Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [86]
Majesty, it is I, Alex, I whispered, after he’d slammed the door behind him.
She looked at me again. Her eyes widened. She smiled. I told her that I tried to get in to see Louis-Charles many, many times, but was always turned away. I told her I never gave up and though it had taken me a very long time, I’d finally found a way. I told her all these things, just as I’d been instructed.
She called for Louis-Charles. He knew me right away. He ran to me, kissed me, and hung about my neck. I hugged him tightly, lifted him off the ground, and spun him around. The queen laughed to see us. His happiness was her own. From then on, we spent every day together. I did my duties—helping Louis-Charles rise and dress, attending him at meals, keeping his chambers tidy. But mostly, I sang songs for him, told him stories, played games, as I had at Versailles. He was lonely and so glad of my companionship.
I love you, Alex, he told me as we played tin soldiers. You must never leave me again.
I love you, too, Louis-Charles, I said. I won’t ever leave you again. I promise.
I kept that promise. For love him I did. For nearly two years I spent almost every waking hour with him. Until he was taken from me. But I never left him. And I never will.
Orléans bought me the position. He bribed the governor of the Tuileries. Told him I was his bastard son and that he wished to help me make my way in the world. He assured the man that I was a good Republican and a Jacobin. Like he himself.
He wanted me to be his eyes and ears in the palace. To go where he—a revolutionary now, who had distanced himself from the king—could not and tell him all I discovered. What did the king do that day? Whom did he receive? To whom did the queen write? Who tutored the dauphin? Did any send him gifts? Rumors swirled about Paris—whispers of counterrevolution, of foreign intrigues, of plots to liberate the king.
I was to be Orléans’ spy.
Why me? I asked him the night he took me to his rooms. Why do you not get a boy to do boy’s work?
I have, he said, three times over. The first—a stable boy—got a maid with child. The second—a footman—joined the army because he liked the uniform better. The third—a cook—was killed in a brawl. I need a boy who thinks with his big head, not his little one. Since they do not exist, I have fashioned my own.
He had watched me all along. At Versailles, cavorting for Louis-Charles in my cap and britches. At the Palais, giving out Hamlet and Romeo. I, I myself, had given him the idea.
Do this for me, he said. Do it well, and when I no longer have need of you, I will put you onstage. At the National. The Opéra.
I was not quite the fool he thought I was.
I will never be on a Paris stage, I said, and well you know it. I am too plain to play Juliet or Iphigénie. And too good to play chambermaids.
Then play Romeo. Benedick. Philinte. You can do it. Have you not done it a hundred times? Nightly at the Palais-Royal?
This was a novel idea. I thought on it, then said, And if I will not do this thing?
Then you will go to prison. Four guards saw you take my purse. Have you forgotten my promise of the Ste-Pélagie?
Promise is it? I said, snorting. I call it threat.
Orléans smiled. I have no need of threats, he said.
Something bloomed inside me then—a black and fearsome dread. I did not want to be a spy, a telltale. I was worried my reports might somehow harm Louis-Charles and his family. But there was something else inside me, too, something far less noble, and oh, how his words fanned its fading embers.
Orléans saw it in my face, he must have—some pale flicker of conscience warring with my ever-burning ambition—and hurried to damp it.
Hear me, sparrow, he said. I mean the king no harm. He is my cousin, my blood. I wish only to help him.