Chapter 30
Be reassured about us; we are alive. In a manner of speaking, as it were.
I exist, which is all I can hope for myself at this point.
My husband is a constitutional monarch, but it is hardly the pleasant position that exists elsewhere.
It is a hollow crown, and we are prisoners to it.
We are in view of our guards day and night; I am indifferent to it by now.
We do nothing, and yet we are hated. We are protected, of sorts, but without any care or respect.
Duty is all. They do not want us here, but they cannot let us leave. What sort of life is this?
Antoinette
“They’re going to attack the king!”
The cry that had burst into the quiet salon in the Tuileries was met with a long beat of silence, and then a mass of sound and movement exploded.
Antoinette, however, remained in her seat, staring at the young Comte de La Rochefoucauld while a horde of emotions went on a rampage within her. Horror. Disbelief. Anger. Grief. Anxiety.
Resignation.
“Enough!” Louis bellowed, silencing everyone in the room. He pointed at the comte. “Explain.”
Quickly, the young man did so. While enjoying a matinee at the Comédie Francais, he had heard rumors of a crowd assembling at the Faubourg Saint-Antoine with the intention of attacking the Tuileries. He had immediately come back to inform everyone and to ensure the king was secure.
Antoinette would have to remember to thank him later, if they survived what was coming.
Louis using short, one-word sentences was not uncommon either.
For the last year or so, he had retreated into himself, growing more uncertain about the things he said and how they were received.
He’d even privately confessed to her that he was questioning his own sanity.
She couldn’t blame him; everything he had said in public or to the Assembly had been misinterpreted and twisted to make him appear more of a villain and useless figure.
Every word was used to incite France’s people against their king.
Silence was safer. Easier. Protective.
And now that there was a plot against them officially?
He was all action.
Bless him.
The drums of the National Guard suddenly echoed from outside the palace, and Antoinette and the group swiftly moved to the entrance, unsure if the approaching force would be one for good or for evil.
With confusing, jerking motions, the group of soldiers split unevenly into two groups, one raising their fists and bellowing, “No more king!”
Antoinette gripped her throat, watching the angry men in fear.
But the other group of soldiers continued up to them. The one in the front inclined his head. “Your Majesty. We are voluntary soldiers in service of the king. We will protect you.”
Tears welled in Antoinette’s eyes.
So all was not lost. What miracle was this?
Other groups arrived at the palace in the hours following, including roughly three hundred aristocrats carrying rudimentary weapons.
The Swiss Guards already with them at the Tuileries started moving into place, practically becoming walls to protect Louis.
The less regimented, less serious National Guard soldiers were still trying to decide what to do while a portion of them remained standing aloof, chanting furiously, and refusing to join them.
Antoinette glanced at Louis, who was flushed and red-eyed, and her heart ached for him. She moved to his side and looped her arm around his. “Come,” she urged softly. “We can do no good here.”
With a small nod, he let her pull him away, retreating to his bedchamber.
Members of the household followed eventually, all of them debating standing or sitting in the presence of the king.
The children were brought in to say good night before being sent to bed, the truth of the situation kept from them for now.
If they needed to secure them in another way, so be it, but their childhood had already been mostly stripped away, and Antoinette couldn’t bear to instill fear into them as well.
The night sky darkened ominously. One by one, the candles in the bedchamber and apartments were lit, no one removing to other parts of the palace while the guards and soldiers shored up the defenses against the ever-growing crowd outside.
And growing it was. Antoinette didn’t need to look to know. The sounds thundering against the night were proof enough.
Once the early morning hours reached them, she woodenly went to her own apartments to change, to try to rest, to do anything except sit or stand in Louis’s rooms and wait for whatever attack was coming for them.
She was only gone for a couple of hours, but when she returned, the mood had changed drastically.
Quiet arguing was taking place, not with Louis but rather over Louis.
One of the men turned to her and exhaled an irritated sigh. “The king is refusing to don his quilted waistcoat.”
Brows rising at once, Antoinette looked at her husband in silent inquiry. The quilted waistcoat was designed to protect him from assassination attempts, and he had never had qualms about wearing it before.
He met her eyes without shame. “I am determined to share in the general fate on equal terms. Why should I be more protected than anyone else?”
“You are the king of France!” another bellowed.
Louis kept his eyes on Antoinette, not rising to the bait. “There is no king of France.”
Such a hollow, cold answer—but she could not argue the truth of his words. He might still technically be the monarch, but only because the Assembly had not removed the position of king from the government of their nation. He was not treated as a king. Living as a king. Serving as a king.
France was not behaving as though they had a king.
Her husband was no longer flushed, but white as death, as lifeless as a corpse apart from the breath that filled his chest.
“If you will not protect yourself,” the first man said harshly, “then you might as well inspect the defenses to improve morale. Give them a king to protect, because to them, you are still the king.”
Louis closed his eyes for a long moment, and Antoinette was suddenly irritated. She wanted to watch him process the suggestion, guess his thoughts and prepare herself for what was to come. She wanted to watch his emotions dance through his eyes, never hidden from her no matter how hard he tried.
He rose, his eyes springing open, and he nodded.
“I want to come,” Antoinette announced before she could stop herself. “The children too.”
“No,” three voices said at once, Louis included.
She had never been refused so harshly for trying to do her duty as queen, for standing by his side.
“The danger is too great,” Louis told her, his eyes softening. “We do not know this will even work, and I cannot risk you. Or them.”
He came to her, only standing close enough to gently take her hand. “I shall return momentarily.”
Then he was gone with the two who had argued the point with them.
The Swiss Guard inside the palace would not let him come to harm, especially not when the danger was still outside.
But the rest of the other soldiers . . .
A finely dressed soldier from the National Guard entered the room, bowing to Antoinette with just enough politeness to not be considered insubordinate. “Pierre Roederer, Your Majesty. Procurator-General of the Paris Prefecture. Presently charged with the defense of the Tuileries.”
“I know who you are,” Antoinette replied coldly. She had never met the man, but she knew the name well enough. He had been hastily named to his position when the Marquis de Mandat had been killed, and he was the Assembly’s man through and through.
But he was also timid and unsure of his limits and responsibilities. He was a weak chief of defense for them, and, under his care, they would be doomed.
Not that he would care.
If he noticed her attitude toward him, he did not react to it. “I think the queen and the children ought to take refuge at the Assembly on the far side of the precinct.”
Vicomte Dubouchage, the former minister of foreign affairs, rose and glared at the soldier. “You are proposing to hand over the king to his enemy!”
Pleased that she wouldn’t have to make the argument alone, Antoinette allowed the politician to do the shouting for her. “Sir,” she said calmly to Roederer, “there are some forces here.”
Roederer blanched, his timidity no match for his opposers.
A roar came from out in the courtyard, rattling the windows. Dubouchage stepped forward, then gasped. “It is the king they are shouting at! Jeering, even!”
Roederer’s jaw clenched as he glared at Antoinette. “Madame, do you really wish to be responsible for the massacre of the king, your children, yourself, to say nothing of the faithful servants who surround you?”
Her chest seized at the imagery he produced. She had no doubt that was what was at stake, considering the impending danger and forces massing against them.
But she was not afraid of her fate. She was afraid of her family being separated, knowing what fate could come.
“On the contrary,” Antoinette told the small, angry man, “what would I not do to be the only victim?”
Louis returned to the room a few moments later, appearing hot and breathless from his actions out in the precinct. But he did not seem particularly troubled either. He was resigned. Calm. Accepting.
It was terrifying.
“I believe,” he said without emotion, “we should go to the Assembly.”
Antoinette’s mouth fell open in shock, outrage, denial. To leave this last shred of their dignity to claim safety with those seeking to undermine them at every turn . . .
Her husband met her eyes, the finality of it all written in their depths. “There is nothing more to be done here.”
Arguments and protests whirled in her mind, ready to fly from her lips, but they would not come.
Could not.
Every beat of her heart thudded with the same furious truth: This was the end.
They had nowhere else to go.