The Rising Storm

itself.* This, then, explained why so many of the poissardes were much taller than the average woman. The Orleanists had taken advantage of the ancient liberty accorded to the fishwives of Paris to approach the King and Queen without formality, to disguise a number of assassins in the type of garments the poissardes always wore, so that they could mingle with the real poissardes and under that cover commit the heinous task they had been given.

The revelation of this new piece of treachery added fuel to Roger's wrath. He had no thought now of settling his old score by slicing off the villain's ears and nose. With a cry of rage he rushed forward, intent to kill. De Roubec was half-crouching against the locked door with his hatchet raised to strike, but he never delivered the blow. It had been only a second before that he had recognized his pursuer. The knowledge that it was Roger now seemed to paralyse him with fear. The blood drained from his face. His unshaven chin showed blue in the early­-morning light, making his lean visage more than ever incongruous under its woman's bonnet. His mouth dropped open, showing his yellowed teeth. It seemed that he was about to scream for mercy; but there was time neither for him to ask nor receive it. Roger leapt the last few paces that separated them. His feet landed with a thud upon the floor. At the same instant he drove his sword through the cowering man's body.'

De Roubec's eyes started from his head, a long low moan issued from his lips; suddenly he slid sideways and collapsed in a heap. Roger put his foot on the torso, gave his sword a twist, drew it out, and wiped it on the hem of the dark skirt beneath the poissarde's white apron.

For a moment he stood there frowning down upon the man who had caused Isabella and himself so much misery. They might by now be married and gloriously happy together in England had it not been for de Roubec's evil activities in Florence. Roger felt not an atom of compunction at having struck him down like a rat in a corner. To his mind the self-styled Chevalier had earned death thrice over; twice for having wrecked Isabella's life, and his own, by bringing about their separation, and a third time for having participated in the attempt to assassinate the Queen.

The sound of more firing and fresh tumult down below recalled Roger to the present, and while he was still staring at de Roubec's body an idea flashed into his mind.

It was by no means certain yet that Lafayette would succeed in clearing the palace of the insurgents. The National Guards were not to be relied on; at any moment some incident might turn them from their grudging obedience to renewed fraternization with the mob, then support of it. Should that happen the bodyguard would be over­whelmed and the Royal Family again in dire peril. Even if Lafayette's men did continue to obey him for the next few hours there was still the persistent rumour that they meant to take the King to Paris, and if they did it was certain that the Queen would refuse to be separated from him. In either case, it seemed to Roger, if things went well his presence would be redundant, but if they went badly he would stand a better chance of keeping near the Queen and, perhaps, being able to defend her in an emergency, if he disguised himself as a poissarde than if he remained in his ordinary clothes.

Hastily pulling off his coat and unbuckling his sword-belt, he began to strip de Roubec of the coarse female garments he was wearing. On stepping into the petticoats and ragged skirt he found that they came to within an inch of the floor, hiding his riding-boots. Untying the queue at the back of his neck he shook his head hard, and ran his fingers through his medium-long brown hair until it was sticking out wildly in all directions; then he put on the bonnet and pulled its frill low down over his forehead. To his grim amusement he found that de Roubec had been wearing breast-pads, so he put on this false bosom and over it the high-necked cotton blouse. His sword he picked up to carry in his hand, as most of the poissardes were armed and one of them might easily have taken it from a fallen bodyguard.

Looking out of a window he saw that the mob was now steadily being ejected from the front entrances of the palace, and decided that he had better join it; but in his new role he knew it might go hard with him if he fell foul of a group of angry Loyalists, so, hiding from time to time, he cautiously made his way down a back staircase and out through a side entrance.

As he mingled with the mob no one took any notice of him, and he gradually worked through the crush till he got to its densest part, which was swaying in a tightly packed mass that jammed the whole of the Cour de Marbre. From time to time there were sporadic shouts for the King, and in the course of an hour they steadily increased till they became a loud, imperative demand to see him.

At length he came out on the balcony, and the fickle populace cheered him; but after a few moments the cries of 'Vive le Roil' died away and the crowd began to call for the Queen.

The King retired and the Queen appeared; she led Madame Royale by the hand and carried the Dauphin in her arms. The crowd hissed and booed, then a shout went up: 'We want you without your children!: No children! No children!'

Madame Marie Antoinette withdrew. A moment later she re­appeared on the balcony alone. Her eyes were lifted to Heaven and she held her beautiful hands shoulder high, in an attitude of surrender.

Roger's heart missed a beat and he closed his eyes. The same thought had leapt into his mind as was already in hers. The conspirators had demanded her presence alone because they did not wish to risk harming the children, but intended to shoot her.

She was standing no more than twenty feet above the crowd, so an easy target, even for a pistol-shot; but her extraordinary courage seemed to stun her enemies. The vast crowd suddenly fell completely silent, then, forced to it by admiration, they began to cry, 'Vive La Reine!’

After the Queen had gone in, the crowd called for the King again. When he came out there were more cheers, but a few voices started up the cry: 'To Paris! To Paris!'

He went in, but they had him out again, a dozen times in the next hour; and every time the voices grew more insistent, until the cry became a chant: 'To Paris! To Paris! To Paris!'

Afterwards Roger heard from de la Marck that each time the King had gone in, he had flung himself down in an elbow-chair, moaning: 'I know not what to do I know not what to do!'

Lafayette asked the Queen her intentions, and she replied coldly: 'I know the fate that awaits me in Paris, but my duty is to die protecting my children at the feet of the King.'

Eventually Lafayette came out on the balcony, and announced that the King and his family would accompany the National Guard back to Paris at midday.

Expecting that the royal party would catch up with them, a part of the mob left at once, bearing on poles the heads of Messieurs Deshuttes and de Varicourt, two of the bodyguard whom they had murdered. At Sevres they halted, and seizing upon a wretched barber compelled him to undertake the gruesome task of dressing the hair on the dead heads.

By one o'clock the main contingent began to follow them to Paris. Several battalions of the National Guard, and another section of the mob, led the miles-long procession. Then came the royal coach, containing the King, Queen, Dauphin, Madame Royale, the King's young sister Madame Elizabeth, the Comte and Comtesse de Provence, and Madame de Tourzel. There followed carriages containing the royal household and then, since the National Assembly had declared its in­separability from the neighbourhood of the King, more than a hundred additional carriages filled with the deputies. The rear was brought up by sixty waggon-loads of grain seized from the municipality of Versailles, and more National Guards mingled with the last of the rioters.

Roger was now both very tired and very hungry. He had not slept for thirty hours and had had nothing to eat since a light snack taken in the palace the previous evening at a hastily arranged buffet. But as the procession moved off he elbowed, cursed, jostled and joked his way through the crush until he was within twenty feet of the royal carriage. He could get no nearer as the press was so great that it appeared to be borne on the shoulders of the sea of poissardes that surrounded it.

Craning his head above the crowd now and then, he kept as constant a look-out as he could. He had thrust his sword through a hip-high hole in his skirt, and had his pistols stuffed into his false bosom; but he realized now that though his having dressed as a poissarde had secured him a place within sight of the Queen, there was very little chance of his being able to intervene if any of the canaille attempted to harm her. Several times while the procession had been forming up lank-haired, brutal- faced ruffians had screamed out: 'Death to the Austrian harlot!', levelled their muskets at her and fired them off. Whether their aim had been bad, or others near by had knocked their muskets up, Roger could not tell, but each time the bullets had whizzed harmlessly over her head. In no instance had he been near enough to grapple with her attacker, and he knew now that if she was shot all he could hope to do was to endeavour to mark her murderer down and later exact vengeance.