Confessions of Marie Antoinette (45 page)

I remain rooted to the floor with my arms about the little king, his face, blotchy with weeping, pressed against my
lévite
. Finally, I kneel so that I am looking into his red-rimmed, swollen eyes. “I want you to understand,
mon chou d’amour
, that I would never let you go unless the bad men forced me to do so,” I whisper into his ear. “I am counting upon you to be brave, just as your papa was. Oh, my darling—my sweet precious darling,” I say, clasping the boy to my bosom. He is so slender. Will they feed him properly and see that he remains well? The air in the Temple is unhealthy: drafty and damp. “Promise your maman, who loves you more than she loves her own life, that you will never forget her.
Promets-le moi?
”

“Je te le promets,”
he replies, his lower lip moist and trembling, his high voice barely audible.

“At least allow me to dress my son,” I urge Chaumette. “I will not send him out in his nightclothes.” I linger over each article of clothing, inhaling the child’s scent in his chemise and
gilet
, helping him to maintain his balance as he inserts his legs, one at a time, into his breeches, rolling his white hose over his pale feet and legs, putting on his leather shoes and fastening the latchets with silver buckles. I slip his arms into his black mourning coat and hand him his little black tricorn. “Don’t forget your handkerchief,” I sniffle, placing the folded square of linen into the pocket of his coat.

“May I take Tonnerre?” he asks tearfully, and without waiting for an acknowledgment from Chaumette and Simon, I fetch the hobbyhorse from its “stable” in the corner of the salon.

“Allow him just this one comfort,” I urge the men. Louis Charles clasps the beloved toy horse’s head in his arms as if to embrace a house pet.

Chaumette nods brusquely and Citoyen Simon steps forward, grabbing the boy roughly by the elbow.

“Do not presume to touch my nephew like that!” Madame Élisabeth cries, stepping between them.

“I urge you to back away, madame, unless it is your intention to get hurt,” Chaumette orders. My
belle-soeur
shivers with fright, never doubting that his threat is genuine.

We are startled by a commotion outside on the stairway. Shrieking incoherently, Madame Tison pushes her way through the knot of soldiers and flings herself to the floor. Reaching for the hem of my silk wrapper, she presses it to her cheek, crying, “Forgive me, madame! Forgive me! I did not know it would turn out this way!”

“What is she raving about?” I ask Monsieur Chaumette. The poor woman is convulsing, her body wracked with spasms as she continues to implore my forgiveness for her past transgressions. Hers is the unseeing gaze of a madwoman. In her ranting, she stains my gown with flecks of spittle.

A pair of guards lifts Madame Tison by the armpits. Her anguished cries echo through the winding stairwell as she is dragged forcibly down the precipitous circular staircase.

“You have had sufficient time for your adieux, citoyenne,” the Procurator warns.

“Give your aunt and sister a kiss,” I instruct my son. He embraces them tearfully, for he has not stopped crying for a moment, and then turns back to me, throwing himself into my arms one more time.
“Donne-moi un bisou,”
I sob. “Give your maman one more kiss.” He complies and I stipple his little face with moist kisses. He is led from the chamber still bawling.

My gaze is riveted on his retreating form. At the doorway he turns back to look at me. I touch my hands to my heart and mouth the words
Je t’aimerai toujours
—I will always love you—knowing, even if my son does not, that we will never see each other again.

The hollow tower is full of echoes. I hear the hideous scraping of the two massive doors leading to the apartment below—the rasp of the iron bolts and the rattling of the heavy padlocks that confirm all too well that my little boy has become an official prisoner of the Nation. I imagine him in the shuttered rooms, perched on the edge of his late father’s bed, frightened and alone. For two straight days the excruciating sound of Louis Charles’s incessant sobs penetrate the thick floorboards of my rooms. “What are they doing to him down there?” I ask, of no one in particular. Madame Royale steps around the back of my chair, entwining her arms about my neck. My
belle-soeur
looks for solace within her prayer book. “You must take comfort in your faith, sister, as I do,” she exhorts me gently.

I glance down at my trembling hands. “God Himself has forsaken me,” I murmur in reply. “I no longer dare to pray.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

The Devil’s Catechism

S
UMMER
1793

The day after Louis Charles was ripped from my arms, eight men convey Madame Tison out of the Temple, incarcerating her in the Hôtel-Dieu, where she is to remain hospitalized, away from public scrutiny. Even as the guards forcibly remove her, she is shrieking about being haunted by ghosts and shadows, blubbering incoherent fearful cries that those she had denounced would be put to death and return to remind her of the lives she had ruined. Later that day, I receive a visit from her husband. “I believed you to be a demon, a monster, madame. It was not until I came to know you—through spying upon you, I confess—that I came to see who you really are: a loving wife, a grieving widow, and a devoted mother, like any other woman who has been touched by sorrow, regardless of her rank.”

I assure Monsieur Tison that I bear his family no malice and request that he keep me informed with regard to the health of his
wife. Overcome with guilt, she has lost her mind. Perhaps it seems strange that I do not condemn a woman who persecuted my family, but I hate to see anyone in torment. This Revolution has claimed enough victims.

On the third day of my separation from Louis Charles his unceasing sobs are met with reproofs from Citoyen Simon. I hear their muffled voices through the floor, and I suspect that Simon shouts deliberately, knowing that he tortures me as well when he torments my child.

“I wish to know what law it is that says you can take me away from my mother,” my son demands imperiously, finally remembering who and what he is, despite his tender years. “If there is such a law, then show it to me.”

“Hold your tongue, you little imp, or I’ll tear it from your head. And don’t think I’m fooling.” I can just imagine the evil man thrusting one of his filthy cobbler’s tools in the boy’s face, hinting at their use as instruments of torture. “We’re going to have a music lesson today,” Citoyen Simon tells him. He begins to whistle the
Ça Ira
.

“My maman will not let me sing that song,” Louis Charles protests. “She says it has bad words.”

“Your maman isn’t your teacher anymore, boy. Your maman is a slut and a whore and not fit to live. Now, repeat what I said.”

“Non!”
the little king shouts.

“What was that?”

Louis Charles raises his voice. “
Non!
I will never say nasty things about my mother.”

In reply to his feeble protest comes a frightening sound, like the staccato crack of a whip or a slap. Has that horrid cobbler struck my child? A sudden stabbing pain in my chest makes me double over. If these monsters want to kill me, all they have to do is touch my son. He begins to bawl again. The
crack-snap
is repeated, generating
another round of hysterical tears. I rush to the door of our apartment and pummel it with my fists. All of us are now at the complete mercy of the Commune and the Committee of Public Safety. The only time Madame Élisabeth, my daughter, and I have contact with our jailers is when they ascend the winding staircase three times a day to bring our meals and to take Thisbe, my spaniel, and Madame de Lamballe’s terrier for a walk in the courtyard. I am not even permitted to exercise the dogs myself anymore.

As the lonely days without my little boy drag on, the remorseful Monsieur Tison, who often carries the meal trays himself, manages to slip me brief notes, scribbled on scraps of paper in his uneducated hand. They indicate that Louis Charles is healthy and cared for, despite Citoyen Simon’s campaign to poison his mind. But when I ascend the dank stone steps of the tower in order to glimpse my son through the narrowest of windows, my eyes inform me otherwise.

They have confiscated the black silk suit I had dressed him in, obliterated any visible trace of mourning for his father. He is outfitted now in filthy beige
sans-culottes
and a
carmagnole
, the short red jacket favored by the peasants and laborers in the Piedmont village of Carmagnola that the revolutionaries have adopted as an identifying garment. Beneath the
bonnet rouge
that Simon compels him to wear, my son’s soft brown hair has become lank and greasy. If they do not regularly tend to the child’s hygiene, in no time he will be crawling with lice. Is this how the revolutionaries intend to break his spirit?

Already Simon is poisoning the child’s mind against everything he was raised to believe, beating time on a snare drum as Louis Charles marches in a circle about the courtyard with a miniature musket—which I sincerely hope is a toy—on his shoulder, singing the vicious verses of the
Ça Ira
, although I doubt he understands their meaning.

That night I hear my son crying again when Simon endeavors to teach him a new song. The lyrics of the
Carmagnole
are nothing more than hideous propaganda intended to incite even the most ignorant to violence. It has a simple, lively melody, much like a children’s nursery rhyme, easily learned within five minutes as the tune is the same for every verse.

“Come now—loud and clear, so your mother the whore can hear you,” Simon demands. After a few moments of tense silence, I hear the cracking sound again and I flinch. “Do it, you little brat,” Simon shouts.

“ ‘Madame Veto threatened to cut everyone’s throat in Paris; but her plot failed, thanks to our cannons,’ ”
Louis Charles sings.

“Louder.”

I know that my son is being terrorized into complying, petrified that this big unshaven brute who stinks of onions and brandy will hurt him again. So he sings more lustily, but Simon remains unsatisfied.

“Sing it like you mean it, you little spawn of the devil.”

“ ‘Monsieur Veto promised to be loyal to his country, but he failed, and gave the people no quarter.’ ”
My son fairly shouts the words.
“ ‘Antoinette resolved to drop us all on our bums, but her plan failed and she got
her nose
broken instead.’ ”

For the rest of the hour Simon drills the refrain into the boy’s head.
“Long live the sound! Let us dance the Carmagnole. Long live the sound of our cannons!”

And yet, I would give anything to see my son, even though he is being taught to despise his parents. How could I ever stop loving him, no matter what he sings? It is not his fault. As I climb the stairs and peer between the iron bars that cover the windows of the Grosse Tour, pressing my cheek against the cold metal in an effort to get as close as I can to my child, to bathe in the sight of his sweet, trusting face, I gasp at the telltale signs of his coercion. His right
eye is swollen shut. Beneath it spreads an angry blue-black bruise, like an indigo crescent moon. There are cuts on his forehead, cheeks, and hands. He is a brave little boy, but how much torment is an eight-year-old expected to endure? I am sure he will say—or sing—anything to stop Citoyen Simon from striking him. I become physically ill when I consider what other abuse his new tutor has perpetrated upon his innocent body.

A few days later, I witness another effort to transform Louis XVII into a radical revolutionary, to fill his head with hatred for everything he used to know and love. Louis Charles is standing outdoors in the pouring rain without an oilcloth coat to protect him. Simon has even removed the child’s liberty bonnet so that the raindrops pelt him like God’s tears, weeping at such a travesty. “What is your name?” Simon demands.

“Louis Charles Capet.” My son replies meekly.

“And your rank?”