Authors: Anne Perry
Marat looked around for faces he might recognise, and saw Barbaroux. His handsome profile was unmistakable. He had once been told by someone that it was noble and very Roman. Now he was forever leaning back to display it the better. Fool! If he had spoken as well as he looked, he might have achieved something.
Brissot appeared harassed and uncertain, like a man who has been set on a horse he knew perfectly well he had not the strength to ride, and that he would eventually have no choice but to cling on to for dear life and be carried wherever it chose to take him. Marat despised him, as he despised them all. Idiots, poseurs, the whole lot of them.
He would show them, tomorrow, if there was a plan to rescue the King. He, Marat, would be the one to expose it.
He looked for Danton but did not see him. He would have been noticeable instantly, even in this crowd. It took him a moment to find Robespierre. The light caught the white of his powdered hair and the flickering movement of his little hands. He was whispering to someone. Effete little swine. He claimed to love the people, and yet his neat little nose wrinkled in disgust if one of them came anywhere near him! Hypocrite!
And there was Saint-Just, sitting like stone. He could have been a monument on a grave. Better he were! That was where he belonged.
The debate seemed desultory, and without emotion. Then suddenly there was a rustle of movement. People sat further upright. Some craned forward. They were staring up. They had seen him. He smiled. He did not know how grotesque the gesture was with his wide, sagging mouth.
This time tomorrow he would drop the bombshell that there had been a plot to rescue the King—which he had brilliantly foiled. That would make them all take notice—not just here but all over Paris—all over France! It would be the end of the Girondins. Smug little Robespierre could not be the hero of that! He would be ignored, and he would hate it! Marat’s smile widened.
Next to him a man moved a few feet further away. Another wrinkled his nose then instantly covered his face with a handkerchief.
A busy little deputy shot to his feet and scurried round to climb the rostrum. Almost before he was there he began to speak of a glorious new age born of blood. His eyes kept glancing towards Marat.
Marat nodded.
The deputy spoke of the imminent death of the King, and what a glorious day it would be: the birth of the Republic, of liberty and justice for everyone.
Marat watched the Girondins to see if any of them had the courage to argue what he knew they believed.
They looked wretched, embarrassed, fidgeting with their hands, but not one rose to speak. Cowards! Exactly what he expected.
Another deputy asked a question about the war with Prussia, and if there were any way to prevent it escalating. He showed a spark of courage, but no one responded.
Brissot turned to Vergniaud, the spokesman for the Girondins, beside him, and for an instant Marat wondered if he were going to rise, but he did not.
Marat stared down at the sea of faces; at the Girondins in whom so many hopes had been placed: their gravitas, their virtue, their noble ideals! They sat in little huddles. One could tell just by looking at them who had quarrelled with whom, who felt insulted or cheated of some honour. It would be amusing, if the fate of France did not hang on it! They aspired to the dignity of the senators of ancient Rome. They talked endlessly and wrote terrible treatises. Roland was the worst: a sour, unhappy man with literary pretensions infinitely beyond his ability to realise. It was said his memoranda were the most complete ever written. He took it as a compliment. It was not. They were dry enough to choke a horse.
They all had dreams of literary immortality, and their works were almost unreadable. They had exasperated Bernave. Marat remembered that now. He had been funny about them at times, and yet there was irony and tragedy beneath the laughter. He had cared too much.
Marat cared too. He knew what it was to be tired and poor, to be sneered at and excluded, to be hungry, cold and frightened and have no weapon with which to fight back. He remembered when the Marquis de Lafayette had sent three thousand soldiers into the Cordeliers to hunt him like a rat! And failed.
And where was Lafayette now? Gone over to the Austrians!
Tomorrow Marat would put the final seal on his glory and make irrevocable the steps forward into the new age. But it must be done his way: through the men of the Commune, not these ineffectual talkers in the Convention. He had no more patience with them. Whatever had been planned, by Victor Bernave or whoever else it was, it would happen between the prison of the Temple and the steps of the guillotine.
So that was why Bernave had told him of the royalists’ plan in the Temple! It made exquisite sense! It could not succeed. He did it to protect his own plan!
He turned and pushed his way through the crowds back to the corridor. He must hurry. The pain of his sores was crucifying, but there was no time to give in to it. He had borne everything in the past: hunger, cold, illness, persecution. Only a little longer and the fruits of it would be his. All the glory in the world.
He did not even see the men he passed who stepped back too hastily, making way for him, faces tight with fear, hands to their noses.
C
ÉLIE WOKE EARLY. LAST
night after leaving Briard she had gone back to tell Georges. She had found him in the alley outside the house where he had lived, standing shivering in the dense shadow of the wall.
The National Guard were moving too close and it was time for him to go. He had waited only to tell her. Even as they’d stood under the eaves they had heard the sound of heavy feet and caught the red reflection of torch glare against a window above them.
He had stayed almost too long.
‘Run!’ she’d hissed in agony of fear for him. ‘I’ll stop them a moment. They don’t want me.’
He had hesitated.
‘Run!’ She had put up her hands to push him physically.
He’d caught her arms, holding her close to him. She could remember with a piercing sweetness the smell of his skin and hair, the touch of his lips on hers. Then he was gone, and the next minute the torches, burning red and yellow, and half a dozen Guards had come into the alley, mist swirling around them.
Célie had stepped forward, head high, eyes and voice steady. She must have a good lie ready.
‘What are you doing out at this time, Citizeness?’ the leader her demanded suspiciously. ‘You should be at home in your own bed!’
‘I know I should, Citizen,’ she’d said demurely. Then she’d looked up at him with a smile. ‘But there is someone else’s which is warmer, and much more fun.’
The man had wanted to disapprove, but in spite of himself he’d had to smile back at her.
One of the others had laughed.
‘Go on home, you baggage!’ the leader had said smartly, waving his arm. ‘It’s dangerous to be out here. There are wanted men around, enemies of the revolution.’
She had wanted to answer him, but it was wiser not to. You could never be entirely certain of anybody’s real loyalties.
‘I will,’ she’d promised. ‘Good night, Citizens.’
She did not know how far Georges had gone, or even for certain that he had escaped. She had slept only from exhaustion, and then it was broken fitfully with dreams of fear in which she was pressed in on all sides, watching helplessly as someone was executed. At first she was sure it was the King, then when she looked again she saw with heart-stopping horror that it was Georges.
Then it was time to get up. January 21 at last. It had come. No more waiting, no chance to change anything. She must be there with the others to crowd the carriage, to shout and press forward, making the exchange.
This was the day she did not ask anyone’s permission to leave the house. She simply went out, and walked alone in the thick, silent fog, down to the river, across the Pont St-Michel, past the Palais de Justice, and over the river again. She turned east until she came to the Hôtel de Ville, then up the long sweep of the Rue de Temple towards the prison at the end, where they had kept the King and his family. It towered in the distance, its four sharp pinnacles outlined against a grey sky.
Célie put her head down and walked into the slight wind. There was ice on the edge of it. It seemed right with the terror and anticipation that knotted her stomach.
The moment had come. It was too late for any further planning or changes of decision now. It was all to play for: win or lose. In an hour or so it would be over. The King would either be on his way out of the city, or they would all be on the steps of the guillotine, a moment from whatever lay in eternity: oblivion—or God.
The streets were not full. Maybe most people would be along the route the King would take in his last ride through his city, or in the Place de la Révolution beside the scaffold, finding their positions from which to witness the ultimate act.
She looked at the faces of the few there were, pinched with cold and hunger, but excited. There was a nervous energy in the air as if they were on the brink of something new and full of promise. Had they any real knowledge of what they were about to see? This would not be just one more execution: an ordinary, fat little man being sent from life to death in a matter of minutes. It would be the passing of an age, and everything good in it as well as all that was stupid and ugly and corrupt.
Had they any idea what would happen tomorrow, and in the days and weeks after? Did they know what war would be like, really like: the constant fear, night and day, and the hunger and the marching of enemy soldiers in the streets, the loss of those they loved, too often never learning what had happened to them, whether death had been easy or hard?
Célie was almost at the Temple now. It loomed over her, massive and dark in the drifting fog. There was an old man in front of her, standing bare-headed, his white hair plastered down. He squared his shoulders and stared at the gateway into the prison. His skin was whipped pink by the cold but his faded eyes did not waver. She did not need anyone to tell her he was a monarchist, and probably a Catholic; it was there in the quiet despair in his craggy features and the unbending pride. He had come alone to watch the end of the world which he had known destroyed piece by precious piece—all the old ideas he had lived by and loved—mocked, denied and at last torn apart. He probably still believed God had placed Louis XVI on the throne of France to rule it by divine appointment, and this was not only regicide but blasphemy as well.
She hoped he would not show it. That would be a public offence, and very probably end with him being jeered at, even arrested himself. Or perhaps he would not mind that, even count it a privilege to be accused of such loyalty?
She admired him for that—if it were true. It was stupid, of course. If he were noticed it would be another pointless death; but the ability to care for anything with such integrity was a purpose in itself.
The streets towards the Place de la Révolution were lined with National Guardsmen in their blue and white, with their tricolour cockades, but the scene was all peculiarly lifeless. All windows and shutters on the houses were closed, by order of the Commune, and the fog seemed to shroud everything.
Célie wondered if Menou were here, and what he felt: no doubt something more complex than simple jubilation at a republican victory, the ultimate triumph of the common man over all kings. Maybe it would be the last thing they could celebrate for a while. If she and Georges and Briard failed, then in a few weeks the Convention would have their hands full with war. This was the time of great promises, but soon, when they had the ultimate power, they would have to deliver all the peace and justice and prosperity they had been talking about all this time.
There were lots of armed citizens around as well, standing to attention holding pikes or muskets. Would they have to stay here? Or would they all be allowed to troop down to the guillotine, that most mercifully intended invention of Deputy Joseph Ignace Guillotin, who had sought to make death as quick and as painless as possible, to avoid for evermore the bungling and torture of the wheel or rope. Once beheading had been available only to the aristocracy. Now it was freely available to any—and everybody.
There was a movement in front of her, a rustle of sudden attention. The gates of the Temple prison had swung open. A man appeared, ashen-faced, paunchy, barely of average height. He walked slowly towards the large, green carriage which was waiting on the cobbles. God in heaven—he looked like Briard! Célie’s stomach clenched at the sight of him. She almost expected to see Briard’s blue eyes, but she was too far away.
In front of her the old man’s breath caught in his throat with a sob.
Célie stared ahead. She had never seen the King before. He walked slowly, as if he needed all his concentration simply to place one foot in front of the other without stumbling.
Twice he turned and looked back at the tower of the prison, and his grief was unmistakable in every line of his body.
‘That woman and her children are up there,’ someone said behind Célie. ‘But we’ll have them too.’ He hawked and spat his contempt.
A sudden, unaccountable rage boiled up inside Célie. She had no love for the King. He had no more right to life or happiness than anyone else, and he had certainly behaved like a fool. He had largely brought this upon himself. But at this moment, beaten finally, he was merely a fat, pale little man taking leave of his family for the last time on earth. All she could feel for him was pity, and the passionate need within herself for some knowledge of dignity.
She turned and glared at the man who had spoken, but he was not looking at her, and she could think of nothing to say which would reach any humanity in him.
The air was full of swirling moisture, and bitterly cold. Célie’s whole body was shivering and her feet were numb. It would not be long now till she would have to force her way right up to the carriage, even perhaps be the one to yank the door open. She must watch all the time for Georges, and Briard.