By Honor Bound (39 page)

Chapter Thirty-Nine

August 1792

Though it was barely noon, the small cafe was packed with men and a few coarse-looking women. The stink of stale wine and sweaty bodies filled Philippe’s nostrils, and smoke burned his eyes. He made a show of drinking the sour red wine he held clutched in his hand, but his throat threatened to close each time he raised the glass to his lips. He longed to push his chair back, leave the crowded, noisy table, and breathe the relatively fresh air of the Paris street. But he didn’t dare. He’d come too far. They trusted him now; he was one of them. He was learning the things he needed to know. He coughed, nearly choking, as the man next to him clapped him sharply on the back.

“Isn’t that right, Philippe?”

He turned to his neighbor, who grinned at him through the sprouting stubble of a gray beard.

“You know I always agree with you, Luc,” Philippe replied, though he had long ago stopped listening. Luc was a member of the Jacobin Club, a rabble-rouser, and one of his favorite pastimes was exhorting a crowd while drinking seemingly endless quantities of red wine.

Luc laughed. “You’re a smart man!” He turned to the others at the table and some of the men who had left their seats and stood near, the better to hear him.

“Philippe knows. He’s with us,” Luc continued. “Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Desmoulins … our leaders have finally issued the call to arms. Heed them! Join us!”

“Call to arms … bah.” An old man, long white hair disheveled, grunted. “Robespierre and his ilk have been stirring up trouble in the press all along. They’ve blackened the king. And the queen. But that’s all they’ve a mind to do. They’ve done their job.”

“Not by half.” Luc’s eyes had narrowed, nearly lost in the wrinkles of his heavily lined face, and his tone was menacing. But the old man seemed not to notice.

“The king’s gone along with the Assembly, given ’em everything they wanted,” he went on. “And he’s in prison to boot, though he’s committed no crime. So what do your …
leaders
… plan to do?”

Philippe could almost feel Luc bristle next to him. Hate came off him in nearly palpable waves.

“Execute the criminal,” he replied in a tone so low and deadly that the men around him stiffened. Even the old man appeared to visibly lose some bluster. Nevertheless, he arched his shaggy brow.

“Criminal?”

“Yes, criminal.” Luc slammed his roughened palm on the crude, stained table. “Is counterrevolution not a crime? Are counterrevolutionaries not criminals?”

The old man looked taken aback. But he was not done yet.

“And just how is the king a counterrevolutionary?”

Luc sat back, a smug smile on his sun-darkened features, and crossed his arms. “Did the king not veto the Assembly’s decree?”

“To punish and exile priests not loyal to the state, you mean?”

Luc nodded slowly. “His action is contrary to the will of the people, to the revolution that is cleansing France. Therefore, he is a counterrevolutionary. He has committed
treason
!”

Once more Luc’s beefy fist came down on the table, rattling glasses. Philippe could not help but wince. Fear roiled the wine in his stomach.

In the months since Honneure’s arrest and imprisonment, Philippe had tried his best to ally himself with the extremists. If he knew what they were planning, if they trusted him, he might have a chance to rescue his wife. He had not realized the task would be so difficult, so terrifying.

The city indeed seemed to have gone insane; madness gripped the people. The streets ran red with blood, and still they were not satisfied. It had soon become clear to Philippe that they did not wish to merely depose the king but murder him and all his family, legitimate and illegitimate alike.

Philippe rubbed the scar above his left temple, his permanent reminder of the day the terrorists had seized Honneure. It had become like a talisman to him. He rubbed it and then nudged the man next to him.

“This … call to arms,” he began. “Tell me more. Is there a plan?”

Luc quaffed the contents of his glass and set it down heavily. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and grinned.

“We’ve got a plan all right,” he crowed. “If the Assembly won’t take care of the criminal they’re harboring, then the rest of us will. We’re going after the cringing lion in his den … the Tuileries!”

Only with great effort of will did Philippe manage to control the expression on his face. “The … Tuileries …”

Luc appeared briefly puzzled by Philippe’s reaction. Then the grin split his face anew.

“That’s right … I’d forgotten! You’ll want to be right there with us when we go after Louis and his Austrian whore. You’ll want to be right there with us for your vengeance, won’t you? You’ll want to put the head of your lyin’, bastard wife on the pike yourself! Imagine keepin’ a secret like that from you all those years … one of the old Louis’s bastard whelp!”

The surge of emotion that coursed through Philippe was so powerful it was debilitating, which was the only thing that kept him from ripping Luc’s own head from his shoulders. Carefully, slowly, he reminded himself that the only way he might hope to save his wife was to appear to be on the side of her jailors.

“You’re absolutely right,” he said through clenched teeth. “I want to be the one to … take her myself.”

Once again Luc clapped Philippe smartly on the back. “You’ll have your chance, boy. Tomorrow, if all goes right.”

“And will we be … armed?”

“Hah! Will we be armed? Fifty thousand arms from the arsenal are being distributed first thing in the morning. And we have federal troops that have come over to our side as well.”

Philippe had to fight to control a shudder. It appeared the end was very near, and it was going to be far worse than he had ever imagined. The mob, savage and bloodthirsty, had become impatient. They woud take what they wanted with their own hands.

And if Philippe was to be able to take what he wanted, he had to be with them. Every step of the way.

Honneure lay absolutely still on her hard, narrow bed. There was a single, small window in the airless room, but it did not open. Hot August sunlight poured through the glass and made the temperature of the tiny, bare chamber nearly unendurable. Honneure could only abide it by remaining completely motionless. She lived almost entirely inside her mind. It was how she had learned to survive.

With her eyes closed, she walked through the gardens of Chenonceau and along the grassy banks of the Cher. She dangled her feet in the cooling waters. She placed her palms on the cool, stone walls of the château. She felt a stirring breeze lift the hair from her shoulders. She was refreshed. But she was alone. Always alone.

It was too painful to people her dreams with memories of those she loved. She was alone.

She had been alone since the day they had taken her.

There had been questions first, of course. She had denied nothing. There was no point. They had the letter.

What they did not have was Philippa. In a hurry because she had been late to visit the queen, she had decided to address her letter when she posted it, not before. In spite of their threats and their petty tortures, she had not given it to them. Nor had she given them Philippe.

He did not know the truth, she had told them. She had kept it from him all those years. And all the while she had prayed he had told them the same thing.

Please, save yourself, my darling.

It had been her prayer, over and over and over.

Perhaps God had answered her. There was no sign of him. She had not heard of his imprisonment.

Please let him be with Philippa at Chenonceau.

This was her new prayer. She had none for herself. She did not expect to live.

The France she had known was dead. The king and queen soon would be. She had no reason to disbelieve her jailors. At least she had seen her sovereigns one last time.

They had wanted to humiliate her. The king and queen as well. She had been shoved into their chamber, her letter read aloud.

The royal couple had maintained their dignity, as always. Cousin to a servant? Not by the slightest word or gesture did they give anything away.

But she had seen sympathy in Antoinette’s gaze and deep, deep sadness.

Then she had been taken to this room. She had a bed and a chamber pot. Simple meals were brought to her regularly by a young man who was obviously simple. Because she didn’t eat, they had sent a doctor to examine her. He was a kindly old man, and he urged her to eat, to save her strength. But for what? So she could better mount the steps to the guillotine?

Honneure turned her thoughts away from the inevitable and returned to Chenonceau. The flow of the Cher carried her away.

It seemed a little cooler. The light must be gone, the day faded. But Honneure still did not open her eyes. Earlier she had heard the door open and had assumed it was her dinner. She wasn’t hungry. The vague aroma that drifted to her nostrils sickened her. She wanted to go back to Chenonceau. She set out on her way.

A soft touch on her forearm drew her back. She resisted the temptation to open her eyes.

“Honneure?” the soft voice whispered.

It was the doctor. She pictured him, thin, with a birdlike face, glasses perched on the end of his nose.

“Honneure, open your eyes, please. I want to know you hear and understand me.”

“I hear you.”

“Open your eyes, Honneure.”

He carried the stub of a candle, and it flickered gently in the darkness. Shadows played on his gaunt features. She saw the slight hump on his back and his perpetually hunched shoulders.

“Thank you, my dear. I haven’t much time. I simply came to urge you once again to eat.”

It seemed so pointless, so senseless. Then she saw his gaze flicker toward the partially open door.

“Eat, my dear. You’ll need your strength.” Dr. Droulet patted the back of Honneure’s hand. His voice dropped to a whisper. “There’s rumor of trouble. If the château is attacked, you might have a chance of escape.” The doctor coughed and raised his voice again. “I’ll try to look in on you tomorrow. Good night, child.”

Honneure watched him shuffle to the door. It opened wide, and she saw her jailor beyond the threshold. The door closed again and locked. She shut her eyes.

Tomorrow.

She didn’t dare to grasp at hope. But neither could she live without it.

Slowly, painfully, she roused herself from her stupor and sat up.

It was true. Everything Luc had said was true. It was a nightmare.

At five in the morning a provisional government had been installed. Danton himself arrested the Commander of the National Guard and replaced him with a friend. The mob had been armed. The Place Vendôme had been filled with a crowd carrying human heads on pikes. And now they swarmed through the streets toward the Tuileries. The insurrection had begun.

Philippe felt himself being swept away and carried along by the mob. He wasn’t sure how he had come by the musket gripped in his hands. He only knew he had to be there when they stormed the château. He had to be at the forefront. He had to be the first to find her.

It was nearly eight o’clock. The sun was already bright and hot. Not a breeze stirred, and the leaves on the trees were limp and still. Even their shade did not seem to cool. Sweat poured from Philippe as a crowd nearly twenty thousand strong surged around him. They pressed against the gates of the Tuileries.