Farewell, My Queen by Black Moishe (children's ebooks online txt) 📗

out of touch with reality. They were eager to tell their stories, partly to reassure themselves, and also to persuade us not to venture out, to stay where we were, safe. It was of no avail. The recital of all those horrors did not stop those about to flee from wanting to flee, nor did it stop the incomers from taking to the road again later that night.

Panic was jubilant. She had us all in her power. She was manipulating us however she liked. Once more, savagery was rising to the surface. Despite having been warned of what would happen to them out there, the departing château dwellers were frantic to go. Their behavior no longer showed any consideration for rank, sex, or age:

A snarling Court dandy used his knee to block the path of a venerable old man. A haughty dowager found herself swept aside by a little Burgundian woman, screaming: “My parents were taken hostage and their female companion murdered before my very eyes!” But she showed no inclination to turn around and go back to rescue them. A peer of the realm had the experience of being collared by a bourgeois nobody, who under normal circumstances would never have dared look him in the eye. All this was brought about partly by sheer numbers, but also and especially by the power of revelation that was driving the courtiers out from the château with tremendous force, a reversal of the force of inertia that for years had kept them passionately chained to the place, unable to stay away.

The new arrivals had met horror, face on. They could bear witness to the fact that, despite what some people were obstinately repeating, the insurrection had spread beyond the capital city. But, unlike the terror-stricken crew of Versailles, who were abandoning ship, they had not heard the mast snapping off, nor felt the deck slide out from under their feet to slope steeply down toward the abyss; they had not seen, upon the announcement that the King had sacrificed his armies and his government ministers, the waves part to swallow up centuries of dynasty. That morning the Court had surrendered once and for all. The defeat had become a fact; deep inside them, the deserters had known it was so. That defeat had released them from their code of honor and left them no recourse other than flight.

In the midst of so much disorder I had difficulty moving from one spot to another. The château, as Monsieur de La Chesnaye was fond of pointing out, did not have an entrance worthy of its splendor. Just now, it would have been more relevant to say it did not have an exit . . .There was the noisy sound of a window being opened. A woman wearing a high, fluted bonnet leaned out to hang a caged parrot from one of the shutters. The bird was shocked into silence.

People were abandoning birds in their cages, they were forgetting they had children, were casting aside, so as not to add one more burden to their expedition, the little black slaves who carried Milady’s parasol. These hapless youngsters were to die of cold the following winter, and perhaps, as they stood wide-eyed and motionless, what they already apprehended was their own fate. The dogs could smell betrayal in the air and were barking as when death is present. They went dashing away down the corridors or surged in packs up the staircases.

My confusion of mind became worse and worse. People were telling me to leave. People were pleading with me to stay. I was hearing vivid descriptions of the carnage out there. I was being reminded that “they” would soon be here. The gallop of a horse in the courtyard brought my heart into my mouth. The Queen, it was reported, had gone down to the Dauphin’s apartments. She was obsessively anxious about him. It did imply, though, that she had managed to cross the Hall of Mirrors alone. Unless she had gone around it, which I was inclined to think she must have done. I was mistaken.

“You are the stronger” had been reversed.

LAST READING AT THE QUEEN’S APARTMENTS

(from eight to nine o’clock in the evening).

I walked through the so-named Madame Sophie Library and went soundlessly into her lavender-blue room, the Great Bathing Room of her new apartment on the ground floor. I thought at first it was empty, for I did not immediately see the Queen, lying on the daybed. She was wrapped in a white satin dressing gown, under a canopy hung with midnight blue. The bed was high, narrow, and angled toward windows looking onto the Marble Courtyard. To escape inquisitive eyes, the Queen had had a hedge of flowers planted in the Courtyard, and a cherry tree as well. The windows were closed, but the curtains had been left open, for they were really not needed with the interlacing of foliage and flowers swaying outside and making a muffled sound as of stealthy footsteps. The Queen was lying on her side. She had her back turned to me. She seemed huge, with very long legs tapering from broad hips to extraordinarily slender ankles. I thought this must be the first time I had seen her hips, for that part of the body is usually concealed by the fullness of a woman’s skirts. And just as, on those occasions when I smelled her jasmine-scented hair salve, I tried not to breathe because that would have invaded her unbelievable privacy, so this time I tried not to look at her. I made a conscious effort, turning my eyes away from that alluring body stretched out in the blue-tinged half light. I looked steadily at the window where dark shadows stirred. Then I brought my gaze back to her. She was not sleeping. With a fingertip, she was following the outline of swans and seashells decorating the wainscot. She was giving it her complete attention, just the way she had so