Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [93]
I grabbed another rocket. Jammed the shaft into the tiles. Lit the fuse. And then another. Over and over again, as fast as I could.
There are no songs left for me to sing you, Louis-Charles, I said. No games to play. But I can give you this—this light.
I will rain down silver and gold for you. I will shatter the black night, break it open, and pour out a million stars. Turn away from the darkness, the madness, the pain.
Open your eyes. And know that I am here. That I remember and hope.
Open your eyes and look at the light.
18 May 1795
I dare not go out tonight. Bonaparte has doubled the patrols, hoping to catch me. He is furious about my last fireworks display. As well he should be, for they were magnificent. I must not be caught. I shall wait. I shall sit at my table at the Foy and eat a bowl of soup—the very picture of a law-abiding citizen—and write.
I go back now. To 1791. To the Tuileries. After spending nearly two miserable years there, watching the revolutionaries grow only stronger, the king decided he would flee the palace and Paris and his people. At the start of the summer, when the rains had finished and the roads would be dry. He would go to Montmédy, on the border of the Austrian lowlands. There, with the help of the loyal Marquis de Bouillé, he would rally troops.
They would leave Paris in the dead of night, the king and his family. Madame de Tourzel, the royal governess, would pose as a Russian noblewoman. Louis-Charles and his sister would be her children. The queen would play the part of governess and the king was to be disguised as a valet. It was all arranged with the help of the queen’s brother Leopold of Austria, the Swedish ambassador Count Fersen, a handful of chambermaids and guards, and me.
All through the spring of 1791 I carried coins and jewels, wrapped in cloth and stuffed down my britches, to a carriage maker. An ostler. A seamstress. I smuggled in a plain black dress for the queen, a linen waistcoat for the king, a dress for Louis-Charles, who would be disguised as a girl. I knew not when they would leave. That was known only to a few.
Tell no one what you do, the queen said to me, even those most sympathetic to us, for a maid or manservant might overhear. There are spies everywhere. Promise me that you will not. Our very lives depend on it. She took out a Bible then and bade me place my hand upon it. Swear to me, she said, and to God.
I trembled inside. How could I do it? How could I swear an oath to God to say nothing when I had promised the devil I’d tell him everything? Yet if I refused to do it, the queen would know me for a spy.
I must lie to one—but which one? Orléans or the queen? If Orléans found me out, I would suffer for it. If the queen did, I would lose her favor. She was a prisoner now and without the power she’d once had, but that might not always be so.
I placed my hand upon the Bible and made the oath. I had figured out what to do. After news broke of the king’s escape, Orléans would surely question me. I would pretend to be as shocked as he was and tell him that I knew nothing about it, that I’d seen nothing, heard nothing. I would say the king and queen had been most secretive and that if they’d involved any of the servants in their plan, they must’ve paid them well, for none had whispered of it.
I would pull it off, I told myself. I was a player, was I not? Orléans would believe me. Perhaps he would not question me at all. Wishing the king well, as he said he did, he would likely be overjoyed that he and his family had got safely away.
Night after night I met Orléans in his chambers to give my reports, and there I lied to him. And to others. To Desmoulins and Marat, Danton, Robespierre, Collot d’Herbois, D’Églantine, and to their strongmen—a revolving pack of Jacobin brigands including Santerre,