Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow (32 page)

“Ach! Gott im Himmel!”
I cried, doubling over. The window-pane snapped free and swung toward the interior of the coach.

“What is the matter?” inquired the Lamballe solicitously. “Did you hurt your hands? Come, let me see.” She reached across the carriage and clasped my wrists.

I shook my head vehemently. The cramping in my belly had been immediate, sharp, and intense, like the most unpleasant visit from Générale Krottendorf I had ever experienced. By the time we arrived at Versailles a few hours later, the spasms had not abated, and I was desperate to avail myself of a commode.

When I hiked up my skirts and petticoats, I noticed a brownish
discharge running down my legs and my thighs were streaked with blood. There were dark stains on the lower half of my chemise as well. I screamed for help and the princesse de Lamballe and my Mistress of the Robes came running. They helped me to my bedchamber and shut the doors against intruders, undressing me with great haste and a frightened expression in their eyes. By then the crimson stain on my petticoat had spread.

“Fetch Monsieur Lassone and the king,” Marie Thérèse ordered the Mistress of the Robes, “but take care that you do not seem to alarm them, for Her Majesty will suffer all the more if her condition becomes the subject of idle speculation.”

I was trying not to weep, but I knew that something was terribly amiss. Slipping through the door cleverly concealed in the paneling I tiptoed back to the commode, shoving my knuckles into my mouth to bite back the sharp onslaughts of pain.

Only when I stood again did I notice the clots of blood in the basin. Merciful God, this could not be happening to me! How many times had Maman warned me about the dangers of a miscarriage from overexerting myself?

Arriving first, Monsieur Lassone examined me, then inspected my ruined garments and the contents of the basin. To my deepest sorrow, the
premier médecin
confirmed my most harrowing fear. He prescribed at least two weeks of bedrest, although I could not even imagine facing the world again by then.

Difficult to rouse once he was already aslumber, Louis finally entered my bedchamber through the secret door shortly after the hour had struck half midnight. Monsieur Lassone shook his head gravely and showed him the contents of the bowl.
“C’est finis,”
he said sadly. “It’s over.”

The king sat beside me on the bed, taking my hands in his and pressing them to his cheek. I tilted my head and rested it on his shoulder and he shifted his position to enfold me in his arms.

“I am so sorry, Toinette,” he murmured into my hair.

“
Moi, aussi. Je suis tellement désolée
. Louis, I am so sorry.” I moaned. “I feel so empty inside.” I pressed my hands against his chest and looked into hs eyes, watching the silent tears meander down his face. “What if it had been a dauphin?” As I rested in his arms my thoughts were pulled in a thousand directions. “What if God is punishing us?” I said in a small voice.

“For what?” Louis asked, dismissing the notion with his inflection. “Have you something to be so ashamed of that He would take our child?”

I met his gaze. “Yes,” I whispered, momentarily thinking of Axel. Yet my secret passion for him had not been consummated; our lips had never even touched. Our mutual desire had been a pleasant dream and my thoughts of him now revolved around his safety. I had certainly cared as much about the infant I carried inside me, the son I’d hoped to bear for France, Louis’s long-desired heir. “Perhaps He was cross with me for denying you my bed for so long after Marie Thérèse was born. And He did this to teach me a lesson.”

“Why would He take the life of an innocent?”

“He does so all the time.” I wound my arms around Louis’s neck and pressed my lips to his cheek. “I have learned the lesson nonetheless,” I added tearfully. “And I pledge to you with my entire heart that we will try again, as soon as we can, as soon as Monsieur Lassone tells us it is safe.” I felt like a drowning woman, flailing for a passing shard of wood.

Twenty-five years from the day my mother had brought me into the world, I had lost a child of my own, perhaps through my own selfishness in insisting upon celebrating my natal day in Paris. In a few weeks we would resume relations, asking God’s forgiveness and praying for His munificence: to let me conceive quickly and bring a heathy babe to term. But this night would remain
forever imprinted on my memory and I would never cease to mourn my loss.

Yet before the month was over there would be more to grieve.

D
ECEMBER

Louis found me in my music room practicing the harp. From the moment he entered the salon I sensed something was terribly wrong. Rarely had I seen his expression so sorrowful. And he had never before interrupted my afternoon lesson. As he crossed the threshold my servants and attendants made their reverences and he dismissed them with a terse “Leave us,
s’il vous plaît
.”

Once the room was empty he walked over to me and proffered his hand, raising me to my feet. The knots inside my belly grew tighter with every step we took toward the sofa. The king seated me as gently as if he were nestling an egg into a bed of straw, and sat beside me, still holding my hands. “I know I have not always been kind when it comes to my opinions of the Empress of Austria,” he began. “And I-I,” he stammered, searching for words, meeting my questioning gaze. He shook his head dolefully. “I am not terribly good at this … and there is no worse role than the bearer of bad news, but it has just reached us from Vienna. The empress”—he broke off, realizing how ridiculously formal he was sounding at such a time.

“I am so sorry to tell you this,
ma chère
, but I thought I should be the one to break the news to you. Maria Theresa has …” and then with quiet simplicity he said the words that cracked my heart. “Your mother has died, Toinette.”

At that moment, my world ceased to spin. I shivered, releasing a soul-shattering wail. My tears flowed copiously and my breath exploded in ragged gasps.

I knew Maman had felt ill for the past few weeks. I was aware, too, that she always worked herself to the point of exhaustion. But I had always thought her invincible, surviving smallpox and the births of sixteen children as she balanced the extraordinary pressures of governing a vast empire, fending off foreign enemies, and often crossing swords with my brother Joseph. She had never made my life easy, but she made it what it became. I was queen of the most glamorous and sophisticated court in Europe because of her indefatigable efforts to solidify an alliance with the French.

Louis reached over and stroked my hair, endeavoring to soothe me as he spoke. “The note we received from the emperor stated that she had caught a chill on the twenty-fourth of last month. She took to her bed with an inflammation of the lungs, but her physician Herr Stork feared that this time she would not be able to conquer the illness. Forty-eight hours before the end she gave her blessing to her absent children, reciting them by name in the order of their birth. Herr Stork writes that Her Imperial Majesty paused just before your name, and after a moment’s silence, shouted with all her breath, ‘Marie Antoinette, Queen of France!’ ”

A cry escaped my throat. My hand flew to my mouth.

Louis softly continued. “She requested that last rites be performed on November twenty-eighth and departed this world for a better one on the following evening at nine o’clock. Your brother was at her bedside; she expired in his arms.”

Today was the sixth of December; it had taken fully a week for Joseph’s letter to reach us. I clenched my fists and shut my eyes. Although she had often visited Papa’s tomb in the Kaisergruft and looked forward to the day when they would be reunited, I did not wish to picture Maman cold and stiff and still. Instead, I searched my memory for reminiscences of our happiest times: the arrival of Louis XV’s formal offer of his grandson’s hand in marriage;
the first visit of Générale Krottendorf after so long a wait. Maman’s letters from Vienna had angered me as often as they delighted me, for so many of them bore endless scoldings and warnings; but the realization that she would never pen another, and that she had left me adrift amid a sea of enemies without further benefit of her guidance, wisdom, and experience, was too much to bear.

I didn’t think I was capable of rising from the sofa; wracked with convulsions, I had lost the will to go on. How could I face the frivolous courtiers of Versailles the following morning as if I had not received such a blow? The thought of masquerades and games of blindman’s buff seemed absurd. Although I was as near to collapse as I had ever been, Louis managed to convey me to my bedchamber, where I hurled myself upon the mattress and buried my face in the silk coverlet, staining it with weeping as I sobbed myself to sleep.

In the middle of the night, troubled by my thoughts, I left my bed and lit a candle, placing it on a table near my bedside. Opening a portable writing desk, I sharpened a quill and uncapped the ink, penning a note to Joseph on the stationery embossed with my cipher.

1781

In the wake of Maman’s death I departed for le Petit Trianon, seeking solace and privacy. And as the months progressed I absented myself with greater frequency from the superficial, if glittering, world of the court. The delights of gossip and fripperies had lost their luster and now seemed a discordant frivolity, an insult to my grief.

Our prayers had been answered as well, and both the king and I admitted our surprise at my ability to conceive within a few months of my miscarriage. Although perhaps it was purely my perception, I seemed to be increasing at a more rapid rate than I had previously done. Rose Bertin’s lightweight muslin
gaulles
, with their puffed sleeves and ruffled décolletés, suited both my condition and my moods, for only the pastoral atmosphere of Trianon, which I was continually improving in an effort to recapture the essence of my Viennese summers, could soothe me.