The Blue Rose

by Kate Forsyth

  The sound of drums. The tramping of feet. A low ominous grumble like a thunderstorm. Viviane leapt up, pressing herself to the rain-washed glass. A great crowd of women marched towards the palace, damp, dirty and bedraggled. The leaders were foul-mouthed fishwives, dressed in bloody aprons, their gutting knives and cleavers stuck through their belts. Others looked like ladies of the night, in dishevelled gowns of shiny satin and drooping feathers. Cannons were dragged along by rope, and many of the accompanying men sported muskets slung over their shoulders.

  ‘Bread! Bread!’ they shouted. ‘Give us bread!’

  Viviane turned and ran through the state apartments, bursting into the Galerie des Glaces, her skirts bunched up in her hands. ‘They’re here!’

  Her voice cut through the uproar. Everyone rushed down the state rooms to look out the windows.

  The Royal Flanders regiment were lined in the palace courtyard, weapons at the ready. They looked nervous, Viviane thought, her face pressed against the window. They must know the crowd thought they had desecrated the sacred cockade.

  ‘Give us the Austrian whore!’ one woman shouted.

  Viviane caught her breath, unable to believe anyone could speak of the queen with such flagrant disrespect.

  ‘We’ll hang her from the lamp-post!’ Another woman held high a ragdoll hanging limply from a broken neck.

  The fishwives flapped their bloody pinafores. ‘We’ll fill our aprons with her entrails and make ourselves cockades!’

  ‘We’ll slit her gizzard!’

  The queen was pale and trembling. ‘We should have fled,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, my little ones. What have I done?’

  ‘Bread! Bread! Give us bread.’ The chant was incessant.

  Eventually twelve women were chosen to meet with the king. They were brought up to the Salon de l’Oeil-de-Boeuf, named for its small round window, thought to resemble a bull’s eye. The women had been chosen for their cleanliness and decorum. They looked around them in awe, overcome at the opulence of the gilded halls.

  Pierrette Chabry, a delicate young flower seller, was so dazed she fainted at the foot of the king. Louis gestured that she be lifted up. One of the ladies-in-waiting burnt some feathers under her nose to rouse her. At last her dark eyelashes fluttered open. She moaned a little.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Louis asked.

  ‘Bread,’ she replied tearfully.

  Louis called for food and wine, and then ordered bread from the palace kitchens to be distributed amongst the crowd. In awe and gratitude, the women retreated, only to come back fifteen minutes later, truculent and defiant, asking for the king’s promise of bread to be given in writing.

  One of the guards reported they had heard the fishwives shouting, ‘Go back to the palace and tell them we will be there soon to hack off the queen’s head.’

  ‘We need to leave here,’ Marie-Antoinette cried. ‘It’s too dangerous … my children …’

  Orders were given for the royal family to escape through the gardens. Viviane began to hastily pack the queen’s bags.

  Ashen-faced, the guards reported back that the harnesses for the king’s carriages had all been cut. There was to be no escape.

  The wind had risen. Rain lashed the palace. It soaked the thousands that fumed outside the palace gates. Courtiers paced up and down the Galerie des Glaces, unable to sit still for a minute. The roar of the angry crowd grew louder.

  ‘Where is that damned declaration?’ the king said crossly. ‘I will sign it, for God’s sake, if that will make them all go home.’

  No-one went home.

  At midnight, the Marquis de Lafayette, the commander-in-chief of the newly formed National Guard, finally arrived. More talk. More arguments. More vacillation.

  At two o’clock in the morning, the queen at last went to lie down in her bed. Her ladies-in-waiting slept in chairs and on couches in her antechamber. It was cold, the storm lashing the palace with sleet, the crowd outside restless and uncomfortable.

  ‘Why do they not go home?’ Madame Campan asked querulously. ‘What do they want?’

  No-one answered, or met her eye. The answer was too terrible to speak aloud.

  Viviane was woken by a great roar. Voices shrieking. Metal clanging.

  ‘Go and see what is happening,’ Madame Campan ordered.

  Viviane ran to the guard room. It looked over the royal courtyard. Peering out into the rain-lashed darkness, Viviane saw the crowd pushing at the golden gates. Screaming, shouting. The gates broke. The mob clambered through, then ran across the courtyard, smashing down doors, breaking windows.

  Viviane ran to the door. A swarm of screaming people raced up the queen’s staircase. The Duc d’Orléans urged them on, riding whip in hand, his tall boots splashed with mud, his hat drawn low. With one gloved hand, he pointed out the guard room which led to the queen’s apartment. Viviane recoiled. It was true. The duke had betrayed the king, his own cousin.

  The palace guard fought to keep the mob back, but they were outnumbered. Knives flashed. Men fell. Blood splattered on the marble.

  Viviane burst into the queen’s bedchamber without any thought of ceremony.

  ‘They’re coming,’ she panted. ‘You must go. Now!’

  The queen scrambled out of bed. Hurriedly her ladies flung a robe around her, but had no time to fasten the ties. Barefoot, the queen ran across the room and pressed something on her wall. A panel sprang open, revealing a secret passage.

  ‘Quick! Quick!’ she cried.

  The door slammed open. A guard, covered in blood, cried, ‘Save the queen, madame!’

  Then he was stabbed from behind.

  Marie-Antoinette fled down the secret passage, her ladies close behind. Viviane had to coax Luna to come, and so she was last. As she drew the panel shut, she saw half-a-dozen ragged men and women burst into the bedchamber. One paused to hack the head from the fallen guard. The rest attacked the queen’s bed with their cleavers and pikes. Holding her breath, Viviane silently closed the secret door.

  She hurried along the dark passageway, trying to keep the frightened dog from whining. A howl of anger and frustration from the queen’s bedchamber spurred her on. A slit of light showed her the end of the secret passage.

  It led to the king’s apartment. Confusion was rife. Louis was dressed still in his nightshirt and nightcap. The queen was sobbing for her children. Madame de Tourzel went running to fetch them, while Viviane helped the queen draw on some clothes. No-one knew what to do. It was impossible to escape. The mob raged through the palace, smashing what they could. At last, the king agreed to show himself on the balcony. He had dressed and hastily pinned a tri-coloured cockade to his hat. A cheer rose up from the ragged crowd at the sight of him. ‘Vive le Roi! Vive le Roi!’

  But these cries were overtaken by the new chant. ‘To Paris! To Paris!’

  ‘My friends,’ the king said, smiling tremulously, chubby hands spread wide. ‘If you so wish it, I shall go with you to Paris, with my dear wife and children. I trust all that is most precious to me to my good and faithful subjects.’

  The crowd shouted its approval, but it was impossible not to see the heads of the queen’s slaughtered bodyguards, bobbing about on the sharp end of pikes.

  ‘Bring out the queen! Bring out the Austrian whore,’ the mob shouted.

  The queen went shakily out onto the balcony, her daughter and son clutched close.

  ‘No children, no children!’ the mob screamed.

  Madame de Tourzel and Viviane helped draw the frightened Children of France away. Marie-Antoinette stood alone. The crowd booed and hissed, but she bowed her head and stood steadfastly. Some of the crowd shouted, ‘Vive la Reine! Vive la Reine!’

  But those words were drowned beneath the chant, ‘To Paris! To Paris!’

  Dawn came, grey and cold, and then noon, before the king’s carriage at last set out for Paris. The Marquis de Lafayette rode his famous white horse at one door of the royal coach, and the Comte d’Estaing at the othe
r. Behind followed the coaches of the court. Viviane travelled with her father and stepmother, Luna cowering under her skirts, Pierrick running ahead. Everyone was white and silent, shaken by the violence of the night.

  The golden poplar trees burned like flames against the grey sky. Damp leaves whirled in the wind. The crowd pressed close around the coaches, in high humour at their success in forcing the king to Paris.

  ‘We’ve got the baker, the baker’s wife and the baker’s boy,’ they shouted, thrusting the decapitated heads of the bodyguards at the coach windows.

  Viviane looked back. The palace of Versailles disappeared behind her.

  All she could see now were the grinning faces of the mob, pressing close all around.

  16

  A Captive King

  6 October 1789 – 25 June 1791

  The Tuileries was a ramshackle old palace. As the dauphin was carried inside, he wrinkled his nose and said, ‘But, Maman-Reine, it’s so ugly.’

  Marie-Antoinette looked ill with exhaustion. It had taken the royal cavalcade almost seven hours to reach Paris, and then they had been driven in circles through the streets of the city for another three, for the people to taunt and jeer at them. But she straightened her back and said, with a brave attempt to be calm, ‘If your great-great-great-grandfather Louis XIV could live here and like it, so can we.’

  Viviane helped Madame Tourzel and Pauline settle the children as best they could. Marie-Thérèse had to sleep on a dusty old ottoman, there being no bed for her. The door to Louis-Charles’s room did not shut, so Madame Tourzel barricaded herself inside with furniture, and sat up in a chair to guard the little boy as he slept.

  The next day, when the dauphin woke, he heard the sound of the mob still shouting in the Tuileries gardens.

  In a tone of dismay, he said, ‘Is today going to be like yesterday?’

  ‘No, my boy. Today will be better,’ the king said, opening his arms to his son.

  Louis-Charles climbed up onto his father’s lap. ‘Papa-Roi, I do not understand. Why are the people of France so angry with you now?’

  The king looked sad. ‘I have tried to make them happy, but the fact of the matter is, our country is deep in debt and that means people are hungry. Being hungry all the time makes them angry. Do not blame them or think ill of them, for we are all working together to try and fix things.’

  ‘You must be kind and friendly to everyone, mon chou d’amour,’ the queen said, ‘no matter what they say or do to you.’

  When Jean Sylvain Bailly, the new mayor of Paris, came to the Tuileries to see how the royal family was settling in, the dauphin spoke to him with great courtesy, then ran to his mother, climbed up on her lap and said, loudly, ‘Was that good, Maman-Reine?’

  ‘Yes,’ Marie-Antoinette answered, bending so she could brush his fair curls with her lips. ‘Very good, my boy.’

  Later, when the Spanish ambassador asked her how her husband was feeling, she answered, in a voice choked with sobs, ‘Like a captive king.’

  Indeed, it felt like imprisonment. The Marquis de Lafayette posted guards on every door and stair, all dressed in their new uniform emblazoned with Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.

  No-one in the royal court could go out to walk in the gardens or go to the theatre without being jeered at by crowds of people. So the queen stayed at the Tuileries, furnishing their apartment, busying herself reading and sewing and hearing her children’s lessons, and only venturing out for Mass each day.

  Viviane had to share a tiny suite of rooms with her father and stepmother, for the marquis wished to stay close to the king in the hope of being rewarded for his faithfulness once the revolution was crushed. Besides, he was crippled with debt and the Parisian townhouse and the château in the Loire Valley were ruinous to run. So the marquis had sacked many of his servants, and closed both his residences, living only upon his courtier’s salary and the king’s largesse.

  Living with her father was an ordeal. His mood was dark and bitter, his tongue cruel. He told Clothilde she was an empty-headed fool, and kicked Luna every time he saw her, castigating Viviane for allowing a useless crippled animal to live. He railed against Viviane for being a worthless girl, and against Clothilde for being barren and failing to provide him with an heir. His château was entailed, Viviane knew, and would be inherited on his death by a distant cousin whom he hated.

  Most of his anger was directed towards Pierrick, however. The marquis expected Pierrick to bow and scrape and fawn on him, as if all noble privileges had not been abolished. The marquis struck him across the face for bringing cold coffee, even though the kitchens were a long way from their quarters, and lashed him again and again on the back with his cane for failing to keep his linens snowy-white, despite soap being hard to come by. Viviane could not bear it. She tried to defend Pierrick, but that only made things worse. It was as if the marquis hated them both. Viviane returned to her dark cupboard of a room only to sleep, and made excuses to send her milk-brother out on errands.

  Pierrick spent most of his time in the inns and coffee-houses, collecting gossip and rumours. He told Viviane that the Breton Club had moved to Paris, along with the National Assembly, and had begun meeting at the Jacobins’ friary on the Rue Saint-Honoré, not far from the Tuileries.

  ‘They want to unravel everything,’ he told her, torn between high excitement and awed dread. ‘The monarchy, the church, everything.’

  The Jacobins, as they began to be called, exerted their radical influence on the Assembly. First, all property owned by the Catholic Church was confiscated. Then – some months later – religious orders and vows were dismantled. All priests had to swear an oath to the new French government and forswear any loyalty to the Pope in Rome. The streets of Paris were filled with effigies of the Pope being burned, and nuns and monks were attacked and driven out into the streets as beggars. Viviane could only pray that her beloved Abbé was safe.

  The following summer, it was announced that hereditary nobility was abolished for all time. Viviane was no longer the Duchesse de Savageaux, much to her secret pleasure. Her father was no longer the Marquis de Valaine, much to his blatant displeasure. There were no more princes, dukes, comtes, barons or chevaliers.

  No mention was made of kings or queens or dauphins, but the implication was clear.

  The anniversary of the fall of the Bastille was greeted with hysterical joy by the Parisians. The king and queen and their children spent all day standing on a stage, listening to martial music and watching soldiers march by. The celebrations went on for days.

  Six weeks later, Viviane was at last permitted to put aside her mourning clothes and wear colours once again. This meant a white dress, with a sash of red-white-and-blue. No-one, not the queen, not any of her ladies, not the meanest washerwoman, wore anything but the tri-colours of the cockade anymore.

  It was a strange existence. The king and queen retained much of the old etiquette of Versailles, with formal ceremonies of rising and dressing and eating and going to bed, even as they wore the revolutionary cockade and endured the rudeness of their revolutionary guard.

  January 1st 1791 was the day when all members of the clergy had to decide whether to take the oath of allegiance to the revolutionary government, or not. On that day, Louis-Charles was given a gift of dominoes made of stone and marble gathered from the ruins of the Bastille.

  He opened the box eagerly and began to stack the dominoes up into towers. The queen saw that the lid of the box had been engraved with words, and picked it up.

  ‘The stones of the walls which imprisoned so many innocent victims of arbitrary power have been made into a toy for Your Highness, as a token of the love of your people and as a symbol of their strength,’ she read, aloud. Her face stiffened. She bent and began to gather up the dominoes, thrusting them back into the box.

  Louis-Charles objected loudly, and she said, a voice of fury, ‘You shall not play with such a thing. No, mon chou d’amour, I am sorry but the dauphin of France must n
ot soil his hands with such filth.’

  He wept, but his mother was intractable. She hid the dominoes, and Viviane had to think of some way to distract and comfort the little boy.

  Every day, there was some new disturbance. Lafayette and his National Guard were in constant motion, calming a demonstration here and a rally there.

  In late February, a riot was caused by the king’s elderly aunts. Horrified by the dismantling of the Catholic church, they decided to go on pilgrimage to the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, and asked the king for passports. Someone tipped off the Jacobin Club, who protested to the National Assembly. A crowd of women gathered, determined to stop them, but Madame Adélaïde and Madame Victoire escaped in the coach of a friend.

  Protestors invaded the gardens of the Tuileries, shouting and demanding the king order his aunts to return. ‘Bring the old bags home!’ they screamed.

  Pierrick thought it was hilarious. He brought Viviane the newspaper with her morning coffee, and showed her the passage which amused him most.

  Two Princesses, sedentary by condition, age and taste, are suddenly possessed by a mania for travelling and running about the world, she read. That is singular, but possible. They are going, so people say, to kiss the Pope’s slipper. That is droll, but edifying. The Ladies, and especially Madame Adélaïde, want to exercise the rights of man. That is natural. The fair travellers are followed by a train of eighty persons. That is fine. But they carry away twelve millions. That is very ugly.

  Viviane pushed the paper away. ‘It’s not true. The king’s aunts took little more than a trunk of clothes each. There is not twelve million in the treasury to steal.’

  She rested her head in her hands. How she wished she too could flee this cold and gloomy old palace. She longed to fill her lungs with fresh air, and stride out through the forest. If only she could go home! But there was no home left for her.

  ‘They are two old ladies,’ she said wearily. ‘Why should they not travel to Rome if they want to?’