We don’t have any more nobles or priests.
Oh, it’ll be okay, be okay, be okay.
Equality will reign everywhere.
—EXCERPT FROM THE REVOLUTIONARY SONG “ÇA IRA”
DESPITE THE DECREES THAT HAVE STRIPPED THE CHURCH of its property in order to use it as backing for the Assembly’s assignats—a new paper currency we’re all to use now instead of livres or sous—the French have not forgotten Noël. The churches are filled with rosy-cheeked worshipers willing to brave the cold in order to honor Christ’s birth. I look down the pew at my brothers, and they both smile back at me. Our entire family is here except Edmund. So while we’re eating Bayonne ham and drinking wine, enjoying the company of Johann’s wife, Isabel, and their little son, Paschal, he’ll be stalking the halls of the Tuileries, ingratiating himself with Besenval. A lonely choice.
When the sermon’s finished, Paschal exclaims, “It’s time to eat!”
Everyone around us laughs, even the old, humorless women who come here every day. My mother bends down to pick him up, and he rides contentedly on her hip.
“It must be nice for you to have so much of your family here,” Henri says, taking my arm.
Since the king’s flight from Versailles, my brothers have moved to Paris. Last month, Johann found a handsome apartment with a salon that has a sweeping view of the Seine. “Yes. My mother is very happy, too,” I say. “Of course, she misses Edmund.”
“Has he written?”
I shake my head. A rare dusting of snow covered the ground while we were at Mass, and now flakes have settled on the rim of Henri’s hat. He’s let his hair grow longer this winter, and there’s a soft stubble shadowing his chin. Between the work at his exhibit and his attentions to me, he’s had little time to visit the barber. I look around at the people I love most in this world, and my heart feels close to bursting. On every street, nativity scenes are nestled in shop windows, and painted santons hang from lampposts and doors. “This is going to be a very good year,” I predict. Yesterday, Curtius spoke with Lafayette and told him of his intention to resign in twelve months.
Henri squeezes my arm meaningfully. “Yes, I think it will.”
We enter the house, and the lingering scent of cooked ham fills the hall.
It’s the merriest gathering we’ve had in many years, with food, and laughter, and wine from Bordeaux. Jacques has challenged Isabel, the daughter of a butcher, to name all the parts of a cow. I have always liked Isabel. I remember the day my brother married her, and how he never let go of her hand, not even to stand before the altar. She has plain gray eyes, but a beautiful smile. And her laugh. It is deep and throaty, full of the greatest joie de vivre, and it’s completely infectious. She’s still naming the parts when the sound of a horse and carriage echoes outside, followed by a sharp knock on the door. The conversation stops while we look at one another.
“I’ll get it,” Wolfgang says at once. He hurries from the table, and I look to my mother. Perhaps it is Edmund. Perhaps he’s had a change of heart. But it’s a woman’s light footsteps on the stairs, and a moment later Wolfgang appears with the baron’s daughter, Abrielle. Johann passes a meaningful look to Isabel. Did they know she’d be coming?
Wolfgang clears his throat and announces nervously, “I’d like you to meet the daughter of the Baron de Besenval, Abrielle.”
Her gaze roams quickly around the room, and she looks like a small, startled deer. She is dressed in an exquisite red velvet gown with a white ermine cloak and matching muff. She belongs in the queen’s rooms, not on the Boulevard du Temple, but she tries for a smile, and everyone raises their voices in welcome. My mother hurries to take her cloak, and Curtius finds her an extra chair. The room is silent while she seats herself between Wolfgang and Johann. How did she get here? Does her father know she’s come, or did Wolfgang steal her away somehow?
“I suppose you’re all wondering what Abrielle is doing here,” Wolfgang begins.
“Not at all,” my mother says cheerfully. “In fact, she’s just in time for the ham.”
“Yes, well …” He looks around the table and begins fidgeting with his napkin. I have never seen Wolfgang nervous about anything. Then finally he blurts out, “We are both here to stay.”
My mother lowers her glass of wine. “You mean a little vacation?”
Wolfgang hesitates. “No.” He looks at Abrielle, who nods slowly. “I mean Abrielle is pregnant, and this morning we were married.”
I think my mother is going to faint. She begins fanning herself with her hand, and Wolfgang adds quickly, “It wasn’t planned. It simply happened. But now we are married in the eyes of God—”
“And in the eyes of her father?” my mother exclaims.
“Yes, well that … That hasn’t gone so well.”
“He tried, Maman,” Johann explains. “He went to me first, but I’m not close to Besenval. Then he went to Edmund …”
My mother stops fanning. “Edmund has always been a favorite with the baron. He must have done something.”
Wolfgang clenches his jaw, and Abrielle is close to tears. “Yes,” Wolfgang replies. “He did.”
“He went straight to Besenval and told him the news,” Johann says. “Wolfgang has been dismissed from his position, and Abrielle …”
He doesn’t have to say what has become of Abrielle. This is a disaster for them both. I can only imagine the sort of scandal that was created. A heavy silence has fallen, and my mother covers her eyes to weep. Then Curtius raises his glass and says loudly, “To Wolfgang and Abrielle!”
I repeat, “To Wolfgang and Abrielle!”
Everyone follows, and there is no more talk of traitorous brothers or angry fathers. She is nine weeks pregnant, and Wolfgang is sure it will be a girl, but Paschal has decided it must be a boy. “Else who will I play with?” he exclaims. We all laugh, and Abrielle bears it as best she can.
“Soon, it will be Marie’s turn,” Johann says, and they all look at me. “We’ve heard the rumors. So when will it be?” My brother looks from me to Henri.
“When Curtius retires from the National Guard,” Henri replies and takes my hand.
“Another year,” I confirm.
“And then you will be bouncing a fat baby on your knee,” Isabel teases.
It’s what every woman wants, surely. And in another year, who knows what will be? I might be made a member of the Académie. Or perhaps Curtius will be. If that happens, there will be money enough to hire an apprentice.
As everyone leaves, Wolfgang and Abrielle linger behind. The guest room will now belong to them, and I wonder how Wolfgang must feel to know he will never serve the king with his brothers again. Johann embraces him tightly, and whispers what must be words of encouragement in his ear. When everyone is gone, my mother asks quietly, “Shall we see to your room?”
She is still upset, but as soon as the shock is over, this will be a great joy to her. She’ll finally have a grandchild in her home.
Abrielle follows her down the hall, but Wolfgang remains with me. We watch each other in the low light of the candles. “It may be a blessing,” I say to him.
“It’s hard to see that right now.”
“I know. But it wasn’t your calling.”
“I can’t afford a family,” he worries, “let alone a woman like her. Marie, she is inconsolable.”
“She just lost everything. Her father, her home. Give her time.”
Wolfgang nods. “Will you go to her? Maman is preparing her room, but she should have someone else—”
“Of course.” She’s my sister now. I must support her in any way I can. I climb the stairs and pause in front of Curtius’s door. I can hear my mother speaking to him in German, something about the clothes Abrielle has brought.
“They’re too fine,” I hear her telling him. “How will she ever be happy here?”
I continue to the guest room, with its sweeping view of the Boulevard du Temple, and peek around the open door. She is sitting on the wide four-poster bed
with her beautiful velvet gown spread out around her, watching the snow settle on the rooftops and across the windowsills. She turns when she hears me, and her eyes are filled with tears.
“Is there anything you need?” I ask softly.
She shakes her head, and I think of the chances I took with Henri and realize now how foolish we were. For a moment’s pleasure, we risked altering our lives forever. “No. Thank you,” she says. “Your family has already been more than generous.” I see my mother has brought her heated bottles and a cup of hot chocolate, probably spiked with liqueur, to help her sleep. But she hasn’t touched it. She hasn’t even unpacked her chests.
“I know it must be difficult for you,” I say, “being torn from your father like this. But if it’s any consolation, I can tell you that Wolfgang loves you deeply, and my family is very happy to have you here.”
She begins to weep, dabbing her eyes with a square of silk. “Thank you, Marie. It’s more than I deserve.”
“Nonsense,” I say and cross the room to sit next to her on the bed. “You are married,” I remind her. “And unlike most women, you’ve had the opportunity to marry someone you love. Wolfgang adores you. He has spoken about you for months on end.”
She looks up at me, and her wide blue eyes are like pools of light. “Really?”
“Yes,” I assure her. “And as soon he is able, he will find employment and take care of you. Until then, you are always welcome here.”
She straightens her shoulders, and I can see that this talk has done her some good. “May I ask you a favor?” she whispers.
“Of course.”
“I—I have never undressed myself,” she admits, “and I don’t know how.… I’m not sure how I should take off this gown.”
The poor child! She doesn’t even know how to prepare for bed. How does Wolfgang think she will survive here, on the Boulevard du Temple, with prostitutes and fish sellers shouting over one another for business in the streets? I unlace her corset and help the gown from her shoulders. Her body is as smooth and flawless as her face. She’s like a porcelain doll. And this is how it must be for the queen. Every day someone to help her dress and undress. If she wants water, someone is there to fetch it. If she lacks perfume, or powder, or pomade for her hair, a dozen servants are happy to make it appear. Women like this have never known any different. I hand Abrielle a clean nightgown from her chest, and I wish her good night. “Tomorrow, I’ll be in the workshop,” I say. “You’re welcome to come and see what we do.”
“Thank you,” she says with real affection, and my heart breaks for her.
SINCE THE NATIONAL Assembly has moved from the Salle des États to the Salle du Manège, we must change the backdrop of our tableau. This time it’s Wolfgang, not Henri, who helps Curtius, and while the sawing and painting go on, Abrielle peeks around the workshop door. I’m reminded of a little mouse, and when Yachin sees her and shouts, “Come in!” she freezes in the doorway.
“It’s fine,” I say and rise from my stool. “This is our workshop.”
She takes a tentative step inside. I can see how this place could be intimidating: on the far wall are the bodies of all the previous figures we’ve ever done, and on the shelf above that are a dozen wax heads we no longer need. Jars of teeth and glass eyes line shelves around the room, and baskets filled with hair clutter the ground.
“Are—are those real?” she asks. She points to the eyes.
Yachin snickers, and I give him a sharp look. “They are glass.”
She steps farther inside, and now she can see the discarded tableau of the royal family at dinner. A letter came last week asking if we would loan this exhibit to Versailles. With the château sitting empty, the National Guard has hit upon a way to make money: installing our wax figures in the Petit Trianon and charging visitors ten sous to see what life used to be like. It’s a terribly offensive idea, but the request is more than a simple request: it’s a command. All we can do is negotiate what percentage of the ten sous will be ours.
Abrielle steps closer to The Grand Couvert tableau to touch the face of the queen. “Did you do this?” she asks.
“The faces, yes. Curtius makes the bodies.”
She circles the table, and I catch Yachin grinning from ear to ear. He has seen this before. The disbelief, the fascination, then finally the questions about how long the models take to sculpt, what kind of wax we use to make them, and how long they will last. Abrielle asks all of these things and more. “But what will happen to this? It won’t stay back here forever?”
“As soon as the backdrop for the National Assembly is finished,” I tell her, “Curtius and I are taking this tableau to Versailles. They want to display it in the Petit Trianon.”
Her eyes go wide. “And you’re going today?”
“Yes.”
She begins to tremble. “My father will be there. He’s the only one with the keys to the Trianon.” She sits on the nearest stool, and I go to her.
“Perhaps you should come with us,” I say gently.
“No.” She shakes her head, and tears roll down her cheeks. “He doesn’t want to see me again. He said as much before the coach began driving away. He doesn’t care what happens to me. To either of us.” She looks down at her belly, and now Yachin must understand why she is here.
“He allowed you to pack your clothes,” I say helpfully. “He might have given them away, or sold them.”
“Because he was too angry to care. He just wanted me gone.” She looks up at me through her tears. “I was his little girl. His only child,” she adds, “and I betrayed him.”
I’m glad that Wolfgang’s not in the room. It would be too painful for him to hear this. “Do you regret the child?” I ask quietly.
She lifts her chin. For the first time since arriving, she looks like a woman. “I have no regrets over this baby, and no regrets over choosing Wolfgang. I only wish I’d had the courage to tell my father that I wanted to marry him. I should never have waited until this happened. I knew better,” she admits, “but I was a coward.”
That afternoon, as Curtius and I are riding to Versailles, I tell him what Abrielle said.
“Then Wolfgang is lucky,” my uncle replies. “If she were full of regret, he would have to live with her resentment for the rest of his life.” Curtius sucks thoughtfully on his pipe. “He’ll become a private soldier,” he predicts. “Or join the National Guard. I can speak with Lafayette.”
This is exactly what my uncle does, and in three days, my brother is made a captain of the National Guard. I hope it enrages Edmund as much as it enrages me to think of what he did. The baron would have discovered his daughter’s pregnancy on his own. But to learn about it from another soldier? It’s embarrassing, and worse, it is unforgivable.
Wolfgang and his wife will be moving to their own apartment now, so Curtius and I oversee the packing of Abrielle’s chests. My mother wipes away her tears, and I exclaim in German, “What’s the matter with you? On Noël, you were upset that Wolfgang was here.”
“That was five days ago. I’ve changed my mind now.”
Chapter 37
1790
WE WATCH THE NEW YEAR’S FIREWORKS FROM OUR BALCONY, and with every explosion, Paschal squeals with delight.
“Look at the colors!” Henri shouts.
But I can’t. When Curtius said everyone was coming tonight, I assumed he meant everyone who had been with us on Noël. He didn’t say that Marat, on the run from the king’s authority, would be coming here to hide. So while Henri is explaining the science of fireworks to me, my eyes wander to the shadowy figure in the corner. His head is wrapped with bandages soaked in vinegar, and the stench is repulsive. His face is covered with open sores. Curtius whispered to me that he caught these from hiding in the city sewers.
This is my first clue that the year 1790 will be filled with unpalatable news.
On the thirteenth of February, the National Assembly passes a law forbidding monastic vows and dissolving every ecclesiastical
order. Nuns are dragged into the streets to be whipped, and monks are given six months to marry or be killed. The Pope, without his own army, without any real power at all, sits in the Vatican while convents all across France are closed. Priests who are allowed to remain with the Church are instructed on the new order of things: before the Pope, before salvation, before even God Himself, there is the nation.
In the Church of Saint-Merri, the priests must wear the tricolor cockade over their holy vestments, and the altar has been defaced to read, “Glory be to God and the Nation.” At every Mass, before every prayer, the priests must ask God’s blessing over the Revolution. And in Marat’s newspaper L’Ami du Peuple, he repeats Diderot’s vicious philosophy: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
Seven days later, news comes from Austria that Joseph II, the queen’s eldest brother and the Holy Roman Emperor, has died. He has been her greatest hope, and now Leopold II, a brother she’s never really known, has inherited the crown. Madame Élisabeth tells me this has crushed the queen. If Leopold refuses to offer his help, where will the king turn?
It is blow after blow for the royal family. In the spring, when Marie-Thérèse is to celebrate her First Communion, there are no gifts or celebratory feasts. The ceremony is held at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. The king does not dare to attend, and the queen is forced to watch from behind a curtain. Madame Élisabeth confides that Marie-Thérèse asked her father why her friends could celebrate their First Communions, while she could not. She was told that any sort of fête would be too extravagant. In this, I feel sorry for Madame Royale. Every child across France receives gifts for this passage. When I ask if the dauphin was in attendance, Madame Élisabeth’s face turns pale. “He had a fever,” she says quietly. “The doctors say he is coughing up blood.”
At some point, I think, God must look down and take pity on the royal family. But the terrible news doesn’t stop. In April, the National Assembly votes to transfer all four hundred million livres of church property to the state. Camille and Marat applaud this new law as saving the nation. Catholics, they write, have secret royalist tendencies, and schools run by the Church teach pupils to love God and, even worse, the king.
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