Though maybe that isn't entirely true. Maybe it wasn't so much nothing I expected as it was the triumph of the political over the personal, of a great blundering headless behemoth over a sad little human scheme.
"The species must be looked on as a tree that is pruned without cease by an invisible hand," wrote Jacques-René Hébert, headlessness's most ardent spokesman. "Blood is the fertilizer of the plant that is called genius." He was the one who got everyone fired up with the idea of removing the bodies of France's dead Kings from their vaults in Saint-Denis and dumping them in the river.
I sent Provence Louis's wedding ring, also a lock of his hair. I sent Axel a wax impression of my seal, a homing pigeon with the words EVERYTHING GUIDES ME TO THEE. Both of them so far off and farther every day, the one near a river, the other the ocean, which might as well have been China, the moon.
Every night the same thing:
Antoinette. Antoinette.
From my heart through my pillow and into my ear.
Your face, Antoinette.
Promised a throne and then ending like this.
My little boy was sick. They took him away from me and made him a ward of the Republic. They put him in his father's old room, where I could hear him sobbing, though even that was better than later when they fed him brandy and had him sing "The Marseillaise." To arms, citizens! Form your battalions! Sometimes I'd catch a glimpse of him through the window, playing with other little boys, using their toy guillotines to decapitate birds and mice.
Spring came and went with its flowers and breezes. Germinal, Floréal, Prairial; Candlemas, Carnival, Lent. I couldn't eat a thing, but what I did eat went right through me, along with my blood, which every month poured out by the bucket. I would see my hand sewing at the end of my arm and it seemed to me it didn't belong to me but to one of those ancient bundles I used to make fun of, those pitiful hags with skin as gray and translucent as raw fish who used to scrabble for purchase on my sleeve, trying to catch my attention back in the days when that was what everyone wanted more than anything.
Antoinette, Antoinette.
Your Highness. Your Majesty.
Messalina, Fredegonde, Brunhild.
Madame Tison lost her mind and they took her away to the madhouse.
I hadn't lost mine, but they took me away too — not to the madhouse but to the Conciergerie, which was delicately referred to as the "waiting room." They took me away and put me in a cramped cell with a brick floor, a little fireplace, a barred window, a straw mattress, a modesty screen, and a nail in the wall where I hung my mother's watch.
Prisoner Number 280: Marie Antoinette de Lorraine d'Autriche.
Her possessions (including the aforementioned watch): A lock of her deceased husband's hair. A lock of hair from each of her four children, two dead and two still living. A sewing purse with scissors and needles and thread. A mirror. A painted miniature of the Princesse de Lamballe. Three rings. A scapular. A pair of black silk stockings. A tin box of hair pomade. A swansdown powder puff. A painted miniature of her son, Louis — Charles, ward of the Republic. His yellow glove.
They gave me a nice young girl named Rosalie to be my maid, who did her best to protect me from being watched by the two guards whenever I sat on the chamber pot, and then burned juniper berries to freshen the air afterward. She brought me linen rags to put between my legs. She brought me books. Captain Cook's Travels. A History of Famous Shipwrecks. She also brought her little boy, Fanfan, who was the same age as my little boy, and broke my heart.
Sometimes I'd read, sometimes I'd sew. Sometimes I'd watch the guards play backgammon, neither one of whom was very good at it. I'd drink my potion of lime-flower water, orange-flower water, maidenhair syrup, and Hofman's liquor. I'd say grâce and eat my supper. Sometimes some of the other prisoners would come by to kiss my shoes.
Prisoner Number 280: bored out of her mind.
Eventually Captain Cook discovered New Caledonia, and then it was Fructidor, the days were getting shorter. In the new calendar each day was represented by a different wonder of nature, a hazelnut, a crayfish, a rose, as if Maximilien Robespierre or Jean-Paul Marat or any one of those monsters would know a crayfish if it bit him.
September 2: Crayfish. Another escape plan came to naught. To punish me I was put in an even smaller cell, a former dispensary that smelled like old medicine and piss. No window this time, no fire, no screen. No sewing purse. Water continually dripped down the walls, the same as the blood down my legs, making puddles on the floor. My shoes got mildewed but it didn't really matter since no one was coming by to kiss them anymore, having lost track of where I was. Rosalie warmed my nightgown every night over her own fire. She hung a bolt of moth-eaten carpet around my bed.
But I was cold, all the same. Cold and wet. The walls were spotted with mustard yellow lichen and dark green moss, and I couldn't help thinking of the Stairways of the Hundred Steps, which had turned out to have a hundred and five, in case anyone's interested.
I used to own two copper bathtubs, one for washing, one for rinsing. I used to sleep on six mattresses. My little boy would run in to wake me, laughing; my daughter would look up from her breviary and blink at how bright the day had grown. I used to be in love. I used to be married to a King. In my bedroom at the Petit Trianon there were three different shades of gold leaf on the ceiling.
The boxes they put me in got smaller and smaller, until the last one was so small you couldn't see it at all, or the woman inside it. Even if you were a guard. Even if you took away the screen. Where did she go? Where did she go?
Am I complaining?
No, frightened.
I was frightened.
I sat there in my chair, hour after hour, day after day, turning my rings, turning and turning them, the two guards watching my every move to make sure I wasn't up to something, meaning playing, amusing myself, in which case they'd have to take my rings away.
My rings. One turn to the right, and the door would swing open; another, and in would come my little boy, my little girl. Three turns, Axel. Four, Louis. Four turns to bring back the dead, their necks no longer severed, their hearts no longer stopped. Four turns and it would come to pass that the mountains drop down new wine, and the hills flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah flow with waters, and a fountain come forth of the house of the Lord.
Whereas turn the rings to the left, and instead of a door there'd be only more wall, a daughter betrothed to the enemy, a son bearing false witness against his mother. Turn the rings to the left, and the lover would belying in another woman's arms, the King covered with quicklime in a pauper's grave, his severed head tucked between his legs, the sun and moon dark, the stars no longer brilliant.
What's she doing? the guards asked each other. They thought it was witchcraft, I guess. Watch out, the old witch is casting a spell! Hard to believe people used to call her beautiful. Hard to believe she used to be a woman. By now they liked me well enough; they felt sorry for me. Sometimes they even brought me flowers.
Magpie. Needle. Fructidor. Vendémiaire.
Four turns to the right, and the Austrian army would take me back to Vienna.
Four turns to the left, and the box would fill with ghosts.
My hearing was still good. I could hear the nearby bells of Sainte-Chapelle perfectly, but my vision was failing, my eyes starved either for things to look at or for food. By then I was eating nothing, though I'd still say grâce. Preparing to vanish, either out a door or up a chimney, which reminded me of how the old King used to climb onto the roof at Versailles and whisper down the chimney flues.
"Who are you?"
"I was called Marie Antoinette de Lorraine d'Autriche."
"Do you want counsel?"
"Yes."
When they finally brought me before the Revolutionary Tribunal I could scarcely see a thing. A huge dark hall, two candles, twelve jurors: a wigmaker, a cobbler, a cafe proprietor, a hatter, a printer, a musician, a lemonade seller, two carpenters, a surgeon, an ex-priest, a former marquis. Forty-one witnesses.
Who are you?
I was called Maria Antonia Josephina Johanna.
Do you want counsel?
I want my family.
My eyes failing but my ears still perfect — I could hear every whisper. Oho, look at her now, the bitch. That'll teach her to steal our food. But why is she drumming like that on the arm of the chair?
My mother stifling a yawn as my fingers flew across the keys of the clavichord. Les Barricades Mystérieuses. François Couperin. Sit straighter, Antonia. Do you want to end up with a hump?
To which the answer of course is no no no no no, unless to avoid it you have to die before the age of forty.
"Do you believe Kings are necessary for a people's happiness?"
"An individual cannot make such a decision."
The trial lasted two days. Among other things, I was accused of conspiring with my brother against France, of forcing my husband out the door and into a carriage bound for Varennes, of appointing perverse ministers, of engineering famine, of keeping the Swiss Guard in a state of perpetual drunkenness, of printing slanderous pamphlets about myself to arouse sympathy abroad, of having sex with my own son.
"Human nature cannot answer such a charge against a mother," I said. "I appeal to all the mothers in the room" — at which even the most crazed of the tricoteuses stood up in their red bonnets and cheered.
Naturally it didn't matter what I said.
Naturally I was found guilty.
Then it was Vendémiaire, the Feast Day of Saint Theresa, sacred to my mother, my daughter. Then it was Amaryllis, in the new calendar. A fine fresh day, a little mist, the sun trying to shine, and all the birds singing. Two hundred thousand people have fallen in love with you, said the Maréchal de Brissac twenty years earlier, when I made my triumphal entry into this same Parisian square. On that day, as now, people were selling cakes and lemonade. On that day, as now, everyone was in a state of high excitement.
October 16. Theresa, Amaryllis. I combed and powdered my hair. So thin, so white but with hints of fire, of who I used to be. My hair used to be beautiful. Also my eyes, also my mouth. I removed the bloody rag from be tween my legs, rolled it up and stuffed it in a chink in the wall. For posterity, I told myself, but I admit I was angry. Let posterity make what it would of menstrual blood. Rosalie was sobbing and to please her I ate a little bouillon. I dressed myself for the last time, in a gown of white piqué, a black slip, a muslin shawl, and my plum-colored high-heeled shoes.
When they went to bind my wrists, I put up a fight. You didn't bind my husband's wrists, I said. But when I saw the tumbril, I fell apart. My husband rode in a carriage, I told them. I squatted in the Mouse's Corner and relieved myself.
I was going. I was going.
Antonia, SIT UP STRAIGHT!
In the tumbril, riding backward, leaves and nuts raining from the trees. The sky blue now, dotted with clouds. Blue. Blue and white.
Though the soul has no spine. THE SOUL NO SPINE.
Antoinette. Antoinette.
He cut my hair, I stepped on his foot.
When you look up, clouds; when you look down, the same. Blue sky and clouds and, suddenly, water. Suddenly against the blue sky a spray of jewels.
Pardon, monsieur, I said. I did not mean to do it.