Authors: Vanessa Royall
“So?” interrupted the monarch, sitting up on the edge of the bed. “I do not want your sympathy. Go away. If I must die, let it be with honor, not pity. His Majesty and I both feel that way.”
This meeting was getting off on the wrong track. Now it was Selena’s turn to interrupt.
“My lady, I can arrange for your niece to be transported safely to England. There is no need for her to perish, if in fact, anyone must perish at all.”
Marie Antoinette regarded Selena for a long moment, then gave a scornful little laugh.
“A nameless young thing like you?” she doubted. “What could you do? With your looks, what might you
ever
have done, seduction or attempted seduction excepted?” She made a loose gesture with her hand, as if dismissing Selena. “Child,” she addressed the princess, “do not trouble me with this feeble prattle now. You are not going anywhere.”
There was a long moment of silence. Selena tried to fashion a rebuttal. She did not have to, for suddenly the princess declared, without heat but with absolute conviction: “Aunt, I am going. I trust this woman, who is my friend.”
The Queen looked shocked, then horrified.
“No, hear me out,” Francesca went on. “When I was stumbling over my tongue in Varennes, it was she who gave our captors an
alias. My presence here in France is not generally known. And Selena is aware of how matters work in England—”
Yes, indeed
, thought Selena wryly.
I was thrown out for such knowledge
.
“—and knows her way about. I shall go with her.”
“My lady,” Selena pressed on, “I may look to you like one who is used to comfort and ease, and I confess that at times this was the case with me. But more often than not, I have had to deal with burdens that would have confounded many a man. And here I am alive to tell the tale.”
“In any event, I am going with her,” Francesca declared. “Of what use is it if we all perish? If I reach England, I shall marry William as planned, and perhaps one day our son will be a King. Is that not worth a risk, I ask you?”
Marie Antoinette, pressed thus to a facet of logic she understood very well, acquiesced. “Let it be done then,” she said. There were fresh tears in her eyes when she embraced her niece this final time.
“Tell my story truly in days to come,” she said. “I was a woman. I was as weak as any man. But if I must die, it will be as a Queen, not some vagabond emigré growing old in alien lands, dreaming of what has been lost.
“Go, both of you,” she said. “May God be with you.”
Gendarmes swarmed about the river piers. Where once they had gladly obeyed the King and protected the nobles, their bread was now buttered on the other side. They swore fealty to the revolution, wore the cockade, and were on the watch for any nobles foolish enough to try to escape Paris by boat.
Selena knew that she would have to deceive them somehow.
The regular boat down the Seine to Le Havre was preparing to leave. Passengers were boarding, but the captain and an officer of the police stood at the base of the gangplank, questioning all prospective passengers. There were few travelers this day, which troubled Selena, who had counted on a crowd to hide amongst. Moreover, although she checked the dock carefully, she could see no sign either of Royce or Pierre Sorbante.
Selena and Francesca, dressed respectably but simply in togs of the
petit bourgeois
and carrying small bags, stood waiting near the gangplank. The captain, it appeared, was eager to be off. A portly, choleric man, he strutted nervously about. The police officer, however, was taciturn and observant.
“You there,” he challenged the women. “What is your business? Do you wish to board or no?”
“Yes,” said Selena, giving him the benefit of her smile and her eyes, “but we are waiting for our
grandpère
. He is to meet us here.”
The officer squinted and examined Selena carefully, then Francesca. “Is that right?” he asked. “What are your names? Where are you bound? You wouldn’t be members of the nobility, would you?”
“I resent the latter question, sir!” Selena said.
It had been decided that she would do the talking, since Francesca’s Austrian-accented French was more noticeable than the remnants of her own Scots lilt. The officer spotted it nonetheless.
“You’re a foreigner, are you not?”
“I do resent that as well, citizen gendarme. My parents sent me to study for a time in England, years ago. I am Yolanda Fee of Provence, and this is my sister, Colette.”
The princess nodded emphatically.
“We go to take our
grandpère
to the coast. He is quite ill and requires the sea air.”
Selena met his eyes all the while and contrived to look as innocent as possible, and just resentful enough of his questions to seem injured by them. If the man began interrogating Francesca, however, the game would become much more difficult.
“And where is this illustrious grandfather of yours?” asked the officer suspiciously, looking about. “Or perhaps he is a figment of your imagination?”
“Ready to leave in a few minutes,” advised the boat’s captain, ordering his crew to make ready for casting off.
“You would be surprised,” the officer continued pointedly, “how many complicated stories I hear from people who are trying to leave the city. I admit, though, that a sick grandfather is a new one.”
Royce, where are you?
thought Selena. She had a momentary and extremely disquieting concern that perhaps she’d been gulled by Pierre Sorbante. What if this were all some monstrous treachery, with her as the victim? What if Sorbante, the revolutionary, had learned about Francesca and sought to have her captured? What if he’d been lying, and had known nothing of Royce’s whereabouts?
What if Royce was dead?
A desperate political situation in which numerous groups with conflicting ideas battled one another led inevitably to virtually trackless patterns of betrayal and intrigue.
“You ladies boarding or not?” the irritated captain called out. “We’re leaving.”
“Please wait just one more minute,” Selena pleaded.
“You don’t say much, do you?” the officer asked, turning toward Francesca. “I don’t like the smell of this at all. Perhaps the two of you ought to come with me to the barracks. I suspect a long chat might produce some facts.”
“Hold up there! Hold up, if you will!”
It was Pierre Sorbante, moving slowly across the dock. Behind
him, moving even more slowly on crutches, was a tall, bent figure in a cheap suit and a floppy shapeless hat that concealed his hair and a good portion of his face. Several days’ growth of scraggly whiskers, powdered to look lighter, obscured a strong jawline that no grandfather, however healthy, would have retained. It was Royce.
“Grandpère!”
cried Selena excitedly, so that both Royce and Sorbante would understand the ploy she had chosen. “Oh,
Grandpère
, I knew you’d arrive in time.”
She rushed over to him and put her arms around him gently.
“Grandfather?” whispered Royce. “I hope you are enjoying this, Selena.”
“Shhh.”
Taking her cue, Francesca also approached Royce and gave him a daughterly peck on his stubbled cheek. He gave her a sharp look; he had no idea who she was.
Pierre Sorbante did, however, and for a long moment, as the revolutionary leader stood looking at the princess, Selena believed that her entire plan was about to fail.
“Citizen Sorbante,” said the police officer, saluting smartly. “You know these people?”
Another long, long moment, then: “Yes, I do. You may permit them to board.”
Royce, with Francesca’s help, hobbled up the gangplank. Selena remained behind for a minute, and held out her hand.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Now it is you who are in danger. I understand the feeling. Soon I will be in your shoes. Good fortune, whatever the future brings.”
He released her hand and smiled.
“And you as well,” she said.
Selena moved toward the boat, then turned. Sorbante had already begun to walk away.
“Citizen, before I leave…” she called after him.
He stopped and looked back at her. “Yes?”
“Let me give you this,” she said, unfastening the gold chain and the cross from her neck. “It was meant for you, and it is a bit overdue, but I think Erasmus Ward would sleep more peacefully if he knew you had it.”
“No, you keep it,” the man protested. “It has served its purpose, and you have worn it faithfully and well.”
“I insist,” she said, walking toward him and pressing it into his hand. The moment was rich with meaning for them both, and tender.
“It is not considered gallant to refuse the request of a lady,” said Sorbante, accepting the cross. “But,” he added enigmatically, “when I have no more need of it, I shall see that it is returned to you.”
“All aboard!” the captain shouted.
“See to your man,” said Sorbante. “He is still very weak.”
“I shall,” Selena promised. “Love has a way of making people strong.”
Then they parted. Selena walked onto the boat, where “grandfather,” crutches at his side, had already been helped into a deck chair by Francesca. Ropes were loosened, knots unbound, and the boat drifted slowly away from the riverbank and out upon the waters of the Seine.
Later she would shed her tears for Jean Beaumain, and there were many. Later she would regret the turn of events that had set Martha Marguerite, once her friend, against her. Later she would appreciate, with a shudder or two, all that had happened to her in this city of lights, the maelstrom into which she had been drawn, and out of which she had emerged richer than before, in the mysterious process by which every event in life makes one richer.
Those things would come later.
But for now, joined again with Royce, Selena added Paris to the list of special places in her heart.
The journey to Le Havre took many days, since the boat stopped frequently along the way, either to take on passengers and goods or to off-load them. And at every stop, local revolutionaries would board to ascertain that enemies of the newly proclaimed Republic were not attempting to escape its authority. Royce had considerable money with him, should bribes be necessary—some things never change, no matter who is in power—but Selena kept him belowdecks when the boat was boarded. There, on a bunk in a dark cabin, out of the light, his beard growing longer and his face powdered white, he did indeed begin to resemble an older fellow.
“Mature and dignified,” he proclaimed.
“Rickety and decrepit,” laughed Selena.
But while the boat was on the water, he spent his time on deck, resting in the sun and growing stronger every day.
When they finally reached Le Havre, Royce was fit enough to move about without the crutches, albeit slowly. His abdominal wound was healing well, and his hand even more quickly, although a full measure of strength had not returned to it. He used a goodly share of his money to purchase a sluggish old one-sailer from a fisherman whose ears and nose had been cut off years before, and waited for a dark night and a good wind.
These came with July. Royce, Selena, and Princess Francesca got into the old scow, raised the sail, and moved slowly out into the English Channel. They struck a course northward toward Calais, thence westward. The boat was slow, the wind intermittent, but when, on the morning of the third day, Selena saw the first rays of sunlight playing upon the white cliffs of Dover, she let out a shout that must have carried all the way up the coast of England, to Scotland, must have echoed against the walls of Coldstream Castle itself.
“Almost home!”
she cried.
“Almost home!”
Those old stone walls of Coldstream seemed close enough to touch.
Elation proved to be transitory.
Royce eased the boat alongside the pier in Dover, and pulled down the patched old sail that had served so well. Francesca and Selena roped the vessel to the timbers of the dock, the princess looking eagerly, nervously, at this first manifestation of her new homeland. Initially, she’d thought the small but busy little port of Dover was London itself, and disappointment had darkened her features. Reassured by Royce and Selena, however, she was eager to set out for London, only sixty miles inland.
This she was able to do, in a stagecoach with Royce and Selena, but only after a fateful confrontation. Each of them ought to have foreseen it, in which case they would have put ashore not in Dover but somewhere along the coast. They should have foreseen it, but they did not, and the consequences of the confrontation itself did not seem particularly important at the time.
As they climbed up from the boat and onto the Dover docks,
the three fugitives, relieved to have made the journey safely, were approached and greeted by a blue-coated naval ensign. He was brisk, well-spoken, courteous, young. Even as he addressed them, his eyes went again and again toward Francesca.
“In light of the conflagration in France,” he said, “I have been charged by military intelligence and the Foreign Office to make certain inquiries of those who arrive upon the shores of England.”
“Go ahead,” Royce said agreeably. His beard had grown in thickly; his color was good; his Scots accent proud and strong.
“Ah,” exclaimed the officer, “none of you are French?”
“No,” said Royce. “We managed to escape in the nick of time. All we want now is to go home.”
“I congratulate you on your good fortune. May I ask your names?”
“Campbell,” said Royce. Selena winced inwardly, even as she understood that Royce was incapable of giving any name but his own. Had he been before a firing squad, and told that he would be permitted to live if only he claimed to be someone other than he, he would not have done so. Pride in the name and pride in the man were one and the same.
“And I’m Mrs. Campbell,” said Selena quickly, also in the accent of her land. She pointed toward Francesca. “And this is my sister, Colette.”
The princess smiled at the guard, who blushed.
“Welcome to England,” he said. “You may be on your way.”
The three left the docks, found a hotel, ate a magnificent breakfast of ham, kipper, poached eggs, oven-toasted bread, butter, preserves, tea and brandy. Then they boarded the stage for London for a journey that would last all day.