I will tell you only what is of most importance.
Robespierre was guillotined on the twenty-eighth of July.
The Terror is over.
I am with child.
We have come home to Vasaro.
Always,
Catherine
“It’s beautiful, Jean Marc,” Juliette said.
The white-columned brick mansion stood on a bluff several miles north of the city of Charleston. To the east it overlooked the sea and, to the west, miles of untamed forest.
“There’s a natural harbor a mile from the house,” Jean Marc said as he pointed out the window of the carriage at a path leading down to the shore. “You can have your own boat, Louis Charles.”
“Thank you,” Louis Charles said politely. “But I wouldn’t know how to sail it.”
“I’ll teach you,” Jean Marc said. “And when you’re a little older, I’ll let you go with me on short runs along the coast in a larger vessel.”
“That would be very kind of you.”
Juliette sighed as she exchanged a look with Jean Marc over the little boy’s head. In more than seven months they had made little headway in breaching the distance Louis Charles kept between them. She could understand the child had undergone too many partings and tragedies to want to form new attachments, but it was still discouraging.
The coachman reined in the horses and a moment later Jean Marc lifted Juliette from the carriage and then swung Louis Charles down to the ground. “There’s a stable in back of the house with twelve fine horses,” he told the boy gravely. “And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you found one that was small enough for you to ride.”
“Truly?” Louis Charles’s face lit up. “May I go see them?”
Jean Marc nodded and Louis Charles bolted across the lawn and around the house.
“I’ve not seen him so enthusiastic about anything since our ride in the balloon.” Juliette started up the four wooden steps leading to the wide porch. “I’ve been worried about him. He’s wonderfully polite but he’s always so guarded. For heaven’s sake, what more can we do, Jean Marc? Have you noticed how he still flinches when either of us touches him?”
“You can understand his being cautious.” Jean Marc unlocked the front door and let her precede him into the spacious foyer. “And neither of us trusts easily ourselves. It will just take time.” He closed the door behind him and smiled at her. “Now, stop worrying and show a little appreciation for our new home. I’ve hired stable help but no servants. I thought you’d prefer to select them yourself.” He paused. “Slaves are used extensively in both Charleston and the surrounding plantations, but we will have no slaves.”
“Of course not.” Juliette had caught sight of something glittering on a cabinet on the far side of the foyer and was moving toward it. “The crystal swan. I remember it from your father’s study at Ile lie du Lion.”
He nodded. “All the furnishings from Ile lie du Lion were brought to Charleston and stored in one of the warehouses on the dock. I had them all transported here last week when the house was finished. Of course, you may rearrange everything as you see fit once you have time to see whether or not it suits you.”
“Where are the paintings by Titian and Fragonard?” Juliette asked. “I hope they found a suitable place to hang them.”
“The library. Would you like to see them now?”
She nodded and then frowned in puzzlement. Jean Marc appeared curiously tense. “Now, what could you have done with them, Jean Marc?”
He led her toward two tall double doors. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”
She moved slowly forward into the library and nodded approvingly. “Yes, you’ve hung them in fine places.”
“And does everything else meet with your approval?”
She glanced around the room. “It seems quite—” Her eyes widened in shock. “The Wind Dancer!”
On a white marble pedestal by a tall French door the statue shimmered with golden splendor in the sunlight.
“But how could—” Juliette whirled to face him. “We left the Wind Dancer in France. Dupree’s mother …” She shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t understand.”
“There are two Wind Dancers,” Jean Marc said quietly. “The real Wind Dancer and the copy I ordered from Desedero to try to deceive my father. Unfortunately, my father instantly knew Desedero’s was a copy and I thought it useless to me.” He shrugged. “So I ordered it melted down and the jewels sold off.”
“But it was never done.” Juliette looked back at the statue on the pedestal, her mind working quickly. “And when we went back to Ile lie du Lion from Andorra you substituted the real statue you’d gotten from my mother for Desedero’s statue which was still on the island. Then you sent the real statue to Charleston with the captain and took the false one to Paris.”
Jean Marc smiled. “Yes and no.”
“What do you mean? That’s what you must have done.”
“Yes, I sent the real statue to Charleston and took Desedero’s to Paris.” He paused. “But I didn’t substitute the statue your mother took from the queen. You see, your mother never had the Wind Dancer, Juliette. I stole the Wind Dancer from the Hall of Mirrors myself in 1787 and substituted Desedero’s statue for it.”
She froze. “What?”
“I didn’t want to do it.” His smile faded. “I’d have offered the queen everything I owned if I could have persuaded her to sell.”
“I remember …” Juliette shook her head dazedly. “She refused you.”
“My father needed the Wind Dancer. It was the great dream of his life and he was dying. Marie Antoinette thought of it only as a bauble, a good-luck piece,” Jean Marc said. “I was desperate in those weeks before I left for Versailles. That’s why I went back and told Desedero not to destroy the statue. I knew I had to have the Wind Dancer—one way or the other.” His lips twisted. “When the queen refused to sell, I realized I had to steal it. I went back to Versailles three days later and substituted the statue. To soothe my conscience I gave the king his loan and the queen the two jewels.” His voice was suddenly urgent. “Don’t you see? She couldn’t tell the difference. The statue remained at Versailles for two years and no one at court realized the Wind Dancer had been substituted.” His gaze shifted to the statue. “And my father had his dream throughout the six months before his death. I’m not sorry. I’d do it again, Juliette.”
Juliette nodded slowly. She could see how desperate Jean Marc must have been with the father he loved dying and he unable to give him what he wished more than anything in the world. “You took a great chance. If you’d been caught, you’d have been stripped of everything you owned, and very likely thrown into prison or executed.”
“I loved him,” he said simply.
And this was the man who was convinced he was incapable of dreams, Juliette thought. “But why did you go to Andorra after the false statue? Why would you even want it?”
“I didn’t want Desedero’s statue,” Jean Marc said. “I only wanted the queen to issue me the writ giving me legal right to the Wind Dancer. She would never have given me the writ if she’d known I’d stolen the statue from her. I had to reclaim the statue she thought was the Wind Dancer before I could gain legal documentation for the real one.”
Juliette started to laugh helplessly. “Jean Marc, you’re truly impossible. You make me dizzy. Only you would become involved in such convoluted maneuvering to get what you want.”
“Some things are worth a great deal of trouble.” He took a step nearer, his gaze searching her face. “You are, Juliette, and so is my Wind Dancer.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I was worried because we had to leave the Wind Dancer in France.”
“I suppose I was afraid to tell you. I stole the statue from the queen and she was your friend.”
“You stole because of love, not greed,” she said softly. “And, God knows, you tried to repay her in every way you could. I can’t condemn you for that.” A fro
wn suddenly furrowed her brow. “But wait, there’s something that does bother me. When you arranged to have me sent to the abbey, was it because you thought I might be able to tell the difference in the statues?”
He grinned teasingly. “Well, Desedero did warn me that an artist would be able to tell the difference.” His smile faded and he slowly shook his head. “No, Juliette, even then I knew I had to find some way to keep you in my life.”
She turned toward the pedestal and leaned her head back on his shoulder as she stared dreamily at the Wind Dancer.
Everything leads me to you.
The words she had spoken to Jean Marc in love came suddenly back to her. She had the odd feeling they applied also to this statue that had drawn them, shaped all their lives, inexorably interwoven their paths, even leading Jean Marc and her to this new land. “That’s because you have excellent good sense and knew I would love and protect you for—”
“The groom says I must ask you if I can ride my horse now.”
They turned to see Louis Charles, his eyes glowing with eagerness, standing in the doorway behind them. “Please, Jean Marc, may I ride—” He stopped, his gaze on the statue on the pedestal across the room. “What is that?” He moved slowly across the library until he stood before the pedestal. “I’ve seen this before. I know him.”
Juliette and Jean Marc moved across the room so that they stood on either side of the little boy before the pedestal.
“He’s called the Wind Dancer and he once belonged to your mother.” Juliette watched the little boy’s face. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
Louis Charles nodded, his eyes curiously intent as he stared directly into the shimmering emerald eyes of the Wind Dancer. “I remember, this statue was at Versailles. But he seems more now.”
Louis Charles had been too young to recall any but Desedero’s statue, Juliette realized. “You’re older now. Perhaps you view it differently.”
“Yes.” Louis Charles’s gaze never left the statue. “May I come here to see it every day?”
“Of course, if you like,” Jean Marc said.
“Oh, yes, please,” Louis Charles whispered. “It belonged to Maman. You see, I don’t have anything else that belonged to her. I must see it every day and remember … You understand?”
Juliette felt the tears sting her eyes as she recalled what Catherine had told her about Louis Charles’s desperate unhappiness regarding his mother’s burial.
Another link. Another path merged by the Wind Dancer.
“Yes, we do understand, Louis Charles.”
The three of them stood there for a long time, looking at the Wind Dancer, remembering.
Then, slowly, tentatively, his gaze never leaving the emerald eyes of the Wind Dancer, Louis Charles reached out and took first Juliette’s hand and then Jean Marc’s.
AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD
All facts regarding Marie Antoinette—her life at Versailles and imprisonment at the Temple—are as accurate as my research could make them. As for her character, a good deal had to come from my imagination, inferences I made from the huge, conflicting body of writing on this tragic queen. In an age abounding with larger-than-life figures, she seemed quite ordinary. Not particularly clever, she was undoubtedly selfish and flighty in her youth, yet she was also sentimental, generous, a very good mother, and brave at the last in the face of adversity and death.
Danton’s brilliance and earthy love of life are well documented and in sharp contrast to the rabid fanaticism of some of the other leaders of the revolution. Many historians believe that if he hadn’t grown weary of the insanity taking place around him and absented himself from the political scene at a crucial period, he might have been able to guide the country through the turmoil and spare France the worst of the Terror under Robespierre.
The Comte de Provence declared himself King of France on the announcement of the death of Louis XVII and later did ascend the throne after the return of the Bourbons. No evidence exists he had anything to do directly with the death of the royal family but he was known to be ambitious, jealous, and manipulative with no liking for his royal brother.
Did Louis Charles escape the Temple?
Opinion is divided. According to record, a child named by the government as Louis XVII died in the Temple on June 8, 1795. No doubt exists of the child’s death, only that the child was Louis XVII. At the time rumors were rife that there had been an escape and a substitution and in later years at least forty claimants came forth asserting they were Louis XVII. Their stories regarding aid received, dates, and methods of escape are as varied as the claimants themselves.
The reason I chose January 19, 1794, for the child’s escape was that in the historical record that date appears to have been a mysterious turning point for the boy in the tower.
After that night the child was totally isolated and never seen alive again by any disinterested witness who had previously known and could identify him. During the next six months no sound was heard from the child by his sister, who occupied the upstairs apartment. This was an unusual circumstance since the boy had cried for two days when separated from his mother and had been clearly heard by Marie Thérèse. There were tales of his apartment being walled up, of the child being fed through a hole, but records of masonry work being done are curiously absent from the Temple accounts. There are only accounts of cleaning of stovepipes and the insertion of a glass window above the boy’s stove.
Madame Simon spent her last years as a charity inmate of the Home for Incurable Diseases and was described by the sisters as a clean, well-behaved, decent old woman and perfectly sound mentally. Yet she stated to the sisters that Louis Charles had been spirited out of the Temple in a cart of dirty linen and a dumb child with rickets taken from a Paris hospital had been substituted. She still swore to this fact on her deathbed in 1819 while taking the last sacrament.
Suppositions abound that there were two substitutions during the period between January 19, 1794, and June 5, 1795. It seems strange that after the child in the Tower died, his sister, who was on the premises, was not called down to identify the body.
Of course, there are many historians who claim there was no possibility of escape, that tales of Louis Charles’s survival are just that—tales.
But I find it intolerable to think of that desolate child dying in his grim, lonely Tower. I choose to think he escaped, that there was one beam of light and hope for him during the period of his darkness.
And, if I believe, and you also believe … then it must be so.
Iris Johansen, who has more than twenty-seven million copies of her books in print, has won many awards for her achievements in writing. The bestselling author of Killer Dreams, Blind Alley, Firestorm, Fatal Tide, Dead Aim, Body of Lies, The Search, and many other novels, she lives near Atlanta, Georgia, where she is currently at work on a new novel.
The Wind Dancer/Storm Winds Page 92
