muffle my sobs—“I am thereason the people are so unhappy, the reason they wish to destroy the monarchy. And I must be the one to do whatever it takes to save us.”
I hear the scrape of Axel’s chair as he pushes himself away from the table and stands behind me. And I turn into his embrace, throwing my arms about his waist and burying my face in his torso, staining his embroidered yellow gilet with salty tears. He holds me until my sobs subside, until my resolve to confront our adversaries returns. God is watching us, but He is wise enough to understand our interaction, Axel’s and mine. He does not bear witness to a lover’s illicit passion, but to the expression of comfort that one friend provides to another in deepest distress.
“We will have much more time to practice the cryptography this summer,” I tell Count von Fersen. “The Assembly is permitting us to go to Saint-Cloud. We leave in less than two weeks.” Axel can discern the relief in my face at the knowledge that we will be able to leave Paris and escape, if only for a few months, the crucible of revolution. “The air will be more healthful for the children,” I say.
“And the climate more so for you,” he adds meaningfully, referring to the ugliness of the current political debate here in the capital.
“We will not be so closely watched there,” I say, absentmindedly playing with one of the silver buttons on Axel’s vest. There are moments when I still regard him as a lover and wish for the touch of his lips against my skin. But more and more I think of him, yes, as a friend, bien sûr , but more than that, as a kind of savior. He is providing me with the tools and the knowledge to triumph over our enemies.
“Come. Explain to me how the polyalphabetic ciphers work,” I say, settling down to the task at hand as I pick up the chart.
Axel sits beside me again and points out how each letter in thealphabet will be replaced or substituted with one of two letters in its partner pairing. “This is just an example of the enciphering. We’ll practice by writing to each other. After you master this code, we will move on. Once it becomes necessary to correspond in cipher we will have to change the codes every week. Your memory will be taxed as it never has been before.”
“And I thought learning the plays of Molière and Beaumarchais was difficult,” I jest.
I want to write Axel a letter to express how grateful I am to him for teaching me this skill. It will take me hours before I am competent enough with the polyalphabetic system to write even the simplest encrypted sentence. It is nearly dusk when I finally manage to write two words on a scrap of paper. Je t’aime .
I am exhausted from the mental exertion. My head throbs. Axel strokes my hair, letting me weep in his arms for as long as the tears will flow.
We are only a little more than six miles outside Paris but the Château de Saint-Cloud is an oasis of calm compared to the seething cauldron of hatred in the capital. “Listen!” I say to Louis.
He cups his hand to his ear. Then he shakes his head. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly!” I clap my hands with girlish glee. Gone is the constant cacophony of the rabble outside our windows, their promenading in the gardens at all hours, their insults shouted across the courtyard, cruel syllables that echo and bounce off the Tuileries’ stone façades, and the distant rumble of drums and artillery.
It has been some time since we have visited Saint-Cloud. The king purchased the palace in my name three years ago when we sought a more salubrious climate for the first dauphin. Louis Joseph was never well; the poor child’s spine was deformed and his lungs required all the healthful air we could provide. Even whenthe breezes were charming, the Château de Versailles smelled rank, the result of more than a century of hygienic neglect. The sewers never properly drained. The chimneys perpetually smoked. Countless cats and dogs marked
I hear the scrape of Axel’s chair as he pushes himself away from the table and stands behind me. And I turn into his embrace, throwing my arms about his waist and burying my face in his torso, staining his embroidered yellow gilet with salty tears. He holds me until my sobs subside, until my resolve to confront our adversaries returns. God is watching us, but He is wise enough to understand our interaction, Axel’s and mine. He does not bear witness to a lover’s illicit passion, but to the expression of comfort that one friend provides to another in deepest distress.
“We will have much more time to practice the cryptography this summer,” I tell Count von Fersen. “The Assembly is permitting us to go to Saint-Cloud. We leave in less than two weeks.” Axel can discern the relief in my face at the knowledge that we will be able to leave Paris and escape, if only for a few months, the crucible of revolution. “The air will be more healthful for the children,” I say.
“And the climate more so for you,” he adds meaningfully, referring to the ugliness of the current political debate here in the capital.
“We will not be so closely watched there,” I say, absentmindedly playing with one of the silver buttons on Axel’s vest. There are moments when I still regard him as a lover and wish for the touch of his lips against my skin. But more and more I think of him, yes, as a friend, bien sûr , but more than that, as a kind of savior. He is providing me with the tools and the knowledge to triumph over our enemies.
“Come. Explain to me how the polyalphabetic ciphers work,” I say, settling down to the task at hand as I pick up the chart.
Axel sits beside me again and points out how each letter in thealphabet will be replaced or substituted with one of two letters in its partner pairing. “This is just an example of the enciphering. We’ll practice by writing to each other. After you master this code, we will move on. Once it becomes necessary to correspond in cipher we will have to change the codes every week. Your memory will be taxed as it never has been before.”
“And I thought learning the plays of Molière and Beaumarchais was difficult,” I jest.
I want to write Axel a letter to express how grateful I am to him for teaching me this skill. It will take me hours before I am competent enough with the polyalphabetic system to write even the simplest encrypted sentence. It is nearly dusk when I finally manage to write two words on a scrap of paper. Je t’aime .
I am exhausted from the mental exertion. My head throbs. Axel strokes my hair, letting me weep in his arms for as long as the tears will flow.
We are only a little more than six miles outside Paris but the Château de Saint-Cloud is an oasis of calm compared to the seething cauldron of hatred in the capital. “Listen!” I say to Louis.
He cups his hand to his ear. Then he shakes his head. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly!” I clap my hands with girlish glee. Gone is the constant cacophony of the rabble outside our windows, their promenading in the gardens at all hours, their insults shouted across the courtyard, cruel syllables that echo and bounce off the Tuileries’ stone façades, and the distant rumble of drums and artillery.
It has been some time since we have visited Saint-Cloud. The king purchased the palace in my name three years ago when we sought a more salubrious climate for the first dauphin. Louis Joseph was never well; the poor child’s spine was deformed and his lungs required all the healthful air we could provide. Even whenthe breezes were charming, the Château de Versailles smelled rank, the result of more than a century of hygienic neglect. The sewers never properly drained. The chimneys perpetually smoked. Countless cats and dogs marked
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