Виктория Холт - Flaunting, Extravagant Queen

She tried to excuse herself.

‘It’s that child,’ she murmured under her breath. ‘It’s taking him from her … seems a bit cruel. That Hébert, it’s his doings. Who does he think he is? He gives himself the airs of an aristocrat.’

Madame Tison continued to jeer at the Queen, but now there did not seem to be much point in those jeers. The Queen was indifferent to them and Madame Tison no longer uttered them with the same enthusiasm.

Then she ceased to jeer; and oddly enough she discovered new feelings in herself. She would lie awake at night, and sometimes she would awaken out of dreams sobbing, and the Queen always figured in those dreams.

‘You going crazy?’ asked Tison.

Madame Tison would shiver and stare into the darkness.

The Dauphin lay sobbing in his new apartment.

Simon bent over him, shaking him. Simon shook the boy with relish. This was the child who one day might have been King of France. Who would have thought that he, Simon, who had known such dire poverty, would have the opportunity of boxing the ears of the future King of France?

Simon was filled with ecstasy at the thought. It showed what the revolution could do for a poor man. This boy who had had everything he could want – luxury, food, fine garments, people bowing wherever he went – was now the prisoner of Simon.

Citizen Hébert had spoken earnestly to Simon. ‘We want to make Louis Charles Capet a son of the people, you understand. He is but a boy. We want to make him a true son of the revolution. We want to make a man of him … you understand me? A man of the people.’

Simon was illiterate. He had once had a low-class eating-house in the rue de Seine, but he had not made a success of it. He had lived in utter poverty. He had done all sorts of things besides being a cobbler, in the hope of getting a living, but he had always been a failure until the revolution came. He was crude; he spoke the language of the faubourgs ; he had lived with the lowest. He was the sort of man who Hébert needed for the task which lay ahead.

Now he leaned over the Dauphin and shook him roughly.

The child looked up at him, too wretched to care about anything but his own misery.

‘Here, what’s the matter with you, eh?’

‘I want my mother,’ said the boy.

Simon bandaged his wound for him.

‘How did you get this?’

‘I was riding on a stick.’

‘That’s a queer thing to do … ride on a stick. What do you want to do that for?’

‘Pretending it was a horse.’

Simon spat over his shoulder in disbelief.

The boy was uncomfortable to be exposed before the eyes of this crude man.

‘Here,’ said Simon, ‘you don’t need to be so particular. We’re all alike, you know. Some of us knows a bit more than others. I reckon I could show you a thing or two.’

‘What?’ said the boy.

Simon winked.

He then taught the boy how to masturbate. It was all part of the duties outlined to him by Hébert.

‘Who taught you that?’ demanded Simon.

‘You did,’ said the boy.

‘That’s a lie.’

‘But you … you did … You know you did!’

A blow sent the Dauphin reeling across the room. He was startled. He had never been treated in such a way before. He stared in astonishment at Simon.

‘Now, not so many lies,’ said Simon. ‘You’ve got to tell the truth like a patriot.’

‘I was telling the truth.’

Simon caught the boy by his ear.

‘When I say who taught you that, you give me the truth. You say, my mother.’

The boy flushed scarlet. ‘My mother … But … she … she must not know of this. She … she would be … very angry. She would be ashamed of it.’ His lips trembled. ‘Please let me go back to my mother.’

Simon shook the boy’s head to and fro, still gripping his ear violently. ‘Didn’t I tell you I wanted the truth?’

The boy looked bewildered.

‘Listen here,’ said Simon. ‘Your mother taught you that. When you slept in the bed with her.’

The boy was silent, the pain in his ear made him want to scream.

‘Yes, you used to lie between her and your aunt, and they used to say, do that … and they laughed at you, while you did it.’

The boy shook his head. It was too fantastic. His mother to do such a thing! His saintly aunt! He longed to be with them; he longed to return to sanity.

‘And I’ll tell you something else your mother did, shall I? She used to hold you tight against her …’ Simon released the boy’s ear and put his foul mouth against it.

His whispering words made the boy feel that he had stepped into some fantastically horrible world which was quite outside his comprehension.

Simon finished by saying: ‘Now that’s what really happened. Is it not so?’

‘It … it couldn’t,’ said the Dauphin.

Simon shook him until his teeth chattered and the room swung round him.

‘I tell you it did.’

‘It didn’t … it didn’t … it didn’t !’ sobbed the Dauphin.

Simon’s foul face was close to the boy’s. He said: ‘I’m going to teach you to speak the truth … no matter what I have to do to you.’

The Dauphin stared at him with horrified eyes. This was like one of his nightmares coming true. He shook his head dumbly.

But Simon was not perturbed. A few beatings … a few days all alone … on black bread and lentils … then they would see.

Simon would not disappoint Hébert. They would make the boy admit anything they wanted him to. After all, he was only eight years old.

Madame Tison dreamed terrible dreams. She dreamed that her bedroom was filled with headless corpses which marched towards her, getting nearer and nearer. They carried their heads before them, and the eyes in their heads accused her while the lips chanted: ‘Madame Tison, your turn will come.’

Often she dreamed of the Queen, the Queen with her arms outstretched, the Queen crying for her son.

When she saw the Queen standing at the window hoping for a glimpse of the Dauphin, she shared her misery.

Her husband was brutal to her; he struck her once or twice. ‘What’s come over you? Do you want to lose us our job? We’re in clover here. Do you want to get us turned out of the prison?’

She was sent for that she might be questioned.

‘Go on,’ said Tison. ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘I do not want to tell them,’ she said. ‘I do not want to be their spy.’

Her husband advanced, his arm lifted to strike her. ‘You’ll go,’ he said, ‘and you’ll tell them about that new guard we saw talking to Elisabeth.’

So she went and, as though under a spell, she told.

When she returned to the prison she burst into the Queen’s quarters. Madame Royal was sitting at the table staring ahead of her; Madame Elisabeth was praying; and the Queen was at the window, hoping for a glimpse of the Dauphin.

Madame Tison ran to the Queen and threw herself at her feet; she took the hem of her dress and looked imploringly up at Antoinette.

‘Madame, forgive me,’ she cried. ‘I am going mad. I am a miserable sinner. I have spied on you … They are watching you all the time, because they want to murder you as they murdered the King … Madame, I beg your forgiveness for what I have done.’

The Queen’s face softened immediately. ‘You must not be distressed. What have you done you have been made to do. And you have lately been very kind.’

‘I am going mad … mad, Madame. These terrible dreams. … I cannot live with them. They haunt me … they will not leave me …’

The guards came in. They seized her and took her away.