Daughters of the Storm (33 page)

He smelt of heat, of sweat and of gunpowder. Héloïse touched his damp flesh. It was firm beneath her hand and her own responded. With an effort, she turned on her side and laid a hand on Louis' chest, feeling the muscle and hair smooth beneath her fingers.

‘Thirsty?' he asked.

‘Very.'

‘There is nothing I can give you.'

‘Tant pis.'

He smiled at her attempt at lightness.

‘When did you last eat?'

‘I can't remember.'

‘Nor can I.'

‘Shall we dine on love?'

‘We have no choice, but I am not complaining.'

Louis edged his body closer to hers and kissed her.

‘Unfortunately, I am too tired to do more than this.'

He kissed her again and held her tight. She thought of the captives down the corridor.

‘What will happen to them?'

‘Who knows? They should have gone when I told them to.'

‘You did what you could. More.'

‘Did I, my heart? I hope so.'

‘What will you do?' she asked at last.

He rolled over on to his back.

‘I must try for the border and the army,' he said bitterly. ‘As a soldier of the king, I don't think Paris is the place for me any longer.'

Héloïse crushed her knuckles against her mouth and willed herself to say nothing. She needed to think.

‘It is not safe at the moment, Louis. You'll need money and visas. Otherwise you won't get across France.'

‘I shall have to risk it without them,' he said. ‘What else can I do?'

With an effort, Héloïse sat up on one elbow.

‘I have a better idea. My house at Neuilly. I could hide you there until we arrange the papers.'

Louis tried to think sensibly, but his mind felt thick and clogged. He understood enough, however, to know that Héloïse was talking sense. It would be far better to go to Neuilly, rest a little, plan and then leave Paris.

‘And you?' he asked. ‘What about you? I cannot leave until I know you are safe.'

‘I shall come to Neuilly, too. With Sophie. And I shall manage it without de Choissy.'

‘Bien,'
said Louis exhaustedly.
‘Bien.'

He pulled her down towards him and buried his face in her breasts.

‘The child?'

‘Our child is well for the moment.'

Louis tried to smile, but he heard again in his mind confused echoes made up of shouts and screams, of hate and violence, all mixed into a jangling concert of death. She felt him grow tense and wrapped her arms around his head, willing him to sleep and to forgetfulness.

Louis relaxed, the nightmare slackened its hold and he slept. He left Héloïse to stare over his head and to reflect on the strangeness of fate that had brought her to this place. Her eyes closed, but she continued to cradle her lover with infinite care – until sleep bore her away, too.

Throughout the night the looting went on amid scenes of indescribable savagery and drunkenness. Drinking and eating whatever they could lay their hands on, the looters piled up their plunder and counted the heads of their enemies.

Round the fires they danced, singing at the tops of their voices, hoarse with exhilaration and with battle. Many of the women dropped drunkenly where they fell, some with their skirts above their heads in which case the shadows merged while the men made free with the wares so liberally offered. Every
so
often a scuffle would break out as somebody tried to steal someone else's booty. Once the horrible sounds of an unlucky thief precipitately hanged from a convenient tree broke into the revelry.

Towards dawn, the Tuileries lay quiet at last. The bodies of the living and the dead lay jumbled together in the courtyards and gardens. The stench of wine and of death crept over it all and, as the sun strengthened, became overpowering. It percolated into the adjoining streets and filtered into the alleys, causing citizens to put up their shutters in spite of the heat.

That sun rose over a city that had witnessed a revolution – a bloodbath that in a single night had washed the country free of a king. It was a city that was soon to be deserted by those who had taken its pleasures so lightly; for at first light everyone who considered it prudent to leave Paris began to pack. There were many. In the embassies and trading houses, the diplomats and merchants chivvied their frightened families into any conveyance they could lay their hands on. In the noble houses, the aristocrats hid their jewels and paintings and burnt their documents.

From this day on the old Paris would be silent. Even as the sky turned from dawn opal and turquoise into bleached white, the Insurrectionary Commune was planning its arrests, and considering how best to deal with foreigners within the city walls. From this day on, no one who had links with the court or those proscribed by the revolutionaries would feel safe.

It was only after dawn had come and gone that the citizens of Paris, the ones who had sat terrified and mute behind their doors, crept out of their homes to wander the Tuileries and to see for themselves what had been done in the name of freedom.

There they saw the grief of the women who searched through the dead for their menfolk, and heard their sobs. They witnessed looters stripping the corpses, and picked their way through the terraces over the recumbent bodies and aggravated the clouds of flies. They saw that their brothers had given their lives to defend their rights and demolish a tyranny, and they committed it to memory – for vengeance feeds on vengeance.

If any of them had chosen to look up, they could have seen the sky stretching out beyond the grey roofs and the glistening river, and heard the birdsong in the trees, and seen the splashes of late summer flowers; and they would have wondered at the contrast between the beauty of nature and the horror of humanity.

Chapter 12

In the Rue de l'Université, Sophie paced up and down land ran to the window every second minute. It was five o'clock in the morning, but she had been awake all night, beside herself with worry for Héloïse... for the future... for everything.

De Choissy, who had also spent a not inconsiderable part of the evening likewise pacing up and down, had finally dismissed Sophie from the salon at two o'clock and ordered her to get some sleep. She had suggested that he do likewise, but Sophie had a strong suspicion that he had stayed up all the same.

She clasped her
robe de chambre
around her shoulders and strained out of the window to see across the gardens and the parallel Rue de l'Île towards the river and the Tuileries. But she could see nothing.

Yesterday had been hideous, a day full of unbearable tension made all the worse by not knowing. It had been impossible to obtain any news: the streets were clogged and de Choissy had been turned back twice by the press when he had tried to drive over the bridge. He had returned in the late afternoon after the second attempt, his mouth set in a grim line.

‘There is nothing we can do,' he had told Sophie, and when William offered to go instead de Choissy had turned on him with unaccustomed sharpness and told him to desist and Ned was silenced. Instead, he sat sprawled in a chair, reading a periodical, and Sophie had wanted to shake him.

She dragged a chair over to the window and knelt on it. Where was Héloïse? Would she have survived the horrors that were being whispered about by the servants? Nobody this side of the river knew what exactly except that the palace had been under attack. Perhaps Héloïse had been warned in time and escaped to the Hôtel de Guinot? Or even to the west of the city? Sophie knew she had friends there.

There was enough in the rumours for Sophie to sense that Héloïse's life would have been in danger.

‘Oh, Héloïse, where are you?' Sophie pressed her fingers into her eyes in an effort to clear her head.

She took a decison, Making her way to the tiny powder room that served as her clothes press, she pulled open a chest in there and searched through the carefully folded clothes.

At last, she found what she was looking for, a plain calico gown with a narrow skirt.

It took her some effort to get dressed without help, but she managed it. Stopping only to snatch up a straw hat and a pair of cotton gloves, she let herself out of the bedroom and ran down the staircase. Halfway down, the door of the salon opened.

‘Where are you going?' enquired de Choissy.

Sophie jumped. He was dressed in the suit he had worn last night and he was holding a bottle and a glass in his hands. So Monsieur le Comte had not gone to bed! His face was drawn and shadowed with stubble and it was obvious he had been drinking.

‘I can't sleep,' said Sophie, continuing on her way.

‘That is apparent,' replied de Choissy. ‘But where are you going?'

‘To see what I can.'

‘Foolish girl,' he remarked as he followed her down the staircase. ‘Don't you realise it is dangerous out there? I had better come with you.'

Sophie was a little daunted by this vision of the normally soigné count.

‘I am sorry to see you so worried,' she replied gently.

De Choissy frowned.

‘What do you expect?' he asked. ‘That I rejoice while my wife is probably massacred by the rabble?'

‘That is not worthy of you, Monsieur le Comte,' she said. ‘I know that you love Héloïse and love her more than you will admit.'

De Choissy trod down the last few stairs towards her.

‘How sweet-natured you are, Miss Luttrell, and so innocent.'

Sophie reached out and took the glass and bottle from him. He relinquished them without comment.

‘Indeed,' she said. ‘Am I at a disadvantage in being so?'

He laughed.

‘If I am truthful, no. But perhaps you are right, Sophie. It is not a fashionable thing to love your wife, you know – and I am not at all sure why I should care for her.'

The last was muttered sotto voce, as if Sophie wasn't meant to hear.

‘I know I am right,' she said, a little alarmed at her own daring, but sensing that now was the time to say things if she was going to say them at all.

De Choissy cupped her chin with one white finger.

‘Are you?' he said in a voice hoarse from lack of sleep. ‘Do you understand, my dear and beautiful Miss Luttrell, what it is to love?'

Sophie's mouth tightened. ‘Don't remind me,' she said painfully.

‘The dashing Mr Luttrell has been superseded by my friend the clever Mr Jones, but duty forbids you from doing anything about it. Am I right? Of course I am, Sophie, and I admire your principles, even if I can't exactly share them.'

‘Nonsense,' said Sophie, not knowing whether to be provoked or not. ‘You understand about duty and obligation as much as anyone, you merely pretend not to.'

‘Touché!
Sharp, straight and to the point. Well, then, Miss Luttrell, we must help each other, must we not? When this is over, that is.'

He reached out and took the brandy bottle from Sophie, poured himself a glass and drank deeply. The white line around his lips receded a little.

‘To our compact, Miss Luttrell.'

He placed the bottle and glass on the hall table. When he turned to hand her out of the door, he was back to his normal, impeccably polite self.

All was peaceful in the Rue de l'Université and the early-morning light made them blink. Sophie stopped to pull on her gloves. A water-carrier passed them and a girl was selling fuel outside a shop. De Choissy's silk coat seemed incongruous in this setting, but he appeared not to be troubled by his appearance. They made their way down the street.

At the junction with the Rue de Bac, they turned left towards the river and the Pont Royal.

‘It's strange to be walking in the streets,' commented Sophie, for want of anything better to say.

‘I never do,' said de Choissy. ‘I don't need to. I have at least three carriages and a stable of horses at my disposal.'

‘What do you think can have happened?' said Sophie, impatient with the inconsequentiality of their conversation.

‘Who knows? It looks as though the palace was taken by the revolutionaries, but what actually happened inside is difficult to say. My secretary has failed to get back to me yet, so I can't even hazard a guess if Their Majesties have survived.'

‘What will you do if they haven't?'

‘Then, my dear,' de Choissy said, through clenched teeth, ‘it is more than time to leave Paris.'

At the river embankment, they turned right and picked their way through the jumble of makeshift huts and houses that fronted down to the water's edge.

‘Oh, no,' muttered Sophie, clasping her hand to her mouth and pointing with a shaking finger.

Lying in the shallows were the corpses of two men. Who or what they were was impossible to say, for their bodies had been stripped of clothes and equipment. Only their bloated faces and gaping wounds were left. De Choissy turned her face gently away.

‘Look across the river,' he said.

Her arm tucked into his, they stood and gazed across the multi-coloured water to the Tuileries. The hush was complete - astrange, eerie silence that appeared to wrap the city – and, yet, it told of things done and prophesied of things to come. The smoke from the revolutionaries' camp-fires wreathed the sky, garnishing its blue with white and yellow. It tipped the palace buildings in an acrid haze and rolled in clouds over the gardens.

‘What have they done?' said Sophie. ‘Dear God, what have they done?'

Chapter 13

Héloïse woke first, aroused by her raging thirst. She lay for a moment without moving, pinned by the dead weight of Louis, whose head still lay on her breast. Her tongue was swollen, and stuck to the roof of her mouth.