I Hate Cake

I hate cake.

I said it once when I was maybe six or seven. The frosting was too sweet and the colors far too bright for my liking as it sat in a neatly woven basket. The cake blade cut through so cleanly, and without a single trace remaining. The crumbs had stuck to my gloves, and I had to shake them off. I did not want them to leave any stains. I did not know that sentences could have a gift for traveling beyond your lips and taking on lives of their own. The tutors in the palace did not teach me that.

“That didn’t happen,” my old governess said years later, when the pamphlets began to circulate and cover the grounds of France.

Of course nobody believed her.

I had never said the other thing. Not about the cake. Not about bread. Not about the peasants. Not about anything. But it was a very useful sentence, and it fit so neatly.

I was in my quarters when the first of the pamphlets was brought to me.

“They are saying you told the people to eat cake,” the servant said carefully.

We had both known that hadn’t happened.

I was fourteen when I was brought to France. They called it good connections and peaceful relations. Nobody asked me if I wanted to go. Nobody asked me if I wanted France. Nobody asked France if they wanted me. They instead asked if I looked like a blooming flower. Flowers can easily wilt or be stamped out by angry mobs, I would learn.

I hate cake.

I thought foolishly that the pamphlet would vanish. I was very wrong. Instead, it multiplied faster than the rabbits in spring. The first became ten and ten became a hundred, and a hundred became a courtyard buried under soggy papers plastered on every available surface. The worst of them had drawings. In one particularly absurd version, I was eating slices of cake the size of my head, while sitting on a throne of starving peasants.

“That didn’t happen,” I said again when the servant brought me another. She nodded. The next time she showed me a whole stack before we threw them into the fire for warmth.

The drawings grew more frequent. There were fewer words on each. One week, I was laughing as I tossed cakes like treats to fat dogs. The next, I sat upon bread loaves with a cake scepter in my hand. I looked like I had conquered the kingdoms of dairy and dough. The drawings of the crowds changed too. The people grew skinnier with each new rendition, while I grew fatter and fatter. In one version, the cake and I were nearly the same size. Each one declared the statement to be the truth. The contradictions were at first amusing. How could they not be? Apparently I had said it from the balconies, loud enough that the people far outside the gates below could hear. They also claimed I had said it while taste-testing at a local bakery, as if I would wander into one unannounced and without guards. Somehow, I had also said it while at a gluttonous feast, stuffing my face. All of them absolutely certain. All at the same time.

I wondered once or twice which version was the most popular. The servants did not answer. Soon the detailed stories faded, and I thought the matter had finally passed. But my face—and the cake—remained. In a moment of candor, one of my ladies-in-waiting asked if the royal household should put out a statement. To deny it publicly and without interpretation, before the story could become something more permanent.

We looked outside together as the rain poured, and we realized I didn’t need to say anything. I was France, and France was whatever they needed it to be.

“That didn’t happen,” I would say again and again, and they laughed. At first, I had laughed too. That part did happen. Can you blame me? What kind of person could not distinguish bread from pastry? What kind of foolish queen would further suggest frosted treats when a nation lay starving with food shortages?

Somehow the whole of France knew for an absolute fact that I must have said it. Sworn testaments and claims of “I was there” sprouted up everywhere. I told a man with ink-stained hands that it was not true. He looked at me as if I had grown even more insane. History, as it turned out, does not require actual witnesses. Only the repetition.

I hate cake.

Such a small, delicious treat that can be passed so easily through small simple lips. Someone else, somewhere long before me, must have said those words. I think I remembered reading that once. That story existed long before I ever did. By the time they came for my son, it was far too late for me. I tried to hold true and stand tall, but he would eventually be taken from me as well.

The crowd is very loud today and very eager. They are ravenous. That part did happen. I see a wrinkled pamphlet fly by, and my own face stares back. The stage had been set, and the blades sharpened. A good blade can so easily cut through almost everything, leaving behind nothing but a flash of color and a clean slice. In that moment, I do not think of Austria or my missing silks or my already gone husband. I think of cake. How once the baker had tried to outshine all previous attempts and made one with too many tiers to count. It had shone above the court, in all its color and glamour—until it fell with a splat.

They said I had called out about cake. That didn’t happen. I kneel above the chopping block and close my eyes. Of all the words held and thrown against me, the only true ones were the shortest.

A basket is waiting next to the stage. The blade drops.

I hate cake.