“Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l’ai pas fait exprès.” These are my last moments on earth and soon by the grace of God, I will soon reside in my rightful place in heaven and my soul will be redeemed of the accusations levied against me, a divine queen.

 

The crowd is baying. I will not permit myself to blush at the curses and filth they are directing at me. A guard, with rough peasant features and a burnished helmet two sizes too big, dares to touch me. He takes me by the elbow and directs me to the wooden steps, painted a deep red by the spilled life force of my comrades and cousins, glistening in this cold autumn sun. I feel the slick pools of clotted blood beneath my worn silk slippers and even as I hitch the loose skirts of my rough chemise in a last vain attempt at dignity, I see the red tide creeping up from my hem, as if Death itself cannot wait a few moments more.

 

I feel as though I may swoon, but I must not allow that. I must show serenity and authority at all times, even now when the world has gone mad and it surely must be the end of days. I have prayed to understand how this can be my reward for a lifetime of servitude and devotion. I am still queen. I am still married to France and yet this is how my people repay me.

 

Even now, as I hold my head up high, I cling on to some hope that I may be saved. A valiant musketeer perhaps, or an out of breath herald clutching a decree and shouting that a terrible mistake has happened, that they still love me. I long for a hopeful roar from the midst of these growling dogs and the sound of sharpened steel swords as my saviours clash and fight their way towards me and sweep me away on horseback, like our desperate flight to Varennes. But no one comes. From the corner of my eye I see a vile, toothless hag gumming some bread, jeering and urging the executioner on.

 

“L’Autre-chienne!” I hear the voices screech. Ostrich ‘Austrian’ bitch, they laugh at the old, tired joke. Pray God they are not the final words I hear in this world. How I wish for my Louis-Auguste now, God rest his precious soul. My heart is pounding and I can feel the tremor in my hands; I must not show my fear to the people. They are going to do to me what they did to my beloved husband. They wish to cut off my head, let my regal blood spill and mingle with the rest here, to be licked by dogs, collected by witches. They are cowards.

 

They have found me guilty of treason. Treason! I, a child of the Holy Roman Empress. I, Dauphine of France, Queen of France and Navarre. I, who have borne our empire four divine children, lost more and laboured hard and in agony as Eve was ordered to do, to show penitence for her womanhood. I, who have used my beauty to display our nation’s wealth, to give comfort to our poor and to show our strength against our enemies. How has it come to this when I was so loved?

 

My halfwit judges accused me of taking many lovers, of being like a bitch on heat in my palaces, of lying with my ladies, of orgies in Versailles. It is true my husband had other priorities than bedding me. But though we married as strangers, I loved my kind, sweet husband and cousin. I fancy I can hear him calling me now as each step takes me closer to him in the Kingdom of Heaven. “Antonia, Antonia Maria” he would cry out as I worshipped him as a queen should, as I gave him the pleasures a great king wants. And they call me adulteress, when I was on my knees giving succour to France. It was the only way I could rouse his passion, yet I did not complain. How proud he was when I finally gave him his first son.

 

The pale sunlight catches the sharp blade of the guillotine and nearly blinds me as I take another step. I will not falter or show discomfort to my people. Let them see grace and divinity as they send France to the slaughter. Let my blood soak into their fields and soil and nourish the crops to feed these ungrateful sots their loaves of bread. “Brioche, Brioche!” They torment me with the lies that have become truth.  It is as if they can read my final thoughts. They think my death with sate their hunger, but I know it won’t.

 

They accuse me of loving my jewels and wealth above them. They find me guilty of not loving them, of not understanding the common lives my people lead. How wrong, how wrong. I try and quell the lump in my throat as I remember my childhood garden, of playing with my many brothers and sisters and my good friend Hans, the gardener’s son, as we played in our smock dresses and rolled in the freshly cut grass, our puppies and rabbits playing principle parts in our little games. I didn’t know what to be lonely was; nothing can prepare you for the loneliness you endure as queen, surrounded by so many, yet able to trust so few. Sweet Princesse de Lamballe and my dearest, funny Yolande were my only friends, yet they too have been massacred. Is it their blood I am walking in now?

 

My head is filled with the vulgar drumbeat of the soldiers lining the avenue. Sweet music it is not and I think of how I have missed my instruments at the Temple prison these past months. No harp, not even allowed to sing and I think of how a world that does not permit music is surely descended into hell.

 

I calculate there must be tens of thousands of people here now, wishing to see the gory spectacle of their queen’s demise. They wish to see my head paraded amongst them, my swollen tongue lolling from blue lips and lifeless eyes bulging as at the moment of death.  Again, I ask, how has it come to this? I do not understand; they cannot explain. In Paris all those years ago, I charmed fifty thousand people with my dazzling beauty and wit. They said my aquamarine blue eyes and golden hair were that of an angel and I did not disagree. I am their divine queen.

 

They loved me for it and then hated me for it. Did they want me to appear to them in rags? I invested my money in pomade, rouge, the finest clothes from Rose Bertin so they could see me in my queenly state, so they could see I was paying homage and due respect to France.  I had to lead by example. It was my duty to be the finest, the most magnificent at court. They expected it of me. Versailles tailors would hold their breath waiting for what fashions I would inspire. I am more than just a woman, or even the Archduchess I was born. I married a king – I became their country in body and soul before God. The Seine flows through my veins even now and it will be these iron-rich rivulets that spurt from my severed neck and choke them.

 

A mouldy crust of brioche lands before me. I step over it, as daintily as I can on this gruesome stage. “Eat that, enjoy your final meal. Chienne,” spits the dirty man who threw it. I catch his eye, he looks away.

 

I tried to bring harmony between my beloved Austria and France, although my husband disapproved and wouldn’t (or couldn’t) answer my brother Leopold’s pleas for help. I tried to modernise our stuffy, elitist traditions, make our court fairer and more equal and yet this bloodshed has become the people’s revolution. This isn’t revolution. It is carnage; it is a disease that has spread into the weak minds of the starving. I wonder how I could have missed the extent of Mesdame’s poisonous influence for surely she must have poisoned my people against me.

 

In gaol I heard from the wide-eyed young girl who’d bring my meals to me, the wild rumours that I’d demanded the walls of my chateau at Versailles to be plastered in diamonds and gold. How I laughed. What use would jewels be to a wall when I could display them as a queen must, allowing the light to catch them and mesmerise my subjects as I moved and inspired the awe that a queen is duty bound to do. What need had I to steal a necklace, another one of their ludicrous charges against me, when I had chests of jewels and the riches of the colonies to choose from? They are vipers. Where were the gossiping old men when I visited the peasant workshops of the villages? I’d put on a simple dress and straw hat and listen to their troubles, give them my own coin and try and persuade my husband to change the taxes for the mills, yet no one remembers that. But of course, my devotion does not create a scandal, or grounds for hatred, so is forgotten, like a dandelion clock caught on a spring breeze.

 

My people, my judges and murderers, accused me of gambling our fortunes away as the people starved in their fields. Of extravagance when I built my little toy hamlet. What was I to know about the country’s coffers? Was I to have no amusement? Can a young woman not play dice with handsome barons and ducs from Paris? This was my politics – charming the aristocracy as my husband took to the hunt and swore allegiances with our continental neighbours. I had so little power. I was keeping the enemy from within at bay. Or so I thought.

 

My Louis would come to me so troubled as yet more reforms were passed, as parliament dared to defy him over and over. How scared I was as I realised my little ‘enfants de France’ who had grown in the safety of my womb were in need of protection against the very people they had been born to serve. Their father became so lousy with malady his ministers accused him of drinking his own wine cellars dry! My poor, beloved, devout Louis. I tried to help, to stop France’s fortunes running into the gutters from the sewers and bowels of court, as he toed and froed unable to decide what to do. I would not leave him. He was my refuge. Yet still they blamed me, a devoted mother, for their own ruination.

 

“I must go like an actress, exhibit myself to a public that may hiss me,” I’d said when the bakers’ bread rose only in price, in tandem with tempers. Even as France’s heir, my darling boy, lay dying, I thought of my people’s empty stomachs, with only anger and a need for blame filling them. And yet still they hated me and rioted like pigs in Paris.

 

Even as the stench of fire and hacking anguish filled my nostrils in its mocking creep towards my palace home, I truly, naively, thought the madness would pass. Yet here I am. I feel the cool breeze on my shorn head, my locks gone, roughly taken by the prison barber and his knife as dawn broke this morning. It is pleasant to feel the kiss of God’s breath upon my head. It calms me to think of how soon I will be in his embrace.

 

I kneel, resting my exposed neck on the groove that is pockmarked with the blade’s cuts. I look up at the man who will kill me. I don’t even know his name yet feel sorry for stepping on his foot a moment ago. One last thing to feel guilty for. “Excuse me Sir, I didn’t mean to do it.”

 

The blade falls.