Ribbons of Scarlet

by Kate Quinn

  The man frowned. “You are spiteful, citizeness.”

  I pursed my lips and turned away. How should I be called spiteful merely for thrusting his unwelcomed attentions back in his face? How very backward it all seemed.

  The old lady beside me took a piece of fruit from her bag and began to eat it, the sounds of her chewing, the crunch and slurp, making me queasy. I’d not eaten that morning, and I probably wouldn’t eat again, not if I was about my purpose right away. The hunger kept me focused, though, and reminded me of those who starved for bread. Just as our Lord starved for us.

  At last, the stagecoach jerked to a stop.

  “Tuileries Palace.” Our driver hopped down from his seat and opened our door.

  I found myself pausing on the coach step as the sights, sounds, and scents of Paris assailed me.

  The older woman jostled me from behind. “Go on then, we all want to get out.”

  I lurched forward, my shoes hitting the muck-covered cobblestones hard, jarring my bones. With everyone disembarked, the coach moved off, and those I’d spent the last few days with melted into the crowd—except for my ardent, annoying admirer.

  “You must give me your address in Paris,” he demanded. “Or at least the name of your father so I might request your hand in marriage.”

  “What if I told you it was the Conciergerie?”

  His eyes widened at my mention of the infamous prison, and he held up his hands backing away. “I am sorry, I mistook you for someone else.”

  I watched him hurry away, biting my lip to keep from laughing. How little he understood that I spoke the truth.

  I silently gawked at the carved marble of the palace of horror before me, ignoring everything around me. The Tuileries. Its massive bulk represented so very much what I both loved and hated. Political change and oppression.

  I stared at the cobbles, imagining I could still see the bloodstains of the innocent as they’d been hacked to death last September. Was I imagining it? With so much blood, would it not be stained for eternity? Again, I wanted to cross myself, but settled for pinching the beads beneath my sleeve. Have courage. Be brave.

  My gaze shifted to those passing by. They were like something out of the newspapers we read in Caen—dirty, starved, hurried. It was harder to tell at first glance if they were made hard with righteousness as the papers reported. I knew from those papers that years of political unrest, revolution, and chance had transformed Paris into a city of ugliness and hate. That fact had been conveyed again and again, not only in words but in images. Fear and pandemonium. And always the September Massacres were in my mind. A shiver ran up my spine as I imagined what it would be like to be dragged, pleading for mercy, to my death.

  In this great big hateful city, I would be inconspicuous—and that suited my purpose. Though my sister had always told me I was pretty, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about a girl with brown hair and pale skin, whose clothes were plain at best.

  I was attempting to acclimate when the bite of a whip on my shoulder had me leaping out of the way with a cry. Dear God, is it the death I have imagined? Is a new slaughter about to begin?

  “Get out of the street!” The driver of a wagon grumbled as he rolled past.

  I clutched at the spot that still stung. And at the same time the mark of the whip seemed a perfect reminder . . .

  This was the Paris that had been lashed open by the devil himself, Marat, who used his power as a journalist to spread false propaganda and instigate massacres. Perhaps with Jean-Paul Marat’s death the city would be washed clean. Though the king would not come back to life, perhaps Marat’s call for blood of anyone who wished to pardon the rest of the royal family would die unheeded and the blood would stop.

  Another jostle had me fearing I’d once more stepped into the street, but instead, I faced a young woman in a bonnet rouge, blond curls falling from beneath. Bedraggled and haggard, there was a roughness about her eyes that spoke of scenes that could not be unseen.

  “Where is your cockade, hussy?” she spat at me.

  I touched my bare bonnet, my eyes falling on the tricolor rosette pinned to hers, realizing I’d not thought of this important detail and should have. “It must have fallen,” I lied. “Where can I get a new one?”

  She snarled at me and pointed toward a dressmaker’s shop. “Better get one soon, else we’ll see you stripped and whipped.” She laughed as she walked away.

  She must be a femmes sans-culottes. The femmes were Marat’s hounds, often illustrated in fanatical pamphlets standing on the corpses of aristocrats, or eating their entrails. I stared after the woman as she wove her way through the crowd and disappeared down an alley.

  “A sou, citizeness? Just one is all I need for the paper.” A tiny hand tugged at my sleeve and I glanced down to see a child who looked as though he’d not eaten in weeks.

  “What paper is it?” I asked, though I could see it was the very one I hated most of all.

  “Oh, it is the best, citizeness. By the brave Citizen Marat.” The boy shook the paper. “He writes it all just over there.” He pointed to the Tuileries.

  The home of the National Convention was there but it was certainly not where Marat wrote. But perhaps that was what he wanted the people to believe, that he lived on his Mountain and preached vitriol from there by both tongue and pen. A tremor shook my spine.

  How misled the people of Paris were, even down to this young child. Had he been born to different parents, he would have had his throat slit by now. If anyone were to find out that aristocratic blood ran through my veins, I might meet the same fate. That idea enraged me. I might have been born of noble blood, but I believed in a free republic. When born, we could not help whose blood we shared. Why should we be made to suffer on that fact alone? Oughtn’t a person be judged on her actions and beliefs?

  I held out a coin. The lad took it and handed me the paper, then ran away. I studied the Tuileries, hoping Marat was indeed inside at that very moment.

  If I could just get in there now, I could see the deed done before even an hour passed. But too many people milled all around, each of them with tricolor cockades. And my bonnet, missing what they believed to be an incredibly important symbol, made me stand out when I needed to blend in. Without a cockade, I wouldn’t get past the mob.

  Inside the dressmaker’s shop, dust-covered lush fabrics filled shelves from floor to ceiling on one side, and the dull colors of the working-class fabrics were on the other. Standing before the lusher fabrics was a swan of a girl who looked to be around my age. Blond ringlets settled around delicate shoulders, and she fingered the vibrant bolts with desire in her bright blue eyes.

  “Émilie, non, ma cherie,” an older woman tsked beside her. “You’re a married woman now, a wife must dress the part, less flamboyant.”

  Émilie flashed her gaze on me as the door clicked closed behind me, disappointment turning her bow-shaped mouth downward.

  “Citizeness de Sainte-Amaranthe,” the dressmaker called from behind the counter.

  The older woman interrupted her, “My daughter is Citizeness Sartine now.”

  “Ah, congratulations, Citizeness Sartine. I have the perfect fabric for you in the back.” Then she eyed me wearily, as if just noticing me standing there. “Can I help you?”

  “A cockade, s’il vous plaît.”

  I bought a cockade and fastened it to my bonnet, ignoring the twinge of guilt. I would have to think of it as a costume for the role I was to play, and not a betrayal of my own beliefs and those of the great Lafayette, who’d first decided on the colors of blue, white, and red. And to think the Jacobins had helped spur the imprisonment of the creator of the very rosette they so revered! At least Lafayette was not held in Paris where he might have been dragged from prison and murdered in the streets. Oh, how the tricolor had been corrupted over time. The symbols of the republic that I loved were tarnished by the condoning of carnage.

  I sneezed my way out of the dusty shop and back onto the putrid-
smelling streets. I once more considered making my way into the Tuileries, but without a means with which to dispatch the Monster on his Mountain, it made no sense to try and enter just yet.

  I was drawn, instead, to the Palais-Royal, where in the courtyard people gathered to listen to speakers, merchants hawked their wares, and little boys and girls picked the pockets of anyone who looked as though they had a few livres to spare. I tucked my purse closer, not wanting to be one of their victims.

  “Buy an apple.”

  I turned to a woman with mousy brown hair tucked beneath a dingy cap, holding a piece of fruit outstretched toward me, smirking, as though she challenged me to say no. Beside her was another woman—the same who’d accosted me earlier about my lack of a cockade—a piece of fruit in her outstretched hand. Sneering, she stared at me with an intensity bordering on fanaticism, her gaze raking me over before alighting on the cockade. The two femmes stood before a vendor cart—a rickety thing with apples, pears, and peaches, and half filled with vegetables.

  “Louise . . .” The blonde elbowed the fruit seller. “Maybe she only buys fruit from Girondins, not patriots.”

  “Hush, Pauline.” Louise eyed the marketplace warily before her gaze fell back on me. “Come, citizeness,” she urged, “buy an apple and show your patriotism. Your dress is clean, and so is your skin. You’ve not had to work a day in your life I’d guess. So buy my apple before I call attention to you. Or before I let Pauline show you what we do to counterrevolutionaries.”

  Pauline smirked.

  “How much?” I tried to keep my voice strong, to hide the fear that they might just decide to do as they threatened.

  “How much do you have?” Pauline asked.

  I didn’t want to play games, but neither did I want attention drawn to myself. I pulled out two sous and handed them over.

  “I would have only charged one. Your loss.” Louise pocketed the coins and tossed me the apple.

  I’d barely time to catch it, but I did, and then I hurried away from the marketers, not wanting to go through a similar scenario with anyone else. It was time to find lodgings. I spied a likely place under a sign for l’hôtel de Providence, and I ducked inside. “A chambre, s’il vous plaît.”

  The proprietor, a woman with brown hair streaked with gray, gave me a dull look. “Are you alone, citizeness?”

  “Oui.”

  “And you have money to pay? The room is not free.” She named her price and I handed it over without haggling. “I have a small room on this floor with a single bed.” She called to the porter. “Show her to number seven.”

  “Merci, citizeness.”

  I followed the porter through the winding corridors to my dusty room with a small, lumpy-looking bed, a crumpled and dingy white coverlet upon it.

  “Could I have new sheets?”

  “Oui.” He grumbled, returning a moment later with a fresh set. “You come from Caen? My sister lives there. I have not heard from her in some weeks. What is the state of the town?”

  “Not as riotous as Paris. But there has been some recent violence.” I spied a copy of L’Ami du Peuple on a side table, folded and wrinkled as though it had been well read. I set mine beside it. “Do you know of Citizen Marat? Friend of the people?”

  “Ah, oui, everyone in Paris, indeed all France, knows of Citizen Marat. The patriots are besotted with him, but the aristocrats, as you can guess, are not.” He drew his finger across his throat in a way that sent a shiver of dread up my spine. The porter smoothed the sheet over the sagging mattress. “There is much talk of his health lately throughout the city. He has been very ill and missing from the Convention. They say he is working on the paper from his home—from his very bed! However ill he is, it does not keep him from writing and inciting the passion of the nation.”

  “Passion?” I retorted sharply. I had to bite the tip of my tongue to keep from saying more—to avoid lashing out at the man for comparing the riots and massacres fomented by Marat’s writings to passion.

  “Apologies, citizeness, I did not mean to offend.”

  I smiled, because I didn’t want him to think me a royalist and run to tell anyone who would listen. “I am not offended, citizen, merely tired from my journey.”

  My mind was whirling. I’d have to change my plan. If Marat no longer made appearances at the National Convention, I would have to get to him at his residence. But how?

  “Citizen, can you get me writing materials?” I held out a coin.

  “Of course.” When he was gone, I walked across the creaking, sagging wood floor to look out the window. A group of women in bonnets rouges walked by with arms raised, hands fisted. No doubt they were headed to the Palais-Royal. They shouted about the injustices pressed upon the people, the fault of the dead king’s wretched wife. How the only way to truly liberate the poor and the good citizens of France was to cut off the heads of everyone of noble blood.

  How long, unhappy French men and women, will you delight in strife and division? I turned away from their angry faces, their vile shouts.

  When the porter returned with the writing implements, I penned a quick note to be delivered to Marat begging him to receive me, telling him that I bore news from Caen concerning counterrevolutionists. I closed by saying that I would come to his residence on rue des Cordeliers in two days’ time at one o’clock.

  In the quiet stillness of my room, I glanced at the remaining paper. All the words that had been rushing around in my head needed an outlet. If Marat could address the people with such vicious propaganda, perhaps I should address them as well, and my gift could be one of peace.

  I let the words rush out, my own treatise to the people of France.

  Oh, France, your happiness depends on the execution of the law, but I break none in killing Marat. He is condemned by the world from where he stands on the opposite side of the law. Who would condemn me? If I’m guilty, so too was Hercules when he destroyed the monsters. You will not miss an odious beast who has grown fat on your blood. And you sad aristocrats left abused by the Revolution will not begrudge me.

  My French people, you know your enemies. Arise! March! Strike!

  * * *

  Paris, July 13, 1793

  “Arm yourselves, citizenesses,” came the shouts of women in the courtyard of the Palais-Royal. “Women must be able to protect themselves.”

  Was it sad that I had to agree? Perhaps even just so I could protect myself from these women. But I had to concede, much as I might find them frightening or loathsome, these femme sans-culottes needed protection also.

  Too long already party leaders in France, and other scoundrels like Marat, preferred the interests of their ambition in the place of the general well-being of the people, and especially that of women.

  I’d stayed up all night writing, and the plight of these women made me feel more deeply my conviction in what I was to do. I did it for them too.

  These women wanted pikes and daggers. But I was the weapon women needed.

  Soon, I thought, looking at their angry, dirty, hate-filled faces, they could heal. A rush of pride and sense of urgency burst through me. There was no time to waste in saving the women, the people, of France.

  A bell over the door jingled as I entered a cutler’s shop. The proprietor waved though he didn’t look up. A few other patrons milled about, but I kept my head down and began looking. Many of the knives appeared used. How would that be, to stab the devil with an old knife that someone had once used to carve up the carcass of a hog?

  Fitting I should think. Marat, himself, was a butcher.

  I picked up a knife and turned it over, holding the blade against the flat of my palm. Perhaps five or six inches long, the handle was smooth and dark. It was not too long to be inconspicuously concealed. There was nothing particularly special about this knife—no pearl handle, no chaste silver. But then again, there had never been anything particularly special about me. Which was why I knew that it would be my weapon of choice.

  Glancing to m
ake certain no one was paying attention, I held it to my breast to see if it would fit unnoticed into my bodice. A bubble of excitement burst in my throat. Justice would soon be delivered.

  I carried the knife to the counter. I expected the clerk to ask what a young lady might need with a knife, but instead, he tucked it into a cloth sheath, told me how much it cost, and held out his hand for payment.

  How easy that was! I wasn’t certain why, but I kept imagining I would be caught, or stopped. I glanced furtively out the windows of the shop, my hands trembling as I paid and shoved the knife in my purse. I was one step closer to my goal and the idea both thrilled and terrified me.

  I am a soldier, I kept telling myself. Soldiers didn’t doubt their duty, and I couldn’t either. Have courage.

  On the street once more, I began walking to Marat’s establishment, on the rue des Cordeliers, where he rented an apartment. It was nearly one o’clock. The woman I kept running into—Pauline—stood in front of a building perhaps a block, no more, down the street, with a group of other femmes. Dressed in dingy striped skirts with crimson bonnets covering their hair, the women made me nervous. There was a hunger in their eyes that was almost feral, as though just the slightest provocation might set them off.

  They heckled people passing, creating a ruckus. Squaring my shoulders, I picked up my pace, feeling myself tremble. I kept my eyes downcast. Perhaps if I did not look at them . . .

  As I approached the group I debated whether to leave or continue with my quest to enter the residence with its high windows and somber, sagging roof. The idea of being done with my task, efficiently, bravely, even, while his flock gathered on the street made me smile. So I wove my way through them, head high now, and they jostled me like the wind jostles a blade of grass in a field. That was what I have been most of my life—blowing with the vagaries of fate, but that would change today. Today I was not the blade of grass. Today I was the wind. And I refused to let their sharp words stop me.