Why Kings Confess

Chapter 27

That evening, as the snow continued to fall, Sebastian prowled the taverns and coffeehouses of the city.

He began in Pall Mall and Piccadilly, targeting very specific establishments, places like the White Hart and the Queen’s Head that catered to a special kind of clientele. As he ventured farther east, the patrons became perceptively rougher, bricklayers and butchers now mingling with barristers, soldiers, and the occasional well-dressed dandy or Corinthian. They were a disparate lot, although all shared one dangerous secret: In an age when carnal knowledge of one’s own sex was a capital offense, these men risked death to meet and mingle with one another.

Many of the men, or “mollies” as they often called themselves, adopted aliases: colorful monikers like Marigold Mistress, or Nell Gin, or St. Giles’s Jan. Sebastian was looking for a certain well-known flamboyant Miss Molly known as Serena Fox.

But he was having trouble finding her.

He was standing at the counter of a tavern just off Lincoln’s Inn Fields, drinking a pint of ale and watching two men-one dressed in an elegant blue velvet gown, the other a bricklayer in heavy boots-dance, when a tall, slim woman in an emerald silk gown came to lean against a nearby wall, her hands behind her back, her head tilted to one side. “I hear you’re looking for Serena Fox. Rather indefatigably.”

Sebastian shifted his stance and took a slow swallow of his ale. The woman was no longer young, but her softly curling chestnut hair was still vibrant, the flesh of her strong, square jaw still taut, her mouth wide and full. “Hello, LaChapelle,” said Sebastian.

She pursed her lips and shook her head, her French accent a throaty purr. “Here, it is Serena. What do you want with me?”

“I need some rather delicate information. And asking questions of royals-even dethroned ones-tends to be both difficult and unproductive.”

“Is there a reason why I should help you?”

Sebastian took a deep drink of his ale. “Three days ago, a man with ties to the Bourbons had his heart ripped out by an unknown killer. I should think that would be reason enough for anyone interested in the well-being of the dynasty.”

Serena’s features remained flawlessly composed. But Sebastian saw her nostrils flare on a quick, betraying breath. “I can tell you some things. What do you want to know?”

“Is it true that Marie-Therese shuts herself in her chamber every twenty-first of January and devotes the day to prayer?”

“Every January twenty-first and every October sixteenth.”

“Why the sixteenth of October?”

“That is the day her mother, Marie Antoinette, was guillotined.”

“What about the eighth of June?”

Serena shook her head, not understanding. “What’s the significance of the eighth of June?”

“That’s the date her little brother, the Dauphin, died in the Temple Prison-according to Provence.”

“Ah, that’s right.” Serena turned to signal for a brandy.

Sebastian watched her. He said, “Marie-Therese doesn’t believe her little brother is really dead, does she?”

Serena raked her hair back from her head in a gesture that was considerably more masculine than feminine. “I suspect it would be more accurate to say she hopes he is alive. But I have always suspected that in her heart of hearts she knows he is not.”

“Tell me what happened to him.”

Serena lowered her gaze to the amber liquid in her glass. It was a moment before she spoke. “The Dauphin was eight years old when he was taken from the room in which Marie Antoinette and Marie-Therese were kept, and thrust alone into a cell directly below them. When he cried for his mother, his jailors beat him. Unmercifully. His mother and sister could hear his screams, hear him begging for them to stop. But that was only the beginning.” He paused.

“Go on.”

“The revolutionaries-perhaps even Robespierre himself-drew up a confession they insisted he sign. When he refused, they beat him again. Day after day.”

“What sort of confession?”

“In it, he claimed to have been seduced by his mother and debauched by his sister and his aunt, Elisabeth. They wanted to use it at the Queen’s trial.”

“Did he sign it?”

“In the end, yes.”

“But surely no one believed such nonsense?”

Serena shrugged. “Far too many people will believe anything of those they hate, no matter how absurd or patently fabricated it may be. And to the revolutionaries, the Bourbons became the personification of evil.”

“What happened after he did as they demanded and signed the confession?”

“I’ve heard his jailors had promised that if he signed, he’d be allowed to rejoin what was left of his family. But it was a promise they did not keep. His jailor was a member of the Paris Commune, a cobbler named Antoine Simon. Simon’s instructions were to erase all traces of gentility and pride in the boy. On good days, Simon and his wife taught him the language of the gutters, plied him with wine, put a bonnet rouge on his head, and taught him to sing the Marseillaise. On bad days, they beat him, just for the fun of it.”

Sebastian took a swallow of his ale, but it tasted bitter and flat on his tongue.

Serena said, “Yet as bad as all that was, it eventually grew worse. Simon and his wife were replaced with new jailors, who starved the boy and refused to empty his slop bucket. The window of his cell was blocked up, depriving the child of both light and air. He grew increasingly ill. With no one to care for him, he was simply left to lie in his own excrement. He eventually lost the ability either to walk or speak.” Serena glanced over at Sebastian. “You’re certain you want to hear this?”

“Yes.”

Serena nodded. “We know these things because, after the events of Thermidor, inquiries were made. A representative of the National Convention, a man by the name of Barras, was sent to visit the children in the Temple. He found the Dauphin lying on a filthy cot in a dark, noisome room so foul no one could even enter it. His skin was gray-green, his rags and hair alive with vermin, his stomach bloated from starvation, his half-naked body covered with bruises and welts from his endless beatings.”

“And his mind?”

“He was visibly terrified of anyone and everyone who came near him, and completely unable to speak.”

“So what happened?”

“At Barras’s insistence, the child was given a new jailor, a man named Laurent, who was ordered to see that the boy was bathed and fed, and his cell cleaned. They say that on occasion Laurent would even carry the boy up to the Tower’s battlements so that he could breathe the fresh air and watch the birds flying in the sky. But it was all too late. The boy was desperately ill. He died.”

“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.”

“What if they did show her the child’s body, only she was so horrified by his condition that she blocked the sight from her mind?”

“I hadn’t thought of that, but you might be right.”

He went to pour himself a glass of brandy. “I think both the Comte de Provence and Marie-Therese were perfectly aware of the fact that Damion Pelletan was the son of the man who treated the Dauphin at the time of his death in the Temple.”

“Surely you can’t think that’s the reason Pelletan was killed? Who would murder a man for something his father did nearly twenty years ago?”

“Isn’t that what the revolutionaries did? They killed a ten-year-old boy for the sins of his forefathers.”

“But. . Provence is far too fat and crippled to have done something like this.”

“I’m not suggesting he did it himself. But he could certainly have hired someone. Someone such as the gentleman who tried to kill me outside of Stoke Mandeville.”

“I can’t believe it of him.”

“I notice you don’t say the same thing about Marie-Therese.”

She started to say something, then stopped and bit her lip.

“You can’t, can you?” said Sebastian.

Hero shook her head. “There is much about Marie-Therese that I admire. She survived a terrible ordeal and suffered a brutal succession of heart-wrenching sorrows. That she came through it with anything even vaguely resembling sanity is truly remarkable. But for all that, I still cannot like her. It isn’t just the haughtiness, or the rigidity, or the ostentatious, intolerant piety. Someone once described Marie-Therese to me as a consummate performer, and I suspect that she truly is. To my knowledge, no one has ever seen her looking happy, although you also never see her appear anything but calm in public. Yet I’ve been told that in reality she is anything but calm. She has hysterics. She’s been known to faint at the sight of a barred window, and she trembles violently at the beat of a drum or the peal of a church bell. She has never really recovered from what was done to her. And while no one could ever in any way hold that against her, I still-”

“Don’t trust her?”

“I wouldn’t trust either her sincerity or her sanity.”

Sebastian was silent for a moment. Then he said, “LaChapelle told me something else. He said that as part of the autopsy, the boy’s heart was removed.”

Hero’s gaze met his. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “You think that’s why Damion’s killer stole his heart? In some twisted kind of revenge?”

“I don’t know. But what are the odds that Philippe-Jean Pelletan would participate in an autopsy that removed the dead Dauphin’s heart, only to have the heart of his own murdered son taken some twenty years later? What are the odds?”