Daughters of the Storm (36 page)

At ten o'clock he packed up the remains of his meal and stowed them in his pocket. Having locked up the folly, he slipped into an adjacent copse of trees, and worked his way cautiously towards the main gate of the house, using the trees as cover. He made good time. Adèle's carriage swept into view just as he approached the rendezvous. The carriage stopped and the gate-keeper threw open the gates. Lucie opened the door and scrambled out, carrying a basket. She went over to the keeper and appeared to engage him in lengthy and garrulous conversation. Eventually, she offered him the basket and the keeper disappeared inside the lodge, still talking nineteen to the dozen.

This was Louis' cue. Adèle beckoned from the carriage door and Louis, sprinting as hard as he could towards it, leapt inside. Panting, he lay on the floor. Adèle threw a rug on top of him. Lucie climbed in, in her haste stepping heavily on Louis. The door shut and the carriage moved forward.

Once the gate was out of sight, Adèle prodded Louis with her foot and he sat up. She leant forward to adjust his cravat.

‘Up, my friend. Remember you are the respectable and slightly pompous Monsieur Legrand, a very – very – distant connection of mine.'

Louis shrugged gracefully. ‘How badly you treat me,' he said with a smile.

Adèle leant back against the squabs. ‘All this is very trying for my nerves,' she remarked lightly. ‘I shall be forced to leave Paris to take the waters in Plombières.'

All the same, a shadow passed over her face and neither of them spoke for a moment. Louis leant forward and kissed one of her hands.

‘You are a brave woman,' he said, and Lucie, in her corner, blushed for her mistress.

At the
barrière
two bad-tempered soldiers stinking of garlic and cheap wine ordered the carriage to halt. They addressed a few surly remarks towards Adèle and peered inside, but appeared to be more interested in returning to the guard-house than in any passenger she might carry. After some debate, they handed back the papers to Adèle and Louis and the carriage clattered under a grey stone arch into the sunlight.

After three sweltering days spent in the shorthand-writer's box, listening to the deputies voting for the suspension of the monarchy, the king and his family were herded into a coach and driven at a deliberately slow speed to the Temple, former headquarters of the Knights Templars. At first they thought they would be housed in the delightful little palace contained within its medieval walls – the scene of glittering social evenings and musical soirées in better days – but they were soon disabused. The royal family were to take up quarters in one of the ancient towers.

This was prison.

Comfortably, but not luxuriously, housed, they settled down to what remained of their existence together
.

The Girondins still dominated the government of the country, but in the Insurrectionary Commune one man was beginning to make his voice heard above everybody else's. A huge, bull-necked, roistering lawyer called Danton. Dubbed the ‘Mirabeau of the Mob', he was appointed minister of justice, from which vantage point he also influenced the decisions taken in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and War. It was Danton who saw to it that it was his friends and supporters who were sent out to the provinces to convey the message of the revolution and to tell of the glorious day the Parisians deposed their king.

A circle of iron was closing around Paris. Vigilance committees were established in the city sections, many internal passports were suspended and hundreds of ‘counter-revolutionary' suspects were rounded up and herded into the prisons, including a large number of priests. The word ‘aristocrat' became a term of abuse hurled at anyone who did not like the idea of a French republic.

The Parisians mourned their dead, and news of the suspiciously easy surrender of the frontier fortress of Longwy to the Austrians did nothing to soothe the bitterness and hatred. Nor did the intelligence that the Vendée area was rising in support of the royalists.France, it seemed, was on the brink of civil war.

‘We must fling ourselves on our enemies,' declared Danton, whose thundering oratory never failed to stir those who heard it
– ‘L'audace, et encore l'audace, et toujours l'audace.'
And those who still supported the king, or who were suspected of harbouring counter-revolutionary sentiments, took fright as they listened.. They knew that the people of Paris did not need to be told twice.

They were right to take heed. The Parisian authorities were turning an increasingly deaf ear to the mounting rumours that an attack on the overflowing prisons was being planned.... Its object: to rid
la patrie
of her enemies.

Once and for all.

Chapter 14

Armed with a warrant from the surveillance committee, a detachment of soldiers from the section headquarters came for the Marquis and Marquise de Guinot at ten o'clock in the morning. The marquis had just time enough to scrawl notes to Héloïse and his lawyer before he and his wife were conducted outside and told to wait. Watched by the frightened household, seals were fixed to the doors of the Hôtel de Guinot, and the house declared the property of the republic.

‘Stiff-necked lot, these aristos,' muttered one of the guards to his companion, surprised at the lack of commotion made by the affair. He spat on to a marble statue of Aphrodite.

A hired conveyance deposited the prisoners at the end of a small street thirty paces long and ten wide. The marquis descended and helped his wife down on to the cobbles. They were conducted past some ancient houses and into the prison of La Force. Here they passed through a narrow entrance and a lobby and into the prison office.

The
concierge
in charge of La Force was busy and irritable, but not unkind, and he listened with some sympathy to the marquis' politely worded request that he and his wife should be housed together.

‘By rights she should be taken to the Petite Force round the corner,' he muttered, pocketing the louis that the marquis had had the forethought to bring with him. ‘The women are lodged there.' He finished the registration and crackled a knuckle. The marquis proffered a second coin. ‘Well, just for tonight, then,' he said.

His fellow gaolers were considerably rougher, and their tempers were not improved by over-work.

‘Hurry up,' barked the largest and most brutal-looking at the marquis. His big, stupid face glistened with sweat from the heat which penetrated even the thick stone walls which were oozing moisture. His dog, a mangy, vicious-looking animal, bared his fangs. The marquise slumped against a stone pillar and the marquis put his arm around her to encourage her onwards.

‘Allez, ma chère,'
he admonished in a cheerful voice. ‘It can't be far now.'

The gaoler pushed them through the prisoners who milled in the central courtyard. Many of them already had a prison pallor scored into their complexions, and sores from lack of fresh food, but others appeared to be still healthy and were engaged in playing cards and arranging assignations.

The marquise permitted herself one icy glare at the gaoler and stumbled on. Eventually they came to a halt in a corridor studded with doors. The gaoler prodded the de Guinots through the nearest.

‘You are lucky,' he commented sourly. ‘I have been told to put you in here and leave you together.'

‘We thank you,' said the marquis with an old-fashioned courtesy, and hastened to sit his wife down on one of the two camp-beds that took up most of the room. The door closed behind the gaoler and the de Guinots were left to contemplate their new abode.

‘Not much space,' said the marquis, still stupid with shock. A stifled sob answered him as the marquise buried her head in her hands. The marquis let her cry for a while and then prised her hands away from her face.

‘I think you should rest, madame,' he suggested, helping her on to one of the beds and clumsily loosening her stays. ‘You know,
ma chère,'
he said, ‘we do have a position to maintain in this place. Others will expect it of us.'

The marquise shuddered. ‘I am aware of it, Charles,' she replied with a trace of her old hauteur. ‘I shall endeavour to do my duty.'

‘We will talk about it after you have had some sleep,' said the marquis. He folded a threadbare blanket over the marquise and tucked in the ends.

Satisfied that she was as comfortable as possible, the marquis left her to rest. At the end of the corridor the passage widened into a large refectory hall. Seated at a long table, the prisoners were eating their dinner, a tough, unappetising stew, composed mainly of bones and old vegetables. The marquis placed himself at an empty bench and reached for a slice of greyish-looking bread which was piled on the table.

‘Eat up,' advised his neighbour, pointing to the stew. ‘You won't get anything else until noon tomorrow.' The marquis smiled but declined. He had already made arrangements with the obliging concierge to have his meals brought in and his stomach wasn't ready to tackle anything as robust as the stew.

He was sipping at some water when a gaoler appeared. ‘Prisoner de Guinot,' he bawled.

The marquis rose to his feet and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. He followed the man through the courtyard and into a lobby where a familiar figure stood waiting, pale but composed.

‘You have fifteen minutes,' said the gaoler, looking Héloïse up and down with a leer. Héloïse did her best to ignore him and dropped a coin into his palm.

‘Daughter,' said the marquis, stretching out both his hands.

‘I came as soon as I could,' said Héloïse. ‘I have brought you linen and wine.'

‘Excellent,' said her father, and took the bulky package from her. ‘I hope you included some books.'

‘Indeed,' she said, and hesitated, so thrown and bewildered she was to see her father in this setting.

‘What is the charge?' she asked at last. ‘By whose orders are you here?'

‘The commune,' the marquis replied with a shrug.

‘But why?'

‘For conspiring against France and for being in communication with the enemy, for anti-republican opinions.'

‘I see,' she said flatly. ‘But as a minister you had every reason to correspond abroad.'

‘It seems not,' the marquis replied.

‘De Choissy will do all he can.'

‘Good. Tell him I shall count on him and the others of my friends.' The marquis smiled. ‘Take heart, my daughter. All is not lost yet.'

Héloïse swallowed. ‘And madame,
ma mère?'

‘She is sleeping, I hope. This has come as a shock.'

He indicated a bench by the wall. ‘Let us sit down. There
is
one thing I wish to ask you.'

Héloïse sat down. ‘What is it? I am at your disposal.'

The marquis thought hard before he replied. ‘Would it be possible – and it might not be possible since they sealed the house – for Monsieur le Comte de Choissy to arrange for some of my more valuable paintings and porcelain to be taken to safety? It would grieve me unutterably to think that they might be in danger from ignorant persons.'

‘Paintings and porcelain...' Héloïse choked slightly. How very like her father!

‘My dear, these are things that make life tolerable. I have spent many happy hours studying them in my time and they have never failed me.'

Héloïse swallowed. ‘I will see what can be arranged,' she said. ‘It will be difficult if the house is under seal, but perhaps de Choissy can bribe a member of the section committee.'

The marquis sighed, the first flickers of real doubt troubling his serenity. He was not, however, going to reveal any of his private fears to his daughter, and he set about convincing her that he felt perfectly tranquil about his sudden change of fortune.

‘One thing,' he said finally, ‘and the most important. I feel that it is time that Miss Luttrell returned to England. Now that we can no longer extend our protection, this is the correct thing to do.

‘I have been dreading your saying so. Sophie has become more than a friend and I love her dearly. But you are right, sir, she should return.'

‘Once that is done I shall rest easy,' continued the marquis. ‘As you know, Cécile, your sister, has left France, and I wish you to leave now with your husband. You must take the documents that I have deposited with our lawyer and go to Berne or Koblenz. There you will leave these documents with our banks. They will provide you with funds if you have need of them. You must remain out of France until it is prudent to return. Do not, I beg you, leave it until it is too late.'

Héloïse hesitated. She had no wish to disobey her father, or to lie. The marquis leant forward and captured one of her hands. He spoke urgently.

‘You must do as I say.'

‘Your time is up.'

The gaoler had returned with his dog. Héloïse leant forward and, for the first time in her life, threw her arms round her father, regretting bitterly that she did not know him better. She clung to him until he gently disengaged her.

‘Come when you can,' he admonished over his shoulder, and then he disappeared into the courtyard.

The marquise was awake when the marquis returned. He saw that an attempt had been made to render the cell more comfortable. The marquise had pushed the two beds together to make a bigger space to move about in and had placed a stool directly under the window to catch the light. She was saying a rosary when he entered.

‘My dear, I have just seen Héloïse,' he told her.

The marquise's face expressed little more than perfunctory interest. ‘Is she well?'

‘Pale. I think the child bothers her.'

‘As mine did me. Do you remember?'

‘Of course,' the marquis lied. He began to unpack Héloïse's parcel. ‘She has done well, our daughter,' he remarked, holding up food, linen, books and wine. The marquis poured some of the wine into a small leather cup and offered it to his wife.