French Passion (36 page)

Both men gaped at me.

Mr. Camberwell's face was seamed as if someone had carefully stitched together hundreds of tiny pieces of yellowing cloth. Finally he said, “Even so, you bear one of the greatest names of the Old Regime.”

“I use my own name,” I said impatiently. This lawyer's haggling annoyed me.

“Pardon me, Countess, but I fail to see what purpose your going to Paris will serve.”

“I told you!” I snapped. “My friends will help me free my husband. We'll return to England.”

“In talking to the Count of Créqui, he made it abundantly clear that he's not of the breed who run.” The arid legal voice warmed with the admiration that the Comte, without trying, always elicited. “He won't leave France.”

“I'll make him.”

“He—”

“That, Mr. Camberwell, is quite enough.” I used the Comte's peremptory tone.

Again both men stared at me in surprise. I quieted a mere lawyer. Sir Robert, though, a gentleman born, could not be silenced so easily.

“You're intent on going then?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then pack a few things. One trunk, no more. Get together your papers. I'll be back within the hour.”

“Oh, Sir Robert,” I cried. “I'll be forever in your debt if you'll take me to Dover.”

“Dover be damned. I owe you the courtesy of seeing you safely to Paris.”

My eyes fell before the honest blue ones. “I can't let you do that.…”

“There's no way you can stop me.”

“You see me as a lady in distress.” My voice faltered and grew very quiet. “Actually … I was as the Baron de Mably said.…”

Mr. Camberwell, discreet, gazed toward the sun-struck greenery of St. James's Park.

“It's a long story. Still, the Baron was right about … my relationship to the Comte.…”

“Yet very wrong, too?” asked Sir Robert.

I nodded.

“Comtesse, arrumph … I'm very ashamed. Never before behaved insultingly to a woman.” Again he cleared his throat. “This will be my way of making it up to you.”

“It's quite unnecessary.”

But his blue eyes shone like an excited schoolboy's. “Rescuing the Comte de Créqui from the jaws of the Revolution. Spiriting him from the Conciergerie! Gad, what an adventure!”

THREE

The Time of Terror

1792

Chapter One

A fine rain fell, blurring dust on the windows. The post had been stopped more than half an hour. The farm-wife sitting opposite (she smelled of garlic) was picking her teeth noisily. Her husband and Sir Robert stood at a distance, being interrogated by “patriots,” a pitiful group of men armed with ancient musketry. A few drenched, shivering peasants looked on. The unusual July rain fell on a scene as desolate as an abandoned battlefield. Fruit trees had been chopped down. No crops had been planted. Blackened chimneys and foundations, all that remained of a large house, lay a distance from the straggle of cottages.

A “patriot,” his shoulders covered with woven straw to keep out the rain, clumped through the ruts toward us. Opening the door, he asked, “Which of you is Mademoiselle d'Epinay?”

“I am.”

“Émigré?”

“No.”

“You left France, didn't you?”

“But I'm returning.”

“Why?”

“It's my country,” I said.

“Émigrés are to be jailed as traitors.”

“Traitor? Jail? Me?” I gave a false laugh. “I'm one of the seven that the patriots of France released from the Bastille.”

At this he took off his red wool cap and touched his forelock. I wasn't surprised. Even the most ferocious “patriot” saluted this often-made speech. “Citizeness, it's an honor to meet you,” he said. Turning to the others, he shouted, “Let 'em through.”

Sir Robert and the farmer climbed aboard, and we lurched forward on the ruined road.

The barrier clanked behind us.

Sir Robert, wiping rain from his hat, smiled. To him, our moving forward was like scoring another run in a game of cricket; to me, the sound was a reminder of my entry to the Bastille, the sound of imprisonment. Yet Paris drew me. My ties with the Comte pulled and tugged, and I could no more resist moving forward than a ship can prevent itself from shattering on a lodestone rock.

“Don't look so worried, Manon,” Sir Robert said. As a precaution we always spoke in English, and he used my first name only. “We'll be in Paris this afternoon.”

“Yes,” I sighed.

He took my hand, the only intimacy I permitted him. His touch gave me courage. I was well aware that he was in love with me, and this love was enhanced by his sense of aiding a woman in distress. On our painfully slow journey I'd told him the pertinent details of my relationship to my husband, mentioning André briefly, and not by name.

The rain had stopped when we reached the Paris gate. We were stalled in a long, inching line. The produce and grain carts were surrounded by armed peasants. Each person was interrogated by the guards. The traffic leaving Paris moved even more slowly, and those afoot sat chatting on the side of the street. Finally we were cleared to enter the city. We went immediately to the Hôtel des Anglais, on the right bank, a hotel patronized for generations by the English.

I dressed to the dawn chatter of birds. Sleep had given me courage. After my impatience with the stupid “patriots,” after that agonizingly slow journey through the ruined countryside, the thought of a quick adversary to test my mettle was exhilarating. I must make the Comte agree to escape. He was a brilliant tactician. I must get him to plan the escape. The thought of matching wits with my husband was thrilling—and unnerving.

I examined myself in the long mirror. The green flower print of my summer frock turned my eyes the color of spring leaves, and the swathed bodice emphasized the curves of my breasts. My appearance, provocatively pretty, should delight the Comte. On the other hand, in order to get through the Paris streets, I needed to look unobtrusive. I pulled the hood of my green traveling cape low over my curls.

A leather-aproned lackey swept the hall. I slipped by him, going into the early morning. It wasn't actually cold, but clouds threatened, and the heaviness of coming rain hung in the air.

There were no carriages for hire. In my thin-soled, high-heeled slippers, I picked my awkward way over cobbles. At the corner I stared in both directions. A wagon was coming up the street. The driver, an old woman, shouted, “Need a ride, Citizeness?”

“Please, are you going near the Palais de Justice?” An immense complex of buildings housed both the Palais de Justice and Conciergerie Prison.

“In that direction, Citizeness,” she replied.

As we jounced along, she kept up a constant chatter over some new saint, St. Ganteen, or something like that. This St. Ganteen, she averred, would accomplish the miracle of equalizing rich and poor. There was an evil note to the old woman's chuckle; however, she was giving me a much-needed ride, so I nodded, pretending agreement. She let me off not too far from the Conciergerie. Poorly dressed women were hurrying in the same direction, and in the vast courtyard, the Cours de Mai, on the twin curve of steps, more such women were watching a crude, wooden-wheeled cart. They were knitting and chatting, yet I had a feeling they were spectators in a Roman amphitheater, awaiting those ancient sports of death. I was glad enough to get inside the Conciergerie.

In the dark hall was the registry office. The concierge—as the registrar here was called—sat between two lattices. I was to his left, and beyond his office, to his right, was a room holding two coatless men. Their neck bands were loosened, the backs of their necks shaven. My skin prickled. I understood for what the women waited, and the use of that crude cart. The two men were on their way to execution.

The concierge, a stout officer with his belly bulging over his blue uniform, ogled me in the sputtering light of an oil lamp.

“Yes?” he asked.

“I wish to see the prisoner Créqui.”

“Your name?”

“Manon d'Epinay.”

“Purpose?”

“Simply that. To see him in this place.”

“For what reason, Citizeness?”

“Reason, Citizen Concierge? Our tables have been turned. He had me locked in the Bastille.”

My heart was pounding furiously. The ploy had always worked before. But what if it didn't now?

“You were a prisoner of the Bastille?”

“Put there by Créqui, released on July fourteenth by brave patriots.”

The registrar stood. “Citizeness, the traitor Créqui's trial is a week from tomorrow. You will be avenged.”

“In the Bastille I dreamed of seeing him locked in a cell. That sight is my vengeance.”

“It can be arranged.”

A guard led me through interminable arched corridors and across courtyards, down steps, up winding staircases. Pairs of heavily armed guards passed us. We came to a long corridor. At the last door to the left, my guard halted, throwing the bolts. At this familiar grating of iron, I shuddered.

“Citizeness,” he said respectfully, “when you're ready, call. Otherwise I will return in fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you, Citizen,” I said.

And the door closed behind me. A high window cast a slant of light across the rough-stoned floor. I had a confused impression of a scarred wood chair and cupboard, two cots with a backgammon board set on one, the odors of body waste and food.

Two men had risen.

The Comte was bowing. He needed a shave, and his black wool suit was dusty, his neck band loosened, but his wig was well combed. His clever monkey's face snapped with amusement. He looked jaunty and somehow younger. This must've been how he looked facing danger in his army career. No-Retreat de Créqui, wasn't that what they'd called him? Better by far for my purpose if prison had broken him a little, yet at the same time I was grateful that it hadn't.

“Is it really you?” he asked. “Citizeness?”

“Yes, Prisoner,” I replied demurely.

He laughed. “May I present Colonel Duval, late of the Swiss Guard. My wife.”

“Comtesse.” The short broad-shouldered man bowed, picked up a book, and sat on a cot facing slimy stone walls. As I would later learn in prison, the turning of a back was not rudeness but a polite convention of invisibility.

“Now,” the Comte said, “what are you doing here? Camberwell had explicit orders to keep you in London.”

“What? A mere lawyer giving orders to the Comtesse de Créqui?”

Again he laughed.

“Comte, we don't have much time. Tell me how to get you out of here.”

“My dear, I am leaving.”

“You are? How?”

“Next Friday I go to trial.”

“Have you bribed the judges? How can you be sure they'll release you?”

He took my hand, drawing me to a corner of the cell. “Have you heard of a Dr. Guillotin?”

“Guillotin … the name is vaguely familiar, but …” Grimacing, I shrugged.

The Comte smiled. “My dear, I used to wait for hours until you made that gesture. Oh, I was patient as any fisherman waiting for your upper lip to point out and your shoulders to go up with that charming jiggle of breasts. But back to the good Dr. Guillotin. Like most humanitarians, he ended up serving the human race badly. He disliked the axe and the gallows, for they often bungle. So he devised a quick, sure method of death. A sharp blade falling between two boards, instantly severing the head from the body, and life from death. The Revolution hailed his invention. In his honor, they named it the guillotine. And kindhearted citizens and citizenesses come from miles around to watch it perform.”

My mind chilled. I remembered that evil chuckle. “I just heard the name,” I said. “An old marketwoman gave me a ride here. All the way she kept chattering about a St. Ganteen. That's what she meant.”

“You see how the country has advanced in your absence? We now have instant canonization. Well, it's a painless death.”

“No!” I cried. “No. That is not how you'll leave. I'll save you. Goujon, Izette, they'll help.”

“My dear, if that's what brought you back to France, I am angry. I have never asked for help. I refuse to let you ask for help in my name. If you disobey, I shall denounce any who come to my aid. I assure you that our new saint is quite impartial.” He spoke with aristocratic frost.

My mind went black with anger and I clenched my fists to keep from hitting him. He was of the noblest blood, his bravery was undisputed, his mind brilliant—but did that make him too superior to accept human assistance?

I forced down my anger. “Comte, you've planned enough battles. You're known as a flawless tactician. I'll manage whatever you tell me. Alone.”

At this his mood changed abruptly. His laughter rang in the dank cell. “And how, my beautiful one-woman army, will you accomplish this?”

“I can do more than you think. I'm a released prisoner of the Bastille.”

His amused laughter rang again. “Even the most stupid Revolutionary clod would hardly bow to that particular argument to release
me
.”

My anger circled impotently. He was acting as if the Conciergerie were a joke, and I a playful kitten. Yet I was his last chance for freedom. If he refused to listen to me, in a little more than a week he would be standing, like those two men I'd just seen beyond the registrar's office, his linen loosened, the strong black curls at the nape of his neck shaven, and women would jeer as he climbed aboard the crude cart.

I never had been able to properly fathom him. He, however, could read me like a book.

“My dear, we all die. So stop raging at me. Let me see you.” He took off my hooded traveling cape, holding me by my hands so he could examine me. “It must be this bad light, but you've never been so lovely.”