C. Harris - Why Kings Confess

“And how was Marie-Therese treated all this time?”

The question seemed to puzzle the courtier. “She remained in the room she had shared with her mother and aunt before their executions. It was a prison cell, yes, and somewhat shabby. But it was nothing like the hellhole in which her brother was left to rot. The walls were papered, the bed canopied, the mantel of white marble-although the hearth was often cold, and for a time she was forbidden both candles and a tinderbox.”

“She was not starved or beaten?”

“She was not well fed, but she was not starved-or beaten.”

Sebastian was silent, his gaze on the shadows near the stairs, where the bricklayer and his erstwhile dancing partner were locked in a passionate embrace.

After a moment, Serena said, “You think what happened nearly twenty years ago has something to do with the murder of the French physician?”

“You don’t?”

Serena’s tongue flicked out to touch her dry lips. “I have heard-I don’t know that it is true, mind you, but. .”

“Yes?” prompted Sebastian.

“I have heard that one of the doctors who performed the autopsy wrapped the Dauphin’s heart in his handkerchief and took it away with him.”

“Good God. Why?”

“It is traditional, in France, to preserve the hearts of the members of the royal family. The bodies of the kings and queens of France were buried in Saint-Denis. But their hearts and other organs were ceremoniously preserved elsewhere, most typically at Val-de-Grace.”

Sebastian studied the molly’s delicate features. “What are you suggesting?”

But Serena only shook her head, her lips pressed firmly together as if some thoughts were too terrible to be spoken aloud.

• • •

Sebastian arrived back at Brook Street to find Hero in the library with a stack of books on the table beside her, the black cat curled up asleep on the hearth nearby. She looked up as he paused in the doorway, the golden light from the fire shimmering in her hair and throwing soft shadows across the calm features of her face. She looked so alive, so vibrant and healthy, that he could not believe she might be dead in a matter of days.

She said, “Stop looking at me like that.”

He gave a startled huff of laughter. “Like what?”

“You know what I mean. I take it you saw Gibson?”

“I did. He says he’ll make some inquiries tomorrow.” He came to place his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs brushing back and forth across the nape of her neck. After a moment, he said, “The Frenchwoman-Alexandrie Sauvage-is an Italian-trained physician now practicing as a midwife. She says there is a way to turn a babe in the womb. It involves applying pressure to the belly. She claims she has done it before.”

He felt Hero stiffen beneath his hands. “Does Gibson believe it’s possible?”

“He doesn’t know. And even the woman herself admits that it can be dangerous if not done properly.”

“Do you trust her?”

“No.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “I killed someone who was dear to her once.”

“In Portugal?”

“Yes.”

Hero closed the book she’d been reading and set it aside with the others. “Perhaps the babe will turn itself.”

“Perhaps.” He tilted his head to read the title of the slim volume. “ Reflexions Historiques sur Marie Antoinette. What’s all this?”

“I’ve been reading various accounts of what happened to the royal family during the Terror.”

“And?”

“What Lady Giselle told you is true; Marie-Therese does indeed have the bloodstained chemise worn by her father at the guillotine. The King’s confessor saved it and gave it to her.”

“Seems a rather ghoulish thing to do.”

“It does. Yet I gather she cherishes it. It makes you wonder, does it not, about the time-honored role of the royal confessor?”

“A delicate position requiring much tact, I should think. Not so difficult when dealing with someone like Louis XVI, who by all accounts was a devout, loving husband and father, and who tried hard to be a just and honest king. But how do you in all sincerity grant absolution to a Louis XIV-or a Richard III? Someone whose actions so obviously and repeatedly violate the dictates of his faith?”

“I don’t understand how such kings can honestly think they have received absolution. Perhaps they don’t actually believe in their professed religion.”

“Perhaps. Although I suspect it’s more likely they believe they have a special divine dispensation from above.”

She looked up at him. “To sin and kill without compunction?”

“Yes.”

“Then why bother to confess at all?”

“That I don’t know. I suppose I could always try asking Marie-Therese herself.”

Hero gave a soft laugh. “That would be interesting.”

He went to hunker beside the cat, which raised its head and looked at Sebastian with an air of bored tolerance. The cat had been with them for four months now but still lacked a name. None of the various suggestions they’d come up with ever seemed to do justice to the cat’s unique combination of arrogance and ennui.

“I just had an interesting conversation with Ambrose LaChapelle,” he said.

“Oh?”

In quiet, measured tones, Sebastian repeated the French courtier’s description of the treatment given the Dauphin in the Temple Prison.

“I’ve heard some of this before,” she said when he had finished, “but not all of it. That poor child.”

She watched him scratch the cat behind its ears. Then she said, “There’s something about LaChapelle’s tale that bothers you. What?”

Sebastian shifted his hand to stroke beneath the cat’s chin, the cat lifting its head and slitting its eyes in rare contentment. “There’s too much in the traditional story of the Orphans in the Temple that simply doesn’t add up.”

“Such as?”

“Why subject the boy to such savagely brutal treatment when his sister was allowed to live in comparative comfort in the room just above him?”

“Once Louis XVI went to the guillotine, his son became the uncrowned King Louis XVII of France-the symbol of everything the revolutionaries hated. Marie-Therese, on the other hand, was a girl. A daughter of the King, yes, but under Salic Law she could never inherit the throne.”

“True. But Spain once observed Salic Law too, and they managed to get around it. The risk was very real that France might someday do the same. So I don’t think we can say she was no threat to the revolutionaries or the Republic. Yet they let her live.”

“What else?”

“I’m bothered by the shifts in the Dauphin’s condition that LaChapelle described taking place. The Simons-the couple who had been the boy’s first jailors-were suddenly removed and replaced with a changing succession of guards. At the same time, his cell’s window was covered, leaving the boy in the dark. Why do that?”

“To be cruel.”

“It’s possible. But I can think of another reason.”

“You mean, so that no one could get a good look at him or recognize him? Good heavens, Sebastian, surely you’re not giving credence to those romantic tales about the Dauphin being spirited away from his prison, with some poor, deaf-mute child left to die in his place?”

Sebastian rose to his feet. “No; of course not. It’s just. . Why the devil did they not show the dead Dauphin’s body to his sister? She was right there-not simply in the same prison, but in the same tower, in the room directly above his. Why leave her in doubt? Why allow the whispers to spread and grow? Why not put all possibility of a substitution to rest, once and for all?”

“How do you know they didn’t show her the dead Dauphin?”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”