Revolution (25 page)

46

“W
ait,” Virgil says.

He unplugs my iPod from his dash and hands it to me. We’re sitting in his car, outside G’s house.

“Thanks,” I say, taking it from him. But I don’t mean it. I’m not thankful. I don’t want it back. It means the end of my late night calls to him. And his early-morning calls to me. The end of songs and lullabies. The end of the only happiness I’ve known in the last two years.

“Call me, okay?” he says.

I picture myself doing that. Calling from New York. Hearing his voice and talking and laughing, and then hanging up after a few minutes and feeling ten thousand times more lonely after I call him than I did before.

“Sure,” I say.

I open my door and start to get out of the car, but he catches hold of my hand.

“Like this isn’t hard enough?” I say, my voice breaking.

He leans his forehead against mine, then lets me go.

47

M
y father’s at the table, dressed and eating breakfast. He looks up from his laptop as I come in.

“Andi?” he says. “I thought you were in your room. Asleep. Where have you been?”

“I went out to watch the sun rise.”

He looks at me as if I told him I just got into Harvard.

“
Really?
” he says.

“Really.”

“That’s nice, Andi. I’m glad you did that.”

“Yeah, it was nice.”

It was the nicest, most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. And now it’s over. And all I want to do is lie down in my bed and curl up into a ball.

“I went out for croissants,” he says. “Do you want some? There’s coffee, too.”

“No thanks, Dad. I’m really tired. I think I’m going to lie down. Catch a few more Z’s. I need to visit Malherbeau’s house today. Do a bit more work on the outline. I’ll have it for you by tonight. And the intro, too. Are you going to be here?”

“Yes, I’ll be here. I’ll be a bit late—I’ve got to be in the lab all day, and then there’s a dinner—but I’ll be here. Do you mean that, Andi?”

“Mean what?”

“You’re really going to have your outline and introduction done by this evening?”

“Yes. I’m close. But I could use more visuals on Malherbeau. That’s why I’m going to his house.”

“That’s wonderful news. I’m proud of you. Maybe the trip wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”

I smile at him. It takes everything I’ve got. “Yeah, maybe,” I say.

I go into my bedroom, close the door behind me, and sit down on my bed. I open my bag and fish out my cell phone. I’m going to call him. Tell him I was wrong. I’m going to say I want to figure it out somehow.

But I think about what he said, that I’m sad and angry. And I know he hasn’t seen a tenth of it. How do I tell him about the pain? About the pills I pop like M&M’S? How do I tell him how hard it is sometimes, to stay away from the edge of rivers and rooftops? How do I tell him what happened?

I can’t, so I don’t.

I lie down and try to sleep, but I can’t do that, either. I keep thinking of Virgil. I decide to listen to some tunes to help me sleep—I can do that again, I have my iPod back—but then I realize that music will only make me think of him more.

I reach across the bed to the night table for Alex’s diary.

16 May 1795

The dead are all around me now.

They push and jostle in the streets like housewives on market day. They wander the riverbank, silent and lonely. They haunt the places and people who once made them happy.

Look at the Noailles children walking with their tutor. It’s not the breeze that ruffles the little girl’s hair, but her ghostmother’s breath. And there, upon the Queen’s Walk, see the rosebushes shudder? Antoinette has snagged her skirts again. Look there, at the Café Foy. See that shadow on the glass? It’s Desmoulins. Once upon a time he jumped up on a table and urged all of Paris to the Bastille. Now he stands outside, palms pressed to the window, weeping.

There is Mirabeau, the thunderer, who wore jeweled buttons on his coat while the children of Paris wore rags. Danton, our last hope, laughing on his way to the blade. And Robespierre, the Incorruptible, who loved us so much he cut off our heads so we would not be troubled by too many thoughts.

Can you not see them?

Late last night, while I was out with my rockets, I saw another. No doomed queen nor fiery rebel, this one, but one who loved me—my grandmother. She was sitting under a streetlamp, a needle in one hand, thread in the other.

God has need of me, Alex, she said. His angels have no heads. If it takes me all eternity, I will stitch back every one that prancing shit of a Robespierre cut off. There will be no need for ribbons or chokers, either. Not when I’ve finished. There’s none in Paris can hide a seam better.

Do they have gold thread in heaven, Grandmother? I asked her.

Good Arras silks are all I need.

There was a basket at her feet. She reached into it and lifted out the head of a young woman, a marquise. She wore Bourbon white to her death, but wears the tricolor now—white cheeks, blue lips, red dripping from her neck. Long live the revolution.

It will be your head next, my grandmother told me. Tumbled into the basket like a muddy turnip.

Only if they catch me.

And they will, said another. You cannot slip them forever.

Orléans. Dead two years, yet still resplendent in silk and lace. He went to the blade as if to a ball.

I will survive them, I told him. Did I not survive you?

Go. Now. Before the watch sees you.

I cannot. I have business at the tower.

This is madness! What are you playing at?

Tragedy, my lord. As you instructed.

Then, as if playing Shakespeare in the courts of the Palais, I broke into my best Chorus voice.…

Quiet! Quiet all! Settle and be still.

Send your man for more oysters now if you’ve a mind to.

Wink at your mistress, piss on the floor, and be done.

For this is Prologue, where I tell you what’s to come.

A tragedy in five acts—revolution, counterrevolution, a devil, the terror, death.

Is anybody listening? Or am I wasting breath?

The boy is finished, Orléans said. Let him die. Or you will.

He lives, sir! I shouted.

Who’s there? a voice bellowed from the end of the street. No ghost, that one, and it silenced the others. Who are you? Speak!

I am LeMieux’s girl, citizen! I yelled. From the Rue Charlot. I’m bringing his infant son to the doctor. His wife died this afternoon. Consumption. We fear the baby has it now. Look … look here.…

I ran to him as if I’d just run a mile, stumbling and breathless. Overacting. As I always do when I’m afraid. I put down my lamp and reached into my basket, making as if to pull back the linens. They were splotched with crimson. I’d sliced my palm with a paring knife just minutes before and dripped blood upon the cloth.

The man stepped back in fear of contagion. Go! Now! he said, waving me on. Long live the Republic!

Long live the Republic! I replied, hurrying past him.

I whispered to the baby as I made my way down the dark street, but he made no response. He could not, for he was not flesh, that child. He was charcoal and powder. Paper, cotton, and wax.

There is a house on the Rue Charlot. I let myself into its courtyard with a key I bought from the landlord’s daughter for two silver spoons I once stole from Orléans.

I climbed the stone stairs, passing landing after landing. There is a narrow door at the top. I knotted my skirts and stepped through it onto the roof. The pitch was steep. I moved like a dung beetle, nudging my basket ahead of me, the lamp’s handle clenched between my teeth. There is a row of chimneys just below the peak. I braced myself against them and lifted the cloth from my basket.

There were two dozen rockets in it and two dozen shafts to keep them true. I bent to my lamp, inserted the shafts one by one, then leaned the rockets against a chimney.

I could not see the tower in the darkness. But I knew it was there. As I knew he was there—a child, broken and alone.

A church bell struck two. I wiped my eyes. Tears would damp the powder.

I picked up the first rocket and sank its shaft into a gap between the tiles. I took a candle from the basket, held its wick to the lamp’s flame, then touched it to the rocket’s fuse. The rocket coughed. It sputtered and farted and then it was gone in a great, whistling rush.

I waited, hands clenched, and then there was a sky-rending boom, louder than cannon fire. Windows shattered. Birds flew screeching from their roosts. A woman screamed. And suddenly the black night was gone, vanquished in a blaze of light.

I grabbed another rocket. Jammed the shaft into the tiles. Lit the fuse. And then another. Over and over again, as fast as I could.

There are no songs left for me to sing you, Louis-Charles, I said. No games to play. But I can give you this—this light.

I will rain down silver and gold for you. I will shatter the black night, break it open, and pour out a million stars. Turn away from the darkness, the madness, the pain.

Open your eyes. And know that I am here. That I remember and hope.

Open your eyes and look at the light.

18 May 1795

I dare not go out tonight. Bonaparte has doubled the patrols, hoping to catch me. He is furious about my last fireworks display. As well he should be, for they were magnificent. I must not be caught. I shall wait. I shall sit at my table at the Foy and eat a bowl of soup—the very picture of a law-abiding citizen—and write.

I go back now. To 1791. To the Tuileries. After spending nearly two miserable years there, watching the revolutionaries grow only stronger, the king decided he would flee the palace and Paris and his people. At the start of the summer, when the rains had finished and the roads would be dry. He would go to Montmédy, on the border of the Austrian lowlands. There, with the help of the loyal Marquis de Bouillé, he would rally troops.

They would leave Paris in the dead of night, the king and his family. Madame de Tourzel, the royal governess, would pose as a Russian noblewoman. Louis-Charles and his sister would be her children. The queen would play the part of governess and the king was to be disguised as a valet. It was all arranged with the help of the queen’s brother Leopold of Austria, the Swedish ambassador Count Fersen, a handful of chambermaids and guards, and me.

All through the spring of 1791 I carried coins and jewels, wrapped in cloth and stuffed down my britches, to a carriage maker. An ostler. A seamstress. I smuggled in a plain black dress for the queen, a linen waistcoat for the king, a dress for Louis-Charles, who would be disguised as a girl. I knew not when they would leave. That was known only to a few.

Tell no one what you do, the queen said to me, even those most sympathetic to us, for a maid or manservant might overhear. There are spies everywhere. Promise me that you will not. Our very lives depend on it. She took out a Bible then and bade me place my hand upon it. Swear to me, she said, and to God.

I trembled inside. How could I do it? How could I swear an oath to God to say nothing when I had promised the devil I’d tell him everything? Yet if I refused to do it, the queen would know me for a spy.