“This is a beastly world, and she only wanted her piece of the beastly pie!” was what Sadie screamed as she was leaving, escorted out by two officers. No one was ever sure if she meant Marie Antoine or Mary Robespierre. As it could apply to them both.
Sadie thought she would be hanged next to Mary. She would imagine it was Marie Antoine hanging next to her. Wasn’t that always her fantasy? She wanted to be punished with Marie. When they hung with two bags on their heads, all that would be left were two dresses dancing with each other in the air.
Sadie was absolutely right that the trial would sell books. She had vendors selling the books outside the courtroom. Justine and Juliette sold the most copies. Although it was a work of fiction, Sadie gave them permission to market it as nonfiction. She was bringing Marie alive to them all. What an extraordinary life the two of them must have had. Living in the large mansion, playing cards and saying witty things to each other. They were Justine and Juliette.
But she was wrong about being hanged. Instead she was put in a carriage and driven back up the hill to the psychiatric institution, in which she would come to write the greatest books of her career. And the fact that the books were written by a woman who had been committed lent them a fabulous allure.
CHAPTER 51
Come to My Hanging and Kiss Me Good-Bye
Mary didn’t protest or care when they came to get her in her prison cell the day of her hanging. It was fall, she had turned twenty-seven, and she felt immortality all around her. She knew she had done something with her life and talents that had made the whole city notice her. She had caused half the city to go mad and help act out her revenge toward Marie. But her personal vendetta had created something beautiful and immortal. Women everywhere had come to believe they deserved more, and they had demanded more. She would not have the Antoine factory, but in the end Marie wouldn’t either. She was satisfied with all she had accomplished. She had expanded what it meant to be a woman. In the papers it said she couldn’t fully be considered a woman. And she was in agreement with this. She wasn’t a woman or a man. She was something greater than the two.
Young girls shouted her name as they brought her to the gallows.
* * *
Mary was skating on the lake once when she was very little when she fell through the ice. It was always said that if a person were to fall beneath the ice, they would never survive. But that was what made it so pleasurable to skate on top of it. It was beautiful, but it was also very dangerous.
You felt the fleetingness of life. Death was right beneath you. There was a thin line of ice between life and death.
Every child in Montreal was warned about ice. Which was a trickster. Which was out to get you. You could kiss it and your lips would be fastened to it forever. You could hold a doorknob and find your hand stuck. You thought the ice was beautiful. It allowed you to skate far, far out onto it. And then it cracked and swallowed you whole. It would bite off your ears or your nose. There was something almost medieval in its barbaric practices. It tried to pass itself off as being dignified and above everything else. But really it was savage. It liked to bury people alive. It would make the sound of young girls singing in the woods. You would go off to hear what it was. And then find yourself lost.
Mary was being very respectful of the winter the day she fell through the ice. She had on a heavy blue overcoat that had a hood sewn into the top. The coat was so heavy it always fell off the hook a few times after you tried to hang it up, like a drunkard having trouble standing up. She had three pairs of white tights on. She had a dingy white fur hat on her head. She didn’t like any winter activity other than skating.
She liked the eeriness of skating above the river. She wondered about the life that was beneath her. She imagined whales and mermaids. The idea of it gave her such a fright, it sickened her to her stomach. Fright like that was delightful. It propelled you into action. There was a touch of the masochist in everyone.
She thought she had just fallen. But when her body hit the surface, she didn’t stop falling but went right through it. She was stung by the cold. She saw all the people skating on top of her. They were all on their hands and knees trying to keep up with her journey. Did they want to save her, or was it all incredibly exciting to them? It was as though she were trapped in a mirror. Were they following her along as though she were a girl in a fairy tale who had met with a terrible fate?
Some men began to puncture and smash at the ice farther down the river. They opened a hole. They reached down and grabbed Mary. They pulled her out of the hole as though she were being born again.
She couldn’t feel any of her body anymore. She couldn’t feel her bones, although she wondered whether she had ever been able to feel her bones. She felt deep, deep in her body, all she was, was a pair of eyes staring at the world. She couldn’t hear what anyone was saying. She was glad, because it was embarrassing to fall through the ice and be rescued like that, any way you looked at it.
Then she felt the noose snap her neck.
* * *
The older women of the city began a second uprising, much more radical and widespread than that of the young women. The second wave of the revolution had spread from the factories to the city at large. Women of all ages and walks of life began to revolt. They didn’t even weigh whether Mary had the right to murder Marie. They were waiting for a catalyst to push them over the edge. The death of Mary Robespierre had made her into a martyr. All her views were validated. Suddenly Jeanne-Pauline’s pamphlets were read in a different manner. Women took them at face value. They realized Jeanne-Pauline had been dead serious.
They realized that women’s lives were in danger all over the city. And that women had a right to fight back any way they pleased.
They were tired of not being treated as though they were human beings who had a right to dreams and a right to a proper education and careers. There were fires at the university. Books were thrown into burning trash cans. Professors were chased out of their classrooms at knifepoint.
There were women who launched revolts in their own homes. They were tired of being raped and beaten by their husbands. They were so sick of their husbands drinking away their paychecks. They attacked their mates with frying pans and baking spoons and brooms.
There were maids who were fed up with being felt up in closets and having abortions and babies in infamy. They abhorred the thought of having no ownership over their bodies. They went after their masters with loaded chamber pots.