Season of Light (42 page)

At least for the couple of days that Marat’s embalmed body was on display in the church of Cordeliers the atmosphere in the city was peacefully reverential. Asa, who had taken to hiding herself within crowds, glimpsed relics even more macabre than the corpse itself; his fateful bath held aloft by four women, and his bloody shirt, employed, it was said, in a vain effort to staunch his wounds, displayed like a flag on the end of a pike.

But on 17 July, the day of Corday’s execution, the crowd whipped itself into a frenzy of righteous anger. The eyes of young men were spiked with rage and their bodies tough and unyielding as they thrust their way to the front of the crowd. Dressed in the loose trousers of the sans-culottes they held leering conversations about how they’d like to be given the task of establishing Charlotte Corday’s gender for good and all. Asa was crushed among them so that she could see the hairs on their naked chests, their broken teeth and fingernails, smell the garlic and wine on their breath. Corday had been taken first to the Conciergerie, where she was to be tried and found guilty, then carried across the Pont Neuf to commence the long procession along the rue Honoré to the Place de la Revolution and the guillotine.

As the day progressed and it became clear that Corday would die by evening, the trip to watch her passing turned into a family outing. Asa was elbowed out of the way by men carrying children on their shoulders, and women with bundles of food. Relics of Marat were peddled from one hand to another – screws of paper containing a few hairs or a purported scrap of his clothing. As far as the eye could see the streets were crammed with people waiting to witness the passing of the scarlet woman, the witch. ‘Although it’s said she has the face of an angel,’ someone said. ‘Now that I’d like to see.’

Asa was held fast by the memory of Charlotte’s companionship in Caen, a time when others had abandoned her – Charlotte with her ardent eyes, cotton frock and soft hair. If possible, Asa decided, she would catch Charlotte’s eye and show her that she had at least one friend in the crowd. But when news was passed back that the tumbrel was on its way, there was no possibility of even a fleeting glimpse of Corday. The view was obscured by guards who held their pikes horizontal to form a barrier so that the mob would not surge forward, drag the murderess from her cart and rip her to pieces. There was a shout of amazement as people in prime positions registered that this aberration of nature was indeed just a fresh-faced young woman.

Once the cart had gone by the crowd fell in behind it, the late afternoon sun slanting golden on their heads, while some young girls pranced and skipped so that their light skirts billowed out as if it were a feast day. In a strange way Charlotte might actually be pleased to see all this festivity, thought Asa. Perhaps in her mind she was witnessing a new dawn for Paris, because after all she, Charlotte Corday, had excised the scourge, Marat.

Often Asa lost sight of even the guards, but suddenly, through a random rearrangement of the crowd, Charlotte’s face swayed into view. Utterly familiar, she was as rosy as ever in a plain cap, though wearing a shapeless red gown to show that she was a murderess. She was sitting bolt upright, eyes shining, knees braced against the edge of the tumbrel, her hands tied behind her back. For an absurd moment Asa was jealous of Charlotte: to perform an extreme act, however ill judged, and then to die, that at least was a conclusion, a statement.

They came at last to the Place de la Revolution behind the Tuileries gardens, where the scaffold upon which the king and dozens of others had been guillotined was constructed broad and high so that the crowd could surround it on all four sides. Asa, pressed far back, could see only a faceless puppet, but the crowd must have sensed something of Charlotte’s ardour and strangeness because the jeers and oaths gradually ceased.

What was she thinking as she waited patiently for her hands to be retied? Did she believe it was all a game and that soon she would be back among the Normandy apple orchards or strolling through the Paulins’ garden? Her step was buoyant when she approached the guillotine, as though she were about to take communion under the loving eyes of the Madonna in the church of St-Jean. There was a youthful pliancy to her limbs as she first knelt then lay face down on the wooden board and positioned her neck under the blade, lifting her chin as if settling into a pillow. The last thing on earth she would see was the bloodied basket into which her own head would fall.

The crowd was silent as the blade caught the sun and began its unstoppable descent. Asa looked away, partly because she could not bear Charlotte’s insouciance, partly because she realised that she, in turn, was being watched. Perhaps fifty yards away, deep in the crowd, almost concealed but unmistakably there, her entire attention fixed not on Charlotte Corday but on Asa, was a small, dark-haired woman dressed in a pale pink gown that had once been Asa’s own. The tricolour ribbon formed a sash at Madame’s waist and she wore over her tumbling hair the little red cap she had sewn during the voyage from England.

Those huge, hypnotic eyes were exactly as when Asa had first seen them after the charivari. In an instant Asa had thrust herself into the crowd amid people screaming with joy, hurling their caps into the air and hugging each other. Madame ducked away, but Asa was relentless in her pursuit. The difference in their height, as always, put Madame at an advantage; she was small whereas Asa, being taller, found it less easy to worm her way through.

‘
Estelle Beyle
.’ Madame went still, as if she’d been shot in the back. Finally Asa caught up with her. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Not here.’

‘I’m not letting you out of my sight.’

‘Then come with me or you’ll get us both arrested.’

Madame had grown so impossibly thin that her fingers on Asa’s arm were skeletal. Having lost so much flesh, her face had an almost animal quality, the eyes as globed and blank as a nocturnal creature’s. Holding fast to Asa, she led her through the crowd. Sometimes they were jostled and sworn at, always, after a glance at Madame’s face, they were allowed through.

Her lodgings turned out to be ten minutes from Didier’s apartment, on a narrow street with a cemetery on one side and a row of high buildings on the other. The cloying stench of putrefaction forced Asa to cover her mouth and nose. They crossed a gloomy courtyard, entered a tunnel-like entrance hall and climbed flight after flight of stairs that smelt of damp and urine until they reached the sixth floor. Madame occupied one tiny garret room that was stiflingly hot. She closed the door then turned on Asa: ‘Stupid woman. What are you doing here in Paris?’

The tension between them, confined to so small a space, raked the air raw. The tools of Madame’s trade were laid out on a rickety table under a window barely a couple of feet square, just as she had colonised corners of the parlour at Ardleigh or Morton Hall, and the air was pungent with the smell of watercolour mixed with corruption from the cemetery below. Her little box of paints was open beside a jar of discoloured water; she had been painting a fire-screen in shades of crimson and blue against a white background, depicting flowers and floating wreaths and a flag in liberty colours. Poor Madame – Estelle – who had been described in Caroline’s letter as nothing more than a professional copyist. Other blank panels were stacked against the wall, presumably awaiting her attention. Apart from the table, the room was furnished with a narrow bed, a chair upon which a few clothes were piled and, inevitably, the portmanteau.

‘I have nothing to offer you by way of nourishment, not even water.’ Madame’s voice was as always low and controlled. ‘I left you in Caen to keep you safe. Why did you not return home?’

‘I made connections and when I found out who you were I came to warn Didier. And to find out the truth for myself. How could I creep back to England, knowing what you’d done to me?’

Madame smiled. ‘Ah, you are angry. My tepid English friend.’

‘Did you find your brother’s grave, madame? I went to the cemetery in the Vaugirard and half expected to see you there. I have been looking out for you everywhere I go.’

‘I don’t believe he was taken to the Vaugirard. Some say all the bodies were carried there by cart and tipped into the cemetery, but I know there were too many and that there would have been an outcry if people had seen such heaps of corpses.’

‘What do you think happened to him, then?’

‘I have heard rumours that those gardens at Les Carmes, where he died, are haunted. It’s said that after the massacre the guards were embarrassed because they had to dispose of so many bodies in one day, and that instead of removing them all to the Vaugirard, some were tossed into a well in the garden itself – as many as would fit. And then they filled in the well with soil and covered it with shrubs. One day I shall break in there, and I shall find him.’

‘Madame you cannot … it was so long ago …’

Madame jerked her head towards the grimy windowpane. ‘That little cemetery down there is where the dead king’s body and head were thrown. These days the pit where they fling the corpses is left wide open – there’s no time to cover it up. If you were to lean out of the window you’d see one corner of it, crawling with flies, and the smell would make you vomit. But at least
his
family know where he is. I like to look at the cemetery. I like to think of his bald head and naked, pampered body that used to be taut and keen in the saddle, greedy to hunt and kill, just like your father is. It will be Charlotte Corday’s turn next.’

‘You sound contemptuous. I thought you’d be proud of Charlotte Corday. From what I learned at the Paulins’ house, I had understood that she was your friend.’

‘Charlotte. She was always full of self-importance at being some kind of unpaid secretary to the abbess, but in fact it was only because her family was minor nobility that the nuns took any notice of her. What annoyed Charlotte most, when the Revolution came, was that she no longer had anyone’s attention. Well, she got the attention of everyone in the end so I hope she’s satisfied.’

It felt familiar to be in a room with Madame. To be there under the eaves, looking up at chinks of light shining through the roof tiles, to hear the rustle of some creature in the skirting. Madame was so precise with her long lashes and her curling hair, the tautness of her body that had been made love to time and again by Didier; yet so much not herself, so obsessed and so broken that Asa had a compulsion to put out her hand and touch her arm.

Madame cleared the chair and sat with her back to the window so that a shaft of light fell on her black hair, tinting it auburn. With a flick of her hand she indicated that Asa should sit on the bed. Afterwards the hand was held suspended for an instant longer than necessary, the gesture calculated and indeed refined to draw attention to itself and perhaps to the distinct tremor in her fingers.

‘In fact, I knew you were in Paris because I saw you go to Didier’s apartment. I was watching. I expect he told you his story about trying to save my brother.’

‘I do understand what you must have suffered. But it had nothing to do with me.’

A strangely wistful glance. ‘Of course I know that’s true. Poor Mademoiselle Ardleigh.’ Madame picked up a minuscule paintbrush in her brittle hand. ‘I gave you a chance. I could not believe it when I saw you’d come to Paris.’

‘What did you expect me to do? I had no friends, no money …’

‘I left you the fan. What have you done with it? You haven’t lost it?’

‘It’s at my lodgings.’

‘You have no idea, do you, of the worth of that fan?’ She spat out the words. ‘It is a cabriolet, one of the most rare and beautiful of its kind, like the wheel of a carriage. I don’t expect you’ve really looked at it and seen that it is composed of a fan within a fan. Even you, who are supposed to be so clever, have missed the detail. It was an old fan, torn at the top, so I replaced the original silk with my own design. That fan would have bought you a passage to anywhere.’

‘Or had me arrested. Surely it is of no value now. Who carries a fan these days?’

Madame cast Asa a burning glance. ‘So you’re telling me that I gave my life to a thing of no value? I crouched over my desk painting these fans for the great ladies who came to our shop. I watched them hold my creations to their faces and peer at themselves in the mirror, and like you they never saw the fan that I had made, only their own greedy eyes peeking over the edge of it. When the Revolution came I thought that Didier and I would change all that. I thought we would make a world where the fan-maker would be valued more than the useless woman who bought the fan. My family was packing to leave but I stayed in the old house on my own, waiting for Didier to send for me. I was part of the Revolution, even in Caen. We were young and we wanted a new world so we drove the marquis from his castle and the fat, spoilt nuns from their abbey. And all the time, I thought Didier was in Paris paving the way for our life together. As it turned out he’d fallen in love with an English girl.’

‘I didn’t know about you. Had I known …’

‘… you would have done exactly the same. When I came to Paris that summer with my friends I was so full of joy that sometimes I thought my bones would catch fire. On the journey we were short of money so we ate stale bread and drank the roughest wine. Sometimes we walked behind the carriage to give the horses a rest. It was warm at night and you could hear the crickets in the hedgerows. For the first time in my life I saw fireflies. I was travelling to Didier and I knew everything was going to change. What could be better than that? That was the best time of all, the journey from Caen to Paris, to see Didier. We arranged to meet him at the entrance to the Tuileries. I thought he would be as excited as I was but he gave me only a little kiss on either cheek, then he turned away, and I knew something had happened.’

‘But it wasn’t my fault.’

‘He was my Didier and he had fallen in love with you. That is the one thing I did understand – how could I not? I remember … you … I remember when we met you in the gardens and afterwards he broke away from our group and dashed off, out of sight – you see, I forget nothing of those few minutes, your pink cheeks and your shining eyes, the way you moistened your lips with your tongue and glanced at your sister to see if she noticed what you were feeling. Didier returned to my side flushed and full of laughter, but he pretended that you were nothing but a passing acquaintance. I hung on to his arm and looked back at you and said: “You can tell me. I think it’s exciting, Didier, that you have met someone new.” “Don’t you mind?” he said. “I thought you’d mind.” “How could I? All that matters to me is that you are happy.” He was only too willing to take me at my word and pour out every detail of your love affair. We were delayed in Paris by the hailstorm and I sat with him in his room, far into the night after you’d gone, and listened to him talking about you.’