He stares at me. “We are at war with England! It could be another twenty years before any Frenchman is allowed to cross the Channel.”
I close my eyes.
“Marie, I want you to be my wife. Tell me you will marry me.”
“It’s likely we’ll meet our deaths tomorrow.”
“Then we can live our last day together in hope.”
I search his face and see that he is earnest. He is a handsome man, with a good education and a tender heart. From the moment we met here in Les Carmes, he made it his mission to watch over me. I cannot undo what’s been done. If I am ever set free, it will be to live my life in the confines of Paris. “Yes,” I tell him, and he kisses me. For a moment, I am back in Henri’s embrace, smelling his hair, caressing his skin, and brushing my lips against his.
JULY
28, 1794
—HYMN TO JULY 27
“HE HAS BEEN ARRESTED!” SOMEONE IS SHOUTING. “ROBESPIERRE has been arrested!”
We scramble from our beds into the hall, where a guard is standing at the top of the stairs with the keys of the prison clenched in his hand. “Follow me!” he cries.
The sound of a thousand prisoners hurrying up the stairs echoes above our cell. It is just after dawn, but everyone is awake. There is laughing and crying. We can hear men cheering from the great room. We follow the other prisoners up the steps into the hall, and inside it is chaos. Soldiers from outside the prison have arrived with kindling for the fireplace, and they are burning the chief jailer’s records, paper by paper. Francois finds the guard who has been so generous as to lose at most games of poker and asks him what’s happening.
“They arrested Robespierre last night,” the guard says. “The National Convention has charged him with being a tyrant.”
The irony of this is not lost of any of us.
“When he realized they were coming for him,” the guard adds, “he attempted to shoot himself.” He smiles. “All he succeeded in doing was shattering his jaw. They are taking him to the Place de la Revolution. They are to guillotine him this morning along with all of his accomplices.”
As the news spreads, there are shouts of relief and tears of joy. But at noon, when word comes that Robespierre is dead, there is a startled silence.
It is real. The Terror is over.
A soldier stands at the front of the hall and announces that we are all free. Throughout the room, men and women are crying. I embrace my mother, and we weep into each other’s arms. I think of all the people we shall live to see again. Curtius, Paschal, Isabel … Edmund.
Next to me, Francois caresses my cheek. His eyes are red and his hands are trembling. “Madame Tussaud, will you escort me to freedom?” He takes me by the arm, and I am filled with the most immense gratitude I have ever known.
God, it seems, exists even in Les Carmes.
E
NGLAND
A
UGUST
11, 1802
AS THE SHIP SAILS INTO PORT, JOSEPH RUSHES TO THE RAILS, begging to be picked up so he can see the shore. At four years old, my son wants to run, and touch, and explore. Everything is an endless adventure for him. I lift him onto my hip and ask what he can see on the docks.
“Happy people,” he says.
I smile. Yes. There is one man, in particular, who will be happy to see us. I search the crowd for his face, and he is standing beside my brother and his wife. After ten years, it is as if nothing has changed. He wears his hair loose around his shoulders, and there are still smile lines around his eyes. From the cut of his coat, I can see that he is doing well for himself. Then, for a moment, I panic.
What if he is disappointed in what he sees? I am not a young woman anymore. In the eight years since Robespierre’s fall, I have been married and given my husband two sons: Joseph, and Francis, who is two. They have not been easy years. After the end of the Terror, whatever money I earned, Francois gambled or drank away. We have been poor, then wealthy, then poor again, and now my fortune has changed with rise of a Corsican general named Napoleon Bonaparte. He has taken for his wife a young woman I once knew as Rose de Beauharnais, renaming her Josephine and promising to someday crown her Empress over all of France. Together they have rebuilt what was once torn down, and though I did not think I would live to see peace between England and France, Napoleon has signed a treaty. It has allowed me passage to the man I have yearned after now for ten years.
Much has been given up for this voyage. I have left my mother behind with my second son, since she is too old to travel and Francis is too young. It is my hope that Francois will take care of them. The models I did not bring on this ship, I left with him. But my guess is that it will be Maman and Isabel who will run the Salon de Cire in my absence. Under the constant threat of death, Francois was one man, but in the aftermath of war, he became another. Still, he has given me two beautiful gifts, and for that I will always be thankful. I look at my son and ask if he has ever seen such tall, white cliffs.
As the ship is being secured at the dock, I catch my reflection in a small window. I would like to believe that I am not much different than the thirty-one-year-old woman Henri left in Paris. On the inside, however, a great deal has changed. I take Joseph’s hand, and we step together onto the plank. At the bottom, just as he promised he would be, Henri is waiting.
Whatever happens for me here in England, I shall not betray my heart again.
A
FTER THE
R
EVOLUTION
MARIE GROSHOLTZ
After Marie arrived in England in 1802 with her elder son, Joseph, she never looked back. Henri was there waiting for her, as were several other emigres who had fled the Revolution. Together, they took their shows throughout England, traveling from city to city for the next thirty-three years. In 1822, Marie, Henri, and Joseph boarded a ship bound for Ireland, where they hoped to tour. The captain of the
