Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution (54 page)

Twenty thousand people have filled the public square, and it is a sea of red, from the brightly painted guillotine to the liberty caps that both men and women are wearing. Thousands of soldiers line the route where the king will be taken from his prison to the scaffold, and somewhere among those men is Curtius. If there are royalists who are hoping to save the king, there is no chance that their uprising will succeed.

The clouds are low and dark in the sky, and fog has obscured much of the courtyard. “Perhaps God is already in mourning,” I say. We stop at the edge of the crowd. More people will be coming. It is nine, and the king will not appear until ten. “I don’t think we need to go any farther.”

“I’m glad your mother isn’t here,” Isabel tells me.

We huddle against our cloaks and listen to the people talking around us. They are commoners mostly, dressed in long trousers and ill-fitting coats. They are curious to see what the king will look like, since most of them have never laid eyes on him in person. “I heard he’s enormously fat,” one woman says, and her family hurries to agree. “What else would you be on a diet of cake and wine?” Another woman offers, “I bet they will sing
‘La Marseillaise
’ when he comes and force a liberty cap on his head.”

But when the king arrives, there is silence in the Place de la Révolution. His coach is pulled through the crowds by a pair of horses made skittish by the number of people. And when the door to the carriage opens, it is no fat man in ermine who climbs the narrow steps to the scaffold. In the six weeks since I have seen him, the king has lost a great deal of weight. His simple suit and cloak hang loose on his frame, and he looks older than his thirty-eight years. His white hair has been cropped at the neck for the guillotine, and as he stands before the masses who once adored him, it is a pitiful sight.

Charles Sanson, the executioner, has allowed him to speak his last words. Although we cannot hear them, they are repeated through the crowd. He is declaring his innocence, and is using the last breaths he will ever take to pardon those who are about to shed his blood. Although it’s clear he wants to say more, a captain of the National Guard orders the drumroll to begin and he is taken to the plank. His hands are tied behind his back, and his neck is held in place by a piece of wood. The drumroll quickens. Isabel looks away, and in a moment it’s over. Sanson pulls the string, and the blade comes crashing down.

There is silence. Then Sanson reaches into the wicker basket and holds up the king’s head. Cheers resound throughout the square, and the crowd surges forward. “What are they doing?” Isabel cries.

We are carried along by the momentum of the crowd. They are pushing from behind us, and from what I can see, they are struggling to reach the scaffold. “They want to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood!” I shout. I grab Isabel’s arm so that neither of us falls in this moving tide of people. We struggle for an hour to leave the square, and when we finally escape, Sanson has already sold the king’s belongings. It is an executioner’s right to strip the corpse and sell its clothes. In this case, he has even sold King Louis’s wig.

We begin the walk to the Madeleine Cemetery. Neither of us speaks about what we have witnessed. Nine hundred years of august tradition died on the scaffold today, yet every
sans-culotte
we pass is humming a tune and the children in the streets are waving flags. Now that the king is dead, we shall all be rich. No one will ever go hungry. There will be bread in the bakeries and cheap coffee in the shops and a respectable job for every patriot. We reach the cemetery gates, and a guardsman demands to know our business.

“We are here on the orders of Robespierre,” I tell him.

“You are Citizeness Grosholtz?” He peers into my face.

“I am.”

He gestures with his toothpick to Isabel. “And who is this?”

“My assistant,” I lie.

He studies her, and his eyes come to rest on her tricolor cockade. “Follow me.”

Isabel takes my arm as we pass through the graveyard. Thunder echoes in the distance. It will rain at any moment. A fitting tribute, I think, to regicide. We reach a small house at the edge of the cemetery, and the guard says, “The charnel house. The body is in there. I will stand here while you work.” He hands Isabel a lantern, and she holds it out before us.

“Thank you for coming with me,” I whisper.

“I would never have let you come alone.”

We enter the room together. It is dark and cold, and immediately we are assaulted by the stench of rotting flesh. It is almost sweet and cloying, a scent that will remain in our hair and clothes until we wash. There are a dozen bodies waiting for burial, but I hardly notice them. All I see is the dismembered corpse of the king in his plain wooden coffin. Isabel has never been so close to him, and to see our monarch like this is both humbling and horrifying. She crosses herself. But someday, this is what we shall all come to. I open my leather bag.

“I’ll need water,” I say.

Isabel goes to the door and asks the guard for a cup.

“Thirsty work?” He laughs.

She does not laugh with him. “It is for the plaster. A bowl will do as well.”

I am finished in a few minutes. I replace the king’s head between his legs—there is no room for it anywhere else in the coffin—then wrap the plaster death mask in a cotton shawl.

“I thought it would take longer,” the guard remarks. He takes the toothpick from his mouth and casually investigates what he’s pulled from his teeth.

“I am taking the cast to my workshop,” I reply. “The wax head will be created there.”

“As long as it’s somewhere. Those men from the Convention were eager to have it done.”

“And the body?” I ask quietly. “What will happen to it?”

“Quicklime, I suppose. That way there’s nothing left to dig up. We’re not looking to have his bones made into relics.”

“And it will be an anonymous grave?”

“Of course. He was a tyrant.” The guard smiles. “That mask is the last that anyone shall see of him.”

Chapter 52

J
ANUARY
25, 1793

I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long
.

—M
ARIE
A
NTOINETTE

T
HE GUARDS SCRUTINIZE MY PAPERS AND ASK ME AGAIN WHAT
I am doing here.

“I am visiting on the orders of Robespierre. I am to report on the conditions of the royal family.”

“I can read that,” the younger one snaps. But he has searched my basket and discovered the wax miniature of Saint Denis, the patron saint of Paris, and become suspicious. “And what business does Robespierre have in sending a woman? Did he ask that you bring a headless saint?”

I raise my chin. “I am here on Robespierre’s request,” I repeat. “I brought this as a warning,” I lie. Saint Denis was beheaded with a sword on Montmartre. He was the only saint I could plausibly bring. Although he is holding his head in his hands, like his image outside the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, he will give Madame Élisabeth comfort. “I am here to serve the Convention,” I tell him.

“Not to convey a message, or warn her of an uprising?”

“My uncle is a captain of the National Guard.”

“And Lafayette was their commander. That means nothing, Citizeness.”

The guard watches me, and I return his stare. I don’t know what they want from me. I have a pass with the words
Officier Municipal
written diagonally. It is obviously official. Clearly, it was a mistake to convince Robespierre that I should come. But if the guard is looking for tears, he will not find them. I have no more.

“You may go,” he says at last. Then adds threateningly, “My men will be watching.”

Four soldiers escort me into the Temple, and I follow them through the halls. Unlike the Tuileries, this is not a palace. It is a fortress built by the Knights Templars with cold, damp walls and rising turrets. Somewhere, far beneath my feet, the victims of the Inquisition were once imprisoned. Now this is where the royal family must live.

We reach a wooden door, and the guard pushes it open. “A guest!” he shouts, and inside the chamber a woman with white hair and a black taffeta gown rises to greet me.
My God, it is the queen
. I remind myself that I must not curtsy. She is Madame Capet now, not Queen Marie Antoinette.

“Thank you, Thomas,” she says kindly, but the soldier warns her that I shall not be staying long. The door is left open, and the queen takes my hands. “Mademoiselle Grosholtz.” After so many years, she still remembers me. “Or is it Madame now?”

I think of Henri and swallow my hurt. “No, still Mademoiselle.”

She guides me to a chair, and it feels very much like I am walking through a dream. Her children are sitting before the fireplace, reading books from the vast library spread along the walls. They look up at me, and while the boy smiles, the girl watches me with open suspicion. There is a small dog warming itself by the fire. I think of Madame Élisabeth’s little greyhounds. There is no sign of them here, and I wonder if they have been sent away.

“Marie-Thérèse, would you go and find your aunt? She will be very glad to see Mademoiselle Grosholtz.”

“Just Marie,” I correct her.

The princesse stands. “I don’t see why Louis can’t do it.”

The queen smiles self-consciously at me before turning to her daughter. “Because you are the one I asked.”

She doesn’t argue further. She stalks through the door, and I think to myself, What an unfortunate child. How is it fair to heap such losses on a child? The moment Madame Élisabeth appears I stand, but we do not embrace, since the guards are watching. She looks me over. “Marie, how did you come here?”

Unlike the queen, who has aged into an old woman, Madame Élisabeth is still in the full bloom of youth. But her eyes tell the truth. We sit across from each other near the fire, and the queen takes a chair next to her sister-in-law. The guard is lost in conversation with his friend.

“I begged a pass from Robespierre,” I say quietly. “I told him we were old friends and that if anyone could learn of an escape plan in the making, it would be me.”

“A spy?” Madame Élisabeth whispers.

“How clever,” the queen says. “And do you know, that’s what these men believe. We are imprisoned in a Templar fortress and they think that hordes of men are rushing to save us. If that were the case, wouldn’t someone have saved my husband?”

A deep heaviness settles over the room.

“That is what I came to tell you, Madame. Your husband met with an easy death.”

Madame Élisabeth stifles a sob.

“There was no pain,” I promise them. “No suffering.”

Both the dauphin—who is now Louis XVII—and Madame Royale are listening intently. The queen’s gaze is hollow. She is a shadow of herself. Pale and thin with sunken eyes. Around her neck, she wears her husband’s wedding ring on a simple ribbon. It is likely the only jewel she has left in the world. They have taken everything from her. “Do you know what they plan for us?” she whispers in German.

I look over my shoulder. But the guard has obviously heard enough weeping in this room to no longer be concerned by it.

“Life in a convent,” I mouth wordlessly. I have heard this news from Robespierre.

“And my children?”

Both of them are watching me. Louis-Charles, who looks like an angel, and Marie-Thérèse, whose future is uncertain. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.” I reach into my basket and take out the miniature of Saint Denis. I give it to Madame Élisabeth, and she puts a hand to her heart.

“Oh,
Marie.”

Marie-Thérèse rises from the fireside. “Won’t you get in trouble for bringing that?” she asks curiously.

I meet Madame Royale’s narrowed eyes. “It is a miniature of a saint.”

“No one else brings gifts.” She watches me with a strange expression.

Madame Élisabeth reaches forward to take my hands. “You have no idea what this means to me. Please, will you pray for us?” she asks.

I am taken aback by the princesse’s request. What good will my prayers do? My brothers are dead, just like her brother. The National Guard murdered Yachin for nothing more than a square of silk. And Henri is gone. If God is listening, it is not to me.

Chapter 53