Confessions of Marie Antoinette (20 page)

I offer my hand to Axel and he takes it in his, subtly drawing me toward him. “I still don’t understand it,” I whisper. “Why must you leave us now?” I glance at the coachman who is to replace him, a French nobleman, also in disguise. “You are the only one who has been involved in every aspect of the planning.”

He tightens his grip on my hand. “Perhaps His Majesty felt it would be more appropriate to arrive at Montmédy with an entourage comprised entirely of your own countrymen and -women.” I fret about their lack of expertise. “Or he may not have wished to jeopardize my role in your escape, as I am in France as an agent of Sweden’s sovereign.” I sigh heavily, searching his expression, aware that I must not shed a single tear, nor display the slightest emotion at our parting. And yet my heart is so full.

“The king did not give me a reason.
‘Il n’a pas voulu,’
was all he said,” Axel whispers.

It was not desired
. At those words the sour feeling in my stomach rises and I taste it in my mouth. The very vagueness of the command makes it seem unfair; it sounds so arbitrary but as I seek the truth behind it, I imagine layers of meaning even as I remind myself that Louis is not a particularly inscrutable man.

“Thank you. And God save you,” I say. “And may you reach
Brussels safely. I will send you word when we, too, have arrived at our destination.”

“Merci, Majesté.”
He raises my hand to his lips and kisses it and in this briefest of innocuous touches are numberless memories of myriad encounters. Our eyes meet, expressing the words that our lips must not convey. “Godspeed, Antoinette,” he says softly. And for the benefit of the ostlers who are changing the horses, as he strides toward his own waiting mount, Axel tips his hat and waves at the carriage.
“Bonne nuit, Madame de Korff!”

I return to the berline, aware that I must conceal the ache in my heart at parting from Axel. I must smile and face the road ahead, reserving my tears for the joy I will feel when we arrive safely at the frontier. With fresh horses and a new driver on the box, we continue to press on toward Châlons-sur-Marne, our party in a merry mood, now that we have put Paris well behind us. Every fifteen miles or so we must stop at the posting station in some remote town to change horses, but will not descend from the carriage. The postilions and grooms at these
relais de postes
are not known to us; and, with little to do in the dead of night it will surely engender gossip when a handsome equipage comes rumbling through at breakneck speed. We hope they will assume ours is a banking carriage transporting funds across the kingdom; and as our needs are well accommodated, we do not intend to call attention to ourselves by showing our faces.

“Who is hungry?” I ask, knowing the answer already. Louis is always famished, and the dauphin, his eyes sandy with sleep, mumbles
“Moi.”
Madame de Tourzel offers to open the picnic hamper and unlatch the doors that conceal the chests of silver, china, and drinking goblets, but I remind her, “You are a baroness tonight. You must accustom yourself to being waited on, just as Madame Élisabeth,” who is garbed as one of her attendants, “and I must
grow practiced with such simple tasks as serving a meal and pouring beverages. Otherwise, we will give ourselves away, should we be called to account.”

As we rumble through the little town of Meaux after an uneventful change of horses, munching on a paillard of cold veal, Louis’s anxiety lifts.

“Believe me,
ma chère
,” he says, jovially taking my hand with his greasy fingers, “once my backside is back in the saddle, I will be quite a different person from the one I have been until now.” So much of his testiness of late he attributes to his inability to hunt daily as he used to. It had been his sole source of exercise and he had adored the untrammeled freedom of giving chase, in hot pursuit of whatever woodland creature was in season.

It is six
A.M
. and the sun has risen, casting a lemon-yellow glow on the countryside. I peer between the curtains at the day, my heart light, for no one had thought to ask the baronne de Korff and her traveling companions for their papers at Meaux.

His breakfast finished—why did I not think to try one of the two cookstoves; I could have fried him an egg!—Louis spreads a map across his knees and invites the children to follow it with him, although they must read it upside down because they are seated upon the opposite banquette.

“See,
mes enfants:
we were just here—and we have this much farther to go. Our next stop”—he places a thick finger over a dot on the map—“should be La Ferté-sous-Jouarre. That’s quite a mouthful.” He grins. “Can you say that?” he asks our little son.

The greater the distance between our party and Paris, the more we can relax, even jest, although I cannot help but notice that my husband’s mood brightened considerably as soon as Count von Fersen left us. “What must Lafayette be thinking now?” Louis wonders aloud. No one is following us, and so we cannot even be certain we are yet missed. As we clatter through the tiniest rural towns and
villages, we indulge ourselves by taking the opportunity to stretch our legs and enjoy the
plein aire
of the countryside. Louis, his round hat pushed down well over his eyes, even converses with a farmer about his crops while Madame Royale and her brother chase butterflies along the roadside on this first, most promising day of summer. I peer out the window of the berline and call to our bodyguards, offering them something to eat. “Perhaps our old friend Lafayette’s head has been separated from his shoulders by now,” I say jocularly to Monsieur de Malden as he accepts a helping of
boeuf à la mode
, served upon a Sèvres plate rimmed in gold.

“When we have passed Châlons we shall have nothing to fear,” Louis says, once we are back on the road, clip-clopping over a narrow bridge bounded on either side by a stone wall. Yet hardly are the words past his lips when the berline suddenly lurches to a stop and we are all jolted sideways, tumbling upon each other. The horses whinny in fright, a terrifying sound that freezes my blood and mortifies the children, who begin to cry. I peer outside and from the precarious tilt of the heavy carriage, I fear we will topple into the river below. Monsieur de Malden raps upon the window. “I am terribly sorry, Your Majesty—I mean Madame Rochet, Monsieur Durand. The hub of the wheel scraped the wall. And when the coach pitched, the harness broke and the momentum caused the horses to fall.”

Madame Élisabeth gasps. “Are the poor beasts all right?”

Malden nods. “But terrified, Madame Rosalie,” he replies, remembering her nom de voyage. “And needless to say, we cannot travel any further until we repair the carriage.”

“How long will that take?” the king queries anxiously. His hopeful countenance is but a memory now. “We are to meet up at Pont-Sommevel with the young duc de Choiseul and his hussars and if we are late for the appointed rendezvous, Choiseul may think we have elected to take another route, or have already passed
him, and then our armed escort may be dismissed. How long will he be able to convince the citizens that the battalion is merely waiting to accompany a shipment of specie?”

I feel the skin on my arms begin to pebble beneath my sleeves. Choiseul has detachments waiting for us, not merely at Pont-Sommevel, but at three other towns along the route. If we miss the first connection, will the soldiers still be stationed at Orbeval, Sainte-Menehould, and Clermont-en-Argonne? I glance at the broken wheel, at the horses being soothed, at Madame Élisabeth murmuring her prayers and Madame de Tourzel endeavoring to engage my children in a game. “How long must we stay here?” I ask. In answer, Malden shrugs. We are in the middle of nowhere and our outriders are noblemen, not ostlers and wheelwrights. Among the lot of them, it is the king of France who has the most knowledge of mechanics and engineering, and he is the one who divests himself of his coat and pushes the sleeves of his chemise up to the elbow as he tackles the business of repairing the coach and harness.

Nearly two hours later, the traces are mended and the berline limps back onto the rutted highway. Off we rattle, as fast as the horses will carry us. Five leagues from Châlons-sur-Marne, at the relay station in the tiny village of Chaintrix, when we step outside to stretch our legs, we are immediately recognized by the son-in-law of the postmaster, a handsome young man with a cleft chin. “Welcome, You”—and I can see that he is about to say “Your Majesties,” so I touch my finger to my lips and the youth quickly says, “You must be weary from your journey. The afternoon heat is oppressive in this part of the country. Please come inside and take some refreshment.”

We accept his kind offer of lemonade and biscuits, but the murmurs begin and the words
“roi”
and
“reine”
are bandied about. Within moments, the hired postilions realize they are escorting
their sovereigns across the realm. Someone saddles a horse and, with a spray of gravel, spurs his mount onto the road leading out of town.

We do not reach Châlons-sur-Marne, a distance of 106 miles from Paris, until five in the afternoon. It is the first location at which we draw a crowd—the arrival of a grand coach, although coated with a fine layer of dust from the road, reason enough to attract a gathering of curious onlookers. I think it best if we remain inside the carriage; as it is, our footmen with their gold-embellished liveries are gaining notice, for they are strutting about as if they are preening in the State Rooms at Versailles, rather than portraying lackeys in a remote town square. But before I can close the curtains, the town postmaster, a short, bespectacled man, approaches the coach and peers inside. He sees Louis and blinks in disbelief, then removes his eyeglasses, leaning toward us for a closer look. The postmaster removes a chamois cloth from the pocket of his coat and fastidiously wipes the spectacles, then gazes at my husband’s face with even greater scrutiny. I find myself holding my breath.

“Why is that man looking at Papa so?” asks the dauphin, tugging at his gown in a most unladylike fashion.

“Shh, Agläe,”
I caution him. “Say nothing,” I mutter to everyone in the coach. “Face forward and pretend nothing is amiss.” Finally, the postmaster’s mouth curves into a faint smile of recognition and I can read the emotion in his gray eyes. He knows who we are. But he presses his lips together as if to tell us that they are sealed and raises his hat in a gesture of respect.

“How soon before we can depart?” I ask Louis, not wishing to remain in this town another moment. But when we reach the next relay station, Pont-de-Somme-Vesle, no one is there to meet us, according to plan. My heart plummets.

“There should have been a detachment of troops here,” I whisper anxiously to Louis, squeezing his arm.

“Perhaps they have marched on ahead,” he says, but his reply lacks much reassurance. Madame Élisabeth, sweetly hopeful as ever, has, at every posting station, been sticking her head out of the carriage window in search of Choiseul’s hussars. The outriders, too, at any moment, have expected to spy the curved scabbards of their flashing sabers.

Finally, as the sun begins to set on June 21, we spot a lone horseman on the road outside Sainte-Menehould. Louis raps on the berline’s roof to halt the carriage so he can speak to the cavalryman. From his uniform, the man appears to be an officer of the guard.

“Where is Choiseul?” the king inquires.

“Gone,” comes the terse reply.

“What about the rest of the hussars?”

The officer shrugs as if to say,
Do you see them?
He clearly does not know he addresses his sovereign. “Not a one of them here.”

My
friseur
, Monsieur Léonard, was to have met up with Choiseul. He has my jewels. My husband and I exchange glances. There is just one road and one way to go: East. We must press on. Something is amiss, but perhaps it will all be revealed when we reach Sainte-Menehould. Yet, upon our arrival in the town square, there is only a small parade of dragoons standing about listlessly while the ostlers change the horses. They recognize me and raise their swords in salute and I give them a subtle nod of the head in appreciation. But where are their mounts, I ask Louis. Shouldn’t the dragoons be in the saddle, ready to escort us toward Montmédy?

In this town, too, we meet the suspicious gaze of the postmaster, an unshaven man with small dark eyes who does not touch his fingers to his hat. His act of disrespect tells me he is no royalist, but then I notice that he holds a fistful of
assignats
as payment for the exchange of horses. The fifty-franc treasury notes bear the king’s likeness imprinted upon them. I want to retch.

FIFTEEN

Caught

J
UNE
21, 1791