Authors: Anne Perry
When she got to Georges’ door she knocked sharply and waited with her heart pounding. She felt as if light and warmth would be inside, but that was absurd. It would scarcely be any better than the street.
Nothing happened. Panic rose inside her in case he was not there. She banged again, more loudly, bruising her knuckles.
There was a sound inside.
Without realising it she had clenched her fists, her body rigid.
The door opened and Georges’ voice came in a whisper.
‘Who is it?’
‘Me, Célie!’ she said urgently.
His hand came out of the darkness, felt for a second, then gripped her arm, pulling her in. He closed the door.
‘What the hell are you doing here at this time of the night?’ he demanded.
She could feel the warmth of his body. He had been asleep and was wearing no more than a shirt and hastily pulled on breeches.
‘Bernave is dead,’ she answered, trying to see his face in the solid blackness of the room.
‘What?’
‘Bernave is dead,’ she repeated sharply. ‘Someone stabbed him. At first we thought it was an accident, now we know it couldn’t have been. That’s the worst of it, or almost. It was one of us!’
He said nothing. He must have been too stunned to speak.
‘Georges!’
‘Yes ... I hear you.’ His voice was low, almost a growl.
He was still so close she could smell his skin and the warmth of him.
‘Put something on,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll freeze.’
He did not move. ‘What happened?’ he asked. She could hear the shock in him. He must feel, as she had, that same numb disbelief.
‘Put something on! I’ll tell you,’ she responded.
He stepped away at last, fumbling to find the candle and light it. The flame sprang up, showing the horror in his face, the shadows around his eyes, the dark stubble on his cheeks. He looked bewildered as he put on a second shirt and then a doublet. It was the first time she had ever seen him at a loss. Even at the beginning of the September Massacres, when the screaming, drunken crowd had swept them along and at last torn them apart from each other, he did not seem to have lost his instinctive confidence. She had expected him always to be like that: suave, sure, believing in himself. It was part of what she liked most about him, and at the same time it angered her because it made him different from everyone else she had known, and unreachable.
Now it was gone. He looked as frightened as she was. His hand holding the candle was shaking.
She took it from him. Her hand was steadier. She had had longer to get used to the news.
‘What happened?’ he asked again.
She sat down in the single chair.
He sat on the mattress opposite her, hugging his arms around himself as if he were chilled, or wounded, watching her face while she recounted to him bitterly and with defensive sarcasm, exactly what she could remember, up to the point when the National Guard had come.
‘National Guard?’ he said quickly.
‘Yes. The leader’s name is Menou. He’s investigating what happened, and he won’t go away until he has the answer.’
‘You mean until he finds which one of the intruders fired the shot?’
‘No.’ Her voice was flat, without life or timbre. She could hear the fear in it herself. ‘Bernave was standing facing the men who broke in after the shots in the street. I saw him, and so did the others. Anyway, only an idiot would have turned his back to that crowd.’
He stared at her, frowning, at first not comprehending the meaning. Then it came to him.
‘It was someone in the room?’ His voice was hoarse. ‘Someone behind him!’ He looked bruised, as though he had been hit harder than he had ever expected or felt before, and he did not know how to accommodate the hurt.
She nodded, refusing to allow herself sympathy for him, or at least not so he could see. It made her too vulnerable herself, and she could not afford it. ‘There isn’t any other possibility,’ she agreed more steadily. ‘If the shooting hadn’t stopped outside, or Bernave hadn’t faced them down, if they’d been braver, or angrier and surged around him, we would never have known. Whoever murdered him would have got away with it.’
He looked at her earnestly, his face crumpled. ‘Do you know who it was, Célie?’
She hesitated. If only there were any way to protect him from the blow, but there wasn’t.
‘What?’ he asked urgently, his voice sharp. Her face with its clearly defined bones and wide mouth had always been too easily readable. ‘Who was it?’ he demanded.
She shook her head a little. ‘It isn’t that. I don’t know who killed him. But Menou said he was determined to find out who it was because Bernave was a loyal supporter of the revolution.’ She swallowed and licked her dry lips. ‘He said Bernave had been a spy for the Commune, against the royalists still planning to restore the King.’
He stared at her, slowly comprehending the full meaning of what she had said.
She longed to see his confidence return. She waited for him to deny that Menou could find evidence that would betray them. Then like ice in the pit of her stomach, for the first time the realisation came that Menou could be right. Of course he would never find proof that Bernave had actually been working to save the King, to prevent invasion and civil war, because there was no proof! Not for Menou ... and not for them either!
How could Georges’ confidence return—now, or ever? To be sure after this would be incomprehensible ... insane. Who knew what the truth was, except that Bernave was dead and one of them had killed him?
Instinctively Célie reached forward and touched Georges’ hand with her cold fingers. She had no idea what to say or do. One lunge with a knife ... and everything was changed. The whole struggle had become hopeless. She tightened her fingers a little, holding on to him.
Then suddenly she realised what she was doing and withdrew quickly.
There was so much that needed to be spoken of, sitting hunched up in this icy attic. Climbing over the roofs and creeping through someone else’s house she had been too frightened to think of physical discomfort, but now she was aware of how cold she was. It seemed to fill her body and she was starting to shake.
Georges was still too stunned to be aware of anything but the horror in his own mind. For the first time since she had met him at Amandine’s house, nearly a year ago, there was no guard in his eyes, no mask, of laughter or bravado. Suddenly the real man was there, and she was sharply conscious of it.
‘Could Bernave have been working for the Commune?’ He searched her face. ‘Is it possible? Why haven’t we all been arrested?’
‘Not very dramatic.’ She defended herself behind a black humour. ‘I’d wait until the last moment, if it were me. Watch us until we try to rescue the King, and then take us all, when it’s too late for anyone else to step in. If you’re going to make a great gesture, do it when everyone’s looking. No glory, otherwise, and Marat would never sacrifice a chance of that!’
He said nothing, but she could see he understood.
‘We can’t warn the others, Bernave’s men,’ she went on. She had to talk, tell him everything. ‘We don’t even know who they are. Only he knew that.’
The humour flashed in his eyes as well. ‘I suppose we don’t really know that they haven’t been arrested already!’
She drew breath to tell him not to say such a thing, then let it out in a sigh. Was she glad the laughter was back in him again? Was it hope—or a mask, like hers?
‘I don’t know how we can succeed now,’ she answered instead. ‘I don’t even know how far he got ...’
Georges smiled, but faintly, a ghost of the way it used to be. ‘What is this man Menou like?’
‘Revolutionary,’ she replied. ‘He won’t give up until he arrests someone.’ Menou’s calm, keen face came back to her mind, and the strength in it. ‘He can’t,’ she added. ‘He’s already committed himself to saying it matters. His men heard him. And if Bernave really was working for the Commune, then they will certainly want revenge. I expect Marat himself will demand it.’ The thought was sickening. She pushed it away. ‘But I can’t believe that!’ she said firmly. ‘Not Bernave! He wasn’t ...’ she tailed off.
What did she really know of him? She had never even heard of him until four months ago. She had only ever seen him in the house in the Boulevard St-Germain. Apart from Georges, she knew no one he knew, except St Felix, and the Lacostes, and of course Amandine. She knew nothing of Bernave beyond what he had wished her to know, perhaps what he had deliberately shown her. And how much of that was true!
Without thinking about it consciously, or remembering why, she had formed the belief that there was some unspoken pain in his past, an old grief which had called on all his reserves of courage and hope to sustain him through it. Perhaps that was why he still kept the Thomas à Kempis, and other books like it, remembrances of an older faith.
Or maybe she had only imagined it, reading something into his face which was not there, into the scars on his hands and body, because of her own hunger for the certainties that would have comforted her. Maybe there was no corresponding reality, and never had been.
‘Bernave wasn’t what?’ Georges’ voice interrupted her thoughts, demanding she return to the present.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I was going to say “anything like Marat or the Communards.” But I don’t think I know very much at all.’
‘Except that Menou won’t let go until he finds out who killed him,’ he answered for her.
‘Then that means I’ve got to get him a solution.’ The realisation was appalling, but inescapable. ‘He’s going to watch the house. He posted a guard in the street this evening.’
Georges stiffened. It was the first sign of physical fear she had seen in him. He must feel trapped here. Every sound, every footstep on the stair had to set his nerves jangling.
‘He didn’t see me!’ she said quickly.
‘How do you know?’ He was only half looking at her, his head turned to catch any movement in the darkness beyond the door.
‘Because I didn’t go out on to the Boulevard St-Germain,’ she explained. ‘I didn’t go anywhere near it until past the church.’
He was confused. ‘You have to! There’s no other way out.’
‘Yes there is.’
‘What?’
‘Out of the attic window and in through one that was open, down their stairs and out into the Rue de Seine, then along the Rue Jacob.’
His eyes widened with incredulity. ‘You went over the roofs! You’re crazy!’ Now there was fear in him—for her. ‘Célie, you could have slipped and been killed! If you’d been hurt, no one would have found you! You’d have frozen to death up there. Never again, do you hear me?’
‘Yes, of course I hear you,’ she said with a sharp shiver of satisfaction. ‘And I shall do as I please.’ She leaned forward, cutting off argument. ‘Georges, one of us in that house killed Bernave. I don’t know for what reason, but it could be anything. I thought I knew more or less what we all believed, but perhaps I don’t! Maybe one of them is secretly a royalist?’ She ignored the disbelief in his face. ‘Or they can see what we can of the dangers if they execute the King, and if they knew Bernave was really working for the Commune ...’ She left the rest unsaid. The conclusion was obvious.
A gust over the rooftops rattled the window, sending an icy draft through the cracks.
‘St Felix?’ he said with surprise. ‘Wasn’t he the only one who knew anything about what Bernave was doing?’
‘I think so,’ she agreed. ‘Anyway, neither Fernand nor Citizen Lacoste have any sympathy with aristos, let alone the King.’
‘Neither have I,’ Georges said quietly. There was a regret in him, a sadness he would not name or explore. ‘I just think executing him is only going to make things worse.’
Célie remembered the lands he had spoken of with such haunting loss. It was part of all the old way which was gone for ever.
‘Citizen Lacoste is for Robespierre,’ she reasoned aloud, watching Georges’ face and wishing she understood more, and yet also afraid to. ‘But he wouldn’t be against anyone spying on royalists. And Fernand is for the Commune and Marat. He thinks they are going to be the saviours of us all.’
‘God help us!’ he said bitterly. ‘And don’t tell me not to speak of God! I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.’ But his brief half-smile vanished as if it had never been. ‘What about Madame Lacoste?’
Célie tried to think back to ever hearing Madame speak of any political belief, even to seeing a reaction in her face to news of victories or reverses in any cause, but no sharp image came to her mind, no emotion over any of it, except pity or exasperation. With Madame it was individuals who mattered, not causes. There had been moments of regret for something she must have lost in the past, but there was no anger or surprise left. Whatever it was, she had accepted it long ago. She cared intensely for her family, but the rest was private. Célie did not even know what she had felt for Bernave. Something powerful, deeply hidden. She had assumed it was resentment for her family’s dependence upon him, and fear in case he failed them, intentionally or not.
Then Célie remembered the tenderness with which Madame had washed his dead body, and laid it in peace. But that could have been religious faith, or the pity of a good woman for any death.
‘I don’t believe it ...’ she began slowly.
‘What do you know about her?’ he pressed.
‘I suppose nothing. I just remember the way she looked when she saw Bernave dead. She and Marie-Jeanne were the only ones who were grieved. And ... and me.’ Honesty compelled that. ‘I liked him, in spite of the way he treated St Felix.’
His face shadowed. ‘St Felix?’
‘Yes ... he gave him all the worst errands, the most unpleasant and dangerous. I don’t think I would have gone, not at the times and to the places he sent him.’
‘Such as?’ Georges pressed.
‘Going to give messages ...’ only now did she realise the import of what she was saying, ‘... to men in the Sections ... and the Commune. To do with getting the King out of the city. Marat’s men ...’ She looked at his face, trying to read it. She saw the quick leap of fear and it made her feel sick. ‘Two or three times he’s come back beaten.’ She dropped her voice to little more than a whisper. ‘Last time one of the mobs drifting around got hold of him. He really was hurt.’