Confessions of Marie Antoinette (46 page)

“Royal brat.”

What parody of a catechism is this?

“And your father?”

“Louis Capet,” the boy replies dutifully.

“And
his
rank?”

“Tyrant and oppressor.”

“And what happened to him?”

Louis Charles mumbles something and begins to cry. I wish I could pull apart the bars with my bare hands and fly to his rescue. I would hold him, comfort him, tell him that Maman will make everything all right again.

“Speak up, brat; your mother can’t hear you,” Simon cries derisively, tossing a glance toward the window where he knows I stand. “What was your father’s fate?”

“He was executed by the will of the people,” my son says.

“And what is your mother’s name?”

“Marie Capet,” he replies, without emotion. “Also known as Madame Veto.
Mais, je ne comprends pas
, Monsieur Simon. Why are we all named ‘Capet’ when we are Bourbons? The last of the Capetian kings was my ancestor Charles le Bel who died in 1328. Why are you my
gouverneur
,” he asks in utter innocence, “when you do not know about the history of France? Why isn’t my maman teaching me anymore? Or my
tante
Élisabeth?
She
knows everything.”

Simon cracks a horsewhip that lands within inches of my son. The little boy leaps back and I repress a cry. “Your mother is unfit. She is no teacher. What is her profession?”

Louis Charles buries his face in his hands. The whip cracks again. “I won’t say it.”

Crack
. “The next time I release this whip, you brat, it will land on your back. What is your mother’s métier?”

My son trembles. “Whore.”

“Say it, brat. Loud enough for all Paris to hear.”

“My mother is a whore.”

“And your aunt?”

“My aunt Élisabeth is a whore too.”

His aunt has never even known a man’s caress. Silent tears trickle down my face, but I cannot tear myself away from the window.

“Good boy,” Simon exclaims, giving my son such a hearty slap on his back that he loses his balance and stumbles.

Citoyen Simon reaches into his coat and removes a plain silver flask. He unscrews the cap and takes a swig, then thrusts it into the boy’s hands. “Good work, today,” he says, tossing an upwards glance at the tower. “Here’s your reward.” Simon forces the bottle to my son’s lips and tilts it toward him.

Mon Dieu
, he is making an eight-year-old child imbibe spirits!

Day after day I climb the interior steps of the tower, hoping to
glimpse Louis Charles, even though it becomes ever more excruciating to witness what he is becoming. He now sings the Revolutionary anthems—carouses—with the members of the Garde Nationale, swearing and swilling alcohol alongside them like an old campaigner. Much to the amusement of our jailers, the compassionate child who used to play bilbo catch with his ball and cup is being taught to toss dice and indulge in other games of chance. It is impossible to control my tears.

When he is indoors, I take care to make as little noise as possible so that I might overhear him through the floor. But one day Madame Élisabeth fumbles with a wooden spool and it falls and rolls away. Unable to locate it, we begin to move the furniture, hunting for the spool under chairs, tables, and beds.

When we pause for a moment to wipe the dust from our brows, I hear Louis Charles below us shout impatiently, “Haven’t those two whores been guillotined yet?”

My hand flies to my mouth in horror. Only a month ago, this solicitous little boy, so kind and compassionate that he would never have squashed an insect, wept for two straight days because he missed his maman.

TWENTY-NINE

Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore

S
UMMER
1793

One day toward the end of July, Monsieur Tison manages to smuggle a newspaper to us. I gasp at the headline. “They have guillotined that young woman from Caen who stabbed Marat to death in his medicinal bath!”

“At least she died for something she believed in,” remarks Madame Royale. “Instead of simply for existing. For having blue blood. And she rid France of an evil man. Charlotte Corday is a martyr, but you know they will turn Marat into the martyr instead.” She reaches for the paper and begins to read about Mademoiselle Corday’s trial. “
Et Voila!
It says here that when the prosecutors examined her in the witness box she told them, ‘I killed one man to save a hundred thousand.’ ” My daughter sighs heavily. “I wish there were more like her. One to stab Robespierre and one to stab Danton and one for Desmoulins—for all of them, an army of women to take charge of what the men lack the courage to do.”

It is a clever idea, although somewhat misguided. “Do not be so quick to enshrine Mademoiselle Corday,
ma chère
,” I tell Mousseline. “She was also a revolutionary—a Girondin who was angry with Marat because he attacked the more conservative leaders for not being as bloodthirsty as he. The Revolution has begun to eat its own,
ma petite
.”

Marie Thérèse continues to peruse the paper.
“Mon Dieu,”
she exclaims. “There will be no end in sight to the carnage, now. Maximilien Robespierre has been elected to the Committee of Public Safety.” She looks up, meeting my gaze. “He scares me, Maman.”

“Moi, aussi,”
I murmur.

“I think, perhaps, that Robespierre is the cruelest of all of them,” muses Madame Élisabeth. “God forgot to give that man a heart. Is there anyone else so cold, so dispassionate?”

I take the broadsheet away from my daughter. She has read enough horrific news for one day. And there is even more that I did not permit her to see. Under Robespierre’s directives, the Committee of Public Safety has ordered the desecration of the tombs and mausoleums of France’s former kings. Afraid that the people have grown weary of all the violence, the Committee has fired up their blood by giving them a new purpose and a renewed hatred of the monarchy. I have heard the
nouvelles
cried in the streets; the people are now demanding that I be brought to justice for crimes against the Nation. “With counterrevolution sweeping the Vendée on the western coast south of the Loire, and the allies advancing on Paris, the revolutionaries fear their cause is threatened.” I raise my eyes to the window, gazing dolefully into the middle distance. “They will demand a scapegoat.”

They arrive in the predawn darkness of the second of August. I am convinced that the Commune enjoys inflicting additional terror by dispatching armed guards to surprise us in the dead of night, rousing
us from our slumber. I bolt upright at the sound of someone pounding on the door and clutch the thin blanket about me. But I am rooted to my mattress, my breath caught in my throat. Madame Royale climbs into my bed, throwing her arms around me. “Don’t let them take me away, Maman,” she weeps, assuming they have come for her. A look from her aunt, and Mousseline realizes that the situation is even more dire than she’d feared. As the padlocks are opened from a ring of skeleton keys and the bolt scrapes across the door, my daughter clings to me as if her fierce embrace will protect me from harm.

The door to our apartments is kicked open, hitting the wall with a shudder. At the head of the intruders, holding aloft a lantern, is the Temple administrator, Citoyen Michonis. But this time, undoubtedly afraid for his own safety, his eyes convey no sympathy.

“You are to dress immediately, Citoyenne Capet,” Michonis says without emotion. “By this decree, authorized by the National Convention, the Commune de Paris, and the Committee of Public Safety, you are to be conveyed without delay to the Conciergerie to await trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal.” I listen, immobile as stone, while he reads the order. And then, as if I am in a dream, I gather fresh linen, a petticoat, and a black silk gown and walk toward the salon where I can dress in private.

“Halt.” I turn at Michonis’s command. “You are not permitted to leave our sight.” The four soldiers from the Garde Nationale shoulder their rifles. The Temple administrator points to a chair where I may seat myself to roll my stockings on and don my shoes. Clearly I cannot make my toilette in the presence of these five men, nor dare I change my linen in front of them. With the emotionless precision of an automaton I remove my wrapper, exposing beneath the thin batiste of my nightgown the figure of a woman who has become old before her time. I slip my petticoat on over the nightgown and then wrap my stays about my torso. Madame Élisabeth’s
hands tremble so much that she fumbles with the laces. Then, biting back her tears, knowing that if she weeps I will break entirely, she helps me into the gown.

“Please, messieurs, let us go, too,” Madame Royale entreats. Monsieur Michonis ignores her, his face impassive.

With the same dispassion I wrap up a parcel of clothes, then place a few prized possessions into a small drawstring bag: a handkerchief embroidered with my cipher, a tortoiseshell comb, my prayer book and my father’s gold timepiece, a vinaigrette of smelling salts, my son’s well-worn yellow leather glove, and the locks of hair of my husband and each of our children, including the first dauphin Louis Joseph and baby Sophie, who have departed this cruel world for an ethereal one.

Mousseline tearfully promises to look after the princesse de Lamballe’s terrier. As she clutches the dog, finally, I lift our other pet, Thisbe, into my arms. Astonishingly, Citoyen Michonis raises no protest. Sensing danger, the spaniel begins to bark and I try to hush her before the Temple administrator changes his mind.
“Suis prête,”
I tell the guards. “I’m ready.” I walk past my daughter and the woman who has been a sister to me for the past twenty-three years, knowing that if I look back, I will lose my resolve to remain strong. Yet more than anything, I long, like Orpheus, to turn, aware that this will be the last time we ever see each other.

Balancing Thisbe in one arm with my keepsake purse and parcel of clothing tucked beneath the other, I lift my head and exit the chamber with dignity. My jailers may no longer view me as the Queen of France, but I will always be a daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria.

I descend the tower’s winding staircase, pausing at each gated landing for the soldiers to unlock the wickets. When I reach the second story I stop, hoping to hear my son’s voice through the door
one last time. Louis Charles is singing as someone—Citoyen Simon or his wife—accompanies him on a fife. He is being taught the words of the
Marche de Marsellois
, or the
Marsellaise
as the Parisians call it.

“Allons, enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé.”

His maman is being conveyed to the Conciergerie, the foyer to Madame Guillotine’s salon, as the prison has become known: death’s antechamber.

The day of glory has arrived
.

I continue to descend the cold stone steps in a haze, my gaze fixed straight ahead although my mind is so clouded with sorrow that I see nothing. If only Mousseline could have known how much I wanted to rush back and embrace her before I left our chamber, how desperately I wished to hold for one final moment my firstborn child, the girl it almost killed me to bring into the world. The girl with her father’s eyes. Near the foot of the stairs, I forget to duck as I have done eleven times out of twelve in order to pass through each of the gates, and my forehead strikes the beam, enough to send me reeling.

“Did you hurt yourself?” Citoyen Michonis inquires, hearing the cracking sound of bone on wood. His tone indicates that he is afraid to sound too solicitous of France’s most famous
détenue
.

They have already wounded me past all bounds of human understanding by murdering my husband and denying me my children. In a hollow voice I reply, “Nothing can hurt me anymore.”

Guarded by armed outriders, the carriage, a plain black hackney, rumbles through the indigo night toward the center of Paris, over
rues
rutted and unpaved, and irregular cobbles that cause the axles to sway and jolt. If the Revolutionary Tribunal is so keen on prosecuting me for being the scourge of the nation, I would have expected
them to parade me through the streets in broad daylight, drawing people out of their homes to witness my degradation.