Chapter 16 #2
“Yes, how do you manage?” Abigail asked, quirking a brow. “Surely the queen of England cannot say exactly what she thinks, particularly if it cuts to the quick.”
Charlotte met her eyes, her smirk in place but twitching as though it might extend beyond. “No, indeed. I must school my features and recite the same bland niceties each and every time.”
“But with such sharp thoughts, how can you maintain such a composed facade?” Abigail pressed.
“I have seen you on several occasions, and you are nothing if not dignified.” She turned to Antoinette.
“And you! Regal and serene, each and every time. I would struggle immensely not to look bored and irritable by the end.”
“Oh, believe me, I am both fatigued and irritable at times,” Antoinette assured her. “But I quite enjoy social engagements. I find them invigorating, so my thoughts often match my expression.” She returned her attention to Charlotte. “How do you manage to school your features, as you said?”
Charlotte laughed once. “Why, it is quite simple: I have spent many years practicing the disengagement of my thoughts to my face, thus my mind may think as and how it pleases while my expression displays nothing of the sort. I am at once true to myself and a mask to those before me. Liberation behind a wall of safety, ladies. It is not without effort, but it is most invigorating, I assure you.”
Abigail had to laugh as well, feeling a strange kinship with this woman who did not like her, and whom she did not like. Was their distaste for each other purely based on the animosity of their nations? Or was there truly something personal in these feelings?
“Do you often have to train yourself to behave as a queen ought?” Abigail asked with real curiosity. “I mean, when it contradicts what you feel and who you are as a woman?”
“Yes,” Charlotte replied bluntly. “In fact, Mrs. Adams, I envy you.”
Abigail’s eyes widened. “Me? Whatever for?”
“Freedom,” came the simple reply. “Independence, and I do not mean what your rabble-rousing friends put together in Philadelphia.”
The tilt to her lips told Abigail that Charlotte was teasing with that statement, but there was likely some truth there as well.
“Freedom as a woman,” Charlotte continued. “Do you know how rare that is?”
“I envy you as well,” Antoinette admitted on a sigh.
“No one looks at you as a symbol of a nation, or a figure to be mocked. No one expects you to be perfect at all times. You may express yourself as you please without bringing down a kingdom or beginning a war. And I doubt your brother writes you to ask what your husband’s policies are regarding foreign aid and to ask why you are no longer furthering the interests of your home nation. ”
Abigail offered her a sad smile. “No, indeed. But if you believe that anyone other than my husband and children listen to what I have to say, you are sadly mistaken. And even my husband only listens half of the time.”
“Husbands and their selective hearing,” Charlotte muttered with a shake of her head. “What did he ignore you on recently?”
“Oh, not that recently,” Abigail replied, taking up her tea.
“But when they were putting together those details over revolution and independence in Philadelphia and establishing laws and rights, I told John to remember the ladies. Women have such capacity and potential, and it is being trampled under the feet of tyrannical men. Alas, there was very little done for the ladies there, and I cannot say if that was John ignoring me or the other men shouting him down. As I understand it, most of what was said in those gatherings was shouted, as men tend to do.”
Her companions laughed at the imagery.
“Rights for women,” Antoinette mused aloud. “That would be a lovely thing.”
“I believe you and I would still be among those excluded, my dear Antoinette,” Charlotte told her with a pat to her hand. “We are in our gilded cages.” She looked at Abigail meaningfully. “Gilded they may be, but what is the point of a sparkling cage?”
Abigail felt a sharp pang of sympathy for these women.
She had always considered them powerful figures, towering examples that could behead a peasant for breathing too near them.
But they were apparently hemmed in just like any other woman in the world, only more publicly viewed and more elaborately dressed.
Still without a voice where it mattered.
What sort of queens did that make them?
Antoinette nodded. “I was mocked,” she told them in a soft voice, a gentle rasp in her tone. “When my Sophie died. When we had her burial. My pain, my emptiness, my loss—I was not supposed to show any of it, and somehow my failure to be made of stone is something to be criticized.”
“We have no emotions,” Charlotte echoed, her eyes taking on a faraway look. “Neither tenderness nor agitation, love nor grief, amusement nor anger. I have lost two boys, and the pain is never gone. It is always hovering, and yet it must never affect me.”
“Girls,” Abigail murmured. “Suky—Susanna—was one year of age, and Elizabeth was born silent. Everyone tells you that it happens and you must move on, but you are never whole again, are you?”
“Never,” Charlotte confirmed hoarsely.
Antoinette suddenly burst into tears, noisy sobs erupting from her slender frame.
Abigail looked at Charlotte in horrified surprise, finding the reaction reflected in a more reserved fashion in the woman’s eyes. Pushing back her chair, Abigail rose and came over to Antoinette’s side, crouching beside her and offering a handkerchief.
“Pardonnez-moi,” she whispered, taking the linen square and dabbing at her face while hiccupping. “Je suis tellement désolé.”
“Not at all,” Abigail murmured as she gripped Antoinette’s hand. “Your grief is still so raw, it is only natural.”
“Ce n’est pas ca.” Antoinette sniffled and wiped her eyes before exhaling slowly.
She reached her other hand across the table and Charlotte took it.
“Forgive me. Yes, I grieve Sophie still, and I cry for her. But that is not all.” She swallowed hard, her lips quivering.
“My son . . . my precious Louis-Joseph. He is not well. His body is twisted with one shoulder higher than the other and a back slightly out of line, with protrusions. He is growing weak and thin, and he gets these fevers . . .” She blinked, additional tears falling down her pale cheeks.
“I hope it is nothing more than his second teeth coming in, but the doctors are not certain. Perhaps he is grieving physically for Sophie, but I fear . . . He is only five years of age! Can I possibly be losing another child so soon?”
Her head fell forward, her tears falling into her lap with the rapidity of rain.
“Hush now,” Abigail soothed, rubbing the younger woman’s hand. “The Dauphin may recover and be perfectly energetic and free soon enough. We cannot predict the Almighty’s ways and means, and trying to do so will only agitate our hearts.”
“It is not in me to agree with Mrs. Adams on a regular basis,” Charlotte quipped with a wryness that produced a choked laugh from their weeping friend, “but in this, I will do so.” Her expression softened.
“You have enough to be getting on with in France without your personal burdens weighing upon you. I understand the desire to dictate the future to protect your heart, but you must treasure what you have as you have it, or the rest of your days will be spent in fear and regret.”
Antoinette’s shoulders shook, and Abigail felt for this woman.
She might not know everything occurring in France, but clearly the woman was burdened by many things, and Abigail could offer very little consolation.
Encouragement was in short supply when lives were so affected by others, when matters were so utterly outside of one’s own control, and when it was difficult to find even a sliver of hope.
But perhaps they could provide a flicker of light for each other, something to reignite the poor lamps of their hearts and give them just enough of a flame to continue forward a few steps more.
Those few steps, after all, might be what was necessary to round the obstacle at hand and open the view to a far sweeter future.
“My son might have secretly married a Catholic,” Charlotte announced without any preamble.
Antoinette gave a startled hiccup and raised her head in shock to stare at the older woman.
Charlotte shrugged, sipping her tea. “I realize you are Catholic, mon amie, and I have no great objection to the faith in general. But England has a very strong opinion on a Catholic sitting the throne, after what happened the last time, and it is not a good one. Suffice it to say, my son did not get approval for the marriage, if it happened, and therefore, it is not valid. So it is very likely that we will have an annulment scandal and have to find him a wife he detests. Joy of joys.”
Abigail tried not to laugh, she truly did, but the utter lack of inflection or emotion in this queen’s tone while stating such shocking things was utterly hilarious.
A snort escaped her.
She clamped a hand over her mouth and nose as a wave of reckless laughter threatened to rise like a high tide.
Then Antoinette giggled into the handkerchief she still held, and all restraint was lost. Abigail’s chuckles burst forth like a spring, Charlotte hummed a melodious aria of laughter, and Antoinette continued to giggle like a schoolgirl.
Abigail rose to return to her seat, though her composure was anything but sedate. She leaned against the arm of her chair as the hilarity continued to roll for no reason other than the fact that the others were laughing, and that their lives were, for the moment, utterly ridiculous.
“My husband,” she gasped between chortling, “wants to return home so he can be of use to our new nation. Never mind that I wish to return home to settle into being a grandmother and finding wives for my sons, generally living a quiet life. Do you know how tired I am of being the wife of someone ‘of use’? I shall be rewriting his speeches and policies until my dying day because no one has thought to put the women in charge of matters!”
Charlotte thumped the table as she continued to laugh. “Oh, for shame! Yes, should we be permitted to speak so freely, we should have all nations suitably bound and organized within three weeks!”
“Surely you do not mean that we ought to be educated in matters of policy and governance,” Antoinette interjected with a dramatic gasp that did not hide her amusement. “Our weak little minds cannot sustain it!”
They erupted into more laughter, none of them minding a bit.
The women talked late into the evening about their families, their fears, and their hopes for the future. No one else would know what was discussed at this tea, and no one would ever be able to verify its existence.
But the hearts of the three queens were bound by the quiet warmth of their companionship.