Chapter 28 #3
It was nearing midnight when they reached Varennes-en-Argonne, which had to be the smallest, sleepiest village Antoinette had ever seen. It was dark in every window and business, quiet in an unnerving way, and there was no answer at the coaching inn.
Which meant there were no horses to switch for them.
Still, they climbed out of the carriage while the bodyguards who had ridden alongside them began seeking out anyone in the town that could lodge them or procure a new relay of horses for a continuing journey.
Louis held their sleeping son in his arms, and Antoinette had her arms around Thérèse’s shoulders, waiting for any positive response.
If she did not fear being recognized, Antoinette would have pounded on doors herself. Would these villagers know the face of their queen if they saw her? Possibly not, but she would not risk it.
The lives of her children were not worth indulging in her desire for comfort.
An alarm bell suddenly sounded throughout the silent town, clanging urgently, and Antoinette tugged Thérèse closer to her protectively.
To her horror, villagers began to stream from their houses in confusion, their eyes naturally going to their small group in suspicion.
That was when Antoinette began to hear the whispers.
“The king! The king is in Varennes!”
“It is the king!”
“Why is the king here?”
How had their identity been given so easily? They were still in their traveling clothes, and there was nothing on their persons to give them away. No one was close enough to truly look at them at this time of night, and yet somehow, they knew.
Had their plan been compromised after all?
Antoinette bit her lip, fighting between her natural vulnerability and the mask of the queen she had been practicing for years. “Louis . . .”
“Patience,” he encouraged, though his voice quivered.
A single man approached; he did not bow when he reached them. He seemed polite enough, and he was unarmed, which, Antoinette supposed, was a blessing.
“My name is Jean Baptiste Sauce,” he said. “I am the Procurator of Varennes. Might I offer your party some hospitality? My home has a second upper room in which you may take your ease, and the children may sleep.”
Antoinette grabbed Louis’s upper arm in warning and fear, her instincts at war with her fatigue.
“I thank you, sir,” Louis replied with politeness. “But we really do wish to continue our journey as soon as possible.”
There was no reaction on Mr. Sauce’s face. “I understand perfectly. Unfortunately, you will not find fresh horses at this time of night without previous arrangement. Please, allow us to house you until morning, and you may continue on your way then.”
The words were polite enough, but there was something about his insistence that Antoinette did not care for at all.
Yet if the horses were too weary to continue and no fresh horses could be fetched, what choice did they have?
Antoinette looked at Louis, and a sudden weight swirled in the air between them. They both seemed to sag under the same knowledge.
They were trapped.
“We accept,” Louis mumbled, hoisting Louis-Charles higher into his hold.
Mr. Sauce nodded as though unsurprised and gestured for them to follow him as he walked down the main street and through the villagers, whose numbers seemed to be increasing.
He led them to a comfortable home and to the upper rooms, taking care to show them to the bed for the children. Louis-Charles and Thérèse did not hesitate to crawl onto it and curl against the pillows, almost immediately falling asleep.
Louis dropped into an armchair as Mrs. Sauce arrived with wine for them all, which Antoinette thanked her profusely for, though she would not be partaking herself. Hot water was also provided for them to wash.
The bodyguards and Pauline said nothing as they milled about the room, and Louis slumped in his chair as though the weight of the world rested upon him.
An air of defeat settled on them all without anyone saying a word.
Minutes, perhaps hours, passed as they waited, none of them able to rest or settle in any way. The Sauces had not come again, and the sounds of villagers in the street were growing.
Echoes of the trouble at Versailles filled Antoinette’s mind, practically appearing before her eyes. The fear she’d felt at that time did not accompany the memories, but her current weariness might have been the reason for that.
Perhaps this truly was the end.
A knock sounded at the door, and two stately men entered, one in military uniform.
The old military. Not the National Guard.
“Choiseul,” Louis grunted without straightening or moving. “Goguelat. Care to provide an explanation?”
Antoinette had never heard his tone be so flat in all the years she’d known her husband.
They moved closer to Louis as though closing ranks. “Sire, we can still get you out of here. My hussars are ready. The crowd outside is growing, yes, but there is no authority for an arrest.”
Louis leaned his head on the tips of his fingers, his elbow propped on the arm of his chair. “How do you propose we do that, Choiseul?”
Undeterred, the man pressed on. “You and the Dauphin on one horse, the queen on another, and the rest of your party on the horses of my soldiers.”
Even to Antoinette’s eager ears, it sounded reckless and desperate.
Louis rubbed his brow and asked one of the bodyguards for an estimate of the crowds out in the street.
“Perhaps seven hundred, Sire.”
Antoinette felt ill. Authority to arrest or not, that was a startling number, and if recent events had proved anything, it was that a crowd needed no official authority to act as they saw fit.
Louis looked at Choiseul without raising his head.
“You have forty men,” he said. “There are perhaps seven hundred in the street, many armed. How can I be sure that the queen or my children might not be killed by a bullet in such an unequal battle? If I were alone, I would willingly take your advice and win through. But like this?” He shook his head slowly. “I cannot.”
Unsurprised, relieved, but also despairing, Antoinette closed her eyes, focusing on the steady movement of air through her lungs.
The other man who had entered—Goguelat?—cleared his throat. “Sire, some of the National Guard in neighboring towns are arriving. I have no doubt word has reached Paris, and the National Assembly will have word sent here at once.”
Louis shrugged, his face lined with fatigue and sadness. “What can I do?”
It wasn’t a question of options. It was a question of finality.
There would be no escape unless the Sauces truly allowed them to leave in the morning.
Rest did not come easily to anyone during the remaining hours of the night.
Antoinette had taken up a space beside the children on the bed for a while, but whether she had slept at all, she could not say.
All she could know for certain was that she would never be parted from her children and that she would soak in every moment she had with them.
The door to their room burst open at some point, and two young men with windswept hair entered.
“A message from the National Assembly,” one said without offering any respect as he handed a note to Louis.
Antoinette sat up and watched her husband with wide eyes.
Louis read the note, then looked across the room at her. “We are to be prevented from continuing further on our journey, and they have the authority to take us back to Paris. Under guard.”
“But you’re the king,” Antoinette whispered. “The new constitution says the person of the king is—”
“Apparently, there is no king in France any longer,” Louis overrode with a bitter smirk.
Over the next hour, they were roused, fed, and loaded into a coach with guards and forced to head back to Paris. They had tried for a delay of any kind, but nothing had been granted.
The crowd had continued to swell throughout the night, word having spread to neighboring towns and villages of their presence there, and it had not been curiosity that had brought them to Varennes.
It was anger. Pure, rabid, unfettered anger.
These people were determined to see the king and queen returned to Paris with all due haste, though it did not stop them from surrounding the carriage.
It did not stop them from brutally killing an older man who had offered Louis a salute.
It did not stop them from walking alongside the carriage as they proceeded along their route, even when it had long passed the boundaries of Varennes.
It did not stop them from offering them a meal of pigeon as a manner of shaming them.
Antoinette took the pigeon leg freely, showing no hint of shame or remorse, and ate it all, throwing the bone out the window without a care when she was done, much to the cheering—or jeering—of the crowd.
Pauline raised a questioning brow at her actions.
Antoinette only smiled. “We must show character right to the end.”
Louis nodded his approval, and as though in direct response, began discussing their exact location along the route, and then discussing English manufacturing and business skill, which fascinated the guards with them. Not quite entertained but certainly educated.
The progression of the crowd, which shifted and changed as they passed through more villages, made their return trip to Paris slow.
It had taken more than twenty hours to reach Varennes at their original pace, but now it was taking days to return.
There was no haste, and while Antoinette did not wish to return to Paris to face their fate, she also wished to be free of the carriage, the heat, the crowd, and the apprehension of what was to come.
The palace of the Tuileries was eventually in their sights once more, at least three full days having passed since departing Varennes.
Louis had stopped talking at some point, the children were exhausted and surly, and Antoinette felt as though she was but a shell of herself.
Paris had held a fairly mild response from its thronging crowds when they arrived, apparently by order of Lafayette and the National Guard themselves.
The crowd was organized and calculated, and somehow more unsettling than anything they had suffered thus far.
The carriage reached the Tuileries, and Louis could barely alight for his own exhaustion. Antoinette helped the children out, then turned them over to Pauline for their usual care now they had returned.
Entering the building, Antoinette removed her hat and veil, craning her neck from side to side.
“Your hair,” Louis rasped from behind her. “It is . . . it is going white.”
Antoinette exhaled a humorless laugh. Of course her body was declaring its agony by aging her before her time. After all, hadn’t she died several deaths in the last few years without managing the task enough to earn eternal rest?
Once, she would have cared that her hair was changing, but now?
It seemed fitting.
Lafayette appeared before them with soldiers alongside him. “Your Majesty, the guards are in place, and I am preparing to withdraw. What are your orders?”
Antoinette’s mouth fell open as she stared at this man, this sometimes friend and ofttimes enemy, who had no strong reaction to their escape and return, and who acted as though they had only gone out to market and returned to find themselves under constant guard.
Louis stepped to Antoinette’s side. “I seem to be more at your orders than you are at mine,” he replied in a cold, weary, hard voice. He took Antoinette firmly by the upper arm and steered her toward their apartments without another word to the man.
They did not speak as they walked away. There was no need to.
Their flight to freedom had failed.