Chapter 32
We continue our days here in the Tower simply, as you might expect.
And yet I find I am not unhappy, so long as my family is with me.
Louis is less satisfied and despairs often.
“Ah, Madame,” he said to me when I sat mending a shirt, “what an employment for a queen of France! Could they see that at Vienna! Who would have foreseen that, in uniting your lot to mine, you would have descended so low?” I could only smile at him and reply, “And do you esteem as nothing the glory of being the wife of one of the best and most persecuted of men? Are not such misfortunes the noblest honors?”
My poor Louis. That which troubles him most is the fear of being separated from us.
Antoinette
“No! No, no, it cannot be!”
Antoinette heard her daughter’s agonized shrieks without actually connecting to them. The sounds did not penetrate her mind, let alone anything else. She could only stare at this man who stood before her, charged with delivering the worst message anyone could ever hear.
Her husband had been sentenced to death.
In the morning.
Louis had been completely separated and kept from them for six weeks in the Tower, their cruel oppressors determining that the children were only permitted to see one parent while Louis was prosecuted by the Assembly.
Prosecuted. As though justice was to be done.
And now he had been sentenced.
It was not a surprising outcome. Truthfully, it was the only outcome that would have been allowed by the monsters of France.
But to hear the official verdict . . .
Louis was going to die. Not in theory, but in actuality.
She inhaled, and, to her surprise, it was ragged and keening, echoing around the chamber that was their apartment.
Then came the sobs.
It was strange, feeling so removed from her body’s reactions. She could barely feel them, was hardly aware of them, but there was a dull cramping in her lungs. A choking sensation in her throat. Pressure rising in her cheeks. Tears falling on her hands as they gripped the floor.
When had she buckled into this position? On her hands and knees, her nails clutching at the stone as though they were claws, her lips parted as she fought for air to feed her sobbing breaths.
She was somehow inhabiting her own body while also watching herself, separated into the mortal frame and the immortal soul that was ready to fly to heaven rather than face the morning.
After all they had been through, all they had fought for, all they had lost, all they had loved, all they had dreamed.
It was going to end.
France was killing her king.
And Antoinette was losing her husband.
“Let us see him,” Thérèse begged on her knees, clinging to the guard’s pant leg. She looked like a child instead of a young woman of fourteen. She was pale, frail, feverish, and about to lose her father.
It was not fair. It was not right. It was cruel, and there was no consolation to give. If they were going to kill Louis, what would stop them from killing the rest of them?
“P-please,” Louis-Charles added in a tear-choked voice. “Please, let us see our father. Let us bid him farewell.”
Antoinette would have raised her voice with theirs, but she had nothing but inconsolable sobs to offer. She was suffocating on her grief, on her fury, on her despondency, on her surrender, on the way her heart was desperate to leave her chest and fall at Louis’s feet.
The guard cleared his throat, and with Antoinette’s tearful eyes downcast, she could not tell if the sound was from emotion or impatience. “You will be taken to his apartments at seven. Prepare yourselves.”
He turned and closed the door firmly behind him.
“Mama!” her children cried in chorus, coming to either side of her and hugging tightly.
With their young and tender arms clenched around her, Antoinette felt strength enter her body, easing the tingling and pressure and tension that had swamped her from head to toe.
The notion of being strong for her children had long since departed from her, and now they would bear witness to her vulnerability, her defeat, and her devotion.
They would know that their father’s death would end her.
That her love for him consumed her.
That he was her strength.
Thérèse wiped at her cheeks, a wobbling smile crossing her lips. “I will brush your hair, Mama. You know how Papa loves it.”
Antoinette kissed her daughter’s cheek, which still felt too warm and feverish.
She was only just starting to recover from her head cold, but this could sink her back into that haze of near-incoherency.
Perhaps it would be better. Perhaps her grief could be delayed until her body was strong enough to endure the tragedy.
Perhaps it would all seem a horrible dream, and Thérèse might imagine that her father was still on this earth, encircling her in his arms and cradling her as he had done in her infancy.
Antoinette would never want to wake her daughter from that dream. Not to the ugliness that would be the truth.
Thérèse brought over a brush and began to run it through Antoinette’s gray-white locks.
Every day in this prison turned her hair, and it was not vanity that prompted her feelings about it.
On the contrary, it was proof of her suffering, and she would wear that proof with a raised chin to any who mocked her.
Her body might be free from scars, but her hair would be her testament.
Louis would see the change that had been wrought in the last six weeks, but there were far more important things to care about.
He might note her diminished frame and her newfound frailness, but he would still hold her close.
He might fear the morning, but he would let her hear the beating of his heart before it was stopped.
They were not the king and queen any longer. France had no monarch. They had no wealth or status. They had no influence or power. They had each other and they had their children. They had their love, their connection, their memories, their vows.
God alone would be their keeper, and He alone would free them from prison and torment.
The pain she would feel in the morning, the pain she was feeling now, was evidence of how dearly she had loved. How deeply she treasured her life with Louis. How poignantly she would long for him.
How blessed and fortunate she had been.
Gratitude in her grief might keep her sane when he was gone. If she could cling to that, perhaps she would not die from the pain.
She could feel Thérèse’s nimble fingers plaiting her hair loosely, and one of the ratty ribbons they had made from old clothing was used to fasten the end.
“Thank you, my darling,” Antoinette told her, the sound of her voice almost startling in its hoarseness.
She caught the tears welling in her daughter’s eyes, the tracks that marked her cheeks, and the tremble in her smile.
There would only be tears tonight. She would not brush them away, would not soothe their cause.
Tears would be needed to help ease the burden.
They would shower the shattered pieces of their broken hearts until something else would grow.
Hopefully something beautiful and not something twisted and filled with briars and thorns.
Whatever would grow would depend entirely on the state of their souls, and only time and their unknown fates could determine that.
The sound of a key turning in the lock of the door brought all of them round to face it, their familiar guard standing there.
He gestured for them with his fingers. “Come.”
The word was oddly soft for someone who was charged with keeping them imprisoned as well as safe, someone who probably had no strong opinions about their lives. But whatever his sympathies, Antoinette would take the gentle moment.
Their family trio was silent as they followed, though their footsteps thundered in Antoinette’s ears.
Even those of Louis-Charles, which were nearly shuffling, might have been a stampede.
Every sense was heightened, every thought was painful, and she was not entirely certain how her legs were holding her upright when there was no strength to them.
How did anyone prepare for a moment such as this? The final moment with their beloved, the ending of their mortal binding, the last time their eyes would rest on the person they most adored.
She needed to remember everything. Every word, every smile, every embrace.
The way he smelled, the rumble in his voice, the feeling of his arms, the cadence of his heart.
Every detail needed to be carved upon her mind and branded upon her heart.
She could not—and would not—allow herself to miss a single moment or forget anything about him.
Their guard stopped them in front of an old, worn, thick door of oak, and suddenly Antoinette’s heart pulsed so furiously at the base of her throat that her mouth burned with every swallow.
The door was opened, and the guard stepped back, giving the slightest incline of his head as he did so.
Louis slowly stood from a chair, his eyes red.
A guttural cry burst from the depths of Antoinette’s soul as she stumbled into a sprint and threw herself into his embrace, her sobs nearly screams as she clung to him. His fingers clutched at her hair, scraping against her scalp while another arm nearly crushed her ribs.
“Oh, my dearest love,” Louis croaked, his mouth dusting along her ear and her jaw, his tears falling onto her neck.
Only the cries of the children could make her break from his hold, and she stepped back, cupping his jaw and pressing a hard, tear-moistened kiss to his lips.
Then she turned and let him drop to his knees to scoop the children into his arms. She kept close enough to him that the warmth of his body seeped into her own skin. As Louis sobbed into their son and daughter, Antoinette stroked his hair, hiccupping as she continued to cry for them.
For him.
For herself.