Sovay (33 page)

She went faithfully every day; sometimes to see Hugh, sometimes Virgil, sometimes both together. They would stand for up to half an hour, staring up at the window in silent vigil. She derived great comfort from this, but suffered almost equal anguish. If one was missing, she feared for the other and vice versa. She dreaded the days when neither appeared at all. Whoever appeared, she always told her father that it was Hugh. Each day, she searched the crowd for another, and had almost given him up when there he was, in his distinctive uniform of dark blue and white, his highly polished boots silver in the bright sunlight. His gold epaulettes glittered and the decorations swinging from his lapels shimmered as he swept off his hat and bowed. He stayed for several minutes, staring upwards, his hand on the pommel of his sword, his heavy, handsome face unsmiling, his thick brows drawn together.

‘Comme il est beau!’ The girl standing next to her grinned. ‘Is he your lover?’

‘Yes,’ Sovay replied, almost without thinking, and continued to stare back at him. No word had passed between them, but she knew it to be so. She kept her eyes upon him until it seemed that the prison walls had melted, the other people, the trees, the gardens themselves had faded to nothingness and they were the only ones left whirling in an eternity of time and space.

She was so lost in the intensity of his gaze that she failed to realise the purpose behind his appearance. He had come to deliver a warning.

There was another ritual, as unvarying as the parade. Every evening, at around six o’clock, all talk ceased, all movement stilled, silence spread round the prison like a rippling wave. It was as if the building itself were holding its breath. An officer walked through the public rooms where the people stood frozen like statues; the silent corridors echoed to his slow, measured step. As he walked, he read from the sheet he held before him, the ‘Evening Paper’, the names of those who were to appear the next day before the Revolutionary Tribunal.

Sovay heard his voice and stopped what she was doing. Her father sat up in bed, his ears straining, his face puckered in concentration. It was a quality of listening that everyone adopted, as if sheer intensity of concentration could change what the guard was going to say, or make him go away. One of his feet dragged slightly behind the other. Every night, Sovay tracked his halting step as he went past them and on up the corridor. One evening, he stopped outside their door.

‘Middel-ton!’

Sovay and her father looked at each other. The moment they had most dreaded had come. Her father struggled up and swung his legs out of the bed by gripping them one at a time. He could scarcely walk but he was reaching for his breeches.

‘Help me, Sovay!’

‘No, Father. Stay where you are. I will go to enquire.’

She opened the door. Her father had taken up his sticks and was coming after her.

‘Which?’ she called. The guard was already past them. ‘We’re both Middleton. Which one of us is it?’

‘What does it matter? Me! Take me!’ her father shouted.

The guard ignored him and traced his finger back up his list.

‘It says female here.’ His fingernail was blackened and broken, she noticed, as he pointed to her name written in gothic script. ‘It is for you, Citizeness.’

CHAPTER
3
8

A
number was chalked on her door and in the morning that number was called. Sovay went out, her head held high, her shoulder wet with her father’s tears. She had said her goodbyes to him and, although they would never meet again in this life, she did not look back as she left the cell. She needed all her courage for the ordeal ahead.

Sovay was taken from the Luxembourg with about thirty other prisoners to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Prisoners were now tried in
fournée
, batches, in the same way that they were herded to the guillotine. They travelled in a long, covered cart drawn by four horses. There were people of every age and condition, from a little servant girl who looked no more than a child, to an old man of eighty or more who still wore a soiled wig and rags of velvet that marked him as an aristocrat. These were people of every sort and class but they had one thing in common: once they had appeared before the Tribunal, they would be dead within twenty-four hours. If there was a lesson in uniting the nation, this was it. United by their shared fate, all differences of degree, age and status melted from them. Laundress comforted countess and vice versa, servant shared bread with his master. Sovay had to smile at the irony of it. She offered her scrap of kerchief to the little servant girl and asked her name.

‘My name is Minette,’ the girl answered as she wiped her tears away.

‘Why are you here?’

The girl looked at her dumbly. She had no idea.

Sovay put her arm round the child and held her close until her shivering stopped.

They were taken to the hall of the Revolutionary Tribunal where they were put together with people from other prisons, some of whom, it was alleged, had been part of the same conspiracy, even though they had never seen each other before. They were directed to their places on the ranges of benches reserved for prisoners. Since 22 Prairial, the number had been expanded so that the accused could be tried a hundred at a time.

Sovay looked around from her place about halfway up the tier of benches. The hall bore some similarities to a courtroom, in that there were clerks, a jury, but in other ways this was markedly different. There were guards everywhere; the judges sat at a long table in the body of the court; there was no witness stand, because there would be no witnesses, and what dock was large enough to accommodate a hundred? The jury came in and sat down on the right-hand side of the judges’ table. Again, this had the semblance of justice, in that they were a jury, but the jury was always made up of the same people, all Jacobin friends of Robespierre or other members of the Committee of Public Safety.

They were told to stand and the judges filed in. There were five of them, all formally dressed in black with white wigs under tall, black hats which were crowned with great black plumes. They wore the tricolour like a badge of office, on the bands of their hats, the rosettes in their lapels and the sashes across their chests. They stood and bowed to the court, their president at the centre, some kind of official insignia swinging from a tricolour lanyard round his neck. They sat as one as he rang a small bell to signal that proceedings should begin. The noise was tinkling and slight and sounded odd in the sombre room, more suited to the ordering of tea, than the deaths of so many.

They had been followed into the room by Fouquier-Tinville, the prosecutor. Hated and feared in equal measure, this was the man who had sent hundreds, if not thousands, to the guillotine. Most eyes were on him not the judges. A tall man dressed in black like the others and swathed with tricolours. He wore black gloves and a black wig under the nodding, funereal plumes. He looked around and held out his hand for the charge sheet. He began to read in a monotonous voice, as if his task had become tedious and wearisome. Proceedings had begun.

Each prisoner was asked to stand, their name and the charge against them read out. At this point any semblance to proper court procedure ended. There were no defence lawyers, no witnesses, even the prisoners were not allowed to speak up for themselves. Any who did were silenced by the president with a peremptory ‘
Tu n’as pas la parole
’, it is not your turn to speak. Any who persisted were turned out of the court room and condemned in their absence. And condemned they were and quickly. The proceedings went on apace. The charge was read, the jury gave a verdict of guilty, the Tribunal conferred, the president announced the sentence. ‘Death.’ In every case.

The charges varied: conspiracy; hoarding; being a suspect, suspected of being a suspect, associating with people who were suspect; being an aristocrat, having aristocratic connections, an aristocratic appearance; acting in an unrevolutionary manner, uttering unrevolutionary words, thinking unrevolutionary thoughts, even grieving for those who had been sent to the guillotine was enough to land one here. The charges were relentless and most of them trivial. On what Sovay heard, most of the people of Paris, most of France, would have been condemned. The death sentence was inevitable. There was nothing you could say, nothing you could do. One spirited woman, accused of conspiracy, protested that she was not even in the prison where the alleged conspiracy took place. The president’s bell tinkled, she was told to be quiet, and informed with cold impatience that ‘You would have been in the conspiracy if you had been there!’

Most people heard the charge and the verdict in silence, staring forward without expression, struck by a kind of numbness that Sovay could feel creeping through her, too. She withdrew from the vicious absurdities played out before her and lapsed into a kind of reverie. Part of her remained present, watching everything, but it all seemed to be happening to someone else.

The sound of her own name startled her. She stood up and stared at Fouquier-Tinville. His dark eyes hardly registered her presence. He read out the charge. ‘Proscribed person, English spy and enemy of the Republic.’ He turned to the jury, expecting no answer, when there was an interruption. Virgil Barrett was standing at the bar of the court.

‘This is a case of mistaken identity!’ he shouted across to the prosecutor. ‘She is an American citizen. Married to me. I have papers here to prove it!’

It was a vain intervention, with no hope of succeeding, but at least she was not completely abandoned. The weight around Sovay’s heart lightened just a fraction to know that she had not been forgotten.

Fouquier-Tinville turned to him. ‘We have plenty of evidence to the contrary,’ he said.

His hooded eyes looked towards the back of the room. Standing there was Dysart, dressed in black, with a white wig, plumed hat and tricolour sash, just as if he were a judge at the tribunal.

The president rose and bowed in his direction. ‘We have pleasure in welcoming Citizen Dysart to our proceedings from the Departement of the Thames.’

Sovay was not shocked or even surprised to see him. She stared straight ahead, as hope finally died within her, snuffed out by his presence. All her fire left her, collapsing into grey ashes of resignation. She was determined to show nothing, but Dysart scented her utter defeat, as a predator smells hart’s blood. His thin nostrils flared and, in a rare show of emotion, he gave her a smile of gloating triumph.
I win, you lose
, his pale, lustreless eyes seemed to say.
I get my revenge at
last
.

Sovay scarcely heard as the president rang his bell.

‘Guards! Remove that man from the court.’ He pointed to Virgil. ‘He and his
wife
can spend one last night together. Put him in with tomorrow’s batch.’ He announced the verdict on Sovay without consulting his colleagues. ‘Death. Who’s next?’

CHAPTER
3
9

S
ovay was taken from the Revolutionary Court to another part of the Conciergerie in Paris. The prison. The most feared destination. It was the antechamber to the guillotine; all those who were to die the next day were brought here. She joined a line of other prisoners and they were marched across the great courtyard. Some of the paving stones still lay heaved up like tombstones from burying the dead of the September Massacres, and all around gaped gated dungeons, crowded with wretched prisoners from every part of France.

Conditions were very different here. The gaolers were grim and unspeaking with large mastiff dogs snarling at their heels. Sovay could not see Virgil as she waited with other prisoners outside the Records Office. He must have already been processed. She was registered by a prison clerk who rarely looked up from his scribbling and then taken to another room for the toilette. A man stepped forward, scissors in hand. He was an assistant to the executioner, here to perform the ritual inflicted on all the condemned in preparation for the guillotine. The collar of her dress was sheered off. Then he took the heaviness of her long, dark hair in his hand and began to cut. The slicing of the blades sounded like tearing silk. Sovay watched each lock curl to the floor like smoke. Her hair was cut short into the nape to allow no obstruction to the falling blade. When he had finished, the prison dampness felt cold, clammy on her neck and she put her hand up to feel the strangeness of her newly shorn state. The hair that remained felt like fur.

The process of her death had already started. She was leaving a part of herself behind, already lost to her sight, mixed there on the floor with hair of every hue and kind, to be swept up and disposed of; so much dead stuff, as she would be tomorrow. The executioner’s assistant pushed the pile together with his foot and took up his broom.

The turnkey led her away from the common areas of the prison. Sovay shivered as they passed along dank, stone passages, running with water and clotted with slime. Contagion breathed from the very walls. Sovay did not believe for a moment that the president of the Tribunal would keep to his word, certain that his remark to Virgil had been just another jibing cruelty. She followed the guard with a heavy heart, sure that she was to spend her last night on earth alone, but when the man turned the big key in the lock and the door creaked back, there was Virgil waiting for her. His hair had been shorn like hers, and his shirt collar had been torn away. She flew into his arms and he held her to him. The gaoler had no difficulty believing that they might be husband and wife.

‘Make the most of it!’ he said with a leer as he shut the door.

Almost as soon as he had left them, they broke away from each other.

‘Sovay,’ Virgil held her at arm’s length, searching her face for signs of change. ‘How are you?’

‘All the better for seeing you! What you said in that courtroom, knowing it was certain death.’ She shook her head. ‘I am for ever in your debt. Or, at least, until tomorrow.’

‘It was worth a try. I thought it might work. Occasionally, such things do. A case of mistaken identity . . .’ He sat down on the filthy straw pallet and buried his head in his hands. ‘Anything is worth a try.’

‘But you have thrown your life away. For me. Why?’

She looked round at the ancient, crumbling stone of the walls carved with names, dates, prayers, rows of little lines scratched in and crossed out to measure time passing; messages of despair from all the poor wretches that had been incarcerated there. Waves of misery washed over her.

‘It is hopeless!’ She shook her head.

Virgil’s fingers parted. His grey eyes looked up at her.

‘Perhaps not entirely,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Things are happening.’ It was his turn to stand and pace. ‘Yesterday, I was at the Convention. Things did not go well for Robespierre. He went too far. He made thinly veiled threats against Tallien, Fouché, Vadier, Barère and others, implying that he was ready to move against them. The convention trembled, then rallied. Tallien and his allies are ready to join with Fernand and his moderate friends. It has come to the point where it is either him or them. I don’t know what happened today but the reign of the tyrant may well be nearing its end.’

Sovay sat on the bed, listening to him, her hands held in her lap, clutching each other for comfort.
I will
not hope. I will not allow myself to hope
, she recited it inside herself like a litany. What hope could there be when people like Danton, Desmoulins, men who had been among the original leaders of the Revolution, had perhaps sat in this very cell, powerless to prevent their own deaths?

‘Even if it is true,’ she looked up at him, ‘it may well come too late for us.’ She touched her shorn neck. ‘We are due to die tomorrow. The people here will follow their orders, whatever happens in the Convention. They have turned the Revolution into a great machine: once something is set in motion, it is impossible to stop.’

‘Perhaps. It is on an edge as keen and narrow as the blade of the guillotine –’

He was interrupted by the gaolers making their rounds, turning locks in doors, herding people back to their cells, demanding lights out, numbering the doors for tomorrow’s
fournée
with a swift chalk scrawl.

Sovay looked to the tiny scrap of light that still gleamed through the bars high above her.

‘They make us turn in earlier here than in the Luxembourg,’ she said. ‘What day is it? I lost track of time in there.’

‘Twenty-seventh of July – 9 Thermidor.’ Virgil stretched out beside her. ‘Come, let’s get some rest.’

Sovay must have slept, because she was suddenly being shaken awake.

‘Hssh!’ Virgil’s face was close to hers. She could see the whites of his eyes in the darkness. He held his fingers to his lips. ‘Listen!’

At first, Sovay could here nothing. Then, through the night sounds of the prison, a muffled shout, the scrape of a key, footsteps echoing, she heard a bell ringing, a slight sound, thinned by distance, tiny but insistent. It was joined by another, a deep toll, loud and ominous, booming through the thick walls.

‘That’s Notre Dame. They are sounding the tocsin.’ Virgil sprang up and went to the faint patch of light that marked the window. ‘Calling the city to arms.’

‘What does it mean?’ Sovay rose to join him.

They both listened as the rest of the gaol woke around them. Others had heard it, too. There was movement and rustling of feet through straw, the sound of running and men shouting. A cry went up of fear and lamentation. A clamour started as prisoners hammered on the doors and beat on the bars and walls with their metal food pans, fearing that they would be dragged from their cells to be hacked and beaten to death on the paving stones and cobbles outside, as others had been at the time of the September Massacres.

‘What will happen?’

From above came the beat of hooves as men rode into the courtyard; the rumble of cannon being moved into place.

‘Who knows?’ Virgil dragged the bed over to the wall and climbed upon it, to try and see out.

‘Here,’ Sovay hitched her skirt. ‘Let me stand on your shoulders.’

She relayed to Virgil what she could see happening. The night was fully dark. It was not long past midsummer, so she would think it before three o’clock. The grating of their cell was almost underground; her eyes were on the level of the paving stones outside. She could see the stamping hooves of the horses, cannons being wheeled about and rolled towards the gates. An officer dismounted and strode towards the entrance steps, his spurs ringing and sparking on the stones. Whatever he had come for, he didn’t get it. After a few minutes he was back again, mounting his horse. The gates opened and he was gone, the cannon rumbling after him. She wondered for a moment if it could be Léon.

‘What do you think it means?’ she asked as she dropped down from Virgil’s shoulders.

‘Well, I don’t think that we are all going to be dragged out and massacred. Not just yet, anyway.’ He rubbed the fair stubble on his chin as he paced the room, aching to escape out into the city. ‘It could still go either way, but it could be that Robespierre and his friends have been arrested. If that is so, then that officer could be trying to find a prison to take them.’

‘What about the cannon?’

‘Let us hope that it is not being used by Hanriot to move against the Convention. He’s an ally of Robespierre. Let’s hope your friend, Léon, is able to deal with him. Léon’s been rallying the other battalions, so that they will be ready to act when the time comes. He’s a good man, clever and courageous and devoted to his country. If anything is to be salvaged from the wreck of the Revolution, it will be by men like him.’

‘Why do you say he is my friend?’ The mention of his name had made her heart beat a little faster and she had found that she was blushing despite herself.

‘Is he not?’ Virgil smiled. ‘Perhaps I am mistaken, but
he
has sworn to marry you, if we can get you out of here. The marriage was his idea. When he knew that you were to appear before the Tribunal, he wanted to go to them and declare that you were man and wife. He would see you go free or share your fate. I took his place. As you say, the gesture was near hopeless and, in the balance, his life was more important. He can do more than I to stop this madness.’

By now there was sound and movement out on the corridor. Virgil and Sovay went to listen. The turnkeys were making extra rounds, checking every lock and door. They were more surly than usual, some of them plainly fearful, their dogs barking and yelping as they picked up their masters’ agitation.

Any communication with the prisoners was strictly forbidden, but not all the gaolers were on the side of Robespierre. Gradually, word began to spread by means of what the prisoners called
the whispers along
the wall
. As the first light of dawn struck through into the filthy cells, the news broke to general rejoicing. They were facing a new morning; one without Robespierre.

No one was sure exactly what had happened. Some stories said he was dead, others imprisoned, still others attested that he was alive but wounded, but all agreed that his reign of terror was over. Many found it hard to believe and as the morning light strengthened towards day, they listened for the rumble of the tumbrels in the courtyard outside. But the gates remained shut, the guards did not come to check the numbers chalked on the cells and escort the occupants to have their hands bound in readiness by the executioner’s assistants. The prison was still, as if none quite knew now what to do.

When the guards finally came round with the
gamelles
, the mess tins, they were uncommunicative but they unlocked the doors to allow access to the public areas.

Everyone crowded round the bars, although there was not much to see. At length, the gates opened. A carriage rolled up and the overseer of the prison returned, his face white and rigid with shock. He was accompanied by an escort of National Guardsmen. Commanding them was Léon.

He came striding down the aisle with the Governor behind him.

‘I don’t have orders,’ the man was saying.

‘
I
have the orders, Citizen.’ Léon brandished the papers in his face. ‘I have cannons, too. Trained on this place. If you do not release them into my custody, it will be the worse for you! Now, where are they?’

He was besieged by supplicants, all clamouring to be released from their hateful confinement.

‘All in good time, Citizens! All in good time! Your turn will come soon.’

‘Is it true?’ someone cried. ‘Is it true? Has the tyrant fallen?’

‘Aye!’ Léon looked round them. ‘It is true. Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just are appearing even now before the Revolutionary Tribunal.’

His announcement brought bitter laughter and fresh cheering.

‘What about the others?’

‘Dead or dying, as the Incorruptible will be shortly. He tried to kill himself but only succeeded in shooting half his jaw off. Do not worry, my friends, he will not cheat the guillotine. You will all be freed soon. My present orders are for two prisoners only.’ He turned to where Virgil and Sovay were fighting their way through the press of people. ‘They are to be released to me without delay.’ He took Sovay in his arms. ‘Especially this one!’

He kissed her and the cheering redoubled. Clapping broke out all around them, while Virgil looked on, grinning like a groomsman. Even turnkeys joined in the jubilation. The spell of the Terror was broken. The dismal walls of that grim prison had rarely witnessed a moment as joyful as this.