Ribbons of Scarlet

by Kate Quinn

  Danton—our minister of justice, bulky, coarse, violent; all blunt-force charisma and brutal energy when he spoke. Him I had never liked; I’d taken one look at Danton when we met, fended off his fleshy hand—for he was one of those men who couldn’t meet a woman without giving her rump a squeeze—and decided I could watch him glug to the bottom of the Seine without lifting a finger.

  And finally, Marat of the newspaper L’Ami du Peuple—a rag and bone scarecrow, the worst of the gutter press lunatics, all wild eyes and half-mad followers, who was said to go into hiding in the city’s sewers when his attacks in the paper went too far. I’d never met him, but had ample time to evaluate him now.

  Robespierre, Danton, Marat: one could hardly see three men less alike, yet I saw them pulling unmistakably together. You three, I thought. You brought bloodshed to the prisons and out into the streets. You seek my husband’s end. And not just my husband’s, but any man who called himself a Girondin. A word that just meant a man was sensible and moderate in his politics, not frothing at the mouth like a wild dog, but there were those in this room who spat out Girondin with the same vitriol as traitor.

  All is not lost, I reminded myself. We had fine leaders in the moderate camp. My husband, of course. Condorcet, the beak-nosed former marquis and current philosopher, whom I sometimes caught sleeping under the table in the chamber between discussions of bills so he could get more work done. François Buzot, who had burst upon the scene with such decisive leadership they were calling him General Buzot—whom Marat hated because he had proposed checks against mob violence, and whom Danton hated because he had rejected the creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal . . .

  Danton was haranguing my husband now. The motion had been introduced that Roland continue as minister of the interior rather than serve as deputy in the Convention, as no man could do both, and Danton shoved back his chair and rose in bullish fury, roaring, “If you invite him to remain as minister, you should also extend the invitation to her.” Sweeping his arm up to the galleries and pointing at me.

  I jerked, startled, as hundreds of eyes turned in my direction. Danton grinned, clearly enjoying the color I could feel spreading across my face. I held myself spear straight, refusing to shrink. You might make me blush but you can’t make me flinch.

  Danton shook his head, turning his gaze to my husband standing embarrassed and awkward. “The nation needs ministers who can act without being led by their wives.”

  Laughter rippled, and I could see Roland shrivel. Stand tall, I wanted to shout down, don’t let them see you shrink—

  One voice rose above the cacophony of laughter and hoots. “I am, for one, proud to call Citizen Roland my friend.” Dark eyes looked up from the Convention floor, but as soon as they found mine I looked away, refusing to gaze upon the man who wanted to be my lover. He had come straight from Normandy as soon as he received my letter, to throw his support to Roland and the rest of our moderate-minded allies in the Convention. He came for that alone, I told myself. He knew I could give him only friendship.

  ROLAND LOOKED DRAWN and wasted in the privacy of our chamber that night. “Put the gibes from your mind,” I said, massaging his aching shoulders. “It is classic Danton, you know. He tries to attack you by prowling around your family. Well, they can slander me to their hearts’ content—they won’t make me budge, or complain, or even care.”

  “They think me a fool,” Roland muttered.

  “You know you are no fool.” I spoke gently. “Do not let them see how much their words shake you, and they will cease needling with such glee.”

  My husband pinched the bridge of his nose. “I sometimes wonder why I was so eager for political life, Manon. I do not like it. I cannot see how anyone likes it.”

  He spoke like a child, exhausted and petulant. I knelt and laid my head in his lap, yet even as I murmured something reassuring, I wondered why I so loved political life. Not the petty intrigues, but the true art of politics—for it is an art! The art of ruling men and organizing their happiness in society. Like any art it was frustrating, all-consuming, demanding everything one had and more, but was great art not worth the sacrifice? If I were a man I would lay my whole self down on that altar, but I was not a man, and no amount of ink spilled by women like Olympe de Gouges arguing for female votes and female equality would give me a man’s power. My role was to inspire, to aid, to act as a sort of Providence in the background. I accepted that—but why were men, with the whole glory of the role open to them, so lacking in the courage to grasp it?

  France was drained of men, I sometimes thought. Some I was not sorry to see the back of—the useless Feuillant faction, and outdated heroes like the great Marquis de Lafayette who was so loved by Paris and the Assembly for his heroic feats in America, until the fickle wind of public favor turned and he found himself burned in effigy, denounced by Robespierre, forced to flee, and currently sitting in a Prussian prison cell. Such men could not lead a new republic forward to glory, but who was left who could?

  I looked about the Convention in the weeks that followed, as the conversation shifted from the recent violence in Paris to the army’s success in pushing back the Prussians. Where was that greatness of soul Rousseau defined as the first attribute of the hero? Hardly anywhere, however far I looked.

  Was that why Marat and Danton and the rabids of the street and the Jacobin Club attacked me—not just my husband, but me? Were they afraid of the merest notion that heroes might be supplanted by heroines?

  Was that why they called me to the bar of the Convention not long afterward, and accused me of treason?

  “THERE SHE IS, the harlot . . .”

  “La femme Roland . . .”

  “Traitorous slut . . .”

  The whispers followed me as I made my way across the floor, looking neither right nor left. It was the first time a woman had been called to address the Convention, and I’d dressed for the occasion as though it were an honor: a blue gown that foamed about my feet as I stalked to the bar, a white fichu pinned with my tricolor cockade, red ribbons twined through my hair. A revolutionary patriot, top to toe. When I turned to face the questions, I let my eyes travel, bold and confident, to the high bleacher seats where the Montagnards held court.

  Before the proceedings could even begin, some heckler from their ranks called, “How do you answer the charge, citizeness?”

  I replied with calm contempt. “The charge is ludicrous, and all here know it.”

  It was a smear job of the crudest kind: an unsavory informer reporting he had discovered a London conspiracy to restore the king, and that the Rolands were complicit. My husband had already been summoned to account for himself and had perhaps not done as well as he might: he couldn’t hide his indignation, and he became flustered when the tone turned sneering. I would not give my questioners a chance to sneer.

  “The informer states clearly, Citizeness Roland, that you—”

  “I did not summon him.” I spoke briskly, taking the reins before my questioner could bring down the whip and speed this interrogation to the pace my enemies wanted. This was going to go at my pace, not theirs. “From my files of letters I can see the man wrote to me, asking for an interview with Minister Roland. I receive dozens of such requests every week.”

  “You do not deny you received the man?”

  “He paid a brief call, and from his probing I concluded he was sent to sound us out about some scheme or other.” I smiled. “Or perhaps I was wrong. I am a woman and not skilled in these matters.”

  The questioner took turns with his colleagues, trying to turn my words on me, trying to talk me in circles. As long as I had listened to politicians drone over my dinner table, I could talk anyone in circles. I shredded their accusations and stamped the shreds underfoot, feeling the color rise in my cheeks—not embarrassment, but the fierce heat of pride. Was this what Roland felt when he addressed the Convention? This rush of power that tingled the fingertips, the confidence that my words were deploying like obedient sol
diers and the crowd sat in the palm of my hand? Why would anyone who had command of this floor ever leave it?

  Finally, I was excused to the sound of ringing applause, the charge dismissed in full, the honors of the session formally accorded to me. I looked from Robespierre to Danton to Marat with a wide bland smile as I glided out, and the smile became a beam as Roland drew me into the nearest empty hall.

  “Thank goodness it’s over.” His face was creased with relief. “Let me take you home, calm your nerves.”

  “My nerves are calm, and I can take myself home. You stay, speak with those who need reassuring.”

  He kissed my forehead. “I hated seeing you up there,” he muttered, before rushing back inside.

  He’d hardly gone before a low voice spoke behind me, prickling my skin. “I loved seeing you up there. You were born to it.”

  I turned, smile draining away. The man who loved me stood feet planted wide, arms folded, dark hair rumpled—he must have been waiting to catch me alone. “Citizen,” I managed to say, not daring to put his name through my lips.

  “You were brilliant,” he said quietly. “Brave as a lioness.” A voice of calm power for a man not yet thirty-three. Six years younger than I, what did that say about me? “They should have known better than to try to trap you in so crude a snare.”

  “That shabby excuse for a conspiracy might have been crude, but it was real, even if we had no involvement.” I kept my voice brisk, turning the conversation to safer waters. “As long as the king lives, there will be plots to restore him. The matter will have to be dealt with.”

  “The king is just a man, and a small one.”

  “With a long shadow.”

  We both smiled involuntarily. It had always been like that with us, the eager cut-and-thrust of our minds. “If you wish to speak to my husband . . .”

  But the man who loved me took my hand.

  “Manon, I honor Roland and support him always. But I am here for you.”

  He brought my hand to his face as I turned. His jaw was rough under my fingertips, evidence that he’d stayed up all night again writing. I pulled away as his lips touched my palm, sending my heart thudding. “Please—anyone might see—” Being caught by one of these men so eager to hiss traitorous slut as I passed would be the end of me.

  But he was already stepping back, leaving a scrap of paper in my hand. “Good day, citizeness,” he said formally and was gone into the cold street outside. With shaking hands I unfolded his note.

  I watched you today, and loved you more with every word you spoke. Just once, even if it leads to nothing else, I wish to hear you say you love me. La Maison du Chocolat Léon, near the Palais—I will be there at noon tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after.

  I burned the note. I was no slave to my heart, regardless of what it wanted, and I would not go.

  * * *

  Autumn, wet and cold, had turned to winter as the Convention blustered and brooded over the pressing issue of what to do with the king.

  When I was not writing Roland’s speeches or soothing his frayed feelings over the attacks that continued unabated in Marat’s newspaper, I devoted myself to my daughter. At eleven she was pretty and phlegmatic, resisting all my attempts to make her imagination flower. Books bored her, which dismayed me since I could remember how at her age I had devoured them like sweets. But she may be happier with a mind like a tight bud, I thought, threading pink ribbon through her curls and smiling at her delight. Bookish women are not the happiest females, for the world does not like to see a woman’s head bent over anything but a cradle, a cooking pot, or a rosary.

  I surrendered to my daughter’s begging one night and agreed to take her to the theater. I suspected she was more interested in Le Mariage de Figaro’s most dashing actor—“They say François Elleviou is singing, and he is so handsome, Maman!”—than in the politics, but perhaps I could steer her to a conversation on the underlying issues.

  Roland was attending a salon so I was escorted to the theater by one of his deputies, full of news from the Society of the Friends of the Blacks. “Condorcet argued most passionately at our recent meeting for a complete ban from politics on any man who has engaged in the slave trade or owned slaves.” Holding the carriage door for me, the deputy continued, “He has often said ‘Anyone who votes against the rights of another, whatever his religion, color, or sex, automatically forfeits his own.’”

  “Fine sentiments.” We squeezed through the throng on the steps into the theater, my companion making way for my daughter and me in the crowd of Greek-styled gowns and bonnets rouges. It wasn’t just the handsome François Elleviou on the stage tonight, but the notorious Claire Lacombe, mediocre actress and expert rabble-rouser, no doubt trying to drum up support for her absurd notion that revolutionary women deserved a political society of their own—the Enragés were out in force, and the smell of garlic and wine was overwhelming. “But fine sentiments mean nothing without action. When will there be a motion before the Convention to free the slaves in our colonies?” It was a matter long overdue: for many months we had seen passionate public debate as pro-enslavement and anti-enslavement factions went head-to-head, and rebellions against slavery raged in Martinique and Saint-Domingue. I doubt the oblivious royals would have ever noticed such uprisings until their spending was affected—heaven forbid the budget for satin shoes be curtailed!—but a Revolution that had only this April instated citizenship and equal political rights to free blacks could not remain so blind. Especially when former slaves from the colonies stood right there on the debate floor, arguing for those still enslaved across the sea. The Americans had neglected to amend the matter of slavery in their own revolution; surely we French could do better.

  “We still face considerable resistance from those saying mass abolition would empty the nation’s coffers at the worst time imaginable—”

  “No republic is perfect if it allows slavery. We cannot simply turn away from the matter, or congratulate ourselves for offering sympathy but never help. If we want practical advances in the cause of abolition—”

  We were pressing through the throng toward the box reserved for the minister of the interior, but as we neared it the embarrassed box attendant beside the door flapped his hands. “I am sorry, citizeness, but the box is occupied.”

  “Impossible.” Entry to the box needed a ticket signed by my husband.

  “The minister insisted on entering. You mustn’t go in—”

  Pushing the door open, I smelled a waft of strong wine and met the insolent eyes of three or four sans-culottes lounging, their shirts unlaced, two tawdry-looking women with rouged cheeks and gowns slipping off their shoulders—and a broad man with a brutal, pockmarked face.

  Before I could retreat, Danton looked over his shoulder and saw me. “What ho, Citizeness Roland! Showing your virtuous face at the theater?”

  I backed out, looking to my puzzled escort. “We must return home. Please fetch a cab.” But as he disappeared back down the stairs, Danton emerged, blocking my path before I could follow.

  “Join us, Madame Squeamish. I hear there’s a pantomime in the wedding act that’s quite an eye-opener. Claire Lacombe has the best tits in Paris, and when she gets them out—” He made an obscene gesture, and I hastily moved my daughter behind me out of sight. “Might learn a few things, eh? Better than sitting at home pen in hand.”

  “I prefer a pen, citizen.”

  “That’s a boring life for a woman.”

  “Boredom is a malady of empty souls and resourceless minds. I hate wasting my time in gossip, and what I am bored by is fools.”

  “Come on, Manon. We never got along, but it’s not for lack of my trying.” He spoke true enough. When Roland was first instated as minister of the interior, Danton had been a frequent visitor, dropping in with bottles of wine and heavy-handed charm, not that he had ever charmed me. Men like that were far too easy to see through. “Have a drink,” he cajoled now, raising a bottle. “We don’t have to be enem
ies, you and I. Friendship could be profitable.”

  I turned to my daughter, wide-eyed behind me, and gave her a gentle push a few steps toward the stairs. “You’ll see the fine gowns better from there, ma petite.” When she was out of earshot, I turned back to Danton. “It is my husband you should speak to if you wish to—”

  “Bollocks. I talk to the man in the marriage, and the man in your marriage is you. Roland does what you tell him, and you told him to show me the door.”

  I flushed. Roland had been more disposed to build bridges, once. “Danton has been useful in the Revolution,” my husband had pointed out. “He has many friends, and there is no point in making an enemy unnecessarily.”

  I was aware I could be too severe in my assessments, too quick to form a dislike, but Danton’s coolly assessing gaze and backslapping bonhomie had always made my flesh creep. “It is easier to avoid giving a man power than to prevent him from abusing it,” I’d replied to my husband. After that it hadn’t taken Danton long to realize he would get nowhere with either my husband or me, and he’d stopped dropping in.

  “Most women like me,” Danton said, eyes traveling to my bosom. “You don’t. Why is that, Manon?”

  I almost laughed. How puzzled men were when they met a woman who didn’t blush and look pleased as she was greeted with a squeeze of the hip! “Why wouldn’t I enjoy your company, citizen?” I said, looking him in the eye with an amused smile even as I kept watch on my child. “Doesn’t everyone enjoy listening to men who imagine that every word they say is a revelation? Men who speak to women and think all they are capable of is stitching shirts and adding up figures?”

  “You’re a clever bitch, I’ll give you that,” Danton said frankly. “Watching you defend yourself on the Convention floor, I thought, ‘That’s a woman who needs a good fuck more than anyone I’ve ever seen—except maybe Robespierre—but she’s got brains.’ They won’t do you any good, though. Or your husband.”

  “Do not speak of my husband.” My smile evaporated. “He is an honorable man, and you sit in his theater box after months of spreading vile rumors about him. And you ask why we can’t be friends.”