French Passion (49 page)

Far away, the grated door creaked open. I didn't glance up.

“A visitor,” called the guard's voice. “Prisoner de Créqui!”

Wondering who it was, I pushed up, making my slow way between cots to the lit table.

With an escort of two soldiers was Sir Robert. The shoulders of his greatcoat were dark with rain, as was the three-cornered gray hat he held. His cheeks glowed, red as an apple.

As I entered the circle of golden light, he beamed, his smile quickly fading. “Comtesse—Manon, what is it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Nothing at all.”

“What have they done to you?” he demanded.

The Duchess de Gramont replied for me, “The Executive Council has been, questioning the Comtesse. 'Tis rather distressing to be questioned, and most wearying.” Her voice was serene. She was stately in her violet gown—like any lady here who could, she adhered faithfully to the Court routine of three daily changes of costume.

Sir Robert blazed, “By God! Manon, if they've been torturing—”

“They haven't,” I interrupted. “Would they dare? They know they'd have account to you. Ah, Sir Robert, how good it is to see you.” I embraced him. His bright cheeks were cool and damp from night rain.

The ladies clustered tactfully at the far end of the table; however, both soldiers and two jailors stood breathing over us, on the lookout for notes that might be passed, for remarks that smacked of escape plots.

Sir Robert sat facing me across the table. “Jove, what a foul state of affairs! The felons on the outside, the decent people inside!” He used English.

“No speaking gibberish,” a soldier ordered, but not unkindly.

Sir Robert said in French, “You've been weeping.”

“It's this place. Did you know I've been sentenced?”

His hearty face moved close to mine. He smelled, faintly, of roast beef and sherry. “There, Manon, there.” He spoke with appropriate mournful sympathy, yet there was that glint of adventure in his Saxon blue eyes. “Izette sends word to cheer you. She said to remind you of that night you and she and Deputy Goujon and I had a dashed jolly time discussing her job.”

My hand tensed, arching up on the table. “Izette's a good, sensible girl. She knows she doesn't have the strength.”

“She'll get other women to help her with the heavy work.”

The soldiers and jailors were staring down at us. I turned to each, managing smiles. “It's my old lady's maid. She's going back to being a laundress.”

Of course that wasn't what Sir Robert was telling me. He was informing me that Izette intended carrying out the rescue plan we'd worked out for the Comte. I'd never been convinced that any disturbance caused by mere women could distract the armed men guarding a tumbrel. Still my pulses throbbed.

But how could I let Sir Robert know that André and I were going to the Place de la Révolution together? And that I refused a rescue that didn't include him?

The four men peered down at us. There was no chance to whisper. Panicked, I began to weep.

“My dear, my dear,” Sir Robert said.

This endearment, used so often by the Comte, reminded me too vividly of the guillotine, and my panic overwhelmed me.
Think! Think!
Instead, I sobbed the harder. And abruptly realized that Izette's plan was our last hope. Desperation prodded me.

Drying my eyes, I said to the four men, “Pardon my weakness. Is it possible for me to send my brother a note through this gentleman?”

“It'll be read, I warn you,” a soldier replied without rancor.

“I understand. Of course,” I said. At the far end of the table a woman sat writing. I called, “Madame de Chaumont, might I borrow your quill and a sheet of paper?”

“Comtesse, please,” she replied.

Sir Robert rose to get the writing implements for me.

I scratched out a note, sanded it, giving it to a jailor.

The four men passed it around. None could read. A soldier went to the door, asking through the grating if anyone knew his letters. I held my breath. The note was doomed if no literate servant of the Revolution could be found. After an interminable moment one of the sentries spoke up, unlocked the door, relocked it, handed over his musket, and held the paper at arm's length, hesitatingly sounding out words.

“‘My dearest André,'” he read. “‘Do you remember how we rode together, the two of us, in the hay wagon? Do you remember how we swam together in the river Aube? Think of those good times, my brother, when the two of us were always together. And do not think of anything else. Just the two of us together. May God bless you. Your loving sister, Manon.'”

During the slow reading I gazed at Sir Robert.

“You're from Champagne, Citizeness?” inquired one of the soldiers.

My heart skipped a beat. “As a girl, yes. Why? Are you?”

“Your name?”

“D'Epinay. Manon d'Epinay.”

What if—despite all chances against the coincidence—this man came from the country around our village? Surely he would know the d'Epinay name, and know just as surely that my brother was called Jean-Pierre, not André.

“My grandfather came from Arcis sur l'Aube,” the soldier replied. “To hear the old man tell it, the only food and wine not fit for hog swill comes from Champagne.”

“Does your grandfather live in Paris now, Citizen?” I asked.

“He did. He passed on at a ripe old age. Sixty-one.”

I let out a shuddering, relieved breath. “There.” I smiled. “Doesn't that prove the quality of our fare?”

The soldier chuckled, winking at me. The note was handed to Sir Robert.

The Englishman folded it. “You may be sure this will be delivered promptly,” he said.

“My brother, André.”

“I know how close you are.” Saxon blue eyes twinkled. Sir Robert understood the rules of the game. He rose, bowing.

After the soldiers led him out, every emotion—including hope—drained from me. I leaned my elbows on the table, resting my face between my palms. I'd seen the crowd lining Rue St. Honoré. I knew its temper. Even granting that it was indeed possible for the guards to be distracted enough to halt the tumbrel, there was no chance. The crowd was thirsty. The Comte had been popular with his former soldiers; however, even they couldn't have wrested him from the mob.

Much as I yearned to live, I knew that the mob permitted no escapes without blood sacrifices. I shuddered, remembering the unspeakable barbarism of the September Massacres. Some of those deaths made a public guillotine appear blessed.

I returned the writing implements, moving slowly back to my cot. The sound of rain was louder. I curled my aching body on the straw pallet and let the tears come.

Chapter Fifteen

As the chill scissors touched the back of my neck I was overcome with terror.

Two mornings after Sir Robert's visit, the jailor had just read what was called The Prison Newspaper: the names of those who on this day would make the journey to the Place de la Révolution.

Manon de Créqui was the only name on the women's list.

I had stepped to the long table, and around me the ladies had acted as if I, like them, would make my normal toilette.

The scissors moved on my nape, cold. Death would come so, by cold steel.

“Is it all right if I cut it?” My final words were run together in a gasp.
IfIcutit?

The jailor replied by handing me the scissors. I was not too benumbed to realize the Conciergerie jailors, common, uneducated men with every reason to despise their aristocratic prisoners, had never been cruel, and for the most part had behaved toward us with respect and kindness. Holding out the hair from my neck so the scissors wouldn't touch my flesh, I cut.

“That's enough,” said the jailor. “It's such pretty hair, shiny as midsummer moonlight.”

I handed him a curl as I returned his scissors.

“Now for the chain,” he said.

He'd been good about letting me use the scissors. I didn't argue. I lifted the chain over my head, briefly weighing the ruby wedding band that I could not remember being placed on my finger, and the heavy gold that Louis XV, by divine right King of France, in his fifty-third year had given to his beloved womanchild. A second jailor took the chain and rings, listing them in his ledger.

I combed the remaining hair over my bared shoulders—I wasn't permitted a fichu. There was something terribly wrong with my heart. The pauses fluttering between each beat shortened my breath, and I gasped, sighing. I'd hoped to go to my death with brave amusement, like the Comte, and here I was, gasping for air like a poor fish thrown up on a riverbank.

The Duchesse de Gramont approached, holding out two enameled boxes. “Comtesse, may I offer you maquillage?”

“I've never painted,” I replied breathlessly.

“Then will you permit me to demonstrate?”

I must be very pale, I thought, and nodded.

The Duchesse had been served by three personal maids, yet now her slender, wrinkled fingers skillfully applied rice powder and scented rouge. As her touch moved lightly on my face, it was borne forcibly on me that her handiwork would soon be held up on display to the crowd, and this realization would have brought violent shudders had I not pressed my back hard against the ladder of the chair.

Our fellow prisoners gathered around. One offered me a touch from her scent flacon, another a gold pillbox with laudanum, a third murmured that I looked charming.

I stood to bid them farewell. My mind was working as erratically as my heart. I couldn't properly remember names or titles, yet each of these women had become very dear to me.

All at once I was hurling myself against one, then the other, as if I were caught in a current, pressing my cheek to this blooming young matron, kissing that rosy fifteen-year-old, hugging this delicately wrinkled dowager. Wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend. Gently reared, sweet-scented, quiet-voiced, with soft white hands. Useless, maybe. Yet each, knowing in her heart she was already a ghost, gallantly faced the hours in this long smoke-drabbed tunnel that led to the grave.

“Goodbye,” I murmured, “goodbye. I love you all.”

“Ready?” asked the jailor.

I was ready—if only my heart would return to normal. Settling my cape about my bared shoulders, I stepped forward.

We went to the Conciergerie's enclosure.

Here, André must have passed the night, for the cot was rumpled and dishes were pushed in a corner.

His hair, too, had been clipped. The back of his neck band was slit.

“Good morning,” I said, and found it possible to manage a smile.

His arms went around me, and I pressed my poor, weakly fluttering heart against him. How sweet to embrace without bars separating us. At the same time how shattering to know that never again would I feel his warm, mortal flesh. Never again, never again, the words echoed inside my head, and I prayed: Sweet God, don't let me cry. Spare me. I'm insufficient, and have sinned in too many ways and too many times, sinned much, but I beg You, spare me from weeping, for then, surely, I will break.

It was André who began to make the awful, gasping sound. His chest shuddered against me. He'd wept like this for his nephew's death. It was then I realized, for the first time, that only the strongest of men can permit a show of weakness.

My arms tightened around him.

“I've killed you,” he said in a choked voice. “You pretend it isn't so, but in this last hour we must be honest. Had you not witnessed at my trial, you'd have been safe.”

Not denying this, I stroked his quaking shoulders. “I wouldn't want to live,” I said, “in a world where you're not.”

We stood holding each other for several minutes. I heard the guard unbolt the door.

“André,” I said, “we still have quite a bit of time. The cart moves slowly, the ride takes over an hour.” Even now, I couldn't resign myself to the inevitable. The minutes of life seemed to stretch out, an eternity.

“Let's say our goodbyes here,” he said.

We said we loved each other and then, sweetly, calmly, he kissed my lips. I could feel his warm, moist breath. Farewell to breath that smells of apples and sleep. One last gentle kiss of the poet who dreamed of a world free, farewell to earthly consummation, farewell to love. Why, why, must I still yearn after the transitory flesh?

Our hands were tied with rope behind our backs. A guard settled my cloak again about me. We were led to a narrow door.

As it opened, a great burst of sound exploded in the courtyard. My heart was giving me trouble again. We exited to the left of the Palais de Justice staircase. Men and women sat on the steps, clapping, stamping, laughing. Shouting.

The crowd that once had cheered André, their fervent poet of the Revolution, their Égalité, their Incorruptible, now hurled insults at “Capet Bastard!” “Whoreson!” “Tyrant!” I moved closer to him, my arm touching his. “It's the beautiful prostitute who defended him!” someone screamed, and the obscenities were turned on me, too.

We were helped into a wood-wheeled cart that smelled of manure. A dozen heavily armed soldiers on horseback stationed themselves around us. To me, they seemed not guards but a defense against the palpable malevolence of the roaring voices. Once more I knew for certain that Izette's plan was pitiable. What other than blood could satisfy this mob? Beyond the courtyard—the Cours de Mai—massed others, shouting insults.

I said to André, “We seem to have begun and ended in coaches.”

“If I could turn back the clock to that night, darling, I'd take you with me to the United States, and we'd be there now, safe, across the sea, on the other side of the world, safe.”

“In a state called Georgia,” I said. “It's on the Susannah River.”

“Savannah,” he corrected. His gray eyes were warm, his mouth formed a smile.