by Juliet Grey
The sight of the lash sends the woman into another agonized frenzy. She recalls the words of her sentence: Condemned to be flogged and beaten, naked with rods, by the public executioner …
A rough hand grasps the back of her gown, holding it away from her body, and one clean slash of the knife cuts through the layers of silk. But she will not slip her arms from the sleeves, and her flailing fists are too quick for her captors to clasp. The officer warns her, ridiculously, “Stop moving! We do not want to hurt you,” but she is like a frightened animal and will not heed.
The sleeves are sliced open, revealing her sweat-stained chemise. The woman tosses her head; errant tendrils fall into her eyes, eyes that are filled with tears of terror and fear. “Snatch me, I beg you, from my executioners!” she cries, reaching toward the onlookers. “It is my own fault that I suffer this ignominy—I had only to speak one name and could have made sure of being hanged instead.”
Her back must be exposed in order for the sentence of flogging to be legally fulfilled. With the bravado of a showman at a carnival the lieutenant takes his dagger and splits the laces down the front of her stays. Whistles and catcalls of approval greet his performance. From there it is a simple matter to rend the flimsy batiste of the woman’s shift, baring her entire torso and her high breasts.
From his vantage at the window opposite the courtyard the duc de Crillon feels his heartbeat quicken and he pulls the courtesan to him so that her derrière presses against his silken breeches. He had used the privilege of rank to secure this optimal view, having written to the cardinal’s attorney, Monsieur Target, I am consumed with curiosity to see this woman scourged with the rods which you, in a manner of speaking, have prepared for her. The outer rooms of the lawyer’s office, those of the duc de Brissac’s hôtel next door, and many other edifices with a view of the courtyard, are crowded with men and women of means, nibbling macarons and sipping brandy or champagne as they enjoy the ignominious display.
The accused struggles to cover her nakedness; mothers amid the crowd try to shield the eyes of their children; but the two lieutenants grasp the woman’s arms, and by extending them, unwittingly pose her in the tableau of a martyr. Derisive laughter from the rabble degenerates into all manner of blasphemous remarks. “Some Madonna,” shouts one man. “I’d worship her!” hollers another in reply.
The bourreau orders the soldiers to spin the woman around so that the hooting will cease and the crowd may witness her flagellation. His victim’s guilt or innocence doesn’t keep him awake at night; it is not within his purview. At the first crack of the whip upon her bare back, the woman cries out, “Save me, my friends! It is the blood of the Valois they are desecrating!” The lash falls nineteen times more and with each subsequent stroke, the throng becomes less exhilarated, even bored, daring to surmise that the flogging is being carried out in a most perfunctory way. There is not enough blood. A cabbage head, lobbed from within the crowd, glances off the edge of the scaffold. The catcalls are now aimed at the executioner.
“Rather pro forma, that,” remarks a disappointed English journalist, who has traveled across the Channel purely to cover the spectacle for his London broadsheet.
The woman would disagree. She can feel the raw welts rising on her skin with every stinging stroke. At last, the torment is over and she collapses to the floorboards in an incoherent blizzard of curses, cries, and tears. Her hair tumbles down her flayed back in loose ringlets.
But her punishment is only half completed. The clamor of the crowd has drowned out the sizzle of the brazier. The lieutenants hoist the woman to her feet to receive the balance of her public penalty. To be branded upon both shoulders with a hot iron … The head has already been heating and the executioner raises it aloft so that the crowd can see the shape of the brand: V for voleuse—thief. Some cheer; others gasp; still others can be heard weeping.
There is a moment of dreadful, deafening silence as the bourreau approaches the woman with the glowing iron. Behind his hood, his small eyes are grim. As he clasps her by the arm the soldier relinquishes his grip, and in that fleeting moment the prisoner slips from their grasp. She bolts across the scaffold and down the wobbly flight of steps as the executioner, branding iron in hand, gives chase. Tripping on the final step the woman falls headlong, scraping her palms, and begins to writhe in agony from the lashing she has only just received. She rolls away from the scaffold, bumping across the uneven cobbles, as if by doing so she could stop the pain, but she only increases her torment. Her mind is a jumble; her only thought, to escape the executioner.
In this she has no prayer. The bourreau quickly hauls her to her knees, pressing the brand into the tender flesh of her left shoulder; a pale bluish vapor floats about her mane of curls. The stench causes two onlookers to vomit onto the paving stones. A nearby child hides her face in her hands.
At that moment the woman’s body is seized with such a violent convulsion that the executioner is unable to steady the branding iron. The red-hot instrument misses her back entirely. The second V does not land on her right shoulder but upon the delicate flesh of her breast.
She releases a howl that rattles the glass of the windows above the courtyard and sends a shiver coursing through the spine of the duc de Crillon’s inamorata. Several women in the crowd are moved to tears, but they are nothing to those that streak the prisoner’s face. Her eyes widen and her mouth gapes ghoulishly. After another prolonged spasm, she manages to rise, having harnessed all the fire of the Furies. She places her hands, stippled with blood, on the bourreau’s broad shoulders as if to bravely steady herself. And then with a roar she sinks her teeth into his shoulder, biting through his protective leather vest all the way to the skin.
He emits an involuntary cry of shock.
Turning to the mob, the woman shrieks, “It is the queen! It is the queen who should be here in my place! My only crime is that of having served her too well!” Her spittle sprays the crowd and flecks her chin and lips like wet snow. Overcome with pain, she collapses to the ground as the blue sky above her head appears to turn impenetrably black.
How quickly those who had come to enjoy the woman’s punishment take up her cry and martyr her instead! The voices of the rabble begin distinctly at first, cursing l’Autrichienne—the Austrian bitch. Within moments they have reached a crescendo. “Marie Antoinette is the real voleuse! It is the greedy queen who should have suffered this fate! Monsieur le bourreau, why did you not brand her?”
ONE
Queen of France
TWELVE YEARS EARLIER
May 8, 1774
TO: COMTE DE MERCY-ARGENTEAU, AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY AND PLENIPOTENTIARY TO THE COURT OF VERSAILLES:
My Dear Mercy,
I understand that the death of my sovereign brother is imminent. The news fills me with both sorrow and trepidation. For as much as I account Antoinette’s marriage to the dauphin of France among the triumphs of my reign, I cannot deny a sense of foreboding at my daughter’s fate, which cannot fail to be either wholly splendid or extremely unfortunate. There is nothing to calm my apprehensions; she is so young, and has never had any powers of diligence, nor ever will have—unless with great difficulty. I fancy her good days are past.
Maria Theresa
LA MUETTE, MAY 21, 1774
“My condolences on the passing of His Majesty, Your Majesty.”
“Your Majesty, my condolences on the death of His Majesty.”
“Permit me, Votre Majesté, to tender my deepest condolences on the expiration of His Majesty, Louis Quinze.”
One by one they filed past, the elderly ladies of the court in their mandated mourning garb, like a murder of broad black crows in panniered gowns, their painted faces greeting each of us in turn—my husband, the new king Louis XVI, and me. We had been the sovereigns of France for two weeks, but under such circumstances elation cannot come without sorrow.
Louis truly grieved for the old king, his late grand-père. As for the others, the straitlaced prudes—collet
s-montés, as I dubbed them—who so tediously offered their respects that afternoon in the black-and-white tiled hall at the hunting lodge of La Muette, I found their sympathy—as well as their expressions of felicitations on our accession to the throne—as false as the blush on their cheeks. They had not loved their former sovereign for many decades, if at all. Moreover, they had little confidence in my husband’s ability to rule, and even less respect for him.
“Permettez-moi de vous offrir mes condoléances. J’en suis desolée.” I giggled behind my fan to my devoted friend and attendant Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan, the princesse de Lamballe, mimicking the warble of the interminable parade of ancient crones—centenarians, I called them. “Honestly, when one has passed thirty, I cannot understand how one dares appear at court.” Being eighteen, that twelve-year difference might as well have been an eternity.
I found these old women ridiculous, but there was another cause for my laughter—one that I lacked the courage to admit to anyone, even to my husband. In sober truth, not until today when we received the customary condolences of the nobility had the reality of Papa Roi’s death settled upon my breast. The magnitude of what lay before us, Louis and me, was daunting. I was overcome with nerves, and raillery was my release.
The duchesse d’Archambault approached. Sixty years of rouge had settled into her hollowed cheekbones, and I could not help myself; I bit my lip, but a smile matured into a grin, and before I knew it a chuckle had burbled its way out of my mouth. When she descended into her reverence I was certain I heard her knees creak and felt sure she would not be able to rise without assistance.
“Allow me, Your Majesty, to condole you on the death of the king-that-was.” The duchesse lapsed into a reverie. “Il etait si noble, si gentil …”
“Vous l’avez détesté!” I muttered, then whispered to the princesse de Lamballe, “I know for a fact she despised the king because he refused her idiot son a military promotion.” When the duchesse was just out of earshot, I trilled, “So noble, so kind.”
“Your Majesty, it does not become you to mock your elders, especially when they are your inferiors.”
I did not need to peer over my fan to know the voice: the comtesse de Noailles, my dame d’honneur, the superintendent of my household while I was dauphine and my de facto guardian. As the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, I had come to Versailles at fourteen to wed the dauphin; and had been not merely educated, but physically transformed in order to merit such an august union. Yet, there had still been much to learn and little time in which to master it. The comtesse had been appointed my mentor, to school me in the rigid rituals of the French court. For this I had immediately nicknamed her Madame Etiquette, and in the past four years not a day had gone by that I had not received from her some rebuke over a transgression of protocol. Just behind my right shoulder the princesse de Lamballe stood amid my other ladies. Our wide skirts discreetly concealed another of my attendants, the marquise de Clermont-Tonnerre, who had sunk to her knees from exhaustion. I heard a giggle. The marquise was known to pull faces from time to time and kept all of us in stitches with her ability to turn her eyelids inside out and then flutter them flirtatiously.
“Who are you hiding?” quizzed Madame de Noailles. My ladies’ eyes darted from one to another, none daring to reply.
“La marquise de Clermont-Tonnerre est tellement fatiguée,” I replied succinctly.
“That is of no consequence. It is not comme il faut. Everyone must stand during the reception.”
I stepped aside. “Madame la marquise, would you kindly rise,” I commanded gently. With the aid of a woman at either elbow she stood, and the vast swell of her belly straining against her stays was as evident as the sheen on her brow. “I believe you know the comtesse de Noailles,” I said, making certain Madame Etiquette could see that the marquise was enceinte. “I am not yet a mother, mesdames, although I pray for that day. I can only hope that when it comes, common sense will take precedence over protocol. And as queen, I will take measures to ensure it.” I offered the marquise my lace-edged handkerchief to blot her forehead. “As there is nowhere to sit, you may resume your former position, madame, and my ladies will continue to screen you from disapproving eyes.”
I glanced down the hall, noticing the line of courtiers stopped in front of Louis a few feet away. There was much daubing of eyes, yet only his were genuinely moist. Then I returned my attention to the comtesse de Noailles. We were nose to nose now; and I was no longer an unruly child in her custody. One mother who scolded me at the slightest provocation was sufficient; I had no need of a surrogate. “You and your husband have served France long and faithfully,” I began coolly, “and you have devoted yourselves tirelessly without respite. The time has come, therefore, for you to take your congé. My husband and I will expect you to pack your things and retire to your estate of Mouchy before the week is out.”
Her pinched face turned as pale as a peeled almond. But there was nothing she could say in reply. One did not contradict the will of the Queen of France.
“The princesse de Lamballe will be my new dame d’honneur,” I added, noting the expression of surprise in my attendant’s eyes and the modest blush that suffused her cheeks. I had caught her completely unawares, but what better time to reward her loyalty?
The comtesse lowered her gaze and dropped into a deep reverence. “It has been an honor to have served Your Majesty.” The only fissure in her customary hauteur was betrayed by the tremolo in her voice. For an instant, I regretted my decision. Yet I had long dreamed of this moment. From now on, I would be the one to choose, at least within my own household, what was comme il faut. As the comtesse rose and made her way along the hall to offer her condolences to the king, I felt as though a storm cloud that had followed me about from palace to palace—Versailles, Compiègne, Fontainebleau—had finally lifted, leaving a vibrant blue sky.
At the hour of our ascension to the throne, after the requisite obsequies from the courtiers, we had fled the scene of Louis XV’s death nearly as fast as our coach could bear us, spending the first nine days of our reign at the Château de Choisy on the banks of the Seine while the innumerable rooms of Versailles were scrubbed free of contagion. Yet I was bursting to return, to begin making my mark. No one alive could recall when a queen of France had been much more than a dynastic cipher. Maria Theresa of Spain, the infanta who had wed the Sun King, was almost insignificant at court. She spent much of her time closeted in her rooms drinking chocolate and playing cards with her ladies and her dwarves, and had so little rapport with her subjects that when they were starving for bread she suggested that they eat cake instead—this much I had learned from my dear abbé Vermond, who had instructed me in the history of the queens of France when I was preparing to marry the dauphin. The mild-mannered abbé had accompanied me to Versailles as my reader, to offer me spiritual guidance, and he still remained one of my only confidants.
In any case, Maria Theresa of Spain had died nearly a hundred years ago. And her absence from public life had afforded Louis XIV plenty of opportunities to seek companionship in the arms of others. They, not his dull queen, became the arbiters of taste at court.
My immediate predecessor, Marie Leszczyńska, the pious consort of Louis XV who passed away two years before I arrived at Versailles, had been the daughter of a disgraced Polish king, forced to live in exile. She bore Louis many useless daughters, but only one dauphin to inherit the throne—the father of my husband—and he died while his papa still wore the crown. Like the queen before her, she endured a shadowy existence, maintaining her spotless propriety while my husband’s grand-père flaunted his latest maîtresse en titre. No one noticed what she wore or how she dressed her hair. Instead, it was Madame la marquise de Pompadour who had defined the fashion in all things for a generation. And then Madame du Barry, Louis XV’s last mistress, set the tone, but there was no queen to rival her—only me. And I had failed miserably, never sure of myself, always endeavoring t
o find my footing; desperate to fascinate a timid husband who could not bring himself to consummate our marriage. I had wasted precious time by allowing the comtesse du Barry to exert her influence, over the court and over Papa Roi, much to the consternation of my mother.
Yet I was determined to no longer be a disappointment. Not to Maman. Not to France. In the aftermath of Louis XV’s demise, the comtesse du Barry was now consigned to a convent. Her faithful followers at court, the “Barryistes,” would simply have to accustom themselves to the absence of her bawdy wit and gaudy gowns.
The condolences of the nobility at La Muette marked the end of the period of full mourning. When the last of the ancient courtiers had risen, the king and I made our way outside to the courtyard where the royal coach awaited us. I dared not voice my thoughts to Louis but I felt as though we had spent the past ten days in Purgatory and now, as the gilded carriage clattered over the gravel and out onto the open road toward Versailles where we would formally begin our reign, we were finally on our way to Heaven.
I had first entered the seat of France’s court through the back route in every way—as a young bride traveling in a special berline commissioned by Louis XV to transport me from my homeland. How eager he had been to show me Versailles, from the Grand Trianon with its pink marble porticoes, to the pebbled allées that led past the canals and around the fountains all the way to the grand staircase and the imposing château that his great-grand-père the Sun King had transformed from a modest hunting boîte into an edifice that would rival all other palaces in Europe. And oh, how disappointed I had been on that dreary afternoon: The fountains were dry, the canals cluttered with debris, and the hallways and chambers of the fairyland château reeked of stale urine.
How different now the aspect before me as we approached the palace from the front via the Ministers’ Courtyard. The imposing gateway designed by Mansart loomed before us, its gilded spikes glinting in the soft afternoon sunlight. I rolled open the window of the carriage and peered out. Then, turning back to my husband, giddy with anticipation I exclaimed, “Tell me the air smells sweeter, mon cher!”
