The Blue Rose

by Kate Forsyth

  It took some time to open up a dialogue with the mandarin, for he did not understand a word Father Li spoke. It seemed the young priest had been away from China too long, or spoke a different dialect. Tom had the bright idea of writing down a few characters, however. The mandarin recognised them at once, and so they were able to communicate through the written language.

  As soon as the mandarin realised the flotilla was escorting the English ambassador, his haughty manner changed. He bowed, and willingly agreed to give them supplies and to organise a meeting for Lord Macartney and Sir George with the town governor.

  David and the other men went to explore the town.

  Ting-hai was guarded by a wall thirty feet high, set with stone towers every hundred yards. The wall was battlemented, but there was no sign of any cannons.

  A wooden gate was guarded by soldiers in medieval-looking garb, wearing steel caps with a sharp metal point. While Father Li tried to communicate with them, scratching characters in the dirt with a stick, William Alexander quickly drew one of the soldiers in the sketchbook he carried with him everywhere. Eventually the gate was opened for them, and they stepped through into the walled city.

  Ramshackle grey houses with upturned eaves huddled together along narrow alleys, running north to south and east to west, in neat squares. Overhead hung dozens of long banners and signs, painted in unfathomable Chinese characters. Ahead was a bazaar teeming with people, arguing and bargaining. Chickens and songbirds were crammed in small bamboo cages, and thin dogs rooted through piles of rubbish. Outside one shop were barrels of water filled with flapping fish. Another shop sold exquisite fans, with scenes of lovers in gardens painted on fluted silk. A man carrying a huge wrapped bundle on his head pushed past David, glancing at the Englishmen with suspicion.

  Everywhere David looked was something strange and marvellous. A set of lacquer-red temple doors guarded by immense stone lions with stylised curls like a judge’s wig. Vermilion lanterns inscribed with gold. Tiny paper kites of dragons bobbing and darting in the air, long tails writhing. An old man with a long white beard, dressed in a cerulean satin robe embroidered with peonies, fanning himself with a pink silk fan painted with cherry blossoms. A pine tree in a pot, no larger than his handspan.

  And over it all loomed the monumental city walls, frowning down on the buildings below like the ramparts of a prison.

  ‘There are no women in the streets,’ William said.

  David realised he was right. The people jostling on every side were all men.

  They walked on through the marketplace, uneasily aware of how everyone stared at them. David in particular attracted attention, with his bronze-red hair, grey-blue eyes and unusual height. It made him most uncomfortable.

  ‘There’s a woman,’ William said, pointing. ‘In that shop.’

  David turned and saw an old lady with sunken cheeks and sparse white hair, sitting on a stool inside one of the shops, weighing rice with a small set of scales. She was dressed, like most of the men, in a blue smock over loose trousers.

  William said, in a low shocked voice, ‘What’s wrong with her feet?’

  David looked down, and realised that the old woman’s shoes were impossibly small. It looked as if half of each foot had been amputated. The remaining stumps were clad in tiny silk slippers, with a narrow pointed toe, intricately embroidered with flowers.

  Just then another woman hobbled into sight from the back of the shop. She was much younger, but her feet were as unnaturally small. She moved with the awkward jerkiness of a small boy trying out new skates for the first time.

  A man saw the Europeans gazing in, and with unintelligible shouts and flaps of his hands shooed them away from the door.

  But not before they saw that the woman carried a little girl on her hip. The child’s feet were tightly bound in bandages that were soiled with blood and pus. She was sobbing in pain.

  The men walked away in silence.

  ‘I had read that Chinese girls’ feet are bound to keep them small, but I had not imagined they would be so sorely maimed,’ Scotty said at last. ‘Surely the foot must be broken and crushed to be so tiny?’

  ‘It is a wonder they can walk at all,’ David said, filled with a sudden rage.

  Tom turned to Father Li, and said in a voice that trembled, ‘Why do they do that to the girl’s feet?’ For once, his Latin was not perfect.

  The priest looked down at the ground, his face impassive. ‘The women do it,’ he replied in his precise Latin.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘So their daughters will be number one wife.’

  ‘It’s horrible,’ David said.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw Viviane running barefoot in a meadow, laughing and graceful and lissom, her dog leaping and playing about her like summer lightning.

  That little Chinese girl would never be able to run so free.

  24

  The Cobbler

  3 July – 2 August 1793

  Viviane kicked off her sabots, reaching down to rub her aching foot. The clock on the mantelpiece said it was almost ten o’clock. Outside, the other maids sat drinking rough wine and smoking with the off-duty guards. Alouette was strumming a guitar and singing:

  If some want a master,

  In a world filled with kings,

  Let them beg for shackles.

  Unworthy to be called Frenchmen,

  Unworthy to be called Frenchmen!

  Alouette had liked to sing such songs when the king and queen and their children were walking in the garden but, since Louis’s death, Marie-Antoinette could not bear to pass his door. She had not walked in the garden in the months since his execution. So Alouette had to sing loudly under the queen’s window, and hope she heard.

  Viviane had little time for drinking and singing. The kitchen staff had been reduced to eight and she had taken on extra chores as a result. Besides, she did not have the heart for it.

  She rubbed her other aching foot, then drew a leaflet of papers out of her apron pocket. They were creased and stained, Viviane having read them many times in the past few months. It was a pamphlet, entitled The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, written by a woman named Olympe de Gouges. It began: ‘Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman who asks you this question: who has given you the authority to oppress my sex?’

  Alouette had brought the booklet back from one of her political meetings, as she had done ever since she had learned that Viviane could read. Alouette liked to pore over the tracts, following the words with one dirty finger, committing them to her memory and then repeating them triumphantly whenever she wanted to win an argument. This was one of her favourites, and had become Viviane’s too.

  ‘Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights,’ she read. ‘Liberty and justice consist of restoring all that belongs to others; thus, the only limits on the exercise of the natural rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny.’

  The words always made Viviane think of her father with bitterness and pain. Viviane wondered where he was. She could not imagine him living in this new France. Perhaps he had fled to England or Austria, and was even now plotting to restore the monarchy under the name of the little boy-king kept prisoner in this cold, dank tower.

  The pamphlet ended with the rousing words: ‘Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights!’

  Viviane murmured Olympe de Gouges’s words over and over to herself, trying to commit them to memory. If her father ever came back, and tried to force her to marry against her will again, or impoverish her land and her people for his vanities and gambling debts, she would shout them in his face.

  Ivo came through the kitchen, drawing on his coat. ‘I’m off to the theatre,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come?’

  Viviane shook her head. ‘Too tired.’

  He nodded, having expected the answer, and went out, shutting the door behind him.

  The truth was Viviane really d
id find crowds difficult to bear. The smell, the roar of many voices, the fear of being crushed. It had been nine months since the Paris mob had torn apart the Princesse de Lamballe and paraded her head on a pike through the city. The Temple prison had, strangely, become a place of refuge and protection for Viviane, and she took pride in windows that sparkled and the delicious smell of bouillon that she had made herself.

  The tramp of booted feet in the hall. She looked up anxiously. Even after so long play-acting the role of Rozenn Cazotte, Viviane feared the day when she would be discovered.

  She stood up, crushing the booklet in her hands. The marching boots did not come into the kitchen, but kept on going up the stairs. Viviane crept through to the front hallway and listened. Up one flight of stairs, and past the first floor where the maidservants slept. Up another flight, and past the apartment which Louis had once used. It had been locked since his execution, but had been opened up and aired by the maids that very day, and a fire laid in the main bedroom.

  Viviane frowned, as the boots kept on marching up another turn of the stairs. It was late, the queen would be preparing for bed, the little king would be asleep. What could they want with poor Marie-Antoinette and her children at this late hour?

  She began to hurry up the stairs, telling herself all the while not to be so foolish, to go to bed and put the pillow over her head, and pretend she had heard nothing. But the thought of the queen and her two young children, so thin and white and sorrowful, made it impossible. Viviane had to know what was happening, had to try to help if she could.

  She needed some excuse. Viviane got out a chamber-pot from a cupboard, threw a cloth over it, and hurried up the steep circular steps.

  Suddenly she heard Marie-Antoinette cry out, ‘No! No! Don’t take him. Please, I beg you!’

  Then the little boy’s shrill cry of terror. ‘Maman!’

  Viviane ran up the last flight of stairs. The only light shone through the door to the queen’s apartment, standing ajar.

  One of the officers was saying, ‘The Committee of Public Safety orders that the son of Capet shall be separated from his mother and delivered into the hands of a governor.’

  ‘Please, you cannot … be so cruel. He’s been sick … he’s only a little boy … he needs his mother.’ Marie-Antoinette was almost incoherent with fear.

  ‘You must release him,’ one officer said, ‘else we shall be forced to strike you.’

  ‘Strike me all you like, just leave me my son.’

  ‘If you do not let him go, we shall have to drag him away and then he may be hurt. Let him go!’

  Viviane did not dare go in. She crouched in the darkness, listening, hating her fear and her impotence. A brief scuffle, then the boy screamed, ‘No, no, maman, maman!’

  ‘Where are you taking him?’ Marie-Antoinette cried. ‘Oh, please do not hurt him.’

  ‘He’s not going far,’ one of the men said kindly. Viviane recognised his voice. His name was Jean-Baptiste Michonis, the superintendent of the prison. ‘Just downstairs. Just to his father’s rooms.’

  ‘But why? Why? He will be so frightened all alone. He’s only just eight years old, he needs me.’

  ‘He will not be alone. The Commune has found a tutor for him.’

  ‘A tutor? But who?’

  Nobody answered her. Viviane heard Marie-Antoinette sobbing.

  ‘Get him dressed,’ another man said.

  A low murmur, and the high-pitched voice of Marie-Thérèse, questioning her aunt. ‘But why are they taking him away, Tante Élisabeth? Who will care for him? Who will hear his prayers at night?’

  ‘Oh, please, don’t be so cruel!’ Marie-Antoinette cried once more. ‘He needs his mother.’

  ‘That’s enough! Be silent, or we shall silence you. Come, take the boy!’

  Viviane retreated swiftly, as the officers came out of the queen’s room, one carrying the boy over his shoulder. Louis-Charles was crying and hammering his fists on the officer’s back. His golden curls were damp and ruffled, his thin face flushed and hectic.

  His spaniel Coco raced out, yapping madly and nipping at the officer’s boot heels. He kicked out, and the puppy tumbled over, yelping.

  Viviane could not bear it. ‘Oh, let him take his dog! What harm could it do?’

  The officers glared at her, but Superintendent Michonis bent and scooped up the spaniel and carried it away.

  The door to the queen’s room was locked securely behind them. Viviane was left standing on the steps. She kicked her feet out of her sabots and tucked them inside the chamber-pot, then went silently down the steps in her stockinged feet. Sabots made such a clatter, and she did not want the officers to know she was following them.

  She stopped in the shadow of the curving steps, peering around the central pillar.

  The officers had flung open the door to the lower apartment.

  A tall, beefy man stood waiting, dressed in rough clothes with a red cap on his greasy, matted hair and stout leather boots on his feet. He held a leather strap in one hand, and a bottle in the other. Viviane knew him. His name was Antoine Simon, and he was a cobbler by trade. He and his wife Marie-Jeanne had been employed at the Temple for some months as servants.

  ‘Ho, so here is my young charge!’ Simon slurred. ‘Well met, little Capet.’

  ‘That is not my name,’ the boy answered defiantly.

  The man slapped the strap in the palm of his hand. ‘Your name is what I say it is!’

  The child shrank back, but was dropped roughly to the ground and shoved through the door.

  ‘So what is your name, toad?’ the man asked, stepping forward so he loomed over the child.

  ‘Louis-Charles of France,’ the little boy replied at once.

  The man struck him across the face. ‘No! That is wrong. You are Charles Capet. No-one is to be called Louis anymore – that name is soiled by treason and betrayal. You’ll be Charles from now. Do you hear me?’

  The little boy sobbed, holding his cheek.

  ‘Do you hear me?’ The man held high the leather strap.

  ‘Yes, monsieur,’ the boy whimpered, and was struck again.

  ‘Call me citoyen!’ the man cried.

  ‘Citoyen Simon, is this really necessary?’ Michonis asked in a pained voice.

  ‘Yes, it is necessary,’ Simon replied. ‘Have I not been hired to teach our little Capet to be a good revolutionary? By the end of the week, I’ll have him spitting on his father’s portrait.’

  As he spoke, the door was swung shut and Viviane heard no more. She was trembling, close to tears. She wanted to fling open the door, take the little boy in her arms, and tell those bullies to leave him alone.

  But she dared not.

  It would do no good. They would simply throw her back in prison and punish him more harshly. She knew what men like Antoine Simon were like. Her father had taught her well.

  For the next few days, there was no sight of the little boy.

  Viviane occasionally heard the sound of pitiful sobbing, or brutal yelling, but the child was not taken out for his daily walk. The Convention sent orders that Simon must make sure the boy was seen, as rumours were flying about that he had been murdered. So Louis-Charles was taken to the garden. He walked slowly, his shoulders hunched, wavering a little in his step as if dazed. He wore a red revolutionary bonnet on his head.

  ‘Poor little mite,’ Viviane whispered, sitting on the back step peeling potatoes.

  Alouette looked at her askance. ‘You should not pity him. Was he not suckled on the blood and sweat of the poor? Why should you pity him, and not my little brothers who spend their days rummaging through refuse looking for rags they can sell?’

  ‘I pity them too,’ Viviane said.

  ‘Citoyenne Simon told me this morning that her husband is teaching the little Capet to call his mother “that damned whore”,’ said Jeanne, another maid, in a tone of frightened wonderment.

  ‘And to spit and trample on the Bible,’ Alouette said, laughing.<
br />
  Viviane herself heard, a few days later, the little boy singing, in his clear piping voice, the words of La Marseillaise, which she had first heard the terrible night of the attack on the Tuileries.

  To arms, citizens,

  Form your battalions,

  Let’s march, let’s march!

  Let an impure blood

  Water our furrows!

  It all brought back awful memories for her. Viviane found it hard to sleep, starting awake at the slightest sound, the faint memory of nightmares shadowing her days. She was close to tears at all times, and stupidly clumsy, cutting and bruising herself as she went around her work. She thought of her own lonely childhood, starved of love, willing to do anything her father ordered in the hope of a scrap of praise or affection. If she did not stand the second he came into a room, she was beaten. If she did not remember the right depth of curtsey for each rank of nobility, or did not deploy her spoon in the accepted manner, she was beaten. If she laughed, or cried, or spoke spontaneously, she was beaten.

  And when her father was at court, her governess Madame Malfort made sure his methods were followed scrupulously.

  No wonder the little Capet sang La Marseillaise when he was told to, and cursed God.

  Viviane would have too.

  On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, Jean-Paul Marat was murdered in his bathtub by a young woman named Charlotte Corday.

  She was only a year younger than Viviane. She had travelled up by stagecoach from Caen, a journey of four days, purchased a newspaper, a sharp kitchen knife, and a hat with green ribbons, and gone to Marat’s house in the Rue des Cordeliers. Turned away several times, she at last gained admittance to his house. Marat spent much of each day in the bath, because of a painful and debilitating skin disease rumoured to be caused by hiding out in the sewers of Paris in the early years of the Revolution. Charlotte pretended to betray the Brissotins of her home town. Marat was pleased, and promised her they would be sent to the guillotine. And so she drew her knife and stabbed him.