La Guerre des Mondes – Part One
King Louis XVI stood at the window of his study, staring down at the crowd of bloodthirsty Parisians clustered around the gates to the palace ground. The young monarch looked pale and sickly – as well he might given the unhappy circumstances. While unenviable, the King’s predicament could be worse. He still commands the loyalty of his three most capable agents; the brilliant Andre Carnot, the dour but dangerous Marcel Cochen-Saucisson & the impulsive rogue Rugue de la Pumpernickel.
“Do my people forget all that I have done for them?” Louis mused regretfully.
“What was that exactly?” Rugue asked innocently, turning his hungry gaze from the basket of fruit arranged artfully on the King’s desk.
Marcel cast a warning glance towards Rugue and the younger man stilled his reckless tongue. Satisfied, the executioner returned to the task of honing the blade on his father’s axe, the wicked edge of which had claimed the lives of thousands of the throne's enemies over the last hundred years. The steady scrape of whetstone against metal did nothing to diminish the mounting tension within the room.
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Meanwhile, upstairs in the royal bedchamber, Lisette Martine de Cholet assisted the Queen with her frantic packing. One could not flee Paris without looking spectacular! Dresses and corsets littered the floor as the two noblewomen filled their travelling bags with attire suitable for several days’ rough and speedy travel towards the German border. Tears streaked the Queen’s face, making her powder run and giving her the appearance of a sad clown caught in an unexpected shower. Lisette may have laughed were she but a little crueler and not herself teetering upon the verge of hysteria. Had someone told her a year ago that she would be forced to abandon her aristocratic trappings and flee the capital in fear of her life, she would have tittered behind her fan and thought them mad. It did not seem so mad a prospect now, as the mob beyond the walls of the palace grew and the volume of their shouting increased.
“My lady,” Lisette ventured, “Perhaps it is time for us to depart?”
Queen Marie Antoinette joined Lisette by the window and the two women surveyed the scene at the gate with some anxiety. Several men of the Royal Guard still held the gate, but even in their resplendent armour, they seemed too few to hold back the clamouring horde that raged beyond the gates. Lisette found herself thinking of Denis de Sevigny, the handsome Captain of the Royal Guard, whose smouldering gaze lingered upon her whenever their paths happened to cross… surely her paramour would not allow harm to befall either his royal charges or the woman for whom he so lustily longed? A sudden gunshot snapped Lisette from her romantic reverie. A single man had begun climbing the gate, the intricately wrought iron providing ample handholds for his brave ascent. He cried out and tumbled away as one of the King’s men discharged his musket into the man’s chest. With cries of outrage, more men rushed forward and began clambering over the gate. More shots rang out, but the horde was too many and the King’s men too few. Blackpowder spent, the guardsman shouldered their rifles and drew steel.
“I think perhaps you are right….” the Queen said, clutching a pale and tremulous hand to her breast, “If you would be so kind Lisette, please advise my husband that I have finished packing.”
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“Perhaps I could put on the crown and act as a decoy!” Rugue suggested enthusiastically, “I could lead those smelly fellows a merry dance while you escort the King to safety, then meet up with you later to toast our success over a fine red wine and selection of cheeses.”
“You are not wearing my crown!” Louis snapped.
“I’d give it back!” Rugue cried, but the King was not to be persuaded.
“My bloodline was selected by God to rule this troubled nation and my crown is a symbol of that sacred trust, it is not some costume piece to adorn any unworthy head!”
Rugue scowled and stormed from the room to sulk privately. At the doorway, he almost collided with Lisette as she hurried in to find the King.
“Your Majesty,” she cried, “We must away! The gates cannot hold for much longer!”
As though to credit her dire prophecy, a terrible roar arose from the grounds as the palace gates swung inward and a great wave of oppressed humanity trampled across the palace’s neat lawns and tidy shrubberies. Several of the revolutionaries must have possessed pistols, as the glass of the study windows exploded inwards, showering the King in glittering shards. In a moment, Marcel had seized hold of the King’s collar and was manhandling the young monarch out of the line of fire.
“Are you injured, your Majesty?”
“Thus far, only my pride.”
“Not if those bâtards have anything to say about it.” Rugue snapped, whipping his rapier from its sheath, “Past time for us to be off, I think. We can reach the carriage house if we cut through the ballroom.”
“Mademoiselle de Cholet, please be so good as to fetch the Queen,” Marcel said, “Rugue, go with her. I will protect the King! Where the diable is Andre?”
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Andre Carnot had been working in his office when the first gunshots sounded – or at least that was the impression he hoped to give anyone who entered suddenly. In reality, the young man’s thoughts had wandered – as they did with pleasant frequency – to Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, the young, attractive and bored wife of his esteemed mentor, Antoine Lavoisier. Had those all too brief moments of intimacy between them been worth his academic exile from the university? His musings were rudely interrupted by a crash from the floor below, followed by the rumble of heavy footsteps along the corridor beyond his office.
“Keep the noise down!” Andre roared, throwing open the door, “Some of us are trying to work!”
The King gaped back at him, clearly unused to be addressed in such a boorish manner. Marcel Cochen-Saucisson stared levelly at the young scientist, his bloody axe splattering gore onto the polished tiles.
“The palace is under assault, Andre, stop playing with your toys and come with us.”
“Assault?! Toys?!” Andre spluttered, “These are not toys, you humourless butcher! These are priceless antiquities from a bygone age of invention! Cunningly wrought weapons of such deviousness they make your meat cleaver look like a butter knife!”
Marcel arched one pencil-thin eyebrow.
“Weapons, you say? Tell me more.”
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Ben Poisson had been a fisherman for most of his adult life, scratching a meagre living from the muddy banks of the Seine. He caught enough to survive and sometimes had a little extra to sell at market or trade for a few modest luxuries (like soap). He had never met the King and had nothing against the man personally, but when the Jacobins began talking about how the monarchy was oppressing the common man, he realised that; yes, actually, he did feel quite oppressed! Ben put down his rod, took up the sturdy club he used to bludgeon particularly truculent trout and joined the mob gathering outside the walls of Toulouse Palace. When the gates opened, Ben was swept along with the rest of the crowd, though the gardens and in through the doors of the palace proper.
“La mort du roi!” the crowd chanted and Ben Poisson chanted with them, “Longue vie a la France!”
“Find the King! Find the Queen! Take them alive but kill anyone who stands in your way!” cried a man in a tattered greatcoat, his eyes bright with the inner fire of fanaticism. He pointed to the huddle of thugs in which Ben Poisson found himself standing. “You men! Search upstairs! Do not let those Royalist curs slip away! Lord Robespierre has promised 1000 francs to the man who brings him the King!”
One thousand francs would buy a lot of modest luxuries and proved ample incentive to propel Ben upstairs in search of the royal couple.
“Look there!” Ben cried, noting that the doors to the grand ballroom stood ajar. A curious metal doll lay propped against the portal and as the revolutionaries approached, the strange figure rose jerkily and turned to face them. Ben uttered an old sailor’s curse in surprise as he noticed the intricate clockwork innards within the doll’s chest grinding against one another.
“Auto-destruction imminente,” the doll said, “Baiser le cul au revoir.”
BOOM!!!
Ben Poisson had a moment to reflect that his simple life as a fisherman had not actually been all that bad before the clockwork man exploded, incinerating him and the men beside him in a ball of hungry flame.
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“That automaton was hundreds of years old!” Andre Carnot lamented as the explosion shook the palace, “It was one-of-a-kind!”
“Cheer up Andre,” Rugue said, glancing over his shoulder to where a sheet of fire now blocked the entrance to the ballroom, “You’ve bought us enough time to get clean away!”
Suddenly, the windows ahead shattered inward, as the revolutionaries threw ladders against the walls of the palace and began spilling into the ballroom ahead of the Royalists!
“Surrender now and you will be given a fair trial by the Committee for Public Safety!” cried a man in a tattered greatcoat, “Resist and you will be summarily executed!”
“I don’t suppose you’ve got another of those one-of-a-kind autowotsits?” Rugue asked hopefully.
To be continued….
