by Celia Rees
The president rose and bowed in his direction. ‘We have pleasure in welcoming Citizen Dysart to our proceedings from the Departement of the Thames.’
Sovay was not shocked or even surprised to see him. She stared straight ahead, as hope finally died within her, snuffed out by his presence. All her fire left her, collapsing into grey ashes of resignation. She was determined to show nothing, but Dysart scented her utter defeat, as a predator smells hart’s blood. His thin nostrils flared and, in a rare show of emotion, he gave her a smile of gloating triumph. I win, you lose, his pale, lustreless eyes seemed to say. I get my revenge at last.
Sovay scarcely heard as the president rang his bell.
‘Guards! Remove that man from the court.’ He pointed to Virgil. ‘He and his wife can spend one last night together. Put him in with tomorrow’s batch.’ He announced the verdict on Sovay without consulting his colleagues. ‘Death. Who’s next?’
CHAPTER 39
Sovay was taken from the Revolutionary Court to another part of the Conciergerie in Paris. The prison. The most feared destination. It was the antechamber to the guillotine; all those who were to die the next day were brought here. She joined a line of other prisoners and they were marched across the great courtyard. Some of the paving stones still lay heaved up like tombstones from burying the dead of the September Massacres, and all around gaped gated dungeons, crowded with wretched prisoners from every part of France.
Conditions were very different here. The gaolers were grim and unspeaking with large mastiff dogs snarling at their heels. Sovay could not see Virgil as she waited with other prisoners outside the Records Office. He must have already been processed. She was registered by a prison clerk who rarely looked up from his scribbling and then taken to another room for the toilette. A man stepped forward, scissors in hand. He was an assistant to the executioner, here to perform the ritual inflicted on all the condemned in preparation for the guillotine. The collar of her dress was sheered off. Then he took the heaviness of her long, dark hair in his hand and began to cut. The slicing of the blades sounded like tearing silk. Sovay watched each lock curl to the floor like smoke. Her hair was cut short into the nape to allow no obstruction to the falling blade. When he had finished, the prison dampness felt cold, clammy on her neck and she put her hand up to feel the strangeness of her newly shorn state. The hair that remained felt like fur.
The process of her death had already started. She was leaving a part of herself behind, already lost to her sight, mixed there on the floor with hair of every hue and kind, to be swept up and disposed of; so much dead stuff, as she would be tomorrow. The executioner’s assistant pushed the pile together with his foot and took up his broom.
The turnkey led her away from the common areas of the prison. Sovay shivered as they passed along dank, stone passages, running with water and clotted with slime. Contagion breathed from the very walls. Sovay did not believe for a moment that the president of the Tribunal would keep to his word, certain that his remark to Virgil had been just another jibing cruelty. She followed the guard with a heavy heart, sure that she was to spend her last night on earth alone, but when the man turned the big key in the lock and the door creaked back, there was Virgil waiting for her. His hair had been shorn like hers, and his shirt collar had been torn away. She flew into his arms and he held her to him. The gaoler had no difficulty believing that they might be husband and wife.
‘Make the most of it!’ he said with a leer as he shut the door.
Almost as soon as he had left them, they broke away from each other.
‘Sovay,’ Virgil held her at arm’s length, searching her face for signs of change. ‘How are you?’
‘All the better for seeing you! What you said in that courtroom, knowing it was certain death.’ She shook her head. ‘I am for ever in your debt. Or, at least, until tomorrow.’
‘It was worth a try. I thought it might work. Occasionally, such things do. A case of mistaken identity . . .’ He sat down on the filthy straw pallet and buried his head in his hands. ‘Anything is worth a try.’
‘But you have thrown your life away. For me. Why?’
She looked round at the ancient, crumbling stone of the walls carved with names, dates, prayers, rows of little lines scratched in and crossed out to measure time passing; messages of despair from all the poor wretches that had been incarcerated there. Waves of misery washed over her.
‘It is hopeless!’ She shook her head.
Virgil’s fingers parted. His grey eyes looked up at her.
‘Perhaps not entirely,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Things are happening.’ It was his turn to stand and pace. ‘Yesterday, I was at the Convention. Things did not go well for Robespierre. He went too far. He made thinly veiled threats against Tallien, Fouché, Vadier, Barère and others, implying that he was ready to move against them. The convention trembled, then rallied. Tallien and his allies are ready to join with Fernand and his moderate friends. It has come to the point where it is either him or them. I don’t know what happened today but the reign of the tyrant may well be nearing its end.’
Sovay sat on the bed, listening to him, her hands held in her lap, clutching each other for comfort. I will not hope. I will not allow myself to hope, she recited it inside herself like a litany. What hope could there be when people like Danton, Desmoulins, men who had been among the original leaders of the Revolution, had perhaps sat in this very cell, powerless to prevent their own deaths?
‘Even if it is true,’ she looked up at him, ‘it may well come too late for us.’ She touched her shorn neck. ‘We are due to die tomorrow. The people here will follow their orders, whatever happens in the Convention. They have turned the Revolution into a great machine: once something is set in motion, it is impossible to stop.’
‘Perhaps. It is on an edge as keen and narrow as the blade of the guillotine –’
He was interrupted by the gaolers making their rounds, turning locks in doors, herding people back to their cells, demanding lights out, numbering the doors for tomorrow’s fournée with a swift chalk scrawl.
Sovay looked to the tiny scrap of light that still gleamed through the bars high above her.
‘They make us turn in earlier here than in the Luxembourg,’ she said. ‘What day is it? I lost track of time in there.’
‘Twenty-seventh of July – 9 Thermidor.’ Virgil stretched out beside her. ‘Come, let’s get some rest.’
Sovay must have slept, because she was suddenly being shaken awake.
‘Hssh!’ Virgil’s face was close to hers. She could see the whites of his eyes in the darkness. He held his fingers to his lips. ‘Listen!’
At first, Sovay could here nothing. Then, through the night sounds of the prison, a muffled shout, the scrape of a key, footsteps echoing, she heard a bell ringing, a slight sound, thinned by distance, tiny but insistent. It was joined by another, a deep toll, loud and ominous, booming through the thick walls.
‘That’s Notre Dame. They are sounding the tocsin.’ Virgil sprang up and went to the faint patch of light that marked the window. ‘Calling the city to arms.’
‘What does it mean?’ Sovay rose to join him.
They both listened as the rest of the gaol woke around them. Others had heard it, too. There was movement and rustling of feet through straw, the sound of running and men shouting. A cry went up of fear and lamentation. A clamour started as prisoners hammered on the doors and beat on the bars and walls with their metal food pans, fearing that they would be dragged from their cells to be hacked and beaten to death on the paving stones and cobbles outside, as others had been at the time of the September Massacres.
‘What will happen?’
From above came the beat of hooves as men rode into the courtyard; the rumble of cannon being moved into place.
‘Who knows?’ Virgil dragged the bed over to the wall and climbed upon it, to try and see out.
‘Here,’ Sovay hitched her skirt.
‘Let me stand on your shoulders.’
She relayed to Virgil what she could see happening. The night was fully dark. It was not long past midsummer, so she would think it before three o’clock. The grating of their cell was almost underground; her eyes were on the level of the paving stones outside. She could see the stamping hooves of the horses, cannons being wheeled about and rolled towards the gates. An officer dismounted and strode towards the entrance steps, his spurs ringing and sparking on the stones. Whatever he had come for, he didn’t get it. After a few minutes he was back again, mounting his horse. The gates opened and he was gone, the cannon rumbling after him. She wondered for a moment if it could be Léon.
‘What do you think it means?’ she asked as she dropped down from Virgil’s shoulders.
‘Well, I don’t think that we are all going to be dragged out and massacred. Not just yet, anyway.’ He rubbed the fair stubble on his chin as he paced the room, aching to escape out into the city. ‘It could still go either way, but it could be that Robespierre and his friends have been arrested. If that is so, then that officer could be trying to find a prison to take them.’
‘What about the cannon?’
‘Let us hope that it is not being used by Hanriot to move against the Convention. He’s an ally of Robespierre. Let’s hope your friend, Léon, is able to deal with him. Léon’s been rallying the other battalions, so that they will be ready to act when the time comes. He’s a good man, clever and courageous and devoted to his country. If anything is to be salvaged from the wreck of the Revolution, it will be by men like him.’
‘Why do you say he is my friend?’ The mention of his name had made her heart beat a little faster and she had found that she was blushing despite herself.
‘Is he not?’ Virgil smiled. ‘Perhaps I am mistaken, but he has sworn to marry you, if we can get you out of here. The marriage was his idea. When he knew that you were to appear before the Tribunal, he wanted to go to them and declare that you were man and wife. He would see you go free or share your fate. I took his place. As you say, the gesture was near hopeless and, in the balance, his life was more important. He can do more than I to stop this madness.’
By now there was sound and movement out on the corridor. Virgil and Sovay went to listen. The turnkeys were making extra rounds, checking every lock and door. They were more surly than usual, some of them plainly fearful, their dogs barking and yelping as they picked up their masters’ agitation.
Any communication with the prisoners was strictly forbidden, but not all the gaolers were on the side of Robespierre. Gradually, word began to spread by means of what the prisoners called the whispers along the wall. As the first light of dawn struck through into the filthy cells, the news broke to general rejoicing. They were facing a new morning; one without Robespierre.
No one was sure exactly what had happened. Some stories said he was dead, others imprisoned, still others attested that he was alive but wounded, but all agreed that his reign of terror was over. Many found it hard to believe and as the morning light strengthened towards day, they listened for the rumble of the tumbrels in the courtyard outside. But the gates remained shut, the guards did not come to check the numbers chalked on the cells and escort the occupants to have their hands bound in readiness by the executioner’s assistants. The prison was still, as if none quite knew now what to do.
When the guards finally came round with the gamelles, the mess tins, they were uncommunicative but they unlocked the doors to allow access to the public areas.
Everyone crowded round the bars, although there was not much to see. At length, the gates opened. A carriage rolled up and the overseer of the prison returned, his face white and rigid with shock. He was accompanied by an escort of National Guardsmen. Commanding them was Léon.
He came striding down the aisle with the Governor behind him.
‘I don’t have orders,’ the man was saying.
‘I have the orders, Citizen.’ Léon brandished the papers in his face. ‘I have cannons, too. Trained on this place. If you do not release them into my custody, it will be the worse for you! Now, where are they?’
He was besieged by supplicants, all clamouring to be released from their hateful confinement.
‘All in good time, Citizens! All in good time! Your turn will come soon.’
‘Is it true?’ someone cried. ‘Is it true? Has the tyrant fallen?’
‘Aye!’ Léon looked round them. ‘It is true. Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just are appearing even now before the Revolutionary Tribunal.’
His announcement brought bitter laughter and fresh cheering.
‘What about the others?’
‘Dead or dying, as the Incorruptible will be shortly. He tried to kill himself but only succeeded in shooting half his jaw off. Do not worry, my friends, he will not cheat the guillotine. You will all be freed soon. My present orders are for two prisoners only.’ He turned to where Virgil and Sovay were fighting their way through the press of people. ‘They are to be released to me without delay.’ He took Sovay in his arms. ‘Especially this one!’
He kissed her and the cheering redoubled. Clapping broke out all around them, while Virgil looked on, grinning like a groomsman. Even turnkeys joined in the jubilation. The spell of the Terror was broken. The dismal walls of that grim prison had rarely witnessed a moment as joyful as this.
Sovay left the prison to find a Paris transformed. The streets were full of people, showing their release, their gladness, by laughing, singing, drinking and dancing. They had endured. They had survived. The Conciergerie was close by the great church of Notre Dame. The doors were open. A steady stream of visitors, mostly women, was going in to give thanks to whichever deity, God or Reason, had prevailed.
Later that day, Sovay would go to the Place de la Révolution, accompanied by Léon, Virgil, Hugh and his friend, Fernand. The guillotine had been brought back to the centre of the city and reassembled for this special occasion and the streets were thronged with people. There were as many lining the streets and crammed into the square as had been present at the death of Louis XVI. They were here to witness the end of a different kind of tyranny.
Shouts and cheering marked the slow rumbling progress of the tumbrels across the city. A great roar went up when at last the carts rolled into view. One by one, the prisoners mounted the scaffold, were placed on the plank, as so many had been before them. The crowd seemed to hold its breath at each hissing, heavy fall of the blade, to explode into cheering at the tumbling of the head into the basket, the lazy sluice of blood.
At last, Robespierre, a slight figure, his face bandaged, his sky-blue jacket stained with blood, mounted the scaffold. His coat was stripped from him. The executioner tore the bandage from his wounded jaw and a high-pitched animal scream rang out across the huge expanse of the Place de la Révolution. A single, sharp cry of agony from one who had brought such suffering to so many. Robespierre was strapped to the plank and the blade descended. It was all over in less than a minute. The people had their revenge.
More were to die that evening, but Sovay had seen enough death. She left on the arm of her lover and did not stay to witness the passing of the various allies and supporters of the tyrant, among them the Englishman, Dysart.
Afterword
June, 1816
‘And your sister never returned to England?’
‘No, she never did.’
The story had begun with Sir Jonathan Trenton’s portrait of her that stood at the top of the stairs. It was finishing with the miniature that Sir Hugh was showing to us now. It had taken him some days to tell and he’d kept us well entertained through the current spell of unseasonably inclement weather.
‘She married Léon, the dashing young captain and hero of the Revolution. After all that austerity, Paris went wild. One long round of hectic gaiety: parties, salons, theatre, the opera. Sovay and her husband were much in demand. They called her La Minerve. This is a likeness taken about that time.’
The pict
ure showed a striking young woman in a pale primrose dress, seated on a chaise longue, her head turned à l’odalisque, her bare shoulders and long neck accentuated by her dark, cropped curls.
‘Her short hair was very fashionable. The new fashions of the merveilleuses suited her, those simple dresses based on the style of Greece and Rome. All very à la mode,’ he laughed. ‘Although she never adopted that most extreme of Thermidorian affectations: a thin red ribbon tied round the neck.’
‘Is she still alive?’
‘Why, yes! She lives in Venice, in a palazzo by the
Grand Canal. Now that the war with Napoleon is over, I’m thinking of visiting her.’ He looked around at the company. ‘Perhaps we should all go to escape this beastly weather.’
CELIA REES
is the bestselling and award-winning author of Witch Child, Sorceress, Pirates! and The Fool’s Girl. She lives in Leamington Spa, England, where she spends her time writing, talking to readers in schools and libraries, and teaching creative writing.
www.celiarees.com
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There were things a child could not know. With Viola spending so much time at the summer palace, rumours grew. Some whispered that the Duke had lost interest, preferring his books to his young wife, and she, in turn, had lost interest in him.
They also whispered about Lord Sebastian: that he resented his sister, that he was jealous of her. He was Count Sebastian, but she was Duchessa. Not only that, but he had lost his wife to her. Olivia might have married him, but there was no doubt which twin she preferred. It was as though she’d made her vows to the sister, not the brother, they said as they laughed behind their hands, but no one said such things in his hearing. He had a violent temper on him and was always ready to draw steel.