The Chateau on the Lake by Charlotte Betts Page A

Has his priest listened to his last confession? It’s impossible to grasp that these momentous events are taking place less than a mile from here. When I am old my grandchildren will ask me what I recall of this long-ago day. And what will I tell them: that I sat by a sick friend’s bedside watching her sleep, while less than a mile away history was being made?
    Almost without thinking, I find myself hastily buttoning on my coat and tucking my hair inside the deeply frilled cap that has become the revolutionary wear
de rigueur
. Closing Sophie’s door behind me, I skitter downstairs and across the vast hall. The front door is locked. Nonplussed, I set off down the corridor towards the back of the house. I hear vegetables being chopped and the clatter of dishes through the open door to the kitchen and slink past before anyone notices me. The back door is unlocked and outside, at the end of the walled yard, is a bolted gate. The bolt draws back smoothly and a moment later I’m in an alley. I lose my bearings for a moment but then weave my way through a maze of lanes until I’m in the Rue de Richelieu again.
    Men and women are running past and the frosty air vibrates with their excited chatter. In the distance I hear the tramp of feet and the banging of drums, and a wave of exhilaration washes over me. I’m swept up with the hurrying throng past the Palais Royal and into Rue St Honoré, carried along by the high spirits of the crowd. The wide road is lined with
sans-culottes
and soldiers of the National Guard, while the teeming mass of people behind jostles at their backs.
    I stand on tiptoe and catch a glimpse of thirty or so militiamen marching towards us, banging their drums as if on the way to a battlefield. The clamour is deafening and I put my fingers in my ears but the sound still resonates in my head. The crowd is shouting but the beat of the drums, the stamp of marching feet and the clatter of the cavalry who ride past with swords held aloft, drown the cries.
    A woman standing next to me wearing a drab brown coat clutches at my arm and says something I can’t hear. I shake my head and she shouts in my ear.
    ‘The king’s carriage is coming!’
    I jump up to peer over the heads, my heart thudding in time with the drums. Amongst the cavalry escort I see a green coach making its way slowly along the road and the roar of the crowd swells.
    I’m knocked flying by a great bull of a man carrying a fearsome pike. He curses at me. ‘Get out of my way, Citoyenne!’
    Suddenly frightened, I drag myself to my feet from the muddy cobbles before I’m trodden underfoot by others racing past. Catching my breath, I lean against the window of an umbrella shop and glance at the patriotic display of red, white and blue silk parasols. Then I’m caught up again by the noise and the excitement and the sense of urgency, and shoulder my way through the horde rushing towards the king’s destiny. Today history is being made and I’m never, never going to forget the heart-stopping excitement of this moment.
    Battered and bruised, at last I reach a great open square surrounded by classical buildings. The Place de la Révolution. Some way off is a raised scaffold surrounded by blue-coated soldiers with revolutionary cockades in their hats, all armed with rifles and fixed bayonets.
    The square is heaving with a teeming multitude carrying pikes and guns and the noise is overwhelming. I elbow my way determinedly through the crowd and after twenty minutes or so I have a place near the front and can see the scaffold clearly now. It’s higher than the height of a man and the guillotine looms fifteen feet above it. I supress a shiver as I see four executioners waiting impassively below, with their arms folded. They wear coats in the revolutionary style and tri-coloured cockades in their three-cornered hats.
    The insistent drumming is growing faster, and louder, and in only a moment the soldiers step back to make way. The king’s carriage