French Passion (50 page)

And with his smile, my heartbeat returned to normal.

The driver touched his whip to the decrepit old plow horse, the poor animal strained, unoiled wheels creaked, and we jolted forward.

André, to comfort me, talked of the Americas. I listened to the cadence of his voice, but not his words.

The places we passed were a weaving of the threads of my life. We lurched out of the courtyard. Near these finely gilded wrought-iron gates I'd waited through the cold night for admission to André's trial. In the distance I glimpsed the Hôtel-Dieu; there, with Izette, I'd discovered that I couldn't leave her crippled little brother. We jostled over Pont Neuf, passing Rue Maupin. Once I'd raced up this street to seek refuge with Monsieur Sancerre from the Comte's aristocratic rage that he wouldn't be my first lover. We skirted the Tuileries Gardens: in happier days here had toddled my CoCo, plump, cloudy-haired, imperious. There, in the Manège, André's voice had exhorted the Assembly to moderation. We crossed a street that led to the cul-de-sac where the Comte had rented a house for dear Aunt Thérèse, Jean-Pierre, and me, the house where CoCo had been born and died, where the Comte had loved me too passionately, the house where each Friday night the now scattered money, wit, and demimonde beauty of Paris had gathered. We lurched slowly down Rue St. Honoré. Clenched fists were raised, tricolors waved against the cloudy sky, and occasional bits of offal dropped into the cart. That refectory there was home to the Jacobin Club; in that building the Jacobins, including Goujon, had planned the September Massacres.

An old man was shoving through the crowd to keep up with us. He shrilled words. It took me a while to realize it was Old Lucien. Yes, Izette once had told me that whenever a woman rode in the tumbrel, the old man was there, shouting obscenities.

For a moment his filmed eyes met mine. More memories, these of childhood, flooded over me. Old Lucien's toothless mouth trembled. “Bad 'un! This time there ain't be nobody who can save you, bad 'un!” He kept spewing out the same words. He's mad, I realized, mad as any locked in the dungeons of Hôtel-Dieu.

He fell behind us. Here, the crowd was thicker and more vituperatively shrill in its cries for blood royal. Almost all females, a legion of harpies and fishwives. Yet many, doubtless, were good women. And it occurred to me that in each of us there exists a locked-away lunatic. Who in this Reign of Terror could remain completely sane? The Revolution, with its carnage and bloodlusts, had unlocked our universal madman.

Similar thoughts occurred to André.

“I wanted to set people free,” he said. “What I've accomplished is freeing their baser instincts.” Hopelessness weighted his voice.

To keep our balance, we were leaning against the rail. I pressed my tied-back arm closer to his.

“This hatred'll burn itself out,” I said. “The children will have better lives. André, think of the cruel old laws. The children will be free men and women. They'll stand tall and straight and won't feel inferior to anyone.” Was I paraphrasing Goujon? I didn't care. I couldn't let André die believing his life worse than wasted. “There'll be no more starvation, everyone'll be schooled—”

My predictions of hope were halted by a penetrating shriek. We both turned to where the cry came from.

Maybe a hundred yards ahead of us, atop a carriage block, stood Izette. Both her shapely arms were raised to the sky. Even from this distance I could see that her face blazed white.

Chapter Sixteen

“It's Izette,” André said.

“Whatever happens, promise you'll do as she says.” My voice was urgent. Yesterday, when I'd whispered through Conciergerie bars of Sir Robert's night visit, I'd explained to André about the plan originally designed to rescue the comte. “Promise?”

“We aren't leaving this cart.”

“She's risking her life.” As I spoke, my hands were at work under my cape. “Can you untie your hands?”

“Darling, do you know what that mob can do to you?”

“See? Up ahead it's almost all women. Her club.”

“How do you know?”

“They have to be.” The knots were careless, less bondage than symbolizing bondage. The rope slipped apart and I held it. “André, we're loosely tied. Hurry.”

He spoke with the same urgency. “There's no way to be sure it's her club. All we can see is a mob. In the Assembly I've had to listen to reports of mutilations, live disembowlings.”

I felt none of the paralyzing and merciful shock that eases many to the guillotine. In this moment, with André, I affirmed life. I yearned with all my heart to live.

“
It's our only chance!
” I hissed fervently.

We jolted on a pothole. He gazed down at me and said quietly, “From the beginning you've had a little too much courage.” And slowly his hands began working at his ropes.

The cart grumbled toward the thick crowd of women. Their faces glistened in the cloud-dulled light, and the shrill notes of their voices struck horror in my heart.

What if André was right and there was no plot? What if these women were as they appeared, a malevolent force intent on wreaking upon us a far more hideous death than that ordained for us.

Yet there stood Izette in her red wool cap, her arms upraised. The tall body was never more voluptuous. In this pose she was one of those maiden goddesses who hover above battles, leading the bravest warriors to victory. Something glittery was tucked into her belt. A knife, I thought. The women around her shoved and yelled.

The driver slowed his decrepit horse. The dozen soldiers guarding the tumbrel glanced uneasily at one another. The leader, a long-jawed corporal, moved his hand on his musket. The private behind him, a boy with fine blond hair and round face, reined his horse so it reared up.

“So this is the first time you're out?” called the elderly soldier next to him.

The boy's eyes were fixed on the women.

“Afraid of a bunch of
tricoteuses?
” asked the old soldier.

The boy replied, his voice cracking. “The knitters sit by the guillotine.”

“Then these're nursing mothers. You ain't going to wet your new breeches over a bunch of nursing mothers, are you?”

Izette never moved. Maybe it was her upraised hands that made me glance upward. The houses were tall. Over her were open windows with people watching for our cart. Alone in a fourth-story window stood a huge, red-bearded, red-haired figure. Goujon. Coatless, the many pockets of his waistcoat showing, and his wide-sleeved shirt, he seemed yet more gigantic. Like Izette, he was absolutely still. He gazed down at her. Above the window ledge showed the top of a rifle.

“André,” I said quietly, “look up there.” My hands supposedly bound, I jutted my chin toward the window.

André saw Goujon. And, like me, he followed Goujon's eyes downward to Izette. Her arms were still raised in that V.

“She doesn't know he's there,” André said. “My God, he's got a rifle!”

“Is he planning to kill her.”

“Us, far more likely,” André replied.

“He's watching her.”

“But Goujon would kill me, then you.”

I flushed. Naturally I'd never mentioned my bouts with Goujon, and the thought of acquiescently receiving him shamed me deeply.

André was saying, “He's vowed to get rid of everyone connected to the monarchy.”

We were closer now. André was right. All reason said that Goujon would kill him, a king's son, then me, in preference to Izette. Yet it was at her poised, immobile body that he gazed.

“Izette! Above you! Look!” My voice skimmed over the shouts.

Neither Izette nor Goujon showed signs of hearing.

The long-jawed corporal, though, turned to me. “Shut up, you!” he snapped. Anger and fear mingled in his expression.

“Izette! It won't work!” I yelled.

The corporal raised a clenched fist. I shrank back.

Izette, head cocked, appeared to be listening to the tick of an inner timepiece. We had come to the entry of a courtyard, and I remembered that in the Hôtel des Anglais Izette had spoken of a house partially put to the torch, one wing burning, to leave an unseen path from Rue St. Honoré. Here, she'd said, a hidden cart could wait.

The old horse plodded forward.

Abruptly Izette's arms went down. She tore off her red hat, releasing a flood of rich brown hair.

This was the signal. Women began pushing and shoving into the street.

Soldiers, six on either side, closed in on the tumbrel.

“Halt, you bitches!” bawled the corporal. He raised his flintlock, firing over their heads. There was a loud retort. Acrid smoke hazed my eyes. The plow horse whinnied loudly. The soldiers' horses, though, were trained to gunfire, and reared only a little. The men managed them with their knees. Several raised their flintlocks.

At fourteen, my most ardent tomboy phase, I'd badgered Jean-Pierre into showing me how to load one of our father's muskets, how to fire it. I'd learned to pour the coarse black powder and place the bullet and ram it home. I'd conquered that overwhelming recoil, my slender arms had become used to the weight. Yet I'd never been able to take aim at a living creature. Jean-Pierre, laughing, had gone hunting. I'd practiced on an old pewter plate hanging from the oak tree in the back pasture.

A woman shrieked, “Sisters, take the tyrant Capet!”

“The guillotine's too easy for him and his whore!”

“Over their heads, men,” shouted the corporal. “Fire!”

A fusillade of shots rang out. The plow horse reared, the tumbrel lurched forward, and I fell against André, remembering to keep my hands clasped behind my back. The gunshots precipitated the women. Like one of the great, unstoppable waves in a night storm, they moved forward with cries and the roar of wooden sabots. Their bodies pushed against the soldiers' horses. The soldiers, reloading, kicked and cursed. Women cursed back.

“Get the oppressor tyrant! Kill him!” shouted a thin woman. I could see her scrawny neck pulse. I knew this was all a plan, yet I pulled back against André in real terror.

Another woman tried to get between two soldiers, and as I stared at her, one of her brown eyes closed in a wink.

Shots sounded again. The horse jerked forward.

Izette whirled into the street. Instinctively I glanced up. Goujon had raised his rifle. A breeze ruffled his loose sleeves. Calmly he aimed down at her.

“Izette!” I screamed.

But she was grasping the bridle, halting the old beast. The tumbrel halted, jolting André and me.

Another great wave of women poured toward us. Altogether there were over a hundred, pushing, shoving at the soldiers.

“Hold your fire!” yelled the corporal. “Let 'em take the prisoners. We don't want to kill patriots!” What he meant was he didn't want patriots killing him.

“My God!” I turned to the round-faced soldier. “They're going to tear us limb from limb.”

Women pushing under and around his horse, the boy struggled to remain mounted: he gave me a despairing glance as if he feared the same end. He held his weapon loosely.

What happened after that was very swift.

Overhead a shot rang. Not pausing to see what had happened, I reached forward to grab the boy's musket. Believing me bound, he turned amazed golden eyes on me.

In my life I had never aimed at a living creature, yet this was pure impulse, no thought. Goujon, behind a cloud of smoke, was ramming powder and a ball into his rifle. I raised the flintlock, staring up the barrel to the metal sight. The weapon was heavier than I remembered, and my arm shook a little as I squinted, aiming. Tense, I was barely aware of the howling, pushing women, the rearing horses, the odors of manure and sweat. I saw only the huge red-bearded figure who had planned the September Massacres. Goujon took another sight at Izette. My finger squeezed on the trigger. The roar almost deafened me. I fell back against the rail.

The acrid blinding smoke attenuated the instant, making it endless. I saw Goujon's hands release the rifle, go to his chest as if he were searching in one of his pockets. His body swayed. He leaned forward, slowly, onto the window ledge, seeming to teeter. He hurtled down to the cobbles. For a split second I saw his huge legs and arms outflung, limp. His thick neck was turned at an impossible angle. A cluster of women hid his body from me.

Goujon was dead.

I had killed a man.

I, who couldn't ride hunting with my brother, I, who ran from the hogs' squeals at slaughtering time, I, who wept over fallen nestlings. I had killed a man. And my body shook with as great and vital a pleasure as I had ever experienced. The Comte's severed head was avenged, and my nightly shame, the foolish yet gallant ghosts in the Conciergerie were avenged, as was the shot fired at Izette.

André had risked his own life time and time again to halt France's paroxysm of killing. He hated killing. And I, undeniably, had just killed. Defiant, I turned to him. To my surprise, he was gazing at me with warm approbation and love.

The women had penetrated the cordon of our unwilling protectors. Two girls were mounting spokes of wooden wheels.

Izette's voice, weaker, called, “Hurry.”

She's alive, I thought, filled with relief.

And then André and I were climbing over rails of the manure-scented tumbrel. To the mounted soldiers, it must have seemed we were rushing to meet a horrible death. They reined their horses, moving back, drawing their swords as though on the ready—should the necessity arise—to defend themselves, but not us. They were set to watch the women tear us apart. The crowd pressed, swaying from side to side, somewhere a shot was fired, and this increased the urgency. An old crone threw a long woman's cape over André, disguising him, a tall matron wrapped a frieze shawl over my head, and as part of the mob, we were rushed forward. I glanced around to see four women propelling Izette.