Daughters of the Storm (51 page)

She got to her feet. The world swam around her head.

‘I never really found out what happened to you, Jacques. Oh, I know you got a beating and I left you, but that wasn't enough, was it? One woman's body and your stupid lust and it leads you to this point? How, and how petty? Where did you lose your soul, Jacques? And was your revenge on me worth it?'

Her voice cracked and despite himself Maillard was forced to look away from her misery.

‘I tell you,' she continued in the same clearly enunciated voice. ‘I shall have mine, for now I have nothing to lose. You took my innocence, then you took Pierre and now my child.'

Maillard attempted to flick the shawl over Marie's dead face but Marie-Victoire forestalled him.

‘Don't you touch her,' she said. ‘Don't you dare.'

‘I didn't kill her,' he said defensively.

‘As good as.'

Maillard shrugged. ‘As you like.'

He was halfway out of the room. ‘As to my soul,' he threw over his shoulder, ‘I lost it the day you left me in the orchard. If anyone is to blame, it is you, Marie-Victoire. Think on that. The child is dead because you abandoned me. Once abandoned, I took another path, an infinitely more rewarding one. Death is of little importance.' He stopped at the door. ‘I pursued you because it suited me, and because I needed you to remind me of my past and because I wanted your body. Because', he added softly to himself, ‘I could... and also... and also because it wasn't in my nature to let you go.'

‘You lie, Jacques.' Marie-Victoire spoke in a manner he had never heard before.

He turned back to face her.

‘You lie. You loved me and still do.'

Her eyes glittered and with one hand buried in her skirts, she moved towards him as sinuously as water over stones. ‘Take me in your arms, and tell me it isn't true, and then I will believe you.'

Her body swayed towards him in the half-light, mysterious and sweetly curving. Her hair streamed down her back and her gold-tipped lashes veiled eyes that had gone misty with feeling. He

She drew him like a moth to a candle. He stepped towards her and pulled her body into his, closer and closer – until he felt the knife she produced from her pocket sink deep into his neck.

‘For Pierre,' she said, as he staggered and flung up a hand to ward off the next blow that sliced up into his breast.

‘For Marie,' she said, and struck him again.

‘And for me,' she intoned as the last thrust struck deep into his heart.

He sank without a sound to his knees, blood filming his vision and streaming down his shirt. She stood above him, her knife dangling from her hands, and let it drop to the floor.

‘Now we are both damned,' she said, and watched Maillard's blood mingle with the spilt wine on the floor. He sighed once, raised his head and tried to speak. Deliberately, she turned her back and waited until the bubbling breaths died away. Then she stopped down to close the staring eyes and to mop at the blood with a strip of linen. Wiping her hand on her dress, she knelt down beside Marie.

‘It is over, little one,' she whispered. ‘All the pain and the worry, and soon it will be for me, too. I shall not be with you because I have sinned, but I will think of you where I am going and know that you will be safe. If God is merciful, Pierre will be with you too.'

She drew nearer till her lips rested on the transparent cheeks.

‘Perhaps it is better so. Perhaps I could not have managed to look after you, however hard I tried.'

She kissed the now icy forehead, traced the lines of Marie's feathery eyelashes and attempted to straighten her fever-twisted limbs. Then, carefully lifting the body into her arms, she stepped over Maillard, sat down in the chair by the corner and cradled it to her.

‘I have until morning to say goodbye to you, Marie,' she told her.

Settling back in the chair, she whispered to her dead baby until the dawn streaked the sky and a rumpled Monsieur Théry appeared at the door to bid his farewells and awoke the household.

Slowly but surely, the Jacobins seized the advantages of their opponents' disarray, took control, and ruled the country through the increasingly sinister Committee of Public Safety.

Not unnaturally, the provinces came to resent the Parisian dominance of the revolution and demanded that the National Convention exercise its full weight in deciding social and political policy. In Paris itself, egged on by Marat and others, the easily whipped-up sansculottes demanded wage rises, price controls and punishment for hoarders. Always there was the ever present threat of foreign invasion. The Prussians were advancing, the Spanish were threatening to cross the Pyrenees and the British had besieged Dunkirk. The situation degenerated when royalists in Lyons assumed control, and in Toulon counter-revolutionaries handed over the French fleet, the arsenal and the town to Lord Hood, the British admiral. As a result, Danton, who had tried by diplomatic means to defuse the crisis, was thrown off the Committee of Public Safety. He was replaced by Maximilien Robespierre.

The Jacobins had to work hard. Popular unrest increased after the murder of Marat by Charlotte Corday, a young woman of Girondinist sympathies, which gave the people a potent martyr. Danton and his supporters were still men to be reckoned with, and so were the followers of Hébert, who had set himself up as a radical figure with the sansculottes.

The committee responded with decisive measures. The army was purged of undesirable generals and the devastation of the Vendée was ordered. Revolutionary authority was imposed by force in the provinces, the trial of the queen was ordered and the call went out for the entire country to take up arms.

On September 5th, Paris echoed once more to marching feet as Parisians made their way to the National Convention to demand bread and higher wages. In the confusion, a cry went up from the Jacobin side – ‘Let terror be the order of the day. ‘

On September 17th, the convention passed the Law of Suspects. All those who showed themselves by thought, word or deed to be ‘advocates of tyranny' or ‘enemies of liberty' were suspects. The categories included those whose ‘civism' was unproved and whose loyalty to the revolution was questionable, those who did not have a legal means of support, those with relations abroad, and those who had emigrated without being acquitted before the law.

The reign of terror had begun.

Chapter 7

What made me do it? I don't know. I can no longer think or feel. I can only remember that a madness came over me and I wanted to drive the knife in as deeply as I was able. How strange he should die like that! Jacques always cherished his knife back at La Joyeuse so long ago.

They've taken me to this place and told me that it wouldn't be long, but I think they've forgotten. To kill a patriot is parricide, they said, and they predicted I would wear the red shirt.

It's dark in here and there is no peace. It smells. They smell. So do I. I can never be alone. Except in my mind. I know there will be no mercy for me, especially not from God. I have sinned so terribly. I have killed, I have lain with a man when my heart belonged to another. And today, for the first time, I stole some bread. It was easy. I was surprised how easy.

Blessed Virgin, you deserted me. I wasn't the most obedient of your children but I did love you, but when it came to it I loved Marie more and you took her from me. Why did you do it? How could one small, very small, baby have made any difference to you? I don't understand, and now I never will.

I hope they come for me soon... I hate the dark... and my head hurts. Lady, look down from your throne and pity me. I am without anyone. If there is any room for forgiveness, think of me. You were a mother once.

My feet are dirty, my hands are dirty and my hair is stiff with grime. I cannot keep off the lice any longer. Every night the rats come and I wake when they run over me. When I remember all the lotions I used when I was with Madame Héloïse and the perfume I dabbed on my wrists, then I laugh. I have Pierre's letter and I read it every day. Was he true to me when he described the girls with their plaits? I think so. In his way. I am sure he is dead. Where does he lie? I wonder. I hope it is in a cornfield sprinkled with bright red poppies where the birds swoop after the sun has gone down in the evening. His eyes will have faded now and there will be earth in his black hair. At least he is in the fields. I shall be confined between grey-stone walls, and the sky that will look down on me will be hazy with city smoke. And there will be no poppies or cornflowers over my body.

Pierre said I was like a cornflower. He never knew he had a daughter. I had a daughter. Her name was Marie and she was so beautiful.

Will the dark ever go? Blessed Virgin, forgive me.

Chapter 8

The gates of the Abbaye prison opened to let the cart through. Outside, the driver began to negotiate his way through a jumbled assortment of stalls and shops.

It took time. Most of the figures in the cart sat quietly and from time to time raised their heads to the sun. Nobody talked much being too preoccupied with their thoughts.

One of the prisoners, her dark hair coiled in a mass on top of her head was deep in reverie. Her fingers fiddled with her white dress, now very soiled, and she coughed once or twice, but seemed calm enough. She did not even look up as the cart began to rumble down the streets towards the river, and through the places she knew.

Half hidden by a group of women, a sansculotte who was observing the cart remained where he was until the cart was out of sight.

Today the transfer of prisoners from the Abbaye to the Conciergerie was going well. The cart turned into the Cour de Mai and stopped. Clutching what possessions she had, Héloïse got down from the cart and walked through the grille, down a flight of steps, across a small courtyard and into the Conciergerie prison. The door banged behind her, closing out the sun and severing all contact with the world. She closed her eyes for a moment. It was impossible not to know what entering the prison meant. The sudden drop in temperature made her shiver and the cold poked its fingers down the opening of her dress.

The prison registry was divided in half by a wooden grille.

Héloïse and her companions were ordered into the area where a clerk sat at a desk strewn with papers. At their arrival, he looked up and mouthed
sotto voce,
‘ I don't believe it'.

‘Get going,' said the official in charge.

‘Do you think I'm a machine?,' said the clerk. ‘There's no no time for anything. The prisoners keep on coming and how am I supposed to make out the correct documents and compile the lists for the prosecutor-general?'

‘Shut up,' said his superior.

They were all the same. A selection of frightened people who tried to disguise it. Sometimes with anger; sometimes with bluster; sometimes with rudeness. He began to write their names in the book and glanced up at Héloïse. This one seemed as if she had herself well in control. She was trembling, though, and that made him regard her a little more kindly. He could sympathise with that much better than anything else.

She answered his questions quietly and efficiently, only once casting a look through the grille where two prisoners, who had been condemned too late for immediate execution the evening before, waited to be conducted to the tumbrils. They had been stripped of their coats and their hair was shorn. One of them was drunk and called out for more brandy and the floor was littered with his clothes and the remains of a meal. His companion endeavoured to comfort him, but his efforts were greeted by drunken abuse. Héloïse looked away and prayed that, if... when the time came, she would have strength to approach her end better. The door reopened and four more prisoners entered the registry. Before she had a chance to see if she recognised any of them, Jean-Baptiste threw down his pen and shouted to a companion to take her away.

The stench in the corridor into which the turnkey led her was horrible – a combination of decay and latrines, of illness, misery and the sickening miasma of too many bodies crowded together. The corridor was packed with prisoners who miled up and down, exchanging gossip, cultivating friendships and striking bargains. Some were in rags, but many, those with funds, were dressed with the careful refinement of people who had nothing else to occupy their time. Well-bred voices mixed with the harshest of patois, and the noise was intense. The turnkey's dog snapped at anyone who was unwise enough to brush against him and he tore a ruffle of Héloïse's dress. She protested.

‘Quiet, Ravage, or I'll throttle you.
Palilleux
or
Pistole
?' enquired the turnkey, driving his truncheon savagely into the dog's side.

‘Pistole,'
replied Héloïse quickly. At all costs she must have a cell to herself. ‘With a window.'

‘Ten livres.'

‘Five.'

Héloïse knew better than to use up her stock of money all at once.

‘Ten or nothing.'

‘I have it in coin – that will interest you.' She allowed him to see a gold coin.

The turnkey snapped his fingers to bring his dog to heel. ‘Why didn't you say before? You pay each week. I want two weeks' worth now.'

Héloïse's incarceration in the Abbaye had taught her a few valuable lessons. ‘Come back in a week, if I am still here,' she said. ‘The money will be ready.'

‘You're fortunate,' said the turnkey. ‘I have a vacancy next door to the Citoyenne Capet. The very best of accommodation.'

He laughed – but it was a sound completely lacking in mirth, only malice. Héloïse followed him down the passage and left into a corridor that ran the length of one side of the women's courtyard. He stopped, jangled his keys and indicated that she was to enter the cell. Héloïse clasped her bundle tighter and went inside. The turnkey held out his hand.