A Place of Greater Safety (40 page)
Read A Place of Greater Safety Online
Authors: Hilary Mantel
“Please don’t think of it.” Camille said. “Leave it exactly as it is.”
Claude looked faintly bemused. “Well, I’ll leave you to it then, if you want to talk about furniture.” He smiled, gallantly. “I must say, my dear boy, you never cease to surprise.”
T
he Duke of Orléans said: “Are they? Isn’t that wonderful? Do you know, I never get any nice news nowadays?” Some months previously
Lucile had been brought for his inspection; he had passed her. She had style, almost the style of an Englishwoman; be good to see her on the hunting field. That toss of the head, that supple spine. I’ll give them a good present, he decided. “Laclos, what’s that town house of mine standing empty, the one with the garden, bit shabby, twelve bedrooms? Corner of thing street?”
he Duke of Orléans said: “Are they? Isn’t that wonderful? Do you know, I never get any nice news nowadays?” Some months previously
Lucile had been brought for his inspection; he had passed her. She had style, almost the style of an Englishwoman; be good to see her on the hunting field. That toss of the head, that supple spine. I’ll give them a good present, he decided. “Laclos, what’s that town house of mine standing empty, the one with the garden, bit shabby, twelve bedrooms? Corner of thing street?”
“O
h, wonderful!” Camille said. “I can’t wait to hear what my father says! We’re going to have this amazing house! Plenty of room for the
chaise-longue.”
h, wonderful!” Camille said. “I can’t wait to hear what my father says! We’re going to have this amazing house! Plenty of room for the
chaise-longue.”
Annette put her head in her hands. “Sometimes I lose hope,” she said. “What would happen to you if you didn’t have so many people to look after you? Camille, think. How can you accept from the Duke a house, which is the largest, most visible bribe he could come up with? Wouldn’t it be a shade compromising? Wouldn’t it lead to a little paragraph or two in the royalist press?”
“I suppose so,” Camille said.
She sighed. “Just ask him for the cash. Now, speaking of houses, come and look at this.” She unfolded a plan of her property at Bourg-la-Reine. “I have been making some sketches for a little house I should like to build for you. I thought here,” she indicated, “at the bottom of the linden avenue.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I value my holidays, and I don’t intend to have you and Claude in the same house sneering at each other and having meaningful silences. It would be like taking weekend excursions to Purgatory.” She bent over her drawings. “I’ve always wanted to design a sweet little cottage. Of course, I may in my amateur enthusiasm leave a few vital bits out. Don’t worry, I’ll remember to put in a nice bedroom for you. And of course, you’ll not be exiles. No, I’ll come tripping down to see you, when the mood takes me.”
She smiled. How ambivalent he looked. Caught between terror and pleasure. The next few years will be quite interesting, she thought, one way and another. Camille has the most extraordinary eyes: the darkest gray, as near black as the eyes of a human being can be, the iris almost merging with the pupil. They seem to be looking at the future now.
“A
t Saint-Sulpice,” Annette said, “confessions are at three o’clock.”
t Saint-Sulpice,” Annette said, “confessions are at three o’clock.”
“I know,” Camille said. “Everything’s arranged. I sent a message to
Father Pancemont. I thought it was only fair to warn him. I told him to expect me on the dot of three, and that I don’t do this sort of thing every day and I don’t expect to be kept waiting. Coming?”
Father Pancemont. I thought it was only fair to warn him. I told him to expect me on the dot of three, and that I don’t do this sort of thing every day and I don’t expect to be kept waiting. Coming?”
“Order the carriage.”
O
utside the church Annette addressed her coachman. “We’ll be—how long will we be? Do you favor a long confession?”
utside the church Annette addressed her coachman. “We’ll be—how long will we be? Do you favor a long confession?”
“I’m not actually going to confess anything. Perhaps just a few token peccadilloes. Thirty minutes.”
A man in a dark coat was pacing in the background, a folder of documents tucked under his arm. The clock struck. He advanced on them. “Just three, M. Desmoulins. Shall we go in?”
“This is my solicitor,” Camille said.
“What?” Annette said.
“My solicitor, notary public. He specializes in canon law. Mirabeau recommended him.”
The man looked pleased. How interesting, she thought, that you still see Mirabeau. But she was having trouble with this notion: “Camille, you’re taking your solicitor to confession with you?”
“A wise precaution. No serious sinner should neglect it.”
He swept her through the church at an unecclesiastical pace. “I’ll just kneel down,” she said, lurching sideways to get away from him. It was quiet; a gaggle of grannies praying for the old days to come back, and a small dog curled up, snoring. The priest seemed to see no reason to lower his voice. “It’s you, is it?” he said.
Camille said to the notary, “Write that down.”
“I didn’t think you’d come, I must say. When I got your message I thought it was a joke.”
“It’s certainly not a joke. I have to be in a state of grace, don’t I, like everybody else?”
“Are you a Catholic?”
A short pause.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because if you’re not a Catholic I can’t confer on you the sacraments.”
“All right then. I’m a Catholic.”
“Have you not said”—Annette heard the priest clearing his throat—“have you not said in your newspaper that the religion of Mahomet is quite as valid as that of Jesus Christ?”
“You read my newspaper?” Camille sounded gratified. A silence. “You won’t marry us, then?”
“Not until you have made a public profession of the Catholic faith.”
“You have no right to ask that. You have to take my word for it. Mirabeau says—”
“Since when has Mirabeau been a Church Father?”
“Oh, he’ll like that, I’ll tell him. But do change your mind, Father, because I am dreadfully in love, and I cannot abide even as you abide, and it is better to marry than to burn.”
“Whilst we are on the subject of Saint Paul,” the priest said, “may I remind you that the powers that be are ordained of God? And whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God, and that they that resist shall receive unto them damnation?”
“Yes, well, I’ll have to take my chances on that,” Camille said. “As you know very well—see verse fourteen—the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife. If you’re going to be obstructive, I’ll have to take it to an ecclesiastical commission. You are just putting a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in your brother’s way. You’re not supposed to go to law, you’re supposed to rather suffer yourself to be defrauded. See chapter six.”
“That’s about going to law with unbelievers. The Vicar-General of the Diocese of Sens is not an unbeliever.”
“You know you’re wrong,” Camille said. “Where do you think I was educated? Do you think you can get away with talking this sort of rubbish to me? No,” he said to his lawyer, “you needn’t write that down.”
They emerged. “Strike that out,” Camille said. “I was being hasty.” The notary looked cowed. “Write at the top of the page ‘In the matter of the solemnization of the marriage of L. C. Desmoulins, barrister-at law.’ That’s right, put some lines under it.” He took Annette’s arm. “Were you praying?” he said. “Get it to the commission right away,” he said over his shoulder.
“N
o church,” Lucile said. “No priest. Marvelous.”
o church,” Lucile said. “No priest. Marvelous.”
“The Vicar-General of the Diocese of Sens says I am responsible for the loss of half of his annual revenue,” Camille said. “He says it was because of me that his chateau was burned to the ground. Adèle, stop giggling.”
They sat around Annette’s drawing room. “Well, Maximilien,” Camille said, “you’re good at solving people’s problems. Solve this.”
Adèle tried to compose herself. “Haven’t you a tame priest? Someone you were at school with?”
Robespierre looked up. “Surely Father Bérardier could be persuaded?
He was our last principal,” he explained, “at Louis-le-Grand, and he sits in the Assembly now. Surely, Camille … he was always so fond of you.”
He was our last principal,” he explained, “at Louis-le-Grand, and he sits in the Assembly now. Surely, Camille … he was always so fond of you.”
“When he sees me now, he smiles, as if to say, ‘I predicted how you would turn out.’ They say he will refuse the oath to the constitution, you know.”
“Never mind that,” Lucile said. “If there’s any chance …”
“O
n these conditions,” Bérardier said. “That you make a public profession of faith, in your newspaper. That you cease to make anti-clerical gibes in that publication, and that you erase from it its habitually blasphemous tone.”
n these conditions,” Bérardier said. “That you make a public profession of faith, in your newspaper. That you cease to make anti-clerical gibes in that publication, and that you erase from it its habitually blasphemous tone.”
“Then what am I to do for a living?” Camille asked.
“It was foolish of you not to foresee this when you decided to take on the church. But then, you never did plan your life more than ten minutes ahead.”
“On the conditions stipulated,” Father Pancemont said, “I will let Father Bérardier marry you at Saint-Sulpice. But I’m damned if I’ll do it myself, and I think Father is making a mistake.”
“He is a creature of impulse,” Father Bérardier said. “One day his impulses will lead him in the right direction; isn’t that so, Camille?”
“The difficulty is that I wasn’t thinking of bringing an issue out before the New Year.”
The priests exchanged glances. “Then we will expect to see the statement in the first issue of 1791.”
Camille nodded.
“Promise?” Bérardier said.
“Promise.”
“You always lied with amazing facility.”
“H
e won’t do it,” Father Pancemont said. “We should have said, statement first, marriage after.”
e won’t do it,” Father Pancemont said. “We should have said, statement first, marriage after.”
Bérardier sighed. “What is the use? Consciences cannot be forced.”
“I believe Deputy Robespierre was your pupil too?”
“For a little while.”
Father Pancemont looked at him as one who said, I was in Lisbon during the earthquake year. “You have given up teaching now?” he asked.
“Oh, look—there are worse people.”
“I can’t think of any,” the priest said.
T
he witnesses to the marriage: Robespierre, Pétion, the writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier and the Duke’s friend, the Marquis de Sillery. A diplomatically chosen selection, representing the left wing of the Assembly, the literary establishment and the Orléanist connection.
he witnesses to the marriage: Robespierre, Pétion, the writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier and the Duke’s friend, the Marquis de Sillery. A diplomatically chosen selection, representing the left wing of the Assembly, the literary establishment and the Orléanist connection.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Camille said to Danton. “Really I wanted Lafayette, Louis Suleau, Marat and the public executioner.”
“Of course I don’t mind.” After all, he thought, I shall be a witness to everything else. “Are you going to be rich now?”
“The dowry is a hundred thousand livres. And there’s some quite valuable silver. Don’t look at me like that. I’ve had to work for it.”
“And are you going to be faithful to her?”
“Of course.” He looked shocked. “What a question. I love her.”
“I only wondered. I thought it might be nice to have a statement of intent.”
T
hey took a first-floor apartment on the rue des Cordeliers, next door to the Dantons; and on December 30 they held their wedding breakfast for a hundred guests, the dark, icy day nuzzling in hostile curiosity at the lighted windows. At one o’clock in the morning they found themselves alone. Lucile was still in her pink wedding dress, now crumpled, and with a sticky patch where she had spilled a glass of champagne over herself some hours earlier. She sank down onto the blue
chaise-longue,
and kicked off her shoes. “Oh, what a day! Has there been anything like it in the annals of holy matrimony? My God, rows of people sniffing and groaning, and my mother crying, and my father crying, and then old Bérardier publicly lecturing you like that, and you crying, and the half of Paris that wasn’t weeping in the pews standing outside in the streets shouting slogans and making lewd comments. And—” Her voice tailed off. The day’s sick excitement washed over her, wave on wave of it. Probably, she thought, this is what it’s like to be at sea. Camille seemed to be talking to her from a long way off:
hey took a first-floor apartment on the rue des Cordeliers, next door to the Dantons; and on December 30 they held their wedding breakfast for a hundred guests, the dark, icy day nuzzling in hostile curiosity at the lighted windows. At one o’clock in the morning they found themselves alone. Lucile was still in her pink wedding dress, now crumpled, and with a sticky patch where she had spilled a glass of champagne over herself some hours earlier. She sank down onto the blue
chaise-longue,
and kicked off her shoes. “Oh, what a day! Has there been anything like it in the annals of holy matrimony? My God, rows of people sniffing and groaning, and my mother crying, and my father crying, and then old Bérardier publicly lecturing you like that, and you crying, and the half of Paris that wasn’t weeping in the pews standing outside in the streets shouting slogans and making lewd comments. And—” Her voice tailed off. The day’s sick excitement washed over her, wave on wave of it. Probably, she thought, this is what it’s like to be at sea. Camille seemed to be talking to her from a long way off:
“ … and I never thought that happiness like this could have anything to do with me, because two years ago I had nothing, and now I have you, and I’ve got the money to live well, and I’m famous …”
“I’ve had too much to drink,” Lucile said.
When she thought back on the ceremony, everything appeared to be a sort of haze, so that she felt that perhaps even by then she had had too much to drink, and she wondered in momentary panic, are we properly married? Is drunkenness an incapacity? What about last week,
when we looked over the apartment—was I quite sober then? Where is the apartment?
when we looked over the apartment—was I quite sober then? Where is the apartment?
“I thought they’d never go,” Camille said.
She looked up at him. All the things she’d been going to say, all the rehearsals she’d had for this moment, four years of rehearsals; and now, when it came to it, she could only manage a queasy smile. She forced her eyes open to stop the room spinning, and then closed them again, and let it spin. She rolled facedown on the
chaise-longue,
drew up her knees comfortably and gave a little grunt of contentment, like the dog at Saint-Sulpice. She slept. Some kind person slid a hand under her cheek, and then replaced the hand by a cushion.
chaise-longue,
drew up her knees comfortably and gave a little grunt of contentment, like the dog at Saint-Sulpice. She slept. Some kind person slid a hand under her cheek, and then replaced the hand by a cushion.
“L
isten to what I will be,” said the King, “if I do not uphold the constitutional oath on the poor bishops.” He adjusted his spectacles and read:
isten to what I will be,” said the King, “if I do not uphold the constitutional oath on the poor bishops.” He adjusted his spectacles and read:
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