The Blue Rose

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘You lost someone in the fire?’ he asked sympathetically.

  Viviane nodded, but then found herself in trouble again. She could not say her wet-nurse. So she blurted out, ‘My maman. She was the château cook. She knew the madman and ran into the fire to try and save him, but died herself.’

  Tears burned her eyes, and she stopped and searched for a handkerchief. Not having one, she used her sleeve to mop her eyes.

  ‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ Ivo said. ‘I’ve lost my mother too, so I know how it hurts.’

  She nodded, and asked him about his mother and so turned the conversation away from herself.

  ‘I will tell the chef de cuisine that you are my cousin, come up from Bretagne,’ he said abruptly. ‘We are short-staffed, and so I think he will be glad to give you the work.’

  Viviane nodded, even though it was yet another lie. Each falsehood made her feel more afraid.

  The chef de cuisine looked her over with a frown, and commented on how skinny she was.

  ‘She might be skinny, but she’s strong,’ Ivo said.

  ‘Her hands look too fine for a scullery-maid.’

  ‘She worked mainly in the kitchen and stillroom,’ Ivo explained. ‘Her mother was the cook.’

  The chef de cuisine snorted contemptuously, clearly not approving of female cooks.

  ‘Where are your papers?’ he asked.

  Viviane did not know how to answer. ‘They were all burned … in the château fire,’ she managed. Another lie.

  ‘So how did you get into Paris?’ he asked.

  ‘I … I told them about the fire. They said I must apply for new papers.’

  ‘Very well. Ivo can take you to the Committee of General Security, and vouch for you, and get your papers in order. In the meantime, Rozenn, I expect you up early to get the fires lit and the bouillon on. Ivo will show you where you’ll sleep, and get you an apron and cap.’

  She nodded and thanked him, but thought to herself that she would never get used to being called Rozenn.

  As the weeks passed, it became easier.

  Although the former king and queen and their family were kept closely guarded, and allowed only one servant – the king’s faithful valet, Jean-Baptiste Cléry – there was still a full team of chefs employed to feed them, just as if they were at Versailles. The chef de cuisine oversaw the work of the hâteur de la bouche who roasted the king’s meat, Ivo, the poissonnier who prepared the fish dishes, the garde manger who made salads and pâtés, the maîtres-queux who prepared the sauces, the gobelet who carried drinks to the king, the paneterie, who cooked the bread and pies, the fruiterie who prepared fresh and preserved fruits for the family, the potager who made the soups, and the patissier who made all the cakes and pastries. There were also a few boys who watched the fires and the spits and ran errands, making thirteen kitchen staff in total, cooking for a family of five.

  Viviane was one of four serving maids. Her main duties were bringing water from the public fountain, preparing the bouillon, peeling vegetables, washing dishes, scrubbing floors, and going to the market for fresh fruit and vegetables and fish. She was able to listen to the gossip of the market-vendors and the loud cries of the newsboys, and pass the news on to Cléry, who then whispered it in His Majesty’s ear as he was shaved and barbered. That was the only news the king received. The royal family were kept under close scrutiny, and were not permitted any quills or ink or paper, or to receive notes or letters.

  Viviane did what she could to help the imprisoned family – laundering the women’s linen, making up tisanes for their constant coughs and fevers – but she did not see them. The faithful Cléry was the only servant permitted to them, with the chambermaids cleaning their rooms while they walked in the garden once a day. The guards were rude and insolent to the king and queen, blowing pipe smoke in their faces and sitting on chairs in their presence. Often, the royal family returned to their rooms to find graffiti scrawled on the walls. Madame Veto shall swing. The guillotine is ready for the tyrant Louis. The wolf-cubs must be strangled. Viviane did her best to scrub the cruel words away.

  Viviane and Cléry set up a complex system of secret signals to keep Louis and Marie-Antoinette aware of the news, including the passing of tiny notes concealed within balls of strings or hidden within fruit. So they heard of the defeat of the Prussian army at Valmy and the victories of the French republican soldiers, and they knew that the new National Convention was divided between the moderate Brissotins and the radical Jacobins, who had begun to be nicknamed ‘the Mountain’ because they occupied the highest benches in the hall in which the deputies met.

  The Mountain wanted the execution of the king.

  Gradually the dauphin’s sobs died away. Viviane was able to mop his face with a corner of her apron, and smooth back his ruffled curls.

  ‘Come, let me take you to your mama,’ she said, and lifted him down to the ground. With Coco scampering ahead of them, they went hand in hand up the stairs to the next floor, where Marie-Antoinette, her sister-in-law Élisabeth and her daughter Marie-Thérèse shared a few cold and gloomy rooms.

  Louis-Charles had been looking up at her in puzzlement, taking in her grey gown and apron, the white cap that hid her hair. ‘Are you playing dress-ups, madame?’ he asked eventually.

  Viviane had to smile. ‘In a way, Monseigneur.’ She lowered her voice. ‘But in this game we are playing, you must not call me Madame and I must not call you Monseigneur. We are simply citoyen and citoyenne, understand?’

  Louis-Charles nodded gravely, and she knew he must have already had such instructions from his mother.

  The door to the queen’s apartment stood open, and two guards sat outside, legs outstretched, puffing evil-smelling smoke from their pipes.

  ‘I have been instructed to bring the boy to his mother,’ Viviane said shortly.

  ‘O-ho!’ one cried. ‘So fat Louis is to face the Convention. Won’t be long and he’ll be losing his head.’ He made a swift, slicing motion with the edge of his hand into his palm.

  Louis-Charles made a sound of distress, and Viviane drew him closer. ‘Come, I’ll take you to your mama,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘No whispering! Speak up so we can hear you,’ the guard ordered.

  Viviane went in. She felt both anticipation and anxiety at the prospect of seeing the queen again. What if Marie-Antoinette or her daughter unwittingly betrayed her to the guards? She could only hope they would be aware of the danger.

  Marie-Antoinette sat listlessly at the narrow window slit, watching the rain drench the glass. Marie-Thérèse read a battered old book. Élisabeth, the king’s youngest sister, sat with her eyes closed, counting her rosary beads. All looked thin and pale, and the queen’s bright hair was fading to white.

  ‘Maman-Reine!’ The dauphin ran forward and was clasped in his mother’s arms, Coco leaping up and barking for attention.

  ‘Your papa?’ she faltered.

  ‘He is with officers of the Convention, citoyenne,’ Viviane answered.

  At the sound of her voice, Marie-Antoinette looked up. Viviane instantly lifted her finger to her lips. The queen looked startled, but bit back the words she had been about to say. Marie-Thérèse’s blue eyes were round with surprise, but she too managed to stifle her exclamation.

  ‘Thank you, citoyenne,’ Marie-Antoinette said, then stepped a little closer, saying in a low voice, ‘So you are our friend in the kitchen?’

  ‘Yes, madame.’

  ‘We are most grateful to you,’ the queen murmured.

  ‘Speak louder!’ the guard shouted.

  Viviane spoke more clearly. ‘I cannot stay. I will be in trouble if I do not return to my duties. Already I have been away far too long.’

  Marie-Antoinette started forward, catching her hand. ‘Please, bring me what news you can of the king. I am so afraid …’ She stopped, swallowing convulsively.

  Viviane answered only with a brief nod, then turned away, worried the guard would grow suspicious of her. Mari
e-Thérèse said, in a low voice, ‘I am glad to know that you are not dead, madame.’

  ‘So am I,’ Viviane answered, with a poor attempt at humour.

  The princess did not smile. ‘So many people we know are dead.’

  As Viviane returned to her bucket and scrubbing brush, a column of men marched up the spiral staircase. One wore a tri-colour sash across his chest.

  They charged into the king’s room, leaving the door wide open. Viviane decided she had best scrub away their muddy footprints before returning to the kitchen. She dropped to her knees, but moved the brush only lightly so she could still hear.

  ‘I come with orders that Louis Capet should be brought before the bar of the Convention,’ the man with the sash cried.

  ‘I am not called Capet! That is the name of one of my far distant ancestors.’

  ‘It is your name now,’ one of the men said with a guffaw.

  ‘I could have desired, monsieur, that the commissioners had left me my son during the time I have spent waiting for you. In any case, this treatment is in accordance with what I have experienced here the past four months.’

  ‘You have been treated far too well, considering how badly you have treated the people of France!’

  Louis’s voice rose in surprise. ‘I have never done anything but my best for the people of France.’

  ‘A poor best!’ the man cried angrily. ‘When your people are starving in the streets and foreign troops march upon our cities!’

  ‘That was never my intention,’ Louis replied unhappily.

  ‘Enough! You may speak in your defence before the Convention …’

  ‘Much good it will do you!’ one of the men jeered.

  ‘So you must come with us now, and face your accusers.’

  With great dignity, Louis replied, ‘I will come with you now, not in obedience to this Convention of yours, but because my enemies are in possession of force majeure.’

  He walked out the door, and the men all crowded after him.

  Viviane scrambled to her feet and stood silently, the scrubbing brush in her hand. As the king passed her, she looked up.

  He wore a simple brown coat, and looked just like any other man.

  December passed.

  Marie-Thérèse turned fourteen, but was not permitted to see her father.

  Louis spent his days on trial. Viviane heard that he was calm and composed. Only once did his self-possession falter. When accused of being responsible for the shedding of French blood, he answered angrily and then paused, rubbing his hand across his eyes as if to dash away tears.

  All day Viviane worked quietly at her tasks in the kitchen and scullery. At night she crept to her bare, icy room, so weary and aching in every limb that she could scarcely walk.

  Christmas Day came. Louis spent it alone in his cell. The gossip in the kitchens said that he occupied the day by writing his will.

  The staff had had their own celebration, eating leftover roast goose stuffed with chestnuts and drinking the cellar’s best apple brandy. Viviane ate a little, quietly, then went to her room where she lay in her bed, curled under her thin blanket.

  Christmas Day was hard for her. Five years since David had drowned under the ice. Five years since her heart had been broken.

  Hearts can’t break, David would have said, laughing. It’s a muscle, not a bone.

  But Viviane felt like something inside her had broken.

  22

  Hungry Ghosts

  29 December 1792 – 20 June 1793

  The albatross had followed the ship for miles, gliding effortlessly on its great dark wings just above the surge and swell of the ocean waves. Its frowning gaze, its silence, the hypnotic sway of its motionless wings, was unnerving.

  It’s as if it carries some secret message, David thought, but has not got the language to tell it. Hope, perhaps … a promise that we will one day reach land again …

  ‘It’s been flying like that for days and days,’ Tom exclaimed. ‘Does it never sleep?’

  ‘Not natural,’ a young lieutenant named Whitman cried. ‘Why don’t it flap its wings like it should?’

  ‘The sailors say an albatross is the ghost of an old sailor who died at sea,’ Mr Hickey said, puffing on his long pipe.

  ‘A ghost?’ Whitman looked at him, startled.

  ‘Or perhaps a reincarnation,’ the artist replied. ‘An interesting distinction.’

  Whitman looked back at the bird. ‘I don’t hold with ghosts,’ he said.

  On the last day of 1792, the tiny remote island of Tristan da Cunha was spotted on the horizon. The ships dropped anchors some distance away, and Whitman rowed ashore on the cutter to scout for fresh water and food, his musket slung over one shoulder. When he returned, the boat was laden with the weight of an enormous sea lion. The sailors let out a cheer, for supplies were now scarce.

  The next minute, the cheers died away. With a broad grin of triumph on his face, Whitman lifted up the limp body of the albatross, wings dangling gracelessly. ‘Look what I bagged!’ he shouted.

  ‘Ought not to have done that,’ one sailor muttered. ‘Bad luck to kill an albatross.’

  ‘I knew His Lordship wanted some scientific specimens,’ Whitman blustered. ‘Besides, it weren’t natural, that bird.’

  The sea lion was cut up to be made into soup, while Sir George examined the dead albatross. With a wingspan of over nine feet, it weighed just three and a half pounds.

  ‘That’s half the average weight of a newborn baby,’ Dr Gillan said.

  ‘And more than the average weight of a human brain. Whitman’s, anyway,’ Scotty added dryly. David exchanged a quick glance with him, knowing his friend felt as angry at the slaughter of the magnificent bird as he did. Whitman was hacking off one of the dead bird’s feet, declaring he would make a new tobacco pouch from it. The sailors looked at him askance, but no more was said.

  Sir George was pleased at the reports of fresh water and many different species of birds and plants on the island, and decided to send an expedition onshore the following day. A feast for New Year’s Eve was prepared, and extra rations of grog handed out.

  But that night, a heavy gale rose up and the Lion’s anchor was torn loose. The ship was almost wrecked upon the rocks.

  Then the deaths began. The cook of the Hindostan died of a fever. The ship’s carpenter was killed by natives while washing his linen on a beach. A sailor fell from the mast into the ocean and was drowned. Then, two weeks later, another sailor was lost overboard. The fever spread, and could not be checked. Dysentery and scurvy worsened.

  Many a glance of anger and loathing were directed at Lieutenant Whitman, who glared back as he puffed at the long pipe he had made from the wing bone of the albatross.

  ‘Superstitious fools,’ he complained. ‘It was just a damned bird.’

  On the evening of the 16th of January 1793, the king was to be sentenced.

  Each deputy had to make his vote publicly.

  Along with thousands of other Parisians, Viviane fought her way into the Salle du Manège, the old riding stable where the National Convention held its meetings. A roaring trade was made by selling hot chestnuts and mulled wine. Girls carried baskets of oranges around, shouting their wares hoarsely, and some even sucked on ices, despite the crippling cold.

  Voting began at eight in the evening, and continued all night. The king’s legal counsel was denied a seat and stood, swaying visibly, for thirteen hours as, one by one, the deputies cast their votes. Again and again, the same word was cried.

  ‘Death.’

  Viviane recognised a few faces, among them Camille Desmoulins and Maximilien Robespierre, who had been the first to vote.

  The last man to cast his vote was Louis’s own cousin, the Duc d’Orléans. He had changed his name to Philippe Égalité. When he pronounced the dreadful word, in a calm measured tone, the king bent his head into his hands.

  Viviane sat frozen. She could not believe it.

  Louis XVI was a gentle,
pious man. He liked to read, and make things with his hands, and play games with his children. He had never asked to be king. He had never liked being king.

  Viviane stood and made her way blindly to the door.

  He was just a man, she thought. A man who made mistakes, it’s true. A man who could have done more. But surely not a man who deserved to die?

  The king was guillotined on the 21st of January 1793.

  His wife and children were informed by the great shout of joy that rose from the throat of Paris. The moment that his head was sliced from his body, his young son became the next king of France.

  The prison laundress, a fervent revolutionary named Alouette, had been in the crowd. She had come back to the prison, laughing, her face splattered with gore.

  ‘They told us that his blood would be on our heads. And see? It is!’

  The coffin was carried on a bamboo litter on the bowed shoulders of four young men, dressed in sackcloth, white rags bound about their foreheads.

  The smoke of incense hazed the air with a blue tinge. Monks in saffron-coloured wraps and beads walked ahead of the coffin, shaved heads bent, chanting. Behind, men carried paper lanterns inscribed with golden dragons. One man threw handfuls of rice to the watching crowd; another scattered money which the half-naked beggars fought to catch. Tall banners inscribed with strange intricate characters fluttered on all sides. Musicians played a strange wailing music upon wooden flutes and cithers. Drums thumped. Cymbals clanged.

  Behind the coffin stumbled several young men, clad all in white, weeping and crying aloud to heaven. Sedan chairs, curtained in white, were carried behind. David could hear the sound of women wailing. More women followed behind, their faces heavily painted, black tear tracks running down their cheeks, grimacing theatrically with grief.

  ‘What is it, what’s happening?’ David asked.

  ‘It looks like a funeral procession,’ Tom Staunton answered.