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unhappy no matter where they are. No matter who they’re with and what they have. Or maybe that’s just my talent.
    I pretend to fall asleep. Jules isn’t talking to me anymore anyway.

Aurélie du Bessancourt—October 6, 1789
    The market women marched on Versailles yesterday. They killed two guards, relieved them of their heads, and mounted their grisly trophies on pikes. “Like apples on a spit,” Guillaume told the servants gathered around him in the front hall, and a gasp went up, a frantic chorus of rustling aprons and whispered oaths.
    We were not supposed to hear, my sisters and I, but we stood at the crack in the music room’s doors and listened.
    Guillaume had been at Versailles, waiting to deliver a message from Father, when news came of the market women’s approach. He claimed to have seen the queen herself running for the hall of mirrors with the young dauphin. He said that the royal family had fled to Paris, that Louis XVI was as good as headless already.
    My sleeves stick uncomfortably to my wrists. My mouth is dry. I hurry my sisters out the other side of the music room,and I try to distract them with fumbled card tricks, but I cannot focus and I drop the deck. Father has already left the château, gone down to the Palais du Papillon. Again a casket was sent to Mama, an invitation asking her to join him in the depths. Again I intercepted it:
    My darling, it said, the writing splattered and uneven, ink beads on an ink thread, as if Father paused many times during the forming of each letter to consider the next.
    It is no longer safe to remain in the château. I have heard whispers, received letters. A storm brews in Paris that will rain blood and ruin on France as it has not seen in a hundred years. Soon there will be looting and death and chaos. The king will be beheaded and his wife as well. A wave of human filth will flow across the land. But you have nothing to fear, ma chérie. For such a catastrophe as this I built the Palais du Papillon: so that no matter what terrors befall the world, our way of life shall go on, the beauty and tranquillity of our grand culture preserved forever. I promise you, you shall have every comfort in the palace. You will be safe, my treasure. You will be cared for.
    Your husband,
    Frédéric du Bessancourt
    But Mama would not go. I had heard her pleading withthe guards he had sent for her, heard her anguished sobs, so desperate and grating, I could hardly imagine them coming from one so small.
    â€œWhy?” I asked her again this morning when I caught her alone in the upstairs gallery. “Mama, why will we not go to the palace? We will only be there a short while, surely. What has frightened you?”
    She answered me this time, taking my hands and squeezing them until I thought my fingers might snap. “The servants,” she said. “They have such dreadful faces.”
    She might as well have held her tongue for all that helped me.

6
    Our convoy pulls into Péronne a little after 11:30 A.M. I peer up at the buildings as we drive down the main street, at the ivy climbing the brick facades, the boulangeries and pâtisseries and fleurists . Freezing rain drips off every mansard roof and verdigris-touched gutter. A woman in a vivid red head scarf turns to watch our convoy’s approach, then looks away quickly. It’s so quiet.
    I expect us to park at the tiny hotel, but we don’t. The cars continue down the street, gliding silently. We leave Péronne behind. After about twenty minutes, we turn through a pair of tall iron gates and down a country road. Security cameras swivel as we pass. I look back and see the gates closing behind us.
    I tap the glass that separates us from the driver and Dorf. No answer. I look at Jules. He’s fallen asleep, knees pulled up to his chin.
    I watch the trees slide by, bare and wintry. The road is long and utterly straight. Our convoy slices down it, sleek black cars