Fifteen days

June 28, 1789.

André and Oscar arrived at the Jarjayes mansion at the same time, but while she climbed the stairs seeking refuge in her room, he quickly headed to his quarters to change clothes, aware that Oscar would need him to prepare her bath and everything necessary to relax after such a brutal day.

Although he had been working in parallel for the Jarjayes household and for the State for two years as part of Company B of the French Guard, he felt his life hadn’t changed much. He remained Oscar’s shadow, her unconditional supporter. For him it made no difference whether the setting was Versailles, the mansion, the army, or the street... Wherever she went, he would follow, no matter where or what he had to do to remain by her side. If the general hadn’t asked him to enlist in the French Guard to look after Oscar, he surely would have found a way to be near her, even if he’d had to enlist on his own.

That day, June 28, 1789, had been especially challenging for the French Guard. Oscar had rebelled against the crown, refusing to follow orders to attack the people’s representatives in the National Assembly. Although things had apparently gone well, André was certain the situation would bring some kind of consequence, given that Oscar had declared herself in rebellion and had aggravated her situation by fleeing the arrest they had imposed on her. Not only had she declared herself insurgent, but she had dragged Major Girodelle, commander of the Royal Guard, behind her, who had been forced to withdraw his troops, unable to attack the woman he visibly still loved. André didn’t know what would come next, but he did know two things: that it would be terrible, and that he would be there anyway, even if he had to follow her to the scaffold.

He had finished tying his cravat, the last piece of his uniform, when the unmistakable sound of General Jarjayes’s voice resonated on the upper floor, piercing through the walls, fierce and resonant shouts as he rarely heard from him. He distinguished scattered words—punishment, treason, crown—and something contracted in his chest, an electric presentiment that made his skin crawl.

Instinctively, he ran to Oscar’s room and extracted her dagger from the box where she kept it, in one of the drawers of her nightstand. He climbed the stairs two at a time toward the study, moving with all the speed and stealth he was capable of. Upon arriving, he opened the door with utmost care, being careful not to make the slightest noise.

The scene hit him like a punch: the general standing before his daughter, his hand on the hilt of his sword, the blade half unsheathed. Oscar motionless, livid, trembling, looking at her father with wide-open eyes in a gesture of horror.

André’s body reacted before his mind. He crossed the study in three strides and caught his master’s wrist from behind, immobilizing him with the strength of one who has carried firewood and weapons for years, of one who has trained to kill though he has never done so. A lifetime carrying heavy objects, doing all kinds of domestic work, and two years in the barracks subjected to rigorous training had developed his muscles much more than he himself had anticipated.

“Release me, André,” sounded the general’s grave voice, visibly irritated.

“I’m not going to release you, sir.”

“I’ll only repeat this once: release me.”

“I’m not going to release you.”

“Then I’ll kill you too,” the general’s words boiled with fury as he struggled to free himself from his servant’s grip. But he couldn’t. André was not only taller but also stronger. Regnier de Jarjayes had to acknowledge that, despite all his experience, the young man could easily defeat him in hand-to-hand combat if he set his mind to it.

“If that’s what you want, I’ll have to kill you and then I’ll escape with Oscar,” were the defiant words of an André completely transfigured by fury, a man who had completely abandoned his usual serenity. Suddenly, he brandished the dagger before his master’s face, so close that the blade reflected the astonished gleam of his eyes.

André’s fixed gaze, the anger contained in his single eye, that ferocity with which he was willing to defend Oscar, spoke to the general about the truth that beat behind his radical personality change: that André would kill for Oscar, that he would die for her, that there was no line he wouldn’t cross, no abyss he wouldn’t leap into, if it meant keeping her alive one more day. That he loved her, that he had always loved her.

Like Castor and Pollux, the divine twins of ancient Greece, André and Oscar had been two halves of the same existence from the beginning. The Dioscuri—sons of Zeus, protectors of sailors lost in the storm—were inseparable even in death. When Castor fell in combat, Pollux renounced his immortality to share his brother’s fate, alternating days between Olympus and Hades, together always, in light and in shadow.

That’s how they were: raised under the same roof, always breathing the same air. André had been the shadow that followed Oscar’s every step, the silent echo of her every word, the invisible guardian who would have renounced any heaven rather than abandon her in her descent to the underworld. And Oscar—haughty, brilliant, indomitable—had been his guiding star, the reason why every dawn was worthwhile. They weren’t blood siblings, but fate had intertwined them with a force more powerful than any blood bond. And like the Dioscuri, they were condemned never to separate, not even before death.

“Is that what you feel for Oscar?” he asked, as if wanting to confirm from the mouth of the one who was once the boy he received in his house, what his heart somehow already knew. André didn’t respond. His action was, in itself, a clearer answer than any words.

Oscar looked petrified at the two most important men in her life, not daring to intervene, not even to move. She directed a pleading look at André, who upon seeing her gesture understood that he wouldn’t be capable of sealing that moment with the general’s blood, no matter how much his instinct screamed that he should protect the woman he loved at any cost. He appreciated, even loved his master—he was the closest thing to a father he’d ever had—but it wasn’t that—not only that, at least—that prevented him from moving from word to action with that threat. It was that he didn’t feel capable of doing it in front of the woman he loved.

Oscar remained standing before them, observing the scene in absolute silence, not knowing what to say or do, just looking with eyes of the most stark pleading, hoping that her gesture alone could be understood, answered by André.

“You’re an idiot,” said the general dryly.

“Yes,” André answered without hesitation.

It didn’t affect him to hear from others’ lips what his own always whispered in silence. He was an idiot, he had accepted it long ago. An idiot in love with the unattainable, clinging to a hope so absurd that it hurt to hold onto it.

“Don’t think you can cross class barriers.”

“No.”

“The marriage of an aristocrat requires the king’s consent.”

“I know.”

André released the general’s wrist, took a step back. The dagger trembled in his hand. When he spoke again, his voice had shed all anger, leaving only naked truth:

“I don’t yearn to marry Oscar.”

He set the weapon aside and planted himself before his master with fierce determination. If he couldn’t kill, he was determined to die.

“Even if I had ten lives, I know they wouldn’t be enough... but I beg you, sir: accept my life in exchange for Oscar’s.”

Regnier de Jarjayes seemed to soften his expression for an instant upon hearing André’s words. He looked at him for a moment and suddenly saw in him the boy who had arrived at his house twenty-six years earlier, hand in hand with his grandmother, to keep company with the girl he was raising as a boy, in a gesture of eccentricity motivated by the fact that he’d had no sons. He saw how that boy became a man always anchored to Oscar’s life, always there, always faithful, carrying an impossible love like one carries a cross.

And he thought that only God knew how long that feeling had been in his heart without telling anyone. Regnier felt an immense sorrow that he couldn’t process in that moment, but that had settled there, insurmountable, profound, in his heart. A mixture of contradictory feelings: compassion and sadness, anger and admiration, understanding and reproach.

Oscar suddenly fixed her clear eyes on André, with surprise visibly imprinted on her face. She couldn’t believe what she had just seen and heard. André confronting her father for her? Threatening him with death? Offering his life in exchange for hers? Confessing his love? All together. And that surrender meant to her much more than she ever imagined: the intangible and unfathomable gift of a love that transcended everything known, of a devotion that bordered on the religious, something much greater than she felt capable of receiving or deserving. She knew he loved her but like this? Was his love for her this great?

“If I kill you, I’d kill your grandmother,” said Regnier, sketching a slight smile behind which he tried to hide the wave of contradictory feelings invading him. “How cunning you are.”

And without more, directly, he turned to look at his daughter.

“Oscar, the king wants you to go to the palace to collect your credentials,” and upon hearing these words, the woman’s surprised countenance became even more pronounced. “Do you understand what this means? The king has absolved you.”

André and Oscar remained standing before the general, in silence, assimilating his words and watching as he left the study with quick steps. It immediately became clear to André that his master didn’t really intend to hurt anyone, but he knew the situation with his daughter had reached dangerous levels and he wanted her to have a stimulus strong enough to abandon her reckless attitude toward the crown, which, if it continued, would end up causing serious problems for his entire family.

Meanwhile, the general struggled with himself, trying to understand what had happened, though he had carefully hidden all his impressions behind a mask of indifference. So André loved her. He loved his daughter. That wonderful and stubborn woman, who was fire and ice, rebellious and indecipherable, free and beautiful like her alone.

André closed his eyes, exhaled. The adrenaline left him suddenly, leaving him empty. He tore off his jacket, loosened the cravat that suddenly seemed to strangle him. He needed air, he needed to leave that room before collapsing. But when he tried to walk toward the door, Oscar extended a hand and blocked his path.

“André...”

He stopped, willing to set aside, once again, his own need to listen to her, to console her, to attend to her. Always, always there for her.

“I feel so useless,” Oscar said, with a tremor cutting her voice. “I couldn’t even protect my men. I’ve come out unscathed only through Marie Antoinette’s mercy. And you... you saved me from my father’s sword.”

She looked at him then and André saw how something broke behind those blue eyes. They looked at each other for an instant, and in that look he could perceive a suffering that was both profound and devastating, a sadness he had rarely perceived in her. Tears suddenly appeared in her sapphire eyes. She bit her lower lip in the gesture she usually made when she wanted to gather courage to speak, when words were too dense or painful to come out on their own.

She looked at him tenderly. She could no longer and didn’t want to keep holding back. Not anymore.

“I love you, André.”

The words came out of her mouth, giving name to the feeling that had been pressing on her chest forcefully for months, but which only until that moment had she been able to understand. And finally he heard them. Those two words he had only heard in his boldest dreams, in the sleepless dawns where he allowed himself to aspire to something his heart had yearned for during twelve long years, perhaps more, perhaps all his life.

She had spent many years—all her life—thinking she could never be loved as a woman. And she had discovered, in a painful way, that she had been receiving that kind of love for many years. What she had seen in Fersen toward Marie Antoinette, that kind of love with which she wanted to feel like a woman, she had been receiving for a long time from him, who was always within her reach. Why wasn’t she able to see it before?

He felt a lightning bolt pierce him and, in an instant, countless images of her came to his memory from when he met her, at eight years old, until that moment when he saw how tears could no longer be contained in her eyes.

The images of a lifetime together unfolded before him like a luminous tapestry: the first fencing lessons under the afternoon sun, their childish laughter as they played on the damp grass of the garden, the occasion when he confronted Girodelle when they were about eleven years old and he felt for the first time the irrational impulse to protect her from everything. He saw her again in the white uniform of the Royal Guard at fourteen, majestic and delicate at the same time. He remembered the occasion when they almost lost their lives trying to stop Jeanne de Valois, when he understood that death would only be tolerable if it came with her by his side.

So many experiences, so many moments. Twenty-six years of his life passed before his eyes in that instant, condensed into a single memory that until that moment hurt, but which now—after those words—stood as a healing potion that enveloped his entire being, filling every void, healing every wound that years of unrequited love had left in his soul.

“I’m useless, you’ve already seen it... Alone I can do nothing. Before the colossal machinery of history, my existence is insignificant,” Oscar continued, crying openly. “I’ve been indulgent with myself, I’ve always needed someone’s support and comfort. Do you still love me?”

He smiled, moved by the vulnerability and determination with which she formulated the questions, seeking to anchor herself in them, wanting him to tear down all the doubts that enveloped her heart behind a veil of anguish.

“Are you willing to love me?” she inquired, with feverish insistence. “To love only me? Can you promise that you’ll love me until death?”

He looked at her through tears, with every fiber of his being vibrating from the intensity of what he felt.

“Do you promise?”

With diamond tears still in their eyes, both quickly closed the distance that separated them and melted into an embrace that was war and peace, storm and calm, the sure anchor in which both found everything their hearts yearned for: each other, what they loved most in the world. It was the refuge they had sought all their lives without knowing it, the home that no place on Earth could ever provide them. In that embrace was contained all the history they had lived together: every stolen glance, every accidental touch, every unspoken word that had floated between them for years, with love suspended in an air that belonged only to the two of them.

“André,” she said as they joined in that embrace that was everything, that contained everything she yearned for in life. Security, trust, love, everything she wanted and dreamed of, that safe place where she could abandon herself with the certainty that upon opening her eyes he would be there, always, as he had been from the beginning.

“Do you want me to promise you a thousand times? Or a million times?” he said, smiling against her hair. “My words will remain the same. Words that beat eternally in the palm of my hand... that make me burn and close my eyes. Words for which I would give my life. Do you want me to repeat them?”

She buried her face in the chest of the one who was no longer just her best friend, but her greatest love, crying no longer from sadness, but from the absolute happiness of confirming that he loved her, that he had always loved her and that he would always love her, until the last day of his life. It was a liberating, cathartic cry that washed away years of self-imposed solitude, of emotional armor with which she had sought to protect her heart.

André cradled her face with his hands, cleaning with his fingers the salty drops that slid, warm, down her alabaster cheeks. She looked at him with those eyes that were love, passion and devotion, and sadness, all together, all in that indefinable mixture of emotions that enveloped her heart like petals cover the center of a flower. In that look there was something more than love: there was gratitude, relief, and the silent oath that they would never be alone again.

“I love you,” she told him tenderly, as she brought her face close to his, their lips barely a breath away. “I’m so glad to have been born!”

It was a kiss that contained years of silence, of repressed love, of unspoken words. A kiss hungry and desperate and tender at the same time, as if they wanted to recover all the lost time in a single instant. Oscar’s lips were salt and light, tremor and certainty. André kissed her as if it were the first and last time, as if the world could end at any moment and this—only this—was the only thing that mattered to save.

He thought: It’s like a dream. I wish I could stop time, freeze this instant like a fossil in amber, preserve it forever.

She felt: His lips are fire and tenderness, they envelop me and hold me and melt me. They are the lips I know and the only ones I ever want to know.

The kiss deepened, slow and deliberate, as if they wanted to memorize every second, every sensation. André’s hands trembled slightly as he caressed her face, her neck, her golden hair that he had always wanted to touch like this, with this freedom, with this right earned through years of unwavering loyalty and love. Oscar clung to him like one clings to life itself, with her fingers tangling in his shirt, drawing him closer, as if physical distance were an enemy to defeat.

When they finally separated, just enough to breathe, they remained with their foreheads united and eyes closed, savoring the intimacy, the irrepressible sweetness of that so-yearned-for moment. The silence that enveloped them wasn’t empty but full, charged with everything they didn’t need to say because their bodies had already expressed it. André smiled, running his thumb over Oscar’s lips with infinite tenderness. She returned a faint smile, her eyes laden with bliss.

Oscar kissed him again, more slowly this time, savoring every second, memorizing the exact way their lips fit together, the taste of his mouth, the warmth of his hands. As if she knew that time was a luxury they might not have for much longer. Outside, night closed, dark, over Versailles. Inside, two souls raised in the same fire finally recognized each other as what they always were: two halves of the same existence, inseparable, eternal... Like the Dioscuri.