by C. S. Quinn
‘And how it runs,’ I say, ‘when first you let slip your fine principles. How distasteful it must have been to you to use Monsieur Foulon, a lipsticked old aristocratic of the worst kind, to gain access to the Bastille.’
Something flickers in Robespierre’s face.
‘How soon did your careful thoughts fall to eliminating that loose end?’ I continue. ‘One death can never be enough. Not for a thorough man, such as you. Foulon has a mistress.’ I glance at Angelina, tears filling my eyes. ‘Who knows what they discuss behind closed doors? The risk is too great.’
Robespierre stands, straightening his already straight clothing.
‘An interesting story,’ he says, ‘but to no real purpose.’
‘Aside from this,’ I say. ‘Now I understand what happened to Gaspard, I know your plan at the Hôpital des Invalides.’
Robespierre’s face is peculiarly rigid.
‘I commend your intelligence,’ I say, ‘but not your originality. The hôpital is nothing more than Gaspard on a larger scale. The people go to raid the hôpital, but you have made certain they will fail and be massacred. Am I close to it? You believe their deaths will create a surge of rage and terror, enough hatred towards the monarchy to put your radical ideas in place. You hope to revolutionize the moderates. To bring about a republic, with no King at all.’
‘All those innocent lives lost. Even if you succeed, how many more perfect deaths must now be composed? There is no way of stopping the thread. You begin to fear everything, doubt everyone. I should hate you. But my sincerest sympathy is yours, Monsieur. For now you cannot be at peace until the world lies dead at your feet.’
A void opens just behind Robespierre’s blue eyes. For a moment I am staring into a yawning abyss. At its mouth stands a little schoolboy from the country, afraid of the big city and its important men. I am reminded of myself, landing at the Bristol docks all those years ago.
Robespierre’s hand shakes as he adjusts the chair square to the wall.
‘You are an aristocrat.’ It isn’t a question. ‘Daughter of Lord Morgan. A family, whose fortune is forged off the sweat of the people.’ His lips press tight. ‘Your people would enslave us. Put your puppet on the throne. Dictate our constitution. You are, to my mind, the worst kind of traitor. Born with a choice and you chose to side with them.’ He pauses for effect.
‘I am not the only man in Paris with a distaste for the aristocracy,’ he says. ‘As it happens, there are rioters who are roving about the Hôtel de Ville. They have a bloodlust about them, after the severing of Monsieur Foulon’s head.’
He tilts his head. ‘It would be most unfortunate if someone were to advise this savage group that some traitors were under arrest in this room,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘And the pair of you appear inadvisably dressed.’
Robespierre looks pointedly at my lace-trimmed culottes and satin shoes, Jemmy’s well-fitted black coat and boots. His eyes settle on Angelina’s lifeless body.
‘I am told she didn’t suffer,’ he says quietly. ‘I shall give you your last moments without the distress of these remains. A guard will be brought to take them out.’
‘You have broken every law of your own country and are a traitor,’ I say.
Robespierre’s grimace twists to a cold rage.
‘Be careful, Monsieur Robespierre,’ I say, ‘of the manner in which your change will come, and how fast. When you rip apart a way of life with violence, a great ugly energy is cut adrift.’
I search my mind, trying to define that feeling, the nameless shapeless thing that seemed to bellow in the sultry Virginian night through our slave huts and straw beds.
‘Such a thing unleashed will not be contained,’ I tell him. ‘It will lash its tail and do horrors.’
There’s a flicker of unease in Robespierre’s pale eyes.
‘Perhaps best to leave La Mazarin here,’ he says spitefully. ‘You can explain your friendship to the people when they arrive.’
He steps towards the entrance. ‘I would say au revoir,’ he says, ‘but you are English. So instead I will say goodbye.’
CHAPTER 72
GRACE IS LED THROUGH THE ENDLESS DARK CORRIDORS OF the Bastille. What she notices most is how empty the vast space is. She doesn’t see a single other prisoner on the long walk to the Compte Tower.
‘Where are all the prisoners?’ she blurts, passing deserted rooms with bars for doors.
One of the guards looks at her as though wondering whether she is testing him.
‘The Bastille only holds a handful of inmates nowadays,’ he says.
There is something in his expression that makes Grace wonder. Were there legions of secret prisoners languishing in the dungeons? She’d heard tall tales of a man in an iron mask, of felons without names, held in manacles.
As the guard leads her up into the sweltering heat of the tower, she notices how lonely it feels. How this vast emptiness makes it feel more like a prison than anything she might have imagined.
‘The King just keeps it to look intimidating,’ adds the guard. ‘He means to knock it down in a few months.’
They ascend a stone, then wooden staircase, into the top cell of the tall tower.
As the guard throws back the door, Grace prepares herself. She has been half-expecting the Marquis to leap out at her from the shadows.
Grace doesn’t know what she’d been expecting as she steps on to the plain floorboards of the prison room. But it isn’t this.
It’s fashionably furnished with rugs and a comfortable bed. There’s a writing desk with several pages crammed with untidy, tiny letters. The room is stiflingly hot but completely empty.
‘Where is the Marquis?’ asks Grace timidly.
The guard stares at her for a moment.
‘Why, we took him elsewhere, of course,’ he says. ‘You don’t think we would lock up a girl with him?’ The guard shakes his head. ‘He’s a deviant of the worst kind. Daily, fathers come, begging for justice. We cannot give it. The Marquis was put here for his own protection. King’s protection.’
The guard retreats back towards the door.
‘Food will be brought,’ he tells her. ‘Good food they have in the Bastille. De Launay often dines with prisoners, for it’s a lonely place.’
Relief and shock are hitting Grace in equal measure. ‘The Marquis left his papers,’ adds the guard. ‘I wouldn’t go reading anything.’
He shuts the door and locks it. Grace hears his footsteps go back down the tall turret. They resound for a long time.
Despite the warning, Grace moves to the writing desk. She lifts a page labelled ‘One hundred and twenty days of Sodom’ and drops it again sharply. There are a few sketches, thrown in the corner of the room, depicting disturbing scenes. She turns them face down.
Grace scans the rest of the cell. The ceiling is arched. There is a large fireplace and a small stove.
Now she notices carvings on the stone of her wall. A prisoner has drawn a crest, which looks, somehow, familiar. She peers at it but the answer won’t come.
Below it, someone has carved: ‘Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.’
Grace recognizes this statement. It was written by a poet named Rousseau. Many of his ideas on democracy and politics caused a stir in France.
A sound startles her; heavy barrels being rolled.
Grace looks around uncertainly then realizes the noise is coming up her chimney.
She moves towards it. If she stands in the unlit fireplace she can hear something happening elsewhere in the prison.
The thunder of rolling barrels goes on and on, joined by what sounds like the dragging of stone on stone.
Voices drift up, rather ghostly, through the flue.
‘Rocks to the top,’ says a guard with a Swiss accent. ‘Pile them near to the edge. The governor says if anyone gets close on the north side, throw them down. Don’t await orders.’
‘The gunpowder?’ asks another voice.
‘Take it to the dun
geons,’ comes the reply. ‘There’s two hundred more of these barrels to come from the hôpital.’
‘S’all gonna end tonight, then,’ says someone thoughtfully. ‘Poor bastards. Governor de Launay is a ruthless bastard, ain’t he?’
‘He’s afraid of losing the Bastille,’ says another guard. ‘Someone let slip where the King hid the muskets. There’s a great crowd of people going to raid ’em.’
‘Ah, but de Launay’s taken measures, hasn’t he?’ says the first. ‘That little wiggy fellow with the glasses. Roberts-Pierre. He’s been whispering in his ear, giving him advice.’
‘God knows he needs it.’
‘Roberts-Pierre told de Launay, leave the guns at the hospital.’
‘Forty thousand muskets? Why should he do that?’
‘He’s clever, isn’t he? Thinks ahead. There’s a couple thousand old soldiers at the hospital. They’ve been put to work dismantling the guns. The mob will go there for the muskets and find loaded cannons pointed their way. De Launay has said all the rebels are traitors. Must be treated as such. He wants them all blown to bits.’
‘Brutal. Lure them there, then kill ’em all.’
Grace can almost see the other guard wincing. She realizes she is balling her fists. It’s all so wrong.
The men are retreating now. She can’t hear them so well.
‘Because I know the plan, if the mob ever arrives at the gates ...’ a guard is saying in a disgusted voice.
Grace strains to listen, but the second guard’s conversation is lost. The first guard replies loudly, ‘First sniff of attack and we kill all the prisoners.’
CHAPTER 73
AS ROBESPIERRE LEAVES, I ALLOW MYSELF A MOMENT OF utter despair.
Jemmy and I are sat side by side, chained to the wooden bench, but I’ve never felt further away from him.
‘There there now, Attica,’ Jemmy says uncertainly as I put my head in my hands. ‘No sense in letting it get you down.’
I look up at him angrily, through bloodshot eyes.
‘Angelina is dead. Grace is in the Bastille, about to be murdered. Thousands of innocent people are being massacred.’
I don’t voice the other fear: that Atherton has given up on me.
I try to push hair out of my face but my wrists are jerked back by the manacles.
‘I admit, things look bad,’ says Jemmy, ‘but there must be a way out of here.’ He gives his chains a manful tug.
‘There is,’ I say, moving my foot to where Angelina lies on the hard floor. I slide my toes under the bottom of her dress and kick it nearer to my feet.
‘This isn’t the time to fall apart, Attica,’ says Jemmy uneasily. ‘She’s dead. She can’t help you.’
‘Why do you think I insulted Robespierre?’ I say. ‘Angelina always hid a little pouch of gunpowder in the hem of her skirts.’
Jemmy stops pulling on his chains.
‘That was why you goaded him? To have him leave the body?’
I nod, letting my fingers follow the bottom of Angelina’s skirt.
My hands settle on a hard lump, sewn in place.
Angelina’s gunpowder.
I feel a surge of pride to have known her so well after so many years.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper to her, my eyes filling with tears. ‘You see? I always told you. It is you who saved me after all.’ I sniff, wiping my face. ‘Goodbye, chérie .’ I bring my face close to hers. ‘I am so sorry I couldn’t keep you safe. I always thought ...’ I swallow. ‘I meant one day we should go back to that river. I will go for you, I promise, when all this is over.’
I untangle the last threads, disengaging her gunpowder and pull it free.
Everything of that old self is gone now, I realize, looking at Angelina. The girl I was, before Sicily. Before Lagos slave docks. Before everything. Something else occurs to me.
What I am now, Robespierre has made me.
‘Attica!’ Jemmy is clicking his fingers. ‘Come back to me.’
I blink, forcing my mind back to the present.
‘The gunpowder,’ I say, holding it up. ‘If I’m careful, I should be able to blow open the manacles.’
‘A sound idea, to be sure,’ says Jemmy, ‘but where’s your flame?’
‘I’ve the means for fire inside my corsetry.’ I’m remembering the flame-sticks Atherton developed, hidden in the hollow bones of my dress.
‘You risk blowing our hands off,’ says Jemmy uncertainly.
Far down the corridor are shouts, voices, a door beaten in and then blood-curdling screams.
My heart races faster. It sounds as though someone is being torn to pieces.
‘It’s a good plan,’ says Jemmy hurriedly. ‘Let’s waste no more time discussing it.’
‘I don’t intend to open your manacles,’ I retort haughtily. ‘You’re a traitor.’ I’m remembering Robespierre’s revelation.
‘I don’t set much store in that word,’ says Jemmy. ‘From where I’m sittin’ “traitor” is just an idea bandied about by high-ups to make us all behave. There’s no country I like well enough to nail my flag to.’
‘Well, I am loyal to England,’ I say, ‘and you killed English troops.’
‘You’re loyal to England because you don’t know any better. But you should,’ says Jemmy. ‘A country can become something different overnight, Attica. Believe me, I’ve seen it. The only thing you can be sure won’t change is in here.’ He pats his chest.
I glare at him. ‘You haven’t told me one piece of fact since I met you. You’re for the English or the French or yourself. I lose track. Do you have even the tiniest scruple, or do you just work for the highest bidder?’
I’m reaching inside my dress when my victory dissipates. The manacles stop short. There’s not enough length to reach down to where the fire-sticks are hidden.
I look up to the ceiling. Let out a long breath. The only way I can slide the boning out is if Jemmy does it for me.
He deduces this almost instantly, his dark brows lifting in amusement. ‘Having problems?’
‘Laugh and I’ll kill you.’
‘You might find that difficult, in your current situation. Here,’ he sighs, ‘let me help you.’
I flinch back, feeling the knife hard against my chest.
‘I told you, I don’t trust you.’
We hear a door slam open, not far away, and furious shouts.
‘Attica,’ says Jemmy, ‘there is a bloodthirsty mob headed this way. Don’t take your anger out on me. Your inventor fella in England has a job to do. He’s a captain with a crew, that’s all. He can’t make decisions on personal feelings. It wouldn’t be right.’
He sighs, seeing my unrelenting expression.
‘Robespierre never told you why I killed those Englishmen,’ he says. ‘Your troops were massacring natives in their tepees. Women and children too. Butchering them like cattle. I stopped them as fast as I knew how and I’d do it again.’
There’s another crash from outside. Jemmy holds out his hands then he moves them to the top of my dress.
‘I tell you this, and I tell it only once,’ he says, ‘take it how you will: I have my own code that I live to. I have never broken it. Three rules only: be loyal to your crew, defend those who need defending and don’t kill anyone you like.’
He slides out the hollow bone of my dress and passes it to me.
I unscrew the top wordlessly and tip out the fire-sticks.
Jemmy’s face drops in disappointment.
‘That’s it?’ he says incredulously. ‘That’s what you think is going to make fire? They’re just little pieces of wood.’
‘They’re dipped in a flammable paste,’ I explain. ‘With enough friction, it sets alight.’
‘If you say so.’ Jemmy looks entirely unconvinced.
‘Only three,’ I say. ‘Should be enough for both of us, if they all work.’
‘I’ve encountered many strange things at sea, to be sure,’ says Jemmy. ‘Mermaids, swimming unicorn
s. But a stick that flames itself? I’ll believe it when I see it.’
CHAPTER 74
OLIVER JANSSEN IS ASSESSING THE HIGH-CEILINGED infirmary of the Hôpital des Invalides. Hundreds of ragged soldiers are sitting cross-legged, carrying out his orders to dismantle muskets.
He moves further into the main hall, where boxes of guns lay stacked. He sees an elderly man with a peg-leg. The man doesn’t seem to be actually taking the musket apart. Rather, he is messing about with the trigger.
‘What’s your name, soldier?’ Janssen demands.
‘Jacques,’ replies the man; Janssen believes there is a note of amusement in his voice.
‘These are the dismantled guns?’ Janssen asks, nodding to the nearest crate. ‘The hammers have been unscrewed?’
Jacques passes a hand through his wispy hair.
‘It’s slow going,’ he says unrepentantly.
Janssen takes a few seconds to absorb his meaning.
‘You’re telling me,’ he says, with a creeping horror, ‘these crates contain working muskets?’
‘We’re soldiers of France,’ says Jacques. ‘Our business is to defend the people from foreign attack not to disengage weaponry. Morale is low.’
Janssen looks about the elderly men. Many are wearing leaf cockades, he notices, symbols of the revolution. They have a defiant air to them.
‘You’ve had six hours,’ growls Janssen. ‘There are a thousand of you. It only takes moments to unscrew a musket hammer. How many guns have you completed?’
Janssen stands tall, glaring from under his musketeer hat. He’s used to his appearance having a certain effect on people. But these old men don’t seem concerned in the slightest by his ghoulish red eye and sharp metal hand. It is disconcerting.
The pensioner looks up to the high ceiling, calculating. He addresses the nearest man.
‘’Ow many d’you think we done?’ he asks.
The other man frowns. He spreads his fingers, counting. ‘Maybe ... twenty,’ he says.
The pensioner turns back to Janssen.
‘Maybe twenty,’ he says remorselessly.
‘The mob is at the door,’ rages Janssen. He turns to the man with the missing teeth. ‘What is your name?’ he demands. ‘There will be penalties for those who disobey.’