He was laughing, a great broad laugh.
“So that’s her, is it? What a sight! How the mighty have fallen, eh?”
I heard the chink of coins. Axel was handing out money, and plenty of it, to Barassin and the two guards.
“There now, why don’t you all go down to the tavern and bring us back some wine? Have some yourselves while you’re there.”
“Thank you, sir. You’re a generous man.” The three went off, locking the door behind them and leaving Axel and me alone. He listened at the door, then, when he was sure they had gone, came over to me and enfolded me in his arms.
For a long time we stood there, embracing, and nothing mattered but the sheer comfort of his body against mine, his familiar smell, his warmth and vitality.
“We have very little time,” Axel said after a few moments and led me to my small table where we sat down together. “On the night of September fifteenth I will come for you, at about midnight,” he said. “There will be a farewell banquet in one of the cells in this wing. The Knights of the Golden Dagger will serve the food and be on watch. Your guards will be lured to the banquet, which will turn into a riot. You and I will slip away. I have bribed one of the sentries to let us leave the prison by the main gate.”
“My children?”
“Lieutenant de la Tour will arrange to remove them from the Temple and bring them to where you and I will be waiting.”
He held my hand and smiled. “You have nothing to fear. This time we will succeed. You’ll see.”
“Where will we go?”
“To Sweden. To Fredenholm. You loved it there, all the peace of the countryside. We will all be safe there, far from the madness of Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety. He is insane, you realize.”
“I know. I’ve met him.”
“Your encounter is well known. You are the bravest woman that ever lived.”
“Tonight, I feel I am the most fortunate.”
“Do you remember the wedding we went to in Fredenholm, on the estate?”
“Of course.”
“When we get there, my dearest little angel, we will have a wedding of our own, shall we? Will you?”
I cried then, I couldn’t help it.
“I will make such an old, broken-down bride.”
“To me, beloved girl, you will be the most beautiful bride the sun ever shone on. Besides, we’ll fatten you up on good Swedish cakes and pies and cloudberries and fish.”
His smile, and the look of love in his dear eyes, are all I can think of now. He will come for me. I know he will. Only nineteen days to go. Anything can happen in nineteen days, I know. Still, I trust Axel. If only I could get word to Louis-Charles and Mousseline, so that they could share these days of joyful anticipation.
I am counting the hours.
September 5, 1793
Only ten days to go. He will come for me. He will come.
September 13, 1793
The time is so close now, I am frightened. I pray for deliverance.
September 17, 1793
It was all so very well arranged. Axel had planned everything, down to the last detail, and he is meticulous.
We could not have carried it out without the help of Barassin (who, as it turns out, is one of the Knights of the Golden Dagger, I was completely wrong about him), and several of the officials whom Axel had bribed well with Swedish and Austrian gold. We also had the help of Eleanora Sullivan, who lent Axel her carriage.
Rosalie Lamorlière, my maid, was told nothing of the plan. I did not want to put her in any danger. She has been good to me.
Barassin brought me my final letter of instructions, and a package, only hours before Axel was due to arrive, at midnight on the fifteenth. In the package was a pair of blue trousers and a red carmagnole jacket and black hat and black men’s shoes—the uniform of a municipal officer. Also forged identity cards and passports for me and the children.
I was unbearably nervous all evening, and could not stop shaking. I told the guards I feared I had the ague and that made them stay as far away from me as they could in the little room.
At about ten o’clock I could hear visitors arriving for the banquet which was being held not far from my cell. Prisoners condemned to die often give banquets on the last night before their execution, it is a macabre ritual. So many prisoners are being condemned now, Rosalie tells me there are sometimes twenty executions in a single day. So it was not surprising that one of my fellow inmates should be saying goodbye on this night, no doubt with the encouragement of Axel and the Knights.
I smelled spicy dishes and was suddenly very hungry. Soon I heard singing and shouting. The banquet was becoming raucous. At about eleven o’clock by my gold watch (which I hang on a chain from a nail on the wall) there was a knock on my cell door and it was Barassin, saying that he and my two guards had been invited to dine. The guards shambled off, and Barassin locked the door.
When he opened it later, at around midnight, Axel came in, carrying a lantern and dressed in the black cassock of a priest, and I was waiting, having put on my disguise.
“Quickly,” Axel said. “Follow me. Keep your head down. Don’t show your face. If we are challenged, I will talk. You and I are on our way to visit the cell of a condemned man. As soon as we reach the courtyard, we will say we are on our way to the meeting room of the Revolutionary Tribunal, to inform them that we have met with the condemned.”
I resisted the urge to take Axel’s hand and, trying to walk with a manly swagger, followed him along the dimly lit corridor. When we passed the cell where the banquet was being held—the cell door was wide open—we saw my two guards, full plates in front of them, clearly intoxicated and paying no more attention to us than they did to any of the others in the corridor. I wondered how long it would be before my absence was discovered.
When we arrived at the innermost of the three gates to the prison we presented our passports and were allowed through. At the middle gate a guard shone a lantern in our faces and looked hard at me but he passed us through, and I thought we were safe.
As we approached the main gate, however, and saw that some twenty soldiers were posted there I heard Axel’s sharp intake of breath.
“Our man is not there,” Axel whispered. “We must go back.”
We turned, crossed the open courtyard and ducked under a portico where some grooms were brushing horses. We stood in the shadows, conspicuous because of Axel’s lantern.
What could we do? We were trapped. If we went back to my cell I might never get out again, and yet we couldn’t get through the main gate because the sentry Axel had bribed was nowhere to be seen. This was in itself a worrisome sign; had he been arrested? Had he revealed Axel’s plan, or what he knew of it?
As we stood watching, the grooms completed their task and led the horses away.
“Let’s follow them,” I whispered, and Axel, not knowing what else to do I suppose, agreed. The grooms led us, predictably, to the stables, from whose windows I could see carts and riders coming and going through a purveyors’ entrance. Unlike the main entrance to the prison, this gateway, used by suppliers of provisions, had only a single guard.
I thought quickly. Axel was a good driver, he could drive a coach very capably. Surely he could drive a small cart. All we needed was a cart, loaded with empty flour sacks or barrels or boxes. We could pose as deliverymen.
“Have you a shirt under that cassock?”
“Yes.”
“Then take off the cassock and try to look like a driver.” He did as I asked, then we began our search for a suitable vehicle. Fortunately there were few grooms in the stables at that hour—it was by then after one in the morning—and no one questioned us as we searched from stall to stall, eventually coming across an old wagon to which we hitched a sleepy but serviceable horse.
“We requisition you in the service of the state,” Axel said to the horse as he fastened on a harness from among the many hanging on the stable wall. Some empty feed bags, a larg
e earthen jar, and a pile of blankets made up our cargo. We climbed in, Axel touched the horse lightly with a long stick he found in the bottom of the cart and we were on our way.
“To Gentilly?” the guard asked Axel as we came up to the gate.
Axel nodded, and we were allowed through.
As soon as the horse turned into the street I felt my stomach begin to relax. We headed along the road, the horse just beginning to gain speed, when I saw, at a distance of perhaps fifty feet, a structure looming up out of the shadows. As we came closer we could tell that it was a barricade, hastily built up out of bricks and lumber and pieces of old beds, tables and chairs, all piled haphazardly across the road. Our way was barred.
Axel turned the horse’s head intending to go back the way we had come. But as the wagon made its slow cumbersome turn a line of people came into view, Parisians, communards, carrying lanterns and torches. They had evidently come up behind us silently, as we approached the barricade. We could not run them down. We were, once again, trapped. And in the middle of the line of people stood Amélie.
She stood triumphant, a frown of command on her implacable features, a pistol in her hand.
“Get down and show yourselves.”
Axel jumped out of the wagon and helped me down.
“Remove that hat,” she said to me. What could I do? I took it off, and my long white hair tumbled down my shoulders.
I saw Amélie’s eyes widen.
“Fool!” she spat out. “Did you really think you could escape the Committee of Vigilance?” To the men nearest her she said, “I recognize this woman as Prisoner 280. Take her back to the Conciergerie at once and deliver her to the captain of the guard.”
Axel stepped in front of me, drew his pistol, and pointed it at Amélie.
“Let her go.”
“Take her,” Amélie told the men again. They reached for me, coming toward me. Axel fired at them, and one of the men fell. Amélie fired at Axel, and struck him in the shoulder. I screamed. He went down.
I lunged at Amélie then, but several of the communards restrained me and began dragging me back along the road we had traveled, toward the prison.
“Don’t worry, prisoner, he’ll live,” Amélie called out after me. “At least long enough for us to torture the truth out of him.”
I spat at her. “When the armies of rescue come, you will all die. You will all die horribly.”
Amélie laughed. “It is you who will die, Prisoner 280. And soon. We are the Committee of Vigilance. We do not let enemies of the revolution escape justice.”
September 30, 1793
I have almost nothing left. A yellow glove from my son, the little angel Axel gave me once, my wedding ring and Louis’s, the girdle of Ste. Radegunde. And this journal, the record of my life.
But then, what do I really need? My time is short now.
A sparrow comes to my window every morning and evening, a little dark brown sparrow with yellow legs and an orange beak. He is thin, I see him shiver and fluff up his feathers against the autumn wind. I give him crumbs from my coarse black loaf. Food fit for peasants and sparrows, not for a queen!
If only he were a homing pigeon, and could fly to Axel. Axel is in Sweden now, I suppose. Free and happy there. I know that he was wounded but I think the wound has healed. He is sitting in a chair by a beautiful lake, with Malachi beside him. He is thinking of me.
Rosalie gives me so much orange-flower water and ether that I sleep most of the day. At night, though, I hear a lot of screaming. So many are being taken to their death, more and more each day. They are frightened. God bless them.
Note by Rosalie Lamorlière, maid to the Widow Capet in the Conciergerie Prison, written on the evening of October 16, 1793 and added to this journal:
My mistress the Widow Capet, formerly Queen Marie Antoinette, was taken from her cell this morning by the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal who had condemned her and by the executioner Henri Sanson. I had helped her dress and put up her hair under her linen bonnet. She had saved the bonnet for this day, keeping it white and clean. But they did not let her wear it and they cut off her hair and bound her hands.
I followed her out into the courtyard. She limped because her leg was hurting her, but she didn’t complain. I saw her mouth moving as she walked along and I knew that she was saying her prayers, and singing a little song from her childhood, “Soldier of the regiment, be strong, be brave.” They made her ride backwards in a cart just like a criminal. It was cruel of them to make her do that.
I walked along behind the cart all the way to the square and stood behind the soldiers in a place where I could see my mistress, though I could not see very well for I was crying. She climbed the steps to the scaffold quickly and lay down under the blade. Some people say that she stepped on the executioner’s foot and asked his pardon, but I did not hear that.
There was a loud rattling noise and the blade fell and I saw the executioner hold up her head and walk around with it, showing it to the crowd. They cheered and cheered and some danced and sang. A few were silent or sad and there was a line of men who raised golden daggers in a sort of salute as her head was thrown down onto the bare boards and her body taken away.
I will never forget her. She was a great lady, the sweetest lady I have ever known and very brave. I knew her better than anyone for many weeks and I can swear to how good she was. She wore white to her execution because she always said she was innocent, and I believe her.
My mistress made one final entry in this journal, in which she imagined what her death would be like and wrote of our late king’s death and of her son and daughter and how much she loved them all. She was kind enough to write about me as well. Right up to the end, she never gave up hope.
Just before I began to write in this journal I found a note in her prayer book. This is what she wrote:
The 16th of October at four-thirty in the morning
My God have pity on me!
My eyes have no more tears to cry for my poor children.
Farewell, farewell!
Marie Antoinette
NOTE TO THE READER
The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette is a work of fiction, not fact—a historical entertainment, not an attempt at historical reconstruction. Readers who want a scholarly account of Marie Antoinette’s life will find it in the author’s biography To the Scaffold, and in the notes and bibliography cited there.
While Axel Fersen was a real historical figure, and one who loved Antoinette dearly, Eric is an invention, as are Amélie and Sophie and the bushy-eyebrowed Father Kunibert. So far as is known, Antoinette never went to Sweden; there really were Knights of the Golden Dagger, but of their actual exploits almost nothing is known.
Historians cleave to their historical sources, and do not (if they are good at their craft) deviate far from what can reasonably be conjectured from those sources, if not precisely verified. Novelists invent: scenes, dialogue, motivations, entire story lines. Yet the invention here is tethered to all that I know about Antoinette and those around her; it is tempered by decades of research into the late eighteenth century, a rich slice of historical turf which I have spent so many years exploring, blade by blade.
My hope is that through the magic of stark, simplified, dramatic fictional narrative, the long-dead spirits of Antoinette and her circle may live again.
The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette Page 29
