The Prince Lost to Time

by Paul Doherty

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

A missing prince may provide the answers - can he be found? The Prince Lost to Time is Paul Doherty's second novel to feature Nicholas Segalla - a shadowy scholar travelling through time solving the past's greatest mysteries. Perfect for fans of Ellis Peters and C. J. Sansom. As the flames of revolution spread through France, they engulf the Royal Family, whose fairy-tale life in the magnificent palace of Versailles is shattered during the violent and bloody Reign of Terror. First to face the executioner is King Louis XVI, followed nine months later by his beautiful queen, the passionate Marie Antoinette. Several months before her death her young son and heir, Louis Charles, is torn from her arms, disappearing into the annals of history for ever. Although many presume him dead, legends spring up about the boy who would be king - did he die? If not, what happened to him? To keep his promise to the doomed queen, Segalla must brave treachery to unlock the answer. What readers are saying about Paul Doherty: ' Wonderful story' 'No one can make you feel as if you're living in different times like Paul Doherty' 'Paul Doherty's books are a joy to read '

Release date: June 11, 2013

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 228

Sample

Ann Dukthas sat outside the small café in the Rue de la Corbière; in the distance she could hear the noise and incessant car horns of the early Parisian traffic along the Champs Élysées. She sipped from her cup and congratulated herself on the previous week’s holiday in the city; all expenses paid by the mysterious Segalla.

“I could grow accustomed to this,” she murmured to herself.

She sat back in the chair, revelling in the rich smells of apple blossom, freshly brewed coffee and the smoke of Gauloise cigarettes. Next to her, a group of office workers just off the metro were now breakfasting on large bowls of coffee, bread, butter and jam. She bit into the newly baked croissant she had bought and gazed down at the guidebook next to her plate. Ann had enjoyed the week, though now she felt lonely and rather homesick for Ireland.

As always, Dr. Segalla had been rather mysterious. She had flown from Dublin to Paris, stayed at a small hotel overlooking the Bois de Boulogne, and spent most of her time being taken round Paris by a tour company which specialised in the history of the city, particularly the era of the French Revolution. To begin with, Ann’s knowledge of that period had been minimal. Indeed, most of it was gleaned from the novels of Baroness Orczy, but as the days passed, she had become more and more fascinated by those few violent years which had shattered the mould of European politics. Ann had visited Versailles where the women had marched to bring Louis XVI and his family back to Paris; the Place de la République where the guillotine had stood; the Conciergerie where the September massacres had taken place; and the ancient site of the Temple prison in which Louis XVI had spent his final days.

Ann sipped from her coffee, grimacing at its bitterness. She felt a tingle of excitement in her stomach. Such a trip could only mean that the enigmatic Segalla, the man who claimed he had been alive for centuries, was, once again, about to reveal his secret past.

Ann nodded at the waiter, who quickly refilled her cup. She sat playing with the spoon. “I can’t tell anyone,” she whispered. Ann glanced up as a rather noisy Citroen, packed with students, hurtled by. Who in Paris or London, she wondered, would believe that she had met a man who claimed to be alive when Harold was killed at Hastings? Who had witnessed the rise and fall of the great, the good and the bad? Who had involved himself in some of the bloody affrays of Western Europe? A man who, by his own confession, had met Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth of England, Catherine de Medici, Napoléon, Robespierre? She sipped at her coffee. Segalla had given her sufficient proof of his claims whilst she had done her own research. Time and again, the letters and diaries of different people, at varying times and places, all mentioned a man who slipped like a shadow across the stage of history. A man who could be traced in records separated by centuries. Hadn’t Napoléon III set up a commission here in Paris during the 1860s to investigate such a person? Yet its records had all been destroyed in a mysterious fire. Whilst the American secret service, in the months preceding the outbreak of World War II, had organized a manhunt across the states for this enigmatic character? Ann had long accepted that Segalla was neither a fool nor a charlatan. Now, she wondered why he had brought her here to Paris.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle.”

Ann, startled, stared over her shoulder.

“I am sorry,” Segalla murmured, taking the chair next to her. “I did not mean to surprise you.”

He snapped his fingers and called out for more coffee. The waiter asked if he wanted anything to eat. Segalla shook his head. “Too early.” He smiled at Ann. “For when in France, do what the French do. And they are, surely, people of the night?”

He extended his hand and Ann shook it. Segalla looked no different from the time they’d last met, some six months earlier in a London pub. He was dressed more simply yet just as elegantly in a dark blue jacket, trousers of the same colour and polished black shoes. His open-necked shirt was silk, a Celtic cross hung on a golden chain round his neck. Ann quickly guessed it must be of medieval origin and worth more than she earned in a year. In his turn Segalla stared, smiling at her, then he leaned forward.

“What are you thinking, Ann?” he teased. “Are you looking for some ancient spell or talisman?”

Ann blushed with embarrassment and looked away. Suddenly she felt rather plain in her simple, cotton dress and flat-heeled shoes. Did Segalla have girlfriends? she wondered. What did he do with his time?

“I have been abroad,” he declared, taking the cup off the waiter and sipping it carefully. “Two months in Russia.” He smiled over the rim of the cup. “We live in interesting times, Ann.”

“And how long have you been in Paris?”

“Twenty-four hours. I followed you last night as you walked along the Quai d’Orsai.” He held his hand up. “Ann, I’m sorry, but I have to be sure of you.”

Ann pulled a face and drank from her own cup.

“You enjoyed your own trip?” he asked. “The hotel is comfortable? And the tour interesting?”

“Yes, yes,” Ann replied quickly. “Though rather lonely. I am a little homesick for Ireland.”

Segalla picked up the small briefcase he had been carrying. He unlocked the clasps and placed a manila folder into Ann’s lap.

“This is the reason for your coming,” he said quietly. He stared down the street. “It wasn’t always like this,” he murmured. “Paris in springtime. I was in this city long before Baron Haussmann built his broad boulevards and tree-lined avenues.” He sipped at his coffee. “I have been to the salons,” he said softly, “to the opera house; I have danced to the tinkling tunes of Offenbach. I have also seen Paris barricaded, black smoke hanging like a coverlet above the city whilst the blood bubbled along the cobbles like wine from the press.”

Ann lifted the folder. “And this?” she asked.

“A story of treachery, Ann. Of violent, bloody murders. Of innocence exploited and the doings of cruel men.”

Segalla’s face had paled and the anger blazed in his eyes.

“How can you feel,” she asked, “so angry about events which happened so long ago?”

“The past is never behind us, Ann.” Segalla leaned over and touched her gently on the forehead. “In the dark places in all our souls, the junkroom of our memories, evil is still evil whether it was perpetrated yesterday or a thousand years ago. Like the stars, the effect of explosions millions of years ago, evil can still make its presence felt across the centuries.” He got to his feet. “But, come, let us walk the boulevards; then, this afternoon, go back to your hotel and read this part of my soul.”



Paris, October 1793 – Year 2 of the Revolution

A great, red fury descended upon the land. Some deadly mist which had sprung up in Paris and spread out across the kingdom. Men called it The Great Terror as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse made their presence felt. France had killed its own king, driven him in a carriage to the great square his own father had built. There, in the presence of the angry mob, they had dragged the descendant of Saint Louis, Christ’s own anointed, onto the scaffold as the drumbeat of the National Guard rumbled like a clap of thunder. Executioner Sanson had seized Louis, his former king, tied him to the plank then fastened the heavy, wooden collar round Louis’s neck. The crowd had fallen silent. The drumbeat had increased, then Sanson pulled the cord and the sharp, twinkling blade fell like the angel of death. Louis’s neck was so fat that, instead of immediately slicing through it, the blade’s penetration had been comparatively slow and the King’s screams were heard even above the drumbeat. The anointed head tipped into the basket and a young guardsman seized it and went to the edge of the scaffold. He shook the bloody head but the crowd just gazed back in a terrible, awestruck silence. The young soldier remained unabashed, dangling the dripping head as he shouted, “Vive la République! Vive la République!”

At last the shout was taken up: Minute by minute the voices multiplied until the soldier’s shout was repeated a thousand times as the hats of hundreds of spectators were thrown into the air in sheer exultation at the death of poor, fat, incompetent Louis. Once the grisly spectacle was over, the King’s corpse was taken to a city cemetery where it was placed in a wooden, battered casket – a pauper’s coffin – the severed head jammed unceremoniously between the legs. Even in death the King was deprived of the usual courtesies: Abbe Edgeworth his confessor was forbidden to attend the royal interment. Instead, two state priests, who had taken a vow of loyalty to the state rather than to God, chanted the office of the dead. The lid was fixed and the coffin was lowered into a narrow, deep grave and covered with lime. Not for Louis XVI a ceremonial burial at Saint-Denis amongst his ancestors but, as Jacques La Rue, ex-priest and leader of the militant enrages had declared, Louis Capet, former King of France, had received no more than he deserved.

Nevertheless, many whispered that the King had been a good but weak man. Had he not been anointed with holy chrism? Was he not Christ’s vicar on earth? And had he not suffered, albeit bravely, a horrid, unjust death? As if in response, these whisperings grew to a murmur and then, in the Catholic west of France, an enraged roar of outrage, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse arrived. Famine appeared; the weather turned foul; the rains fell and the corn turned to a rotten blackness as if the earth itself protested at Louis’s death. The price of bread rose sharply. Flour became as rare as gold and the paper money of revolutionary France, the Assignat, was of so little value, the poor used it to paper the cracks and holes in their miserable hovels. The rulers of Europe also protested. England, Holland, Austria, Prussia and Russia mobilised their armies. In the Channel and the Bay of Biscay, English men-of-war prowled, snapping the chains of France’s commerce and making the starvation in the cities worse. To the north and east, the rulers of Europe massed their troops and crossed France’s border: They intended not only to crush the revolutionary movement in Paris but curb France’s power once and for all. Those wild men who dominated the Convention and Commune of Paris, responded with a levée en masse, only to find their General Dumouriez defect to the enemy.

Meanwhile the revolutionaries’ attack on the Catholic church finally provoked rebellion in the west. The radicals in Paris responded, sending agents to cities such as Lyons to collect priests “in baskets to shoot, hang or drown in the rivers.” At the same time, in the Place de la République in Paris, Madame Guillotine became even busier. All those who were suspected of even thinking treason were sent in batches to be executed. Fouquier-Tinville, President of the Tribunal, sat throughout the night, listening to cases, his sallow, death-head features impassive under his broad-brimmed, black hat with its plume of pure jet. Fouquier-Tinville, a good family man, would listen attentively and then scratch in his ledger, Mort sans phrase – Death with no mitigation.

Across the city in his lodgings, Fouquier’s master, Maximilien Robespierre, drew up lists and drafted instructions, increasing the severity of his drive to purify the body politic of any threat, either at home or abroad, to his Great Revolution. Those who opposed him could only watch and wait. When dusk fell, the Paris mob returned to its taverns and shops; the guillotine was no longer busy and royal sympathisers would slip along the Rue de Temple to stare up at the great, grim façade of the former headquarters of the ancient order of the Templars. These sympathisers, fearful of the myriad of Robespierre’s secret agents and spies, would shelter under the lime trees. They would either peer over the walls or through half-open gates, across the garden to where the donjon of the Templars stood. This donjon, more than fifty metres high, was crowned with battlements. On each corner the donjon was flanked by tall, rounded towers and, despite the gardens and greenery, looked a black, sinister building, harbouring secrets and mysteries of its own. At the time of Robespierre’s rule, it was also the final shrine for royalist sympathisers. Louis XVI may be dead, but in the Temple were lodged his queen, the fair-haired Austrian Marie-Antoinette, her young daughter Marie-Thérèse and, more importantly, the dead King’s only surviving son, the Dauphin Louis Charles. In secret houses throughout Paris, supporters of the royal family met and plotted on what they could do to free the Queen and liberate her children. A visit to the Temple soon dashed their hopes. The palace was secured, padlocked and guarded by the most fervent members of the National Guard.

In the west of France, the leaders of the royalist armies listened to these reports and despaired. If the King was dead and his son in prison, what hope for the future?

Robespierre, sitting in his stark, whitewashed chamber, heard of these royalist aspirations. He refused sleep, even food and drink, because of the dangers they posed. He sat up at night stroking the quill of his pen against his cheek as he looked for a way out of the impasse. The Dauphin and his sister, Robespierre concluded shrewdly, posed no real problem: children were mere pawns. But their mother, the Austrian woman? Robespierre’s bleak face broke into a smile. She was another matter. By early autumn 1793, Robespierre reached his decision and petitions began to appear from the Paris Commune and the Convention that the Austrian woman be brought to trial to answer for her crimes against the people. Two of Robespierre’s most insidious agents, Hébert and Chaumette, went to the Temple to begin their interrogation. Eventually the Queen, screaming and protesting at being removed from her children, was lodged in the Conciergerie and put on trial.

On 15 October 1793, Marie-Antoinette, “Capet’s woman,” was found guilty of treason and crimes against the people. Sentence followed swiftly. On the evening of 15 October, Marie-Antoinette was informed that she would die early the next day, so she prepared for her last evening on earth. Her cell in the Conciergerie was clean but bleak; a straw-filled mattress, a table, a chair and, more importantly, quills, ink and parchment to write her last letter. Marie-Antoinette, now a shadow of her former glory, sat at the table and prepared to write to her close friend and sister-in-law Marie-Élisabeth. She felt herself shiver and picked up the cracked mirror she had smuggled from the Temple.

“I have to be brave,” she whispered to her reflection. “I was born a queen. I have lived as a queen and I will die one.”

She studied her reflection and her courage faltered: Her once golden hair was now grey, unwashed and ungroomed. She stroked the mirror carefully. She had no need to worry about that; tomorrow her hair would be cut and what was left would be hidden under a cap, her neck unprotected, ready for the guillotine’s kiss. She pinched her pallid cheeks; she wished she had eaten more so she could present a brave, full face to the mob, yet her poor body had betrayed her. Ever since she was a girl she had suffered severe menstrual pains. Now, in the Conciergerie, these pains had become so pronounced she had fainted twice in a single day, being forced to have recourse to a soothing potion containing lime flower water and Hoffman’s drops.

Marie-Antoinette rubbed her hand across her stomach. She placed the mirror back on the table and listened intently to the sounds of the darkened gallery outside her cell. The guards had been changed at irregular intervals because of the many supposed plots to free her. Marie-Antoinette put her face in her hands. So many schemes, such subtle stratagems and cunning ploys, but they had all failed. All except one! Marie-Antoinette’s head came back and, for a few seconds, her face was transformed by her old brilliant smile until she remembered the spy-holes in the walls and doors and schooled her features accordingly. She must act the part. She must never betray a hint of her plan; her life was over but her son’s must go on. The Revolution would pass. Already it was beginning to destroy itself, Robespierre’s party divided, becoming involved in a bitter civil war.

Marie-Antoinette dipped the quill into the ink and prepared to write, then she paused, nervously stroking the side of her neck. Would she die bravely? Or would she weep? Marie-Antoinette shook her head.

“I have no tears left,” she whispered to herself.

Would she scream abuse at the crowds? Marie-Antoinette recalled her once fiery temper and vowed to keep a still tongue in her head, even though her blood boiled at the accusations levelled against her. She put the pen down and began to restlessly pace up and down her cell, clenching and unclenching her fists. She had expected the allegations: conspiring with her relatives in Austria; waste of public money. But then Robespierre’s creature Hébert had insinuated foul, devil-inspired crimes. How she had taught her own son to practise self-abuse. And how she and Madame Élisabeth had made the boy lie between them and taught him that sacred act which should only take place between man and wife. How the blood had beat in her head when she heard that, but she had kept to her vow and simply replied, “I have no knowledge of the incidents Hébert speaks of.”

Marie-Antoinette stopped pacing up and down. She could feel her stomach churning and forced herself to take deep breaths to calm her beating heart and soothe the bubbling of her blood.

“For four years,” she whispered to herself hoarsely. “For four years I have been in a nightmare.”

She sat down, her mind going back to the Paris mobs swarming through the Tuileries, and that desperate ride to Varennes when she and her husband had so nearly escaped across the frontier. She picked up her pen. She was to die and she must prepare for that, but her line would continue. Surely they would not hurt her little girl? Perhaps royalist sympathisers amongst the exiles would bargain for her release? And her son? Marie-Antoinette lifted her head suddenly. The spy-hole in the door had been opened and, in the shadowy light of the candles, she glimpsed the eye watching her intently. Were they suspicious? she wondered. Did that creature Robespierre and those maggots from hell, Hébert and Chaumette, suspect? Marie-Antoinette put her head down recalling an age in another lifetime before these horrors began. How Louis had furnished a room, covering each wall with mirrors; she and her ladies-in-waiting had gone in, laughing and joking, dancing and spinning, becoming so dizzy it was difficult to distinguish between the reflection and the real person. If Robespierre ever searched for the truth, the same might happen to him. Marie-Antoinette stared down at the letter. Madame Élisabeth and the Englishwoman were the only living persons who knew the truth about her son. Would others find out what she had planned? She recalled Nicholas Segalla, that mysterious, enigmatic man who’d warned her about the coming Revolution.

“If only . . .” she whispered, then closed her eyes.

Somehow Segalla would return, the imminence of death informed her of that, but would he discover her secret?

“Oh,” she prayed, “please God, let my son live, not reign or rule, but just live in peace!”

Marie-Antoinette heard a key turn in the lock and looked up, as composed and regally as she could. Fouquier-Tinville, a pale man with thick, black eyebrows, low forehead and jutting chin, came into the cell. He and Hébert, who followed, wore black from head to toe; their rounded hats, turned up at the front, were topped by tall black plumes held together by red, white and blue.

Marie-Antoinette gazed bleakly at them and, in a gesture of contempt started to drum her long fingers on the table as if she were back in the Tuileries playing the clavichord. “What do you want?” she snapped.

“Citizeness,” Hébert replied, “in a few hours you die. Do you have any requests?”

“Yes, to be left alone.”

“You accept the verdict of the court?” Fouquier-Tinville asked.

Marie-Antoinette stared at his death’s-head face. “What verdict? What court?” she asked.

Fouquier’s fingers clawed the air like some bird of ill omen. He gestured down at the table. “You are making a will?”

“I have no possessions,” Marie-Antoinette replied.

“Then what are you writing?”

“A letter to my friend Madame Élisabeth.” Marie-Antoinette’s face softened. “You’ll see it is delivered?”

“We are not your messenger boys, Citizeness.”

“In God’s eyes I am still your queen,” Marie-Antoinette retorted.

Hébert smirked. “Then tomorrow you can converse with your God about that.”

“No ot. . .