Flaunting, Extravagant Queen

by Виктория Холт

  * * *

  Hébert said to Madame Tison: ‘What ails the boy Capet?’

  ‘Oh, Citizen, he fell over a stick. He’s hurt himself. The doctor has bandaged him. He said it was a bad wound … in a tender spot.’

  She laughed and nudged him. We’re all equal now, she implied.

  Hébert believed he was the equal of the Queen, but not that Madame Tison was equal to him; but he did not notice her crude manners then. He had an idea.

  * * *

  It was ten o’clock at night. The Dauphin was sleeping and there were traces of tears on his face, for his wound had had to be dressed and he had cried a little.

  The Queen was sitting by his bed when the door was opened and six members of the municipaux came into the room.

  She did not look at them, and as they stood awkwardly before her, one of them found his hand going to his hat; he had to restrain himself from taking it off.

  ‘We have come to take Louis Charles Capet to his new prison,’ said one of the men.

  The Queen gave a sharp cry of alarm which brought Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale running to her side.

  ‘I beg of you,’ said the Queen, ‘do not take my son from me.’

  ‘These are our orders,’ said the leader of the party. ‘He is to be put in the care of his new tutor, Citizen Simon.’

  ‘No!’ cried the Queen, thinking of the brutal cobbler. ‘Please … do anything … anything … but do not take my son away from me.’

  Madame Royale stared at the men with imploring eyes; they would not look at her.

  ‘Wake him up,’ said one of the men, a stonemason. ‘Come on. We’re in a hurry. Either you do, or we will.’

  ‘He is not very well. He injured himself recently. Please let me keep him with me. He is not very old.’

  One of the men came close to the bed. The Queen, with Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale, barred his way.

  Another of the party, a clerk, said: ‘We’re sorry. But we’re given orders and we have to obey them.’

  The Dauphin had awakened, startled out of his sleep. ‘Maman, Maman, are you there? I had a dream …’

  He sat up in bed and saw the men; a look of fear crossed his face.

  ‘Come on, Louis Charles Capet,’ said the stonemason. ‘You’re moving from here.’

  The boy drew the clothes about him. ‘I … I shall stay with my mother,’ he said.

  One of the men seized him. The Queen ran to his side.

  ‘I beg of you … I beg of you. Remember he is my son. You have taken his father … murdered his father … Is not that enough?’

  The Dauphin tried to seize his mother’s hands, but he was snatched away.

  ‘Come on, let us get going,’ said the clerk.

  The Queen ran after the men who carried her son; the other men held her back and pushed her not ungently into the arms of her daughter and sister-in-law.

  The door shut. The Queen stood as though dazed, listening to the piteous screams of the Dauphin as they carried him away.

  * * *

  They kept the Dauphin in the Temple, in rooms below those occupied by his mother, Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale. He was so near, yet so far away, for she was never allowed to see him.

  Piteously she would demand news of him from all those who came into contact with her; but they had received stern orders not to discuss the boy with her.

  She discovered that on some days he was taken into a courtyard which she could see from her barred window; and for hours she would stand there hoping to get a glimpse of him.

  Elisabeth tried to comfort her, as did her daughter; but during those days there was no comfort which life could offer Antoinette.

  Madame Tison, coming into her cell, would jeer at her. ‘This is a bit different from Versailles, eh? This is a bit different from that Trianon!’

  But one day when Madame Tison jeered at her something in the dejected attitude of the Queen brought a catch to the woman’s voice which sounded odd and unlike her. Madame Tison turned angrily away, put a startled hand to her cheek and found a tear there.

  She tried to excuse herself.

  ‘It’s that child,’ she murmured under her breath. ‘It’s taking him from her … seems a bit cruel. That Hébert, it’s his doings. Who does he think he is? He gives himself the airs of an aristocrat.’

  Madame Tison continued to jeer at the Queen, but now there did not seem to be much point in those jeers. The Queen was indifferent to them and Madame Tison no longer uttered them with the same enthusiasm.

  Then she ceased to jeer; and oddly enough she discovered new feelings in herself. She would lie awake at night, and sometimes she would awaken out of dreams sobbing, and the Queen always figured in those dreams.

  ‘You going crazy?’ asked Tison.

  Madame Tison would shiver and stare into the darkness.

  * * *

  The Dauphin lay sobbing in his new apartment.

  Simon bent over him, shaking him. Simon shook the boy with relish. This was the child who one day might have been King of France. Who would have thought that he, Simon, who had known such dire poverty, would have the opportunity of boxing the ears of the future King of France?

  Simon was filled with ecstasy at the thought. It showed what the revolution could do for a poor man. This boy who had had everything he could want – luxury, food, fine garments, people bowing wherever he went – was now the prisoner of Simon.

  Citizen Hébert had spoken earnestly to Simon. ‘We want to make Louis Charles Capet a son of the people, you understand. He is but a boy. We want to make him a true son of the revolution. We want to make a man of him … you understand me? A man of the people.’

  Simon was illiterate. He had once had a low-class eating-house in the rue de Seine, but he had not made a success of it. He had lived in utter poverty. He had done all sorts of things besides being a cobbler, in the hope of getting a living, but he had always been a failure until the revolution came. He was crude; he spoke the language of the faubourgs; he had lived with the lowest. He was the sort of man who Hébert needed for the task which lay ahead.

  Now he leaned over the Dauphin and shook him roughly.

  The child looked up at him, too wretched to care about anything but his own misery.

  ‘Here, what’s the matter with you, eh?’

  ‘I want my mother,’ said the boy.

  * * *

  Simon bandaged his wound for him.

  ‘How did you get this?’

  ‘I was riding on a stick.’

  ‘That’s a queer thing to do … ride on a stick. What do you want to do that for?’

  ‘Pretending it was a horse.’

  Simon spat over his shoulder in disbelief.

  The boy was uncomfortable to be exposed before the eyes of this crude man.

  ‘Here,’ said Simon, ‘you don’t need to be so particular. We’re all alike, you know. Some of us knows a bit more than others. I reckon I could show you a thing or two.’

  ‘What?’ said the boy.

  Simon winked.

  He then taught the boy how to masturbate. It was all part of the duties outlined to him by Hébert.

  * * *

  ‘Who taught you that?’ demanded Simon.

  ‘You did,’ said the boy.

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘But you … you did … You know you did!’

  A blow sent the Dauphin reeling across the room. He was startled. He had never been treated in such a way before. He stared in astonishment at Simon.

  ‘Now, not so many lies,’ said Simon. ‘You’ve got to tell the truth like a patriot.’

  ‘I was telling the truth.’

  Simon caught the boy by his ear.

  ‘When I say who taught you that, you give me the truth. You say, my mother.’

  The boy flushed scarlet. ‘My mother … But … she … she must not know of this. She … she would be … very angry. She would be ashamed of it.’ His lips trembled. ‘Please let me go ba
ck to my mother.’

  Simon shook the boy’s head to and fro, still gripping his ear violently. ‘Didn’t I tell you I wanted the truth?’

  The boy looked bewildered.

  ‘Listen here,’ said Simon. ‘Your mother taught you that. When you slept in the bed with her.’

  The boy was silent, the pain in his ear made him want to scream.

  ‘Yes, you used to lie between her and your aunt, and they used to say, do that … and they laughed at you, while you did it.’

  The boy shook his head. It was too fantastic. His mother to do such a thing! His saintly aunt! He longed to be with them; he longed to return to sanity.

  ‘And I’ll tell you something else your mother did, shall I? She used to hold you tight against her …’ Simon released the boy’s ear and put his foul mouth against it.

  His whispering words made the boy feel that he had stepped into some fantastically horrible world which was quite outside his comprehension.

  Simon finished by saying: ‘Now that’s what really happened. Is it not so?’

  ‘It … it couldn’t,’ said the Dauphin.

  Simon shook him until his teeth chattered and the room swung round him.

  ‘I tell you it did.’

  ‘It didn’t … it didn’t … it didn’t!’ sobbed the Dauphin.

  Simon’s foul face was close to the boy’s. He said: ‘I’m going to teach you to speak the truth … no matter what I have to do to you.’

  The Dauphin stared at him with horrified eyes. This was like one of his nightmares coming true. He shook his head dumbly.

  But Simon was not perturbed. A few beatings … a few days all alone … on black bread and lentils … then they would see.

  Simon would not disappoint Hébert. They would make the boy admit anything they wanted him to. After all, he was only eight years old.

  * * *

  Madame Tison dreamed terrible dreams. She dreamed that her bedroom was filled with headless corpses which marched towards her, getting nearer and nearer. They carried their heads before them, and the eyes in their heads accused her while the lips chanted: ‘Madame Tison, your turn will come.’

  Often she dreamed of the Queen, the Queen with her arms outstretched, the Queen crying for her son.

  When she saw the Queen standing at the window hoping for a glimpse of the Dauphin, she shared her misery.

  Her husband was brutal to her; he struck her once or twice. ‘What’s come over you? Do you want to lose us our job? We’re in clover here. Do you want to get us turned out of the prison?’

  She was sent for that she might be questioned.

  ‘Go on,’ said Tison. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘I do not want to tell them,’ she said. ‘I do not want to be their spy.’

  Her husband advanced, his arm lifted to strike her. ‘You’ll go,’ he said, ‘and you’ll tell them about that new guard we saw talking to Elisabeth.’

  So she went and, as though under a spell, she told.

  When she returned to the prison she burst into the Queen’s quarters. Madame Royal was sitting at the table staring ahead of her; Madame Elisabeth was praying; and the Queen was at the window, hoping for a glimpse of the Dauphin.

  Madame Tison ran to the Queen and threw herself at her feet; she took the hem of her dress and looked imploringly up at Antoinette.

  ‘Madame, forgive me,’ she cried. ‘I am going mad. I am a miserable sinner. I have spied on you … They are watching you all the time, because they want to murder you as they murdered the King … Madame, I beg your forgiveness for what I have done.’

  The Queen’s face softened immediately. ‘You must not be distressed. What have you done you have been made to do. And you have lately been very kind.’

  ‘I am going mad … mad, Madame. These terrible dreams. … I cannot live with them. They haunt me … they will not leave me …’

  The guards came in. They seized her and took her away.

  That night the news went round the Temple: ‘Madame Tison has gone mad.’

  * * *

  The Queen was at the barred window. He could not see her but she could catch a glimpse of him now and then. How he had changed! He no longer seemed like her little boy. His clothes were stained and greasy; his hair was unkempt.

  He shouted as he ran about the courtyard. That gross man, Simon, played games with him … rough games.

  They sang together. Antoinette recognised the revolutionary song ‘Ça ira’. It was strange to hear those words on the lips of a son of the royal house.

  But was he well? Was he happy?

  If only she might speak to him, have his own assurance that all was well with him.

  ‘My darling boy …’ she murmured.

  Then she heard the thin reedy voice of her son singing in the courtyard below.

  ‘Allons, enfants de la patrie …’

  ‘They have taken him from me completely,’ she told herself. ‘What does anything matter now? Surely I have touched the nadir of all my sorrows.’

  But she was wrong. A greater sorrow awaited her.

  * * *

  It was decided that the time had come for the Queen to stand her trial.

  One August morning a carriage came to the door of the Temple. With resignation Antoinette said good-bye to Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale.

  She seemed dazed as she walked out of the Temple; and as she passed under the low porch she forgot to stoop, and knocked her head on the hard stone.

  ‘You have hurt yourself,’ said one of the guards, overcome by compassion.

  ‘Nothing can hurt me now,’ she answered.

  She stepped into the carriage and was taken to the Conciergerie.

  Chapter XVII

  THE LAST RIDE

  There was little comfort in the Conciergerie.

  She was taken to a small room with barred windows recently vacated by an old General who had left that day in a tumbril for the Place de la Revolution.

  Moisture trickled down the walls of the cell and it was impossible to keep the mattress dry.

  The Conciergerie was known throughout Paris as the prison of doom. Few left it nowadays except for that last journey to the guillotine.

  Hébert was inflaming the people against the Queen. It was time, he said, that she tried on Samson’s necktie. It was time the executioner should play ball with the she-wolf’s head. She should be chopped into mincemeat to pay for the blood she had on her conscience.

  But the military commanders were not eager for the death of Antoinette. The war was going less satisfactorily, and it was felt that alive she could be used to bargain with the Austrian enemy.

  * * *

  Fersen was in despair when he heard of her removal to the Conciergerie, and at the root of his fear was his feeling of helplessness.

  He wrote to his sister: ‘Since I have heard that the Queen is in the Conciergerie, I have no longer felt that I am alive, for it is not life to exist as I do and to suffer the pains which I now endure. If I could do something to bring about her release my agony would be less. It is terrible that all I can do is to go about imploring others to act. I would give my life to save her. My greatest happiness would be to die that she might live. I reproach myself for breathing this pure air while she is in that loathsome place. My life is poisoned, so that I veer from pain to wrath and from wrath back to pain.’

  But Fersen was powerless. He could only mourn.

  * * *

  There was more kindness in the Conciergerie than there had been in the Temple. Was this because the place was known as the ‘ante-room of death’?

  The jailer’s wife, Madame Richard, was a kindly woman. She was charmed by the Queen’s graciousness and did all she could for her comfort. She made her husband fit a piece of carpet over that part of the ceiling through which the water dripped onto the bed. And when Madame Richard’s little boy came into the cell, the Queen embraced him because he was as fair-haired as the Dauphin was, and of the same age.

&nb
sp; ‘You see, Madame Richard,’ she said, ‘he reminds me of my own son.’

  Madame Richard turned away to hide her tears, and after that she asked the police commissioner, Michonis, who had been a lemonade-seller before the revolution and was now an inspector of prisoners, if he would discover and bring news of the Queen’s children. ‘For what harm can that do to the Republic?’ she asked. ‘And look what good it can do to a poor mother!’

  So Michonis, who was a good-hearted man, brought little bits of news about Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale. The Dauphin was well and not unhappy, he said. ‘These young children,’ he added, ‘they are resilient. They recover from griefs more quickly than we do.’

  Then there was Rosalie, the young servant girl, who adored her mistress, and who cleaned the cell as she cleaned no others; she brought in a box so that the few clothes the Queen possessed might be folded carefully and kept as well as possible. Every morning she would scrape the mildew from the Queen’s shoes, for it would gather during the night in that damp cell.

  The Queen had aged considerably. Her hair was white now; there were rheumatic pains in her legs so that some days she found it difficult to stand. She was suffering from haemorrhages which made her very weak.

  These good people took it upon themselves to smuggle comforts into the cell – some warm blankets to keep out the damp, some new sheets, a new mourning cap. Madame Richard and Rosalie did little jobs for her when they could, such as washing and mending her clothes.

  One day Michonis came to inspect her cell, and with him was a stranger, a man who, he explained, wished to see what the inside of a prison was like.

  Antoinette looked at this man and believed she recognised him. He was carrying a nosegay such as was generally carried by visitors to prisons and such places where the foul air might provoke disease.