Fires of Delight

by Vanessa Royall

  Dressed in old clothes, escorted by a Guardsman who was similarly attired, Selena and the princess left the Tuileries and proceeded perhaps a quarter of a mile. Here they entered a respectable but unprepossessing house that, judging from its expensive but ponderous furnishings, seemed to be that of a prosperous but unimaginative merchant. The King, the Queen, and their two children were already there, as were several retainers. Everyone was tense, and the young dauphin fussed and fretted.

  To Selena’s surprise, however, the members of the royal family had changed from the peasant garb worn to sneak out of the palace, and now wore clothing of the middle class, dark in color, well-made, but not ostentatious. She and Francesca were instructed to change into similar attire. The second phase of the plan went into effect: the King would flee by coach, posing as a merchant.

  Jammed together in a large coach pulled by four bays, the party left quietly in the darkness. It was two hundred miles to the German border. Even with frequent changes of horses, the trip would take several days. The most dangerous portion of the trek, naturally, would be in the vicinity of Paris. Out in the provinces, it was unlikely that many people had ever laid eyes upon either Louis or Marie Antoinette. If the secret of the royal flight could be kept from members of the National Assembly, chances of reaching foreign sanctuary were excellent.

  By dawn, the fugitives were far from Paris, and a lighthearted mood, almost of giddiness, took hold. A merchant traveling with his family was a not unfamiliar sight, and Selena noted that few paid much attention to the King when the coach stopped in one town or another to acquire fresh horses. Day passed into night and then into day again, and on they sped.

  Conversation inside the carriage was sparse and inconsequential. The Queen seemed devoted to her children, and did her best to keep them calm and amused. The King brooded. Princess Francesca worried about William, in spite of the reassurances of everyone—Selena included—that everything would eventually turn out for the best.

  Selena herself was not so certain that this was true, and she grew almost sick with anxiety about Royce’s fate. Without care, his condition was bound to deteriorate, and not to mention the suffering, lack of food and water would also take their toll.

  The King was concerned about his own stomach, and as the trip wore on and the German border neared, he became increasingly vociferous about his hunger. The quick, furtive meals they were able to snatch at way stations did not suffice to sate an appetite cultivated during years of rich foods and fine wines.

  “Now we are coming to Varennes,” he declared, “and the border lies just beyond. We shall stop, rest, and partake of a fine meal.”

  “Do you think that is wise?” asked Marie Antoinette, with a worried look.

  Selena was hungry herself, but she would have recommended against such a pause, had anyone asked her. While Francesca seemed to take some comfort in her presence, to the monarchs Selena was merely a nuisance to be gotten rid of at first opportunity. They seemed hardly to notice her existence, and it was quite likely that they did not. The Queen had not spoken a word to her during the entire trip.

  The coach rolled into Varennes, a quiet, peaceable frontier town, on a warm June afternoon. Citizens went placidly about their business. Farmers and peddlers attended their stalls in the market square which, characteristically, faced the local church with its Gothic spire, the livery, and the town hotel and brasserie. A fair-sized crowd filled the square. Many buggies and coaches and carriages were lined up on the street in front of the livery, as the horses of traveling parties were hitched and unhitched.

  The King ordered one of his footmen to go inside the hotel and inquire about whether a meal might be served immediately, brushing aside the objections of the Queen. The driver went to see about an exchange of horses.

  “Hah!” cried Louis then, with a glance in the direction of the market. “Look at those stalls, laden with fresh fruits and vegetables. And they say that our nation is starving! Come, Francesca, let us go over and have a look.”

  Selena, left to her own devices, climbed down from the coach and strolled up and down in front of the hotel. I could get away right now, she realized, debating whether or not to do it. I could melt right into the crowd and…

  Then she saw a familiar figure browsing near a row of market stands. It was Zoé Moline, examining the workmanship on a pile of peasant-sewn quilts offered for sale. Selena walked over. The presence of the famed couturier’s wife here in remote eastern France was more than a little surprising.

  So was the other woman’s reaction when Selena greeted her. Zoé almost jumped back in alarm.

  “You!” she cried. “My God!”

  “I’m sorry to have startled you. What on earth is wrong?”

  “Don’t play the innocent with me, my dear!” said Madame Moline in haughty accusation. “You…you murderess!”

  “Murderess? What—”

  “Yes. Don’t lie. I heard all about it from Martha Marguerite. How much the poor woman suffers from the pain you have caused her! And after all she did for you too!”

  “I don’t understand…”

  The older woman marshalled her full supply of righteous sanctimony, which was considerable, and stated her case. “You needn’t pretend with me, my dear. When you did not return, Madame LaRouche sent those two louts who work for her in search of you. They found the apartment in the Rue St. Denis, in which you apparently nested with a lover. And there they also found a man named Beaumain, who was supposed to have been your betrothed, dead of a gunshot wound. Ah, my dear, I know why you are here! You are on the run! They are hunting for you in Paris…”

  Selena, in spite of her horror, noted that Zoé had said nothing about Royce being in the apartment. She did not know what that portended, but she was not about to stand here and let Madame Moline run roughshod over her.

  “Well, if you think I am a murderess, why don’t you just go fetch up the local authorities and turn me over to them?”

  Zoé’s expression became cunning and just a little sheepish. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? What satisfaction you would derive if the King’s couturier were to be captured by the rabble and sent back to Paris.”

  “Marc is here as well?”

  “He is at the hotel, settling our bill. I would like nothing better, my dear, than to turn you over to the gendarmes, but we must make haste to Germany and safety.”

  “You? Why?”

  “Because that is where their majesties have gone, and all those who loved and served them are seeking exile as well.”

  “The King has fled?” asked Selena. If Zoé Moline knew this dangerous bit of information, then how many others did too?

  “All Paris knows!” the woman declared. “The National Assembly has issued a decree calling for His Majesty’s arrest. But that has not happened yet, so we believe that he is safe in foreign sanctuary, God bless him. Ah, there is my husband. Our carriage is about to leave. I hope you get your just deserts.

  “And you needn’t bother to tell me au revoir,” she added, before huffing away.

  Selena watched their carriage move off toward the border, then hastened back to the royal party. The footman had judged the hotel dining room to be too crowded, and had instead ordered a huge picnic lunch, which he was lifting into the coach as Selena approached. The King was standing on the ground next to the coach, looking somewhat irritated that his plans for a real meal had been thwarted.

  “Better get inside,” he told her coldly. The Queen, Francesca, and the children were already waiting in the vehicle.

  Selena obeyed, but as she was settling herself in the seat, she glanced toward the hotel. There, on top of the steps, she saw a man. She did not know him, nor did he look her way. He was looking—staring—at King Louis XVI.

  Selena knew right away: The King had been recognized. Even as she watched, the man turned decisively and moved off, as if going in search of aid.

  “Your Majesty,” Selena said, “I fear that your identity is no lo
nger a secret here.”

  Louis looked startled. He climbed quickly into the coach. A brief order, and the party was on its way again.

  “Why do you think I was recognized?” he demanded of Selena.

  She told him about the man on the hotel stairs.

  “He could have been anyone,” hoped Louis. “Thank you for your concern, but there is no need to alarm my family.”

  Marie Antoinette was listening, aghast.

  But Selena felt she had a responsibility in this situation, so leaving out that it had been Zoé Moline who’d given the news, she also mentioned having heard in the marketplace the fact that all Paris had learned of the King’s flight.

  Marie Antoinette gasped. Louis himself grew pale.

  His fright did not last long, however, for as the coach left Varennes behind and approached the border, the royal stomach renewed its demand for sustenance.

  “We must stop!” ordered the King, calling out to his driver. “Stop. I can wait no longer. Look, there is a fine place to picnic, right here along the roadside…”

  His wife protested, but the monarch was not to be gainsaid. Had he not traversed half of France in complete safety…and constant hunger? Was not the German border just up there ahead?

  What could happen now, alarmists like Selena notwithstanding? She was not only a commoner, but a foreigner. Had he not been so kindhearted, he would have had her killed. His father would almost certainly have done so, and with his grandfather it would have been ipso facto.

  The coach was halted, the food and wine spread about beneath gentle trees. Ah, a picnic in the countryside, just the thing for a fine June day.

  The peasants and townspeople who crept up and surrounded this little band in the glade were resolute, but courteous and even deferential, as if reluctant to spoil the royal repast.

  But they did.

  The man from the hotel steps in Varennes was among them. How fate and chance must laugh at the deliberate schemes of man.

  23

  Into the Fire

  So the royal fugitives were turned back to Paris, which became a prison rather than a capital for them. Although the King swore to uphold the constitution passed by the National Assembly, news of his attempted escape destroyed whatever remnants of personal popularity he had managed to retain. Marie Antoinette who, it was discovered, had been in correspondence with foreign governments, was more detested than ever.

  Just as dangerous to stability as the King’s weakness was the growing power of the radical Robespierre. Not content with the reforms that had already been achieved, and driven on by the fecklessness and cowardice of Louis XVI, he sought more and more concessions, made ever more outrageous demands.

  The Paris to which Selena returned was a far more dangerous city than the one she had left only days earlier. To say nothing of the fact that she was apparently being sought for the murder of Jean Beaumain.

  If the flight to Varennes had been uncomfortable, the journey back to the capital was sheer psychological torture. The children were terrified by the people who gathered around the coach at every way station and peered insolently within. Louis mustered what dignity he could, but it was obvious that he was a beaten man. The Queen took refuge in a remote, icy reserve, which fell away only when darkness came.

  “I want to thank you,” she said to Selena, at one such moment, “for thinking so quickly when we were…when we were…” She could not bring herself to say “seized” or “arrested” and instead said “…required to change our itinerary.”

  Selena, mindful that her name might well be known to the Paris police, had identified herself as Yolanda Fee, maidservant. And while Princess Francesca had faltered in fear before her captors, Selena had given her name as Colette, also a maid.

  Then they were again at the Tuileries, with the mob screaming and the torches blazing and the revolutionary banners waving and all the rest of it.

  “I will be leaving now,” Selena informed His Majesty, as they disembarked from the dusty coach and stood in the cobblestoned courtyard.

  “Oh, please don’t go,” Francesca cried. “I feel so alone. Pray, remain here with me.”

  “No, I cannot.”

  She had to find Royce. They had to get out of Paris at once.

  Then a steward approached the King. Selena overheard the message he conveyed. “Sire, your ministers await with Citizen Sorbante of the National Assembly. What is your pleasure?”

  At that moment, Louis XVI was only a human being, fatigued beyond endurance, humiliated, beaten in spirit, reduced even in the eyes of his loved ones. “My pleasure is never to see any of them again!” he flared. “Get away, you jackass, and don’t trouble me again.”

  But an instant later, he pulled himself together. He had to. “It’s not your fault,” he said to the shaken, crestfallen steward. “Tell them that I will join them within the hour. Why is Sorbante among them, I wonder?”

  Selena, whose heart went out to the King at this time of travail, wondered the same thing.

  And she decided that she had to reach Sorbante as well. He was, insofar as she knew, her only link to Royce Campbell.

  “Your Highness,” she said to Francesca, “I fear my mind is not with me. I spoke too hastily. If you will still have me, of course I shall be delighted to remain with you.”

  Francesca agreed gratefully, even soberly. She was still a very young and inexperienced girl, but the abortive trip to Varennes had begun a process of change and maturation. She had begun not only to grasp the nature of the political turmoil in France, she also understood that, if events grew more dangerous, life and death did indeed hang in the balance. The possibility of never seeing Prince William again had, only a short time ago, been fraught mainly with romantic pathos. Now it had become merely one eventuality, however important, in a commingled whirl of time and blood and duty.

  The princess was growing up.

  “Come with me to my bedchamber, Selena,” she said. “Perhaps we can think of something…”

  “You go along. There is something I must do. I shall join you presently.”

  Selena, still in her drab traveling clothes, entered the palace and made her way to the stateroom in which Louis was meeting with his ministers. Outside the closed bronze doors, awaiting a summons inside, stood Pierre Sorbante. For a man whose dream of revolution and power had come to pass, he seemed weary and rather dejected. The fact that he was here at all attested to his success, but it did not seem to cheer him much. He glanced at Selena, but did not recognize her until she spoke.

  “It is you!” he exclaimed, breaking into a smile. Then he lowered his voice and glanced around, making certain that no one was eavesdropping. “There are many who would like to find you.”

  “I know. I have heard that I am being sought by the authorities.”

  “True, but that is not my meaning. The Vicomte Campbell has been worried about your welfare.”

  Selena’s heart skipped a beat. Royce was alive!

  “Where is he?” she asked. “How did you—?”

  Sorbante lifted a hand. “He is safe. That is all I am going to tell you. It would be folly for you to attempt to go to him now.”

  “But I must!”

  “In due time. In due time. He is a very lucky man.”

  “He was badly wounded…”

  “Yes. But he is recovering. He was supposed to have met with me on the evening of the…of the incident in his apartment. When he did not appear, I sent one of my lieutenants to find out what had gone wrong. That is the only thing that saved him. We were able to get him to a doctor in time.”

  “And Jean Beaumain? The other man?”

  “Buried. Some rich woman from the Right Bank arranged it all. But as I believe you know, she also gave your description—and her suspicions—to the police. May I ask what you’re doing here?”

  She told him, briefly but thoroughly, all that had transpired. “Royce and I had made plans to leave Paris,” she concluded. “And I think we must follow th
rough, or risk arrest.”

  “Or risk death,” he corrected. “The shadow of death is all around us now. That is why I have sought an audience with His Majesty, and I hope he will listen to what I must tell him. Robespierre and the radicals are in control of the revolution now. There are demands for the heads of the King and the Queen, particularly after his ill-advised attempt at flight. Oh, I tell you, hundreds of heads will roll. Perhaps thousands. I see no hope of stopping it, unless the monarch abdicates.”

  “Do you think he will do that?”

  “No.”

  “And what will happen then?”

  “He and his entire family will be executed.”

  “My God, do you really think so?”

  “I know so. Have you ever looked into the eyes of Maximilien Robespierre?”

  Selena had, and she’d been reminded of Clay Oakley.

  “I believe you,” she said. “All the more reason for you to tell me where Royce is, so that we may flee immediately. He is still vicomte. We might be able to reach England.”

  Sorbante shook his head. “No, my dear. Campbell’s title has been withdrawn. His espionage was discovered. I am protected now as a delegate to the National Assembly, but he is without shield. And let me further advise you, the people are watching those who leave Paris most carefully. In Brittany last week, a mob of villagers set upon a family of nobles who were attempting to escape to England and tore them apart. It was a frenzy of blood-lust. That is only one example out of many. Flight will be most difficult; everyone will be suspected. Moreover, Campbell is very weak. He should not travel at all. Riding a horse for any distance would open his wound and kill him.”

  Selena had listened and understood all these things with their attendant problems and difficulties. Yet in spite of hindrances, obstacles, barriers, there was always one way to prevail, wasn’t there? If a person could only think clearly enough…