Ribbons of Scarlet

by Kate Quinn

  “The condemned is a hardened highwayman,” Moustier says. “I doubt he is a man for prayer.”

  “Ah, but the Bible teaches that no one is beyond redemption. Perhaps, faced with his end, he has confessed. And after a suitable stay in purgatory, he can attain heaven.”

  “I would be sorry to run into him there,” my companion replies, looking extremely dubious. “But I suspect even in that setting we would move in different circles.”

  We enter the place de Grève. The crowd is so thick that, being short, I feel as if I am in a forest. But I can see the Hôtel de Ville rising over the heads of the others and before it, on a raised platform, is the guillotine. I give an involuntary shudder and my hand tightens on Moustier’s arm.

  I did not expect it to be red! But it is: tall and blood red. At its apex a pulley suspends a great blade, shining silver in the afternoon sun, its edge a dramatic angle. Below a small table extends behind the contraption. This must be where the highwayman will lie to put his neck through what looks like a wooden yoke. On the other side of that yoke a simple wicker basket sits.

  Dear God, that must be for his head!

  A massive roar announces the arrival of the condemned. A man mounts the steps between guards, followed by a drummer. I cannot see his face from this distance, but his shirt is red.

  “So the blood will not be obvious,” Moustier murmurs, suggesting that he likewise is caught off guard by this detail.

  The man’s arms are bound, and he is quickly lowered to the board, facedown. As the upper part of the “yoke” is secured so that only his neck and head protrude, the crowd falls eerily silent. It is as if the thousands of souls present hold one collective breath. Someone on the platform speaks but I hear only sound, not words. While the inaudible official pronouncements are made, a man with a shovel pushes a small wheelbarrow across the platform, coming to a stop near the condemned man’s head.

  There is a drumroll. At its last beat, a silver flash—and the man’s head is gone! Gone so quickly that I do not see it go! There is nothing but a red stump where it used to be. The man with the shovel throws sawdust on the platform.

  The crowd groans. I do not know what I was expecting but not a groan, and not grumbling, but that, too, starts immediately. “Too quick,” someone shouts. A woman just beside me cups her hands around her mouth and yells, “Bring back the gallows!” Others take up the cry.

  “The head! Show us the head.” This demand grows to a roar.

  The executioner stoops over the basket. Straightening, he holds up the dead man’s head by its hair. The crowd is delighted. A cheer goes up. Apparently most people do not want swift and painless—they want blood, as if killing a man were sport.

  I feel nauseated; not by the sight of the strange, lifeless trophy, but by my sobering realization about the nature of those I stand shoulder to shoulder with.

  “Monsieur, I have seen enough. Please take me home.”

  “THEY WANT ME to withdraw my veto of the twenty thousand troops.”

  “Louis?” I ask, startled. They are the first words my brother has spoken to me, other than those necessary to play backgammon, in days. When he has not been meeting with deputies or ministers, Louis has maintained a nearly absolute, dejected silence. Antoinette has been sick over it, and the children both have been in tears over their dear papa.

  My brother meets my eyes. “At the meeting of my council today, my minister of the interior, Monsieur Roland, read aloud an extraordinary letter. It demanded I withdraw the royal veto preventing the establishment of twenty thousand provincial soldiers on the outskirts of Paris.”

  “Minister Roland, the man with the receding hairline and no proper buckles on his shoes?”

  “Yes. His letter was a reprimand. There is no other word for it.” Louis’s eyes mirror the confusion I feel. Roland is a moderate Brissotin, and not a particularly notable one. I would not have expected such bold, and inappropriate, action from him. “Roland claims that my opposition shows a lack of enthusiasm for France’s defense. A retreat from my avowed support of the constitution.”

  I snort. No matter how many times the king appears before the Assembly voicing his support for this or that action, the deputies are never satisfied. They want a level of fervor Louis will never manage, not only because dramatic statements are contrary to his nature, but because much of what he is asked to support is neither good for his crown nor good for France.

  “One line in particular—” Louis shakes his head. “‘The revolution has been made already in the people’s minds; it will be accomplished and cemented at the cost of bloodshed unless wisdom forestalls evils which it is still possible to avoid.’”

  “That sounds like a threat,” I say. It also sounds very unlike the minister I’ve met in passing—a rather indecisive man without a particular flare for conversation. It seems to me the rumors that his wife writes his speeches and letters may be true. What kind of woman must she be to think she has the privilege of advising a king when she is no minister—let alone has the right to reprimand one! This thought is quickly followed by another: I advise Louis. But that is different because he is my brother, my family, my blood. Still, I think that those criticizing Manon Roland are too harsh. Although she oversteps in counseling a king, she surely does not do so in counseling her husband.

  “It sounded like a threat to me as well.” Louis’s eyes are filled with dejection. “Just as twenty thousand provincial soldiers do. I fear such men will be called to Paris not to train—whatever the deputies insist—but in preparation for some attack upon us. Which is why I exercised my veto.”

  “Rightly,” I say firmly, seeking to reinforce one of my brother’s rare decisions that put himself and his family first. “You must not trust the deputies, or your ministers. Not even moderates like Roland, who enter the Tuileries with half bows and platitudes.”

  “They certainly do not trust me. Roland claims Parisians see my veto as a sign I am planning to use foreign forces against them and would have them defenseless so that I may more easily triumph. But I would not do such a thing!” Louis’s face colors, and he picks up the game pieces, although we are not finished and he was winning. “In charitable moments, I tell myself the Assembly is only afraid. My people are afraid. Fear makes men foolish. It makes them entertain thoughts beneath them and causes them to act rashly. And my subjects are terrified of Austrian armies on French soil.”

  The king gives a deep sigh. “I am not a man for this epoch, Élisabeth. But, as I am not merely a man but a king, I must try.”

  “What does that mean, Louis? Surely you will not rescind the veto? The survival of the House of Bourbon may depend on your fortitude in upholding it,” I push.

  “No, I will let the veto stand. I believe I exercised it wisely. I have not used my veto a dozen times, but each time I do some faction finds the action offensive.”

  Relieved, I dare push him in a new direction. “While we speak of the veto, Louis, I would beg a favor. Please protect our beleaguered clergy from the Assembly’s latest attack. Their decree providing that denounced priests will be sent to Guiana . . . it is a death sentence. Few deported there survive even a year. It is a place for criminals, not God’s faithful servants.”

  “Yes, that is a wicked law.” Louis puts his hand over mine on the game table. “I will veto it. I cannot imagine any but those who deny the very existence of God will blame me.”

  “The opinions of those who deny God, brother, are worthless. One should wear their bad regard as a crown.”

  * * *

  Palace of the Tuileries, Paris, June 20, 1792

  I knew the date as soon as my eyes opened this morning. A year ago, I sprang from my bed with a sense of purpose and full of hope. Today cries of “Tremble tyrant” and worse assail us on the feeble breeze. Below His Majesty’s bedchamber windows, every gate is open and the gardens fill with “citizens” pushing past the National Guard, while these soldiers stand gape mouthed as if under a horrible enchantment. There a
re so many marchers, surely all Paris must lie deserted.

  I am furious at the marchers, who believe the lies saying Louis works to surrender the capital to France’s foreign enemies, but even more so at the newspapers and the ranting radicals who drive such sheep to the streets. And I have a particular resentment against now former minister Roland. His letter castigating Louis for vetoing the encampment of soldiers has been carried in too many papers to count. Or rather his wife’s letter, for this past week there were nearly as many flyers showing him with the cuckold’s horns as there were of Louis, and Manon Roland is widely being shamed and mocked for writing her husband’s now famous tract, even as the letter itself is praised.

  If I were to shame her, it would be on the content of her prose not because she was a woman writing it.

  Staring at the crowd, my racing pulse quickens further as I notice banners decrying the king’s veto protecting priests—the veto I urged upon him. Satan must be well pleased with the godless citizens of Paris.

  The marchers carry more than lettered strips of bedsheet—they bear all manner of crude weapons: pikes; hatchets; tools of their various trades; anything, it would seem, that is sharp or heavy. As they pass directly below, a malodorous mix of sweat, grime, and I know not what else, rises up through the dreadful heat. I am tempted to take my handkerchief from my sleeve and cover my nose. But I would not have the grimacing, gloating men and women see the bit of cloth and think they have reduced me to tears.

  “It seems the twentieth of June is not a day of good fortune for me,” my brother remarks in a failed attempt at sangfroid.

  The Princess de Lamballe comes running in. “They throw themselves at the gates to the grand courtyard!”

  We race to take up places at windows in the king’s antechamber overlooking the cour. Crowds surge against the gates on some unseen shouter’s count. Then the gates are gone—opened, broken, I cannot tell—and a shouting horde sweeps up the château’s outer staircase.

  Madame Royale bursts into tears. The queen puts an arm around her, and we retreat to the bedchamber. We are there but a few moments before a knock comes. It is too civilized a sound to be the invaders, so Louis calls, “Enter.”

  The chef de bataillon of a company of the National Guard enters, flanked by a handful of grenadiers. “Your Majesty, the crowds are inside the palace. If you show yourself, they might be calmed.”

  “Or they might fall upon him in a frenzy and murder him, which some in the Assembly would dearly love!” The queen steps forward, lifting her chin and placing a hand on Louis’s arm. Even as a voice somewhere in the rooms beyond can be heard calling for her head to mount on his pike, Antoinette remains unbowed.

  “Majesty, upon my honor, I swear to you that we will do our duty to guard His Majesty. But there are not so many of us that we are likely to be successful should those approaching lose all control.”

  The sound of splintering wood, sadly familiar to me, punctuates the commander’s point.

  “If Your Majesty will deign to meet them in his antechamber, to receive their deputation, things may better remain within our power to control.” The sounds of the crowd and of their destruction draw closer. “In haste, Your Majesty, please.”

  Louis steps forward and the grenadiers close around him. My belle-soeur loses her grasp. Another guard draws her in the opposite direction, while Lamballe urges Antoinette to secure the children.

  The queen cannot follow Louis, she has other duties. But I can. Advising is no longer enough—I must act.

  I push between two of the grenadiers accompanying Louis. I can see the surprise in their eyes, and I am surprised by my own physical strength, but not by the strength of my will. The door shuts behind me. I am close enough to hear the bolts sliding into place. They cannot force me back now.

  I am jostled into a man in the middle years of his life. As he turns to see who runs upon him, I recognize Lieutenant Colonel François Louis Bartelemy de Sainte-Amaranthe, father of the beautiful Émilie. Sainte-Amaranthe has long been in my brother’s service and was once a member of the king’s Garde du Corps. Now he stands with his hand on his sword and a look of fire in his steel gray eyes that speaks both of his courage and of his devotion to Louis. Springing to a spot between the king and the outer door he declares, “They come, Majesty.” Louis glances about, then climbs atop a coffer standing in one of the windows.

  Good, this is a crowd that must be shown their relative place.

  The first of the marchers breach the door and pour in, rushing forward as grenadiers move to join Sainte-Amaranthe, forming a protective line before the king. I press myself against the nearest wall. A member of the guard hangs back at my side.

  He ought to be with the king! I have barely thought it when a man at the front of the mob raises an ax shouting, “The fat pig must die like one!”

  In a flash, Colonel de Sainte-Amaranthe blocks the villain’s arm, grabbing the handle of the ax, and with a single, violent twist ripping it from the man’s hand. “This is your king!” the faithful colonel shouts, his face as distorted with anger as the would-be attacker’s. His passion seems to surprise the assailant and those around him. Did they think no one would resist? Are they so drunk on convenient Jacobin lies?

  Pushing the disarmed man back, Sainte-Amaranthe raises his chin and cries, “Vive le roi!” All around him grenadiers take up the chant. Despite their good intentions, their shouts draw additional marchers into the chamber. In a matter of moments the press of bodies is such that I cannot breathe.

  Perhaps it is this desperation for air, but when the guard beside me surges forward to join those intent on pressing back the crowd, I go with him, then beyond, until I am through the mass of them and attempting to clamber up, gown lifted without thought for my personal dignity, beside my brother. As I teeter precariously on the edge of the coffer—as likely to topple backward into the sea of our enemies as to find myself securely atop it—Sainte-Amaranthe offers me his hand in assistance.

  “It is the Austrian whore!” a voice tinged with hatred cries.

  Sainte-Amaranthe opens his mouth. Squeezing his hand, I lean close and whisper, “Do not disabuse them.” Then, having found steady footing on the window seat, I turn to face the mob.

  A woman in front of me presses against the colonel, holding up a little gibbet, with a roughly fashioned cloth doll hanging from it labeled “Marie-Antoinette à la lanterne.” She laughs as I recoil, and then spits, barely missing me.

  “We have her now!” someone shouts. “We are poor citizens if we let her escape alive!”

  Under other circumstances, I might laugh at being mistaken for Antoinette. With her slender frame, the more girlish me was long jealous of the fashions she could wear that I could not manage with my farmer’s-wife figure. At this moment, however, being mistaken for the queen is serious business. But I like it very well. If this mob thinks I am she, Antoinette will be safe elsewhere and have time to secret the dauphin.

  The tip of a pike brushes across my arm coming to rest at my breast. I look into the eyes of the man holding it. His face is nearly as red as his ugly bonnet rouge, and his eyes bulge, putting me in mind of one of the frogs at Montreuil. That image breaks the back of my fear.

  “Take care, monsieur,” I say, raising a hand and pushing the pike aside. “You might wound me, and I am sure you would be sorry for that.” I lift my chin, mimicking the queen’s familiar gesture. “I am not your enemy.”

  Mentally I add that lie to the things I must confess to the abbé. And if I do not live long enough to confess, I have already resigned myself to significant time in purgatory. Adding to it, both by my lie and by my lack of true repentance for it, seems but a little matter.

  “You fools!” That voice! My eyes shoot to the doorway and find the figure I expect—the fruit seller who led the delegation of rain-soaked market women to Versailles. It does not matter that nearly three years have passed. I could never forget that face, or the brash manner in which she met my eyes and pro
nounced her name, Louise Reine Audu, self-proclaimed Queen of the Market Women, in response to my inquiry as if she were my equal. “That is not the Austrian bitch. That is Princess Élisabeth.”

  My heart falls, and the crowd appears even more disappointed than I. There are curses and murmurs. Someone near the door slips out, and the hair on my neck stands up. Oh, how I hope Antoinette and the children are safely under guard.

  “My sister Élisabeth is not your enemy, nor am I.” The king raises his voice to be heard.

  “Then, Monsieur-le-Royal-Veto, sign the Assembly’s decrees!” someone shouts.

  “Give Paris the soldiers needed to protect us from the Austrian devils,” cries another.

  “How can monsieur do that when he is a cocu in more ways than one? Show him, Pauline!”

  A young woman in a striped skirt with a mass of dirty, light-colored curls spilling from beneath her bonnet rouge holds forth a pike with bloodied bull testicles dangling from it. “I’d like to cut yours off, you parasite.” She spits the words, her eyes full of hatred. How can she hate so very deeply a man she does not know?

  Louis does not retreat, despite the threat. “I vetoed in accordance with my conscience.” He sounds remarkably patient—like a tutor explaining a simple mathematical problem to a young child. “The constitution gives me this right. It is my responsibility under law.”

  There is a burst of noise from the crowd—none of it flattering. Before us, the colonel and the other grenadiers tighten their ranks preparing to fend off an attack.

  “If monsieur is such a good citizen, where is his bonnet rouge?”