Ribbons of Scarlet

by Kate Quinn

  “Mon dieu!” I said, pressing my hand to my heart as if their presence had given me a fright, an impression beneath which there was some truth. “Is something the matter?”

  “We didn’t mean to startle you, Citizeness de Sainte-Amaranthe,” the senior officer said, stepping forward. I didn’t bother to correct him, though I hadn’t gone by that family name for nearly two years. In this moment, I preferred for him to think of me as innocent, virginal, uncorrupted . . . “We received a report of a suspect upon the property.”

  “Oh, dear.” I held the basket in front of me so that the fine satin tendrils of blue, white, and red spilled over the edge in plain sight. Had someone seen François? Certainly, he’d make the Jacobins a notable prize as he’d become one of the most celebrated singers in France—and though that brought him fame and stature, it also brought jealousy and a desire to be the one to take a notable down a few pegs. But if he was their prey, that would mean we were being watched even here in the country. I swallowed hard. “A suspect? Have you found anything? Are we in danger?”

  “Do not worry. All appears as it should,” the man said in an officious tone as his fellows nodded.

  “Well, you deserve our gratitude.” I swallowed back bile and smiled at each of them in turn. I moved closer so they could smell my rose water perfume, and I fingered the ribbon upon my breast, inviting their gazes to linger there. “I was just on my way to present these cockades I made to my family. But I would be honored if such fine citizens as yourselves would wear one.”

  “The honor would be ours,” the first officer said. With sheepish nods, the commissioners agreed, and I made a little project of pinning the ribbons upon each man’s lapel, making sure to give them the same private smile I used to give Maman’s players at Cinquante. The one that made the men believe they might receive even more special attention later—and in the meanwhile, order another round of drinks or play another set at the tables. Sometimes it felt as though my whole life had been about learning to trade one mask for another. At the club, in polite society, with men . . . When I was done with the cockades, the senior commissioner gave me another bow and gestured to the grand staircase. “Merci, mademoiselle. Now, may we escort you down to your family while we complete our business?”

  Still playing the innocent coquette, I readily assented and descended ahead of the men, who followed seemingly without realizing they’d never searched my rooms. Just as I’d hoped, the beautiful, innocent façade I presented hid all my secrets—not just François’s presence in my chamber, but the misgivings I shared with Maman about the Jacobins’ extremism in our revolution. Then again, how could we not question it when the Jacobins had cut down faithful servants like my papa, an officer in King Louis’s guard who’d been butchered nearly two years ago in the insurrection of 10 August?

  I blinked away the sudden rushing threat of hot, angry tears.

  The commissioners led me to our parlor, where they’d gathered the rest of my family—Maman, my brother, and my husband of almost two years, Charles de Sartine, at whom a sentry glared and pointed his bayonet. Despite working for the revolutionary government as a senior judicial officer in the Council of State, Charles lived forever under the shadow cast by his father. Antoine de Sartine had served as lieutenant general of the police and had the detestable habit of imprisoning people without trial. After the fall of the Bastille, the mob meant to seek their revenge against him, and so Antoine had fled to Spain, leaving Charles to prove his loyalty to the republic, which he’d done quite admirably.

  But still, the people remembered.

  “Are you all right, mon amour?” Charles asked as I rushed to his side.

  “Quite.” I dropped my basket onto an armchair and heaved a calming breath. “The commissioners explained everything and I’m grateful to them for being so diligent.”

  “As are we all.” Charles slanted me a glance that suspected too much.

  Our praise made the commissioner puff up, putting his cockade on display. “It is nothing more than our duty to protect our citizens from enemies of the republic.” Just then, a clang rang out from the hallway, and the officer turned on his heel. “You there, be careful!”

  On hands and knees, a boy, perhaps my brother’s same age of sixteen, gathered our kitchen utensils from where they’d scattered upon the marble floor, confiscated, no doubt, to be melted and made into weapons as was the custom whenever the authorities conducted a search. I smiled serenely until the commissioners and their patrolmen finally took their leave.

  “Why would they suspect us of harboring enemies?” my brother fumed. “This revolution promised liberty, equality, and fraternity, but all it seems capable of is tyranny and death!” Louis stormed out of the room. Ever since Papa’s murder, he’d harbored a simmering anger that took little to ignite into outright rage. Not that I could blame him.

  With a sad, resigned smile, Maman squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll talk to him.” Nodding, I watched her go. With her golden curls and still-pleasing figure, my mother was as beautiful as she’d ever been, with grace and polish and a pointed wit that could hold a whole salon in thrall. But as she turned away, I couldn’t help noticing how she seemed to have aged—silver now streaked through the gold here and there, and she braced her hand against the back of the settee as she passed it, as if she required the support. Once, at the zenith of French society, men had attempted to flatter Maman by telling her she and I must be sisters. But whatever youthfulness had occasioned those fawning compliments had given way under the weight of widowhood and the loss of our lives and livelihood in Paris, not to mention all her friends who had disappeared over the last year . . .

  When her footsteps retreated upon the stairs, my husband pulled me aside. “He’s here again, isn’t he?”

  Guilt stirred in my belly. “Charles—”

  He shook me by the shoulders, dark eyes flashing and his handsome mouth set in a hard frown. “Damn it, Émilie. Now is not the time for recklessness. If this regime is willing to execute radicals like Jacques Hébert and his faction, then God help us all.”

  I shuddered upon hearing the man’s name, though I regretted his death not at all. Like Marat, Hébert had begun as an angry newspaperman, aiming his poison pen first at the royal family, then at moderates like the Marquis de Lafayette, and then against the reasonable Girondins. In the process, he’d been catapulted into the political leadership of the Montagnard extremists who favored martial law, a system of Terror to root out so-called counterrevolutionaries, and a program of dechristianization for all France. And now that all the reasonable men and women had mostly been silenced, the radicals were turning on one another. “Hébert died for charging that Robespierre was not radical enough.”

  “That is exactly my point,” Charles said. “France’s leaders have spent the year since Marat’s death convincing themselves that assassins and counterrevolutionary plotters lurk around every corner. And Robespierre himself has become a tyrant used to getting his way at any cost. In such an atmosphere, no one is safe.”

  Weariness weighed upon my shoulders, and I sighed. Must even love wither and die because of this damnable revolution? “I know, but—”

  “I told you what Marie said. As long as the Committee of Public Safety believes that some foreign faction plots Robespierre’s assassination, suspicion and calumny are having their day. The longer they cannot catch the leaders of this supposed conspiracy, the more their frustration leads them to seize anyone who could, rightly or wrongly, be suspected of intrigue, corruption, or even merely lukewarm support. You must be smart.”

  At that, I flashed him a look. “I kept them from finding him, didn’t I?”

  After a moment, the anger bled out of my husband’s expression. “The cockades?”

  A slow grin crept over my face. “‘I’d be so honored if such fine citizens as yourselves would wear one,’” I said mockingly. But my smile fell away again. “It’s not fair that you can go to Paris to see your actress whenever you wish while Fra
nçois and I can only see each other at great risk.”

  “It’s not,” Charles agreed as he pulled me into a comforting embrace, for we’d been friends long before circumstance had forced us to marry. Friends who’d first come to know each other through the community of Théâtre Favart, where I’d met François, and Charles had courted Mademoiselle Marie Grandmaison, an Italian actress who’d risen in popularity here in France.

  When the Jacobins murdered Papa, Maman determined that the security of our family necessitated that I give up my lover and marry, preferably someone serving the new government. She’d gone so far as to invite her recommended choices to join us on a sojourn to the country, where I’d allowed her to introduce me to Monsieur Charles-Louis-Antoine de Sartine as if Charles and I hadn’t been drinking wine together with our lovers and other theater friends several nights a week. And so I married him in hopes that I could secure my family’s future—without either Charles or myself having to give up the love we’d found in others, making my marriage just one more role I played.

  Now I wondered how much more of ourselves we’d have to sacrifice in an effort to make ourselves free.

  “When is it all going to end, Charles?” I asked, because I couldn’t see a way out of the madness. Despair threatened to dig its claws into my heart.

  He sighed and shook his head, and his voice was gentle when he spoke. “I don’t know. Marie hears that, privately, some officials are questioning la Terreur, so maybe sooner rather than later.” Charles’s work in the city allowed him opportunities to see his mistress, who was now a source of vital information. For the theater had become a hotbed of Jacobinism, and Marie passed to us secrets of policy and intrigue from inside the Convention that were recounted by several actors who’d become fiery patriots and befriended Robespierre himself.

  Pulling away, I nodded. “I’ll tell François not to come for a few weeks until we know better how the winds are blowing.”

  Charles tilted his head and gave me a little smirk. “And tell him I’ll give him a good knockabout if I need to.”

  I rolled my eyes but appreciated Charles’s playfulness and camaraderie in that moment. For our long friendship and unconventional understanding made him the only person in whom I could confide about François. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” I said, retreating to the doorway.

  “Wait.” I turned to find Charles bringing my basket of cockades. “Wouldn’t want to forget these.”

  “Indeed.” I took it from him, making the blue, white, and red strands flutter. “Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” I said with false enthusiasm. And then I turned and raced back to the arms of my lover.

  Where I could finally take off all my masks and be myself—and try to forget just how close we had come to losing it all.

  THIS IS TOO great a risk, I thought as the carriage came to a hard stop before the grand town house. I wasn’t sure whether it was the night air or my own dread that caused me to shiver. I tugged my blue jacket tighter around me.

  We hadn’t been in the city in weeks, yet Maman had readily accepted a coded invitation to a private gathering of those wishing to be initiated into Robespierre’s new religion, which he called the Cult of the Supreme Being. Ever since Robespierre had first announced it last December—when he’d issued a surprising proclamation prohibiting all measures contrary to the freedom of worship—Maman had begun looking at him with a sense of hope that he might be the one to restore some order after all. I feared it was her flirtation with the Jacobin’s brother, Augustin, that had helped cast the demagogue in a new light.

  In my experience with the man, he did nothing that didn’t benefit himself. So I remained skeptical.

  After all, how could we ever trust Robespierre when he’d built France’s current government upon a foundation coated in my father’s blood? To say nothing of how many times the so-called l’Incorruptible had tried to press his advantage upon me in the back hallways of parties or in dark shadows upon a nighttime street, transgressions I’d kept from Maman fearing she’d be so unwise as to try to defend my honor. Already, I worried that my resistance might have earned his ire, for it had never been riskier for a woman to reject a man’s advances or reveal the limitations of his self-control. Especially when anyone who crossed Robespierre ended up losing their head.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea, Maman?” I whispered, finally giving voice to my misgivings.

  The footman helped my mother and me alight from the conveyance, and we held up our white silk chemise dresses to keep the hems from dragging through puddles leftover from a springtime rain. Charles followed closely behind, also in a blue coat over a white outfit—all of us in the attire specified in the invitation.

  Only when the carriage pulled away did Maman finally respond. “The Cult of the Supreme Being stands for ending religious persecutions, abolishing the scaffold, and restoring peace, whereupon we’ll finally be able to return to Paris and reopen our house. If anyone can bring these things about, it is Robespierre. Why, with a single proclamation, he made it safe to believe in God again. And even now, he has the Convention debating recognition of the cult as our new official religion. So we must play the odds, darling.”

  She walked ahead, her stiff posture and the regal tilt of her chin forbidding further discussion. For Maman was not used to being questioned. Indeed, it wasn’t so many months ago that her influence had been such that men sometimes joked about which of their younger children they might sell off to receive an invitation to join Cinquante.

  But my teeth ached from how tightly I clenched them, and I saw my own uncertainty reflected in Charles’s dark gaze. I took his arm and found a small measure of comfort in his steadfastness as he guided us up the tall staircase to the grand front doors. “I fear they’re bad odds,” I finally muttered under my breath.

  “Perhaps, but we must nonetheless be entirely convincing in our enthusiasm,” Charles whispered, though we could say no more before we were being greeted and ushered inside, where all was oddly dark and quiet.

  Occasional candles cast just enough light to allow us to make our way to a large parlor where perhaps a dozen others were congregated. Notable among them was Monsieur de Quesvremont, who came immediately to Maman’s side and kissed her cheeks. Formerly an intimate of the House of Orleans and a friend of Papa’s, the man had been whispering in Maman’s ear about being initiated since the Proclamation of the Supreme Being. Monsieur de Q was convinced that the end of religious persecutions, as well as Robespierre’s much-rumored design to reign over France, raised legitimate hopes of clemency for royalists.

  Monsieur de Q was not alone in these hopes. Indeed, some darkly jested that Robespierre was at this moment more popular among the party of the victims than that of the executioners!

  We’d barely exchanged hushed greetings before our hostess stepped to the front of the assembly. Only a few years older than me, Victorine, the Marquise de Chastenay, was as devout a believer as she was beautiful. She extended her lithe arms and seemed to hold the whole room rapt. “Come, mortals, share the immortality of the Mother of God.”

  Our shoes barely made a sound upon the carpets as we moved en masse into another parlor. Three knocks rang out upon the far wall, and then a curtain billowed despite the stillness in the room. It hid yet another door through which our silent assemblage passed. I clutched tighter to Charles’s arm.

  The only illumination in this new chamber was a single tall candelabra, which cast just enough light to reveal the silhouettes of several who waited for us within. We formed a line, whereupon Victorine presented each of us with a necklace. “Truth and strength,” she said, giving me a warm, vivacious smile as she helped me fasten mine on, as if we were meeting amidst the gaiety of one of Baron de Grand Cour’s magnificent suppers. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the dimness sufficiently to make out the pendants that now hung around my neck—a mirror and a dagger. The truth of reflection and the strength of the blade.

  Three figures stepped into the r
ing of light cast by the candelabra—two young girls, who immediately knelt, and an elderly woman dressed in a nun’s black habit. I gasped.

  It was the Mother of God.

  Catherine Théot was her name. But she was better known among the people for declaring herself the second coming of the Virgin Mary, the new Eve, and the Mother of God. For her claims, she’d been imprisoned for years, but her persecution only strengthened some people’s belief in her. After her release, believers flocked to her, along with those who wished to hear her prophecies for a price—and we counted more than a few of our aristocratic friends among her clients. And then, after Robespierre’s proclamation, she’d proclaimed the arrival of the Messiah, the one who would comfort the poor, redeem mankind, and create a government inspired by the divine.

  Most believed they knew exactly whom the Mère de Dieu meant, which was, of course, why we were here.

  My pulse raced, and perspiration broke out across my brow. Whether that was from the heat quickly overtaking the dark, shrouded room or from being in the presence of the famed prophetess with whom Robespierre had joined forces in this new religion, I didn’t know.

  The flickering candlelight revealed a pinched, severe face beneath her veil. She held out her hands as if in invitation. Victorine guided the first supplicant through the appropriate gestures. I watched as Monsieur de Q kissed the prophetess’s cheek and hands, then got down on his knees and bent to kiss her feet. One by one, the others did the same, until finally it was my turn to stand before her petite form. A shiver ran through me and I was intensely aware of being watched.

  But the elderly woman radiated a confidence that almost promised to wipe away all my misgivings, and there was a certainty in her pale blue eyes that made me feel exposed, as if she knew the fears harbored deep inside my heart. “You are most welcome, child.”

  Her words spurred me to do my duty before her. I hesitated only for the space of a breath, for I heard Charles’s voice again: We must be entirely convincing in our enthusiasm . . . So I kissed her weathered cheeks, bent to kiss her gnarled hands, and knelt upon the thick, woven rug to kiss her feet. When I rose, the infirm Sybil placed a kiss of peace upon my forehead, and though the mystic seemed kindly, I couldn’t help but count my dignity as another casualty of the times.