“Ah—wonderful. It’s been a week since I’ve had a coffee. All these shortages!” The supper is over, and now it is only Pauline and I at a small table in the dining room. Due to the revolts in Saint-Domingue—it seems the whole world is in a fever—the coffee situation is critical.
“Ah, I have my connections,” I say lightly. Hercules procured some for me before he was imprisoned and I dole it out carefully. . . . Despite all the changes and reforms, and despite the constitution, life is still hard for the common people, and is even becoming hard for me.
Pauline takes a long, luxurious sip. “And this stuff is fine. Do you think taste serves as memory? When I drink this, it seems as though I drink another life.” She sighs deeply.
I look down at my cup. She’s right; the steaming richness does bring back the aroma of a better life.
“Is that singing?” asks Pauline suddenly, putting down her cup and cocking her head.
“Yes, I think so. Probably some festivity down in the village,” I say, then realize it’s not.
“Sounds like one of those new revolutionary songs.”
“It does.” The singing is coming closer and I realize I am holding my breath. Wordlessly we stand up and I am aware of the rest of the household creeping into the room, moving silently and tentatively, all of us listening to the approaching song.
I have no guards, and suddenly the house, the entire vast, stupid house, seems dreadfully unprotected. The gates and fences that goodwill and harmony built—was I a fool to rely on them? We hear the songs coming closer to us through the stillness of the summer night.
Morin holds up a hand for silence. He approaches the open windows, and peers out into the blackness. There is no moon tonight.
“Torches,” he whispers. “Not a lot, just a few. Coming up the path from the village.”
“Who are they? What do they want?” I whisper as fear curls inside me.
“They sound happy?” says Pauline dubiously, but they don’t.
“Why are they coming here?” I whimper as Henriette blows out the candles. Soon the dining room is as dark as the night outside and through the windows we can see the bobbing torches of the approaching men. Some laughter, the song dying off, then silence and footsteps on the terrace outside, but only a pair, quick and light.
And then Hercule’s bloody head, and the revolution, are thrown through the open doors of my dining room.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
In which Madame Adélaïde receives the worst news
It seems all news is bad news these days. I am like a frightened hare whenever the messengers arrive, as nervous as dear Sophie used to be. What we learn with each letter only makes us dread the next one more.
The contents of Versailles, auctioned off: seventeen thousand lots, all my furniture and belongings amongst them. And my books—where did they go?
The abolition of the monarchy—how could they?
Antoinette and her children, imprisoned in the Temple, reputed to be without any of the comforts of life—why must they make them suffer?
My cousin the Princesse de Lamballe massacred like a calf, torn apart by the mob—who are these people?
And then, the trial of the king.
It is Narbonne who brings me the worst of news at the end of January 1793, two years after our arrival in Rome. Italy is not as cold as France, but still the chill here is sharp. I know from the look on her face that the tidings are bad, but nothing could prepare me. How could one ever be prepared for a country to kill its own king?
They beheaded my beloved nephew, that darling boy who only did what he thought was good, who had not a malicious bone in his poor, awkward body. A good man who loved his wife and his family dearly, but who loved his country even more.
They killed him.
Chapter Sixty
In which Citoyenne Jeanne saves herself
What am I doing here? This cell is cold and damp and stinks of the sewer underneath. They have taken my shoes and winter approaches; I wrap my feet in bands of dirty linen the serving girl brings.
“This is the cell where she was kept,” whispers the girl in sympathy, talking of our slaughtered queen. I shiver on the bed and remember my convent days at Saint-Maur—back to where I started, I think, then try to imagine the palace at Schönbrunn where Marie Antoinette grew up. She could never have been prepared for this, poor woman. She did nothing to deserve the fate that was thrust on her.
I am held in the Conciergerie, that dreaded prison that they call the antechamber of death. But not for me. This is all a mistake, a dreadful, stupid, horrible mistake. I ran away to London again after Hercule’s death; to get my jewels back, but also to flee a country that had become distasteful to me. In London, I spent too much time reliving the past, just like the pathetic émigrés, wishing for a world that would never come again. How could it? You can’t smash a vase into a thousand pieces then expect to glue it back together.
I mourned the king’s death in London; unbelievable and barbaric. What did they hope to obtain by murdering that poor man? They said the queen was next, but surely not. Exile or a convent, there are plenty of places to put an inconvenient woman, I thought, remembering when I was sent to the Abbey of Pont-aux-Dames.
The revolution continued to grow like a beast no longer tamed, determined to ravage the land until all decency and virtue are swept away.
Then Morin sent news that Louveciennes had been sequestered in the name of the revolution. My Louveciennes confiscated by hateful, base men. Pauline begged me not to return—she herself stayed in London—but she could not know what Louveciennes meant to me. On the boat back over the grim sea, I played stupid games—if I had to lose one, for it seems everyone is losing something these days, which would I prefer never to see again: my jewels or my house?
I must keep my house.
I got the seals removed from the gates of Louveciennes—I still have some friends, and charms—but gradually I became aware I was back in a hostile country, without powerful protectors.
I was alone.
And I had an enemy. A man called Grieve, an Englishman. All this new radicalism has brought out adventurers, poseurs and philosophers who flock to Paris to take part in this bloody farce they are now calling the revolution. By chance this man Grieve met a disgruntled Zamor and my butler, Salanave, whom I had dismissed for insolence, and who were both nursing their grievances down in the village of Louveciennes. This man Grieve, a radical zealot, fixed upon me as both a fallen woman and a symbol of the excesses of the previous regime, and thought to make a name for himself by championing my downfall.
He worked with my disgruntled former employees and openly accused me of helping émigrés and harboring enemies of the revolution. He tried to have me arrested, and failed, but too late I realized he was an enemy like I had never had before, and that we were locked in a battle I did not understand. This was not a battle over precedence or respect, but a battle for my life.
Grieve didn’t give up and I felt a net closing around me. He applied again for my arrest and this time he was successful. I could have saved myself, because hidden under his hatred for me there was also lust. But no, I could not—he had the eyes of a serpent and they reminded me of that man in Frederica’s bedroom.
At first I was not worried; the whole world was being arrested. In the prison at La Pélagie, I saw so many friends and foes from my past: the Comte de Montmorency; the Marquis de Pons; Beatrice de Gramont; the old Comtesse de Forcalquier, the one they used to call the Marvelous Mathilde. We laid carpets over the slimy floors and played games and drank too much wine.
Beatrice was angry, not fearful, and we laughed in a cherrywine haze about our old enmity and all the things we used to think so important. Her brother Choiseul died in 1788, a year before it all went wrong. And Richelieu died the same year: his timing as impeccable as always.
“Has anyone, ever, witnessed such a change in circumstances?” Beatrice asked one night. “We are the true adventurers and travele
rs, journeying from one extreme of existence to the other.”
“Did we ever think a few years ago this is where we might be? How awful it all is,” says the Comtesse de Forcalquier. Once the most beautiful woman at Court, now her hair is gray, and not from powder, and her eyes deep with terror and sadness as she struggles to remember where she is.
“I’m on a return journey,” I remarked, and we all laughed. We were actors, playing our roles in a ridiculous, never-ending, terrifying charade. Grim reality only intruded when a long, curled finger beckoned its next victim out the door.
A riddle: What is it that you can feed, and feed, but that always stays hungry? The guillotine, of course.
They even executed the queen, on a grey day in October, and I remembered Hercule’s words—she was a symbol. Not just an inconvenient woman, but a symbol.
And too late I realize I am too.
I saw I was a fool to come back to France. When I am released I shall leave, even if it means forfeiting all I have. The answer to the question I asked myself on the boat was not my jewels or my house; it was me. My life is worth everything.
Then they took me here to the Conciergerie to await my trial. Finally! I can tell the men I am nothing more than a simple woman who loves France and did nothing wrong. They will listen to me, for I cannot believe they are past all reason, and then they will put an end to this madness. And I have something they can’t take away from me, something the other prisoners don’t have: my birth.
“Madame, come, you must put this on.” The girl holds out a greasy, bloodstained garment and something in me recoils and cracks, just a bit.
“Whose blood?” I whimper.
“Madame,” whispers the girl sadly. “Citoyenne—please do not think of it.”
Wearing that disgusting shroud, I am led to the tribunal. How can I charm them when my hair is unwashed and I am wearing this disgraceful chemise? When I greet them I see no appreciation in their eyes, no interest, but I do see what I am to them: a hated reminder of the excesses of the ancien régime, a woman once loved by a man they consider an ogre.
I answer their questions calmly, refute their stupid accusations of spying and helping the royalist cause, and though they seem to listen, they do not.
They pass their judgment: death.
When I revive I am back in my cell. Death. At first I give way to despair and scream and howl, but as the night passes my strength returns and I determine what I must do. I summon my courage, chew my lips to redden them, smooth back my greasy, graceless hair. There is no man with me to help me now, but I can do this. Only the ghost of my Louis is beside me—he brought me here, and he will guide me through and see me to safety.
“Messieurs,” I say warmly, greeting the two men who enter my cell. “Please sit down. Thank you for coming. I must protest the decision of the tribunal! There is no need, I have much I can give to France.” My voice is kind and inviting.
“All you have already belongs to France.” The men look bored, and contemptuous, and my stomach clenches. I’m fighting for my life, I think in utter bewilderment.
“Of course, messieurs, but I can give you so much more. I have much more treasure.” I smile at the men, but neither of them lights to the possibility in my eyes. I remember a time when I was the greatest treasure on earth, but now these men are looking at me as though I am sexless, more concerned with their stupid revolution than with the charms of life. “Much treasure—buried and hidden. Let me tell you where, I will show you I am a good citoyenne, that I support the revolution!”
Finally the men look at me with some interest. There is hope, and there is always a way.
And so I begin. “Hidden in the icehouse, a chest with diamonds and a pair of golden candlesticks, heavy. Beneath the hawthorn bushes, a bag with loose gems, some beautiful sapphires amongst them.”
The men scribble, but their eyes are still cold. I must think of more. “Six pairs of silver plate buried under the vegetable gardens.” I go on and on. Outside, I am aware of the rising sun, the faint chirp of a bird, my senses heightened and my life suddenly and painfully in sharp relief. Is it enough? Will it ever be enough? It must be. I continue my list and the men continue scribbling.
“What else, citoyenne?”
“A box with five thousand livres d’or, buried under the myrtles, to the west of the music pavilion.”
There is only one thing I keep from them that shall stay hidden forever—my portrait of Louis. That they shall not have. The bells outside chime ten, then eleven, then noon, and still I keep listing my treasures.
Outside, someone screams. The men start to look bored, expectant. I am reaching the end of these words that must be my savior. The last drip of sweet wine into a handsome gold goblet.
“What else, citoyenne?”
“Candlesticks and silver plate under the dovecote. A collection of jeweled snuffboxes, in a bag.”
“What else, citoyenne?”
“Is that not enough?” I say in a small, hopeful voice. This is a game to them, I think—but what is it they are playing? “I . . . that is all . . . you see my devotion to the Revolution . . .”
“That is all,” repeats the man, and I smile but my lips tremble as his words become real. He gets up and calls to the guard and then the man is upon me, grabbing my hair. Not my hair! He cuts it off roughly as I start to shriek. The kind girl comes in and gathers it, but she can’t look at me, as though . . . as though I am condemned.
“I gave you everything,” I plead with the men who are now rolling up their scrolls, looking at me with amused contempt. “You must save me!”
They exit with a laugh.
No! No, this cannot be! I whirl around in fright, but the guard hits me in the stomach and binds my arms behind me and my head is light because my hair is gone and they are bundling me into a cart, but no! No! This cannot be!
No, no, I continue to scream to the darkening afternoon as the tumbril rolls through the streets. There are crowds of people—waiting to see me? They want to see me, because I am one of them, there is still hope. There must be!
“Oh, please, you people, pity! I have done nothing! Mercy!” I shriek with all the strength of my beloved, precious life. “Help me! I don’t want to die!” The cart rumbles along the rue Saint-Honoré, and on the second floor, above a shop, a group of girls stare down at me, and I see myself in a flash in their eyes, but why have they no pity?
Why will no one help me?
“Help me,” I scream, and the others in the cart urge me to start my prayers, but there is no time for that. Prayers will not save me, only man can. Someone must help me!
The gray shadow of the guillotine rises before us, flanked by an enormous crowd. A beast to be fed, but surely not with me! No, not with me. It cannot be. I hear a great shrieking, like a crow caught in a net, then I realize the sound is from me. I fall down and one of the guards catches me and I see he has tears in his eyes. Hope.
“Please, please, monsieur! No! Why? Why are you doing this?” I shriek, and a great mass of birds rises up against the dark December sky, crying out with angry caws. “I don’t want to die, mercy, please, what are you doing?
“Monsieur, monsieur.” I fling myself toward the executioner, then back away as I remember who he is, but he catches me. “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. Please, monsieur, more time—mercy! No!”
I am forced down on a plank of hard wood and I can’t believe—please—no—not me! More time! Just one more minute! I continue to implore, beseech, plead to the silent crowd, and then all is lost in a great, white silence. For a quick second, so precious because it was all I was ever going to have, I blink one last time, and from the straw on the floor I see a man in the crowd, and he does pity me.
Then, nothing.
Epilogue, 1800
In which Madame Adélaïde remembers
Our last years were a pitiful peregrination as we traveled from one place to another, escaping cold hospitality or the ravages of war and the madman Napoléon.
Our latest flight was from Naples by boat to Manfredonia—one month on board a cramped and freezing vessel, our only protection Angélique’s husband, the Comte de Castellux.
That escape through the snow and over chilly waters was the end for my dear Victoire, and when we arrived at Trieste she died in my arms, the priest alongside us. She had been suffering for a while, of a cancer in the breast. When she died a part of me did too. How lucky I was, I thought as I cradled her in her last dying agony, how lucky I was to have you. I said it, but too late—she could no longer hear me.
These days I try not to think too much, for my thoughts lead nowhere but to sorrow and regret. Instead, I stay busy with sewing and charity work, some reading—nothing of these new philosophers and the madness that has overtaken the world—but other times I am too tired to resist the force of memory that comes upon me.
I am glad all my sisters died before me. To wish Élisabeth, and Henriette, and even little forgotten Félicité an early death is cruel, and though Victoire, Sophie, and Louise lived long enough lives, I am glad they are dead. Is it not better to die young and know only sweetness and no sorrow than to grow old to witness a world of disenchantment?
And I did grow old, I think, as the bells outside in the square peal for evening prayers, and even lived to see the nineteenth century. It is now February 1800—how strange that sounds, especially to one born in 1732. A lifetime and another world ago. My home now is in Trieste, in two humble but warm rooms; I have ceased to regret the luxuries of my old life. I live like Louise, I sometimes think in contentment.
I wish I had died—when? I pick through my memories, enjoying this moment of self-indulgence. I have a glass of sweet sherry in my hand and Narbonne sits beside me, writing a letter. It is Papa’s birthday today. February 21. He was born in 1710, to a world so much sweeter and finer than this one. I am glad he never saw any of this—he would never have understood. The king’s birthday used to be celebrated throughout the Court and the country with fireworks and festivities, an orgy of thanksgiving to celebrate the birth of a divine monarch. He would have been ninety today. Not impossible.
The Enemies of Versailles Page 37