FIFTY

ADRIENNE

Paris

Summer 1794

The names of twenty condemned persons were called each morning in the prison courtyard. Upon hearing their names marked for death, some would gasp, faint, or cry. Some even laughed, knowing we would all meet Madame Guillotine eventually.

On two separate mornings I thought I heard my name. I stepped forward both times, cold with fear, but made no sound at all. For death would be a release from the torment of guilt under which I suffocated to know that my mother, sister, and grandmother were imprisoned.

They had been charged with having conspired with Lafayette to massacre citizens that terrible day at the Champ de Mars. It was the flimsiest, most absurd pretext. I was kept in the prison at Le Plessis. The school at which my husband received his education and formed ideas about liberty was now a makeshift jail, with male prisoners packed in the basement and female prisoners stuffed in the attic. In my lonely cell, I struggled to think how I might get a message to my sister, my mother, or even Grand-mère.

Mon Dieu, how frightened they must be. How they must blame me. Perhaps it was better to keep apart. Here with me was Marc’s sister, my cousin the duchesse de Duras. A staunch royalist, she might have rained down curses upon my head, but instead she embraced me. Even when it fell to me to deliver the worst possible news. “Your parents . . .” How could I say more? After all my quarrels with Aunt Claude, it did not seem possible she could be gone from this world. Butchered. Murdered. I wondered, as they led Madame Etiquette to the scaffold, did she spit at the rabble? No. I believed my aunt would have preserved good form to the end.

Would I be brave when my turn came? There were rumors I would be called to the guillotine in the morning. Then a priest I passed in the courtyard confirmed it, whispering, “I saw your name on the list. You will be called in the morning, child. Prepare yourself.”

I thanked him for helping ready me to meet my fate. I prayed only that God spare the rest of my loved ones. Yes, I still prayed. One might be excused for thinking Madame Guillotine was the thirsty goddess to which we now paid tribute, but faith in my husband and my God was the only thing the murderous Jacobins could not take from me.

Oh, Lord, thou hast been my help and my strength; do not forsake me, and I shall fear nothing even in the shadow of death.

At sunrise I washed my face; it would not do to meet God in a state of dishabille. They said the blade was humane—death came swiftly, and painlessly, despite the blood. It was only terror one felt in having one’s hands bound, in having one’s gown opened to expose the neck, in being laid down upon the plank . . . I imagined these things vividly so they might be familiar and less frightening when my time came.

Then I was led to the courtyard to hear my name—a name that was precious to me. A name through which I would find the courage to meet my death. But when I reached the courtyard, someone was saying, “Robespierre is dead . . .”

That hardly seemed possible, but now everything was in confusion. No names were called, and I felt a faint flicker of hope. I began to breathe air again and like its taste. A few precious gulps filled my lungs before I began to dream this nightmare could be over. That soon I could be reunited with my husband and our family. The mere thought of holding our children in the circle of our embrace made me smile at my fellow prisoners and even my guards . . . until I realized that no one would meet my eyes.

If I were not to die today, then why would no one look at me?

A numb horror came over me as I asked, “What’s happened—is it my husband?”

“Your mother,” someone finally had the mercy to say. “She was guillotined.”

These words hit the center of my chest and I curled inward. “Maman?” I gasped, then could not catch my breath. I nearly swooned again before pleading desperately, “What of my sister? What of Grand-mère?”

Silence was answer enough.

No. No. No! Not Maman. Not Louise. Not Grand-mère. I would have fallen prostrate with grief, but someone might try to help me, and I could not bear the slightest human comfort. For in my howling despair I did not feel human—I felt like a creature in the jaws of a predator. I fled, taking the stairs back to my prison cell as swiftly as I was able, collapsing to my knees there, where I screamed at God, demanding to know why. Why was I still alive when they were dead? Why would our enemies kill my grandmother, whose mind was enfeebled? Why kill my mother, who had never taken part in politics? And Louise . . . Louise . . . who had been a finer patriot and daughter and sister than me. Dutiful Louise had stayed in France for her family when she could have fled to America with her husband. In her place, to be with Gilbert again, I would have gone. So how could she be dead whilst I lived?

The injustice could not be borne. It was so much more than my mind could withstand that my sobs cut off abruptly. Then I rose, almost like a marionette, drawn inexorably to my window, which hovered five stories above the pavement. And there I felt a powerfully seductive impulse.

It is the only escape from your shame, said some voice, unbidden. The only justice. The best way to protect your children. They will be safer when you’re dead . . .

I would not be the first person to jump—to deprive the mob of satisfaction. The Bible taught it was a sin to take one’s own life, but my God was forgiving. If I leapt from this window, he would surely reunite me with my loved ones in a world less wicked than this one.

My fingertips found the cold latch. My hand gripped the wooden frame. My foot found the ledge. One push is all it would take. Let it be done swiftly before fear stopped me.

I am coming, Maman!

Good-bye, my beloved children. Good-bye, Gilbert . . .

It was the thought of Gilbert that stopped me. My children might be safer when I was dead, but not Gilbert. The rumors that he had gone mad in his prison cell, torn out his own eyes . . . I had not believed them. But if I stopped my heart, would it stop his too? Perhaps I was the only hope he had of survival.

Don’t think, Adrienne. Just jump. The temptation was stronger than I could have ever fathomed. Stronger than almost any other urge of my life. Stronger than thirst, hunger, or lust. Shame and grief are more powerful than anything . . . but love.

It was love that made me step back from the window. Perhaps tomorrow I would fling myself into the sweet freedom of the hereafter, but not today. Instead, I passed my days in blackness. I did not eat. I did not drink. I did not sleep. Nor did I wish to speak to those who came to offer comfort. I was scarcely interested when a guard said I had a visitor. I was only curious when he said, “It’s la belle Américaine.”

I emerged from my prison cell dazed and blinking, not knowing what day it was, much less the identity of the mysterious visitor who could have charmed Paris into giving her this sobriquet. A waiting carriage behind her, the dark-haired beauty stood at the gates in splendor—a beautiful topaz cross glittering from her neck. How shabby I felt in my unlaundered garment, my hair a nest of straw. Yet without the slightest hesitation, this stranger reached for my dirty hands and grasped them warmly. She introduced herself as Elizabeth Kortright Monroe, wife of the new American ambassador. “It is my great honor to meet the wife of Lafayette, a hero who shed his blood in the cause of liberty . . .”

She said this in such a manner to be overheard by the guards and passersby. And terrified that even one more person should endanger themselves by uttering the word Lafayette, I whispered, “You shouldn’t have come.”

“Yet I did,” said Mrs. Monroe with a kind expression. She explained that with Robespierre dead, there was some chance now of a legitimate government. “Can I bring you food, a blanket, or some means of comfort?”

“Oh, madame,” I said, my throat swelling with emotion. “Bring me news of my children and my husband. That is all I need.”

My visitor’s dark eyes glistened. “I will make inquiries about your children. Your husband’s situation is unchanged, but I have hope of changing yours. Though forbidden from making any official plea on your behalf, Mr. Morris hinted to the Committee of Public Safety that your death would greatly offend American sentiment and might put our alliance into peril.”

So it was to Mr. Morris that I owed my life. The prickly peg-legged debauchee had gone as far as he dared, possibly in contradiction of his orders. Now his successor was prepared to go further. “Mr. Monroe intends to publicize that he has a personal sympathy in your cause, as he fought with Lafayette at the Battle of the Brandywine.”

Monroe. The name came back to me from all those years ago, when Gilbert boasted of his comrades-at-arms. The brave young Virginian who stayed with him when he’d been wounded—without God, could fortune have turned in such a way that the very same soldier was now here in France?

“Mr. Monroe is tireless in his advocacy,” she was saying. “So I beg you to have courage.”

He should not risk it, I thought, still longing for oblivion. How would I ever again be fit for life when my every thought was poisoned? You were the death of your family, Adrienne. Your affections, your ideals, your opinions, fatal to those who had the misfortune to love you . . .

I did not speak these words, and yet I believe Mrs. Monroe somehow saw them upon my countenance, for she brought her face close to the bars. “Madame, do not forget the obligations that still bind you to this world.”

The next day I was sent to a new prison. Then another. And another. I did not know if this was done to save me or punish me. Having no fire, I shivered violently beneath a pile of rags, my breath frosting the air, little crystals of ice glistening on the wall. The cold was so painful I welcomed the slow creep of numb sleep over my senses.

For when I closed my eyes, I saw Chavaniac.

There, beneath the frost-capped towers, my children might be playing games in the snow, free to laugh, to worship as they wished, to speak according to their consciences. There the little church bell might be ringing to summon the faithful, there might be a blazing fire by which I could read, surrounded by my husband’s books and busts of his favorite thinkers. A ham would be roasting in the oven, and I would find Gilbert in his treasure room, working on plans to improve the place, working on new ideas to improve the world. He would take me into his strong arms and—

“Madame! Awaken, s’il vous plaît!” I did not want to be awakened, torn away from my dream castle. Yet the stranger persisted. “Have my coat, you poor shivering woman,” he said, wrapping me in the warmth of wool.

I took him for a carpenter sent to patch the holes in the roof. He was, in fact, a priest in disguise, having contrived this excuse to be alone with me. “Madame, I must speak swiftly. I don’t have long. I am the man who gave last rites to your mother, sister, and grandmother.”

The mention of them made me groan as if run through, and I again curled in on myself with fresh pain.

“In their final moments, they commended their love to you, and I have come to deliver it,” he said.

Could it be true? That they might have felt love for me in such a moment was both grace and a torment.

He told me how he walked beside their tumbril as it rattled through the streets in a rainstorm. How my angelic sister Louise, all dressed in white, comforted Maman. How the executioner tore Grand-mère’s black taffeta gown to expose her pale neck to the blade. How Maman, in blue and white stripes, said she was grateful to die before her child. How the executioner yanked her cap, forgetting to unpin it, causing her to flinch in pain. How courageous Louise stopped upon the bloody stairs to ask God’s forgiveness for a man in the crowd who tormented her. Then Louise too suffered the pain of her cap being torn from her head before the blade severed her neck, spraying the jeering crowd with crimson.

It was a long time before I could speak. Into the abyss of my dark silence, the priest whispered, “They were shorn before their executions. Louise sent her hair for her children. She would like for them to join their father in America.”

My eyes closed at the reminder that Marc was by now across the sea, pleading our cause with the Americans, quite probably ignorant to the fate of his wife and parents. When he learned this, he would feel he had abandoned them. He would feel as if they had been murdered in his name. He would never recover from it. The self-reproach would surely kill him as it was killing me . . .

All I wanted was to know the final resting place of my butchered family, but the priest said they had been carried away in secret to prevent proper burial. What spite and savagery! The intolerable horror of this made me wish to beat my head against the stone wall.

And when the priest left, I would have begged for beheading.

Instead, I learned I was to be set free.

On a blustery winter day—after more than a year of imprisonment—I limped through the cobbled streets like a beggar, unrecognized and unmolested in my reduced state.

Not knowing where else to go, I walked to the American embassy. There, Mrs. Monroe hastened to wrap me in a blanket, sending her servants to fetch biscuits, jam, and hot tea. What a fright I looked; how wretched I felt, trembling when the warm porcelain cup with its dainty flowers was put into my dirty hands. Minister Monroe appeared at the threshold, and I put my cup down to kneel in gratitude before him.

“Please, madame,” he drawled, trying to keep me upright. “It was and remains my honor to render any service to the wife of my dear friend. My countrymen owe Lafayette a sacred debt. It is the only thing upon which all factions agree.”

How sweet to hear these words. I remembered the cagey Franklin. The prickly Adams. The dashing Laurens. The eloquent Jefferson. The earnest Short. The witty Morris. All those American envoys had expressed appreciation for my husband. But the unguarded zeal in Monroe’s gray eyes gave me courage for what I must do next. My fourteen-year-old son was still especially vulnerable. They had guillotined boys his age, and at present, there was no place for a boy with the name Lafayette but America. So by Monroe’s special envoys, I sent another letter.

To President Washington:

Sir, I send you my son. Although I have not had the consolation of being listened to nor of obtaining from you those good offices likely to bring about his father’s delivery from the hands of our enemies, it is with sincere confidence that I put my dear child under the protection of the United States.

I have nurtured in my son a love of country where his father is disowned and persecuted, and where his mother was sixteen months confined in prison. But he has been taught to regard America as his second country. I shall not say anything of my own position, nor of the one which interests me still more than mine. I will only cherish the hope that my son should lead a secluded life in America, resume his studies, and become fit to fulfill the duties of a citizen of the United States.

To send my boy away tore my withered heart and made me remember I still had one. I closed my eyes, remembering every freckle upon my boy’s nose, reassuring myself that Washington would not, could not, turn away his namesake. Yet I would not wait upon the Americans. I had learned I could not wait on anyone. Cur non? It was now my motto too. I must use my freedom while I had it. I had rescued a priest from certain death.

Now I must rescue my husband too.