Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution (57 page)

For such a slight man, he is sweating profusely. His hair is wet, and there are stains beneath his arms. “Of grave,
grave
emergency,” he swears. I stand from the desk, and he adds quickly, “Bring your bag.”

“With plaster?”

“And towels—everything.”

“Let Maman know I’ve gone with Jacques-Louis,” I tell Isabel. I gather my bag and follow him out the door and into the street. He is practically running. “What is this about?” I demand.

“A tragedy. An absolute tragedy!”

“Has someone died?”

“Yes!” he cries. He stops walking to look at me. In the harsh morning light, he looks all of his forty-five years. “They have murdered Marat. A
woman
, who bought a knife in the Palais, went to his apartment and asked to see him.”

My heart is thundering in my chest. “He let her in?”

“She said she had the names of suspects who could be considered traitors to the
patrie
. So he invited her into his bathing room—”

“He was in the
bath
?”

“He spends much of his time there. For his skin.”

“Yes.” I remember the open sores.

“When she arrived, she gave him a list, and while he was reading …” He makes a stabbing motion with his hand. I know that Jacques-Louis is devastated, but I think of the bravery of this woman.

“And the girl?”

“Was apprehended at the door! She is still there. They are simply waiting for the National Guard.”

We continue to hurry, and I ask him why this is a secret.

“We must discover her coconspirators before the news begins to spread.”

“How do you know she didn’t act alone?”

He gives me a look. “She is a woman. A
girl.”

We arrive at Marat’s apartment in the Rue des Cordelières, and Robespierre and Danton are already there. Robespierre appears the most distraught. He is pulling at his wig. “Jacques-Louis!” he cries. Then, “Marie! You have come to make the model?”

“Yes,” I tell him, holding up my leather bag.

“He was assassinated. Killed for his belief in liberty and equality. They will come for me next. If they came for Marat, they must come for me.”

I am startled by his use of the word
must
.

“You can’t imagine the scene,” Robespierre continues, gesturing toward the apartment behind us. “There is blood in the bath, across the walls, on the tiles. When the people hear of this, do you know what they will do? They will carry him through the streets like a martyr!” he exclaims, and I am sure I hear envy in his words. “Tomorrow, this will be in every paper,” he adds. “For months, this is all we will hear about—”

Jacques-Louis interrupts him. “In this weather, the body will not last long …”

But Danton does not move. I think of asking him about Madame Sainte-Amaranthe, but with a murderess waiting upstairs, now is not the time. I follow Jacques-Louis into the hall of the apartment and am surprised to see a woman’s touch in the furnishings.

“Does a woman live here?”

“Simonne Evrard,” he says.

“He is married?” I hadn’t known. What sort of woman would wish to bind her fortunes with Marat?

“He met her last year.”

I imagine she is young. An idealistic and foolish child. We reach the stairs, and I can hear several men speaking above us. They are questioning a young woman, who is responding to them in a clear, calm voice. She does not sound like a killer.

Jacques-Louis studies me before we climb. “I know you are not a woman of weak constitution. But this death …” He chokes on his own words. “It is gruesome and unnatural.”

And the deaths of the innocent men and women Marat sent to the guillotine are not? I say firmly, “I have brought a sachet.” I take a small pouch of smelling salts from my bag. But whatever is awaiting me upstairs can never compare to the severed limbs and heads stacked in the charnel house of the Madeleine.

We climb fifteen steps to the second floor. A woman is sitting on a wooden stool, her hands tied tightly behind her back. Several men are standing above her, enjoying the view of her torn dress. Whatever happened here, there was a violent struggle. There is a bruise on her cheek, and I am struck by the even beauty of her features. I can see there is intelligence in her eyes.

“I know you,” she says. “You are the sculptress Marie Grosholtz. You make masks of those who have died on the scaffold.”

“Yes.” That this should be my reputation in Paris—a vulture flapping around the carcasses of the guillotine’s victims—makes me physically ill. I raise the smelling salts to my nose and inhale.

“When it’s my turn,” she says quietly, “I hope you will remember that
I
am the martyr, not him.” She looks to the open door of the bathing room, where Marat’s body lies in a tub of water and blood. The scene is less hideous than many I’ve witnessed. In fact, there is a calmness on his sharp, unpleasant features that was never there in life.

“What is your name?” I ask her.

“Charlotte Corday.”

“How old are you?” With her tattered dress and disheveled hair, she appears to be sixteen or seventeen.

“Old enough to execute,” Jacques-Louis replies. “A devil in women’s garb.”

But I think she is an avenging angel. She is as pale and serene as a Grecian statue, with her hands bound and her breasts exposed. I offer her my fichu. “For modesty’s sake,” I say swiftly to Jacques-Louis.

“Thank you,” Charlotte whispers.

Jacques-Louis clenches his jaw, but I will not be threatened by him. Not when this young woman has shown such courage. “Are you ready?” he asks me.

The bathing room reeks of vinegar and blood. In the rising heat, the body is beginning to bloat and smell. He has been stabbed once in the chest, an obviously fatal blow, although it’s doubtful that death would have come at once. He must have had time to shout to his wife, or perhaps to his servants, who came running to find the murderess with her knife. His head rests on his naked shoulder, and his arm is draped limply over the tub. He is still holding a quill, while the papers he was working on float amid the blood and water. I wonder how many lives will be saved because of what Charlotte Corday has done today.

I begin the process of making a plaster mask, and while I wait for it to dry on Marat’s face, Jacques-Louis says, “The Convention will want a full figure. Bath and all.”

“They want me to take his
bath
?”

“Or create a replica. It doesn’t matter. Take the ink, the quill, everything.” He covers his nose with his shirt and breathes deeply. “When the model is finished”—he comes up for air—“I will make a painting of it.”

It will be a great deal of work. “I will have to sketch this first.”

“Of course. I made my own sketches before.”

“While he was dying?”

“Of course not!” Jacques-Louis flushes. “I came … for a visit.” He means he came to deliver names. “When I arrived, he had already been murdered. His wife was screaming, and while she ran to find Robespierre, I stayed with the body. All of France will recognize his sacrifice when I am through. And the funeral …” Jacques-Louis is already imagining the grandness of the event. He has been behind every public funeral since this Revolution began. “We will honor him as he deserves.”

It takes all my restraint not to rip the mask from Marat’s face.

Outside, Robespierre is pacing so frantically that it’s difficult to hear him. “We will find these conspirators if we have to search through every closet in Paris. No one will be above questioning. Not women, not children—”

“The cast is done,” I tell him. “When the model is finished, where shall I send it?”

“To the Convention,” he says, then he contradicts himself. “No—to the Revolutionary Tribunal. And we shall keep it as a reminder of our dangerous work.”

Though I know the risk I am taking, I say, “Perhaps I should return to the Temple. If revolts are being plotted, it is possible the royal family will know of them.”

He studies me through his green-tinged spectacles, and I realize that I have made a mistake. “I do not think that is a wise decision,” he says slowly. “I believe the royal family has enough wax saints.”

I
CANNOT STOP
thinking about Robespierre’s words. Did the soldiers tell him? And if so, why? They had no reason to believe that the figure of Saint Denis was anything other than a warning. I recall Madame Royale’s expression when I handed the wax miniature to her aunt. Did she report it to the guards, who informed Robespierre? But why would she do such a thing?

In the privacy of the workshop, I tell Isabel what happened. She puts aside her broom, and the color drains from her face. “It was a warning,” she says.

“Yes, but who told him?”

“Obviously, the girl.”

That is what I think as well.

“Marie, they will be watching you,” Isabel warns. “First the model of Saint Denis, then your fichu.” I have told her about Charlotte Corday. “They are going to think you are a conspirator!”

I am thinking of the young woman who murdered Marat. Of her strength and courage. “They plan to execute her today,” I say. In the restaurants, her name will be on the back of every menu, among a list of others who have been sentenced to die. The crowds have been gathering since early this morning, and as soon as the bells chime noon, she will be brought to the scaffold.

“Have you been asked to model her?” Isabel asks.

“Yes.” I think of her request that I remember her as the true martyr, and not Marat. What must it be like for Charlotte to know that I will be the last person to touch her face, her hair?

That evening, before we leave for the Madeleine Cemetery, I stand in the hall and look at myself in the mirror. As hard as I try, I cannot find the woman I saw in the glass of Henri’s salon. That woman had been confident and single-minded, filled with lofty ideas about her place in the world. She was as deluded as men like Camille and Marat. Now I see where my talent has taken me. I am dressed almost entirely in black. Only the apron around my waist adds any color, and tonight, when I return from the charnel house, my mother will have to wash it again and again, rinsing the blood from the cotton and the dirt from the trim. I am thirty-two years old without a husband or children, and when I lie down tonight, it will be in a bed empty of warmth and love. Who will inherit everything that I have learned?

I go the the
cassier
’s desk and take out a quill and paper. I must write to him. Then at whatever the cost, I must find a ship that can take a letter to London—either through Belgium or Spain. Tears blur my vision, falling onto the paper and smearing the ink so that twice I have to begin again. The night I refused to leave with Henri will shape my life. Like my brothers’ deaths, there will be
before love
and
after love
. I will never love a man like Henri again. But I do not write this. If I am to free him, I must tell him that there is someone else. Unless there is another man, he will wait. Seven years, ten years … Now his life in London may go on without me.

When Isabel finds me, I am sealing the letter. She looks at my face, then down at the name on the top of the envelope.

“I have freed him,” I whisper.

She understands. Isabel never needs an explanation. She links her arm through mine and we walk silently to find the corpse of a young girl who was much braver than I. But we are not alone in the Madeleine Cemetery. When we reach the charnel house, a group of men are standing above the headless body of Charlotte Corday. They are dressed in black, and a bearded man is in the process of undressing her.

For a moment, I am paralyzed by fear. Then I realize what is happening. I have heard of men like this. “Isabel,” I shout, “run and find the guards!”

“Wait!” the bearded man stands. “We are physicians.”

Isabel pauses at the door.

“We have been sent here by Robespierre,” he explains.

I back away. “I don’t believe you.”

The old man holds up a white-gloved hand. “We are here to inspect her virginity.”

I step closer to Isabel.

“Robespierre has been elected to the Committee of Public Safety. It is now his job to investigate any enemy of the
patrie
. He believes that this woman may have had a lover, and if that is the case, this man may have helped her plan the assassination of Marat.”

And these are the lengths he is willing to go to, to discover conspirators? I think again of Robespierre’s words to me in the Rue des Cordelières and shiver. “We will wait outside.”

Five minutes later, the men emerge, their faces solemn.

“Well?” Isabel whispers.

The bearded man turns to us, and I can see disappointment in the lines of his face. “She was a virgin.”

Chapter 58