The Blue Rose

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘This is an outrage! To be robbed blind on the streets of Paris, in my own carriage.’ The duke unfastened his watch and chain and held it out at arm’s length. The man snatched it.

  Viviane shrank back. Quickly she slipped off the rose-enamelled ring David had given her and thrust it into her pocket.

  Then she said, in a clear voice, ‘Here is my wedding ring. You are welcome to it. I hope you can sell it and feed your little ones.’

  She handed the heavy golden ring to the man, who took it eagerly. The duke was tense with fury, but Viviane did not care. She wished she could give away all that he had given her, the trappings of her ensnarement.

  Other men were jostling the coach, rattling the windows, banging on the roof with sticks.

  ‘Vive le Tiers!’ they shouted. ‘Long live the Third Estate!’

  ‘Toast the Third Estate with us!’ A woman thrust a dusty bottle of wine in through the coach window.

  The duke refused angrily, but Viviane leant forward and took the wine bottle. She lifted it high, cried, ‘Vive le Tiers!’ then drank a mouthful.

  The crowd roared with appreciation. ‘Bless your pretty face,’ the woman said, taking the bottle back and draining it dry.

  Laughing and shouting, the crowd surged on.

  ‘Your father told me you had a taste for low company.’ The duke’s voice was cold and contemptuous. ‘You will not drink a glass of wine with me, but are happy to do so with a filthy woman from the gutter.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Viviane replied, meeting his gaze coolly.

  The duke was white lipped with anger. He rapped on the roof of the carriage with his cane, leaning out the window to shout at the coachman. ‘Get us away from here, now!’

  But the carriage could not move, surrounded as it was on all sides by shouting, jostling people. Viviane heard the cry ‘Vive le Tiers!’ repeated again and again.

  Gunfire rang out. The crowd howled in anger. Viviane craned her neck to see. The Garde Française had their rifles raised, smoke billowing above their cocked hats. Stones and tiles and refuse rained down on their heads from the windows and rooftops of the buildings nearby. Then a cannon fired. A young man was hurled backwards. He crashed into the ground. Blood snaked away from his skull.

  Viviane gasped. She had never seen anyone killed before. She pressed both hands to her mouth.

  ‘Away! Away!’ the duke commanded, rapping on the roof of his carriage with his cane. The coachman turned into a narrow side street, the wheels clattering over cobblestones. People ran alongside the coach, shouting, but the coachman cracked his whip and they fell back.

  At last the carriage made it safely to the duke’s townhouse. The sound of shouting and screaming and smashing continued long into the night, interrupted by bursts of gunfire. Viviane could not sleep. She paced the floor of her room, trying to steady her breath, her hands clenched. Tears slid down her face.

  She thought of the young man flying backwards through the air. His body, limp and broken. A woman would be weeping for him tonight. His mother, or his sister, or his sweetheart.

  Viviane could not stop crying. It was as if the explosion had cracked the glass box which had encased her so long.

  ‘David,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, David.’

  ‘Your lover is dead,’ her father had told her. ‘The ice broke beneath him and he drowned.’

  Viviane had not been able to speak.

  She saw it all in her mind’s eye. David running. The hunt galloping after him, horses blowing steam into the night air, dogs yelping. David driven on to the frozen stream. Stumbling. The ice cracking. Falling. Struggling to keep his head above black water. His strength failing. His body sinking away. Her father and the duke watching from their horses’ backs, laughing. Doing nothing to save him.

  She had laid her head back down on Luna’s bloodstained fur.

  ‘You will be married as soon as the banns have been read,’ her father had told her.

  Viviane did what she was told.

  She did not know if Luna had survived. She had sewn the wound closed with her embroidery silks, but it had been deep. Her father had taken her away the very next day, galloping through the snow in his great golden carriage, the duke watching her with hot, possessive eyes.

  Viviane had begged Pierrick to write to her, and tell her how Luna fared.

  She had received no letter.

  She had buried David’s severed finger in the garden, under the statue of the Lover. She kept his fleur-de-lis ring sewn inside her chemise, over her heart.

  It was warm to touch.

  A weary lassitude weighted her limbs.

  ‘You will get up,’ her husband said to her, ‘and you will dress as befits a duchess, and you will say all that you ought, and try not to disgrace my name.’

  Viviane lay in bed. She hurt all over.

  The duke raised his hand. She flinched back.

  ‘Get up,’ he repeated.

  Viviane obeyed.

  It was the 4th of May, and Viviane was to be part of the procession that would lead through the streets of Versailles to mark the opening of the Estates General.

  Her maid Yvette was waiting with curling tongs and pots of pomade and powder. Viviane submitted to being swathed in a powdering gown, and her hair roughly rubbed with scented pomade and then set in stiff curls. Yvette held the hot tongs too close to her scalp, so that Viviane cried out with pain, and the air filled with the smell of scorched hair.

  ‘Please be careful,’ Viviane said, wondering that a Parisian maid should be so ham-fisted.

  Yvette huffed out an angry breath, and then dug the hairpins in deep as she pinned up Viviane’s curls. She then pumped so much powder onto Viviane’s hair that Viviane could not help coughing, even though she had hidden her face in a cone of thick paper.

  As Yvette flounced away, Viviane wondered if the pretty young maid-servant had been, perhaps, her husband’s mistress. She could think of no other reason for her petulance. Viviane wished she could tell Yvette that she was welcome to the duke’s attentions.

  The maid returned with vast panniers, and tied them about Viviane’s waist. Then Viviane’s corset was tightened with such ruthless strength all the breath was crushed from her lungs. Even as she opened her mouth to protest, she was smothered in stiff heavy folds of gold-embroidered red brocade. The skirt was so wide Viviane would have to turn sideways to walk through a door. Her feet were shoved into matching shoes, tight and pointed with perilously high red heels, and ostrich plumes were jammed into her towering coiffure. Thick bands of rubies were fastened tight about her wrists and neck, and dangled from her ears, and glittered from her fingers.

  ‘Now you look like a duchess, madame,’ Yvette said with thinly disguised malice.

  ‘I’d much rather not,’ Viviane flashed back.

  Her maid made a disbelieving snort, and snapped open a chicken-skin fan for Viviane to carry.

  The royal couple walked at the head of the parade, with the king in cloth-of-gold and the queen dressed in silver-embroidered silk, the famous Sancy diamond in her hair. Walking beside her mother was Marie-Thérèse, her china-doll face set impassively. Behind glided the queen’s favourites, the Princesse de Lamballe and the Duchesse de Polignac, their silk dresses rustling over the cobblestones, their wide-brimmed hats laden with feathers and ribbons. Both were fair with blue eyes, but they could not have been more different. The princess was slender and delicate, with a sweet face and sorrowful eyes. The duchess’s colouring was far more vivid, and her step more vigorous. She looked around at the crowd with great interest, and laughed and waved as they cheered the royal party.

  Behind walked the deputies of the Estates General. The clergy in long soutanes. The nobility in black silk coats and white satin breeches, cloaks lined with gold flung over their shoulders, white plumed hats on their powdered wigs, ornately wrought swords at their hips. The commoners at the back, in plain black wool.

  ‘Vive le Tiers! Vive le Tiers!’ the crowd shouted. The sound
made Viviane flinch, reminding her of the riot in Paris.

  The cheers for the Third Estate were punctuated with loud shouts for the king’s cousin, the Duc d’Orléans, who had caused a stir by choosing to walk with the commoners. He was taller than the other men by more than a head. He waved his plumed hat at the crowd, laughing, as they shouted, ‘Vive Duc d’Orléans!’

  The ovations were much louder for him than they were for the king and queen. Indeed, one woman surged towards the queen and shouted the words right into her face, causing the queen to stumble. The Princesse de Lamballe hurried to support her, her pale skin flushing, while the Duchesse de Polignac cried aloud in indignation.

  ‘Why do the crowds cheer the duke so?’ Viviane asked Clothilde, who was walking beside her.

  Clothilde looked at her in surprise. ‘Good Lord, she speaks!’

  Viviane flushed. ‘I speak if I must,’ she answered stiffly. ‘I am new here at Versailles. I know no-one else to ask.’

  ‘Why, thank you for the compliment!’ Clothilde answered. ‘So glad to know my new step-daughter speaks to me only because she has no-one else with whom to converse.’

  Viviane pressed her lips together, refusing to be drawn into bickering.

  After a moment Clothilde said, ‘Well, I suppose stupid questions are better than the stony silence with which you have greeted me so far.’

  She gave an exaggerated sigh, and began to explain in slow loud tones, as if Viviane was a dim-witted child. ‘The Duc d’Orléans was once a close friend of the queen’s, but she made the mistake of mocking him when he boasted of his victories against the English in the American war. The Duc d’Orléans is very proud, and never forgave her. Then he spoke out against the king in Parlement, something no prince of the blood has ever done before. The king was furious. He banished the duke to his country estate. The people felt that Orléans had become their champion, and so they began to cheer him. He finds their adulation intoxicating, as you can see. And he enjoys stirring up trouble.’

  ‘But does he wish for reform?’ Viviane asked.

  Clothilde glanced at her. ‘He wishes for power.’

  Just then the procession passed the royal stables. The king and queen looked up and smiled, waving their hands to a velvet-clad child lying on a sofa on one of the balconies. He was painfully thin and white, with sores about his mouth. The sight of him smote Viviane’s heart. The young dauphin did not look as if he had much longer to live.

  ‘Poor little boy,’ she murmured.

  ‘It is hard for the queen,’ Clothilde replied. ‘She lost her baby daughter not so long ago, and now the dauphin is dying.’

  It was awful to see the dauphin so sick. All of France had celebrated his birth, which had occurred a few weeks after Viviane and Pierrick’s fourteenth birthdays. There had been fireworks in Paris. Pierrick and Viviane had wanted to go, but of course had not been permitted. So Pierrick had made his own fireworks. He had discovered the recipe in an old book, and had experimented in secret for days. Charcoal was easy enough to get, and he had extracted saltpetre from the contents of the château’s chamber-pots, and stolen some sulphur from the weavers’ cottages, who used soda ash to bleach the linen white. He had also ground up the seeds of a low-growing plant called clubmoss or wolf’s foot, which sent out spurts of fire when shaken through the flame of a brimstone match. For a few mad hours, Pierrick and Viviane had set the dark sky ablaze. Pierrick had burned off his eyebrows and Viviane had scorched her dress, and they had both been whipped, but it had been worth it.

  The procession crossed the Place d’Armes, and finished at the church of Saint-Louis, where Monseigneur de La Fare, bishop of Nancy, was to say the Mass. He took the chance to deliver a long and furious tirade against the royal court, and the queen in particular, calling her mock farmyard at the Hameau ‘a puerile imitation of nature’ and castigating her folly and extravagance. The king appeared to have fallen asleep. The queen sat motionless, her lips pressed together tightly. When he had finished, the audience broke into spontaneous applause, something Viviane had never heard happen in a church before.

  The next day more than a thousand people crammed into the Salle des Menus-Plaisirs, a great vaulted hall lined with marble pillars where the meeting of the Estates General was to be held. As the king and queen entered the hall, the deputies of the Third Estate remained on their feet, refusing to kneel. The king paused, nonplussed, then – after a long awkward moment – proceeded to his throne at the far end of the hall. He gestured to his wife to be seated also. Her head held proudly high, Marie-Antoinette curtsied deeply before him, acknowledging his sovereignty as the Third Estate had refused to do. Many of the nobles applauded and called out ‘Vive la Reine!’

  The deputies of the Third Estate maintained an icy silence.

  It was hard to believe. Royal etiquette demanded that the king’s throne be bowed to, even when he did not sit there. The monarchy had ruled in France for over thirteen hundred years. Never before had the French people refused to bow to their king.

  Viviane felt a sickening twist of fear in the pit of her stomach.

  11

  Death Mask

  4–27 June 1789

  A month later the dauphin died.

  The king and queen stayed in seclusion for the next few days, grieving together.

  On the 7th of June, all those who had been presented at court were permitted to express their condolences. Dressed in a black mantle, Viviane joined the long queue filing through the gallery, offering their condolences to the king and queen. Marie-Antoinette’s face was pale as a death mask. She seemed not to see the gloomy procession passing before her. Her youngest child, Louis-Charles, was honoured as the new dauphin. He was only four years old. Looking troubled and unsure, he clutched the hilt of his little sword. His sister Marie-Thérèse stood silently, but her sensitive lips trembled.

  ‘I am so sorry.’ Viviane curtsied to the queen. ‘Please receive my sincere regrets.’

  Her voice quivered with emotion. The queen seemed to see her for the first time. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

  A commotion occurred when some deputies of the Third Estate arrived, once again asking for an audience with the king.

  ‘Are there no fathers amongst you?’ the king cried out.

  ‘Is the State not as sick as your son was?’ one deputy answered contemptuously.

  Once, the death of the dauphin would have plunged the whole country into mourning, but the business of the Estates General was too urgent to be set aside. Within two weeks, the Third Estate had declared itself a National Assembly and began to talk about creating a constitution to limit the powers of the king and his nobles.

  The Duc de Savageaux was white-lipped with fury. He strode about their apartment, his hand clenched on the handle of his riding crop, hissing imprecations against those damned impertinent lawyers and bureaucrats, who dared try to curb their betters. He lashed out and smashed a priceless Sèvres vase, then strode from the room. He would go hunting with the king, Viviane knew, and take his vicious temper out on the wild creatures of the forest.

  The duke had once been at the centre of the court, along with Viviane’s father. They had been the closest friends of Louis XV, the present king’s grandfather, a hard-drinking, hard-riding gambler famous for his many young and beautiful mistresses. When Louis XV had died and his young grandson had inherited the throne, the duke and the marquis had found themselves out of favour. Louis XVI was a simple devout man who did not like to drink or gamble.

  The king, however, loved to hunt. So Viviane’s husband and father never missed a day. Their fearlessness in the saddle and ruthlessness in the kill endeared them to the king. Perhaps they reminded Louis of his dissolute but charming grandfather.

  Viviane hated blood sports. Her sympathies were always for the hunted. Yet now, in Versailles, she was grateful for it. Hunting took her husband away from her for many hours of the day. It left Viviane free to walk in the gardens or sit in the shade of a tree and read. Sh
e pored over the daily accounts of the Estates General, fascinated and fearful at the same time, wondering that the commoners dared to so challenge the king’s authority and yet secretly cheering them on. It made her feel closer to David. He too had believed in the right of all humans to be free.

  One day Viviane did not have the strength to get up out of bed and go through the long and tedious ceremony of dressing and having her hair done. She dismissed her maid Yvette, and stayed in bed and read. Rain drizzled against the window.

  When Viviane had finished her book, she lay quietly for a while, dull and dispirited. Boredom eventually drove her to rise and walk about her room and stare out the window. She could not dress herself in court attire or powder her own hair. So she found an old muslin dress in her trunk, and combed her own curls and tied them back with a riband, and threw a warm shawl Briaca had once knitted for her about her shoulders.

  Viviane intended only to go and find a new book to read, but as she made her way through the crowded halls of Versailles, she found to her amazement that she was now, miraculously, invisible. No-one recognised the Duchesse de Savageaux in the simply-dressed young woman with loose dark curls. She thought to test the limits of this new invisibility and went out into the courtyard, and then through the golden gates and into the town. No-one stopped her. No-one noticed her at all.

  Footsteps quickening, Viviane set out to explore. Rain came and went in gusts, and she drew the shawl over her head.

  A commotion in the distance caught her attention. Viviane turned that way, curious. She saw a group of men, in the dark coats of the commoners, jostling about a door that was guarded by stiff-backed soldiers in the king’s colours.

  ‘Th-this is an … an … outrage!’ someone cried. Viviane recognised the stammering voice of the young man who had accosted the king in the palace. She went a little closer.