The Queen's Dollmaker

by Christine Trent

  Madame de Tourzel and her daughter were soon released from the prison, and kissed each of them good-bye, promising to try to work for their release. It was a lovely gesture, but everyone knew it was impossible for them to have any influence whatsoever. The prisoners quickly returned to their mind-numbing routine of sewing, reading, and cards.

  A loaf of stale bread and a cracked tureen of thin broth was brought to the cell. By employing some of the spices they had secreted away, the meal was made palatable and the cell mates fell upon it. A different guard came to collect the tureen, and lingered about the cell, grinning slyly as though he was in possession of a large secret. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Claudette looked at him. “Monsieur, you seem to have something to say.”

  “Your friend, she isn’t here anymore.”

  “What, do you mean Madame de Tourzel? Of course she is not here. She has been released.”

  “Not her, the other one.”

  “The princesse?”

  “There’s no such thing as a princesse anymore. New government says so.”

  Claudette sighed. “Very well. Do you mean Citizeness de Lamballe?”

  “That’s her.”

  “What of her? She was transferred to Abbaye Prison. She will be released soon.”

  “No, she won’t.”

  Claudette’s neck prickled. “What are you saying? Was she placed in a different prison?”

  “‘Abbaye Prison’ is just code.”

  “Code? Code for what?”

  “Code for going out the other door.”

  “Monsieur, this is trying. What other door? Where did the princesse—Citizeness de Lamballe-go?”

  The guard described with relish the princesse’s fate. She was sent out into a courtyard of the prison, where a mob, notified of her impending departure, was waiting for her. They fell upon the unsuspecting woman in a frenzy, killing her and hacking her body to pieces. The last anyone had seen, the mob had put her head on one pike, her entrails on another, and some unrecognizable body part on a third. They had marched off with their trophies, singing lustily and laughing, as though out on a spirited boys’ prank.

  The prisoners were numb. If the Princesse de Lamballe could not be saved from such a brutal fate, what hope was there for any of them?

  Claudette took the princesse’s death the hardest, and remained curled up on the stone floor in the farthest corner of the cell. She swatted halfheartedly at a large cockroach that came near to inspect whether or not she was food. She wondered idly if she would be tasty enough for a cockroach. Or for one of the rats that periodically passed through the cells on its way toward the foulest stenches in the prison that indicated a recent prisoner’s demise, and therefore a succulent dinner. What did it matter anyway? She was forgotten here, left to die a wretched mess. William, William, where are you? I could endure this if I thought you were looking for me.

  A few hours later—or was it years?—she heard a familiar noise in the passageway that indicated someone was coming. She lifted her head to listen, but the effort was too much and she fell back, closing her eyes once again. She felt someone shaking her.

  “Mademoiselle Claudette, you have a visitor.” Madame D’Aubigne was tugging on her shift. Claudette looked up. Jean-Philippe was at the cell door. She elevated herself on one arm.

  “Jean-Philippe, go away. Have you not tortured me enough?”

  “Citizeness Laurent, you will rise and come forward.”

  “Leave me be.”

  “You will come forward to hear what I have to say.”

  Madame D’Aubigne was still standing next to her, and placed an arm under Claudette’s waist to lift her up, whispering in her ear, “Mademoiselle, please, it will be better for all of us here if you obey him.”

  Claudette moved to the front of the cell, hardly caring what Jean-Philippe had to say. She looked at him blankly. “What is it?”

  He unfolded an official looking document. Claudette could see a signature and a seal on it. He cleared his throat.

  “Citizeness Laurent, for crimes against the nation of France, including espionage and treason, you are hereby sentenced to death by beheading under the guillotine, to be conducted at the Place du Carrousel tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock.” He folded the paper again. “Consider yourself fortunate. You will have the luxury of traveling alone in a tumbrel. Most prisoners are loaded in groups onto carts. For reasons of efficiency. You will be attended to this evening to have your hair shorn in preparation.” He turned on his heel and departed the way he came, the tapping of his heels receding in the distance.

  Claudette turned to face the others in her cell. Without exception, they all looked at her in horror and disbelief. Madame D’Aubigne, still standing where Claudette had been curled up on the floor, rushed forward to take Claudette in her arms.

  “Dear child, how could this be happening? You are too young for this dreadfulness that has been inflicted on the rest of us. Please believe we are in grief for you.”

  Claudette buried her face in the woman’s shoulder, but no tears would come. She was empty and devoid of feeling, save one thought: William, darling, I love you. I wish I could tell you one more time. I wish I was to die your wife.

  A female prison worker she had never seen before showed up later to see Claudette. She entered the cell, unceremoniously twisted Claudette’s long and once luxuriously curly hair up in the air, and hacked at it with a knife until the bundle fell loose in her hand. The woman, who had not bothered to introduce herself, tossed Claudette a mobcap, instructing her to put it on when the guards came for her in the morning. She also placed a small clock on the cell’s lone table, ordinarily a precious treat, but now just a mocking reminder of what was to come. Claudette stared at the cotton cap, her hand trembling violently. She looked up to see the woman walking up the corridor, Claudette’s tresses dangling from her hand. Claudette momentarily thought of how many doll wigs she could make with that much hair, then shook her head to clear her mind of such a trivial reminder of her old life. There was nothing before her now but death.

  33

  The Temple, September 1792. The Temple’s medieval structure was bleak and forbidding, and now served as a virtual prison for the royal family. Held under “protection” now were the king, Marie Antoinette, the king’s sister Madame Elisabeth, the Dauphin Louis Charles, and his sister, Princesse Marie-Thérèse. They were little more than a band of criminals held at the nation’s pleasure.

  However, their daily routine, if one forgot about the circumstances under which they were being held, was unremarkable in its domesticity. The royal couple began to fulfill the roles of mother-nurse and father-teacher to the utmost. Breakfast was eaten at nine o’clock. Afterward, Louis gave Louis Charles his school lessons, while Marie Antoinette taught her daughter. Madame Elisabeth took responsibility for teaching both children mathematics. Afterward they took some exercise as a family in the garden. Their rooms were usually searched while they were outside.

  Dinner was at two o’clock, and games or cards would follow. Louis typically fell into a deep slumber during the late afternoon, snoring loudly while the women watched. Prior to bedtime and prayers, which the queen conducted with the children, there might be more lessons and play for Louis Charles, or the king might read aloud to the family. After supper was more reading or quiet time, then they went to bed around eleven o’clock.

  The only interruption to the daily domestic scene occurred at about seven o’clock each evening, when criers would appear outside the Temple to relay the latest news. Otherwise, each day was much the same as another for the royal family. In an ironic way, the queen had achieved her wish to lead a simple, unfettered life, as she had attempted to do at her Hameau.

  On September 2, their lives were disrupted again, this time in a horrifying way for the queen personally.

  The king and queen were playing backgammon in an upstairs room when shouts could be heard from outside. Recognizing the noise as the approach of some
rabble, a couple of the few servants they had had assigned to them peered out a window to see what the trouble was. With an inward gasp, one attendant slammed and shuttered all of the windows and ran from the room, calling for assistance.

  The king looked up, unconcerned. “Another demonstration for man’s rights again?” he asked.

  Now they heard the sound of frenzied laughter coming from beneath one of their windows. The king summoned one of the officers on duty, asking what the commotion was.

  “If you must know, monsieur, they are trying to show you the head of Madame de Lamballe.” Other members of the household rushed in to confirm this.

  Marie Antoinette stood up from the game table, staring at the closed window, unblinking. For several moments she stood there, frozen with horror, and even the least sympathetic of the royal jailers was struck numb with the vileness of the act.

  Without uttering a word, the queen fainted away, crumpling to the floor. She did not respond at first to repeated taps on her hands and feet, or the sound of her name being called. Her daughter stayed huddled over her, offering pale words of comfort, and refused to let anyone else near.

  But there was still more to be borne. The mob started piling up pieces of rubble from around the Temple’s environs, and were building a small mound on which to climb with their precious trophies. The occupants of the Temple heard a tapping on one of the windows.

  “Hey, Antoinette, come and see your friend! Kiss, kiss, we will not leave until you give her a kiss, kiss.” Uproarious laughter followed. From inside the room, it sounded as though the rabble might be able to break in.

  “If you do not give her a kiss, perhaps we will add your head to hers, eh? Come out and see what happens to those who deny the will of the people, you Austrian bitch!” More taunts and mockery followed.

  “Savages,” muttered Commissioner Daujon, who was in charge of the Temple and had entered the room to investigate the tumult. He disliked the king and queen as much as any good French citizen, but this was too much even for him.

  He strode down to the Temple’s entrance, and had it blocked. He told the jeering crowd outside, “The head of Antoinette does not belong to you.” Instead, he said, they could march around the Temple grounds with their distasteful pikes, which they did gleefully until about five o’clock the following morning, when their stores of righteous anger and wine were depleted.

  The queen never saw the grisly trophies. She was finally roused and put gently to bed. She went without protest, crying out only once from her room to have her Josephina doll brought to her. From outside the queen’s chamber, the remaining household could hear her, alternating between piteous sobbing and rational conversation with the doll as though it were actually her late friend.

  Two days later it was reported to the king privately that the Duc de Penthièvre, the princesse’s old father-in-law, had managed to have her head and body buried together in his family plot.

  Louis responded, “It was her conduct in the course of our misfortunes that amply justifies the queen’s choice of the late princesse as a true and dedicated friend, both to her personally and to our entire wretched circle.”

  34

  La Force Prison, September 3, 1792. By dawn, Claudette was resolute about her execution. She would go silently and without protest. Mama, Papa, she prayed. I will be with you soon. Please don’t be disappointed in me.

  With all condolences exhausted, her cell group sat silently, watching the inexorable movement of the clock’s hands. Six o’clock. Only five hours to live, perhaps a few minutes longer, depending on travel time in a cart to the execution spot. Will anyone attend my execution? Much worse than dying would be dying without a soul around who was interested in your death.

  Does the blade hurt? When the English Queen Anne Boleyn learned that she was to be beheaded by an expert French swordsman, she reportedly laughed delightedly at her good fate in avoiding the clumsy ax, saying, “I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck.”

  Claudette had not heard of the guillotine ever failing in its job and only partially severing a head, so if she could be brave until she got to the platform, all would go quickly and painlessly.

  Promptly at eleven o’clock by the clock’s reckoning, she heard several sets of footsteps approaching the cell. Claudette remained motionless on her cot. Three men in uniform she had not seen before unlocked the chamber. She laughed mirthlessly. “Does it require so many of you to remove my head this morning?”

  Madame D’Aubigne gasped audibly. The men were momentarily nonplussed, but the shortest of the three, who was apparently their leader, stated in an imperious voice, “Citizeness Laurent, you are to be removed immediately to the Place de Carrousel for your execution.”

  She saw now that one of the other men had two pieces of rope in his hand. He bound her hands together behind her, while Madame D’Aubigne tut-tutted in outrage. He saw that Claudette was staring at the remaining piece of rope in his hand and said, “It’s for later. For your feet. So you don’t fall off the board.”

  Claudette breathed deeply and banished the thought of being tied to a board and slid under the blade. It would be over soon enough anyway.

  She didn’t look back at her cell mates as she was escorted out and through the prison’s dank hallways, for fear of losing her calm resolve. They reached a side entrance and the door was thrown wide open. Claudette was temporarily blinded by the brilliant, warm sunshine. She stood still, blinking rapidly for several moments to become accustomed to the light. It must have been a common occurrence, for the men indulged her this preciously brief time to take in her surroundings.

  From the doorway she was led to a tumbrel, a small wooden conveyance big enough for just a single passenger to sit on its rough bench. It rode low to the ground, such that the occupant was at the same height as anyone walking past. It had clunky wooden wheels and looked altogether uncomfortable for one’s last moments. The cart was connected in front to a small floorboard, on which a driver stood holding the reins to a horse. This particular horse had probably seen better days, but why would a quality animal be used to haul around the doomed? The driver’s back was already to her, but she could see lanky, greasy hair trailing out from under his head covering, the ubiquitous tricolor cockade pinned to it. She wondered if she could convince him to collect her body and send it back to England, but realized she had nothing with which to bribe him, and bribes were what improved any prisoner’s lot.

  The man who had bound Claudette tossed the second piece of rope to the driver, with an instruction to give it to whomever was waiting at the steps of the platform when they arrived. The driver snapped back that he was not an imbécile, and knew perfectly well how to conduct his business.

  Claudette was seated in the tumbrel facing the rear, an additional insult to the condemned. With a huge lurch, her final journey started. The wheels rotated slowly and made a deafening noise as they pounded on the cobblestones. As they turned onto the Rue Pavée, several young boys noticed her and ran up to the cart, following its slow progress. They recognized the mobcap covering shorn hair and her bound hands as sure signs that an execution was about to take place.

  “Are you a murderess? Did you do in your husband?” they asked. She remained silent, resolutely fixing her gaze into space. Other citizens took note as well and began following the cart. A public execution was always much more interesting than working or household chores. It made no difference what the crime was; one execution was as good as another and made for great street entertainment.

  The throng around the cart began growing. Claudette felt a sharp stinging on the side of her face. Wiping her cheek on her shoulder, she saw a red smear left behind. A small stone lay at her feet. Almost immediately another projectile slammed into the side of the cart. It reeked of horse dung. The swelling crowd, full of bodies that smelled as unwashed as her own, began impeding the already torturously slow movement of the cart.

  Now the crowd began jeering at her, hurl
ing insults and spitting at her. Their great desire was to anger her and provoke a heated response, which only increased the excitement of the occasion. She inadvertently cried out as a rotten piece of fruit hit her in the chest, momentarily taking her breath away. The crowd cheered, whether from her cry or the accuracy of the hit, Claudette was not sure. To her great surprise, the cart driver shouted at the thrower, and, cracking his whip loudly, began moving quickly through traffic. Claudette became alarmed as the cart started bouncing off the uneven stones. She was bound and had no means for keeping herself from being thrown onto the street and into the hands of the mob. Was she to meet the princesse’s fate?

  The cart’s followers kept up with its increased pace, determined to witness the spectacular event. She saw people pointing and shouting gleefully about something in front of them. Looking back over her shoulder, she could see what was stirring them. They were hurtling toward the Place du Carrousel, and Claudette could see the giant guillotine looming on the platform, which was raised roughly six feet off the ground. She didn’t think her legs would be able to carry her so far up the steps. Atop the platform stood various men milling about. It was difficult to tell if a condemned man or woman was on the platform as well. In any case, the guillotine, a much larger contraption than she had imagined, consumed Claudette’s attention. The blade was pulled all the way to the top, poised and waiting for its next victim. On the platform beneath the blade was the grooved neck piece where in moments she would be placing her head, after her bound body was tied to a board and positioned properly under the chopping mechanism. A basket awaited her head on the other side of the neck piece. Panic bubbled into her throat, resulting in a small cry of anguish.

  The driver suddenly veered the tumbrel to the left, down a side street, just before reaching the execution area. Claudette pitched forward to the floor of the cart, grateful that she had not tumbled out of it. The driver was reckless, yelling at pedestrians, conveyances, and street sellers who impeded his progress for even a moment. The mob had dispersed when the cart had changed course, since it was now easier to wait at the guillotine to see if another hapless prisoner might be coming along, rather than try to see where this one, lone criminal was being taken.