Authors: Anne Perry
She patted his hand in recognition of his intended kindness, but she said nothing, her eyes far away. There was fear and regret in her he could not reach.
The two households ate separately, as they frequently did, but after the children had gone to bed early, to keep warm, the adults went to the room at the front of the house with windows looking on to the street. The large wood-burning stove kept the air pleasant enough to be able to sit comfortably. They did not need to see, so one candle was sufficient. Even with Bernave’s means, it was important to save where they could. If he chose to burn four candles in his study, that was another matter. He sat now in the shadows, his expression sombre, withdrawn into his own thoughts.
St Felix sat in one of the large chairs. He looked awkward, a little hunched to one side, protecting his arm. His expression was remote. He had a dreamer’s face, fine-boned, etched with delicate lines. Célie thought that anyone seeing him had to be aware that his mind was turned inward, far from this quiet room with its worn rugs, the glimmer of polished wood and the candlelight flickering in the draughts from the imperfectly fitting doors. The silence was punctuated by occasional shouts from the street beyond the dark windows, but they did not catch his attention, nor did the flaring torches as a group of men passed by along the footpath, and then returned.
Fernand, half sitting on the chest near the wall, also seemed sunk in thought, staring into space. His eyes were deep set, like his mother’s, but he was fairer, gentler. Perhaps time would refine him to her strength.
Marie-Jeanne was knitting, her fingers guiding the needles by touch. It was only a simple piece of clothing, and obviously something for a child. She seemed at ease; the lines of her face were soft, in repose, close to a smile. She was not a pretty woman, but her features were such that the passing years would probably sit well on her, and with age she might even be handsome.
Madame Lacoste was sewing. She sat nearest to the candle and the light was sufficient to sew a hem to the pillowcase she was making from a worn-out sheet. She too seemed to work at least half by touch. The silver flash of the moving needle was rhythmic.
Monsieur Lacoste looked at her every now and again and the sight of her seemed to please him. The tight angles of his expression eased, but he did not speak. For once his hands were idle. Célie noticed a triangular cut where one of his chisels must have slipped. He was proud of his craft. The wood he turned was beautiful, the grain in it like satin.
Célie and Amandine sat closer to the door. There was no sound inside the room but the occasional flicker of the candle flame, the click of Marie-Jeanne’s knitting and the sharper, finer tick as Madame’s needle caught against her thimble.
‘They say the price of bread is going up again,’ Marie-Jeanne remarked. ‘Do you think when the King is dead they’ll release the grain and it’ll get better?’
‘I don’t think there is any grain,’ Monsieur Lacoste replied. ‘If there were, they would have released it already. Why not? The King couldn’t stop them.’
‘Maybe they’ll do it for a celebration?’ Marie-Jeanne’s voice rose hopefully. ‘They could be keeping it for that!’
Monsieur Lacoste growled under his breath.
Madame looked up at him questioningly.
He said nothing. His face was dark, hurt with disillusion.
A smile flickered over Bernave’s face and vanished.
‘It takes a while,’ Madame said gently.
Lacoste stared at her, his eyes intense, black in the shadows. ‘You’re too patient,’ he accused her, his voice raw with hurt. ‘You forgive too easily. They’ve had three and a half years, and still there’s no justice and precious little food. We expected as much of the prancing idiots at Versailles, but the revolution was to end all that!’
‘It will!’ Fernand turned to his father. ‘Marat will see to it. First they have to get rid of the King. One thing at a time.’
‘All I want is safe streets and food in the shops,’ Marie-Jeanne said with a sigh, turning her knitting round and beginning the next row. ‘I don’t care whether it’s the King, or Marat or the Commune, or who it is. And I think most of the women in France feel the same. What’s a revolution for if we’re all still cold and hungry, and scared stiff of our neighbours in case they take a dislike to us and make a false report to some Section Leader, and the next thing you know, we’re charged with something?’
Fernand started to speak, but Monsieur Lacoste cut across him. ‘What we need is Robespierre in power,’ he stated. ‘He doesn’t want anything for himself, not glory nor revenge, like Marat, nor money and the high life like Danton, nor to fritter his time away playing games at Versailles as the King used to. He doesn’t even want power for himself, just the virtue of the people.’ He was looking at his wife as he spoke. He was not standing particularly close to her, and yet the angle and gesture of his body seemed to suggest a unity with her, a protectiveness.
‘Robespierre understands purity,’ he went on urgently, his voice rising. ‘There’s nothing filthy in him, nothing perverted and obscene, like some of the others. You’d never think Hébert used to be a priest, or his wife a nun.’ His face was heavy with disgust. ‘There’s the hypocrisy of the Church for you! That’s one good thing the revolution’s accomplished.’
Bernave looked up and spoke for the first time. ‘Only a fool does away with the sacraments of God because men abuse them. Men will always need to forgive, and to be forgiven. Our sanity of soul depends on it. Otherwise there is nothing but madness and self-destruction in the end.’ There was a passion in his voice for all its gentleness, although apparently Lacoste did not hear, or if he did, he did not recognise it.
‘Rubbish!’ he said roughly, jerking his head up. ‘The whole Church was an abuse! A device created by greedy men to get power over others, and then milk them for their money and frighten them into obedience!’ He glared at Bernave, daring him to contradict.
Before that could happen there was noise outside in the street, a group of people shouting. Instinctively everyone in the room looked out towards them beyond the rain-streaked window.
‘They’re hungry, poor devils,’ Monsieur Lacoste said bitterly. ‘They think we’re hoarding food.’
Marie-Jeanne looked at him, frowning. ‘Why should they think that? We haven’t got any more than anyone else—just enough for today and tomorrow.’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied roughly. ‘Rumours. Fear. People say stupid things when they’re desperate.’
More people were gathering in the street. Their voices were raised and angry. Madame looked towards the window, her hands tightening on the linen. The noise was growing louder and she turned to her husband.
There were a dozen or so torches visible beyond the glass and at least a score of people. They seemed to be in groups facing each other, some waving either sticks or cutlasses.
Marie-Jeanne stopped knitting, even though she was in the middle of a row. She spiked the needle ends into the wool and put it down.
Monsieur Lacoste walked forward, peering through the dark windows at the scene beyond.
‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ Bernave observed, remaining where he was. ‘Just the usual scuffles.’
As if to mock his words a musket shot rang out about twenty yards away.
St Felix stirred, but he did not move from his place. He was the only one who seemed impassive, as if the threat had not yet broken through the shell of whatever inner grief it was that lay never far beneath the surface of his mind.
Fernand stood up and began to pace restlessly. The noise was now considerably greater, even though the shouting was indistinct, no words audible, just wild, chaotic anger, moment by moment becoming more shrill.
A National Guardsman ran across in front of the window, his uniform showing clearly in the torchlight, even to the red, white and blue cockade in his hat.
Fernand threw open the door to the outer room, letting in the cold air. ‘The children’ll be frightened,’ he said to Marie-Jeanne. ‘Go up and see they’re all right.’
Monsieur Lacoste looked at him sharply, confused.
‘They aren’t coming in here,’ Bernave said to Marie-Jeanne. ‘They’re just upset because of the shortages. It’s the Convention they are angry with, not us. They’ll get worse. You’ll grow used to it.’
‘Don’t say that!’ Fernand swung round on him, his shoes scraping on the wooden floor. ‘You’ll only frighten everyone, and it isn’t true. It’s the speculators who’ve caused this. Marat will get food back for the people. That’s all he wants, freedom! That doesn’t come for nothing! We have to fight for it, be prepared to suffer a little.’
‘To hell with Marat,’ Monsieur Lacoste said bitterly, gesturing towards the window. ‘Those people are hungry and they’re desperate. They think we’ve got food!’
Further argument was prevented by a volley of shots outside.
Marie-Jeanne gave a little shriek of fear, and swung round, then was uncertain what to do.
Upstairs a child’s voice cried out, ‘Mama! What’s happening? It’s wet up here! There’s water coming in through the ceiling!’
Marie-Jeanne started towards the door to the stairs. The shouting in the street seemed to be immediately outside now, and the household could see at least two score people pushing and shoving each other. Several of them seemed to be National Guardsmen, but most were ordinary citizens.
There were more shots. One whined sharply as it ricocheted from the stone wall of the building not more than a dozen yards away.
Everyone in the room was on his or her feet, even Bernave and St Felix. Célie was near the centre, facing the window; Amandine was somewhere to her left.
Torches flared scarlet and orange in the darkness outside, streaming smoke as they were waved back and forth in the surging of the quarrel.
More shots rang out in the distance, then two almost on top of the inhabitants.
They all swung round to face the street.
There was a crack and splintering of glass as the window was broken. The candle went out. Still more shots. Figures moving around. Célie saw somebody go forward, as if to the window to see, and the whole pane of glass disintegrated. He backed away, hands up, shielding his face.
Upstairs a child was screaming.
It was impossible to see anything but figures blundering about and hear the noise from the street. The cold air rushed in and the smoke from the torches stung Célie’s eyes and throat. She heard coughing. Then there was a crash in the outer room as the street door flew open and hit the wall, then the thud of feet.
Someone charged over to the doorway just as it swung wide and half a dozen people jammed themselves into the space, their faces dark and their heads lit red and yellow by the flare of the torch held up behind them.
‘You hoarding food?’ one of them challenged.
Bernave moved forward into the glare. ‘No, we’re not,’ he said firmly. ‘Look for yourselves. The kitchen’s that way,’ he pointed. ‘We have enough for tomorrow, that’s all. We queue for it like everyone else.’
‘Liar!’ a woman shouted from the hallway. ‘We’ve ’eard about you!’
‘Who are you calling a liar?’ Monsieur Lacoste demanded furiously. It was he who had opened the door and was now standing nearest to the woman. ‘You watch your tongue!’
He took a step towards her. The light was swaying wildly. One moment everything was lit, the next it was dark.
Célie was petrified. She had no idea where everyone was, except Bernave, facing the intruders in the doorway, and she knew that only because she could hear his voice. She could not see Monsieur Lacoste any more.
More shots. Through the broken window they sounded sharp and terrifyingly close.
Someone swore under his breath as he tripped. It was impossible to be certain who, but Célie thought it was Fernand’s voice.
Outside the shouting seemed to have lessened. People had moved twenty yards further down the street, towards the church of St-Germain-des-Prés.
The group in the doorway lurched forward again, angry and confused. She could not hear Bernave any more. It was almost dark. The torch had disappeared and there was no light except from the street. There was a confusion of voices.
‘We have no more food than you have!’ Madame said loudly, sounding to Célie as if she were almost where Bernave must have been. ‘Is this what it has come to? You break into the houses of your neighbours to steal, and terrify the children? Is that what all the blood and pain has been for? We get rid of God and king so we can behave like animals, because there’s no one left to stop us?’
The fury in her voice halted them, then the scalding contempt sent them backwards, into the outer room again, the torchlight flaring steady for a moment.
St Felix turned and stood beside her. Monsieur Lacoste was already moving forward to drive the invaders out, Fernand to his left.
Her hands shaking, Célie felt her way over to the table where Madame had been sewing, bumping into chairs as she went. She fumbled for the candle and tinder and struck a light, guarding it with her hand. The flame shivered up and she could see most of the room.
Marie-Jeanne was gone. There was glass over the floor, and the smoke from the torches outside was clearing. Amandine stood near the window, white-faced. St Felix was in the middle of the room, Monsieur Lacoste against the inner wall to the right of the door.
Fernand was coming back from the front door where he had seen the last of the intruders leave.
Madame stood about two yards from the doorway, motionless, her black eyes staring into nothingness. Close to her feet, almost touching her skirts, Bernave lay face down, the back of his shirt crimson with blood welling up from a wound in his heart.
C
ÉLIE STARED AT BERNAVE
, hardly able to believe what she saw. Her stomach was knotted, horror and dismay creeping over her skin like a kind of paralysis. She heard Madame Lacoste gasp. It was a strangled cry, as if someone had cut off her breath. Her face was white to the lips, her eyes black holes in her head. It might have been her own death she saw there on the floor.
St Felix looked amazed. His jaw was slack, his eyes wide and clear, highlighting the clean line of his brow.