Becoming Marie Antoinette: A Novel

by Juliet Grey

  Even then I recognized that it was not the demise of an insect that troubled me to such an extraordinary extent, though Maman has always chided me for an excess of sensibility. It was my guilt that overwhelmed me. In my heedless haste to possess something beautiful, I had not considered the consequences. My covetousness had destroyed the very thing I had so curiously, passionately, impetuously adored.

  In the aftermath of this little tragedy, our French grammar lesson took on an added significance.

  “How do you say ‘the butterfly is dead’?” Madame von Brandeiss asked us. She turned to look at me but I regarded her blankly. Aware that she would receive a correct response from my sister—which is why she inevitably began our instruction by offering me the benefit of the doubt—our governess addressed the better student. “Charlotte, what is the French word for ‘butterfly’?”

  “Papillotte,” I interjected before my sister could draw breath.

  “Papillon,” Charlotte corrected with the smug satisfaction of an older sister regaining her superior place in the natural order of things.

  “You are right, Charlotte. Very good. Très bien. And how would you say ‘The butterfly is dead’? En français. Madame Antonia?”

  This time Charlotte would not be permitted to provide the answer. I chewed on my lower lip—the protruding one. I had no head for rote memorization or endless conjugation of verbs in tenses I would rarely use. I preferred situations where there was no inappropriate choice: to wear the blue gown or the yellow; to play with the flaxen-haired wooden doll or the one with chestnut tresses.

  Madame von Brandeiss began to feed me the words. “Le papillon …” she began encouragingly.

  “Le papillon tot ist,” I volunteered.

  “Well, ma petite,” our governess chuckled, “you identified the butterfly in French but it died in German. Come, girls, what is the French for ‘dead’?”

  “Mort,” Charlotte replied with confidence. I gave her a mutinous look.

  “Let’s try again, Antonia, now that you know the French. Le papillon …”

  “Mort ist,” I said, my nose beginning to twitch as I sniffed back tears.

  Frustrated both by my inability to construct a simple grammatical sentence and by my tendency to mix French and German, especially when it came to the verbs, Madame von Brandeiss took a pencil from a red lacquer box and in a meticulous hand, wrote out the words in my copybook and then in Charlotte’s. Le papillon est mort.

  To our governess’s consternation, I insisted on delaying the rest of the lesson while I scrabbled in the dirt to dig a grave; my papillon mort deserved a proper burial. As I tore away tiny fistfuls of grass and sod, two periwigged footmen waited patiently with my portable writing desk, their faces as expressionless as if they had been cast in porcelain. I crossed myself and said a little prayer over the new grave. Satisfied that the butterfly would now go to heaven, I wiped my hands on my gown and sank down beside Charlotte, my heavy skirts billowing out beneath me.

  “Now I am ready for my lesson, Madame von Brandeiss,” I said, playfully bumping my sister with my shoulder. A servant opened the tiny clasps on the rosewood writing desk and placed it on my lap while another attendant uncapped the ink bottle and sharpened my quill. Then, as always, I dipped my pen and meticulously traced the words that Madame von Brandeiss had lightly penciled in my copybook. And, as always, Maman would never know that I, no more talented than a parrot or a trained monkey, had not really written them myself.

  While Charlotte and I copied our French sentence, tongues peeking intently from the corners of our mouths, a few feet away the footmen were setting up the easels for our watercolor lesson. Madame von Brandeiss suggested that we look toward the palace and paint the view, incorporating the imposing south façade and the gardens. From our vantage at the summit of the slope the flowers resembled a multitude of colorful spots arranged in perfectly symmetrical beds.

  We had not been laboring long over our brushes and pots of color when I felt a tug at the lace on my sleeve. “Hsst! Look!” Charlotte exclaimed. I turned to follow her gaze. The countess had fallen asleep with her hands folded primly in her lap, her mouth slightly agape. A subtle snore emanated from her throat.

  My sister’s eyes were bright with mischief. Being older, she was always the ringleader in our games, and I never followed her with anything less than slavishly devoted enthusiasm. We loaded our brushes with color and cautiously tiptoed over to our slumbering governess. Falling to our knees on either side of Madame von Brandeiss, at Charlotte’s silent signal we applied the brushes to our governess’s face. Suppressing a giggle, I marveled that we had never thought of this girlish prank until now. The worst that might befall us, I ventured to surmise, was that the kindhearted countess would throw her hands up in the air and exclaim, as she tried not to laugh, “Ach, whatever am I to do with you children?”

  I painted a red rose, a symbol of Austria as well as my favorite flower. Charlotte, with a surer hand than mine, artfully sketched a green climbing vine.

  Madame von Brandeiss awoke with a start. “Ouf, mein Gott!” She bolted upright and began to bat the air, chasing off the flies that she thought had landed on her face. But Charlotte and I had already retreated to our easels and were intent on giving a magnificent performance as a pair of perfectly behaved archduchesses.

  I was daubing blots of paint onto the watercolor paper, reds and purples intended to represent the parterre of tulips below us, when a distant shout claimed our attention. Franz, one of my mother’s footmen, was panting up the winding gravel path, his steps increasingly belabored the closer he got to the hilltop. Breathless and wheezing, and doubtless a bit warm in his wool livery, he bowed deeply to Charlotte and me. As he deferentially nodded his head to Madame von Brandeiss, Franz noticed her comically painted face and dropped his gaze before our governess could wonder if something was amiss. My sister and I stifled our urge to laugh. Shoulder to shoulder, we nudged each other, feigning terribly innocent expressions by widening our already prominent eyes.

  Rivulets of sweat traced pathways from Franz’s white horsehair periwig along his meaty, flushed cheeks as he addressed our governess in halting gasps. “Countess von Brandeiss. Her. Imperial. Majesty. Wishes to speak. To Madame Antonia. Immediately.” He bent over to catch his breath, resting his palms on his knees.

  Within moments the footmen who had attended us all afternoon had packed up the copybooks, writing implements, and watercolor paraphernalia with the precision of a military unit. I scooped up the bouquet I had fashioned earlier in the day and began to skip down the slope as if I were a mountain goat.

  “Madame Antonia, your slippers!” the countess exclaimed. Clasping a satin shoe in each hand, she started to give chase. I stumbled on the tip of a stone embedded in the hillside, catching myself with my hands as I fell forward, but my foot got caught in my skirts and I rolled toward the palace for several yards before I could right myself. At the foot of the hill, breathless but unharmed, I scrambled to my feet and tried to smooth my rumpled skirts. Perhaps Maman would not notice the streaks of dirt. Or the grass stains. Charlotte, Madame von Brandeiss, and our retinue of attendants had taken the more traditional route, trotting down the pathway at the perimeter of the lawn. When they finally caught up with me, Madame von Brandeiss grasped my elbow to steady my balance while I shoved my stockinged feet into my slippers. We descended the elaborate staircase to the pebbled walk beside the parterres; Charlotte and I followed dutifully behind our governess, the gravel crunching percussively beneath our feet. Several paces back, the footmen, laden with our school things, brought up the rear.

  Just before we reached the south entrance to the palace, Franz caught up to Madame von Brandeiss and whispered something in her ear. She wheeled on us, her hands on her well-upholstered hips, her mouth a gaping O of surprised betrayal. “Madame Antonia, Madame Charlotte!” With an exasperated sigh she wagged her finger at us, scolding, “Whatever am I to do with you little monkeys?”

  With no
convenient looking glass, the countess rushed over to the Obelisk Fountain to regard her reflection in the water. “Ach, the little devils,” she muttered, crouching beside the fountain, as her skirts belled out about her. She cupped her hands and splashed her face with the cool water until our artistic efforts were washed away.

  The footmen inside the palace stood at attention, never lowering their gaze to acknowledge us. Their gold and black livery nearly shimmered in the highly polished parquet. Our heels clicked rhythmically along the floor as we strode through the high-ceilinged corridors that connected countless chambers like a string of pearls, our names announced each time we crossed another threshold. “Make way for the Archduchess Maria Carolina, the Archduchess Antonia, and the Countess von Brandeiss.”

  Some minutes after we entered the palace, I skidded to a stop just inside the ornate gilded doorway of the Chinese Room, where Maman was waiting with a guest to speak to me. My mother had caught the fashionable fever for all things Oriental and consequently had commissioned a room that would marry our Austrian décor with exotic images painted on inlaid ebony panels depicting scenes of life in China. Did people really dress so strangely on the other side of the world?

  I had not troubled to check my appearance in the Mirror Room as we sped through it on the way to the Chinese Room. No wonder Maman’s lips were pressed together grimly. What the Empress of Austria saw standing breathlessly before her was a ten-year-old hoyden, her rose-colored skirts a calamity of stained rumpled silk, her reddish-blond hair askew and missing the pink satin ribbon that had held it in place, grubby fingers (though she could see only my left hand; my other hand was behind my back), and filthy hose. The woeful state of my stockings she might have missed, had I not removed one of my slippers in order to shake out a pebble. Her eyes followed the tiny stone as it skittered along the floor, rolling to a stop a mere inch from her visitor’s well-shod foot.

  My mother was seated behind a large rosewood table, the width of her panniers obscuring the yellow brocaded upholstery of the armchair. Her writing desk, as always, was piled high with documents, writs, and decrees so fastidiously arranged that if a sheet of paper poking out from the rest had been one of her children, it would have received a rebuke for unruliness. The room smelled faintly of ink.

  I made a low curtsy to her. “Good afternoon, Maman.” Her plump figure was tightly laced into a black silk gown with an intricately embroidered stomacher; a small black cap trimmed with ribbons concealed much of her thick graying hair. She had rarely looked more imposing.

  Maman’s guest was a gentleman of her vintage with a narrow face, an aquiline nose, and arched brows that formed a double canopy for his small, restless dark eyes. His hair, perfectly curled and powdered, was tied in a tidy queue with a black domino. Upon my ungainly arrival, the stranger had risen from his chair and struck an attitude I had learned from our court dancing master: his feet turned out and his right leg thrust forward, so that his slipper jutted at an oblique angle that made the brilliants on his silver shoe buckles twinkle as they caught the light. From the way the man carried his head, he seemed terribly proud of his red velvet coat, which was ostentatiously embroidered with gilt thread all along the edges from neck to hem, as well as on the turned-back cuffs. Whoever he might be, his wardrobe proclaimed his importance. Perhaps he was someone official because of the broad cordon he wore across his chest—a diagonal slash of blue watered silk. Someone royal?

  The visitor made a bow and smiled benevolently at me, unlike my mother, and I decided to like him. Besides, I might need an advocate, for whenever Maman scowled, it meant either that she was contemplating a declaration of war or that I had disappointed her.

  By now Charlotte and Madame von Brandeiss had entered the room, making their deferential curtsies to the empress. Maman snapped open her black silk fan and held it between her cheek and her guest’s line of vision so that he could not glimpse her cross expression at the sight of my governess’s damp hair and the telltale stains of watercolor on her face. In a gesture of solidarity my sister stepped forward and placed her hand in mine, which comforted me and gave me courage to face the reprimand that would surely come. I sensed that Maman was struggling with herself, deciding whether to chastise us, which would abase us in the eyes of our visitor, or to say nothing, which might leave the impression that she condoned our disheveled state. The room was so silent that I imagined all the little Chinamen and Chinawomen on the illustrated panels had paused in the performance of their tasks, suspended in time, to see what the Holy Roman Empress would do. But the whole world knows that the empress of Austria does not mince her opinions or curb her tongue. So she chose to admonish our governess.

  “Is this the way you present my daughter to me, Countess?” Maman’s voice was stern and clipped.

  Beside me I felt Charlotte’s stolid presence, a sister’s strength that would support me if I faltered. “It’s not Madame’s fault,” I stammered. I could not lie to my mother; she would see right through me. At any rate, I could not stand mutely by while my governess was blamed for my conduct. “It was my idea. Mine and—”

  “You will take Madame Charlotte from the room, Countess. At the precipice of fourteen she is too old to engage in childish pranks, and old enough to know better than to goad her impressionable younger sister into indulging in whatever she finds amusing. And Madame von Brandeiss, I will speak with you later.”

  Charlotte squeezed my hand reassuringly, then reluctantly let go. Our palms had been sticky with fear.

  Madame von Brandeiss curtsied deeply and lowered her eyes. “My profoundest apologies, Your Imperial Majesty, for the young archduchesses’ unkempt appearance. It will not happen again, I assure you.”

  But—excluding the visitor—we all knew it would. Still, as the footmen closed the imposing doors behind them, I wanted to make it all right. “I was the one who rolled in the grass, Maman. I was the one who soiled my stockings.” I neglected to mention my ink-stained fingers, owing to my clumsiness with the quill and all the blots I had made in my copybook. But I did add, “I was the one who dirtied my nails by burying the butterfly.” At that last remark my mother arched a graying eyebrow, then waved her fan dismissively. “Le papillon,” I said proudly.

  “Papillon?” muttered the stranger. But I don’t think Maman heard him.

  “Enough, Antonia,” she said curtly. “What’s done is done. My chief concern is that it will not be done again. Antonia, you will wear that dirty gown every single day until you learn the value of the clothing you mar. And that an archduchess, no matter her age, is expected to behave like a proper young lady. You must set the example for the rest of the realm.”

  My cheeks were hot with shame. I lowered my head. “I am sorry, Maman.”

  She peered at me. “What are you hiding behind your back, Antonia?”

  She had been so harsh with me that I had nearly forgotten about the bouquet. “A present for you!” I said brightly, smiling broadly at the prospect that the flowers might cheer her. After all, they always cheered me. If I had my choice my rooms would be filled with fresh blossoms and there would be flowers on every surface, painted on my walls and ceilings, woven into the fabric of my gowns, and embroidered on my shoes and purses. I would wear a garden in my hair.

  I stuck out my arm and proffered the colorful posy. Maman almost smiled. Then she saw that I had tied the blooms together with my hair ribbon.

  “Come closer, little one,” she commanded. I knew I would be safe from any further chastisement because my mother had used her pet name for me. I approached the table, but she motioned for me to stand beside her. She took the bouquet from my hand and brought it to her nose.

  The man in the red velvet suit smiled, but with his eyes, not with his mouth. His thin lips remained a hard slash of pinkish gray. “Très charmante, Votre Majesté. Very charming.”

  Maman clasped me about the waist and drew me toward her, replying to the man in French. “She most certainly can be—especially when she behaves h
erself. Or did you mean the charming posy, monsieur le marquis?”

  She asked me to stand in the center of the floor, a flower within a flower within a flower that was a miracle of marquetry. I resisted the impulse to twirl about, as I always did when I stood at the heart of the inlaid rosette.

  “Allow me, monsieur, to present you to my youngest daughter, Archduchess Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna of Austria,” Maman said in what I privately referred to as her empress voice. The gentleman bowed to me in a most courtly manner and smiled his most engaging smile. So I gave him mine and, unable to help myself, executed a little pirouette in the center of the flower. Though my academic flaws were legion, I had always received compliments on my natural grace.

  “Antonia, this is the marquis de Durfort, the new French ambassador, who has come all the way from Versailles to visit us.” When I looked at Maman blankly, she added, “He is the envoy from the court of Louis Quinze.”

  “It is my great pleasure to meet you this afternoon, madame l’archiduchesse,” said the marquis. “Je suis très enchanté de faire votre connaissance cet après-midi.”

  “The marquis has come to Austria on a very important mission,” Maman told me. “On his sovereign’s behalf he has been instructed to request your hand in marriage for His Most Christian Majesty’s grandson: Louis Auguste, dauphin of France.”

  I confess that my first reaction was confusion. Bewilderment. I clenched my nails against my palms so that I would not cry. Was I going away to get married now? I was relieved that Charlotte was no longer in the room. I could only imagine the look of surprise behind her wide, light eyes, a reaction tinged with envy; it was not the custom for younger daughters to wed before their elder sisters and there had been no talk of choosing a husband for Charlotte. I wondered if it was because she was not so desirable, not so pretty.