall celebrate the glorious rationalism that has brought us to such liberty.”
Not a single journalist in all of Paris dares to point out that our new liberty has imprisoned us within the city. That our dead are buried the same day they die—in mass graves—because there is no longer room and even gravediggers are not allowed outside the city gates. And so we all must pretend to embrace this new calendar. Those who do not use it are branded enemies of the patrie.
“Repeat the names,” my mother instructs, and we listen while Paschal recites the names of the months.
“Vintage, Fog, Frost, Snow, Rain …” He hesitates on the sixth month.
“Wind,” she says helpfully. We are all sitting at the caissier’s desk, and it is very important he get this right.
“Wind,” he repeats after her. “Seed, Blossoms, M-Mead—”
“Meadows,” I say.
“Meadows, Harvesting, Heat, and Fruit.”
Isabel claps. “Very good.”
“And what year is this?” my mother asks.
Paschal frowns. “Seventeen ninety-three?”
“No,” Isabel says forcefully. “It is Year Two.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“The first year began on September twenty-second, seventeen ninety-two.” The day France declared itself the First Republic.
“But how?” He doesn’t see how he could have been alive before time began.
“That is the decree of the Convention,” she explains.
“But it doesn’t make sense.” He is frustrated.
“It doesn’t have to,” I tell him. “You must simply learn the rules and obey.”
“Is that what liberty means?” he asks earnestly.
The three of us are silent.
“No,” I say. “That is what tyranny means,” but I don’t explain.
Paschal repeats the names of the months again, but we do not ask him to memorize the fruits, animals, and minerals associated with each day. Now that the Convention has declared the Church an enemy of the patrie, no day shall ever be associated with a saint again. Instead, on the twenty-second of September, we are to all praise the grape. On the fifteenth of March we must remember the tuna. The twenty-second of April is reserved for the fern, and we shall not forget the onion on the twenty-first of June. In a similar fashion, all Christian holidays have now been abolished. Despite the fact that the Jacobins have called Jesus our world’s first sans-culotte, we are to celebrate the glorious attributes of the canine instead of Christ’s birthday on the twenty-fifth of December. But these are things that are impossible to explain to an eight-year-old child.
On October 21, however, Paschal’s questions are impossible to avoid. The street criers are shouting that the Cult of Reason is now to replace Catholicism and that the first celebration will be held tonight in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in praise of the Goddess of Reason.
“Who is the Goddess of Reason?” Paschal asks. “Is she real?”
My mother clenches her jaw. “No. She is blasphemy.”
“Maman!” I exclaim. There are patrons in the Salon, and we are sitting at the caissier’s desk.
“I don’t care!” she shouts.
“Yes. You do.”
There are tears in her eyes. I leave the desk to buy a newspaper, and when I return, I read it to her in German. She must understand the seriousness of this. All deaths, marriages, and births are now to be registered under the civil registration law and not in the Church. And all saints and images of worship are to be taken down. Only statues of Citizen Jesus may remain. Synagogues have been closed down, and Jews who wear their peyos long must cut them off. From this day forward, all churches will be turned into Temples of Reason, and any person found harboring priests or rabbis will be killed.
My mother is silent, listening.
“What is it, Grand-mère? Is it very bad news?”
My mother takes Paschal’s hand in hers. “Yes. May God help us,” she whispers.
Chapter 54
FEBRUARY 17, 1793
The tocsin you hear today is not an alarm but an alert: it sounds the charge against our enemies.
—GEORGES DANTON, REVOLUTIONARY LEADER
HE HAS HEARD THAT I AM THE ANGEL OF DEATH, RESURRECTING those who have gone before us, so he has come to me. He looks exactly as I have sculpted him for our National Convention tableau, with a firm jaw and a chest so wide that Curtius had to use extra horsehair for his model. I should send him away. This is the man who, alongside Marat, called for the massacre of the Swiss Guards. Now is the time to exact my revenge.
“I have ridden nonstop for three days,” he says. His clothes are filthy and worn. “Please. She is in the Madeleine Cemetery. They say you are there every night.”
“For the dead,” I reply harshly. “Not for the buried.”
“I have unburied her! Please,” Danton begs. “She is in her coffin. I have opened the lid and she is perfectly preserved. She died while I was at the front.” He cries into his hands, and although I should detest him, I am sorry for his loss. I think of my mother, torn apart by the deaths of Johann and Edmund. She would want me to turn Danton away. No, she would order it. But then I think of what Madame Élisabeth would do. “I will get my bag and shawl,” I say.
I go upstairs, and Isabel asks if she should come with me. “Not this time.”
“You are going alone?”
“With a man from the Convention.”
She is wise enough not to ask who he is. My mother is in the next room.
I follow Danton through the streets and down the familiar path to the Madeleine Cemetery. The air is dank and smells of coming rain. I should have brought more than a shawl. A heavy white mist has settled over the trees, and only the burnished glow of Danton’s lantern lights the way. We pass through the cemetery’s iron gates, and the guard calls for us to stop. When he sees who I am, he tips his hat to me. I have become as familiar as the gravediggers in this place.
“We’re here for Gabrielle Danton,” I say.
The old man nods. “You know the way?”
“Yes,” Danton replies.
I follow while Danton navigates a path between the markers. Although others are tossed into paupers’ pits, Gabrielle has been granted her own place in the earth. I wonder if her death was punishment from God for the sins Danton committed against innocent men. Do blameless women die for their husbands’ deeds? Is that how God works? Or is He merciful and forgiving, like our sans-culotte Jesus?
Danton stops before a gravestone bearing the name of Gabrielle Danton. A pair of shovels rest against a fresh mound of dirt, and next to the frightening hole in the earth is a wooden coffin. “Gabrielle,” he whispers.
This is my moment for revenge. As he pries back the lid, I consider telling him that she is too far gone for a mask. But then
I close my eyes briefly and think of his pain. He is weeping openly over her corpse. I know I should be afraid. After all, these are the scenes that nightmares are made of. But I have seen such death these past three months that nothing frightens me anymore.
I kneel over her coffin and look into the face of a beautiful woman the same age as I am. Her black hair covers her shoulders, and she has been dressed in a handsome taffeta gown. There is no sign of injury to her face and no way of telling that she is dead and not sleeping. “How long has she been gone?” I whisper.
He sobs. “Seven days.”
I have never seen a body preserved like this. What would he have done if she had deteriorated completely?
“Can … can you model her?” he asks.
I look down at his wife. How strange to think that the birds above us will wake up tomorrow to blue skies and life but she will never open her eyes again. Even the fichu around her neck will outlast her. “Yes,” I say quietly. “I can.”
He holds the lantern while I work, and when I am finished, he asks how long it will be before he will have her back. It is not healthy, what he is doing. But I ask him, “A bust or an entire figure?”
“Her entire figure. With the same dark hair,” he adds desperately.
I think of the models still left to do, including a replacement for General Dumouriez, whose defeat last month has resulted in his disgrace. “Two weeks.” I stand, and he closes his eyes. “Danton,” I say gently, “she has left this world.”
“She has not left my world!” His voice echoes through the cemetery, and I take a step back. “I am sorry,” he says at once. “I don’t know … I can’t control …”
“I have known loss,” I tell him. “I understand.”
He searches my face. He must know of the event I am referring to, and his voice is full of emotion when he replies, “I am sorry.”
But we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.
Madame Tussaud Page 37