By Honor Bound (37 page)

“No, Honneure. I am only allowed to take one servant with me, and Madame Campan as chief of my servants owns that position. You have other obligations as well. Go to Philippe. And if I am able, I will send for you.”

The news had stunned Honneure. She had devoted her life to the queen. She could not imagine being left behind. Yet she had no choice. And, in truth, a part of her soul rejoiced.

Philippe. She would not have to leave her beloved husband.

But her heart cringed as the time of departure neared. At one twenty-five, avoiding the bloodstained staircase where the guards had been murdered, Louis and his family went down to his waiting carriage.

Honneure tried to stay near Antoinette and her children, but it was difficult. They were surrounded by their bodyguard, who was having trouble pushing through the large and disorderly crowd. The carriage was encircled, and the National Guard stood ready at the head of the procession.

The fishwives of Paris had helped themselves to the Versailles trees and brandished branches trimmed with ribbons. Others waved flags; some wore grenadier bearskins and shouldered muskets. Those too drunk to stand sat astride the guns. Loaves of bread were impaled on bayonets, and carts of flour were being drawn by the king’s finest horses. At the rear of this assemblage came carriages carrying the few remaining courtiers, retainers, and belongings.

As they neared the coaches, Honneure was forced farther and farther behind. The king climbed in his carriage and turned to a trusted officer.

“Try to save my beloved Versailles for me,” he said quietly.

Then he was inside, seated beside Antoinette. Also with them was Marie Therese, eleven; Louis Charles, four; Louis’s sister, Elisabeth; and Madame Tourzel. The coach started forward, and soldiers and fishwives surged around it, firing guns and chanting songs. Honneure heard someone shout threats at the queen. The scene was chaos.

Honneure tried to hold her place and watch the procession recede, but the rowdy crowd jostled her until she nearly lost her footing. She withdrew closer to the palace, until she was actually pressed up against its walls. They were warm, she noticed, from the afternoon sun. A sound above her caught Honneure’s attention.

Even as she looked upward, she saw shutters being closed in a window. The sound echoed, over and over and over, as doors and windows throughout the palace were closed and locked.

The crowd had thinned, all following the royal procession, intent on the journey back to Paris. Though she was dressed in the queen’s colors, no one paid Honneure any attention. With her heart in her throat, she picked up her skirts and ran.

It was quite a distance to the Hameau, and Honneure had to pause several times to catch her breath. Each time she did, her anxiety deepened. There were signs everywhere that the mob had traipsed through the gardens. Occasionally there was evidence of wanton destruction. Had they gone as far as the Hameau?

Only growing fear enabled Honneure’s exhausted body to keep moving. It seemed the crowd had indeed reached the little farm. A small herd of sheep, released from their pen, bleated in alarm and shied away from her. Where was their shepherd? Where was anyone?

“Philippe? Philippe …”

It was a miracle Honneure was able to force the breath from her tortured lungs to call her husband’s name. But there was no response. Terror increasing, she ran on to their cottage.

The front door stood ajar. A clay vase lay shattered on the doorstep. Honneure pushed the door wide and stepped inside.

The kitchen table was overturned. Clothes were strewn everywhere. She knew before she called that the house was empty.

Philippe was gone.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

January 1792

The dream was the same, always the same. Even asleep Honneure knew it was her recurring dream. Yet she could not escape the terror of it. She was running, running through the Versailles gardens, past the Trianon, trying to reach the cottage. But her legs were so tired, and the ground beneath her feet seemed to have turned into molasses so that it was nearly impossible to pick them up and move them. And she had to hurry, hurry before the mob came and took Philippe away. She had to reach the Hameau before they came upon her beloved husband and killed him …

Honneure awoke with a start and sat bolt upright in bed. Though the small room was icy, sweat stood out on her brow. Her waist-length hair was tangled about her shoulders and upper arms from constant tossing and turning. She cast her gaze wildly about the shabby, rented room.

“Philippe!”

He stood up before the stove he had been trying to light and revealed himself to his wife.

“I’m here,” he replied gently.

Philippe was well aware of Honneure’s fears. Since the day the king had been removed from Versailles, though it had been nearly three years earlier, she suffered from nightmares and unexplained attacks of anxiety. He understood how afraid she had been when she returned to the cottage and had found him gone. On top of everything else that day, she had thought she had lost her husband.

Philippe had, in fact, been searching for Honneure. Knowing of the king’s removal to Paris, he had feared Honneure had accompanied the royal family. He was out searching, trying to ascertain whether she had gone or remained behind, when she had come to the cottage. She had found it in disarray because he had started a frenzy of packing when he thought he might have to quickly follow her. When he had finally returned to the cottage and found her, she had been nearly hysterical. She had never been quite the same since.

Something profound had changed in Philippe that day as well. He had always been secretly afraid that Honneure’s devotion to her duty superseded her love for him. But it did not, and he had seen it clearly that day. Loyalty and devotion were the very core of her nature. Her great sense of integrity did not allow her to show in any way even the slightest waver in her devotion to her duty. What was in her heart, however, was another matter. And what was in her heart was a fiercely passionate, undying love for her husband.

Overwhelmed with love, Philippe crossed the bare floor to his shivering wife and sat on the edge of the bed. Taking her chin in his hand, he tenderly kissed her mouth.

“I’m sorry I gave you a start. I wanted the room to be a little warmer for you when you woke.”

“You are always thinking of me.” Honneure stroked the stubble on his unshaved cheek. “I am the luckiest woman in the world.”

“Then it is appropriate that you are married to the luckiest man.”

Philippe kissed her again and tried to smooth the tangles from the masses of her hair.

“Never mind that. I have a brush. But Snow Queen has no way to fetch her own breakfast.”

“I hate to leave you.”

“And I hate to see you go. But I’ll keep busy today.”

“Oh?” Philippe paused in his shaving preparations. “And just what’s on your agenda for today?”

“I thought I’d write a letter to Philippa and then visit the queen.” Honneure endured Philippe’s sharp glance. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

“Honneure …”

“I know, I know. But she so treasures the little luxuries I’m able to bring her.”

“Luxuries you should be keeping for yourself.”

Honneure glanced away guiltily. Philippe worked so hard for what little they had. Times had changed so drastically it was not safe to be perceived as having money, even a little. Philippe had hidden away their nest egg, therefore, and had taken the lowly job of cabby to support them on a daily basis to appear as one of the people.

“The people.” Honneure shuddered. The people of Paris barely resembled human beings any longer as far as she was concerned. She recalled the first terrible days following their arrival in the city.

Everyone of even decent appearance seemed to be suspect. Had they worn their livery, the queen’s colors, they would have been torn to pieces on sight. It was difficult enough just having the Lipizzan mare, a horse of such obvious noble and aristocratic lineage. Philippe had been forced to tell a series of lies, painting himself as a thief and a criminal, entitled to take what he had needed from someone who had more. He had been accepted at once as a comrade and patriot among the locals in the rundown neighborhood where they had found a room to let. Thus accepted, they had begun their succession of days in a world of topsy-turvy values, Philippe as a cabby, Honneure attempting to continue her service to the queen.

Honneure bent to pull on her woolen stockings and noticed a new hole. She could certainly use another pair, one to wear while she was darning the other. But the winter was a brutal one, and poor little Marie Therese, imprisoned along with her parents, needed them more. Stockings, soap, hairpins; little things had come to mean so much to the royal family.

Honneure straightened and hurriedly pulled on her dress as Philippe finished his ablutions. He moved behind her to fasten the long row of buttons on her plain, black shift and then wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her shoulder.

“Promise me again you’ll be careful, my love.”

“I am always careful, Philippe,” Honneure replied. “There are always six guards outside the queen’s room these days, and at least half of the staff are spies for one side or the other, the Assembly or the Jacobins.”

A familiar anger sparked to life in Honneure’s breast, warming her. She turned within Philippe’s embrace to face him.

“I just don’t understand,” she exclaimed. “I’ll never understand. Why can’t they see how good the king and queen are? Why must they torment them like this?”

It was a question that could never be answered, and Honneure knew it. Reason and sanity no longer existed in France. She buried her face in her husband’s chest, but she refused to cry. Enough useless tears had been shed.

Husband and wife shared one more lingering kiss, and Philippe left to begin his day of driving. Honneure stood in the doorway and listened to his steps descending the narrow wooden stairs. A door creaked open and then shut. Honneure sighed.

Another gray, cold day for her husband, fingers stiff and freezing as they gripped the harness reins. And for what? A few sous only, barely enough to keep them alive and Snow Queen fed. Enough to keep them going one more day, so that Honneure might trudge to the Tuileries with her scraps of gifts for the queen she had once served in splendor. How much was Philippe willing to suffer for her and for how much longer?

Honneure closed the door to the hallway and leaned her head for a moment against the unpainted wood. She was tired, so tired. And so full of doubts. With an effort she straightened, squared her shoulders, and turned from the door. She had to get through her day, a step at a time, just as Philippe did.

The room was still cold, and she pulled on a pair of gloves from which the ends of the fingers had been cut. She fetched pen, ink, and paper from her small box of treasures and sat at the scarred table with its rickety legs. It had been a while since she had written to Philippa, and she was anxious to feel in contact with her again.

But it was hard to get started. Weekly, the madness seemed to spread. She wanted to chronicle the times for her daughter yet did not want to alarm her. It was becoming more and more difficult to choose her words. Honneure put down her pen and rested her head in her hands.

The first letters to Philippa and Madame Dupin had not been so hard. It had not seemed so terrible for Louis and Antoinette in the beginning. When the king and queen had first been brought to the Tuileries, they had still enjoyed relative freedom. They had, for instance, been allowed to spend the summer months at their château in St. Cloud. During the rest of the year in Paris, Antoinette had been free to spend her time trying to improve the welfare of the people, and she visited hospitals, asylums, and orphanages. Louis had worked almost constantly with the Assembly, trying to conciliate them and bring an end to the civil unrest.

After a time it appeared they had succeeded, and a constitutional monarchy was formed. The king lost most but not all of his powers and retained his crown. It appeared that peace and a semblance of political sanity were on the horizon.

But another faction was at work, Jacobin extremists, people who wanted not only to abolish the crown altogether, no matter how weakened it had become, but who also wanted to abolish any kind of power at all that was not held by themselves. As a result, the unthinkable had happened.

Honneure rose from her seat and crossed to the stove to warm her hands. Whenever she thought of those horrible days, a chill went through her.

A new kind of thinking had swept France, self-serving to the extremists who were its proponents. Man, being a natural being, did not need to look to the supernatural, to God, to take care of him, they said. He needed only the state. The Jacobins wanted to make patriotism not only a new religion but the only religion. To that effect, church properties had been seized and nationalized, the clergy reviled. Effigies of the pope burned in the streets.

A new clergy had risen from the ashes, but it owed its loyalty to the state, La Patrie, not to the Holy See in Rome. The king had abided and compromised much. And while he publicly acknowledged the new order, privately he would not surrender his traditional Catholic worship. Refusing to attend Easter services led by a new, schismatic priest, he and his family had tried to leave for St. Cloud and their own priest.

Honneure shivered until her teeth started to chatter. She wrapped a second shawl around her shoulders and briskly rubbed her arms.

A mob had prevented Louis from leaving the Tuileries, to worship as he chose. He and his family were, well and truly, prisoners of the people. Their freedom was only an illusion, and the writing was on the wall. If they wished to survive, they would have to escape.

Warmth from the small stove had crept into Honneure’s chilled flesh, and her shivering stopped. She was no longer able to feel the chill air, in any event, for her memory had carried her to the day she had almost lost Philippe.

With the help of a man who had become a loyal friend, Axel de Fersen, a flight to Varennes was planned. Late on the appointed evening, the children were first smuggled out of the Tuileries palace. Later, avoiding servants known to be spies, the king and queen followed. Axel de Fersen himself actually drove them away from the Tuileries in a hired carriage. Hours later they rendezvoused with the larger Berlin Fersen had purchased to carry the entire royal family to safety, Louis’s sister, Elisabeth, and Madame Tourzel included. Fersen had handed over the reins to the driver who would continue the journey out of Paris and to the relative safety of Varennes. The driver was supposed to have been Philippe.

Tears, unnoticed, streamed down Honneure’s cheeks. They were tears of gratitude and prayerful thanks.

A sudden and disabling stomach ailment had made it impossible for Philippe to drive the king’s Berlin. Another driver, loyal to the crown, had been found at the last minute. He had been a good man, and Honneure mourned him. When the royal family had been recaptured and returned to Paris, he had not survived the wrath of the people.

Philippe had undertaken the mission out of loyalty to his wife first, his king and queen second. Though frightened because of the journey’s obvious dangers, Honneure had been proud of him. Nothing, she had thought, could or should come before one’s duty. It was how she had always lived her life. Loyalty was the paramount virtue. It had been, she thought, her mother’s unspoken legacy to her. Remain loyal to those you serve, devoted to duty, and you will survive. You will have food and warmth and a place to sleep.

Then she had almost lost Philippe, and it was the second time the ground had rocked beneath her. The change within her had begun the day she had returned to the cottage and found it empty. The change, it seemed, was now complete. And it was what enabled her to live in a world where goodness and kindness were now scorned. She had a new tool for survival.

The chiming from a distant clock tower brought Honneure abruptly back to the present, and she reseated herself at the table. More time had passed than she realized. The queen would be expecting her soon. She picked up her quill, her mind completely changed about what she would write to her daughter. She only wondered that it had taken her so long to realize the metamorphosis she had undergone.

Dearest Daughter,
Honneure began. Her pen flew as her excitement increased.

I have spent hours this morning agonizing over what I would write to you. During the past many months I have, as you know, tried to document events here in Paris for you. We are living history in the making. It is not for me to judge the rightness or wrongness of events. Those who come after us will have to decide for themselves when they read of these times. One thing I can say with certainty, however, is that I am glad you are not here. To have you, too, facing danger would be more than I could bear. Which brings me to the point of this letter.