Fires of Delight (43 page)

The Paris to which Selena returned was a far more dangerous city than the one she had left only days earlier. To say nothing of the fact that she was apparently being sought for the murder of Jean Beaumain.

If the flight to Varennes had been uncomfortable, the journey back to the capital was sheer psychological torture. The children were terrified by the people who gathered around the coach at every way station and peered insolently within. Louis mustered what dignity he could, but it was obvious that he was a beaten man. The Queen took refuge in a remote, icy reserve, which fell away only when darkness came.

“I want to thank you,” she said to Selena, at one such moment, “for thinking so quickly when we were…when we were…” She could not bring herself to say “seized” or “arrested” and instead said “…required to change our itinerary.”

Selena, mindful that her name might well be known to the Paris police, had identified herself as Yolanda Fee, maidservant. And while Princess Francesca had faltered in fear before her captors, Selena had given her name as Colette, also a maid.

Then they were again at the Tuileries, with the mob screaming and the torches blazing and the revolutionary banners waving and all the rest of it.

“I will be leaving now,” Selena informed His Majesty, as they disembarked from the dusty coach and stood in the cobblestoned courtyard.

“Oh, please don’t go,” Francesca cried. “I feel so alone. Pray, remain here with me.”

“No, I cannot.”

She had to find Royce. They had to get out of Paris at once.

Then a steward approached the King. Selena overheard the message he conveyed. “Sire, your ministers await with Citizen Sorbante of the National Assembly. What is your pleasure?”

At that moment, Louis XVI was only a human being, fatigued beyond endurance, humiliated, beaten in spirit, reduced even in the eyes of his loved ones. “My pleasure is never to see any of them again!” he flared. “Get away, you jackass, and don’t trouble me again.”

But an instant later, he pulled himself together. He had to. “It’s not your fault,” he said to the shaken, crestfallen steward. “Tell them that I will join them within the hour. Why is Sorbante among them, I wonder?”

Selena, whose heart went out to the King at this time of travail, wondered the same thing.

And she decided that she had to reach Sorbante as well. He was, insofar as she knew, her only link to Royce Campbell.

“Your Highness,” she said to Francesca, “I fear my mind is not with me. I spoke too hastily. If you will still have me, of course I shall be delighted to remain with you.”

Francesca agreed gratefully, even soberly. She was still a very young and inexperienced girl, but the abortive trip to Varennes had begun a process of change and maturation. She had begun not only to grasp the nature of the political turmoil in France, she also understood that, if events grew more dangerous, life and death did indeed hang in the balance. The possibility of never seeing Prince William again had, only a short time ago, been fraught mainly with romantic pathos. Now it had become merely one eventuality, however important, in a commingled whirl of time and blood and duty.

The princess was growing up.

“Come with me to my bedchamber, Selena,” she said. “Perhaps we can think of something…”

“You go along. There is something I must do. I shall join you presently.”

Selena, still in her drab traveling clothes, entered the palace and made her way to the stateroom in which Louis was meeting with his ministers. Outside the closed bronze doors, awaiting a summons inside, stood Pierre Sorbante. For a man whose dream of revolution and power had come to pass, he seemed weary and rather dejected. The fact that he was here at all attested to his success, but it did not seem to cheer him much. He glanced at Selena, but did not recognize her until she spoke.

“It is you!” he exclaimed, breaking into a smile. Then he lowered his voice and glanced around, making certain that no one was eavesdropping. “There are many who would like to find you.”

“I know. I have heard that I am being sought by the authorities.”

“True, but that is not my meaning. The Vicomte Campbell has been worried about your welfare.”

Selena’s heart skipped a beat. Royce was alive!

“Where is he?” she asked. “How did you—?”

Sorbante lifted a hand. “He is safe. That is all I am going to tell you. It would be folly for you to attempt to go to him now.”

“But I must!”

“In due time. In due time. He is a very lucky man.”

“He was badly wounded…”

“Yes. But he is recovering. He was supposed to have met with me on the evening of the…of the incident in his apartment. When he did not appear, I sent one of my lieutenants to find out what had gone wrong. That is the only thing that saved him. We were able to get him to a doctor in time.”

“And Jean Beaumain? The other man?”

“Buried. Some rich woman from the Right Bank arranged it all. But as I believe you know, she also gave your description—and her suspicions—to the police. May I ask what you’re doing
here?”

She told him, briefly but thoroughly, all that had transpired. “Royce and I had made plans to leave Paris,” she concluded. “And I think we must follow through, or risk arrest.”

“Or risk death,” he corrected. “The shadow of death is all around us now. That is why I have sought an audience with His Majesty, and I hope he will listen to what I must tell him. Robespierre and the radicals are in control of the revolution now. There are demands for the heads of the King and the Queen, particularly after his ill-advised attempt at flight. Oh, I tell you, hundreds of heads will roll. Perhaps thousands. I see no hope of stopping it, unless the monarch abdicates.”

“Do you think he will do that?”

“No.”

“And what will happen then?”

“He and his entire family will be executed.”

“My God, do you really think so?”

“I know so. Have you ever looked into the eyes of Maximilien Robespierre?”

Selena had, and she’d been reminded of Clay Oakley.

“I believe you,” she said. “All the more reason for you to tell me where Royce is, so that we may flee immediately. He is still
vicomte
. We might be able to reach England.”

Sorbante shook his head. “No, my dear. Campbell’s title has been withdrawn. His espionage was discovered. I am protected now as a delegate to the National Assembly, but he is without shield. And let me further advise you, the people are watching those who leave Paris most carefully. In Brittany last week, a mob of villagers set upon a family of nobles who were attempting to escape to England and tore them apart. It was a frenzy of blood-lust. That is only one example out of many. Flight will be most difficult; everyone will be suspected. Moreover, Campbell is very weak. He should not travel at all. Riding a horse for any distance would open his wound and kill him.”

Selena had listened and understood all these things with their attendant problems and difficulties. Yet in spite of hindrances, obstacles, barriers, there was always one way to prevail, wasn’t there? If a person could only think clearly enough…

That was difficult to do in a time of crisis, but she made the effort, reducing the problem to its simplest components.

She and Royce were both being sought in Paris.

To be safe, they ought to flee France.

But if they were caught during flight, they would be accused of
trying to reach foreign shores in order to subvert the revolution therefrom.

And Royce was not fit enough for hard travel.

Down a corridor in the glittering Tuileries, just lounging casually against a wall, Selena saw death. He grinned at her, and winked. Death on a prison block in Paris? Or death in some unnamed village in the green countryside?

Did it matter which?

“We’re going to try,” she told Pierre Sorbante. “Can you arrange things so that Royce is brought down to the Seine, where the riverboats are?”

“Yes, I think so, but—”

“Please do it. And disguise him as an old man. As a very old man.”

Sorbante regarded her quizzically. “I don’t know if he’ll like that. He
is
rather vain, you know.”

Selena smiled. “You just tell him to do as I say, and I’ll reward him well when I have the chance.”

For the first time since they’d begun speaking, the revolutionary displayed a glimmer of genuine amusement. “I suspect that might convince him to obey,” he said. “You will flee tonight, of course?”

“No. Tomorrow at mid-morning, when everyone is about. We shall hide in plain sight.”

“Where have you been?” asked Princess Francesca, somewhat suspiciously, when Selena appeared in her quarters.

“I…I needed some time alone. To collect myself. But I am all right now.”

The readiness with which the younger woman believed this deceit shot a stab of guilt through Selena’s conscience. If what Sorbante had told her was true—and she had no reason to doubt him—Francesca’s neck, as well as those of her aunt and uncle, were destined for the guillotine’s caress.

There is nothing I can do
, she told herself.
Royce and I must survive
.

But what of Francesca and William? her conscience demanded. Is their love any less precious than your own?

No, but what can I do about it?

You think you are so clever, contriving your own plan of escape! You might at least try and fashion a ploy for her.

It is out of my hands
.

Francesca was called to dine with her family. Selena, of course, remained behind, eating from a huge tray of cold meats, cheeses, and vegetables that had been brought to her. There was even a bottle of Rhine wine. This largesse, too, made her feel guilty. Francesca was taking care of her, but she was prepared to abandon her young friend.

Fend for yourself
, cherie.
The world is cruel
.

Sipping the wine, sitting near the window and watching darkness fall upon Paris, Selena remembered all those who had helped her in life.

Will Teviot, who had saved her from Darius McGrover in the Highlands long ago.

The common seaman, Slyde, who’d smuggled her aboard a ship in Liverpool. True, he hadn’t done it so much out of charity as lust, but it had cost him his life.

Dick Weddington, the American spy.

Sean Bloodwell.

Royce.

Even Martha Marguerite, and Rafael, Jean Beaumain’s friend.

So many had helped her during times of trouble and need, perhaps Davi the Dravidian most of all. He was long dead, but the remembered power of his beliefs stirred again, and she felt him alive and moving within the borders of her soul, dark and deft and wise.

“Do you feel the cross at your neck, Selena?”
he asked her gently.

Yes.

“Take it off and read the words.”

Selena did.

“There you have your answer,”
said Davi, departing.

Liberté. Égalité. Fraternité
.

There is a lot of room for friendship in three words.

“I’ll try to think of something,” Selena said aloud.

Francesca returned from dinner, her face white as the tear-stained linen handkerchief she held. Selena got up and rushed over to her. “What is it? What has happened?”

It took quite a while to bring the story out. A man—Sorbante—had informed Uncle Louis that very afternoon that the safety of the royal family could no longer be guaranteed. Riots had broken out in Paris and throughout the provinces—riots fomented by the radicals and Robespierre. Convents and monasteries were being sacked, priests and nuns mocked, tormented, and slaughtered like so many pigs. Men and women were copulating on the altars of cathedrals. Châteaux were afire, their owners hanged from trees. The pavingstones of Paris had been torn up for use as barricades, behind which mobs of workers stoned the authorities.

“And,” concluded Francesca, “Uncle Louis has been advised that he might begin to give some thought to his own death.”

So it had come to that. “Francesca,” said Selena, “please take me to the Queen.”

“But she has retired to her bed. She is distraught.”

“Just take me to her.”

“Why? There is nothing you can—”

“There is nothing I can do for her, true. But I can try to save
your
life, and that is what I am about to do.”

Pomp and panoply are the most fickle, the least loyal of fair-weather friends, and the bedchamber of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, was a contrast between grandeur and despair. The glory was all silk and softness, gilt and silver and bronze; frailty belonged to flesh alone.

The Queen lay face down on her extravagantly canopied bed. Her pillow was wet, but she had cried herself out for the present. A gaggle of ladies-in-waiting surrounded her, looking impotent and uncomfortable.

“Her Majesty does not wish to be disturbed,” said one of them to Francesca.

“You just leave,” replied the princess, showing a steel that Selena admired. “This is a private family matter.”

The women did so uncomplainingly, with relief in fact. There are few things less pleasant than to attend the suffering of another and be able to do nothing about it. Moreover, each of those ladies, who had led a grand, privileged life at court, had begun to wonder if the price they might have to pay—death—made such a life worthwhile. They withdrew readily, if not gladly.

“Aunt Marie,” said Francesca, “my friend wishes to speak with you.”

In spite of her predicament, the Queen turned and looked at Selena with a touch of curiosity. “You again? What was your name? I have forgotten.”

“Selena MacPherson.” She rolled it on her tongue, proudly, as always. It was not her name itself, but the history of the name, the family, that made her pronounce it so.

“Another Scot,” said the Queen, somewhat vexed. “The last Scot I befriended turned traitor on us.”

She was obviously referring to Royce Campbell, and once again Selena wondered about the degree of intimacy that had existed between Royce and Marie Antoinette. But this was certainly not the time to inquire about it.

“My lady,” Selena began, probing for the words she had spun out in her mind, “I have learned of the conditions now besetting France, and the danger they pose to you and yours.”