Read Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (P.S.) for Free Online Page A

from hunters.
    Just yesterday, I was riding, confined, in the glass coach through the forest.
    I think of my three new aunts, like three good fairies, plump and perhaps soft, but I do not know, for they did not embrace me. My thoughts retract inward, like the sensitive eyestalks of snails. When I close my eyes to the visible world, immediately, the moon has gone back to the sky.
    I think of Charlotte and how she made the coach stop. She was leaving Vienna to go to Naples and live a married life, but she stopped the coach so she could descend and hug me farewell once more. When we embraced, our bodies melted together, and I could not tell which was Charlotte and which was I.
    To my surprise, behind our hats, she kissed me right on the lips and whispered I will always love you best, my beautiful little sister.
    The Dauphin will close his eyes and I will close mine and then I will feel his lips covering mine.
    To my sleepy mind, Sister Thérèse Augustine appears. She turns around, fluttering away from me like a raven down the corridor of the convent. That snowy Saint Nicholas’s Day when I was only seven, half a lifetime away, I saw ravens walking on the snow, leaving their prints behind. With a rush of wings, they all rise up together and fly toward the western mountains. Hold on tight, Marie —the wintry mountains whisper. The sled rushes over the snow as I watch till the birds are mere black specks against the thin blue sky. I blink, and they are gone. Hold on, Marie Antoinette.

I N THE D EPTHS
     
    A woman with a hunched back stands under a tree; now she turns her face, ravaged with poverty, toward me. Is that Adelaide, Sow, or Grub, or Sister Thérèse Augustine standing beside a chestnut tree? Close to her cheek hangs a clear glass globe suspended from a branch. The globe transforms to glassy apple red and then to lemon yellow. Swiftly, the woman reaches for the fruit of the tree. “No!” I call out and know, in terror, that she is Mother Eve and not the Blessed Virgin. She snatches the globe from the tree and bites savagely into it. It shatters in her teeth, and yellow glass shards fall from her lips. Her mouth is full of blood.
    When I gnash my teeth and cry out, some attendant, some stranger, as though she waited at my door for just this purpose, opens my chamber and rushes to hold me in her arms. Fear not, little one, she whispers. Do I only dream that comfort has come—is she too a dream?
    Her face seems to be that of the Princesse de Lamballe.
    But how could she ever have found me here?
    When I awake, I am dressed, and I ride all day as though suspended inside a clear glass globe. The world surrounds me, but I am separate from it. No clocks tick, but I arrive at La Muette, am undressed, then dressed again for festivities.

A M ISTAKE AT THE C HÂTEAU DE L A M UETTE
     
    It is a supper party , and lightning glimmers around the edges of the drawn curtains. They are a heavy yellow damask, and no light passes through them, but around them leak the silver flashes of a storm, though it is far away. The thunder is a mere low growl, as though lions as far away as Africa were roaring.
    Although I feel hungry, it seems impossible to do more than nibble from the edges of the elaborate dishes endlessly presented. I wish for two simple apples in a blue bowl. Too many eyes are upon me. At every moment, it is incumbent on me to appear engaged in pleasant conversation, else they may think I’m a dolt.
    Silent and morose, across the table, sits Louis Auguste, but I know that he is only timid and perhaps resentful that he must endure another party that makes him feel caged and miserable. I smile at him encouragingly. He looks down, as though embarrassed. Still he could not fail to note my friendliness, and that with me, he may remain as silent as he pleases. Nothing will discourage me in my attempt to be amiable.
    It is a kindness to me to let me gain familiarity with the Dauphin through these festivities so I do not feel I am