French Passion (24 page)

There was no reply. Suddenly the pressure on me was released. Drawing a free breath, I rolled to peer over the rails. Something was wrong with my vision. Details blurred and jumbled. André and the obese carter were hitting each other, but with my accentuated hearing, I heard the blows rather than saw them. Though the carter appeared blubbery, he was strong, and in that first minute his fists pounded viciously. Then André squared off, gripping him by the collar. I opened my eyes wide. André's muscles, under his brown jacket, tensed to a bunch as he aimed his fist at the carter's belly. With a grunt, the fat man lurched, making a half-circle to fall backward against the cart. He hunched over. I couldn't see his face, but I heard, clearly, his pained groans.

Swiftly André leaned over the rail, examining me. His gray eyes filled with horrified pity before his expression darkened. I'd never yet known André in one of his hot spurts of anger, and momentarily my vision cleared and I could see his fury. In my numbed state I forgot how much he hated killing, and was positive he would murder my attacker. I tried to call out. No sound came from my dry throat. With a rage that I can only describe as splendid, André clutched the fleshy throat, shaking the great pile of blubber. He flung the man to the street. The carter knelt, gasping, his round face crimson.

André climbed on the wheel spoke to lift me from the wagon. “Manon. Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“You look so … dazed.”

As we'd touched, a thrill had coursed through me, and weak and shaken as I was, the thrill was so vital I could think of naught else.

André reached for the huge black shawl, wrapping it around me. “Darling,” he asked huskily, “aren't you meant to be at the Inn of St. Antoine, safe in bed?”

“I …” My voice faded. “I was coming to see you.”

“How did you know I was inside the warehouse? Nobody knew I was organizing the grain distribution. Izette just found me a couple of minutes ago. She told me you'd been in the Bastille all this time, and were very weak. In bed. When I saw you I didn't believe it.” He kissed my forehead. “I was on my way to you.” His voice receded and grew louder, but his touch was gentle, his lips on my forehead were warm.

“Oh, André,” I was whispering, “you're all right. You're safe.”

Neither of us noticed a group of soldiers turn onto the street.

The carter had regained himself. “Over here, quick!” he shouted. “I've captured a looter. The wench.”

The soldiers marched smartly toward us. André moved me to the wagon, stepping in front of me, protective.

The corporal said, “Stand aside.”

“She's no looter,” André said coolly.

“See for yourself,” the carter retorted. “That sack of corn in the wagon is hers. She told me so. But it's clearly marked with the King's stamp.”

“It was given to me by the dragoons,” I whispered from behind André's back.

“A likely story,” said the corporal, climbing on the wagon, turning the sack to see the royal crown. To André, he said, “Move. She's under arrest. There's been reports of looting hereabouts, and our orders are to prevent it, by shooting if necessary.”

A soft moan escaped me. I wasn't afraid, André would protect me, yet I felt as if I were drifting away in an oarless boat.

André stretched his arms in front of me. “There's been no looting,” he replied. “The warehouse has been opened. Paris has had famine long enough. The Assembly has taken the problem upon itself. In every poor section like St. Antoine the dragoons are handing out grain. From this day on the people are to have bread.” André's tone was fervent and open. Later, when my senses cleared, I would realize that the Comte gained obedience by his commanding authority, Goujon got his way by virtue of his size and animal shrewdness, André convinced others because he spoke the truth.

The corporal shuffled his boots uneasily. “Nobody told me of such orders,” he said.

“Very well,” André replied. “Now you've been told.”

“By whom?”

“Deputy Égalité,” André said. “I am he.”

The carter drew a sharp breath.

“Take your men,” André was saying. “Hurry to the grainery.”

“The woman's my wife,” the carter muttered.

The corporal said, “You just told me she's a looter. Which is it?”

“Both. We've been married a year, near, and she's a fine wench. That is, until she gets her spells of dishonesty. A good punishment'll set her to rights. Take her to Salpêtière Prison for a while.”

André said, “She was released from the Bastille yesterday.”

“Do you believe a woman's husband, or a stranger?” the carter asked, but his stubborn bravado had faded to a whine.

The soldiers' tall red hats blurred and danced behind André's shoulders.

“The man's a liar,” I heard André say. “Had the crowd chanced along to find him mistreating a released Bastille prisoner, he'd be a corpse.”

My vision was worse, and my head seemed to be draining of blood. I held onto André's arm.

After a second the corporal was asking, “Deputy, shall we shoot him?”

Something whimpered.

“Of course not,” André said. “Now. The dragoons need your help at the warehouse.”

I began to slip. André turned to me. “Oh my darling,” he whispered. “Your head's bleeding.”

It was the first time I'd been ill.

Even in the icy, dank prison, inadequately fed and clothed, I'd never been ill. Now, in my delirium I feared others would die. In my lucid moments I knew I might die.

The carter, with his considerable strength, had punched me to the carriage block, and the granite had cracked the base of my skull. Each time I moved, demons prodded inside my head. To eat even thin gruel caused spears of agony, and when I vomited, the pain was so intense that I sometimes passed out. My fever would shoot up. Death waited behind red curtains.

By day Izette sat by my bed, pressing cool, damp rags to my burning face. Was she or I ill? I wasn't quite sure. Sometimes I was in the toolshed sponging her fevered, oozing body, sometimes she was tending me.

At night André stayed at my bedside, holding me, making death recede. Or was he really with me? Was I dreaming?

In my worst moments I wanted the Comte. Except the Comte wasn't my lover, he was my father, the surrogate father my own father had bestowed on me. The Comte was stronger and more clever than anyone, more powerful. He alone could release me, for wasn't it he who had started my endless punishment? My sick mind raged at him. Yet eternally he was opening that gate to the paupers' burial ground. He was at the same time my father and the father of my child, and thus our lives were inextricably tangled. I screamed for him, and the words came out a whisper.

“Delirious again,” Izette said. “Better send for Égalité.”

Day or night it was always dark and I never was quite positive who was ill, me or Izette, but I knew I couldn't let her die in Hôtel-Dieu.

Sunlight fell through the window onto the bed. André, without his coat, sprawled sleeping on top of the coverlet. In sleep his expression of brooding idealism was gone. He looked relaxed, young.

No demons hammered inside my skull. My body ached, but these aches were normal, as if I'd been riding a horse too long.

André, sensing my gaze on him, stirred. Abruptly he sat.

“So you really were here,” I said. My voice was weak.

“I take the night watch.” He smiled. “I must've dozed.” He touched his lips to my forehead. “You're cool. It's the first time since I carried you back that you've been cool. The fever's broken.”

“Was I ill several days?”

“A month,” he replied.

“That long?”

“Don't try to talk.”

“But I'm better.”

“You need to rest,” he said. “Get well and strong, darling, so we can be happy together.”

“I'll be fragile as long as I can. It's nice having you protect me against overweight carters and all manner of evil. I like having you sleep on the bed next to me.” A note of wonder came into my weakened voice. “André, we have the rest of our lives to be happy together.”

What a fool I was! But then, how could I have known the Comte's reaction to my freedom? And was there any way I could have foreseen that all our lives would be sucked, bobbling straws, into the vast, bloody whirlpool of the Reign of Terror?

Chapter Eight

The following day I was able to sit, propped by pillows. André spoon-fed me beef broth, then held my hand, telling me how he'd spent the months I'd been in the Bastille.

He'd been in the country around Orléans, going furtively from hut to cottage, listing the peasants' grievances. In January, when the river Seine froze, he'd dared sneak back into Paris to see me. We weren't in the house. Neither the neighbors nor the stout provincial couple who'd rented the place knew where we'd gone, so he'd risked visiting Alexine. In her pretty, stupid voice Alexine had repeated the story she'd heard: I'd run off with a lover to Martinique. André had refused to believe her. He'd endangered himself further, traveling by horse-drawn sled to Versailles, where he'd hunted out Jean-Pierre at the Royal Guard regimental headquarters. My brother had repeated that I'd disappeared with a lover, the story told to him by Old Lucien.

“That horrible old man,” I whispered, and began to cry weakly.

André wiped my eyes before he went on with his story. He'd ached with unanswered questions. But—the police were after him. He had pledged himself to complete the peasants' lists of grievances. He couldn't remain in Paris to ferret out the truth.

That bleak winter starving bands pillaged the countryside. Police suppression grew.

King Louis, weak as a King, decent as a man, hoping someone could find a panacea for the country's woes, had called an Estates-General. André had been voted by Orléans as that city's deputy of the Third Estate. On May 4 the King and Queen had led a procession through Versailles to the Hôtel des Menus Plaisir, where the Estates-General would meet. The representatives of the nobility wore varicolored gold-laced silken capes, and from their hats waved large white plumes. The clergy were bright in scarlet or violet. Both these Estates were part of the Court, familiar to the throne. The Third Estate, strangers, elected to wear simple, virile dark coats, plain white neck bands, to each carry a candle.

When the Assembly wasn't convening, André would ride to Paris to track down my friends. Each had embellished the same story. I'd eloped with a new lover. After all, he heard over and over, Manon d'Epinay was lovely, a flirt, impulsive, and what could be more natural for her than to elope?

A sense of despairing belief had crept over him.

What really convinced André that I'd left France was tangential evidence. The Comte de Créqui had ceased to act as the King's Minister of Finance. André had known that only some intense and personal misery could cause a man so steeped in
noblesse oblige
to abdicate his duties. “The Comte no longer advising the King—and in a time of crisis—was my final proof you'd run off with a man, leaving him, leaving me.” André paused bitterly. “I believed the worst of you, the best of him.”

I lifted my head from the pillow. “Don't blame yourself, André. I told you the Comte discovered the truth about us that same night—Old Lucien again. And he, the Comte, needed to punish me, whatever the cost. He couldn't help himself. He realized a
lettre de cachet
would hurt him as much as me, but he couldn't help himself. He's icy brilliant about everything. Except me. He loses all control about me. Go on.”

After the liberation of the Bastille, when Izette came to him at the grainery with the truth, he'd wanted to die with remorse. An illiterate laundress guessing the truth, while he, loving me, had been taken in! After rescuing me from the carter, André had carried me back to the Inn of St. Antoine, pledging never to leave me until I was completely recovered. “I resigned from the Assembly,” he said. “All the other delegates from the Third Estate, though, came here to the inn, pleading. I'm in the center, a moderate, and men from both sides, Monarchists and Extremists alike, said without men like myself there was no hope of setting the country to rights. They needed me to work on the Declaration of the Rights of Man.”

“How angry I'd have been if you'd turned into a nurse.” I managed a smile. In my weakened condition our conversation had worn me out. Holding his hand to my cheek, I drowsed.

The month that I recuperated, André worked on the Declaration of the Rights of Man. I knew which of the articles sprang from his living heart.

Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.…

Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures nobody else.…

All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible for all the dignities and all public positions, occupations, according to their abilities.…

The free communications of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man.…

“What was that last one?” Izette was asking.

I blinked.

“What?” I asked in bewilderment.

How was I sitting here on the window seat, sun warm on my face? It was two weeks after my fever had lifted, and I was able to move around. But an instant ago I'd been in bed, wearing my night shift. And here I was in the sitting room, dressed in—I glanced down—lemon-colored piqué. A simple and charming frock I'd never seen before. Izette, who'd just been combing my hair, was sweating a little as she wielded her fluting iron. Monsieur Sancerre permitted her to bring home gowns to press. But how in less than a second had she started the fire and heated her irons? How had I dressed and come in here in the blink of an eye?

“Go on,” she said. “Keep reading. Ain't it wonderful the way Égalité can string words together? Poetry, them pamphlets of his.”