Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [104]
I do not believe you. The revolutionaries want to do away with kings. They have said so a million times.
What the revolutionaries want to do and what they must do are two different things. The revolution teeters at the edge of an abyss. If the Prussians don’t destroy it, the royalists will. We must have a strong man to rule us. One whom all can accept. Orléans is that man. He is the rarest of creatures—a Jacobin Prince of the Blood, both royal and revolutionary. Who better to unite a divided France?
But France has a king. Louis is still king, I said.
Not for much longer.
You mean that they will send him away. To the country.
They will send him away, yes, but not to the country. There will be a trial first. For appearance’s sake. Then the guillotine.
The rage I’d felt trickled away. Fear took its place. But the king has a son, I said, grabbing hold of Nicolas’ sleeve.
He nodded. Yes, he does, and it is he, Louis-Charles, who will be declared king, but the duke will rule for him, as regent.
Until Louis-Charles comes of age. He can only rule until Louis-Charles becomes king himself, I said. My voice sounded like a beggar’s, desperate and pleading.
The dauphin is a delicate boy as his brother was before him. Many believe he will not see his tenth year, never mind manhood.
No, I said, shaking my head, not wanting to hear anymore.
All along, Orléans had been working against the king, plotting his downfall. Every mistake the king had made had helped him. Every victory for the revolutionaries helped him. Bad harvests helped him. Cold winters. Bread shortages. Foreign threats. Civil war. It all helped him.
And I, I myself, had helped him.
The knowing of it felt like a dagger to my heart. Had I given him names I should not have? Had someone been killed this night because I told Orléans he had visited the king or written to the queen? Were Louis-Charles and his family in prison because of something I had seen? Something I had said? I moaned like an animal and sank to the floor, weeping.
Nicolas leaned over me. It is too late for tears, he said. Get up. Pick up the things you have broken. Do not be here when the duke returns.
I did not get up. I lay on the floor for some time, until the candles burned low. Until the first light of morning appeared in the sky. And then I remembered my work at the Temple and that Louis-Charles would be waiting for me.
I got to my hands and knees and was about to stand when I caught sight of myself in Orléans’ mirror. It seemed as if a stranger stared back at me. A stranger whose face was as white as chalk. Whose cheeks were stained by tears. Whose eyes were sunken and dead.
I crawled closer, through the broken glass, the torn clothing and scattered jewels, and touched my fingers to the stranger’s.
Is it Paris that’s gone mad? I asked her. Or is it you?
I stop reading, devastated. Alex witnessed the massacres. Worse yet, she thinks she may have played a role in them. I remember learning about them in class. They were horrible. After we did a segment on them, our teacher, Ms. Hammond, told us there was a lot of spin directed at them—at the time they actually happened and ever since.
“Some historians call the massacres a spontaneous outburst of violence, a shameful aberration fueled by fear and hysteria. Others said the butchery was planned, that it was orchestrated by those in power in order to rid Paris of counterrevolutionaries,” she said.
“Well, which is it?” Arden Tode asked.
“One or the other. Both. Neither.”
“Are you, like, trying to be funny?”
“What I’m trying to do, Ms. Tode, is show you that the answer depends on where you stand. Marie-Antoinette