A Place of Greater Safety (108 page)
Read A Place of Greater Safety Online
Authors: Hilary Mantel
ROBESPIERRE: No problems really. We hope it will be over tomorrow. Oh, perhaps, you don’t mean Hébert’s trial? Fabre and Hérault will be in court in a few days’ time. The exact date escapes me, but Fouquier will know.
DANTON: You wouldn’t be trying to frighten me, by any chance? All this relentless laboring of the point.
ROBESPIERRE: You seem to think I have something against you. All I have asked you to do is to disassociate yourself from Fabre. Unfortunately there are people who say that if Fabre is on trial you should be too.
DANTON: And what do you say?
ROBESPIERRE: Your activities in Belgium were not perhaps above reproach, However, I chiefly blame Lacroix.
DANTON: Camille—
ROBESPIERRE: Never speak to me again of Camille.
DANTON: Why not?
ROBESPIERRE: The last time we met you spoke abusively of him. With contempt.
DANTON: Suit yourself. The point is, in December you were ready to admit that the Terror should be mitigated, that innocent people—
ROBESPIERRE: I dislike these emotive phrases. By “innocent” you mean “persons of whom for one reason or another I approve.” That is not the standard. The standard is what the court finds. In that sense, no innocent person has suffered.
DANTON: My God! I don’t believe what I’m hearing. He says no innocent person has suffered.
ROBESPIERRE: I hope you’re not going to produce anymore of your tears. It is the kind of talent Fabre and the actors have, and not becoming to you.
DANTON: I appeal to you for the last time. You and I are the only people capable of running this country. All right—let’s admit it Dnally—we don’t like each other. But you don’t really suspect me, any more than I suspect you. There are people around us who would like to see us destroy each other. Let’s make life hard for them. Let’s make common cause.
ROBESPIERRE: There’s nothing I’d like better. I deplore factions. I also deplore violence. However, I would rather destroy the factions by violence than see the Revolution fall into the wrong hands and be perverted.
DANTON: You mean mine?
ROBESPIERRE: You see, you talk so much about innocence. Where are they, all these innocent people? I never seem to meet them.
DANTON: You look at innocence, but you see guilt.
ROBESPIERRE: I suppose if I had your morals and your principles, the world would look a different place. I would never see the need to punish anyone. There would be no criminals. There would be no crimes.
DANTON: Oh God, I cannot stand you and your city for a moment longer. I am taking my wife and my children to Sèvres, and if you want me you know where to find me.
S
èvres, March 22: 2 Germinal. “So here you are,” Angélique said. “And you can enjoy the fine weather.” She kissed her grandsons, ran her eyes down Louise and found occasion to put an arm round her waist and
squeeze her. Louise kissed her cheek dutifully. “Why didn’t you all come?” Angélique asked. “I mean, Camille and family? The old people could have come, too, there’s plenty of room.”
èvres, March 22: 2 Germinal. “So here you are,” Angélique said. “And you can enjoy the fine weather.” She kissed her grandsons, ran her eyes down Louise and found occasion to put an arm round her waist and
squeeze her. Louise kissed her cheek dutifully. “Why didn’t you all come?” Angélique asked. “I mean, Camille and family? The old people could have come, too, there’s plenty of room.”
Louise made a mental note to pass on the description of Annette Duplessis as an old person. “We wanted some time to ourselves,” she said.
“Oh, did you?” Angélique shrugged; it was a desire that she couldn’t comprehend.
“Has my friend Duplessis recovered from his ordeal?” M. Charpentier asked.
“He’s all right,” Danton said. “He seems old, lately. Still, wouldn’t you, if you had Camille for a son-in-law?”
“You’ve not spared me gray hairs yourself, Georges.”
“How the years have flown by!” Angélique said. “I remember Claude as a handsome man. Stupid, but handsome.” She sighed. “I wish I could have the last ten years over again—don’t you, daughter?”
“No,” Louise said.
“She’d be six,” Danton said. “But Christ, I wish I could have them! There’d be things to do different.”
“You wouldn’t neccessarily have hindsight,” his wife said.
“I remember an afternoon,” Charpentier said. “It would be ’86, ’87? Duplessis came into the café and I asked him to supper. He said, we’re up to our eyes at the Treasury—but we will sort out a date, as soon as the present crisis is over.”
“Well?” Louise said.
Charpentier shook his head, smiled. “They haven’t been yet.”
Two days later the weather broke. It turned gray, damp and chilly. There were draughts, the fires smoked. Visitors from Paris arrived in a steady stream. Hasty introductions were made: Deputy So-and-so, Citizen Such-a-one of the Commune. They shut themselves up with Danton; the conversations were brief, but the household heard voices raised in exasperation. The visitors always said that they had to get back to Paris, that they could by no means stay the night. They had about them the air of grim irresolution, of shifty bravado, that Angélique recognized as the prelude to crisis.
She went to ask the necessary questions. Her son-in-law sat in silence for some time, his broad shoulders slumped and his scarred face morose.
“What they want me to do,” he said finally, “is to go back and throw my weight about. By that, I mean … they have plans to rally the Convention to me, and also, Westermann has sent me a letter. You remember my friend, General Westermann?”
“A military coup.” Her dark aging face sagged. “Georges, who suffers? Who suffers this time?”
“That’s it. That’s the whole point. If I can’t remedy this situation without bloodshed, I’ll have to leave it to someone else. That’s—just how I feel these days. I don’t want any more killings at my door, I don’t want them on my conscience. I no longer feel sure enough of
anything
to risk a single life for it. Is that so hard to understand?” Angélique shook her head. “My friends in Paris can’t understand it. They think it’s some fanciful scruple, some whim of mine or some kind of laziness, a paralysis of the will. But the truth is, I’ve traveled that road, and I’ve reached the end of it.”
anything
to risk a single life for it. Is that so hard to understand?” Angélique shook her head. “My friends in Paris can’t understand it. They think it’s some fanciful scruple, some whim of mine or some kind of laziness, a paralysis of the will. But the truth is, I’ve traveled that road, and I’ve reached the end of it.”
“God will forgive you, Georges,” she whispered. “I know you have no faith, but I pray every day for you and Camille.”
“What do you pray for?” He looked up at her. “Our political success?”
“No, I—I ask God to judge you mercifully.”
“I see. Well, I’m not ready for judgement yet. You might include Robespierre, when you’re petitioning the Almighty. Although I’m sure they speak privately, more often than we know.”
M
id-afternoon, another carriage rumbling and squeaking into the muddy courtyard, the rain streaming down. In an upstairs room the children are screaming at the tops of their voices. Angélique is harassed; her son-in-law sits talking to the damp dog at his feet.
id-afternoon, another carriage rumbling and squeaking into the muddy courtyard, the rain streaming down. In an upstairs room the children are screaming at the tops of their voices. Angélique is harassed; her son-in-law sits talking to the damp dog at his feet.
Louise rubs a windowpane to look out. “Oh, no,” she breathes. She leaves the room with the contemptuous twitch of her skirts which she has perfected.
Runnels of water pour and slither from Legendre the butcher’s traveling clothes: oceans, fountains and canals. “Will you look at this weather?” he demands. “Six paces and I’m drowned.” Don’t raise my hopes like that, says the sodden shape behind him. Legendre turns, hoarse, pink, spluttering, to compliment his traveling companion: “You look like a rat,” he says.
Angélique reaches up to take Camille’s face in her hands, and puts her cheek against his drenched black curls. She whispers something meaningless or Italian, breathing in the scent of wet wool. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to him,” he whispers back, in a kind of horror. She slides her arms around his shoulders and sees suddenly, with complete vividness, the sunlight slipping obliquely across the little marble tables, hears the chatter and the chink of cups, smells the aroma of fresh coffee, and the river, and the faint perfume of powdered hair. Clinging to each other, swaying slightly, they stand with their eyes fixed on each other’s
faces, stabbed and transfixed with dread, while the leaden clouds scud and the foggy dismal torrent wraps them like a shroud.
faces, stabbed and transfixed with dread, while the leaden clouds scud and the foggy dismal torrent wraps them like a shroud.
Legendre sat himself down heavily. “I want you to believe,” he said, “that Camille and myself don’t go jaunting about the countryside together without good reason. Therefore what I’ve come to say, I’m going to say. I am not an educated man—”
“He never tires of telling us,” Camille said. “He imagines it is a point not already impressed.”
“This is a business you have to face head-on-not wrap it up and pretend it happened to Roman emperors.”
“Get on then,” Danton said. “You may imagine what their journey has been like.”
“Robespierre is out for your blood.”
Danton stood in front of the fire, hands clasped behind his back. He grinned.
Camille took out a list of names and passed it to him. “The batch of 4 Germinal,” he said. “Thirteen executions in all. The Cordeliers leadership, Hérault’s friend Proli, a couple of bankers and of course Père Duchesne. He should have been preceded by his furnaces; they could have turned it into a sort of carnival procession. He was not in one of his great cholers when he died. He was screaming.”
“I dare say you would scream,” Legendre said.
“I am quite sure I should,” Camille said coldly. “But my head is not going to be cut off.”
“They had supper together,” Legendre said meaningfully.
“You had supper with Robespierre?” Camille nodded. “Well done,” Danton said. “Myself, I don’t think I could eat in the man’s presence. I think I’d throw up.”
“Oh, by the way,” Camille said, “did you know that Chabot tried to poison himself? At least, we think so.”
“He had a bottle in his cell from Charras and Duchatelle, the chemists,” Legendre said. “It said ‘For External Application Only.’ So he drank it.”
“But Chabot will drink anything,” Camille said.
“He’s survived, then? Botched the job?”
“Look,” Legendre said, “you can’t afford to stand there laughing and sneering. You can’t afford the time. Saint-Just is nagging at Robespierre night and day.”
“What does he propose to charge me with?”
“Nothing and everything. Everything from supporting Orléans to trying to save Brissot and the Queen.”
“The usual,” Danton said. “And you advise?”
“Last week I’d have said, stand and fight. But now I say, save your own skin. Get out while there’s time.”
“Camille?”
Camille looked up unhappily. “We met on good terms. He was very amiable. In fact, he had a bit too much to drink. He only does that when he’s—when he’s trying to shut out his inner voices, if that doesn’t sound too fanciful. I asked him, why won’t you talk about Danton? He touched his forehead and said, because he is
sub judice.
” He turned his head away. “You might think of going abroad.”
sub judice.
” He turned his head away. “You might think of going abroad.”
“Abroad? Oh no. I went to England in ’91, and you stood in the garden at Fontenay and berated me.” He shook his head. “This is my nation. Here I stay. A man can’t carry his country on the soles of his shoes.”
The wind howled and rattled in the chimneys; dogs barked across the countryside from farm to farm. “After all you said about posterity,” Camille muttered. “You seem to be speaking to it now.” The rain slackened to a gray penetrating drizzle, soaking the houses and fields.
I
n Paris the swaying lanterns are lit in the streets; lights shine through water, fuzzy, diffuse. Saint-Just sits by an insufficient fire, in a poor light. He is a Spartan after all, and Spartans don’t need home comforts. He has begun his report, his list of accusations; if Robespierre saw it now, he would tear it up, but in a few days’ time it will be the very thing he needs.
n Paris the swaying lanterns are lit in the streets; lights shine through water, fuzzy, diffuse. Saint-Just sits by an insufficient fire, in a poor light. He is a Spartan after all, and Spartans don’t need home comforts. He has begun his report, his list of accusations; if Robespierre saw it now, he would tear it up, but in a few days’ time it will be the very thing he needs.
Sometimes he stops, half-glances over his shoulder. He feels someone has come into the room behind him; but when he allows himself to look, there is nothing to see. It is my destiny, he feels, forming in the shadows of the room. It is the guardian angel I had, long ago when I was a child. It is Camille Desmoulins, looking over my shoulder, laughing at my grammar. He pauses for a moment. He thinks, there are no living ghosts. He takes hold of himself. Bends his head over his task.
His pen scratches. His strange letterforms incise the paper. His handwriting is minute. He gets a lot of words to the page.
Conditional Absolution
C
our du Commerce: March 31, 10 Germinal: “Marat?” The black bundle moved, fractionally. “Forgive me.” Danton put his hand to his head. “A stupid thing to say.”
our du Commerce: March 31, 10 Germinal: “Marat?” The black bundle moved, fractionally. “Forgive me.” Danton put his hand to his head. “A stupid thing to say.”
He moved to a chair, unable to drag his eyes from the scrap of humanity that was the Citizeness Albertine. Her garments were funereal layers, an array of wraps and shawls, belonging to no style or fashion that had ever existed or ever could. She spoke with a foreign accent, but it was not the accent of any country to be found on a map.
“In a sense,” she said, “you are not mistaken.” She raised a skeletal hand, and laid it somewhere among her wrappings, where it might be supposed her heart beat. “I carry my brother here,” she said. “We are never separated now.”
For several seconds he found himself unable to speak. “How can I oblige you?” he said at last.
“We did not come to be obliged.” Dry voice: bone on bone. She paused for a moment, as if listening. “Strike now,” she said.
“With respect—”
“He is at the Convention now. Robespierre.”
“I am haunted enough.” He got up, blundered across the room. Superstitious dread touched him, at his own words. “I can’t have his death on my hands.”
“It’s yours or his. You must go to the Convention now, Danton. You must see the patriot walk and talk. You must judge his mood and you must prepare for a fight.”
“Very well, I’ll go. If it will please you. But I think you’re wrong, Citizeness, I don’t think Robespierre or any of the Committee would dare to move against me.”
“You don’t believe they would dare.” Mockery. She approached him, tilted up her yellow wide-lipped face. “Do you know me?” she asked. “Tell me, Citizen, when were we ever wrong?”
R
ue Honoré: “You’re wasting my time,” Robespierre said. “I told you my intentions before the Convention met. The papers for Hérault and Fabre are with the Public Prosecutor. You may draw up warrants for the arrest of Deputy Philippeaux and Deputy Lacroix. But for no one else.”
ue Honoré: “You’re wasting my time,” Robespierre said. “I told you my intentions before the Convention met. The papers for Hérault and Fabre are with the Public Prosecutor. You may draw up warrants for the arrest of Deputy Philippeaux and Deputy Lacroix. But for no one else.”
Saint-Just’s voice shook the little sitting room. His fist hammered a table. “Leave Danton at large and you will be locked up yourself tomorrow. Your head will be off before the week is out.”
“There is no need for this. Calm yourself. I know Danton. He has always been a cautious man, a man who weighs a situation. He will make no move unless he is forced into it. He must be aware you are collecting evidence against him. He is no doubt preparing to refute it.”
“Yes—to refute it by force of arms, that will be his idea. Look—call in Philippe Lebas. Call in the Police Committee. Call in every patriot in the Jacobin Club, and they will tell you what I am telling you now.” Scarlet flared against his perfect white skin: his dark eyes shone. He is enjoying himself, Robespierre thought in disgust. “Danton is a traitor to the Republic, he is a killer, he has never in his life known how to compromise. If we don’t act today he will leave none of us alive to oppose him.”
“You contradict yourself. First you say, he has never been a republican, he has accommodated every counter-revolutionary from Lafayette to Brissot. Then you say, he has never compromised.”
“You are quibbling. What do you think, that Danton is fit to be at large in the Republic?”
Robespierre looked down, considering. He understood the nature of it, this republic that Saint-Just spoke of. It was not the Republic that was bounded by the Pyrenees and the Rhine, but the republic of the spirit; not the city of flesh and stone, but the stronghold of virtue, the dominion of the just. “I cannot be sure,” he said. “I cannot make up my mind.” His own face looked back at him, appraisingly, from the wall. He turned. “Philippe?”
Philippe Lebas stood in the doorway between the little parlor and the Duplays’ larger sitting room. “There is something which may help make up your mind,” he said.
“Something from Vadier,” Robespierre said skeptically. “From the Police Committee.”
“No, something from Babette.”
“Babette? Is she here? I don’t follow you.”
“Would you come in here, please? It won’t take very long.” Robespierre hesitated. “For God’s sake,” Lebas said passionately, “you wanted to know if Danton was fit to live. Saint-Just, will you come and listen?”
“Very well,” Robespierre said. “But another time, I should prefer not to conduct these arguments in my own house.”
All the Duplays were present in the salon. He looked around them. The room was live with tension; his skin crawled. “What is this?” he asked gently. “I don’t understand.”
No one spoke. Babette sat alone at the big table, as if she were facing some sort of commission. He bent to kiss her forehead. “If I’d known you were here, I’d have cut this stupid argument short. Well?”
Still no one spoke. Seeing nothing else to do, he pulled up a chair and sat down beside her at the table. She gave him her soft little hand. Babette was five or six months pregnant, round and flushed and pretty. She was only a few months older than Danton’s little child bride, and he could not look at her without an uprush of fear.
Maurice was sitting on a stool by the fire, his head lowered: as if he had heard something that had humbled him. But now he cleared his throat, and looked up. “You’ve been a son to us,” he said.
“Oh, come now,” Robespierre said. He smiled, squeezed Babette’s hand. “This is beginning to seem like the third act of some dreadful play.”
“It is an ordeal for the girl,” Duplay said.
“It’s all right,” Elisabeth said. She dropped her head, blushed; her china-blue eyes were half-hidden by their lids. Saint-Just leaned against the wall, his own eyes half-closed.
Philippe Lebas took up his station behind Babette’s chair. He wrapped his fingers tightly round the back of it. Robespierre glanced up at him. “Citizen, what is this?”
“You were debating the character of Citizen Danton,” Babette said softly. “I know nothing of politics, it is not a woman’s province.”
“If you want to have your say, you can do. In my opinion, women have as much discernment as men.” He gave Saint-Just a venomous glance, begging contradiction. Saint-Just smiled lazily.
“I thought you might like to know what happened to me.”
“When?”
“Let her tell you in her own way,” Duplay said.
Babette slid her hand out of his. She joined her fingers on the polished tabletop, and her face was dimly reflected in it as she began to speak.
“You remember when I went to Sèvres, last autumn? Mother thought I needed some fresh air, so I went to stay with Citizeness Panis.”
“You remember when I went to Sèvres, last autumn? Mother thought I needed some fresh air, so I went to stay with Citizeness Panis.”
Citizeness Panis: respectable wife of a Paris deputy, Étienne Panis: a good Montagnard, with a record of sterling service on August 10, the day the monarchs were overthrown.
“I remember,” Robespierre said. “Not the date—it would be October, November?”
“Yes—well, Citizen Danton was there at that time, with Louise. I thought it would be nice to call on her. She’s nearly the same age as me, and I thought she might be lonely, and want someone to talk to. I’d been thinking, you know, about what she has to put up with.”
“What is that?”
“Well, some people say that her husband married her for love, and other people say he married her because she was happy to look after his children and run his household while he was occupied with Citizeness Desmoulins. Though most people say, of course, that the Citizeness likes General Dillon best.”
“Babette, keep to the point,” Lebas said.
“So I went to call on her, and she wasn’t at home. And Citizen Danton was. He can be—well, very pleasant, quite charming. I felt a bit sorry for him—he was the one who seemed to need someone to talk to, and I thought, perhaps Louise is not very intelligent. He said, stay and keep me company.”
“She didn’t realize that they were alone in the house,” Lebas said.
“No, of course—I had no way of knowing. We talked: about this and that. Of course, I had no idea what it was leading up to.”
“And what was it leading up to?” Robespierre sounded faintly impatient.
She looked up at him. “Don’t be angry with me.”
“No, of course—I’m not angry. Did I sound angry? I’m sorry. Now, the thing is—Danton made some remark, in the course of your conversation, which you feel you must report. You are a good girl, and you are doing what you see as your duty. No one will blame you for that. Tell me what he said—and then I can see what weight to give it.”
“No, no,” Mme. Duplay said faintly. “He is so good. He has no idea of half the things that happen in the world.”
He glared at the interruption. “Now, Babette.” He took her hand again, or did rather less than that: he placed the tips of his fingers against the back of her hand.
“Come on,” her husband said: more roughly than he would have liked. “Say what happened, Babette.”
“Oh, he put his arm around me. I didn’t want to make a fuss—one must grow up, I suppose, and after all—he put his hand inside my dress, but I thought, of course, he’s been seen in the most respectable company to—well, I mean the things he has done with Citizeness Desmoulins, I have heard people say that he has quite fallen upon her, in public, and of course that it is of no consequence, because he won’t actually go to the extreme. All the same, I did try very hard to pull away from him. But he is a very strong man you know, and the words he used—I couldn’t repeat them—”
“I think you must,” Robespierre said. His voice was frozen.
“Oh, he said that he wanted to show me how much better it could be with a man who had experience with women than with some high-minded Robespierrist virgin—then he tried—” She put her hands, fingers interlaced, before her face. Her voice came almost inaudibly from behind them. “Of course, I struggled. He said, your sister Eléonore is not so moral. He said, she knows just what we republicans want. I think, then, that I fainted.”
“Is there any need to go on?” Lebas said. He moved: transferred his hands to the back of Robespierre’s chair, so that he stood looking down at the nape of his neck.
“Don’t stand over me like that,” Robespierre said sharply. But Lebas didn’t move. Robespierre looked around the room, wanting a corner, an angle, a place to turn his face and compose it. But from everywhere in the room, the eyes of the Duplay family stared back. “So, when you came to yourself?” he said. “Where were you then?”
“I was in the room.” Her mouth quivered. “My clothes were disordered, my skirt—”
“Yes,” Robespierre said. “We don’t need details.”
“There was no one else in the room. I composed myself and I stood up and looked around. I saw no one so I—I ran out of the front door.”
“Are you—let’s be quite clear—are you telling me Danton raped you?”
“I struggled for as long as I could.” She began to cry.
“And what happened then?”
“Then?”
“Presumably you got home. What did Panis’s wife say?”
She raised her face. A perfect tear rolled down her cheek. “She said I must never tell anyone anything about it. Because it would make the most dreadful trouble.”
“So you didn’t.”
“Until now. I thought I must—” She dissolved into tears again.
Unexpectedly, Saint-Just straightened up from the wall, leaned over her, patted her shoulder.
Unexpectedly, Saint-Just straightened up from the wall, leaned over her, patted her shoulder.
“Babette,” Robespierre said. “Now, dry your tears, listen to me. When this happened, where were Danton’s servants? He is not a man to do without them, there must have been somebody in the house?”
“I don’t know. I cried out, I screamed—nobody came.”
Mme. Duplay spoke. She had been, of course, extraordinarily forbearing, to keep silent for so long, and now she was hesitant. “You see, Maximilien—the fact of what happened is bad enough, but there is a further problem—”
“I’m sure he can count on his fingers,” Saint-Just said.
It was a moment before he understood. “So then, Babette-at that date, you didn’t know—”
“No.” She dropped her face again. “How can I know? Perhaps I had already conceived—I can’t be sure. Of course, I hope I had. I hope I’m not carrying his child.”
She had said it out loud: they had all arrived at the idea, but now it was spoken out loud it made them gasp with shock.
Only he, Robespierre, exercised self-control. To resist temptation is important now: temptation to look in like a beggar at the lighted window of emotion. “Listen, Babette,” he said. “This is very important. Did anyone suggest to you that you should tell this story to me today?”
“No. How could anyone? Until today, nobody knew.”
“You see, Elisabeth, if this were a courtroom—well, I would ask you a lot of questions.”
“It is not a courtroom,” Duplay said. “It is your family. I saved your life, three years ago in the street, and since then we have cared for you as if you were a child of our own. And your sister, and your brother Augustin—you were orphans, and you had nobody except each other, and we have done our best to be everything to you.”
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