This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical persons appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Allison Pataki
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Hardback ISBN 9780593128183
Ebook ISBN 9780593121890
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Virginia Norey, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Laura Klynstra
Cover photograph: Richard Jenkins
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue: Stockholm, Sweden
Part One
Chapter 1: The Convent of Notre Dame, Southern France
Chapter 2: Marseille, France
Chapter 3: Marseille
Chapter 4: Marseille
Chapter 5: Marseille
Chapter 6: Marseille
Chapter 7: Marseille
Chapter 8: Marseille
Chapter 9: Marseille
Part Two
Chapter 10: Rue Des Capucines, Paris
Chapter 11: Paris
Chapter 12: Rome
Chapter 13: Milan
Chapter 14: Paris
Chapter 15: Paris
Chapter 16: Paris
Chapter 17: Paris
Chapter 18: Paris
Chapter 19: Paris
Chapter 20: Paris
Part Three
Chapter 21: Paris
Chapter 22: Tuileries Palace, Paris
Chapter 23: Paris
Chapter 24: Paris
Chapter 25: Paris
Chapter 26: Southwest France
Chapter 27: Paris
Chapter 28: Paris
Chapter 29: Paris
Chapter 30: Mainz, the Confederation of the Rhine
Chapter 31: Paris
Chapter 32: Vienna, Austria
Chapter 33: Château de Fontainebleau
Chapter 34: Paris
Chapter 35: Paris
Part Four
Chapter 36: Stockholm
Chapter 37: Stockholm
Chapter 38: Plombières, France
Chapter 39: Paris
Chapter 40: Rue D’Anjou, Paris
Chapter 41: Stockholm
Chapter 42: Paris
Chapter 43: Aachen, Rhineland
Chapter 44: Munich, Bavaria
Chapter 45: Stockholm
Chapter 46: Stockholm
Chapter 47: Stockholm
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Allison Pataki
About the Author
Prologue
Stockholm, Sweden
December 1860
WHEN THE SNOW FALLS AT midnight, blanketing the empty cobbled streets, sugaring the gothic bell tower of Storkyrkan Cathedral, it becomes easy to imagine. For me, a girl from the south, where the breeze carried with it the warm seaside brine and the faint scent of the hillside lemon groves, the sudden appearance of these white flecks never fails to dazzle and disorient.
“Kring kring,” they all say. Kring kring. Round and round. It’s one of the only phrases I’ve bothered to learn in Swedish: kring kring. “Round and round she goes, our mad old queen, riding through the snow and the midnight streets, imagining herself back in Paris.”
I smile to myself, burrowing deeper into the plush seat of the enclosed coach, nuzzling my cheek against the silver fox fur of my cloak. How mistaken they are. I don’t ride through the darkness of Stockholm, dazed by the snow, to imagine myself back in Paris. I don’t ride through the wintry night to imagine him or his empire or the gold-emblazoned eagles or the brazen spire of Notre Dame, rising up from beside the Seine, a man-made finger of stone, defiant, poking the eyes of God.
No, no. Kring kring. Round and round I ride to see her once more: the girl whose name meant Desire. The girl from that other life, across the frozen sea and the war-scarred continent. Desiree. Before they renamed me, their queen, their Swedish mother, their Desideria.
I suppose he does appear in these midnight musings—I suppose they all do—but only as he relates to her, the girl he loved, the girl who brought the young, rough Corsican soldier to his knees. The girl he might have chosen. Could I have sated his hunger, rather than fueled it? Could I have prevented it all, thwarted the insatiable beast that would consume everything in its wake—his crown, his empire, his continent, his very life?
At night, encased in my snow-covered royal carriage, I think of her. The girl who might have saved him. Saved us all.
Kring kring. Round and round they go—these thoughts, these memories, these spectral phantoms who won and destroyed whole empires. A swirl of silk, steps gliding across the parquet of the dance floor. Dark and determined eyes, strong arms, the shifting colors of the officer’s uniform. Crowns laid in place amid pomp and ceremony, only to be yanked off just as unceremoniously. Laughter, hers. His as well. Shouting and champagne toasts and song, always so many words. They’ve all fallen away, both the words and their speakers, and yet here I am. Only I remain.
They’ll say what they will about me, their beautiful queen. Their cunning queen. Their kind queen. Their mad old queen. I’ll let them. They’ll put these words on me and they’ll take others off. So many different cloaks and crowns and names have I worn. But not one of them can deny what I’ve known all along. I’ve known not only how to rule men and kingdoms—any ambitious schemer with an army can manage that. But me? I know something more. I know how to survive.
Even now, even when I sense that each misting of foggy breath might be my last, I know that I have one last chance to surprise them all. And so I shall. And it all starts with the fierce heart of a young girl whose name meant Desire.
Chapter 1
The Convent of Notre Dame, Southern France
Summer 1789
SOMETHING WAS VERY WRONG. I could see it that morning in their pinched faces, the way the nuns flew up the corridor, their heels clipping angrily against the cold, ancient stones of the abbey. Whispers skittering to and fro, hesitant and erratic, like the fragile flicker of the candlelight that just barely illuminated their hurried steps.
My stomach growled and I pressed my fist into my gut, willing my thoughts away from the hunger. “We haven’t had a harvest this poor in decades,” the nuns kept telling us all summer long. Equal parts resignation and censure, as if we’d somehow brought it on ourselves. “God is testing our faith.” God’s test lasted for wee
ks, then months. Months that, to a hungry girl of eleven years, stretched out with the vastness of eternity. “We must pray for the poor souls who are suffering. We pray for the poor, for the hungry,” the nuns told us each night at vespers, and then again at the morning lauds. The hungry? I wanted to rail back at them. Am I not starving? But I knew better, of course, than to answer the Sisters with anything more than a doleful nod, eyes lowered piously to the floor. I didn’t need my backside to ache along with my empty belly.
In the convent, the only place where we got enough food was the sick ward; it was something we all knew as fact. When my sister, Julie, fell sick last winter, laid up on a pristine cot, tucked in between crisp, white sheets, I’d practically skipped through the halls to the nursing ward. I’d forced myself on her, pressing my lips to hers. Like a stag in rutting season, she’d gasped, her eyes wide with shocked and offended modesty as she chided me with one of Maman’s well-worn scowls.
It had worked—I’d gotten myself gloriously sick, far sicker than Julie even. It had been two weeks of gluttonous eating, weeks of luxuriating in my warm cot, dozing even as I heard the bells chime for matins and the other girls, exhausted, stomachs empty and groaning for bread, shuffling down the dark halls to the freezing chapel for the predawn services. I’d stretched that illness for days, even after my throat had healed and my lungs had cleared. Not only had I lied, but I had lied in order to commit the dual sins of gluttony and sloth. I’d relished every minute of it.
But that morning, the morning when I was certain I was in trouble, it was not because I had feigned sickness. It was not because I had lied to get more food or sleep. No, that morning I had sinned far worse. Thou shalt not steal. I knew the commandment, and yet, I’d stolen. Perhaps not stolen—hidden. Sister Marie-Benedictine had been struggling across the yard during our morning recess when her wheelbarrow had toppled over, her dazzling supply of plump melons rolling across the small patch of parched, yellow grass. She’d enlisted us to help retrieve her bounty, but I’d stepped in front of one and kicked it quickly into a bush and out of sight. I’d just been so famished, and that melon had appeared so ripe and juicy—and so near. I’d felt a momentary pang of guilt, for Sister Marie-Benedictine was one of the kind ones, but my hunger pangs had quickly quashed that lesser discomfort. After Sister left, limping her cart across the remainder of the yard toward the kitchen, I’d enlisted Julie to help me move the melon farther from sight, tucking it away in the back of the yard. Our own treasure.
But someone must have seen. Someone had snitched, and now Mère Supérieure knew. I was certain of it. “Does it hurt?” I asked my sister as we shuffled down the long, dim hallway that led to our dormitory.
“What?” Julie asked.
“You know,” I whispered.
Julie shrugged.
“The beating,” I groaned, my voice betraying my panic.
“How would I know?” Julie frowned. Of course she would not know; she had never committed a transgression like this. Or, perhaps more accurately, she’d never been caught committing a transgression like this. She was far too cautious, her judgment far too sound. I had always been the reckless one.
“I just know they found it.” I gnawed a piece of skin off my finger, the tinny taste of blood seeping into my mouth.
“Stop chewing your fingers,” Julie scolded. Six years stretched between us, half my lifetime. Usually she was more a mother than a sister.
“Why else would they have disrupted our lessons and ordered us back to the dormitory?” I asked, certain of our fate, my hand falling limply to my side.
“Ah, the Clary girls, there you are. Julie. Desiree.” Mère Marie-Claude raced toward us down the corridor, a flurry of white, her wimple fluttering around her face with each hasty step.
Horror of all horrors! Mère Supérieure, Mother Superior herself, here to administer our punishment! God, I will never steal another melon, as long as I live. Please spare me your justice this once. I beg for mercy. Oh, Holy Mother, please intercede with your Son.
But when I glanced back at Mother Superior’s face, it wasn’t anger I detected on her weary features. No, I knew that look, because it mirrored how I myself felt in that very instant; Mother Superior was afraid.
“Girls, your family has been notified to fetch you immediately and take you home, back to Marseille.”
Neither Julie nor I spoke, so stunned were we by this sudden declaration.
“Fetch us?” Julie asked after a moment, my ever-dutiful sister forgetting the proper formality of speech in her confusion.
“Prepare your things at once,” was all Mother Superior offered by way of reply. An image of my own mother’s face, seared with anger—or was it her permanent disappointment?—blurred my vision. What would she say to this?
“Mother Superior, please.” I fell to my knees, the unyielding stone floor receiving my joints with a vicious smack; I’d have bruises, to be sure. I ignored that, raising my hands in supplication: “The fault was entirely mine! I deserve to be sent from school, but not my sister. She played no part. I beg you to—”
“Hush, Desiree.” Mother Superior lifted a long-fingered hand, her face stitching into an impatient scowl. “Quiet, for once, you foolish girl. You will return home, as will all the girls whose families can arrange for safe travel. The others…those whose families are abroad, well, we aren’t certain how we shall…” Mother Superior exhaled aloud, an uncharacteristic display of some internal strain. “But never mind that. You girls are fortunate. Your family is close. They shall come and take you home, where you will be far safer than at this convent.”
“But…take us home? Why? We are not on holiday.” Julie’s voice betrayed the same confusion I felt. Why were we suddenly unsafe here, in the convent? I wondered.
“War,” Mother Superior said, her eyes softening, if only for a moment, as she saw our puzzlement. “You girls must pray. For…for all of us. And for France.”
“War?” I repeated the word, incredulous. The sound was alien, the statement as outlandish as if Mother Superior were telling us that the Virgin Mary sat in the dining hall waiting to have bread and milk with us that very instant. “War with whom?” I asked.
Mother Superior frowned. “Ourselves. It’s a revolution.”
Julie took my hand, her palm clammy and cold, as Mother Superior continued: “The people have risen up.”
The words I’d heard so many times in recent months raced across my mind: We haven’t had a harvest this poor in decades.
Mother Superior’s voice pulled me back to her, back to this dark corridor in the damp stone convent. “They seem to believe that the enemies come from the nobility and…and the Church. We are not safe here. They are sacking monasteries and setting fire to convents all over the country—stabbing priests, defiling nuns.” She raised her hands, clasped them before her breast in a gesture of prayer. “But I’ve said too much. You girls don’t need to know…I do not have time for this.” She blinked, looking at Julie and then turning her eyes on me. “Go to the dormitory at once. Prepare your things. You shall leave this night. I shall pray for you.” Her eyes held mine for a long moment, her expression seeming to indicate a mixture of concern and something else. Was it sadness? Or perhaps fear for my suddenly uncertain future? But then the stern woman pulled her shoulders back, straightening to her full height, and with that, Mère Marie-Claude turned and strode briskly away, offering not another word or backward glance in our direction.
“Revolution,” Julie said in the nun’s sudden absence, her voice barely a whisper. “Killing priests. Burning convents. How shall we ever make it home alive?”
I took my sister’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Papa will get us back safely. Or else Nicolas. Julie, don’t worry, we shall be home by this time tomorrow.” I sounded confident as I said it, and I was, so complete was my faith in our father and our elder brother. And besides, no matter
how terrible the news may have been for our countrymen and our clergy, I could not ignore one glorious, welcome truth: at last, we were going home.
Chapter 2
Marseille, France
1794
WHENEVER THEY BEGAN SHOUTING I’D slip out the door, undetected but by Cook, whose sideways glance and barely perceptible grin always assured me that my secret would be well kept.
“Shh!” I lifted my finger to my lips, my eyes wide and imploring as I stepped delicately past the warm kitchen. Cook nodded, sniffed, and turned back to chopping her pile of fat yellow onions.
And so I did slip out the door that morning, humming to myself as I hopped through the doorway and into the gardens. There, I blinked, looking around. It always struck me as remarkable, a bit dizzying, really, to pass from the close and upholstered interior of our home—drawn damask drapes, muffled arguments, Maman’s complaints of headaches—into the bright, fragrant refuge of our walled gardens. A sudden burst of color, the lilt of birdsong skittering along the mild air. I did not know then, would not understand until later, that it was a precious gift, and rare, to hear birds warbling all year long. To smell the earthy exhale of plant life, thick leaves unfurling under plump pearls of morning dew. But then, only a girl, I couldn’t understand all that, even if I did have sense enough to savor my stolen hours in those gardens, where the warm breeze glided through the trellised hibiscus, carrying with it shifting slants of sunlight and the nearby cries of the gulls and the fishmongers, the horn blasts of massive ships pulling into port at our Mediterranean harbor.
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