Daughters of the Storm (14 page)

‘The king has given orders that we retire to our apartments. Général Lafayette has assured him that the situation is under control. The soldiers will make camp for the night.'

*

It was past two o'clock when the small group re-entered the de Guinot apartments, where they were met at the door by a frightened Marie-Victoire who had kept vigil for hours in the empty rooms. Ned and William supported the marquise inside and Marie-Victoire hastened to help her on to a bed. Héloïse made sure her mother was as comfortable as possible and went to join the others in the tiny saloon, where they fell on the wine and fruit that had been intended as a refreshment for the previous day. Héloïse insisted that Marie-Victoire took a glass as well, and the girl sipped at it while Ned and William sketched out a plan of action.

It was decided that the two men should take it in turns to keep watch. Héloïse and Sophie were to get as much sleep as they could for the rest of the short night. Héloïse half-protested, but her tiredness made her objections uncertain and she allowed herself to be persuaded. Still fully dressed, she and Sophie flung themselves down on to the bed in the second bedroom.

Exhausted as she was, sleep eluded Héloïse, and she tossed and turned. At last, towards dawn, she sank into an unsatisfactory doze, only to be tormented by dreams where mobs of women tore at her clothes, singing raucous songs as they did so. Somewhere among them was Louis d'Épinon but she was powerless to call out to him. Instead, she felt the lips of Hervé de Choissy close down on hers with a cruel insistence... ‘You remind me so much of my mother,' she heard him whisper.

A sound of running feet and of shouts under the window jerked her awake. She sat up, threw back the coverlet and ran to look outside. It was dawn: a grey, cold dawn that loured over the palace and tipped the roofscapes with a damp mist. Héloïse tugged open the window and looked out. Her eyes widened in horror. Surging from the Cour des Princes into the Cour des Ministres were the Parisians. They were armed with sabres and pikes and at their head was a huge, savage-looking man brandishing an axe.

‘Oh my God,' she breathed. ‘How have they got in?'

A shot rang out from a window opposite and, with a scream of pain, a young man at the front of the invaders sank to the ground. Roaring with anger, their leader launched himself at one of the soldiers guarding the entrance to the Cour des Princes and, with a stroke that smashed through his neck, decapitated him on the spot. Within seconds, his companion had suffered a similar fate. The mob formed a circle round the bodies and shouted for the ‘Austrian whore', promising to tear out her heart and fry her liver.

Héloïse ran back to the bed. ‘Sophie, get up. Now.'

Sophie stirred reluctantly. ‘What is it?' she murmured, still drugged with sleep.

‘Go and alert the others. We're under attack.'

Sophie swung her legs over the side of the bed and vanished. The mob continued to stream through a side entrance which had been left – unaccountably - unlocked towards the entrance that led to the queen's staircase. There, egged on by the blood-splattered leader, it forced its way through the doors and up the marble staircase to the guardroom situated at the top.

*

Louis had also spent a sleepless night in the Place d'Armes. Pacing up and down, he tried to make out what was going on in the darkness over where the Parisians were camped only a few yards distant. Most of his men slept where virtually where they stood, although some them had sought shelter wherever they could find it. At four o'clock a message had arrived requesting him to return to the palace in order to inspect the arrangements inside. Reluctantly he handed over to a junior officer and, adjusting his greatcoat, he slipped through the gates. He had just completed his final inspection of the Queen's Guard and was conferring with the sergeant on duty when the noise below silenced them both. Dog-tired and stupid from lack of sleep, it took a moment for Louis to understand that the noise was the sound of many feet. Then, in a flash, he understood.

He groaned and launched himself at speed towards the queen's bedchamber, and beat frantically on the door.

‘Awaken Her Majesty,' he shouted. ‘Save the queen. They're going to attack her.'

There was a muffled exclamation from inside.

He turned, drew his sword and stood with his back to the door. A guard ran to join him and they waited together – a moment imprinted for ever on Louis' memory.

A multitude of thoughts chased through him. Regret for his short life and the things he had never done. There was triumph in the fact of his dying in the execution of his duty, and there was the sensation of the blood quickening in his ears... of the effort to make his courage surmount his fear.

The mob was coming towards them – pikes and staves outstretched, their faces set in hatred. In the moment or two it took for the unequally matched sides to lock in battle, Louis knew that he was ready to die.

An axe crashed into the guard beside him and the man fell without a sound, his blood pumping on to the marble floor. One of the attackers slipped in it and Louis had the satisfaction of driving his sword deep into his body. The blade crunched on bone. He pulled it out and the smell pricked at his nostrils. He lifted his sword, ready to thrust again, praying that the queen had had time to escape, when his head exploded into a million stars. Without a murmur, Louis slid into blackness.

His body sprawled across the floor and blocked the entrance to the bedroom. With an oath one of the attackers kicked it into the window niche. They began to beat down the door. A big raddled woman who brought up the rear stopped to crack a coarse joke at Louis' expense. Nobody paid any attention and, casting a furtive look around her, she thrust her hands into his jacket and ferreted about with the indifference of a butcher preparing meat. Finding nothing of interest, she spat wetly on to the floor and tugged at the silver buttons on Louis' uniform. After a struggle they yielded and the beldame pocketed them. For good measure, she wrenched off the black ribbon that confined Louis' hair and stuffed it down her bodice. Then, propelled by God knew what hideous urge, she dragged Louis' unconscious body back through the guardroom, his blood smearing the floor. Reaching the top of the stairs, she kicked him hard with a shriek, and watched with satisfaction as Louis rolled to the bottom. There he lay still.

Minutes later and sobbing with fright, Marie-Victoire slipped in through the entrance near to where Louis had come to rest at the bottom of the stairs. Despite Héloïse's protests, she had insisted that it should be she who went to investigate what was going on, arguing that nobody would notice someone like her in the mêlée. Her breath seemed stuck in her chest, and she had almost turned back in the courtyard at the sight of a bearded man, surrounded by cheering women, in the act of beheading a wounded soldier. Sickened, she flattened herself against a wall. Would her clean white apron betray her? From there, she watched horrified as the final tendon was severed and the bloody mass fixed to a pike. Waving his trophy on high, the killer led his group towards Marie-Victoire. Without stopping to think, she darted into the nearest door – anything to escape the sight of the dead mouth and its snarl of agony.

At the foot of the stairs, she took stock. Chairs and statues lay on their sides, the paintings had been slashed and pike marks disfigured the wooden doors. She mounted the steps to the point where the staircase turned, lost her nerve and ran back down again. In herhaste, she tripped over the body that lay at the bottom. She hurried on but then her pity got the better of her.

Bending down to take a look, Marie-Victoire recognised Louis, despite the blood running down his face. Marie-Victoire dropped to her knees and felt for his pulse. His hand was very cold. Fearing the worst, she listened for his heart. It was beating. Seizing him by the ankles, she managed to pull him into a niche under the stairs and then ran as fast as she could back the way she had come.

Bursting into the apartments, she was at first breathless and incoherent. Héloïse leapt to her feet and pushed her down into a chair.

‘What is it?'

Marie-Victoire fought with herself to make sense. ‘It is terrible. Awful. ‘They're killing everywhere. Monsieur le Capitaine d'Épinon is lying badly hurt out there. He needs help.'

‘Who?' said Ned.

Héloïse's eyes flew to Sophie's. ‘We must do something.' She pulled a finger until the knuckle cracked
.
What to do?
‘Monsieur Luttrell, will you help me?'

‘Of course, Mademoiselle Héloïse,' said Ned at once.

Sophie explained to Ned who Louis was. Ned turned to Marie-Victoire.

‘Tell me exactly where.'

Marie-Victoire gave the details and, their antipathy for the moment in abeyance, Ned looked to William for support.

‘We will both go,' he declared.

Sophie took a juddering breath. William was already removing his coat and rolling up his shirt sleeves.

‘Of course,' he confirmed.

The two men stood framed in the doorway and Sophie clenched her hands so tight that her nails bit into her palm. Then they were gone.

Time stood still then for all of them. The marquise joined the girls and the four of them sat silently in an oddly similar pose with their hands folded into their laps. The pose, Sophie found herself thinking, that all women assume when waiting... waiting... waiting.

At the sound of footsteps, Héloïse and Sophie got to their feet. The door swung open, and Ned and William edged in with Louis' body slung between them. Héloïse took in his bloody countenance and his pallor. She swallowed.

‘Please take him to the bedroom,' she said.

William eased Louis on to the bed and Héloïse arranged the pillows under his head and tried to pull the crumpled sheets into some kind of order.

‘We had to find a route round the side of the palace,' said Ned in response to Sophie's unasked question. ‘It was too dangerous otherwise and there are too many in the courtyard. See for yourself.'

Sophie obediently went back into the saloon and looked out of the window. Underneath was chaos. The courtyard was packed with bodies pressed up against the grilles, reaching as far as she could make out to the edge of the inner marble court. The air rang with demands for the queen to show herself. Sophie averted her eyes and tried to imagine how Marie-Antoinette must be feeling knowing that she was the target of so much hatred. My God, she thought, to be in that position and her pity stirred. Thinking that Ned was behind her, she groped for his hand and, to her surprise, encountered William's. Her hand trembled when Willian took it in his and held it, as if treasuring the contact.

‘Sophie.'

Héloïse was calling for her from the next room. Sophie blushed to the roots of her hair, disengaged her hand from William's grasp and went to help.

Inch by careful inch, the two of them peeled off Louis' tight jacket as gently as they could. Héloïse was sweating with the effort not to hurt him, but he was moaning and rolling his head.

‘Marie-Victoire.' Héloïse spoke more firmly than she felt. ‘Go and see if you can obtain some water.'

Marie-Victoire did as she was asked, angry at herself for the weakness that turned her knees to jelly. She returned almost immediately, carrying a pitcher and a bowl. ‘Needs must,' said Héloïse and took off her petticoat. With Marie-Victoire's help, Sophie managed to tear it into uneven strips and held the bowl while Héloïse dipped the material into the water and sponged Louis' wound. The water was soon bright red but, cleansed of the blood that caked his hairline, Louis began to appear more normal. The wound, Héloïse was relieved to see, was less serious than it looked. She had seen worse on the hunting field. Louis moaned again.

How strange, thought Héloïse as she worked... her thoughts driven by the madness of the situation into feverish patterns... that I should be handling the body of this man in such a way, a man who means nothing to me... should mean nothing to me... and yet this is one of the most intimate moments that I have ever experienced.

Louis' eyes opened, regarded Héloïse with a direct, unblinking stare and then closed. Héloïse arranged a makeshift bandage around his head, taking care not to cover his eyes, and stretched out her hand to feel his pulse. Suddenly, she felt her hand imprisoned and looked up to see he was looking at her.

‘Can you talk?' she enquired softly, laying down his arm.

Louis' lips stretched painfully. ‘Yes,' he said with an effort.

‘You are in the apartments of my father, Monsieur le Marquis de Guinot. You were found by my maid and brought here.'

Louis grimaced. ‘The queen,' he muttered.

‘I cannot answer that,' replied Héloïse. ‘Can you tell us what happened?'

But Louis had slipped back into unconsciousness.

Sophie returned to the window. The hubbub outside had quietened. Straining out of the casement, she could see that the Parisians had crowded further towards the marble court and they appeared to be watching someone.

‘The queen,' she said. ‘I think the queen is on the balcony.'

‘What courage,' said William under his breath.

He drew Sophie to one side. ‘There is no question that we must remain here for the moment and I think we are reasonably safe. I wanted to tell you, Miss Luttrell, that I think you have been both brave and calm.'

‘But so were you, Mr Jones,' she replied. She intercepted a look from Ned and blushed for the second time that morning.

The sky was lightening. The heavy rain of the previous evening had washed it pale and clean, and the smell of rain-washed stones percolated through the window, bringing with it a welcome freshness to the heavy atmosphere inside. It did nothing to dispel the oppression that hung over them and the apartment, or the feelings of shock and impotence that the new day brought, but at least it was light.