Daughters of the Storm (32 page)

Unaware of the king's order, the remainder of the Swiss Guards disposed themselves inside the palace. This time, with a renewed surge of energy, the mob succeeded in storming the palace. Swarming up the staircase, the attackers launched themselves at the guards, many of whom, their ammunition exhausted, grappled hand to hand only to be cut down where they stood.

Louis found himself fighting his way backwards up the grand staircase, shouting commands over his shoulder at his men behind – but retreating, always retreating into the interior. Within minutes the mob had gained the upper hand and roared into the apartments and corridors – wrenching open doors, and streaming into rooms to search out terrified courtiers and servants who huddled, shivering with terror, in their hiding places. Rather than be taken, some of them flung themselves out of the windows, to be smashed on the stones below or, worse, to perish on the pikes massed underneath. The air was thick with screams, and low, monotonous animal shouts of hate, and blood of the dead and injured flowed down the staircase and the corridors.

Outside the palace, the mob set to work despoiling and stripping the bodies which they piled in heaps, impaling the heads on to pikes. Some of the royalist fugitives unwisely tried to make an escape across the gardens, only to be hacked to pieces under the fountains. Others tried to climb up the marble monuments. They were soon prodded down by bayonets and set on by the mob. A few, very few, lucky ones managed to leap out from the queen's room and on to the terrace below, where they made for the dauphin's garden gate and so to safety.

Louis brushed the sweat out of his eyes and tried to stanch the blood from a pike cut on his neck. The last of his men had just fallen with a curdled scream. Below him, the Swiss were either dead or in retreat up the staircase. All around, the bodies of the fallen lay abandoned, and, like broken insects, the wounded tried to crawl to places of safety. The smoke was choking and lay in a thick cloud over the staircase and corridors – looming out of it, the ghostly figures of both attackers and defenders.

But they weren't ghosts, and this was bitter and terrible battle, and Louis knew that the outnumbered royalists, betrayed by their king at a crucial moment and slaughtered in their hundreds, had lost. It was time to rethink.

Louis decided to make a run for it. There was no point in staying any longer and no dishonour in saving himself. He had discharged his duty and there were no more men left to rally. So thinking, he turned and ran two flights up the stairs into a passage that he knew led to the north of the palace and into a narrow corridor, off which led a series of rooms used for storage. Choosing the smallest, Louis pushed open the door and leant panting against it. He would have to force himself to wait until nightfall, if need be, before trying to leave the Tuileries.

By now the mob had discovered the kitchens in the Pavilion de Flore, where they seized an under-cook and pressed him into one of the cauldrons boiling over the furnace. His screams floated out above the uproar and his murderers gorged themselves on food and watched his torment. In the cellars, the once orderly rows of dusty bottles were now a sea of broken glass. Clutching what they could carry, the looters staggered upstairs and collected in the vestibule under the staircase used by the queen, and proceeded to dance amongst the wine and the gore. From somewhere above a violin sounded out, harsh and discordant, followed by a crash as it was smashed to the ground.

Upstairs, men and women ran up and down the corridors, screaming their defiance. The escritoires in the queen's bedroom had been forced open and money, jewels and trinkets were being fought over by some filthy old women. The bed had been torn apart, the great mirror smashed, and someone had brought a hammer down on the clock that had stood on the console table. Plate, books and even chests were dragged to the windows and the contents tipped out to looters waiting below. In the king's apartments, a chandelier was cut from its moorings and went hurtling down in a million flashing pieces while the royal wardrobes were systematically ripped apart.

In the courtyard, a fire had been lit and a group were engaged in roasting the severed limbs of the Swiss Guards over it. Plumes of foul yellow smoke wreathed the August sky and a white rain of feathers drifted silently down from the bedrooms where the quilts and feather-beds were being destroyed. They fell on to the mutilated bodies of the dead, already beginning to putrefy in the sun. Clouds of black flies were gathering, and a sickly-sweet odour of blood and decay mixed with the acrid smoke, making it difficult to breathe.

Louis waited in his hiding place for the sounds of the hunters that, incredibly, never came. Thank God. He had taken the gamble that the layout of Tuileries was so vast and so bewildering that the odds against his being discovered were shortened – or, at the very least, he had bought himself some time.

Later, and he had no idea how much later, the noise abated. A lull fell, fractured now and again by the cries of dying men and by raucous laughter. Louis' instincts told him that the worst must be over. Opening the door, he scanned the corridor. It was empty. Holding his sword in one hand, he worked his way along it towards a staircase that he knew led down towards the west side of the palace and gave access into the gardens.

He was slithering, light-footed as a stoat, down the treads when a noise caused him to jump out of his skin. Bellowing from the chapel came the sound of an organ: great, booming chords that rang through the palace. A revolutionary was informing Paris that the Tuileries was taken.

Louis leapt down the last few stairs and out into the sunlight. He ran down the steps of the terrace and dodged into the trees, making a bee-line for the riding school and the National Assembly. On the Terrasse des Feuillants, he paused to regain his breath and cast a quick look over his shoulder. To his horror, he saw that a party of looters had seen him and were beginning to give chase. Cursing because his uniform had given the game away, Louis put on an added spurt and dived down the passage that led to the riding school.

Once there, he beat on the door. There was no answer, only a terrified moan from inside. In desperation, Louis set his shoulder against it, crying out that he was a soldier of the king, and heaved. It yielded, and Louis fell into the building and on to the doorman who huddled behind it.

‘Bolt it properly, you fool,' he ordered, and made haste to help the man, whose hands were shaking too much to be of any use. It was woefully inadequate, but it would have to do. The riding school had not been intended as a defensive building.

Louis slumped against the wall. Sweat poured down his back and face. When he had got his breath back, he pulled himself upright and walked into the debating chamber where the delegates sat in a petrified silence.

Covered in bloodstains and grime, his uniform in tatters and his face gaunt with emotion and exhaustion, Louis was not a reassuring sight. A ripple of alarm from the hundred or so deputies greeted his entry. Louis searched for the king to salute him but failed to see him either at the president's table or on the benches.

For a moment – just a moment – he thought that, by some miracle, the royal family had got away.

He turned his head – and it was then he knew that all was lost and that happy endings did not exist. The Royal Family had been herded into the tiny shorthand-writer's box set apart from the main body of the room. Directly in front of the box sat Héloïse.

Louis bowed, and the king lifted a hand in acknowledgement. Louis pushed his way through the deputies' benches and delivered a brief report to the king, emphasising the bravery of the Swiss Guards. The king said nothing. Louis gave a more detailed briefing to the president.

It was only then he permitted himself to approach Héloïse. Leaping to her feet and, disregarding the stares of the curious deputies, she clasped his hands to her breast.

‘Thank God,' was all she could say.

Louis stroked her face with his blackened hands and traced the circles of exhaustion that ringed her eyes.

‘Ça va, chérie?'

‘Of course. And you?'

Louis grimaced. ‘As well as could be expected. What is happening here?'

Héloïse sighed and sat down again.

‘You can see. They have been sitting there since nine o'clock this morning. No one has tried to help them or give them anything to eat. I have done the best I could. But they are suffering terribly.'

Since the shorthand-writer's box measured only nine or ten feet square and into it were crammed the king, the queen, Madame Élisabeth, the two royal children and the governess, the long, hot hours must have been excruciating. Although they all sat quietly, and with a touching dignity, the strain and misery on the faces of the royal captives was plain for all to see.

Once or twice, a fusillade of bullets rattled outside and, a little later, shouts echoed from the direction of the Terrasse des Feuillants. Under his breath Louis instructed Héloïse where she could hide if it should be necessary. The deputies moved restlessly in their seats, and the queen did her best to soothe the fractious dauphin whose exhausted sobbing frayed nerves already at snapping point. After a while, the worn-out royal children fell asleep. So did the king who began to snore. The queen remained motionless, wiping her forehead now and again with her handkerchief. No one dared to offer the royal family any refreshment, not even so much as a glass of water, until, infuriated by the deputies' cowardice, Héloïse went over to the president and begged that he should permit her to offer the jug of lemonade which stood on his table to Their Majesties. After some hesitation, the president agreed and Héloïse had the satisfaction of seeing the queen's discomfort relieved a little.

Dusk fell, bringing with it a measure of relief, and the evening light began to camouflage nerve-racked countenances and cool the furnace of the air. With the threat of violence receding, the tension lessened. Nevertheless, nobody in the riding school was under any illusion that the king and queen were anything but prisoners of the Assembly. At midnight, Louis decided he must do something. Fighting his battle-stiffness and a raging thirst, he approached the president who was sweating profusely.

‘I think the fighting is over,' he told him. ‘It would be best if we tried to convey Their Majesties somewhere for the night.'

The president agreed with Louis and beckoned to a couple of deputies. They all conferred and it was decided that it would be advisable if the king and queen spent the night in the Feuillants Convent. Louis elected at once to escort the party. Indeed, it was expected of him. He went over to offer his arm to Marie-Antoinette. The queen swayed as she rose and nearly fell but checked herself in time.

The royal party filed out of the box. Sweat stained the once dainty robes of the royal ladies and soaked the king's purple suit, and the dauphin whimpered in distress. But, only too glad to be released from their confinement, they went quietly enough.

The convent was only a short walk across a garden and the night air offered a welcome, if all too brief, balm. Louis was to remember that journey as one of the hardest tasks he had ever undertaken for he understood only too well that he was leading his sovereign into captivity. Depleted though she was from her incarceration, the queen walked behind the king but insisted, nevertheless, that she carry her son. For her part, Héloïse took the hand of Madame Royale and was shocked at how pitifully it trembled in hers.

The gloom inside the ancient Feuillants building was unrelieved. Somehow, and Louis never knew how, someone had already procured some dirty – and probably verminous – mattresses which they had thrown on to the truckle beds in the nun's cells. The British ambassadress had also contrived to send over clothes and linen for the dauphin and a former minister to the king had risked his servant's life to send a fresh suit for the king. Otherwise there was little else. Louis stood guard as Héloïse did the best she could to make the beds comfortable. Voices notified the arrival of the Duc de Poix and the Duc de Choiseul, who had been summoned by the Assembly. They announced that they would stand watch until the morning, when the royal family would be escorted back to the riding school. There was nothing more Louis could do.

He stood in front of his sovereigns – was it the last time? - and bowed to them as they sat, beaten and exhausted, on their uncomfortable mattresses. The king stirred himself to thank Louis for his loyalty and courage and gave him leave to make for the royalist armies assembling on the French borders.

Louis found it difficult to speak. Struggling for control, the queen offered him a hand to kiss and, removing one of her diamond rings from her fingers, she gave it to Héloïse. Héloïse clenched her hand so hard around it that the stones bit into her flesh. She curtsied her thanks with tears running down her face. Héloïse's last memory of Marie-Antoinette was of the queen stretched out on her truckle bed crying with jagged, gasping sobs.

Once outside, Héloïse sagged against the wall. She closed her eyes and felt her legs turn to water.

‘I can't go any further.'

‘Nor can I,' said Louis.

He held her against him for a moment. ‘Let me think.' Picking her up, he carried her down the corridor and into a cell at the end of the passage. It was pitch dark, and he swore as he tried to find a place to lay her down. Héloïse clung to Louis, and willed herself not to faint. She managed to stay upright while Louis stripped off his coat and shirt and spread them on the floor. Then he unfastened her robe, eased it tenderly from her body and laid it on top of his improvised bed. Remembering another occasion when he had undressed her like this, Héloïse sank to the floor without a sound and allowed him to loosen her stays and strip off her stockings.

Gradually, the buzzing in her head quietened. The air on her naked limbs was like cool water. She sighed and lay still. Louis moved around the cell in stockinged feet and eventually lay down beside her. His sword clanked briefly in the darkness.