The Queen's Dollmaker (30 page)

“State your name, Citizeness.”

“Claudette Renée Laurent.”

“Resident of Paris?” His tooth did not permit his lips to close completely on the word “Paris,” making it sound like “Fairy.”

“Originally. I have lived for several years in London.”

“Are you aware of the charges brought against you?”

“Yes, but I am not—”

“You are accused of treason against the new Republic of France. You have been involved in plotting to send valuables to Louis Capet and his wife so that they could flee justice. What have you to say?”

Finally, Claudette’s opportunity to clear her name.

“I am innocent of these charges, monsieur. I have a doll shop in London, and apparently someone was smuggling money or other valuables, without my knowledge, into France, with shipments of doll orders to the queen—I mean, Citizeness Capet.” Claudette’s hands were clasped together in front of her in earnestness.

“Without your knowledge?” A raised eyebrow pointed toward the cockade.

“Yes, monsieur. I think that someone working in my shop was responsible for this.”

“And who is this individual?”

“I don’t know. I have hired many workers over the last year as my orders have increased.”

“You are the proprietress of a shop, and have no knowledge of valuables being smuggled out of the shop, nor of which of your workers was doing so.” Sarcasm dripped out of his rodent-like mouth.

“Yes, monsieur, that is so.”

He began shuffling through the papers, and selected one. “I see you were brought here by Citizen Renaud. He affirms here that he witnessed your criminal actions.” He held up a document with Jean-Philippe’s signature boldly scrawled on it.

“But it is not true! Jean-Philippe was angry with me for not marrying him. I have committed no crime, against France or anyone else.” Claudette felt someone touch her elbow, and looked back to see the princesse give her a warning look.

The inquisitor saw the princesse step forward, and lost interest in Claudette.

“You may be seated. I wish to interrogate
you
, Citizeness.”

The princesse guided Claudette back to a chair at the edge of the room, then went back to face questioning. From Claudette’s vantage point, it was disjointed yet vicious, the questions fired at the princesse with no logical direction.

“Your name?”

“Marie-Thérèse-Louise de Savoie Bourbon Lamballe.”

“What do you know of the events which occurred on the tenth of August?”

“Nothing.”

“Where did you pass that day?”

“I followed the king to the National Assembly.”

“At what hour did the king go to the National Assembly?”

“Seven.”

“Did he not, before he went, review the troops? Do you know the oath he made them swear?”

“I never heard of any oath.”

“Have you any knowledge of cannon being mounted and pointed in the Tuileries apartments?”

“No.”

“Do you know the secret doors of the Tuileries?”

“I know of no such doors.”

“Have you not, since you have been in the Temple, received and written letters, which you sought to send away secretly?”

“I have never received or written any letters, excepting such as have been delivered to the municipal officer.”

“Do you know anything of an article of furniture being made for Madame Elisabeth?”

“No.”

“What are the books which you have at the Temple?”

“I have none.”

“Do you know anything of a barred staircase?”

“No.”

And so on. After listening to an hour of this questioning, Claudette was removed from the room and taken back to her cell. She was joined later by Madame D’Aubigne, Madame de Tourzel and Pauline. The princesse returned what seemed like ages later.

She had been interrogated for thirteen hours, under the malevolent gaze of her captors. At length, it was decreed that she be detained till further orders, but she was given the choice of prisons, La Force or La Salpêtrière. She immediately decided on the former. At first, it was determined that she should be separated from Madame de Tourzel, but her captors were apparently humane enough to permit the solace of that woman’s company, and of her other fellow cell mates.

Time continued to drag on, although Claudette and the queen’s friends found consolation in talking together about the royal family, wishing for their safety and wandering back in time to more joyful moments each had experienced as royal intimates. Day followed day, with the inmates no closer to freedom or sentencing than they had been upon incarceration.

September 2, 1792
. “Why another interrogation?” fretted Madame de Tourzel, pacing back and forth across the hard floor, her own dress now tattered and filthy along the edges. “What do they think they will learn from the princesse that they did not know before?”

Claudette tried to comfort her. “Perhaps there is some news that exonerates her, and she is being released.”

“Released! Ha! They had no evidence to put her here to start with. Why should there be anything that exonerates her from imaginary crimes?”

Her retort pierced Claudette in the stomach. Why should there be a reprieve from a trumped-up charge, indeed?

Soon Madame de Tourzel was summoned for questioning again, as well. She and Claudette clung to each other briefly before the older woman left the cell.

“Please tell the princesse to be of good cheer,” she whispered to Madame de Tourzel. “And you will be brave under examination, I know.” Claudette smiled encouragingly at the woman.

In a moment, Madame de Tourzel was gone, and there were only eight bedraggled prisoners left in the cell, including a highly-distraught Pauline.

Claudette and the other women waited anxiously for their cell mates’ return, but for hours they heard nothing. Finally, Madame de Tourzel was brought back down, having been miraculously acquitted of all charges, but desiring to return to her new friends to report that the princesse had bravely told her interrogators, “I have nothing to reply. Dying a little earlier or a little later is a matter of indifference to me. I am prepared to make the sacrifice of my life.”

However, she had been directed to the exit leading to Abbaye Prison, and Madame de Tourzel hoped that she had been spirited away there safely, and that perhaps it was a sojourn on the way to her release.

Madame de Tourzel and her daughter were soon released from the prison, and kissed each of them good-bye, promising to try to work for their release. It was a lovely gesture, but everyone knew it was impossible for them to have any influence whatsoever. The prisoners quickly returned to their mind-numbing routine of sewing, reading, and cards.

A loaf of stale bread and a cracked tureen of thin broth was brought to the cell. By employing some of the spices they had secreted away, the meal was made palatable and the cell mates fell upon it. A different guard came to collect the tureen, and lingered about the cell, grinning slyly as though he was in possession of a large secret. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Claudette looked at him. “Monsieur, you seem to have something to say.”

“Your friend, she isn’t here anymore.”

“What, do you mean Madame de Tourzel? Of course she is not here. She has been released.”

“Not her, the other one.”

“The princesse?”

“There’s no such thing as a princesse anymore. New government says so.”

Claudette sighed. “Very well. Do you mean Citizeness de Lamballe?”

“That’s her.”

“What of her? She was transferred to Abbaye Prison. She will be released soon.”

“No, she won’t.”

Claudette’s neck prickled. “What are you saying? Was she placed in a different prison?”

“‘Abbaye Prison’ is just code.”

“Code? Code for what?”

“Code for going out the other door.”

“Monsieur, this is trying. What other door? Where did the princesse—Citizeness de Lamballe-go?”

The guard described with relish the princesse’s fate. She was sent out into a courtyard of the prison, where a mob, notified of her impending departure, was waiting for her. They fell upon the unsuspecting woman in a frenzy, killing her and hacking her body to pieces. The last anyone had seen, the mob had put her head on one pike, her entrails on another, and some unrecognizable body part on a third. They had marched off with their trophies, singing lustily and laughing, as though out on a spirited boys’ prank.

The prisoners were numb. If the Princesse de Lamballe could not be saved from such a brutal fate, what hope was there for any of them?

Claudette took the princesse’s death the hardest, and remained curled up on the stone floor in the farthest corner of the cell. She swatted halfheartedly at a large cockroach that came near to inspect whether or not she was food. She wondered idly if she would be tasty enough for a cockroach. Or for one of the rats that periodically passed through the cells on its way toward the foulest stenches in the prison that indicated a recent prisoner’s demise, and therefore a succulent dinner. What did it matter anyway? She was forgotten here, left to die a wretched mess.
William, William, where are you? I could endure this if I thought you were looking for me
.

A few hours later—or was it years?—she heard a familiar noise in the passageway that indicated someone was coming. She lifted her head to listen, but the effort was too much and she fell back, closing her eyes once again. She felt someone shaking her.

“Mademoiselle Claudette, you have a visitor.” Madame D’Aubigne was tugging on her shift. Claudette looked up. Jean-Philippe was at the cell door. She elevated herself on one arm.

“Jean-Philippe, go away. Have you not tortured me enough?”

“Citizeness Laurent, you will rise and come forward.”

“Leave me be.”

“You will come forward to hear what I have to say.”

Madame D’Aubigne was still standing next to her, and placed an arm under Claudette’s waist to lift her up, whispering in her ear, “Mademoiselle, please, it will be better for all of us here if you obey him.”

Claudette moved to the front of the cell, hardly caring what Jean-Philippe had to say. She looked at him blankly. “What is it?”

He unfolded an official looking document. Claudette could see a signature and a seal on it. He cleared his throat.

“Citizeness Laurent, for crimes against the nation of France, including espionage and treason, you are hereby sentenced to death by beheading under the guillotine, to be conducted at the Place du Carrousel tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock.” He folded the paper again. “Consider yourself fortunate. You will have the luxury of traveling alone in a tumbrel. Most prisoners are loaded in groups onto carts. For reasons of efficiency. You will be attended to this evening to have your hair shorn in preparation.” He turned on his heel and departed the way he came, the tapping of his heels receding in the distance.

Claudette turned to face the others in her cell. Without exception, they all looked at her in horror and disbelief. Madame D’Aubigne, still standing where Claudette had been curled up on the floor, rushed forward to take Claudette in her arms.

“Dear child, how could this be happening? You are too young for this dreadfulness that has been inflicted on the rest of us. Please believe we are in grief for you.”

Claudette buried her face in the woman’s shoulder, but no tears would come. She was empty and devoid of feeling, save one thought:
William, darling, I love you. I wish I could tell you one more time. I wish I was to die your wife
.

A female prison worker she had never seen before showed up later to see Claudette. She entered the cell, unceremoniously twisted Claudette’s long and once luxuriously curly hair up in the air, and hacked at it with a knife until the bundle fell loose in her hand. The woman, who had not bothered to introduce herself, tossed Claudette a mobcap, instructing her to put it on when the guards came for her in the morning. She also placed a small clock on the cell’s lone table, ordinarily a precious treat, but now just a mocking reminder of what was to come. Claudette stared at the cotton cap, her hand trembling violently. She looked up to see the woman walking up the corridor, Claudette’s tresses dangling from her hand. Claudette momentarily thought of how many doll wigs she could make with that much hair, then shook her head to clear her mind of such a trivial reminder of her old life. There was nothing before her now but death.

The Temple, September 1792
. The Temple’s medieval structure was bleak and forbidding, and now served as a virtual prison for the royal family. Held under “protection” now were the king, Marie Antoinette, the king’s sister Madame Elisabeth, the Dauphin Louis Charles, and his sister, Princesse Marie-Thérèse. They were little more than a band of criminals held at the nation’s pleasure.

However, their daily routine, if one forgot about the circumstances under which they were being held, was unremarkable in its domesticity. The royal couple began to fulfill the roles of mother-nurse and father-teacher to the utmost. Breakfast was eaten at nine o’clock. Afterward, Louis gave Louis Charles his school lessons, while Marie Antoinette taught her daughter. Madame Elisabeth took responsibility for teaching both children mathematics. Afterward they took some exercise as a family in the garden. Their rooms were usually searched while they were outside.

Dinner was at two o’clock, and games or cards would follow. Louis typically fell into a deep slumber during the late afternoon, snoring loudly while the women watched. Prior to bedtime and prayers, which the queen conducted with the children, there might be more lessons and play for Louis Charles, or the king might read aloud to the family. After supper was more reading or quiet time, then they went to bed around eleven o’clock.

The only interruption to the daily domestic scene occurred at about seven o’clock each evening, when criers would appear outside the Temple to relay the latest news. Otherwise, each day was much the same as another for the royal family. In an ironic way, the queen had achieved her wish to lead a simple, unfettered life, as she had attempted to do at her Hameau.

On September 2, their lives were disrupted again, this time in a horrifying way for the queen personally.

The king and queen were playing backgammon in an upstairs room when shouts could be heard from outside. Recognizing the noise as the approach of some rabble, a couple of the few servants they had had assigned to them peered out a window to see what the trouble was. With an inward gasp, one attendant slammed and shuttered all of the windows and ran from the room, calling for assistance.

The king looked up, unconcerned. “Another demonstration for man’s rights again?” he asked.

Now they heard the sound of frenzied laughter coming from beneath one of their windows. The king summoned one of the officers on duty, asking what the commotion was.

“If you must know, monsieur, they are trying to show you the head of Madame de Lamballe.” Other members of the household rushed in to confirm this.

Marie Antoinette stood up from the game table, staring at the closed window, unblinking. For several moments she stood there, frozen with horror, and even the least sympathetic of the royal jailers was struck numb with the vileness of the act.

Without uttering a word, the queen fainted away, crumpling to the floor. She did not respond at first to repeated taps on her hands and feet, or the sound of her name being called. Her daughter stayed huddled over her, offering pale words of comfort, and refused to let anyone else near.

But there was still more to be borne. The mob started piling up pieces of rubble from around the Temple’s environs, and were building a small mound on which to climb with their precious trophies. The occupants of the Temple heard a tapping on one of the windows.

“Hey, Antoinette, come and see your friend! Kiss, kiss, we will not leave until you give her a kiss, kiss.” Uproarious laughter followed. From inside the room, it sounded as though the rabble might be able to break in.

“If you do not give her a kiss, perhaps we will add your head to hers, eh? Come out and see what happens to those who deny the will of the people, you Austrian bitch!” More taunts and mockery followed.

“Savages,” muttered Commissioner Daujon, who was in charge of the Temple and had entered the room to investigate the tumult. He disliked the king and queen as much as any good French citizen, but this was too much even for him.

He strode down to the Temple’s entrance, and had it blocked. He told the jeering crowd outside, “The head of Antoinette does not belong to you.” Instead, he said, they could march around the Temple grounds with their distasteful pikes, which they did gleefully until about five o’clock the following morning, when their stores of righteous anger and wine were depleted.

The queen never saw the grisly trophies. She was finally roused and put gently to bed. She went without protest, crying out only once from her room to have her Josephina doll brought to her. From outside the queen’s chamber, the remaining household could hear her, alternating between piteous sobbing and rational conversation with the doll as though it were actually her late friend.

Two days later it was reported to the king privately that the Duc de Penthièvre, the princesse’s old father-in-law, had managed to have her head and body buried together in his family plot.

Louis responded, “It was her conduct in the course of our misfortunes that amply justifies the queen’s choice of the late princesse as a true and dedicated friend, both to her personally and to our entire wretched circle.”