Chapter 33
I cannot bear to think of what you face, what you suffer, what you endure.
But I know you bear it all with the greatest dignity.
You are incapable of less. Rumors and gossip say such horrible things, Antoinette, and I know not what to believe anymore.
If you can get away, if there is any escape possible, come to us.
George is fully restored. We can keep you safe.
I cannot even say if you will receive this, but God help me, I must continue to attempt it.
Charlotte
They had ordered public mourning throughout the nation, and especially in the court. The bells of every parish rang in tribute. The plays in London had been stopped mid-performance as soon as the news had come through.
The king of France was dead.
Killed by his own people.
Mr. Pitt had given a powerful, passionate speech to Parliament on the subject, declaring the travesty the foulest and most atrocious deed the history of the world had ever seen.
England agreed.
Charlotte sat silently in one of the drawing rooms, staring at nothing.
Her letters to Antoinette were almost certainly not getting to her, but it would not stop her from trying.
There could be no intervention by the English to save Antoinette and the children, she had been told, and no intervening on anything regarding the new French government.
Both George and Mr. Pitt had insisted upon it.
It was a maddening purgatory in which she lived.
They had killed Louis.
Had Antoinette watched? Had she known? Had she been given the chance to bid him farewell? Did the children receive their father’s blessing before his death?
Reports had come to her ears that Louis had been composed and reserved upon the scaffold. He had a firmness about his countenance and courage in every step. He’d given the usual statement of forgiveness to his executioners and pled that his blood would not be revisited upon France.
And then he was gone, and the news of the delighted fervor about his death had chilled every soul that heard it.
France had become a nation of monsters. The devil was unleashed among them, tearing their humanity from them and delighting as it was trampled underfoot.
And now her friend was alone in her prison tower, trying to mother grieving children while bearing the same burden herself.
How could comfort be found when their future lay in the hands of those who had murdered the man they all loved the most? Without family, without friends, without support, they had to grieve and live on.
How could any of them leave their beds?
The Duc d’Orleans had voted for Louis’s death, she’d been told.
Vile viper of a man.
His own set had abandoned him for his actions, shocked by his lack of family loyalty. He deserved no less.
A soft knock sounded from the drawing room door, and she flicked her eyes toward it, curious. It was not a private salon; there was no reason to beg entrance.
The door opened and, to her surprise, her husband walked in.
He paused a step upon seeing her. “Are you still in mourning, Charlotte?”
There was no irritation in his tone, only a probing consideration, and the stiffness in her spine softened at the caring note.
“Is there a designated length of time to mourn a monarch murdered by his people?” she asked, feeling as though her voice was filled with shards of glass.
“To mourn the husband of a friend I should not have and cannot publicly claim? To be horrified by the very real demonstration of anarchy in scenes that haunt my dreams?”
George tutted softly and sat down beside her, taking her hand. “My love . . .”
She shook her head. “I know I can do nothing for her, George. But you cannot ask me to feel nothing for her.”
He rubbed her hand for a long, silent moment before bringing it to his lips for a kiss. “There has been an increase in the number of French refugees to our shores.”
“I cannot imagine why,” she muttered with all the sarcasm known to man.
He ignored that. “Most of them are penniless. For a people who claim the monarchy and nobility have bankrupted the country, they do not seem to care for their own particularly well.”
Charlotte said nothing, content to listen and attempt to determine why her husband was telling her all of this.
“Our people are taking them in,” George went on.
“They are not being allowed to starve, not when word is spreading of the horrors taking place in France. I have asked that it be made known that England welcomes any who wish to come, in the hopes that it will encourage more of the French who wish to flee to do so.”
“Why?” Charlotte asked him bluntly. “You said we cannot intervene.”
He smiled at her. “This weakens France. Do you not see? By having their people come here and be treated well, without fear of retribution or prejudice, without any demonstrations of power or punishment for opinions, word will spread, and more will follow suit.”
Charlotte raised a brow. “Strategic charity, George?”
His smile faded, and he turned to face her more fully.
“No, no, that is not what I mean in the least. We would take them in regardless. Our people are good and charitable, and I would never seek to turn away those who come to us for refuge. But in letting word spread, we might help to mitigate the troubles in France without directly being involved in foreign matters.”
Charlotte took a moment to collect her thoughts, choosing her words with care. “Would your brilliant mind have any ideas for helping the queen and her children without intervening in foreign affairs?”
George sighed heavily, and now she heard the hint of irritation. “Charlotte . . .”
“What, George?” she demanded hotly, her sympathy and anger merging into a peculiar combination that roared to life like a mythical dragon. “Why can I not defend a woman who has been tortured by her people for no reason?”
“You were critical of her behavior early in her reign,” George reminded her.
Charlotte coughed in disbelief. “The minor sins of a young woman are enough to have her husband guillotined and for herself to be imprisoned with her children? To have her name slandered by the people she serves and to be stripped of everything she knows and every dignity she deserves? Is that what you are telling me?”
“No, but—”
Charlotte cut him off with a slash of her hand.
“Always with a ‘but.’ A flimsy excuse to avoid facing the issue directly. You despise everything regarding the revolution in France, but I may not mention my sympathies for the queen. Whatever faults she has, I pity her greatly. And she has more than paid for those faults in her suffering. Her conduct has been commendable throughout her misfortune, and she stood by her husband when a lesser creature would have saved herself.” She slapped the cushion beneath her with such force that her husband startled. “Who is standing by her, George? Who?”
George stared at her, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open in a stunned expression. No words came from him, and for that she was grateful.
He would not give her hope that something could change in his stance, nor in that of the government. He could not.
She understood his position; that was not the issue. The king must abide by the decision of his government, and acting on his own intentions was a path that could lead to the destruction of their own monarchy. Impulses, no matter how valiant or compassionate, could not be heeded or indulged.
But to have her feelings and wishes dismissed was intolerable. To hear such violent feelings against what was happening in France, what had happened to Louis, what Antoinette was enduring, when no action could be taken felt like the worst sort of hypocrisy.
“My friend is grieving,” Charlotte reminded George in a halting, almost broken voice.
“Suffering and grieving yet another loss. The pillar to which she has clung from the moment of her marriage has been taken from her, and now she stands alone. I cannot even be comforted by sending a letter to her because it will likely never be read. I am a flightless bird, George: confined to the ground when I have always been intended to rise above it. Why could we not get them out?”
She imagined herself in Antoinette’s place with George being murdered and no one offering her strength. Her tears began to flow.
“Why could we not get them out?” she asked again, this time in a whisper.
George enfolded her in his arms, cradling her against his strong chest. “I am so sorry, my love,” he murmured into her hair. “I had no idea this weighed so heavily upon you. I am so sorry.”
Charlotte let herself cry and be held for a time, though the guilt she felt at doing so could not be ignored.
Antoinette had no one to hold her while she cried.
Had no husband to keep her upright when the world collapsed around her.
She could no longer find comfort in the arms that had once been home.
“I cannot help but to think of myself in her situation,” Charlotte murmured to George. “How I would respond, how I would cope, how I would survive if it was you taken to the scaffold.”
George groaned as though in agony. “Oh, Charlotte, don’t.”
She held him closer. “I would be dead myself, George. Dead in every way that matters yet forced to be alive. A shell of myself without a heart.”
“You are stronger than you believe,” he insisted. “When I was incapacitated, you never faltered. You never wavered. You were every bit the queen that you have ever wished to be.”
“Do you know how often I felt alone during that time?” she asked gently, not wishing to wound him but needing him to know.
“How often I retreated into myself because I could not face it? Do you know how lost I was, and how afraid I was that you would never return to me? Do you know what it is like to feel as though everything you know and hold dear is about to be pried from your fingers and you have no power or position to keep it?”
He lowered his mouth to her head, saying nothing.
“Perhaps I am not so different from her after all,” Charlotte whispered.
“I only exist with you. I would face all evils for you, but if you are gone, what would I be facing them for? I would be left as only the mother of your children, and what power does a mother have to change her fate when it lies in the possession of those who do not care?”
“Charlotte . . .”
She shook her head. “I will never stop speaking up for Marie Antoinette of France, George. I may not be able to save her from the rabble that holds her captive, but my support for her will be known. I do not want you to have any official association with the French government while they behave this way. Unless they free her, they do not deserve your condescension. If they wish to burn their nation to the ground, let them. We have no reason to be friendly with France generally, but after this?”
“On that, we are agreed,” George assured her.
“There will be no polite discourse with them. I will be more vocal in my denouncement of their actions. I will make my displeasure known. Mr. Pitt is already doing so in Parliament, but I will offer him my support on those issues. We are watching France closely for fear that they may wish for war against us once their internal strife is resolved, but also to attempt to keep their revolutionary ideas far from our shores.”
Charlotte nodded and sat up, pressing the back of her hand against her cheek. “Heaven forbid.”
George took her hand again. “And I promise you, Charlotte, that if I hear of any deeds that might be done in service to the queen or to rescue her, unlikely as it may be, I will listen and I will inform you. More than that, I cannot promise.”
After a moment’s consideration, Charlotte offered him a nod, though the hollow feeling in her chest remained.
It was the best she could hope for, limited though that hope might be.
It was all she could do.
Antoinette was on her own.