A Place of Greater Safety (97 page)

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Authors: Hilary Mantel

BOOK: A Place of Greater Safety
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His face hardened. You can’t stand in the street calling into question the last five years of your life, just because they’ve changed the street name; you can’t let it alter the future. No, he thought—and he saw it clearly, for the first time—it’s an illusion, about quitting, about going back to Arcis to farm. I’ve been lying to Louise: once in, never out.
 
 
“T
hank God,” Lucile said. “I was thinking of coming to get you.”
Her lips brushed his cheek. He’d been preparing to interrogate her closely about Camille and Robespierre, but instead he said, “How beautiful you are. I believe I’d forgotten.”
“In five weeks?”
“I’d never really forget.” He put his arms around her. “That was very
sweet of you, to be so eager for my presence. You should have come to Arcis, I would have liked it.”
“Louise wouldn’t, or your mother.”
“It would have given them something in common.”
“I see. As bad as that?”
“A disaster. Louise is too young, too citified and quite the wrong shape. And how are you?”
“Oh Lord—mixed up.” She tried to pull away from him, but he held on to her, tightening his arms around her waist. How strong she was, full of fight; he believed she was afraid of nothing.
“Not pregnant again, Lolotte?”
She shook her head. “Thank God,” she added.
“Do you want me to give you another son?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You have a nice wife of your own to take care of, I think.”
“I can accommodate more than one woman in my life.”
“I thought you’d given me up.”
“Absolutely not. Point of honor.”
“But you had, before you left.”
I’ve got my strength back now, he thought. “It’s no good trying to reform, is it? You can’t reform of loving somebody.”
“You don’t love me. You just want to have me, and talk about it afterwards.”
“Better than not having you and talking about it afterwards, like everybody else.”
“Yes.” She leaned her forehead against his chest. “I’ve been silly, haven’t I?”
“Very silly. Your situation’s irretrievable. Our wives will never believe any good of you now. Be honest for once, and go to bed with me.”
“Is that what you came for?”
“Not originally, but—”
“I’m glad about that. I have no intention of complying, and besides, a little while ago Camille came in and flung himself down on our bed and is doing some savage brooding.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Look at me.” It was the same request, he remembered, that he had made to his wife thirty minutes earlier. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Everything’s wrong.”
“I’ll fix it all.”
“Please.”
 
 
C
amille lay with his head buried in his arms. “Lolotte?” he said, without looking up. Danton sat down beside him and stroked his hair. “Oh, Georges.”
“Aren’t you surprised?”
“Nothing surprises me,” Camille said wanly. “Don’t stop doing that, it’s the first nice thing that’s happened to me in a month.”
“From the beginning then.”
“You got my letter?”
“It didn’t make much sense.”
“No. No, probably not. I can quite see that.”
He turned around and sat up. Danton was startled. In five weeks, the spurious maturity of the last five years had fallen away; the person who looked at him out of Camille’s eyes was the scared and shabby boy of ’88.
“Philippe is dead.”
“The Duke? Yes, I know.”
“Charles-Alexis is dead. Valazé stabbed himself right in front of me.”
“I heard. They brought me the news. But leave this for a minute. Tell me about Chabot and those people.”
“Chabot and two of his friends have been expelled from the Convention. They’re under arrest. Deputy Julien’s gone, he ran away. Vadier is asking questions.”
“Is he, now?” The head of the Committee of General Security was gaining himself a reputation for a horrible efficiency in the hounding of suspects. “The Inquisitor,” people called him. He was a man of sixty or so, with a long, yellow face, and long, yellow, many-jointed hands. “What sort of questions?” Danton said.
“About you. About Fabre and your friend Lacroix.”
Fabre’s dreary little confession was in Danton’s pocket. He has done … he does not appear to know, himself, what he has done. Yes, he amended a government document, in his own hand, and the amendment has been printed as part of the text; but then again, some unknown hand made an amendment to the amendment … . It makes you tired just to think about it. The possible conclusion is that Fabre is a forger—a
common
criminal, as opposed to some more refined type. All the indications are that Robespierre hasn’t an inkling what is going on.
He returned his attention to Camille. “Vadier obviously thinks he is about to uncover something damning about you, Georges. I spend my time avoiding Fabre. The Police Committee have had Chabot in. He denounced a conspiracy, of course. Said he’d gone along with it to track
it to its source. No one believed that. Fabre has been delegated to produce a report of the affair.”
“On the East India Company? Fabre has?” This is becoming completely absurd, Danton thought.
“Yes, and on its political ramifications. Robespierre’s not interested in crooked stock-market deals, he’s interested in who’s behind them, and where their instructions come from.”
“But why didn’t Chabot denounce Fabre right away—why didn’t he say, Fabre was in it with me from the beginning?”
“What had he to gain? Then they’d be in the dock together. So Chabot kept quiet, thinking Fabre might be grateful, and exonerate him in the report. Another deal struck, you see.”
“And Chabot really thinks that Fabre will remain in the clear?”
“They expect you to use your influence to pull him into the clear.”
“What a mess,” Danton said.
“Anyway, it’s all worse now. Chabot’s denouncing Fabre, and
everybody—
the only saving grace is that by now no one believes anything he says. Vadier questioned me.”
“Questioned
you
? He’s getting a bit above himself.”
“Oh, it was all very informal. One good patriot to another. He said, Citizen, no one imagines you’ve done anything shady, but have you perhaps done something a little bit sharp? The idea was that I’d tell him all about it and feel much better afterwards.”
“What did you say?”
“Oh, hardly anything. I opened my eyes and said, me, sharp? My stutter was very bad that day. I dropped Max’s name into the conversation a lot. Vadier is terrified of crossing him. He knew if he put any pressure on me I’d complain.”
“Well done,” Danton said grimly. But he saw the difficulty that he was in; it was not just a matter of what he did about Fabre, it was the rather larger matter of Camille’s conscience.
“I’m lying to Robespierre,” Camille said. “By implication, anyway. I don’t like this, you know. It puts me on shaky ground for what I want to do next.”
“And that is?”
“There is worse news, I’m afraid. Hébert has come out with a story about Lacroix lining his pockets in Belgium last year, when you were on mission together. He claims to have evidence. He has also persuaded the Jacobins to petition the Convention to pull Lacroix and Legendre back from mission in Normandy.”
“What does he say Legendre has done?”
“He’s your friend, isn’t he? I went to Robespierre and said, we must stop the Terror.”
“You said that?”
“He said, I entirely agree. He does, of course, he hates the killing, it’s only me who took so long to see … . So I said, Hébert is too powerful. He’s entrenched at the War Ministry and the Commune, he’s got his newspaper circulating to the troops—and Hébert will not agree to stop the Terror. It touched his pride. He said, if I want to stop it, I will, even if I have to cut off Hébert’s head first. All right, I told him, think about it for twenty-four hours and then we’ll decide how to move in on him. I came home and drafted a pamphlet against Hébert.”
“You never learn, do you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You were bewailing the Gironde. Your part in their downfall.”
“But this is
Hébert,
” Camille said uncomprehendingly. “Look, don’t confuse me. Hébert’s the obstacle to stopping the Terror. If we kill him, we won’t need to kill anyone else. Anyway, Robespierre—in that twenty-four hours he started to temporize. He came over all twitchy and indecisive. When I went back he said, ‘Hébert is very powerful, but he is right about some things, and he could be very useful if he were under our control.’” Two-faced little bastard, Danton thought; what’s he up to? “‘It might be better,’ he said, ‘if we could find a compromise. We don’t want anymore unnecessary bloodshed.’ For once I wished for Saint-Just. I really thought he was going to do it, you know, and then—” He made an exasperated gesture. “Saint-Just might have been able to push him into some action.”
“Action?” Danton said. “He won’t take action. He’s got no idea when it comes to action. Unnecessary bloodshed, oh my. Violence, how deplorable. He wears me out with his rectitude. That bugger couldn’t boil an egg.”
“Oh no,” Camille said. “Don’t, don’t.”
“So what does he want to do?”
“He won’t be pinned down to an opinion. Go and see him. Just take in what he says. Don’t argue.”
Danton thought, but that is how they used to talk about me. He pulled Camille into his arms. His body seemed strange and precarious, made of shadows and angles. Camille buried his head in his shoulder; and said, “You really are a shocking and cynical man.”
For a moment or two they didn’t speak. Then Camille pulled away and looked up at him. His hands rested lightly on Danton’s shoulders.
“Has it ever occurred to you that Max feels the same basic contempt for you as you do for him?”
“He feels contempt for me?”
“It is something he feels very readily.”
“No, I hadn’t thought that.”
“Well, the whole world isn’t driven by your appetites, and people who are not feel themselves your superior, naturally. He struggles very hard to make allowances for you. He is not tolerant, but he is charitable. Or perhaps it is the other way around.”
“One becomes tired of analyzing his character,” Danton said. “As if one’s life depended on it.”
 
 
H
e had intended to go back to Louise for an hour. He stood at the corner of the Cour du Commerce. He had become used to talking to her, recounting everything that happened and what had been said, waiting for her comments. He told her things he would never have told Gabrielle; her very lack of involvement, lack of knowledge made her valuable to him. But just now, there was nothing to say. He felt a great inarticulate weight inside him. He looked at his watch. It was possible, though not likely, that the Incorruptible would be at home at this hour, and while he stretched his legs in crossing the river he could think what to say. He glanced up at his own lighted window, then strode off vengefully into the evening.
The lanterns were being lit, swinging giddily from ropes in the narrow alleys between the houses, or hanging from iron brackets. There were more of them now than there had been before the Revolution: lights against the conspirators, against the counterfeiters, against the dark night of the Duke of Brunswick. In ’89 they had been hanging up an aristo, and he had asked, “Do you think the light will shine brighter afterwards?” And Louis Suleau, expressing his surprise at being still alive: “Whenever I pass a lamppost, I see it stretch out towards me, covetously.”
Two young boys passed him, with cheerful country faces and running noses; they were selling rabbits to the townsfolk, and they carried the animals slung upside down on poles, bloodstained bundles caught in the field in traps. Someone will rob them, he thought, and then they will have neither money nor rabbits on a pole; as they passed him the furry corpses looked meager, little flesh on the swinging bones. Two women quarreled in the door of a cookshop, fists on hips; the river was a smudged channel of yellow and dirty gray, creeping up at the winter like the onset
of a wasting disease. People hurried off the streets, to be shut away from the city and the night.
The carriage was new, and remarkable because it was smart; even in the gloom you could see fresh polish on new paint. He caught a glimpse of a round, pale face, and the coachman drew up beside him with a ponderous creak of harness; above it, the squeak of the owner’s voice. “My dear Danton, is it you?”
He halted unwillingly. The horses breathed wetly into the raw, wet twilight. “Hébert, is it you?”
Hébert stuck his head out. “So it is. One recognizes your bulk. My dear Danton, it grows dark, what are you doing, walking the streets in this democratic fashion? It is not safe.”

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