Before the Storm (29 page)

Very few courtiers and palace officials had been trusted by the royal couple after this embarrassing incident and Clementine, who had been surprised not to be dismissed, had found herself subject to increasingly stringent security checks and scrutiny whenever she had to attend her royal mistress at the palace. Dozens of
 
National Guardsmen watched her as she alighted from her carriage in the main courtyard then made her way slowly and nervously up to the cramped royal apartments, which were crammed full of paintings and furniture that they had brought with them from Versailles.

Two guardsmen silently escorted her now down gloomy corridors and stairways to the Queen’s swelteringly hot little sitting room that overlooked the Tuileries gardens. Marie Antoinette, pale and silent awaited her on a small pale blue silk sofa by the window and was dressed with her customary restrained taste in white taffeta with a black sash around her waist and a fresh white lawn fichu tied carelessly around her shoulders. She was staring pensively out of the window and into the distance when Clementine and the guards entered but turned immediately and favoured the girl with the charming smile that had melted so many hearts.

‘Ah, you are here at last!’ she murmured, ignoring the guardsmen who had taken up positions on either side of the door. Everyone liked to pretend that the royal family weren’t prisoners in the Tuileries but it was nonsense of course. There had been a time when they had been allowed to spend time at their chateau at Saint Cloud just outside the capital but they had not been able to go there for a long time now.
 
In fact even going out to the Tuileries gardens had become problematic as the atmosphere in the city soured and the mob swarmed into the gardens to shout abuse at the royal captives. ‘We’ve been here for almost three years now,’ the Queen whispered to Clementine when she sat down beside her. ‘And to think that I used to complain about how restricted life at Versailles was.’ She sighed with regret. ‘How foolish I was back then.’

‘No, not foolish,’ Clementine protested, not knowing what else to say. ‘Versailles was like a prison too, in its own way.’

Marie Antoinette smiled sadly. ‘Do you know that I was the youngest of eight sisters, Madame la Duchesse?’ she said. ‘All I ever wanted was a quiet life with children, dogs, a loving husband and a rose garden of my own to tend. That should have been my fate, but when two of my sisters died of smallpox, everything changed and here I am.’ She picked up a blue bound book that lay on the table beside her and handed it to Clementine. ‘If I die today it will be with the full and certain knowledge that I’ve never had the life that I wanted, madame,’ she said with a mirthless laugh. ‘Isn’t that funny?’

Clementine shook her head. ‘I often wonder, madame, if anyone has the life they wanted,’ she replied.

Her mistress looked at her shrewdly. ‘Now, when a young wife says something like that, you know that all is not well in the world,’ she remarked with a shrug.
 

Clementine gave a faint smile and opened the book, a novel by Miss Burney and prepared to read. Outside the sitting room she could hear the other ladies in waiting chatting to each other in low voices as they went past the door, their silk skirts whispering against the panelled walls. ‘More gentlemen of the court have arrived with weapons,’ one of them was saying rather excitedly, her voice trailing away as they carried on down the corridor. ‘I haven’t seen the palace so busy since we first arrived here. ’

‘That’s not necessarily a good thing,’ another cautioned her as Clementine strained her ears to hear more. ‘Something is in the air, my dear and it doesn’t bode well for any of us.’

After she had finished reading to the Queen and the other ladies had arrived to take over, Clementine hastened from the room and hurried down busy corridors to the main reception rooms which were filled with ardent young men, flourishing swords that had not seen action since their fathers had fought against the English in America.

‘This won’t end well,’ one of the older ladies remarked in an undertone as some of the ladies in waiting sauntered amongst the young men, giving them flirtatious looks from behind their painted fans and even fashioning crude garlands from roses taken from vases around the room, which they placed airily on top of their powdered wigs.
 

Clementine sighed but did not reply. It was almost like being back at Versailles again, when the air was full of flirtation, optimism and the old courtly panache that had seemed lost forever. She shrank back into a window embrasure and enviously watched a pretty lady in waiting blushing and smiling as she placed a rose garland onto the dark hair of a crimson cheeked young man, who then caught her hand and fervently brought it to his lips.

‘I would consider it an honour to lay down my life for the royal family,’ another young man was saying to a small group of applauding, simpering women. ‘My father, grandfather and great grandfather all died in battle and I long to emulate their glorious sacrifice.’ He couldn’t be more than twenty and Clementine imagined a childhood in which the portrait of his dead father, bedecked with black silk and a wreath of laurels presided over the family
salon
.

‘They don’t know what they are saying,’ the older lady in waiting whispered to Clementine. ‘This is madness and the King is a fool to allow this. It’s over for us all and these young idiots would be better advised to flee for their lives than die for the sake of a long dead cause.’

Clementine looked at her with interest. ‘Do you really think so?’ she asked simply.

‘They’ll all be dead by nightfall tomorrow,’ the other woman said curtly before sweeping away, her dark blue skirts rustling angrily as she went.
 

Another lady in waiting sidled up to Clementine with a gentle smile. ‘Her son died while defending Versailles in 1789,’ she whispered with a tiny shrug of her shoulders. ‘I think that she must have been sent half mad with grief.’

‘Mad?’ Clementine repeated. ‘I think she might well be the only sane person here.’

The rest of the day dragged on and in the end even Clementine, who spent most of it sitting reading and sewing with the other ladies in waiting began to believe the whispers that there was to be no coup after all and that there was no danger of an attack upon the Tuileries. However, as night fell the news reached them that for the first time since his accession to the throne in May 1774, the King was not going to have an official
coucher
when his courtiers ceremoniously put him to bed. In fact the King, it was said, was not going to bed at all but had instead opted to remain fully dressed and booted in case they needed to be evacuated.

When this news was brought to the ladies, they all dropped their embroidery and stared at each other in horror. ‘So it is true after all,’ one whispered. ‘They are going to kill us.’

‘You are always free to leave,’ an older lady remarked not a little sourly. ‘I’m sure that your presence will not be missed by their Majesties.’

The other laughed and flounced to the window, where the heavy pink brocade curtains had not yet been drawn. ‘Have you seen the size of the mob out there?’ she asked, pointing down to the sight that they’d all been trying their best to ignore. ‘I’d be ripped to pieces as soon as I set foot outside the palace.’
 

‘We should go to the Queen,’ another said, standing up purposefully and going to the door. ‘The poor woman must be beside herself.’ Clementine and a few others rose and followed her.
 

‘Remember how much the Queen used to complain about the
coucher
and
lever
at Versailles?’ one of them whispered with a low laugh. ‘My mother told me that one time, when she was still Dauphine, she had to wait for almost an hour naked while the ladies argued about who was to hand her a shift to cover herself.’

The Queen was standing alone and fully dressed in the centre of her bedchamber when they entered. ‘It is all true,’ she said dramatically as they walked in. ‘We are finished. All of Paris has turned on us.’

Her sister in law rose from the rose and cornflower printed sofa beside the window and went to take her hand. ‘Do not say so, my dear,’ she said gently. ‘The Swiss Guard are with us and many brave men are even now gathering at the palace to defend us.’
 

Always aware of the guardsmen standing outside the door, Clementine softly closed it behind her then leaned back against the panelled wood and closed her eyes. ‘Why don’t you take a chance and leave?’ Juliette whispered to her. ‘You’re English so no one would reproach you for not staying.’ She sounded a little wistful.

‘I would always reproach myself,’ Clementine replied with a sigh. She had been longing to leave all day but had decided that not only was it her duty to remain at the palace but also that despite the danger, she would rather be there than with the Duc at the Hôtel de Coulanges.

Hours passed as more people crammed themselves into the chambers of the King and Queen, determined to show their loyalty and support in what looked to be the final hours of the Bourbon monarchy. Clementine was not altogether surprised when her husband arrived at almost eleven, looking dishevelled and distressed with an askew wig on his sandy hair and an old sword in his hand. ‘I thought that I wasn’t going to get here in time,’ he explained to the Queen, patting his wig into place before bending over her outstretched hand. ‘The crowds around the Tuileries are immense and must number several thousand people by now.’

‘We are grateful that you came,’ she said with a mournful smile before turning away and resuming her anxious pacing of the room, her lips moving all the while.
 

Darkness had fallen on the Tuileries and after the royal children had gone to bed as usual and the royal family and their advisors had vanished into the council chamber to discuss plans for the next day, the rest of the court made themselves as comfortable as they could either by sitting on the hard wooden parquet floors or settling down for uneasy sleep on the spindly elegant sofas and chairs of the royal apartments while some court officials pointed out in vain that it was against etiquette to sit down in the King’s chambers. Clementine managed to evade her husband and found a quiet spot in a small sitting room on the first floor, where she stretched out fully dressed on a red and white striped sofa and rested her head on her arm, listening to the sounds of a palace under siege and like everyone else wondering what the morning would bring.

A second later, all thoughts of sleep fled when church bells all across the city suddenly began to ring, sending peal after peal out into the warm summer air, alerting all of Paris to danger and calling the faubourgs to arms. Clementine sat up in shock and rubbed her weary eyes as she peered through the dim light at the small porcelain and gilt clock that stood on the red marble mantelpiece. ‘Midnight,’ she whispered, feeling a sudden chill go up her spine. ‘Something is starting.’

Chapter Thirty-Three

A
 
crimson dawn rose over Paris the next morning. Only the royal children, unaware of the danger that swirled around them had managed to get any sleep, while the rest of the court dozed fitfully on their makeshift beds, disturbed by the incessant ringing of the
tocsin
bell and terrible fears of what might happen the following day.

By dawn, Clementine had long since abandoned any attempt to sleep and so she was standing by a window when the first crimson streaks appeared in the sky. ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight,’ she whispered to herself, recalling an old rhyme one of her nursemaids had told her. ‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.’

‘It’s so lovely,’ she heard someone exclaim in the next room and guessed that most of the palace inhabitants must also be standing at the windows, soiled and weary and watching the morning break after a sleepless night.

‘It’s the colour of blood,’ another voice cried before they were quickly hushed by several other voices.

Clementine did her best to tidy herself up then went in search of the Queen, who looked dazed, red eyed and pale after spending an uneasy night with her sister in law, Madame Élisabeth. She nodded silently and unsmilingly to her ladies as they filed into her beautiful bedchamber before passively allowing them to dress her in a fresh gown of sprigged lilac cotton. The Queen’s morning
levée
ceremony was usually a lighthearted time with the monarch laughing and joking with her ladies and taking an interest in all the latest news and gossip. Today, however, everything was different, some of the women openly wept as they performed their duties and no one dared smile or speak until they had left her presence.

All of the ladies in waiting, once the very flower of exquisite Parisian fashionable artifice looked dreadful in stained, crumpled clothes, faded rouge and untidy hair and the already oppressively heavy summer air was sour with the odour of stale sweat. Clementine tried to hide her shamefully grimy fingernails before she realised that everyone looked just as bad and there was a polite silent agreement not to notice such things about each other. In fact they smiled ruefully at each other’s frizzy hair and grubby cheeks and when one lady produced a bottle of iris and rose water from within her reticule, they all silently passed it between them, closing their eyes in pleasure as they dabbed the precious scent on their collarbones.

By this time over ten thousand people had gathered outside the Tuileries and it was impossible to escape the raucous shouts and screams that floated up to the royal apartments where everyone gathered together around the King, Queen and rest of the royal family. Clementine and the other ladies hid behind the curtains and stared curiously down at the huge crowd, while the young men who had stalked the palace so confidently the previous evening now looked pale and quiet.