Madame Tussaud's Apprentice (14 page)

I am about to go to him, when there is movement from behind the half-shut door. Madame Élisabeth appears and kneels down next to Jean-Louis. “I am sorry, Jean-Louis. Your
papa
was so faithful to our family. I wish I could have saved him.”

Jean-Louis’s
papa
has died? A hard lump forms in my throat.

Jean-Louis wipes his tears and nods stiffly. “If your own physician could not help Papa, then there was nothing anyone could have done.” Jean-Louis bites his lip, and I can see that he is trying not to cry again.

Madame Élisabeth puts her arms about Jean-Louis. “Come, cry all you want, child. You must not worry about being stoic for me. It is natural that you should cry.”

“But Madame Élisabeth,” Jean-Louis protests, “I am just a servant, and my tears may ruin your fine gown!”

“Oh, Jean-Louis,” Madame Élisabeth replies, “we all live but a short while on this earth, royals and servants. None can escape this end. Just because I am of royal birth does not mean I cannot comfort a fellow traveler on this road we share.

“As for my dress,” she adds, “if I should not hold a child who has lost his
papa
for fear of ruining my silk clothes, then I should not be fit to be thought human.”

She holds out her arms. “Come, child. Come and let me hold you.”

Jean-Louis goes to her then, and I hear him crying as if he will never stop.

Memories of my father roar back. I remember how soft his beard was when he kissed me at night. I remember his deep laugh when my mother sang off-key in our cottage. I remember the coldness of his hand in death. And I bite down hard on the inside of my lip to stop these memories, and to stem the tide of my own tears that I know will drown me if I ever let them come.

• • •

That night, Manon brings me a new gown to wear for the dinner. It is a soft yellow silk decorated with a striped pattern in light blue threads, and silver buttons that shine in the candlelight. Manon hands me new stockings made of fine silk, and heeled shoes with highly polished buckles that sparkle with crystal stones.

“Jean-Louis’s
papa
died today,” I tell Manon.

I catch my breath as Manon pulls and tugs tight on the strings of my stays. But my mind is still on what I have seen. “Madame Élisabeth was with him. She sent her
personal
physician to take care of Jean-Louis’s
papa
.”

Manon’s fingers stop pulling. “
Oui
. This seems to surprise you, Celie.”

I think about Madame Élisabeth. I think of her servants and her dogs. I think of the lavishness of her apartments. Then I think of her praying, and of the wax figures she makes for the poor. I think of the way she did not scold me when I spoke out of turn, and how she had welcomed me and praised my gift for drawing.

“I have been with Madame Élisabeth for over ten years, since I was twenty years old,” Manon continues, as she finishes tying the laces of my dress. “I have accompanied her on rides into the countryside, where she has given away much of her own allowance to help those in need. This past winter, we went out to distribute firewood and food to those who were hungry and cold. You see only the glitter and the waste, but there is much behind that façade.”

I have to admit that Manon is right. Madame Élisabeth is a decent royal.

Manon pats me on the shoulder. “Come to me in half an hour. Let us go and see if we may help Madame Élisabeth end these tedious dinners she hates so.”

I look at myself in the mirror, with my dress falling in lustrous folds about me. I realize then that if Algernon saw me now, he might take me for one of the privileged few, no different than anyone else who inhabits
Versailles
.

• • •

Outside the palace, a horseshoe-shaped table has been set out, and lanterns have been placed strategically about the grounds to light the paths. The banquet table is wreathed in soft candlelight from two large candelabras that sit at each end. Already, crowds are gathering to see the royal family partake of their dinner. Guards patrol the grounds dressed in short robes, red pantaloons with a white swath on the side, and black shoes with buckles. Sashes tie their swords and halberds to their waists.

Madame Élisabeth has reserved us a place near the table. I immediately take out my paper, board, and pencil and get to work memorizing and sketching.

A moment later the musicians send up a chorus of sound, and the king and queen come out, dressed in purple ermine-lined robes. Madame Élisabeth follows, with two of her dogs. An excited murmur sweeps through the crowd, and people push up against me to get a better view of their sovereigns.

I watch the king and queen and Madame Élisabeth take their seats. They do not speak to one another, and the liveliness the queen had displayed at the
Petit Hameau
is gone from her face.

“He’s a fat one, isn’t he?” someone whispers.

“
Oui
, but our queen is lovely to look at,” a second voice states.

I glance over my shoulder. Two people are standing behind me in clothes sporting holes and worn spots, their eyes sunken with weariness. They shiver as they stand there, the wind blowing through his thin coat and her threadbare shawl. But the man wears the required sword at his side, and the woman has on the mandatory stockings. They both beam at me with mouths missing teeth, as if they have just won a prize.

“Lucky to be here, aren’t we?” the woman asks. “Isn’t it thrilling to see our king and queen so close?”

I want to tell these people that this king they so revere spends his time putting locks on the doors of the palace rather than governing and that the queen likes to pretend she is a commoner for fun, while we are left to work the fields that provide the food now being served. But then I think about Madame Élisabeth’s kindness. And so I say nothing.

I begin drawing again, sketching in the servant who stands behind the king and queen as he holds perfume burners that send out waves of sweet scent. Silver platters and china clink and clatter as plate after plate is delivered to the table. The smell of roast pheasant and freshly baked strawberry pastries wafts through the air. My stomach rumbles, and I wonder how the poor people behind me can stand there without fainting from hunger.

The royals do not speak. Occasionally, the king will put a small morsel into the queen’s mouth himself before digging into his own plate piled high with delicacies, but the queen eats little else. Madame Élisabeth’s face is blank, but I can see her feet tapping with impatience under the table.

The crowd stands in silence, too, staring at the royal family, as if they are some of the deformed characters that make up the shows in Paris. I continue to draw, but, as with the shows in Paris, I am uneasy about the whole spectacle.

At last, sweets are dispensed to the king and queen and Madame Élisabeth from a comfit box, and the dinner is over. The royal family rises and walks back into the palace.

“Are you done?” Manon asks.

I shake my head. “
Non
, but I have it all in my head. Can we walk into the gardens to a bench, and I will finish so you may send it to l’Oncle?”

“Come this way,” Manon says, taking me by the arm when the path divides. “Most of the crowd will stay and stroll the gardens along the water, so let us wander a little further afield where you will not be disturbed.”

I walk with Manon to a spot in the gardens that I have not yet been to. The smell of oranges drifts out in the soft night air from the greenhouses where they are grown. There I sit, my head bent, my mind whirling with the images I have seen tonight. I continue to draw while Manon rests beside me, looking out over the well-manicured garden in front of us. I am just about finished when I hear a sound that makes me jump. “What was that?”

Manon lets out a laugh. “I had forgotten. You have not seen the animals. Come. If you are finished, I will show you.”

I rise and walk with Manon to a fence hidden behind tall hedges. Manon parts the greenery, and there before me are two of the strangest creatures I have ever seen, each housed in its own separate cage. “What are they?”

“One is called a lion, the other an ostrich. They come from the continent of Africa. The king ordered them brought here, for he is interested in animals of the exotic kind,” Manon answers.

“Does he do anything with them?” I ask.

The lion lets out a roar again, and I shudder at the sound.

Manon shakes her head. “
Non
. They are just there to look at.”

“They must be homesick,” I say, looking at the caged animals. “It doesn’t seem right to keep them locked up here so that people can just stare at them.”

“Ah,” Manon says, “it is not so different from tonight’s dinner with our good king and queen then, is it, Celie?”

I open my mouth to protest, and then shut it just as quickly. Manon has a point. What difference is there between these caged animals being kept for the pleasure of the court, and the king and queen at dinner tonight being displayed for the pleasure of their people?

Do the king and queen feel like these animals that move about their confined spaces, restless with longing? Perhaps being born a royal isn’t as easy as I imagine. The idea surprises me.

Then I shake myself. Life as a royal is certainly not as hard as the lives of those poor people tonight, shivering in the cold, tired from tilling their fields. Or as dangerous as Mirabeau’s and Algernon’s lives are now, slipping into the shadows of the alleyways of Paris to help these poor people end their misery, and hoping they are not caught and hanged in the process.

Not a week later, the heir to the throne, young Louis-Joseph, in his illness takes a turn for the worse. Doctors come and go, and all court entertainments are canceled. A hush settles in the hallways. Everyone walks about with serious faces.

And then, the unthinkable happens—the young prince dies.

I hear the news and immediately remember Jacques as my mother held him and he took his last breath. But Jacques had no one to stop his starving. It seems inconceivable to me that even with all their wealth and doctors and medicine, the king and queen could not save their little boy. And I realize that Madame Élisabeth was right. Even royals cannot escape death.

The court goes immediately into mourning, draping the halls with black, covering all their mirrors. Versailles becomes a prison of sadness. All signs of excesses and lavishness are banished. The courtiers are like deflated balloons. Everyone is gloomy and sad and worried.

The few glimpses I have of the king and the queen show two people who seem to have aged overnight. The queen is no longer the laughing, vibrant young woman I saw weeks earlier.

Their grief touches me, and I am surprised by this. And yet, they are human and I realize that in loss, we are all the same. I wonder how the king’s starving subjects feel. Are they also in mourning? Or is their anger against their king so strong that they will find no sympathy for his loss?

Madame Élisabeth slips into despondency, canceling her drawing lessons and spending much time praying. I think about the other son, the eight-year-old boy who now is next in line to be king. In spite of our present king’s ineffectiveness at ruling, I pray that nothing will happen to him. The country is in a bad enough condition without having to worry about an eight-year-old becoming ruler.

On our way back to our rooms one evening during these weeks of grieving, Manon says she is not feeling well, and that she wants to lie down.

“Is there something bothering you?” I ask, for I have noticed her pacing all day.

Manon’s eyes slip from mine. “It’s nothing. I just don’t feel right. I will get some sleep tonight, and I am sure I will be fine in the morning.”

I worry that perhaps Manon has caught the same illness that has killed the young prince. A flutter of concern enters my mind. I look closely at her, but she avoids my scrutiny by turning her back on me and closing the door to her room firmly behind her.

I stand in the hallway, concerned. But then my eyes light on a new lock on one of the doors. I wonder how the king has found the time or energy to do this while dealing with his sorrow. It angers me that he would play with locks only weeks after his son’s death. Is he that callous?

I sigh. Perhaps I will be the one to fall ill from lack of sleep. For surely the king deserves to have his work undone tonight.

At dinner, I see Jean-Louis sitting alone at the servants’ table in the kitchen. It is the first time I have seen him since his father’s death. His little head is bent, and he looks completely dejected. I spoon out some bouillabaisse, then go to sit next to him on the bench.

“I heard about your
papa
, Jean-Louis,” I whisper to him. “I am very sorry.”

“At least I have not been let go from the palace,” he says. His voice quivers.

“I heard that Madame Élisabeth made that possible,” I say.

Jean-Louis keeps his head bent but nods.

One of the cooks sits down across from us and reaches over for the pitcher of wine.

“Like you, my
papa
and
maman
are dead, also,” I tell Jean-Louis, my voice thick with memories, “and also my little brother.”

“But now you have Mademoiselle Manon,” Jean-Louis says.

I shake my head. “She is not family.”

Jean-Louis looks puzzled. “But Mademoiselle Manon cares about you. I would be grateful to have someone who watched out for me as she does for you.”

I cannot let Jean-Louis believe this, as it is untrue.

“Manon doesn’t love me. She only brought me here to help her teach Madame Élisabeth how to draw. If my hands were useless, Mademoiselle Manon would not continue to feed and clothe me,” I tell Jean-Louis.

The cook suddenly guffaws. “As if Manon could not do that herself.”

I pause as I lift a spoonful of the fish stew to my mouth. “What do you mean by that?”

The cook shrugs. “Manon can draw well enough to train Madame Élisabeth. The king’s sister has employed Mademoiselle Manon for over ten years now, and she has never been unhappy with her. Manon is thought of very highly by
all
the royals.”