The Blue Rose

by Kate Forsyth

  She went in search of her father, and found him drinking brandy and playing cards with the duke.

  ‘If I may speak with you, monsieur?’ she asked, her hands folded, her eyes downcast, Luna pressed close to her leg.

  ‘If you must,’ her father answered. ‘Please excuse me, Vadim.’

  The duke stood, smoothing the wrinkles of his fine velvet coat. ‘Of course, César.’ He bowed to Viviane. ‘Good night, my dear. I look forward to the day when we shall be married.’ His eyes lingered on her body in a way that made Viviane feel sick.

  ‘I will not marry him,’ she burst out, as soon as the duke had left the room. ‘You cannot compel me.’

  ‘Oh, but I can,’ her father replied.

  ‘You can beat me as much as you like, or drag me to the altar by force, but I will never consent.’

  ‘There is no need for me to use such crude and violent methods,’ the marquis replied. ‘You will do as you are bid. You are a minor, and so subject to my will.’

  Her legs were trembling but she tried to stiffen them. ‘It is not the Dark Ages! There is nothing you can do to make me.’

  ‘I am sure you will see reason once the alternatives are explained to you.’

  ‘Send me to a convent if you must,’ she cried. ‘I’d rather by far take the veil than marry a man I do not love.’

  He smiled. ‘I have in my possession a lettre du cachet, signed by the king and one of his ministers, for use as I see fit. With its power, I can have you confined in La Salpêtrière in Paris, the prison for harlots and prostitutes. It is not a pleasant place. Filthy, overrun with rats, filled to the brim with the most hardened and diseased women of the street, all forced to work at the most degrading work possible. You would stay there as long as you refuse to do my bidding. Till death, if need be.’

  Viviane clasped her hands together. ‘I think you must be mad.’

  ‘I do not like my will to be crossed,’ he replied, still with that faint smile on his lips. ‘Besides, your marriage to the Duc de Savageaux has been arranged to settle what might be called a debt of honour.’

  Her face felt stiff. ‘A debt? Of honour? You gambled me away?’

  He made a tiny gesture. ‘Must you be so blunt? Cultivate some finesse, I beg of you. The Duc de Savageaux likes to play high. Last spring, I won a great deal of money from him. This winter he won it back. And now that gambling has been banned at the palace, and the king has abolished so many of our rightful positions and privileges, there is little opportunity for Madame Fortune to smile on me again. The duke has graciously agreed to forgive me my debts in return for your hand in marriage. Your hand, and all your lands, of course. We are all burned to the socket and must recoup our losses any way we can.’

  ‘I will not marry him. Send me to prison if you must. I do not care.’

  Her father rose and strolled towards her, swinging his beribboned cane in such a way to make her flinch. He smiled and pinched her chin hard between his fingers. ‘I never thought you a fool, Viviane. You may be condemned in public as a whore and sent to the worst prison in the country, or you may become a duchess. The choice is yours.’

  Viviane was finding it hard to breathe. Luna whined and looked up at her, her ears and tail sunk low.

  The marquis suddenly gave his cane a vicious twist. The ornate silver head twisted free and, with a faint hissing noise, he drew out a slim rapier. He seized Luna’s amber collar with one hand and pressed the sharp point to her throat so that blood welled up through her white fur. The puppy yelped and shrank away, but the marquis pressed the blade deeper.

  ‘Your dog offends me. It is an affront to our noble blood that my daughter should choose a crippled dog as a pet. Defy me, and it will die now. Bend your knee to me, and I will let the animal live.’

  Viviane sank to her knees, her arm about the whimpering hound. ‘Don’t kill her. I beg you.’

  ‘So you will marry the duke?’ The marquis drew the rapier away, but kept it raised as if for a killing blow.

  Viviane said unsteadily, ‘What other choice do I have?’

  Her father sheathed his sword. ‘I knew you would see sense. Next Sunday the banns shall be called. In three weeks, you shall be married.’

  Viviane’s hands were shaking so much she could not strike a spark from her flint. At last a tiny flicker of flame leapt out, and she was able to light the candles.

  She set the candelabra in the library window.

  It was very late and very cold. Would David be watching for her? Or did he feel such a disgust for her that he no longer cared?

  She saw a dark figure step from the shadows and raise a hand to her. Her knees weakened with relief. She had to sit down, her arms about her dog’s neck.

  A few minutes later, the hidden door swung open and David stepped through, taking off his three-cornered hat and shaking it free of snow. He was dressed in his long boots and greatcoat, the collar turned up, his leather gloves jammed in its deep pocket.

  She flew into his arms.

  ‘You cannot marry him!’ He kissed her roughly, angrily.

  ‘I won’t! I won’t. I’d rather die.’

  ‘But will your father not beat you again? Viviane, you cannot stay here. He will hurt you.’

  ‘No, no, we have to go. I should’ve gone before. I did not think … I did not know how low he would stoop. Oh David, we have to go. Now!’

  ‘Are you sure? I can offer you so little!’

  ‘You are all I want, all I need. Please!’

  He caught her to him and kissed her fiercely.

  ‘What a pretty scene,’ a drawling voice said from the doorway. ‘I am so sorry but I feel as if I must interrupt.’

  David and Viviane spun about.

  The Marquis de Valaine stood smiling at them. ‘Englishman, I fear that you seek to steal something that is mine. I must protest. Unhand my daughter, and prepare to die.’

  And with a swift twist and hiss, the sword sprang free from its concealment.

  ‘No!’ Viviane backed away, dragging David with her. ‘I won’t let you.’

  ‘How do you propose to stop me?’ The marquis sprang forward, the sword flashing.

  Luna leapt, snarling, and the marquis staggered back. Viviane darted forward and twisted the carved rose to open the hidden door. David caught her hand in his, and together they ducked their heads to enter. David, slightly ahead, put up his left hand to brace himself on the wall. The marquis struck out wildly with his sword. David cried in sudden shock and pain. Blood ran down his wrist, staining his cuff.

  Then the marquis caught Viviane by her tumbling curls and dragged her back.

  ‘Please,’ she sobbed, struggling against her father’s vicious hold. ‘He will kill you. Go!’

  She fought free and pushed David with all her strength through the door, then slammed it shut behind him.

  ‘Open it!’ the marquis cried.

  Viviane shook her head.

  Her father plunged his sword into Luna’s breast. Blood sprayed out.

  The marquis ran for the door. ‘I will catch him and I will kill him, and then you shall do as you are bid.’

  Viviane cradled Luna in her arms, sobbing.

  A gleam of something gold caught her eye.

  She reached out one shaking hand.

  On the floor lay a severed finger, encircled by a fleur-de-lis ring.

  Part II

  Blue Murder

  May 1789 – September 1792

  Blue Murder: To shout blue murder. Indicative … of terror or alarm … It appears to be a play on the French exclamation morbleu.

  The Reverend Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

  Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898)

  10

  Fretted

  28 April – 5 May 1789

  The Palace of Versailles was a gilded cage, and Viviane a pinioned bird within.

  She stood silently, braced against the weight of her immense hooped skirts, bruised in spirit and in flesh. The vestibule was crowded with pe
ople. Most were, like her, bedecked in gaudy court dress. Some wore shabby homespuns, hired swords buckled around their waists.

  Viviane could not meet anyone’s eyes. It felt as if her misery was an open sore that all must see and mock.

  Her wedding ring fretted her finger.

  Her husband, the Duc de Savageaux, stood beside her, swinging his quizzing glass from one languid hand. He wore orange velvet embroidered with gold at the cuffs, lace at his throat and wrists. His red heels were so high and his white wig so tall, he towered above the crush of people. His lined face was heavily painted, with reddened lips, rouged cheeks and black patches affixed to his temple and cheekbone.

  Viviane’s father was as magnificent as always in a long, gold-embroidered red coat and matching waistcoat, with a daring red velvet patch in the shape of a heart glued near the corner of his thin mouth.

  Clothilde looked sulky and bored despite her exquisite gown of embroidered silk. Madame de Ravoisier just looked hot. Her round face was flushed and perspiring, and she fanned herself frantically. Her wig today was pale lavender, to match her vast satin dress.

  The crowd began to stir. ‘The king! The queen! They’re coming.’

  A billowing wave of bows and curtsies.

  Viviane saw only a glimpse. The king, stout and ungainly, with a bulbous red nose and grey powdered hair in thick artificial curls on either side of his broad face. The queen, pale under her rouge, red-rimmed eyes downcast, tall white ostrich plumes nodding from her coiffure. Louis-Charles, the youngest of the royal children, marched at her side. He was a bright-eyed four-year-old, with ash-blond ringlets and a tiny sword by his side. Unlike his parents, he looked about him with curiosity and occasionally waved his pudgy hand at the crowd.

  Behind the king and queen walked the eleven-year-old princess, Marie-Thérèse, looking like a sullen-faced china doll with long powdered curls, round blue eyes and bee-stung lips. She was dressed, like her mother, à la grand panier, her velvet court dress extending a foot to either side of her tiny waist. It must have weighed almost as much as she did. Viviane felt a pang of pity for the little girl, bound as tightly by the rigorous etiquette of the court as she was by her stiffly boned stays.

  Another girl paraded alongside the princess, dressed as richly. She was the daughter of a chambermaid. After her mother died, the girl had been adopted by the queen. She slept in the same room as Marie-Thérèse, ate her meals with her, and was taught the same lessons.

  Clothilde whispered behind her fan, ‘They say the little mademoiselle is the baseborn daughter of the king and that is why she is honoured so.’

  Madame de Ravoisier snorted with derision. ‘Well, I have it on the very best authority that none of the children are the king’s! All the court knows he has no interest in bed sport.’

  Clothilde giggled. ‘Only in playing with locks and keys.’ She turned to Viviane. ‘Did you know he had a forge installed in the palace grounds? With anvils and hammers and everything!’

  ‘At least with a lock, he knows where to find the keyhole,’ Madame de Ravoisier said with a loud laugh.

  Clothilde rapped her arm with her folded fan. ‘Madame! I am shocked.’

  Viviane did not speak. Gossip and scandal was all she heard at Versailles. Some said Marie-Antoinette had taken a Swedish count named Axel von Fersen as her lover, and that he was the father of her youngest son, Louis-Charles. Others said that it was the king’s dissipated youngest brother, the Comte d’Artois, who warmed her bed. Even more scandalous was the suggestion, repeated everywhere, that Marie-Antoinette’s lovers were her closest friends, the Duchesse de Polignac and the Princesse de Lamballe. Scurrilous pamphlets with titles like The Royal Orgy poured out of Paris, filled with images of the queen lifting her skirts for her lovers. In one pamphlet, a knight, a bishop, a baron and a marquis took turns having bed sport with the queen while the court looked on.

  It seemed impossible to Viviane. Marie-Antoinette was never alone, not even when she slept, for one of her ladies-in-waiting was always present, in case the queen woke thirsty or bored. Living at Versailles was like being under the constant glare of a thousand chandeliers. No matter where you went, no matter how hard you tried to find a moment to be alone, a crowd of people would soon be tramping past, giggling and gossiping and quizzing your every step.

  No wonder the queen looked so tense and white, Viviane thought.

  Though the queen had other sorrows to contend with. Her eldest son, Louis-Joseph, the seven-year-old dauphin, was not part of the procession. He was ill, and so kept at Château de Meudon, some five miles away, where the air was thought to be sweeter. Marie-Antoinette had spent most of the past few months there with him, but had returned to Versailles in preparation for the meeting of the Estates General in a fortnight.

  A thin young man in a worn black coat and broken-down shoes pushed his way through the throng. His shaggy dark hair hung about his haggard face, uncombed and unpowdered. His eyes burned with fervour.

  ‘Your Majesty!’ he cried. ‘The Third Estate d-d-demands that we be … be … be …’ His mouth contorted as he tried to force out the words. ‘… permitted to … v-v-vote by head!’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Else the mee … meeting of the … Estates General will be n-n-nothing but a … a farce. A charade. A m-m-mockery!’

  He shouted the words at the king’s back, for Louis did not even pause or turn to look at him, but walked on as if the man was invisible and his words soundless.

  ‘Ignore us at your … your own p-p-peril!’ the young man shouted. ‘The v-v-voice of the Third Estate sh … sh … shall be heard!’

  ‘Not if you are their voice,’ the marquis said with a sneer.

  The young man stumbled back, his jutting cheekbones hectic with angry colour. He glared around at the watching courtiers, muttered something unintelligible and turned abruptly to leave, brushing against the Duc de Savageaux’s arm.

  ‘Must we rub elbows with the canaille?’ the duke sighed, withdrawing a laced-edge handkerchief from his pocket and dusting his sleeve. ‘Really, Versailles has grown to be such a bore. César, I think I shall go to Vincennes for the day and watch the horse races.’

  ‘That should be amusing,’ Clothilde replied eagerly. ‘I hear the Duc d’Orléans is racing against the Comte d’Artois. The stakes will be high.’

  ‘Oh, I think not,’ the marquis replied. He clamped his fingers about her arm. ‘You would be fatigued by the heat and the noise, my dear, and we do not wish that. You have other, more pressing duties to perform.’

  Clothilde tried hard to suppress her distaste. ‘But it is so boring here,’ she faltered.

  ‘I am sure we shall find another way to amuse ourselves,’ the marquis said.

  She shrank back a little, and tried to protest again.

  ‘I have made my decision,’ her husband answered coldly. ‘Your only concern must be providing me with an heir, madame.’

  ‘Yes, monsieur,’ she answered in a low voice, staring at the floor.

  ‘Perhaps we should stay at Versailles too, my dear,’ the duke said, smiling.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ Viviane answered clearly. ‘Much as I hate the races.’

  The racecourse was as dirty, crowded and noisy as Viviane had feared.

  Much of the court had flocked to Vincennes, where they could gamble as much as they liked without incurring the king’s displeasure. Many stared at Viviane and whispered to each other behind their fans.

  ‘Must you always look so sour?’ her husband said. ‘Your face is enough to turn the milk.’

  Viviane did not answer.

  He took her elbow in his hand, squeezing it cruelly. She tried to endure in silence. Her skin would show his dark fingerprints later. She had many such marks under her clothes, where no-one could see.

  ‘Smile,’ he whispered. ‘Or I shall make you weep later.’

  She did not smile.

  At last the day was over, and Viviane could take refuge in the duke’s carriage. They
were to spend the night at his Parisian residence, a luxurious townhouse on the Place Royale in Le Marais. It was not such a fashionable address as it had once been, but the de Gagnon family had owned a house there since the early 1600s.

  They drove into the city as twilight began to fall. Narrow alleyways ran between crooked buildings stained with soot. Open sewers seeped down to the river, where emaciated children in rags dug through the filth. Pigs rooted through piles of refuse. Viviane pressed her hand over her nose, trying to block the smell.

  The carriage turned into the Rue Saint-Antoine, and she saw the great hulk of the Bastille looming against the tarnished sky. She became aware of a swelling noise, like the rumble of a gigantic threshing machine. Shouts and screams, then a sudden explosion.

  ‘What is it, what’s happening?’ Viviane dragged down the window and looked out.

  Over the rooftops she could see the glare of red fire. The air was acrid with smoke. People ran along the road, carrying makeshift weapons.

  The duke thrust his head out the window. ‘Sacré diable! It’s a riot.’

  Further down the road, hundreds of people struggled against blue-clad soldiers. Many carried fiery torches, the flames glinting in the shards of broken glass in the gutter. Piles of broken furniture and bolts of brocade wallpaper burned on street corners. Straw effigies of men in silk coats were hoisted high on pikes and set on fire.

  ‘Down with the rich! Down with the aristos!’

  Some men saw the duke’s coach and ran towards it, banging on its lacquered sides with their wooden staves. One thrust his grinning face in the window. He had a pistol clenched in his red-knuckled hand.

  ‘Help a poor working man!’ he cried. ‘I’ve got a family to feed.’

  With an expression of distaste, the duke drew out his purse and pressed a few sous into the grimy hand.

  ‘That’s not enough. My family are starving.’ He leant forward and seized the duke’s purse. ‘Give me your watch too! And those pretty jewels.’