Madame Tussaud's Apprentice (23 page)

“
Non
,” I say. “We did as you asked. We made the king’s head. You paraded it around the country. We owe you no more.”

“You owe your country nothing more?” the man asks, raising his eyebrows.

And once again, we are to face the horror of this revolution.

• • •

The queen is found guilty and beheaded just like her husband. We make a mold of the queen’s head as the chilly autumn winds shake the few leaves still left on the trees. I cannot help but remember the woman I saw at the Petit Hameau, dancing with her ladies-in-waiting and making daisy chains in the summer sunshine. How silly it all seems now, as I look at the queen’s dead blue eyes staring up at me.

“Celie?” Manon whispers.

I have missed a spot with the plaster. I take my brush and fill it in with shaking hands.

• • •

And then there is a lull, a blessed, wonderful lull. Food is still scarce, but order seems to have returned. Violence is less prevalent, and I begin venturing out again. Spring comes to Paris. Flowers poke their leafy stems from the earth. Leaves pop out from dark, bare branches. Lilacs release their sweet scent into the air.

I take a deep breath as I make my way back to the Boulevard du Temple, a fresh baguette under my arm. Perhaps, I think, spring will bring about a new world. Perhaps the old one of blood and hatred will be washed away in all this newness.

But as I round a corner, my hopes are dashed. The man who has come to get us before stands once again on the stairs. Above him, in the doorway, Manon has a hand to her chest. I run toward the house.

“What do you want?” I demand of him when I reach them.

The man gives me a crooked smile. “Your country has need of you again.”

Manon is swaying, and her face is a ghostly white. I cannot imagine what the man might have said to shake the implacable Manon, but it does not matter. I will kill this man myself before I will do more work for him.

I sweep past him and stand in front of Manon. “
Non
, we are done. We have given enough. Go find someone else to sculpt your grisly heads.”

“There is no one else, and you have no choice,” the man says.

I almost choke at his words. The man is right. We cannot fight back without risking Manon’s life, my own life, perhaps even Jean-Louis’s, the aunts’, and l’Oncle’s lives.

I close my eyes in despair. “Fine. We will come. Who is it?”

“Madame Élisabeth,” I hear the man say.

• • •

I can see that Manon is unsteady on her feet as we make our way to the Temple prison. My thoughts whirl in confusion. I have said we will do this, but how can we? I had not known the governor of the Bastille except by sight. I had known the king and queen, but only by seeing them at Versailles. Now I am to sculpt a person whom I not only know, but whom I admire? Will this nightmare never end?

When we enter Madame Élisabeth’s room in the Temple prison, we find her on her knees, praying. Her hair has been hacked to her chin. She is dressed in a simple black gown. She rises when we enter the room.

Manon takes one look at Madame Élisabeth and turns away, a handkerchief to her mouth.

“
Madame
,” I say, my voice shaking. I manage to sweep into a deep curtsy.

“Eh, no need for that,” the jailer protests, pulling me back up. “She is Élisabeth Capet now. Do not bow and scrape for her.”

“I didn’t do it for her,” I tell the man, wrenching my arm away. “I did it for me. I have always done it for myself.”

The jailer scowls. “Be that as it may, you’ll not kowtow on my watch. Thirty minutes now, no more.”

I nod and watch as the jailer leaves us.

Madame Élisabeth embraces me. “I am glad that you have come.”

“I wish ….” I begin.

“The time for wishing is over,” Madame Élisabeth interrupts. “There is only time for
prayers
now.”

I nod.

“Manon?” Madame Élisabeth says.

Manon puts out a hand signaling to give her a moment. When she turns around, her face is composed.

“
Madame
,” she says, curtsying. But then, she sinks to the floor and begins to weep.

“
Non
,
non
,” Madame Élisabeth says, sliding down next to Manon. “Enough of this,
mon amie.
This has nothing to do with you. I know that.”

I cannot believe the strength Madame Élisabeth is showing. She is to be executed, and yet here she is, comforting Manon.

Madame Élisabeth looks up at me. “What news do you have of my niece and nephew? They have separated us. Have you heard anything of them?”

“They will not let you see them?” I ask.

Madame Élisabeth shakes her head. “
Non
.”

I frown. “They are all right. They are being schooled in revolutionary ideas, and that may save them yet.”

Madame Élisabeth gives a little laugh. “The king’s children? Revolutionary patriots?

“Well,” she adds, patting Manon on the back, “as long as they are well, I can face this with peace. Now come, Manon. Tell me how I am to be displayed.”

Manon shakes her head, still unable to speak.

“You are to be shown in your cell,” I say. “That is why we are here.”

“Then draw, child,” Madame Élisabeth says. “Draw well this prison so that my people will see how I ended my life. And I will sit with Manon.”

I do as commanded by the king’s sister. I pull out my drawing tools and begin to sketch the wretched place in which Madame Élisabeth now resides. It is not hard, for there is little in the room.

But in a few days’ time, we will have to make her death mask. And while I know that Madame Élisabeth will not survive, the question is, will Manon?

• • •

When the news of Madame Élisabeth’s guilty verdict reaches the Boulevard du Temple, Manon takes to her bed and refuses to come out. I bring her a simple quiche, but the food remains on the table untouched.

“Is she any better?” Jean-Louis asks when I return to the kitchen.

I shake my head.

Tears slip down Jean-Louis’s cheeks. I put my arms about the little boy.

“First Papa, and now Madame Élisabeth,” Jean-Louis whispers. “Shall we lose Manon also?”

His words bring me up short. I saved Manon from prison, but if Manon goes mad sculpting Madame Élisabeth’s head, what will it matter?

• • •

Once more, I pin the tricolor ribbon to our front door. Then I sit upon the stoop. This time, I do not have to wait long. Algernon’s man appears within an hour.

He bows to me, grinning. “You have need of something,
mademoiselle
? Perhaps you would like a few more victims for your museum?”

“I need to see Algernon,” I say, ignoring the man’s attempt at humor.

“About what?” the man asks.

“It’s personal,” I tell him.

The man shrugs. “Come along, then. I will take you to him.”

I follow the man down narrow alleys and winding streets. This time, we do not end at the Palais-Royal, but instead enter a small apartment building near the Temple prison.

Inside one of the apartments, Algernon sits at a table, eating roast chicken, his head bent over his meal. He has not heard me come in, and so he does not look up.

My mouth waters with the smell of the meat and its rosemary seasoning. At the same time, anger rises strong and hot within me. Meat has been the scarcest item to obtain since the revolution, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from asking if he thinks all the people of Paris are enjoying a repast as fine as this.

“Hello, Algernon,” I finally say.

His eyes widen when he looks up and sees me. Quickly, he wipes his mouth with a napkin. His hair is tousled, his cheeks flushed. He is even more handsome than I remember—and so impossibly distanced from the boy I once knew.

“I’ve come to ask you to relieve Manon and me from having to make a death mask of Madame Élisabeth,” I say.

Algernon snorts. He picks up his chicken leg again and takes a bite. “Impossible. The people need to understand and see that she is dead.”

“The people,” I say, “need to see that their new government cares for
them
. They do not need these senseless, vengeful killings.”

“Vengeful, are they, Celie?” Algernon asks. “Then so be it. Why should they continue to live when their luxuries took so many lives in starvation and taxes?”

I look pointedly at the chicken in front of Algernon.

Algernon lets out a guffaw. “This is hardly the palace of Versailles.”

“
Oui
,” I agree. “What the palace of Versailles represents is gone, as are most of those who inhabited it at one time. Their ghosts have been buried under a layer of lime, their heads severed from their bodies. I have seen it, Algernon. Or have you forgotten?”

Algernon stands up so quickly that his chair falls over. “Have
I
forgotten? It is you, Celie, who has forgotten. You have forgotten the streets and your
maman
and
papa
, your brother and ….”

He pauses. I know he is thinking of his beaten, dead Julia. I wish not to hurt him, but I cannot spare him the pain when so much is at stake.

“Maman and Papa and Jacques were not
just
about taxes and starvation and death,” I tell him. “They were also about love, Algernon. Love. I’m sure Julia was, too.”

There. I have said it—to his face. The ghost between us has a name and a shape at last.

“They would have hated all this beheading,” I add. “They would have hated the way you are killing in the name of freedom. They would not have wanted the fight for equality to turn into this.”

“You don’t know that,” Algernon snaps at me. “You can’t possibly know what Julia would have thought.”

I have encroached on his sacred memory. But I must go on.

“Oh, but I do,” I say firmly. “They loved us, Algernon. Julia loved you. My family loved me. That is all they wanted, Algernon—love: to live good, honest, caring lives, to put food on the table, to have a roof over their heads, and to come home to us and live peacefully. That is what love is, Algernon. It is
not
about beheading those who wronged them.”

“So you are the expert on love?” Algernon says mockingly. “Are you trying to tell me that you know love better than me? Do you think I don’t know love?”

I hesitate. The boy who saved me from death, the boy who rescued every abandoned animal he found—that Algernon knew love. But the man who commanded me to make molds from the heads of the dead? The man who accepted so much violence? The man who stands before me now?

“Once,” I finally say. “Once I think you knew how to love, to care. But now ….”

I stop and let the silence speak for me. We stare at each other.

“Now you are empty of it, Algernon,” I finally say.

He turns away from me, and I know in that moment that I have failed to grant Madame Élisabeth—to grant
Manon
—her reprieve. But could I be less than honest with this boy I once cared about so deeply? In asking him to face what he has become, how can I, the girl whom he rescued from death with such compassion, not be the one to hold up the mirror and show him that he has lost his way?

Yet now, Manon will be forced to mold her dead friend’s head, and despair over this knowledge leaves me almost breathless.

But when Algernon turns back around and looks full at me, I am surprised by what I see in his face—guilt, misery, even pain. He slowly picks up his overturned chair and sits back down. He buries his head in his hands.

“I am not proud of what I have done,” he says softly.

“Then why did you do it?” I ask, and even I can hear the condemnation in my voice, the unyielding sound of it.

Algernon looks up at me with anguished eyes. “I was forced to it. It was out of my hands. I did not want this.”

My heart softens a bit in my chest.

“The men in charge have made all these decisions,” he whispers, his voice shaking. “And I have been made to support them. I had no choice.”

I seize up again with anger. “You did have
some
choices. You did not need to be so cold-hearted when you came to the cemetery with the dead king. You had the ability to be kind that day, Algernon, but you were not.”

“I came to offer you support,” he says, anger rising in his voice to match mine. “I came to be with you, to comfort you. But you looked at me with such disdain that evening, as if I were no more than dirt on your shoe.”

“What you were forcing me to do was unspeakable,” I spit at him.

“I did not force you,” he argues. “It was you who came here, begging for Manon’s life. It was you who made the bargain. You, too, have been forced to do their bidding. So we are not so different, are we?”

Now Algernon holds the mirror to my face, forcing me to see the truth. I have been blaming him for the predicament I am in, but I suddenly realize that he is right. I also had a choice, and I chose to make a deal with the devil.

I look at him with new understanding. How many bargains has my rogue of a friend been forced to make?

“That does not excuse the ill way you have treated me,” I say, unwilling to bend just yet.

Algernon gives a bitter laugh. “And what of the way you have treated me?”

“What do you mean?” I say, bewildered by this new turn of talk. “I have always had your interests at heart, and I have always been there for you.”

“When you were at Versailles, were you there for me then?” he asks. “You left me, Celie, for two long months. And when I was made to do these things in order to have some ability to effect change, you were not there for me to confer with. I swore I would never get close to anyone again after Julia, but I did with you. And you abandoned me when I needed you most.”

“I was working,” I protest. “I was making drawings for Mirabeau.”

“You did not need to go to Versailles for that,” Algernon says. “There was plenty of wealth to draw here in Paris. And when you did go, it was I who had to prompt you to send some communication. Why did you abandon me?”

He gazes at me, pain and anguish etched deep into his face. And it is as if a light has fallen on me. How could I not have seen this? How can I not have understood? Like Julia, I left him. But Julia died. I did not.