By Honor Bound (40 page)

Standing near the front, Philippe saw a young man emerge from the palace. He strode boldly across the courtyard, and his back was rigidly erect. But Philippe could see the fear in his eyes, the pallor of his cheeks. He ignored the shouts of the mob.

“Do your duty bravely,” he ordered the National Guardsmen who stood at their posts. “You are in service to the king! It is your obligation to protect the royal family!”

In response, the Guardsmen ostentatiously unloaded their guns. Whoops of approbation rose from the crowd. The young man whirled and, at a brisk pace, returned to the palace. A muttering, like the stirrings of an angry sea, rolled through the insurrectionists as the minutes passed. Philippe counted the seconds with every beat of his heart.

After what seemed an eternity, the palace doors opened once again. A dozen Swiss grenadiers appeared. They surrounded the royal family. A cry, almost as if from one giant throat, went up from the mob.

The crowd pressed forward. Philippe felt himself thrust against the iron bars of the huge gates. He was in grave danger of being crushed.

But a hush fell over the crowd. They watched in apparently baffled silence as the king, his family, and their escort walked across a leaf-strewn path to the Riding School, where the National Assembly was housed.

“The king takes refuge with the Assembly,” someone shouted.

Philippe felt the stirring in the sea around him again. But the mob seemed indecisive. The king and his entourage disappeared inside the National Assembly building.

Philippe found himself torn as well. If they did not attack, Honneure would be safe. But she would also still be imprisoned. He would have no chance to save her. Pressed to the fence, he listened to the increasingly angry rumblings of the people. Then some of the nine hundred gendarmes and National Guardsmen left their posts. They unlocked the gates and drew them open. The mob was invited in.

Chaos erupted.

Philippe would never be quite sure what had happened, or why. The king and his family had left the Tuileries. There was no reason to attack. Yet, suddenly, the twelve cannon brought up by the crowd began to fire. A group of armed Parisians charged the palace, shooting at the red-uniformed Swiss.

In self-defense the grenadiers fired back. Two of the attackers fell, blood blossoming from their chests.

But the Swiss were doomed by a shortage of ammunition and overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers. Most of them died at their posts.

Philippe had no time to register shock at the carnage taking place before his very eyes. He was being carried along with the assailants as they entered the palace. They went wild, raging all around him in a frenzy of destruction.

Chandeliers and looking glasses were smashed. Fires were set, and smoke began to swirl through broken windows. Looters carried away plates, carpets, and bottles of wine. Terrified servants fled, only to be caught and massacred in cold blood. Some were impaled on pikes, some mutilated obscenely. Using his musket as a club, Philippe fought his way through the nightmare of turmoil and bloodshed and found a staircase.

She had to be in one of the upstairs rooms. He had to find her. Panic was a live bird fluttering in his throat, making it difficult to breathe.

He made it to the top of the stairs. Others knocked into him. A tall, bald, and muscular man, bloodlust in his eye, pushed past him and kicked open the nearest door. A woman screamed and clutched a child to her. The man dispatched the little boy with a single blow, breaking his neck. As the boy sagged to the floor like a rag doll, the attacker picked up the woman and carried her across the floor. With a mighty heave he threw her from the window.

Sickened, dizzy with terror, Philippe staggered down the hallway.

He had to find Honneure …

She had lain awake all night. Perhaps because the food settled so uneasily in her shrunken stomach. Perhaps because a spark of hope had been fanned to life in her breast and warmed her. However unwanted, the small flame burned within her, and life returned. Wide awake, she listened to the distant sounds of the city night.

At what she judged to be about midnight, she heard a tocsin sound. What did the alarm mean? Could there possibly be truth in Dr. Droulet’s words after all?

Quiet followed. Still Honneure lay in the darkness, senses alert. She watched the bare walls of her chamber lighten with the coming of the dawn. She heard movement in the corridor.

No one came with her breakfast, however. Somewhat past the hour when it usually arrived, she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of her thin mattress.

Then she heard it.

It was like the coming of a far-off storm. There was a rumbling, as of thunder, but so faint one could not be certain of its origin or meaning. The tips of her fingers began to tingle.

Within minutes individual voices could be heard, shouts and cries. A mob approached!

Honneure rose and in two steps had reached her tiny window. But it was impossible to see anything but the leaves of the trees reaching up to the second story. She gripped the edge of the sill and turned her head, the better to hear.

A roar went up. Were they attacking? Would she indeed have an opportunity to escape?

The crowd fell silent again. Honneure’s heart raced. What was happening?

Honneure jumped back from the window as a cannon shot roared into the silence. The storm was overhead now, and it broke, thunder rolling in deafening booms. She put her hands to her ears.

Honneure heard the shots nevertheless. And the sounds of breaking glass. Screams. Terrible, agonized screams. The smell of smoke and gunpowder drifted to her nostrils. Panic bloomed, white-hot, in her breast.

A mob was attacking the palace. The inhabitants were being massacred. They were coming, and she was locked in her room. There would be no chance of escape. Only through death.

Honneure heard the sound of wood splintering, a door being shattered. It was very close.

A terrified scream. More breaking glass.

Heavy footsteps. Someone kicking at her door. It surrendered within moments, and she stood face-to-face with a tall, muscle-bound man, breathing heavily. Blood stained his hands.

A strange calm overtook Honneure. This was the end. She did not even bother to back away as he approached. She looked up into his dark eyes, glazed and maddened.

“Oh, no you don’t!”

Her attacker whirled, surprise etched into his crazed features. The small, thin, and graying woman gestured at him with her pike staff.

“Out of my way … this one’s mine!”

It was the woman who had found her letter. The cause of all this torment, all this misery. The spark of warmth fanned into a blaze. Honneure’s fists clenched at her sides. She didn’t even notice the tall man leave.

“So … we meet again.” The older woman’s eyes narrowed. “Only you’re not so high and mighty this time, are you?” She raised her pike. “Thought you were better than the rest of us, didn’t ye, with your
royal
blood?”

Honneure took an involuntary step backward as the woman took one forward.

“But you’re nothing better than a king’s bastard. Your mother was no better than a king’s whore.” The woman cackled and shook her weapon.

Honneure jumped and felt the wall at her back. The woman took another step toward her.

“You’ve run out of room now, haven’t you? You’ve nowhere to go. You’re just like the rest of them now, aren’t you?
Doomed
.”

The evil smile slipped suddenly from the woman’s face, and her thin mouth twisted into a snarl. She tipped her pike downward, its point aimed toward Honneure’s heart.

There was nowhere to run; it was true. She had come to the end. Absurdly, she recalled something Madame Dupin had said to her many years before.

Be glad you are who you are and are where you are … Those who flutter about Louis’s throne, like moths around a flame, are doomed. Be thankful you will never know the brightness of that light which consumes all.

Honneure nearly laughed aloud. How right she had been. How horribly, prophetically correct.

Something snapped in Honneure in that moment. Perhaps it was the last struggle of the instinct within her to survive. Perhaps it was simply anger, anger at her rate, the insanity that had brought her to it. Or merely her own stubborn blindness. But she suddenly did not want to be the helpless moth, wings already on fire.

Honneure’s initial assault took the older woman completely by surprise. She had not for a moment expected her cornered prisoner to grab the weapon pointed at her heart. She felt the wooden shaft slip a few inches between her fingers.

Honneure almost managed to wrest the pike from the woman’s grip. Almost, but not quite. As the woman pulled back on the weapon, attempting to wrest it from Honneure’s grip, Honneure shoved. Off balance, the woman staggered backward. It was all the advantage Honneure needed.

The tables had turned too quickly. The older woman was not quite able to comprehend the fact that there were hands around her neck, squeezing. She was finding it difficult to breathe. And she continued to stumble backward. In a moment she would lose her footing altogether. This couldn’t be happening! Panicked, she took a renewed grip on her weapon and thrust it at her assailant.

The pain nearly overwhelmed her. Something stabbed at her groin, close to the top of her thigh. Honneure’s choke hold momentarily loosened, and as it did the woman pushed on her weapon with a new burst of strength. Honneure felt a searing agony slide down her leg almost to her knee. The sound of material ripping came to her ears over ragged, sobbing breathing.

She was weakening. And if she lost the battle, she would lose her life. She would never see Philippe again.

Philippe …

The woman knew she had injured her opponent seriously. But she had not killed her. And the fingers were tightening once again. Her vision was growing dim. Her lungs threatened to burst. She dropped her pike and clutched at the hands throttling the life from her body.

Honneure heard the weapon clatter to the stone floor. But she was tired, so tired. She could barely hang on. Her knees buckled.

There was no more light, no more breath. In a final desperate attempt to save her life, the older woman let go of the hands around her neck and shoved her attacker with all her failing strength. The last thing she knew was the sensation of falling forward.

Honneure surrendered. There was nothing left in her. She was light-headed. The room around her had become a blur. She fell beneath her assailant. The pain and all the horror drifted away …

The terrible screams had abated. All around him were the dead and dying. The massacre was coming to an end. But Philippe was more desperate than he had ever been in his life. He couldn’t find her.

Where was Honneure?

At the end of the long corridor, Philippe whirled and started back the way he had come. At each doorway he stopped and peered within. Ruined paintings, broken glass, shattered furniture, blood, and tortured, mutilated bodies. But none hers.

He had almost made it back to the head of the stairs. There was a room on the left, one he could not remember having seen before. Philippe dashed through the doorway.

A thin, gray-haired woman lay sprawled on the floor, a broken pike beside her. A large, shimmering pool of blood spread out from beneath her. It was more than Philippe could stand. He could not bear to look closer. Retching, he fled from the room.

Chapter Forty

October 1793

It was a perfect autumn morning. The air was cool but not chilly, the sunshine a balm. Honneure tipped the pitcher over the window box and watered the geraniums, still summer bright. As she did, she gazed out over the gabled rooftops and chimneys of the city and thought, idly, of how pretty it looked. In certain places and from the right perspective, Paris was a beautiful place. How well it masked the sickness within!

Honneure turned from the window to the cheery room that had become her world. Leaning heavily on her cane, she limped forward to refill her pitcher. There were several more plants to be watered, and the canary had to be cleaned and fed. She moved slowly, but it didn’t matter. These simple chores were all she had to do, day in and day out. She also kept the modest apartment clean and cooked for the doctor. She did everything she could to make his life easy and pleasant. But she would never be able to fully repay him.

The sound of footsteps on the wooden stair alerted Honneure, and she turned the heat up under the coffee. She limped to the door and opened it.

Dr. Droulet, his slight form bent but still spry, entered the apartment and kissed Honneure fondly on the cheek.

“Good morning, dear girl,” he said and handed her a long, thin loaf of bread. “You were asleep when I left this morning. How are you feeling?”

“I’m just fine, and you should have awakened me.” Honneure took the loaf, still warm from the oven, and laid it on the cutting board.

“For what reason? You need your rest. You’re still healing.”

“It’s been over a year. I’m healed.”

Dr. Droulet accepted the plate of buttered bread Honneure offered him. “You nearly died, Honneure. You were unconscious for almost a month. Even the very young do not recover swiftly from wounds as grievous as yours.”

Honneure placed a cup of coffee in front of the doctor and then slowly, carefully, eased herself into the chair opposite him at the table. Her right leg, stiff, stuck out awkwardly.

“I only recovered at all because of you.”

The doctor grunted. “I’m just lucky I found you.”

Honneure reached across the table and patted the doctor’s hand.

“No,
I’m
lucky,” she whispered. Tears had thickened the sound of her voice, and she cleared her throat. She sat back and smoothed the clean, white apron over her lap. “Is there any news this morning?” Honneure inquired lightly.

Dr. Droulet looked up from under shaggy, gray brows as he sipped his coffee. He put down his cup.

“No. No news. Not yet at least.”

Honneure studied her fingernails. “It can’t be much longer, though, can it?”

“I doubt it.”

“Because it’s a foregone conclusion, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Honneure.” Dr. Droulet sighed deeply. He rose and walked around the small table to lay his hands on Honneure’s shoulders. “Yes,” he admitted finally. “I’m afraid it is.”

“She will follow the king to the guillotine.”

Dr. Droulet did not reply. The main reason Honneure healed so slowly was her depression. He did not like her to dwell on things that only caused her pain. He didn’t want her to continue to live in the past. She had to start thinking about her future. Or she would not have one.

“Honneure—”

“Tell me again. You saw him. You saw him arrive in a coach. He maintained his dignity, didn’t he?”

Dr. Droulet sighed again. “Yes, he maintained his dignity to the very end.”

“And his innocence.”

The doctor nodded.

“He was innocent, you know. He was never a counterrevolutionary, like they said. He only wanted to help his subjects. And they murdered him for it.”

“Honneure …”

“They will murder the queen, too. They can’t allow her to live. This trial is only a sham.”

“Honneure, stop. Stop it now.” Dr. Droulet gently squeezed Honneure’s shoulders. “I want you to think about yourself for a change. I want you to write a letter.”

Honneure shook her head.

“Yes, it’s time you wrote that letter. It’s time you let your family know you’re still alive.”

Honneure shook her head more vigorously. “No.”

“I have someone very trustworthy who will carry the letter to Chenonceau. No one will know. No one will connect you with Madame Dupin or your daughter. They’ll be safe. They’ll …”

“No. I can’t take the chance. No letters.” Honneure’s voice was brittle with fear.

Dr. Droulet returned to his chair and sat down. He reached across the table and took Honneure’s hands.

“What about your husband?” he inquired softly. “Wouldn’t it ease your mind to know whether or not he was safe?”

Honneure pulled her hands from the doctor’s grip and folded them in her lap. “He’s only safe if he stays far, far away from me. All of them. Madame Dupin, Philippe, Philippa … all of them are far better off forgetting all about me.”

He would have said more, but it was evident Honneure’s mind remained firm. She pushed back from the table and stiffly rose. She picked up his empty plate and carried it to the washbasin. Her rigid back remained turned to him as she attended to her chores.

The doctor did not bother her again. There would be sorrow and devastation enough to come in the next few days.

The Revolutionary Tribunal had finished with their questions. Thin and gaunt, hair now completely white, Antoinette rose unsteadily to her feet. Leaving the courtroom, she leaned on the arm of her counsel, Chauveau-Lagarde. She was exhausted and soul-weary. But she held her head erect as she walked down the aisle between rows of spectators. The faintest of smiles touched her lips.

During the worst moment of the trial, when she was accused of having committed unnatural acts with her son, seven-year-old Louis Charles, she did not respond. When asked why she did not reply, she had risen from her chair, emotion at last overcoming her. Antoinette recalled her words perfectly: “If I have not answered, it was because Nature refuses to answer such a charge against a mother.” Then she had turned to the spectators and appealed to all the mothers in the room.

A murmur of sympathy had run through the crowd. There had even been a few shouts of approval. The courtroom had to be called to order. In this nightmare that would not end, it was one tiny spark of light. Antoinette clung to it.

Chauveau-Lagarde led his client to a small room where they would await the verdict. He helped Antoinette into a seat, and she smiled at him gratefully.

“You have been very kind to me, my friend,” she said quietly. “I hope you know how deeply I appreciate it.”

The young man flushed. “I do know. I only wish I was able to do more.”

“What more could you do? Their minds are already made up.”

Chauveau-Lagarde averted his eyes. There was no denying it. Having no evidence, they had twisted the truth beyond all recognition. Even their questions to the former queen contained lies. There was no way she could acquit herself.

“Do you know one of the more remarkable features of this trial?” Antoinette continued. “Almost every charge originated, years before, in the slander and calumny of Versailles. Our beloved Versailles …”

Antoinette’s gaze focused very far away. She drew a deep breath.

“We were so happy then. We didn’t think anything could hurt us, not really. Not until the affair with the necklace.” Antoinette smiled ruefully. “That was the beginning of the end, you know. I knew it even then.”

“Madame …”

“What I did not know was how even the Trianon would be turned against me. I had it built for dear Louis, you know. He was so busy, so devoted to governing his subjects and attending to business, he had no time for entertainment. So I brought the entertainment to him. Now I am accused of gross overspending and profligacy.” Antoinette uttered a short laugh.

“They accused me of influencing my husband. They said I made use of his weak character to carry out many evil deeds. But I told them, didn’t I, Monsieur? I told them I knew no one of such character as they described.”

Chauveau-Lagarde ducked his head to hide his sudden emotion. He had never known anyone so noble, kind, or gracious. He had not meant to love her, but he did. There would never be another like her.

A knock at the door brought both occupants of the small room to attention. But Chauveau-Lagarde hesitated.

“Go ahead, dear friend, answer it,” Antoinette urged. “My fate was sealed long ago. Let us hear their condemnation and be done with it.”

Honneure opened her eyes slowly, unsure what had awakened her. The gentle knocking was repeated. She pushed herself up on her elbows, surprised to see the sun so bright already. She had slept late again.

“Yes?” she called.

“Honneure, it’s Dr. Droulet. I must speak with you.”

“Of course! Come in.”

The doctor entered the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “I went out to get the bread this morning,” he began.

“And you heard,” Honneure finished.

He nodded. “Even now the crowd is gathering to watch the execution.”

There was silence for a long moment. Honneure closed her eyes.

So. The end had come at last. It had only been a matter of time. Painfully, Honneure swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Droulet said softly.

Honneure merely nodded. She couldn’t speak.

“I’ll leave you to get dressed.”

When the door had closed, Honneure pulled the nightdress over her head. She put on clean underlinens and took her best dress from the tiny wardrobe. She washed and carefully arranged her hair. For the first time in many months, she looked at her reflection in the sliver of mirror hanging over her dresser. Satisfied, she left the room.

“Honneure, you look lovely,” Dr. Droulet exclaimed.

“Thank you.”

Though the weather was again warm, Honneure took her cloak down from its hook by the door. She threw it over her shoulders and pulled up the hood.

“Honneure!” The doctor stood up as rapidly as he was able. “Where are you going? What are you doing?”

Honneure turned and looked the doctor straight in the eye.

“I think you know,” she replied evenly. “I’m going to be with her. She must not be alone at the end.”

“Honneure, this is madness! What if you’re recognized? They are still looking for you. And you were imprisoned for so long that many know you. And they’ll be there, Honneure, mark me. They will be there to gloat. You
can’t
go.”

“I have to.”

Dr. Droulet crossed the room and grabbed Honneure’s arm as she opened the door.

“Honneure! Listen to me. Your service to the queen is ended … Your duty is over.”

A sad smile curved Honneure’s lips. “You are correct,” she replied softly. “My duty is indeed over. That is not why I’m going. I have to be there because of love. I love her. I will be with her at the end. I want her to know that she does not die alone.”

“Honneure …”

“No, I’m going. This is the last thing I will ever do for her. Possibly the last thing I will ever do for myself. But do it I must. For too long, almost all my life, I put duty first. I did not realize until too late that it’s only love that matters. My stubborn refusal to understand that cost me everything I hold dear. Today, no matter what the cost, I must put that right. For
me.
”

There was no answer he could give. Miraculously, he had saved her life. Though she had almost bled to death, he had saved her. He had thought the meaning in the miracle was that she might one day be reunited with her family.

But it would be arrogance to try and judge God’s purpose. Perhaps he had only saved her so that she might be reunited with her own soul.

“Go with God, dear child,” he said at last and kissed Honneure’s brow.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for everything. If we never meet again, know how I have treasured our friendship.”

Leaning on her cane, Honneure left without another word.