“What’s wrong?” Danton quickly crossed the study to stand beside Dupree. Juliette de Clement was disappearing around the corner, but nothing was visible except the back of her cloak, he noticed with relief. “Is something amiss, Citizen?”
“Perhaps not.” Dupree frowned. “That woman looked familiar.”
“Which woman?”
“The woman in the brown cloak. She’s gone now.”
“You know her?”
“There was something in the way she moved.”
“You frequent the Comédie Française. Perhaps she’s an actress you’ve had occasion to see there.”
“Possibly.” Dupree shrugged. “However, if I do know her, I’ll eventually remember. I have an excellent memory.”
“I’m sure you will.” Danton strolled to the desk and picked up the pamphlet. “What’s the subject of Marat’s ravings today?”
Dupree turned immediately from the window. “You should not speak of him in that way. He’s a true friend of the republic.”
“But sometimes we must forget loyalties toward one friend when we make another.” Danton paused meaningfully. “I have no liking for Marat.”
Dupree hesitated and then smiled ingratiatingly. “Naturally, I would not care to display my dislike of being in his service until I had a position I esteemed more.”
Mother of God, the man would betray the devil himself if offered a higher place. Danton was careful to mask his disgust. “I can understand your caution.”
“But this wouldn’t be a suitable time to relinquish my position. I’m leaving tomorrow for Andorra on avery important mission. Perhaps we can talk when I return?”
“Andorra?” Danton frowned. “Spain? What business has Marat with the Spaniards?”
“A concern of great importance to France, and naturally he would trust it to no one but me.”
“Naturally.” Dupree was evidently not going to confide the nature of that concern, Danton thought with annoyance. What the devil was Marat doing with his filthy fingers in foreign affairs? “You said you’ll leave tomorrow?”
Dupree nodded. “Marat’s given me permission to stop off and spend a fortnight of rest with my mother, who lives on the outskirts of Paris in the village of Clairemont. It’s a difficult trip across the Pyrenees.”
Then the “concern” while important was not urgent. “After your efforts of last month I can see how you’d need a rest,” Danton said without expression as he picked up his hat and gloves. “Come, it’s time we started for the convention.”
Marie Antoinette’s hair was white.
“Keep your head down,” the lamplighter whispered. “I told you not to look up once we were in the courtyard.”
Juliette hastily lowered her gaze and reached up to tie the woolen kerchief more securely under her chin. Her hands were trembling and her throat tight with tears. The queen’s hair was white. It wasn’t perfumed or powdered. She didn’t have on a wig as Juliette had seen her wear on so many occasions when she had first come to Versailles. Marie Antoinette was only thirty-six and she looked twice those years.
“Stop gaping at her.” The lamplighter lit the lamp to the left of the gate. “Do you want to get thrown into the Tower with her?”
“She looks so different.”
“Stand over there in the shadows. I’ll send her over to have a word with you. But only five minutes, you understand? When I finish lighting my lamps, we leave.”
Juliette obediently moved into the shadows beneath the looming Tower. Dusk had completely claimed the courtyard of the Temple and in her drab brown gown and kerchief she knew she’d be virtually invisible to any but the closest observer.
The queen was not ill dressed. Her black cloak was well made and the muff she carried was of marten fur, but her garments might as well have belonged to a prosperous innkeeper’s wife instead of the queen of France. Poor Marie Antoinette had lost everything but her family—and even some of them had been taken from her. The king’s brothers, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d’Artois, had escaped to Austria and his spinster sisters to Italy. Marie Antoinette’s firstborn son, Louis Joseph, the dauphin, had died tragically in 1789 at the same time the queen’s entire world was vanishing around her.
Now Marie Antoinette had only her big, gentle husband, her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, her daughter Marie Thérèse, and little Louis Charles, who was now the dauphin and heir apparent to the throne.
“Juliette?” Marie Antoinette peered into the shadows. “Is it truly you? All that dirt on your face…”
Juliette started to curtsy and then caught herself. The daughter of a republican lamplighter would hardly show respect for royalty. “It’s I. The lamplighter thought I looked too clean, so he rubbed some soot on my cheeks.”
