Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution (53 page)

A bell begins to ring, and an expectant hush settles over the crowd; I see that Paschal has taken his mother’s hand.

A deep voice announces, “Citizen Louis Capet,” and the king is led through a pair of double doors into the middle of the room. The sound of rustling fabric echoes in the hall as thousands of bodies shift to get a better view. He is dressed in green, from his embroidered
culottes
to his long silk coat. There is no chair provided for him until the president of the Convention decides he may be seated. And this is how the trial unfolds. With a hundred little slights to a man who never chose his birth.

“This is all a show,” my mother says. “They will find him guilty, and the only question is what his punishment will be. I will not go back.” She has changed since losing Johann and Edmund. She is not as strong as she used to be.

So it is Curtius and Isabel who join me in the Salle du Manège, day after day, as the lawyers present their cases to the members of the National Convention.
Louis Capet on Trial
is our first tableau, then we add Bertrand Barère, since he is the president and is arguing the case against the king. Curtius prints an excerpt of his final speech on a sign, including the words, “The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants!” I wince when I see it, but this is the news.

T
HE TRIAL IS
over on the fifteenth of January, and though we try to convince my mother to come to hear the verdict, she firmly refuses. “History will remember this,” she says. “I do not need to.”

The crowds are overwhelming. But on this day, they are silent. The driving rain echoes on the roof, and the candles sputter each time the doors are opened. They have accused the king of tyranny, and we listen as they read out all thirty-two charges for the last time. Then the voting begins. First, they must decide whether the king is guilty. If so, they must determine what the punishment will be. Bertrand Barère stands before the Convention and announces, “As proposed by Marat, this will be an oral vote.”

There is a murmuring in the audience. Now, anyone who dares to vote for the king’s innocence will be exposed as a traitor. More than seven hundred deputies approach the bar, and each man announces his verdict. By the afternoon, every deputy has declared Citizen Louis Capet guilty.

“The vote on punishment will now begin.” Barère takes his seat at the head of the Convention, where the king should be. Citizen Capet is not here today. He will never be seated in a place of power again, and everyone in this hall is conscious that they are witnessing history.

“They will banish him,” I whisper to Isabel. “They cannot vote for death.”

But deputy by deputy I am proven wrong. It is the Duc d’Orléans, the king’s own cousin, who casts one of the final votes against him. The Salle du Manège is completely silent. Then the president stands and announces, “Citizen Louis Capet has been found guilty of the charges leveled against him, and for these crimes his punishment shall be death.”

Chapter 51

J
ANUARY
20–21, 1793

You have to punish not only the traitors, but even those who are indifferent; you have to punish whoever is passive in the republic, and who does nothing for it
.

—L
OUIS
A
NTOINE DE
S
AINT-
J
UST, REVOLUTIONARY AND LAWYER

A
S
I
AM ABOUT TO LOCK THE DOORS OF THE
S
ALON DE
C
IRE
, three men emerge from the darkness of the Boulevard. I recognize the middle figure at once. No one else wears powdered wigs or
culottes
on this street. But the other two are unfamiliar to me. “Robespierre,” I say.

“Marie.” He nods curtly. “These are my guards. May we come in?”

I open the door. It is dark inside, since I have snuffed out the candles. I call for my mother to bring us a lantern, and we wait in the hall’s shadows until light appears.

“Thank you, Maman.”

“Robespierre,” she exclaims, then stares at the strangers.

“His bodyguards,” I say in German. She is wise enough not to make any kind of remark. I turn to Robespierre. “Would you like to come upstairs?”

He looks nervous. His eyes are searching the shadows. “Who—who is that?” he cries. His guards withdraw their pistols, and Isabel shouts, “It’s me!”

“That’s my sister-in-law and her
child,”
I say angrily.

Robespierre looks behind him. “There are royalists who wish to kill me, Marie. They want to see me dead for voting to condemn Capet.”

“But hundreds of other men voted as well.”

“And
I
am the one they’ll blame!” Behind his glasses, his eyes are searching. Does he think we’re hiding assassins in the hall? “There are conspiracies being hatched throughout this city. Royalist conspiracies,” he snaps. He has never spoken like this to me. “I have come with a request for which the National Convention is willing to pay.”

I clench my hands nervously. “And what would that be?”

“We need proof,” he says, and I can see that this discomforts him. “There is no way of showing the world that Capet has died unless we have evidence.” He clears his throat. “We wish for you to make a mask,” he says.

A death mask
. So they can see every hair on his head—brows, lashes, even a day’s worth of stubble. My mother has gone pale. Isabel steps forward and says, “This is too great an honor for our Salon. Perhaps the work should go to someone more deserving.”

“I can think of no family more deserving than this,” Robespierre replies. “The Convention will allow you to keep a copy to display in whatever way you see fit.”

“That is very kind,” I say. Henri would hear the sarcasm in my voice.

“And there would be others. Other
traitors
. We must have proof for our citizens that these criminals have died. Now, is the Salon de Cire willing to help our country in this way?”

Isabel takes my hand. I look to my mother and Paschal, who are standing together like a tableau of loss and sorrow. “Maman, why don’t you take Paschal upstairs?” I watch them go, then turn to Robespierre. “As always,” I say quietly, “our family wishes to serve the
patrie.”

The corners of his lips turn upward. “Tomorrow, you will find Capet’s head and body in the Madeleine Cemetery. He will not be buried until your arrival.”

“And the other—traitors?” I ask.

“The Convention will send word the night before. The bodies will be delivered to the graveyard at nine in the evening. It would be advisable to visit before the corpses—”

“Rot?” I ask brutally.

He pushes his glasses back on his nose. “Yes.”

“Models are better taken from life,” I say.

“The purpose of these masks is to prove that they are
dead
. The Convention will not forget your service.” He moves toward the door. “I knew we could consider you a friend,” he adds gravely. “Good night.”

It is only when they are gone that the tears roll down my cheeks.

“Marie!” Isabel cries and puts her arm around my shoulders. But I sit behind the
caissier
’s desk and weep. I look out at my kingdom, and it is a vast stretch of darkness. So this is what I traded for love. This is what I traded for safety.

“I will come with you,” she says.

“I would never ask that—”

“I want to.”

“You don’t know what it’s like.”

“I don’t care,” she swears. “I will not let you go alone.”

I dry my tears with the ends of my fichu. “You are too kind to me. I was not half as kind to the only man I ever loved.”

To this, Isabel is silent.

“He isn’t coming back,” I tell her. “I made my choice, and now he isn’t coming back.”

“You don’t know this—”

But I nod. “I do. He sent a letter.”

“To this house?” She is surprised. She is the one who greets the mail carrier when he arrives.

“It came by private courtier last night. I was outside, sweeping the steps.” I think now of all the times when Henri would sit outside waiting for me. “He is staying in London.”

“Oh, Marie. In a year, in two years, when all of this is over—”

I give her a long look. “You heard Robespierre. One day, he will come with a request I cannot honor. And what will I do then?”

We watch each other in the red glow of the lantern.

“We can think about that tomorrow,” she says.

I
DO NOT
sleep. I lie in my bed imagining the many terrible scenes transpiring somewhere in the Temple. By now, the king’s family must know what is happening. What will he say to Marie Antoinette, who traveled from Austria as a fourteen-year-old girl to be his bride? Louis XVI is the father of her children. She will be devastated.

And how will he tell his son, the little dauphin? I think of Paschal, who is the same age as Louis-Charles, and how he still asks every few weeks when his father will be coming home. How will the prince be made to understand that his papa is to die? That tomorrow, the guillotine will be moved to the Place Louis XV—now renamed the Place de la Révolution—and he will ascend the scaffold like a common criminal and lay his head beneath the blade?

The horrors are too many to imagine. I close my eyes and picture Wolfgang and Henri strolling the streets of London together with Michael and Abrielle. I imagine the bakeries where they buy as much bread as one person can eat. And the streets, all brightly lit with lamps. Somewhere in those streets there will be beautiful women, intelligent women, but Henri will wait for me. I know he will. My eyes begin to sting, and I squeeze them tighter. I have given away life for a career among the dead. I bury my face in my pillow and wish for sleep. But it comes only after many hours.

When I wake, a heavy fog hangs over the streets. I dress in my thickest cloak to ward off the damp, but when I step outside and whistle for a carriage, I can still feel the chill through my clothes. Because Curtius is on duty in the Place de la Révolution, only Isabel and I are going. We kiss my mother and Paschal good-bye, and when a cabriolet arrives, we climb in.

“Do you want to check your bag?” Isabel asks.

My mother packed it this morning with everything I should need, but I haven’t looked inside. “No. I trust her.” I put it on the seat next to me. It is the same as any physician’s leather case, only this will be for death.

“Do you think Robespierre will be there?” Isabel asks.

“In the Place de la Révolution or at the graveyard? My guess is neither. He faints at the sight of blood. He’s not a strong man.”

Though we are several blocks from the Place de la Révolution, our carriage comes to a sudden stop. The streets are filled with too many carriages to go any further. “You will have to walk the rest of the way,” the driver shouts. We pay the old man in livres-assignats, and he tips his hat to us as we leave. “A historic day,” he says. It’s impossible to know exactly what he means, whether he is for the king’s death today or against it. No one gives their opinion now.