by Perrat, Liza
Roux lifted his head for me to tickle under his chin. ‘Speaking of food, I don’t know what to make of these rumours of the King and Queen withholding bread from us, to crush our spirit of revolt,’ I said. ‘There’s talk of a women’s army marching to Versailles.’
Claudine filled two teacups with the fragrant, steaming liquid. ‘I imagine you and Aurore will be marching with them?’
‘Aurore certainly,’ I said. ‘But the savagery sickens me. You know how my parents suffered at the hands of a violent, soulless system. This callous use of force sits uneasily in my mind.’
I slid the teacup towards me. ‘And as much as that boils my blood, and makes me want to fight against it, I cannot condone such barbarous cruelty.’
‘I understand, my child, your nature is not one of violence.’
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I didn’t come to talk about that. I’ve come for another reason — something important.’
As Claudine blew on her tea, I told her about seeing Rubie at the Bastille celebration, and how I’d tried to follow her, and lost her in the crowd. ‘I’m sure it was her. She had my face … she wore the angel pendant. She was wearing a red dress.’
Claudine frowned. ‘A red dr — ?’
‘Oh I know that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just that I have always imagined her in a red dress … her name, perhaps. But it was Rubie, I know it!’
‘But of all the children in Paris, my child, all the orphan —’
‘They called her Rubie, Claudine. I know it was my daughter.’ The hot tea scalded my lips.
‘You and Aurore must have been exhausted. You’d not slept or eaten. You were probably seeing things that weren’t there. The mind plays trick —’
‘My mind was quite clear. I know what I saw.’ I sipped my tea.
‘I went back to the church where I left her basket. I met the priest there — the brother of our priest from Lucie. He told me they took Rubie, like all abandoned babies, to the foundling hospital at L’Hôpital Général de la Salpêtrière! You can imagine the shock when I discovered my Rubie had been in such a terrible place.’ The cup shook as I put it back on the saucer. ‘I’ve seen the orphanage nurseries there. I know how those wretched infants are neglected, so many of them simply left to die.’
‘Did you discover what happened to Rubie?’
‘I knew I wouldn’t find out anything about her at la Salpêtrière, they’ll have destroyed all the records. Besides, even though the prisons were opened and the prisoners freed after the Bastille fell, and I have all but erased those dreaded underground dungeons from my mind, I don’t want to revisit what memories I have the misfortune to hang onto.’ I scratched Roux’s head.
‘Ah yes, I understand,’ Claudine said. ‘The mysterious asylum escape.’
I waved an arm. ‘Nothing too mysterious really — I managed to flee that Hell with another prisoner I was lucky enough to befriend — a generous woman who left me funds to keep me more than comfortable. That’s why I can help you, and Aurore. There are enough livres for all of us. So, now you know everything.’
Claudine refilled my cup. ‘Well I am relieved to learn you’re not some man’s mistress, being paid for your services.’
‘I told you I had no lover, Claudine.’
‘I thought you might be keeping it from me. You’ve been secretive about so much. So, yes, now I know everything, but you know nothing of Rubie, and for that I’m sorry for you, my child.’
‘Oh I can imagine what happened to her,’ I said. ‘A nourrice from the orphanage nursery told me they keep the babies a week, then send them out to wet-nurses.’
‘Ah yes, I have heard of this plight of our foundlings,’ Claudine said. ‘It is a sad thing, Victoire, but most of those babies never survive the journey.’
‘But Rubie did! I saw her. She’s alive, here in Paris. And I’m going to find her.’ I finished my second cup of tea. ‘After all, doesn’t anything, and everything, seem possible in this new era of happiness and liberty?’
***
On that October morning, three months after the fall of the Bastille, an uneasy calm hung over the streets of Paris. It was as if the prison storming had been only the first small wave of discontent, and that some great seism was gathering force, ready to break apart and swamp the entire country.
I had not found Rubie. The words of all the people I spoke to echoed in my head like one continuous drumbeat.
Perished … dead … deceased.
I was almost convinced my daughter hadn’t survived her journey from the orphanage to the wet-nurse. Claudine was right, in the fug of my exhausted brain the night the Bastille burned, I had simply imagined Rubie.
Dawn was quiet and chilly, the little shops still shuttered, as Aurore and I joined my salon friends — Sophie, Olympe and Manon — and the rest of the women marching along the slop-damp cobbles to the low beat of a solitary drum.
When it came light, there were still no coaches or presentable souls about, besides a few clerks hurrying to their offices. All the gardeners though, mounted on their nags, baskets empty as they headed out of town, gaped at the communal stride of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women.
‘Neither our mayor, Jean-Sylvian Bailly, nor General Lafayette can ensure we have bread!’ Olympe, our self-elected representative, proclaimed to the group who had gathered in front of the Hôtel de Ville. ‘They are withholding bread to crush our spirits!’ She flung an arm in the direction of a bakery shop, and its “No Bread” sign.
‘String them up from the streetlights!’ a woman shouted back.
‘Since the men of our city are unable to put bread on our tables,’ Olympe continued, ‘the women of Paris will march upon Versailles and demand bread.’
‘Let’s go and see the baker, and the baker’s wife!’ a woman shrieked.
A hail of cheers and applause smothered her words, children blew bugles and rang bells, and an even greater knot of women assembled in the Tuileries gardens.
The sky turned dark and cloudy as we marched along the Cours de la Reine with our makeshift weapons: pitchforks, broomsticks, pikes and swords. Six drummers headed our procession, alongside two women riding on cannons. We all boasted the tricolour cockade and carried leafy branches, as we had three months earlier when we took the Bastille.
‘Are we truly going to fire cannons on the palace?’ Aurore said.
‘Of course not,’ I said with a wry smile. ‘We have no powder. They’re only for effect.’
‘What a pity,’ she said. ‘How I would love to see the Austrian whore blown to bits!’
Aurore reminded me of that enraged lioness from Les Barreaux de la Liberté, back arched and tail swishing. ‘However can I calm this hate you carry inside?’ I said.
‘I’ll be calm the day I see the Queen’s head roll,’ Aurore said, striding out ahead as we approached the Barrière des Bonshommes tollhouse.
‘We certainly must fight for what is rightfully ours,’ Olympe said, ‘but like a woman, Aurore, who uses her head, and not like a man, who uses only his stiff cock!’
Laughter and giggles rose from the crowd as we marched on, through steadily falling rain.
Dusk fell and Sophie handed around hunks of cheese and cold meat, and that rain-drenched food seemed the best thing I’d tasted.
Flanked by friends, I couldn’t help feeling imbued with their energy and determination throughout that rainy day, but as we approached the royal palace, my foreboding grew.
‘If slander and malice could kill, blood would flow knee-high in this place,’ I said.
‘With no one spared the treachery and deception, least of all the King and Queen,’ Sophie said, as we plodded on, cold and drenched, down the broad alley leading to the palace.
‘Look, they’ve drawn the gates across the entrance,’ Manon said. ‘They must have had word we were coming.’
‘Good, let the Queen tremble in her golden nightgown,’ Aurore said. ‘Let her shit herself with fear!’
We all
laughed — a shivery laugh — as we joined in the chant from the palace gardens: ‘Du pain, du pain, du pain,’ a monotonous drone against the cold drizzle.
A group of fifteen chosen women, Olympe amongst them, disappeared into the palace to appear before the King, to voice the grain-hoarding rumours.
When we heard nothing from inside, a band of women, more agitated than the rest, broke off from the crowd. Brandishing their clubs and meat-cleavers, and calling for the blood of the Austrian whore, they stormed into the palace.
‘We’ll fricassee her liver!’ a woman shouted.
‘I’ll make lace out of her bowels!’ Aurore shrieked, joining the angry mob.
‘No, don’t go inside, it’s too dangerous.’ I tried to clutch onto Aurore’s sleeve, but she shrugged my hand off and I could do nothing to stop her belligerent determination.
Musket fire rang out from within. I jumped, a hand over my breast.
‘Please, let Aurore be safe. Let them all be safe.’
‘She’ll be all right. Aurore’s a fighter,’ Sophie said, swiping a hand across her brow and streaking it with dirt. Her dress clinging to her drenched skin, she looked a very different Sophie to the one who received her friends from a milk bath.
We heard more shots, and reeled back in a great human tide as the bloodied bodies of several women were thrown out into the courtyard.
I gagged on my meagre stomach contents, as we picked our way through them, searching the lifeless faces.
‘None of them is Aurore or Olympe,’ Manon said. ‘They’re not here. They must still be inside.’
‘I’d so hoped this could be peaceful,’ I said. ‘That we could voice our concerns in serenity.’
‘Serenity?’ Manon shook her head. ‘No, Rubie, the women are too angry, and starving.’
Everybody joined in the chant for the King to show himself, ‘Le Roi, le Roi!’
The King appeared on the balcony and smiled down on the crowd in the palace courtyard. He promised bread to his loyal subjects, and there rose a cheer of, ‘Vive le Roi!’
‘How absurd,’ I said, ‘that we cheer when some of us have already fallen.’
‘La Reine au balcon, la Reine au balcon!’
The Queen stepped onto the balcony in her night-robe. I tried not to smile with the irony as I recalled my childhood dream of meeting a real princess. Marie Antoinette’s face a chalky mask, as if frozen in terror of her people’s hatred, I was certain the poorest peasant girl wouldn’t dream of being this princess.
We all knew Marie Antoinette loathed the Marquis de Lafayette, regarding him as a symbol of the revolution, but the General stood by her side — a liberal aristocrat with the unenviable position of reconciling the mob and the Queen.
‘Shoot the whore!’ a woman cried. People pointed muskets and pikes at her.
For minutes, the air was taut with nervous tension and an expectant kind of silence.
Lafayette remained still, though obviously aware he would be forced to shield the Queen if the people started firing. Then in a dramatic, unprecedented gesture, he turned, took her hand, bowed low and kissed her fingertips.
‘Vive Lafayette!’ the crowd shouted.
For no other reason than perhaps impressed by her bravery in the face of a hated crowd, everyone rose in a collective roar, ‘Vive la Reine!’
Marie Antoinette seemed to fall against Lafayette with relief, before a bodyguard ushered her back inside.
The King agreed to move the royal family from Versailles to Paris, and most of the women began the long trudge home to inform the Parisians of the King’s promises of bread.
‘Where’s Aurore?’ I said. ‘And Olympe? We can’t go home until we find them.’
‘They’ll be here somewhere,’ Sophie said, as we hurried about the palace gardens, calling their names.
‘They can’t have gone far,’ Manon said. ‘This is where all the action was.’
Each of us ran in a different direction, our search becoming easier as more and more women left, marching back along the wide alley, chanting, ‘Here we have them — the baker, the baker’s wife and the baker’s little apprentice.’
‘Perhaps they’re still inside?’ I said, feeling my panic unfurl again.
We still had not found Aurore and Olympe by the time the last soggy footsteps of the women faded, along with the words of their new song:
To Versailles, like graggarts,
We dragged our cannon.
Although we were only women,
We wanted to show a courage beyond reproach.
We made men of spirit see that just like them, we weren’t afraid;
Guns and musketoons across our shoulders…
I hope we can meet up one day.
We found Olympe, her dress torn and splattered with blood, thankfully not her own.
‘I lost Aurore in the stampede to get to the Queen,’ she said.
‘It’s dark now, and we’re exhausted,’ Sophie said. ‘We should bed down here in the corner of a stable for a few hours. We have a long walk home.’
‘I will hire a coach to get us home,’ I said. ‘One long march is enough for me.’
Olympe nodded. ‘Yes, but still, we have more chance of finding Aurore in daylight.’
Even as I wanted to keep searching, I knew they were right. We would never find her in this gloom, and as we huddled together on some straw in our damp clothes, the dull ache tore at every part of my body.
Where ever could she be, my little friend? My breaths came fast and shallow, as I dropped into a listless slumber, hoping Aurore had found a dry spot in which to sleep.
***
A strange quiet reigned over the palace of Versailles when I woke. It seemed that great pitiless sprawl had been abandoned, leaving only a straggle of ragged women and the ghosts of kings long gone.
I stepped over the sleeping figures of my friends, and left the stable to find a place to relieve myself. I ducked into the thick of a row of bushes and, as I lifted my dress, I saw her.
Aurore lay on her side as if she’d rolled, and come to rest against a large stone. Her sodden, grime-streaked dress was entwined about her muscular acrobat’s limbs, her arms flung to one side as if she were reaching out to an applauding audience. My cries strangled me as I stared at the dark puddle of blood framing her charcoal-coloured curls in a macabre halo.
The pain in my breast knocked me to the ground, and the blood in my veins seemed to set to stone. Unable to wrench my eyes from Aurore’s lifeless gaze, I lay on the ground clutching my dress and howling like a wolf that had lost her cub.
42
My dear Jeanne,
As you can see, I do not bother with the disguise of any coded names. The Cabinet Noir exists no more. Besides, since Aurore’s death at the hands of the palace bodyguards, I am too tired and saddened by everything to worry.
My tempestuous wildcat is gone, and a quiet emptiness and sadness shrouds the apartment.
Aurore’s murder, coupled with our revolutionary battles, and my desperate failure to find Rubie, who most likely met the infant death of countless foundlings, has siphoned the zeal from me.
They are still calling me the Scarlet Enchantress, but my plume hovers above the blank page, my mind a void. I can barely muster the force to nourish and drag myself through the day, let alone pen scintillating dialogue. I fear, as another winter sets in, la mélancolie has struck me again.
My fond acquaintance, Monsieur Jefferson, returned to America in September. I have neither the spirit nor the vigour for my salon friends right now. I feel like an old woman of forty-seven rather than twenty-seven.
So, in an effort to combat this profound sadness and solitude, I have decided to leave Paris and return to Lucie.
With the news that the Queen was conspiring with the local nobility to massacre the peasants and break the power of the Third Estate, I am anxious for the well-being of my village. It will also lift my spirits to see my brother again. I feel it is a lifetime since I saw my
brother, and even though she has been in caring hands, I ache to see my Madeleine again.
While the opening of Paris prisons and the release of the prisoners has rendered me free, and no longer fearful of return to the asylum, I am concerned the entire underworld of Paris — prisoners, beggars, thieves and murderers — has all made south. People say that during this past summer, these thugs were crouching in the forests, biding their time to seize crops, slaughter beasts and burn every deed proving the existence of a family’s feudal rights.
It is as if the initial triumphs of our revolutionary battles have warped minds; swelled them into flaming wounds, and this underworld can think of nothing beyond recklessly looting and pillaging everything in its path.
We heard in some villages, they put all the women and children in the church, the tocsin to be sounded in the case of attack. Personally, I could think of nothing more likely to cause panic and fear than being shut inside a church with the incessant clanging from the belfry above my head.
What happened in Paris will happen throughout the country. My place is no longer here, Jeanne, I must return to Lucie and continue our revolutionary battle from there.
Of course, I have thought about the traitor, Léon Bruyère who interned me in la Salpêtrière. However, I will not be obliged to return to L’Auberge des Anges, or speak to him again. Apparently all Church property is to be passed to the nation, so I shall simply acquire some small abode in which to reside. Besides, why should that man stop me from returning to my village?
Certainly, I remain bound by the chains of my sadness, but I am free at least, to be, once more, Victoire Charpentier. I think, along with the country air, reclaiming Madeleine and assuring myself Lucie was spared from these brigands, will be a great comfort and give me inspiration to pen further scripts.
Since anti-aristocracy satire is, thankfully, a thing of the past, I shall now put my mind to evoking the plight of women — a subject that remains close to my heart.
Forever your loyal friend,
Victoire Charpentier
***
‘The diligence leaves tomorrow,’ I said to Claudine. ‘I’ve written to Grégoire, telling him of my return.’
