Season of Light (36 page)

‘If you find Didier,’ said Beatrice, ‘give him a message from me. Tell him please to come home. If Didier were here it might not be so bad for Caen when the men from Paris come to punish us.’

My dearest Philippa
,

…
Please don’t worry about me any longer. I have been staying with the Paulin family and am safe and well. They have been exceptionally kind. My regards to all at Morton Hall and my heartfelt apologies for the trouble I have caused. Give my fondest love to Georgina and Caroline and, of course, to Father
.

In a few days I shall be in Paris, under the protection of Didier Paulin. Oh my dearest sister, I pray that one day you will understand, and even forgive this rash, extraordinary journey of mine
…

Your wayward sister
,

Asa

Next morning Asa set off in the diligence for Paris, armed with a street map and a letter of introduction from Beatrice to an old friend of the professor, a Madame Maurice, who lived on the rue des Francs Bourgeois and took in lodgers.

The huge carriage, drawn by a quartet of horses, would make the journey in a couple of days. It was composed of two linked compartments, and Asa was allocated a seat at the back which swayed nauseatingly at sharp corners but was at least removed from the pounding of hooves and the badinage of the coachmen. Her companions were a self-satisfied cabinetmaker and his wife, on the way to join an entrepreneurial son who was doing very well, thank you, having learned his father’s trade and subsequently set up a furniture company making the new plain chests of drawers, cupboards and chairs so much admired by well-to-do Parisians.

The husband wore a tricolour cockade in his lapel and the wife said (with a meaningful glance at the little cockade in Asa’s sash) that were it not unwomanly she would do the same, but she believed a wife’s place was at the hearth, except obviously when she was on a well-deserved trip to Paris. Anyway, she wouldn’t dream of getting involved in politics. When they discovered that Asa was a monosyllabic farmer’s daughter called Julie Moreau, summoned to the capital by her sister who was expecting her first child, they lost all interest. Nevertheless, Asa was sorry when they fell asleep; their self-important conversation at least made her feel safer and distracted her from thoughts of Paris’s Revolutionary Tribunal.

The coach was halted perhaps half a dozen times for papers to be inspected and the passengers scrutinised. On the first occasion, when they were told to hop out and wait in the hot sun at a crossroads just beyond Lisieux, Asa’s armpits were damp with fear and her cheeks burned, though she forced her hand to remain steady as she removed her bundle of papers from the pocket in her bodice. The official, who had a youthful, scrubbed face, pored over her passport for some time while she smiled blandly and pretended interest in a stray dog. Next time they were stopped Asa was much calmer and stood with folded arms while the forms were given a fleeting glance. After that, she grew more confident, so that by the time she reached Paris she almost believed in the authenticity of her papers.

Occasionally they passed companies of National Guardsmen heading west out of Paris to deal with counter-revolutionary Normandy. Sometimes they were delayed by straggles of refugees and beggars who had no right to be on the road at all, according to Asa’s companions. The cabinetmaker and his wife agreed that some people spent their entire lives sponging. The Revolution had provided countless opportunities for those with the wit to use them, so there was absolutely no excuse.

‘I’ve heard that the harvest is likely to fail again,’ Asa replied quietly, ‘because of this hot weather.’

The cabinetmaker’s wife stared. ‘We have not noticed any shortages in Bayeux.’

‘Perhaps Bayeux has had the foresight to store plenty of grain from last year. In Caen there were long queues and I believe that elsewhere in France, in Paris, for example, there are severe shortages of bread.’

She was subjected to further prolonged scrutiny. ‘There is always enough bread for citizens who work hard. It’s the ones who wait for their mouths to be filled who claim they are suffering.’

By early evening on the second day they had reached the outskirts of the capital. Asa leaned forward to catch her first glimpse of Parisian shopfronts and alleys and churches, to hear the first Parisian chatter – a heated exchange between a housewife and a vendor of tubs and buckets – until the cabinetmaker’s wife clicked her tongue in exasperation, claiming her view through the window was obscured.

Falling back in her seat, Asa gave her companions a dazzling smile. Five years ago, when she had left this city, her heart had been leaden with despair. Again and again she had strained to hear the thud of hoof-beats; each time the Mortons’ carriage was halted she was sure Didier had caught up with them at last. When they burst through the gates into open countryside she had thought she would die of anguish. Now she was back it was as if the past had unfurled from her shoulders and drifted away; all this time she had been bound by her yearning for Didier, and then the complication of Shackleford. In Paris she would emerge from the carriage entirely herself, fearful, of course – of what Didier might say and of the dangers of the city – but reinvigorated by this place, to which she had longed to return.

When they were set down in the north-west of the city, however, Asa, projected from the relative calm of the diligence to the hubbub of the capital, shrank back under the gallery of the coach-yard, her confidence displaced by the shock of arrival. There was no John Morton this time to sweep her up in his spanking carriage and arrange an itinerary for her. The cabinetmaker had bundled his wife into the inn, presumably to be met by their grateful son.

Asa set forth, disoriented by tall clusters of buildings blotting out the sky and the unending surge of people on the streets. At first, as she travelled east through the city, everything seemed so reassuringly the same as it had been in 1788 that she began to think the stories of post-revolutionary Paris were overblown. The streets were narrow and thronging as ever, a muddle of mansions and squares, dark alleys and courtyards, and then the massive walls of the church of St-Eustache. But with a renewed surge of apprehension she realised that while superficially the same, there had been a shift which jarred with her memories – no longer was she thrust against a wall while an indifferent nobleman hurtled by in his carriage; now only goods were transported in wagons and carts while people walked or occasionally went by cab. And pedestrians, who in the old days had betrayed their station even by the colour of their gloves or the robustness of their shoes, were dressed in a peculiarly uniform fashion. Gone were the elaborate wigs and towering hats that had imposed such a disdainful posture on wealthy women. Instead hair was worn loose or tucked into plain straw hats or caps with a single frill; skirts were narrow and men wore unfitted trousers and carelessly tied cravats. Everywhere there were flashes of red, white and blue; cockades, sashes, shoe-ribbons.

And this Paris was not as well behaved as the city of the past. Then there had been a brutal drawing of boundaries that consigned the beggar to the church step and a lady to her box at the opera. Now there was a swagger to the step of even the scruffiest youth. Asa sensed this same lack of deference in the hungry eyes of women as she passed through Les Halles, and recognised that when they stood gossiping by an empty vegetable stall, there was not just boredom in their eyes, but rage.

Occasionally from a side street or apartment would come a shout, a scuffle, a hurling of abuse. Sometimes, as Asa passed a church, she noticed that statues on the exterior had been savagely defaced, as they had been in Caen. And despite what the cabinetmaker’s wife had said, there was indeed a bread queue with women standing in line as if they’d been there for half a decade.

Asa was wearing Madame’s old, dark blue gown, let out at the seams and with a strip of darker fabric inserted above the hem so that the skirt reached to an inch above her ankles. A muslin scarf was crossed on her breast and tied behind her back and her hair was covered by a voluminous Normandy bonnet with a deep, flapping brim. Nobody except the occasional lad gave her a second glance. But as she marched deeper into the city Asa felt herself to be subtly obscured. Either it was the clothes, or the knowledge that their former owner might be close by, but Asa had the sense of seeing the world not as herself, but through Madame’s wounded eyes.

On the following day, Thursday, 11 July, Asa ate a meagre breakfast of hard bread and coffee with her landlady. ‘I haven’t been in Paris for years,’ she told Madame Maurice. ‘Where can I find out what’s going on?’

Madame Maurice – or Citoyenne Maurice, as she insisted on being called – was the widow of one of Professor Paulin’s academic colleagues and would have preferred to talk about the old university days in Caen. ‘I still feel a stranger here in Paris. But I suppose you should go to the Palais Royal. That’s where most people start. You can buy any number of different newspapers there, from learned to downright crude. What do you want to know exactly?’

‘As I think Beatrice Paulin explained in her letter, I am here to represent my family in paying my respects to someone who has died. And while I’m in Paris I hope to visit Beatrice’s brother, Didier, to give him messages from his father and sister. In the meantime I might as well see something of the city.’

Citoyenne Maurice’s eyes were disconcertingly incredulous, like those of the cabinetmaker’s wife. ‘A young lady such as yourself would never have been allowed to travel alone in my day. Well, like I said, the Palais Royal is a good place to start. And most people would want to see where the Bastille used to be, but I should warn you there’s scarcely a crumb of mortar left. You might want to put your nose into the Assembly, if you have the energy, though it’ll be a crush. I’ve never attended myself but I’m told it’s quite a thing, to hear the debates.’

‘Would you like to come with me?’

‘Oh no. No. I don’t go out if I can help it and there’s plenty of work to be done running this place. Sometimes, you know, I wish I was back in Caen. I had such a pretty garden there and so many friends. But I’ve heard all kinds of stories about Caen and people would ask questions if I left now.’

How extraordinary to be sent to the Palais Royal, of all places, where Asa had refused Shackleford for the first time. She preferred not to think of him, and those unsettling memories of Compton Wyatt; tender, honey-brown eyes, the silence of the woods. Her clear choice was, then and now, not an English estate spread out in a lush valley, but this clamorous city where a cobbler crouched under an awning hammering at an upturned shoe, and where she was pestered by a woman selling tiny lead figures painted in revolutionary colours, their feet sunk in a tray of sand.

And here was the Palais Royal, its gracious arcades bulging as ever with coffee sellers and pastry vendors, with shops selling books and baskets and hats and stockings. Commerce flourished, seemingly, revolution or no, even if the previous owner, the Duc d’Orléans – despite having renamed himself Philippe d’Egalité in a flush of revolutionary fervour – had been clapped in gaol while his long-term mistress, Madame de Genlis, had fled to Switzerland.

Asa bought a newspaper called
Le Père Duchesne
and, seated in the shade, she read every word.

My fine sans-culottes, your enemies are only bold because you stand there with your arms folded; wake up, damn it … Disarm all those bastards who piss ice-water in a heatwave and want no part in the Revolution. The poison of moderation is more dangerous than Austrian weapons … If you slumber only a short while more you can expect to wake up to bloody slavery, fuck it
.

And on and on. The Girondins (dubbed
Brissotins
by the journalist) were accused of being traitors who regretted the death of the king and were prepared to side with France’s enemies to crush the Revolution. In other words, while France’s brave soldiers were fighting foreign armies abroad the Girondins, such as Brissot, who was now safely in prison, thank Christ, had been using every opportunity to turn Parisians against each other and encourage counter-revolution. This is why a Revolutionary Tribunal had been set up; to give swift justice to enemies of the state. And this is why a Committee of Public Safety was needed, to oversee the war effort and save the country from civil unrest. New elections were soon to be held to that august body. Citizen Robespierre was a likely candidate, likewise Citizen Paulin, currently on a patriotic expedition to the south, where he had been firing up the French generals whose task it was to defend Toulon from imminent invasion.

Once the purge of France’s enemies was complete the lovely new Constitution, which would bestow freedom on every Frenchman, including the right to vote and have free education for his children, would at last be implemented. Readers who were not required to fight were urged to support the Revolution by watching out for counter-revolutionaries, hoarders of grain and those who bad-mouthed the new order.

When Asa raised her head it seemed to her that the city groaned. In the arcades, caged birds cheeped pitifully. A prostitute, lounging in a doorway, cast a disdainful eye over Asa. The garden of the Palais Royal these days consisted of strips of parched lawn and gravel walks; a cheeky sparrow took a dust bath inches from her feet and dry leaves rustled overhead. A youth yelled from an open window to his friend at another where bedlinen hung limply in the hot air.

On the day Shackleford had proposed, these gardens had been green and fragrant; she had been dismissive of him here, as she had everywhere else. What would the owner of Compton Wyatt have made of the scandal-mongering tone of
Le Père Duchesne
? Asa got up abruptly and walked on past the walls of the Louvre towards the old palace of the Tuileries.

With every step, one way or another, she was drawing closer to Didier. Perhaps he had not yet returned from Toulon. Or perhaps she would actually bump into him at the Convention. It was only a matter of time. She was short of breath and her hands were cold despite the heat of the day. His letters, tucked for safe-keeping into the lining of her case at Citoyenne Maurice’s, were such a flimsy hook that she was astonished by her own audacity. Or stupidity, she thought, as she recalled the words of Professor Paulin and his daughter. A queue snaked into the gardens. Apparently the opportunity to sit in the gallery and watch the Convention at work was too exciting to miss, even if you happened to be a woman who had been told by
Le Père Duchesne
that your proper place was in the home, giving succour to the children of France. Sometimes groups emerged, fanning themselves with bonnets or papers and wiping their faces on their sleeves. ‘You don’t want to go in there,’ said one wag on his way out. ‘Filthy mood, the lot of them. And no Marat, so hardly worth it.’