A Place of Greater Safety (61 page)

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Authors: Hilary Mantel

BOOK: A Place of Greater Safety
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“What a good idea,” Camille said.
“You don’t look happy, Camille.”
“Louis Suleau came.”
“Ah.”
“He intends to join the resistance at the palace.”
“More fool him.”
“I told him to come here if he changes his mind. Was that the right thing to do?”
“Risky, but morally impeccable.”
“Any problems?”
“None so far. Seen Robespierre?”
“No.”
“If you do, keep him out of my way. I don’t want him at my elbow tonight. I may have to do things that will offend his delicate sense of propriety.” He paused. “We can count the hours now.”
 
 
A
t the Tuileries the courtiers prepared for the ceremony of the King’s
coucher.
They greeted each other formally, in the time-honored way. Here was the blue blood who received the royal stockings, warm from the royal calf; here was the grandee whose task was to turn down the royal coverlet; here was the thoroughbred who handed—as his father did before him, his father before that—the royal nightshirt, and assisted Louis Capet to settle it about his blue-white, corpulent torso.
They followed Louis’s slumped shoulders, arranging themselves to enter the bedchamber in the due order. But the King turned to them his pale, full, anxious face—and slammed the door on them.
The aristocrats stood looking at each other. Only then did the enormity of events become plain. “There is no precedent for it,” they whispered.
 
 
L
ucile touched Gabrielle’s hand, for comfort. There were a dozen people in the apartment, and a stack of firearms on the floor. “Bring more lights,” Danton said, and Catherine brought them, dough-faced, eyes averted, so that new shadows danced across the ceiling and walls.
Louise Robert said, “Can I stay here, Gabrielle?” She wound her shawl about her, as if she were cold.
Gabrielle nodded. “Must these guns stay here?”
“Yes, they must. Don’t go tidying them up, woman.”
Lucile threaded her way across the room to her husband. They spoke in low, small voices. Then she turned away, calling Georges, Georges; her head ached now, that fuzzy champagne kind of headache that you feel you could brush away, and there was a knot of tension in her throat. Without looking at her Danton broke off his conversation with Fréron, put an arm around her and pulled her close to him. “I know, I know,” he said. “But you must be strong, Lolotte, you are not a silly girl, you
must look after the others.” His face was distant, and she wanted all his attention, to fix herself finally in his mind, her priority, her need. But he might have been down the street somewhere; his mind was at the Tuileries, at City Hall, and his mouth issued automatic words of comfort.
“Please take care of Camille,” she said. “Please don’t let anything happen to him.”
He looked down at her now, somber, giving her request consideration; he wanted to give her an honest answer.
“Keep him with you,” she said. “I beg of you, Georges.”
Fréron put a hand on her elbow, tentative; her arm shrank away from it. “Lolotte, we all look out for each other,” he said. “It’s the best we can do.”
She said, “I want nothing from you, Rabbit. You just take care of yourself.”
“Listen now.” Danton’s blue eyes fixed her, and she thought she heard those familiar words, I am going to speak to you as if you were grown up. But he did not say that. “Listen now, when you married Camille you knew what it meant. You have to choose, a safe life, or a life in the Revolution. But do you think I would ask him to take any unnecessary risk?” His eyes traveled to the clock, and she followed them. We shall measure our survival by that clock, she thought. It had been a wedding gift to Gabrielle; its hands were pointed, delicate fleur-de-lis—’86,’ 87. Georges had been King’s Councillor. Camille had been in love with her mother. She had been sixteen. Danton touched her forehead with his scarred lips. “Victory would be ashes,” he said. He could of course have driven a bargain with her. But he was not that sort of man.
Fréron picked up a gun. “For my part,” he said, “I wouldn’t be sorry if it ended tonight.” He glanced at Lucile. “I see little point in my life as I live it now.”
Camille’s voice across the room, acidly solicitous: “Rabbit, I didn’t realize you felt like that, is there anything I can do?”
Someone sniggered. Lucile thought, I can’t help it if you’re in love with me, you should have more sense, you do not hear Hérault saying his life is over, you do not hear Arthur Dillon say it, they know when a game is a game. This is no game, now; this has nothing to do with love. She raised her hand to Camille. She felt she ought to salute. Then she turned away and walked into the bedroom. She left the door slightly ajar; a little light penetrated from other rooms, and the odd muted syllable of conversation. She sat down on a couch, leaned back and began to doze—a post-party doze, full of fragmentary dreams.
 
 
“T
he Great Council Chamber, Monsieur.” Pétion was making for the royal apartments, sash of office round substantial chest. The aristocrats removed themselves from his path as he walked.
He reached the outer galleries. “May I inquire why all you gentlemen are standing around?” His tone suggested that he was addressing performing apes, and did not expect an answer.
The first ape who stepped forward was at least eighty years old—a quavering, paper-tissue ape, with orders of chivalry, which Pétion could not identify, gleaming on his breast. He made a courteous little bow. “M. Mayor, one does not sit in or near the royal apartments. Unless specifically commanded to do so. Did you not know this?”
He cast a glance of distress at his companions. A small ceremonial sword hung at his withered shank. They all wore them, all the trained apes. Pétion snorted and strode on.
The King looked dazed; he was accustomed to a long sleep, to his regular hours. Antoinette sat very upright, her Hapsburg jaw clenched; she looked precisely as Pétion had expected her to look. Pierre-Louis Roederer, a high official of the Seine
département,
was standing by her chair. He was holding three massive bound volumes and talking to the Marquis de Mandat, Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard.
Pétion bowed, but not profoundly; not in any sense obsequiously.
 
PÉTION: What’s that you have there, Roederer? You’re not going to need law books tonight.
ROEDERER: I wondered, if it became necessary to declare martial law within the city boundaries, whether the
département
has the authority to do it.
MME. ELISABETH: Has it?
ROEDERER: I don’t think so, Madame.
PÉTION: I have that authority.
ROEDERER: Yes, but I thought I’d check in case you were—detained in some way.
KING [
heavily
]: As on June 20.
PÉTION: Forget your law books. Throw them away. Burn them. Eat them. Or you might like to keep them to hit people over the head with. Better than those toothpicks they’re all wearing.
MANDAT: Pétion, you do grasp the fact that you’re legally responsible for the defense of the palace?
PÉTION: Defense against what?
QUEEN: The insurrection is being organized under your very eyes.
MANDAT: We have no ammunition.
PÉTION: What, none at all?
MANDAT: Not nearly enough.
PÉTION: How improvident.
 
 
G
abrielle sat down with a rustle of skirts. Lucile woke with a gasp. “It’s only me,” Gabrielle said. “They’ve gone.”
 
 
L
ouise Robert sank to the floor in front of her, took both her hands and squeezed them. “Will they ring the tocsin?” Lucile asked.
“Yes. Very soon.”
Anticipation tightened the back of her neck. She put up a hand to her face and tears spilled between her fingers.
 
 
A
t midnight Danton came back. Gabrielle jumped up in alarm when they heard his footsteps, and they scurried after her into the drawing room.
“Why are you back so soon?”
“I told you I would be. If everything’s going smoothly, I said, I’ll be back for midnight. Why do you never believe anything I say?”
“Then it is going smoothly?” Louise demanded. He looked at them, irritated. They were his problems.
“Of course. Or would I be here?”
“Where’s François? Where have you sent him?”
“How the hell do I know where he is? If he’s where I left him, he’s at City Hall. And the place isn’t on fire, and there’s no shooting.”
“But what are you
doing?
”
He resigned himself. “There is a large body of patriots at City Hall. They are shortly going to take over from the existing Commune and call themselves the Insurrectionary Commune. Then the patriots will have
de
facto control of the city.”
Gabrielle: “What does
de facto
mean?”
“It means they’ll do it now and make it legal later,” Lucile said.
Danton laughed. “Your turn of phrase, these days, Madame! We can tell what marriage has done for you.”
Louise Robert said, “Don’t patronize us, Danton. We understand what the plan is, we just want to know whether it’s working or not.”
“I’m going to get some sleep,” Danton said. He walked into the bedroom they had just left and slammed the door. Fully clothed, he lay
down: staring at the ceiling, waiting for the tocsin to ring, waiting for the alarm signal that would bring the people surging out into the streets. The clock struck; it was August 10.
 
 
P
erhaps two hours later, they heard someone at the door; and Lucile shadowed Gabrielle as she answered it.
There was a little group of men outside. They had been very quiet on the stairs. One stepped forward: “Antoine Fouquier-Tinville. For Danton, if you please.” His courtesy was automatic and very brisk; courtroom politeness.
Gabrielle stood aside. “Must I wake him?”
“Yes, we need him now, my dear. It’s time.”
She indicated the bedroom. Fouquier-Tinville inclined his head to Lucile. “Good morning, cousin.”
She nodded nervously. Fouquier had Camille’s thick, dark hair and dark skin; but the hair was straight, the face was hard, the lips were thin and set for crises, for bad situations becoming worse. Possible, yes, to trace a family likeness. But when you saw Camille you wanted to touch him; when you saw his cousin, that was not your reaction.
Gabrielle followed the men into the bedroom. Lucile turned to Louise Robert, opened her mouth to make some usual kind of remark: was shocked by the violence in her face. “If anything happens to François, I’ll put a knife in that pig myself.”
Lucile’s eyes widened. The King? No: Danton was the pig she meant. She could not think of an answer.
“Did you see that man? Fouquier-Tinville? Camille says all his relations are like that.”
They heard Danton’s voice, intermittently, between the others: “Fouquier—first thing tomorrow—but
wait
—and getting to the Tuileries at the right time, Pétion should know—cannon on the bridges—tell him to hurry it up.”
He came out, hauling his cravat into place, skimming his fingers over his bluish chin. “Georges-Jacques,” Lucile said, “What an unregarding tough you look. A proper man of the people, I do declare.”
Danton grinned. He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezed it; so jovially, so painfully, that she almost cried out. “I’m going now. City Hall. Otherwise they’re going to keep running up here—”He paused at the door. He was not going to kiss his wife and have her start crying. “Lolotte, you look after things here. Try not to worry too much.” They heard him striding down the stairs.
 
 
“A
ll right, little man?”
“I am impervious,” Jean-Paul Marat said, “to bullets and your wit.”
“You look even worse at this hour.”
“The Revolution does not value me tor my decorative qualities, Danton. Nor you, I believe. Men of action, that’s what we are, aren’t we?” As usual, Marat seemed to be deeply entertained by some private joke. “Get Mandat here,” he said.
“Is he still at the palace? Message to Mandat,” Danton said over his shoulder. “My compliments to him, and the Commune requests his presence urgently at City Hall.”
From the Place de Grève, the roar of the growing crowd. Danton splashed some brandy into a glass and stood cradling it in his palm. He reached up to loosen the cravat he had wasted his time in tightening, at home in the Cour du Commerce. The pulse jumped at the side of his neck. His mouth was dry. A wave of nausea welled inside him. He took another sip from the glass. The nausea abated.

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