Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [59]
Louis-Charles? I called, trailing after him. Come out now. We are too far from the others. We must go back.
But Louis-Charles made no answer.
I walked on, farther down the path. Statues glowed like ghosts in the moonlight. Leaves rustled in the night breeze. I passed a tiny pond, a thicket of white roses. And then I turned a corner and saw him—not Louis-Charles, but a man in a wolf’s mask, sitting on a bench.
Louis-Charles! I called, suddenly afraid. Louis-Charles, where are you?
What’s this? the man said. A little bird from the streets of Paris? A sparrow who no longer eats shit from the gutter, but chocolates from the queen’s own plate. How far you have flown, sparrow.
Louis-Charles! I shouted, backing away. Where are you?
Not here, I’m afraid, the man said.
Louis-Charles? Louis-Charles! I cried, my voice breaking.
It was quiet. So quiet I could hear nothing but the sound of my heart crashing in my chest. Then the man said, Come out now, Louis-Charles. We have played our trick.
Louis-Charles popped out from behind him. We fooled you, Alex! We fooled you! he cried, dancing all around me.
I grabbed him and pulled him close, the fear still strong inside me. All I could think was, What if I’d lost the boy? He was my charge. What if he’d been carried off? The king would have me flayed alive.
Who are you? I demanded of the man.
He raised his mask. His eyes, darker than midnight, met mine. Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, he said.
The Duc d’Orléans. Cousin to the king. And I’d spoken to him as if to a kitchen boy.
Quickly I curtseyed, eyes on the ground. I beg your pardon, my lord, I stammered. He granted it, and then I said we must get back or the queen would worry. We bade him goodnight. We had not gone five steps before Louis-Charles cried, My mask!
I turned around. Orléans was holding it. He made me come close to get it. He smiled as I took it, but the smile did not touch his eyes. Quick as a viper, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me to him. You play a dangerous game, player, he said quietly. Be careful. Not all are so easily played.
He released me. I backed away, then turned and grabbed Louis-Charles’ hand.
Never was I so afraid. What had he meant? Did he know my mind? And that I was only using the child? Would he tell the queen?
I chided myself for my foolishness. No man could see inside another. Only God and the devil could do that. The duke was only scolding me for allowing the dauphin to wander so far in our game of hide-and-seek.
Louis-Charles skipped and chattered as we walked back to the party. He recounted how well he’d fooled me and crowed at his own cleverness. I laughed and played along and told him I thought gypsies had carried him off, but all the while, one thing chivvied me.
The biggest trick of all is how well your cousin Orléans hid himself during the party, I said. I did not see a wolf’s face at supper. Not once.
Oh, he was not invited, Louis-Charles said. He never is. Mama does not like him. I hear her talking to Aunt Elizabeth about him. She says he plays the rebel, but wishes to be king. I do not think him so bad.
I looked back then, expecting to see him sitting there, Orléans, still and silent, moonlight glinting off his rings.
But the bench was empty.
The wolf was gone.
30 April 1795
Autumn came. The leaves fell, the skies turned gray, and wary nobles, like swans in a fairy tale, took wing. They’d been spat upon in the streets. They’d had shit thrown at their carriages and rocks pitched through their windows. They’d seen what the king could not.
The Comte d’Artois, the king’s handsome, laughing brother, swung Louis-Charles high in the air before he kissed him goodbye, and promised he’d bring him an entire cavalry