Daughters of the Storm (49 page)

The woman drew her hand across her throat with an ugly gesture.

‘The guards must know you well, then, and trust you?'

‘I should say.'

Sophie pushed more beer across the table and watched the second cup go the way of the first.

‘The odd thing is,' said Sophie carefully, ‘I have a commission that needs doing, and I am looking for someone to do it for me – for payment, of course.'

The woman put down her cup.

‘Now you're talking,' she said, darting a glance over her shoulder.

Sophie swallowed.

‘I don't want to tell my husband,' she whispered, and motioned for the woman to lean over the table. ‘I want to send some clothes in to my niece, who's in there' – she jerked her shoulder in the direction of the Abbaye – ‘but he, the true patriot he is, doesn't like the idea. But I can't bear to think of her without any clean clothes.'

Sophie's hand opened on the table to reveal a pile of coins, then shut it again. The woman licked her lips.

‘You must be fond of her to pay that,' she said – with just a hint of suspicion.

I am.' Sophie managed a tear which she wiped from the corner of her eye. ‘Will you do it?'

‘Who shall I ask for?'

‘Prisonnier de Choissy.' Sophie pushed the bundle of clothes she was holding over the table towards the woman.

‘Who?'

‘De Choissy.'

In an instant the woman was on her feet. Her beer spilled on to the ground.

‘That don't sound a name for the likes of you or me,' she said slowly, and the suspicion rose into her face. ‘Who are you? I don't like it. Here, take your things back, I am going to...'

She backed into the crowd and shouted at one of her friends to summon the guard. In a second Louis was at Sophie's side.

‘Run,' he hissed. ‘Down the street.'

Sophie did not wait to be told again. She was on her feet and pushing her way as hard as she could through the throng. The shouts redoubled behind her.

‘A moi,'
she screamed, as the pressure of bodies threatened to crush her.

Louis stretched out a hand and Sophie clung to it.

‘I can't move,' she managed to say.

Louis was mouthing something to her over the noise. ‘The prison carts – transferring prisoners,' he said. ‘They are coming through the gates. Get ready to run.'

The hiatus gave them their chance for the crowd's attention shifted to the figures in the carts.

‘Stop them!' came the cry from the woman. With a quick movement, Louis hoisted Sophie over his shoulder.

‘Ma femme,'
he shouted, as loud as he could.
‘Enceinte.
The baby is coming.'

‘Stop them!' came the cry again, but the confusion was so great that no one knew any longer who was being chased.

‘Let me through,' bellowed Louis. ‘Another patriot is on the way.'

Sophie hung lifelessly over his shoulder. The crowd fell back and Louis was able to push his way up the street.

By now, the first batch had driven out of the Abbaye. Sophie, raising her head, caught a glimpse of a wooden cart, rumbling along on hard, uneven wheels. The noise was deafening. She fell back against Louis. He shouldered her up the street as far as he could manage. Then he put her down.

‘Sophie,' he said into her ear. ‘You must walk as fast as you can. You must not think. Just do it. Hold on to me.'

Sophie did as she was told. But with every step, a pain pulled at her belly.

‘The baby,' she gasped. Louis put his arm round her and frogmarched her onward.

‘Keep going.'

After a minute or two they ducked behind a lime tree. To their right lay a side street. Louis hustled Sophie down it until they reached a crossroads where she leant against a doorway and tried to regain her breath. Louis stood fretting, beating his fist into his hand.

‘Nom de Dieu,
it should have worked.'

Fighting to control her panic and discomfort, Sophie knew Louis would not be giving up. That she understood. She also knew that the odds were stacked against him. But, in the grip of their respective passions and commitments, words were useless. If William was in danger, Sophie would not hesitate either.

She squared her shoulders. William would be waiting and she did not want to give him one second's more anxiety than she could help.

‘Don't,' she said to Louis. ‘Don't think about anything until we are back in the hôtel. We have yet to get past the guard.'

Chapter 5

To Citizen Rochefort

The Committee of Public Safety

Dear Citizen,

I have received your directive to investigate the château of La Tesse and I have hastened to carry out your orders.

On arriving there, we found the château almost deserted and in a state of considerable neglect. As far as we could tell, only the concierge still remained with his son. On questioning, they appeared to be admirable patriots and worthy of our great republic.

They say they have not seen the former Comte de Choissy for many months, nor have they been in communication. I arranged for the rooms to be searched, but we found nothing. However, there are reports from the neighbouring village of lights in the windows of the château at night. I will, therefore, continue the investigations and inform you immediately of any developments.

If we do find the
ci-devant
count, I will arrange for him to be conveyed to Paris immediately.

I remain your obedient servant,

Joseph Lescot

Chapter 6

That night she dreamed of Pierre, a loving, happy dream. They had gone to dine in one of the inns in the suburbs and eaten heartily of a stew, fragrant with goose fat and plumped out with white beans. They had drunk rough red wine and it coursed through her body, giving her life and warmth. Pierre had leant over the table and whispered words of love and she listened with a tender smile and returned them with a lightly blown kiss.

‘Marie,' he had said. ‘You must teach her good republican virtues and bring her up to live in the new world. I rely on you, Marie-Victoire, to do this for me.'

Marie-Victoire had nodded, unwilling to let anything spoil the moment.

She had woken sobbing and crying out his name. A baby was wailing, and she realised it was Marie. Still half-dreaming, she shifted in the bed and felt the outline of a back. For a second she thought she was with Pierre. Then she remembered and every joint and muscle stiffened. Tired out from his previous day's work at the tribunal, Jacques Maillard slept on beside her.

She lay still for Marie had quietened. Katrine would have seen to her. One of the many things Marie-Victoire hated, and there were many, about her new life was Maillard's insistence that they hire a girl to look after the child. Marie-Victoire had protested, but in the end, weary of his obstinacy, she gave in. Too despairing to fight? Yes... yes... but deep inside her burned yet another bitter, festering resentment at Maillard. One day, she promised herself, she would rid herself of him once and for all, But not yet: she had neither strength nor energy enough. The grey fog that had dogged her after the birth of Marie had returned with vengenance, wrapping her in misery, and it took all her resolution to keep going.

Sliding cautiously out of bed, she reached for her shawl and let herself out of the bedroom and flitted down the passage into the salon. The sight that greeted her was as she expected. Maillard had given one of his suppers which had gone on late into the night and a stale smell of drink and tobacco hung over the room. She picked her way through the bottles and glasses which littered the floor to the window and flung it open. The morning air filtered in and she sniffed it. Nostalgia crept through her. How she longed for the fresh, sweet smells of the country. How she longed for the peace of the fields and the sound of the wind in the trees. Paris was a stifling place to life, filled with noise and the hot, muddled clamour of greed and political ferment. It was a city in which there was no peace, only terror and sadness. Marie-Victoire wanted above everything to escape from it and take her baby back to the simpler traditions: the ways she at last understood were the ones to which she responded.

She sank to her knees and rested her head against a chair. How she longed for her mother. Marie would have helped and she would have understood. But there was no Marie and no way out of the hell her life had become. Somewhere, somehow, she had lost her way and her hopes had vanished, along with Pierre. What remained was the effort of getting through the day, and then the next, and the next. To live with Maillard was purgatory, but a purgatory that Marie-Victoire had no will to resist. It was not easy to cast aside food and shelter, and she had now tasted of hunger and felt the hand of want. Besides, if she had refused him, he would have taken Jeanne and Héloïse. In the face of such a threat, she felt powerless indeed.

She clasped her hands together.

‘O Mary, Our Lady of Mercy,' she prayed, ‘I know I am a sinner. Have mercy on me.'

She shut her eyes and bowed her head, willing the images of divine forgiveness to soothe and comfort her as they had done so many times before. When, at last, she opened her eyes, Maillard was looking down at her. He was already dressed in his judge's costume of unrelieved black from head to foot. A tricolour sash streaked diagonally from his shoulder to his waist and he wore a short cloak. He held his hat in one hand. With the other he leant forward to jerk her to her feet.

‘What are you doing?' he asked coldly.

Marie-Victoire got to her feet.

‘Nothing that need concern you, Jacques,' she replied.

‘If I catch you praying again, I'll take steps to stop you.'

‘Perhaps,' said Marie-Victoire, an odd little smile playing about her mouth, ‘but you cannot order my thoughts.'

Remembering her state of undress, she pulled her shawl tighter around her body, having no wish to incite his lust at this hour. Maillard ran his eyes over her, noting for the hundredth time the exciting swell of her bosom, and swallowed. Marie-Victoire was unwilling, but the challenge stimulated him, and he piqued himself on the notion that, despite everything, she did not remain entirely cold in his embraces. He knew that she thought of someone else as he roamed unrestrainedly over her body, and the little moans that sometimes escaped her were not for him. But that, he considered, did not matter. The truth was that she was now lying with him and would be as long as he had the power to arrange matters.

Nevertheless, she had to obey him in some things, and for a woman of one of the judges from the revolutionary tribunal to be seen praying was dangerous.

‘You have work to do, Marie-Victoire,' he said. His gaze roved over the littered room. ‘I shall require supper for a few of my friends again tonight. See that it is done.'

Her golden-lashed eyes stared at him indifferently and he mastered an impulse to crush and hurt her - anything to make her acknowledge his presence in a way that mattered. Then he relaxed. Marie-Victoire's capitulation would come later, he was sure of that.

Women did.

‘I must see to Marie,' she said, turning her back.

‘Bien,'
said Maillard, Tall and cadaverous, he put on his hat and the black plumes nodded over his face. Already, his mind was on his work.

He left and Marie-Victoire dressed, her heart lightening at the sound of the closing door. She put on a blue gown of good cotton, brushed her brown hair and pushed it under her cap. For the moment, she did not much care how she looked. Although it was nice to have new clothes again, they did not delight her as once they would have done.

In truth, she was preoccupied with the tasks of the coming day, and worried by the baby who seemed flushed and restless. Katrine merely shrugged when Marie-Victoire tackled her and suggested that Marie was teething. But Marie-Victoire was sure that something wasn't quite right and she wanted to get through her tasks as quickly as possible so that she could spend more time with the baby.

The house on the Rue St Honoré had been built by the convent of Les Dames de la Conception in earlier years, and leased out when it was no longer used for its original storage purposes. A modest two-storey building with an entrance on to the street and a shop on the ground floor, it had four inner windows which looked down into an inner courtyard which was overlooked by the convent. Maillard had rented the whole of the first floor, which consisted of two bedrooms, a salon, a kitchen and a small closet. The apartment was cramped, noisy and dark, assaulted, on one side, by the noise of the traffic in the Rue St Honoré and, on the other, by the carpenters who worked in the courtyard. Marie-Victoire hated it finding the rooms oppressive, Not only that, she was convinced the area was bad for Marie, who had failed to thrive since she had been wrested from Jeanne's rough and ready care.

Apart from that, she was beginning to dread the increasingly frequent processions of carts that made their way down the Rue St Honoré on the way to the Place de la Révolution and the guillotine. She forbade herself from questioning Maillard on the subject, but the fact that he was helping to send these people to their death did nothing to help her peace of mind. Nor did the cries from the crowd – cries of delight at the sight of the swaying prisoners enduring the torture of that last ride.

Yesterday, one of them in the tumbril looked up at the window where Marie-Victoire, drawn by an awful fascination, was watching. A young girl, dressed in a costume from the south, she was declaiming a prayer in a patois that Marie-Victoire did not recognise. The cart slowed and, for a few seconds,, the two women exchanged glances – the pity and horror which must have registered in Marie-Victoire's being returned with a kind of simple acceptance by the other.