Treason's Spring

by Robert Wilton

  Thus the chaos, and those most culpable were least capable. And yet, should the skilled diplomatist come to terms with the chaos, then he immediately finds ways to use it. He finds ways, one may say, to see its parts as so many wheels and levers in the mechanism of a clock or lock. And all the time, the diplomatist holds fast to his aim – he sees it as the pillar of fire in the night – and so he comes through the chaos.

  However, the chaos brings in its turbulent train many unfortunate elements of untidiness to trouble the diplomatist. Past indiscretions, if not adequately obscured, return more monstrous and grotesque, so that they appear as great crimes. A letter that when written might have caused the raising of an eyebrow, in the chaos risks the losing of a head.

  We are coming to think of wars as fought between two parties, as if they were an arrangement between two contracting merchants. Yet the experience of my age has been rather different. Wars to me were diffuse irruptions of violence in the vast web of relationships that was Europe. Wars were not an expression of enmity, but a means of argument – between parties who had been, and would once again be, in concert. The American colonies fought Britain for their independence in 1776, and fought again in 1812, and yet in Paris and Vienna it was widely taken for granted that these antagonists’ mentalities and their economic interests were so congruent that their natural state would remain the closest harmony. The European monarchies fought against the French revolutionary armies, yet this was but a convenience, a temporary suspension of their wider calculations and contests. The settlement after the Thirty Years War a century before – let us call it a cessation of hostilities, a continental catching of the breath – settled nothing, and I continued to regard Europe as so many pieces moving around the chessboard, now attacking the one point, now reinforcing the other, to be blocked or supported or pushed now here and now there.

  Now pray consider the additional complexity when France, seen so wrongly as a unity, began in the 1780s to break down into so many parts. Consider the different factions at court, reformers and compromisers and faint-hearts and defiants and traditionalists; consider the different elements of political France, in and out of the National Assembly and its successors, those who sought genteel adjustments to the system of government and those who sought its utter destruction. Consider everyone writing to everyone, positioning and manoeuvring themselves on that mighty board. Consider every power of note in Europe, desperate for knowledge and influence and advantage. And in the middle of it all, dear Louis. A man so unsure of himself, and accordingly so determined to prove himself. He would insist on maintaining a correspondence with everyone – with all of Europe if he could – and he had his agents maintain correspondence with every faction in France. History has not known so great a spider’s web of intrigue.

  And pray consider, accordingly, the great alarm – the great potential devastation – across France and across all of Europe, at the merest suggestion that so much correspondence, between so many powerful and sensitive people, might threaten to become at once and uncontrollably public.

  [SS G/66/X3 (EXTRACT)]

  The abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés shelters the remains of the Merovingian kings, France’s link to the mystic and the divine and a power greater than her own history. It’s also where they buried Descartes, who knew that what you can dream is more powerful than what you can see.

  On this September day in 1792, the heat hangs heavy around the spire of the abbey church. It drapes itself over the stalls and streets nearby, stewing the blood of those who loiter in them. The spire seems thin today; anxious. It senses something truculent and feverish in the heat. The capture of Verdun has spread across Paris in whispers and wide eyes. Prussians are over every hill, behind every corner. All that anger, all that violence, will have had a cause after all. The alarm guns have fired. Shops are shutting. The streets are fuller than usual because no one wants to miss a word or a warning. They’re recruiting an army in the Champ de Mars. The politics – the talk – have become war; and the war is here in Paris.

  Through the heat trudges a line of shuffling people, towards the abbey. Priests mostly – you can see the costumes. No voices, but the shuffling in the dust makes the line groan and wheeze. And it clanks. They’re not going to the abbey, but to its prison: priests who’ve refused to swear the oath to the state.

  Somewhere close, unshaded by the spire, one head is seething hotter. The Prussians are getting closer. The Prussians will capture Paris and restore the old order and nothing will have changed after all. These people comfortable in their prison, they’re waiting and hoping for the Prussians and when the Prussians arrive they’ll come out again and come out on top, and the possibility that something could be better in our shitty little lives will have gone forever.

  Paris is a city of craftsmen and workers; Paris is always armed: knives and mallets and chisels and stirring poles and whips and shovels and anything else you can lay your hands on.

  And as the line of prisoners trudges forwards and one face glances up towards the sky, with a prayer or the feel of the sun on his face or a faint sound in the distance that might be Prussians coming to save him, something boils over in the watcher. Something will have changed and this will have been worth something after all and I will not wait to be trodden down again and I will not be the first to suffer and he’s running forwards towards the line of prisoners with a blade in his fist and he barges into the nearest and clutches at the collar and stabs, and keeps stabbing as the prisoner topples and they’re scrabbling in the dust. Around them the line recoils and moans because now even the order and certainty of punishment has gone, and the mob is on them. First the assault is anger, fear, self-protection: a dust cloud of clubbing and stabbing. Then triumph, and the certainty that they cannot go back so they must go on, and it turns out that a dead man is a frustratingly inert reward for all that passion, and they begin to hack at the corpses for something more.

  The mêlée: arms scrabbling at him but he’s got two hands on the saddle and heaves himself up, a bird soaring, and now he has height and a horse and he plants a glorious kick in the nearest chest and the man goes sprawling; already the horse is skittering and wheeling and he digs his heels in and the beast leaps away.

  The night roars in his ears: the wind in his face and the moon flashing through the leaves above and the thunder of the hooves beneath, and his exultation. The grim theatre of the executions in the Place du Carrousel, the massacres of priests and prisoners, this is now France and a typically Froggie sort of buggers’ muddle it is too, but amidst it all a man of style may yet do something splendid: in the ’tween-world of darkness, in the under-policed countryside north of Paris . . . A suggestion from a friend, a note, a name, and so he’s playing a bit of havoc with the petty officials of the Revolution. Another escapade, another escape, and he feels the joy of it in his own gasps at breath, hears it in his heartbeat.

  He can afford to slow the horse now, and he begins to enjoy the ride for its own sake: a fresh evening, a man alive and free, a good horse and a straight ride and ahead the promise of wine and beauty.

  A quarter-hour later and the house in St-Denis becomes aware of him: hooves rumble in the lane, and then he’s a shout and a shadow above the ostler and swirling to the ground and throwing the reins over and striding for the building. The double doors of the salon burst open and he’s on the threshold – and for a moment he pauses, bows before the company; then forward again with long steps making straight for his hostess.

  She’s turned to meet him – everyone has turned – and her hand is outstretched before he reaches it. He kisses the hand, and momentum carries him a few kisses farther up the arm then brings his head up close to hers. He grins, and in the grin there’s a growl left over from the energy of the ride.

  Her smile is alive, pleasured. He feels warmed by it, acknowledged and admired. Then she starts to frown as she glances down at his clothes. ‘What happened to you?’

  Again the grin. ‘So much elegance: I have t
o expect a certain jealousy.’

  From one of the company: ‘There’s mud all over your coat, old fellow.’

  ‘And blood all over my blade, Ned. My only consolation is that the other fellows are in rather worse shape.’

  There’s real concern in his hostess’s face. ‘What happened? How did you get in this – and how out?’

  ‘I told them, most courteous-like, that I wasn’t ready to die this evening; that there was wine undrunk and lips unkissed.’ Both points are soon remedied.

  Sir Raphael Benjamin has arrived.

  Danton, brilliant bull of the Revolution, is strangely guarded tonight. So, at least, thinks Roland, Minister of the Interior. Normally Danton dominates: by strength of voice, by physical bulk, by the generous display of his intellect. Tonight he’s quiet; he waits for someone else to speak. Danton’s worried, Roland thinks.

  Roland’s office is compact, comfortable. A safe place in the middle of the ministry building, in the middle of Paris. He checks the papers in front of him on his desk.

  Having sat, Danton stands abruptly. ‘A tempest around the house,’ he says, too loudly; everything he says is a rehearsal for a speech. ‘And the foundations rotting.’ He swoops back down into the chair – it lurches and creaks – and his great head looms at Roland. ‘Do we even have foundations?’

  ‘The – ah . . . ’ – the glance at his papers, the hesitation, as if Roland has to check the point – ‘the people are the foundations.’

  Danton thinks that Roland is guarded; but Roland is always guarded. It’s one of the things that Danton respects about him.

  Danton rolls his eyes, and they pull him up out of the chair again and around the room. ‘The people are the tempest!’ he roars at Roland and a future audience. ‘Part of it, anyway. Their expectation. Their anger. The Pru-’ Stop. ‘Their justified expectation, and their justified anger,’ he adds, remembering the third man in the room.

  Fouché listens. Fouché watches. Fouché waits.

  Danton continues his tour of the room. ‘The Prussians in the Argonne, fifty thousand of them and all coming this way. Nine kinds of danger within Paris, every shade of royalism and every shade of compromise and every shade of treason. And . . . ’ – he turns to face them – ‘no foundations.’ Closer, softer: ‘No money.’ He leans into Roland. ‘The Revolution is penniless. We can’t buy a loaf; we certainly can’t buy an army.’

  Roland leans back. ‘Surely that is properly the province of Clavière, as Minister of Finance.’

  ‘No one cares to be taxed by us, and no one cares to buy from us. We don’t have any finances. Clavière’s irrelevant accordingly.’ Back down into the chair. ‘Finance has become a matter of security.’ His eyes flick between them. ‘Of survival.’

  Fouché listens. Fouché watches. Fouché waits. Danton needs something, he thinks. Or he knows something.

  Fouché isn’t guarded: he’s locked tight; he’s safe behind the ramparts of his alertness, of his scheming. It’s one of the things Danton dislikes about him.

  In the doorway, Raphael Benjamin’s hand rests on his hostess’s forearm, and rests a moment longer, and then his fingers close around it and his eyes come level with hers.

  ‘Not tonight, Raph,’ she says; from her French throat the ‘r’ is a growl, and the ‘f’ a whisper mingling with the night breeze.

  Benjamin stood a little straighter, regained dignity, smiled down at her. ‘We may not have nights to waste, Emma.’

  Emma Lavalier ignored the roguery. ‘The nights we have, we may have to fight for.’

  ‘Hah. You’re becoming wise, Madame Lavalier. I know that face. Sometimes it comes on most inopportunely.’

  She saw him suddenly weary – immediately older around his eyes. ‘Poor Raph; so few moments of rest, and I fill them with worry.’ She laid her hand over his, partly to lift it from her arm. ‘Shouldn’t we worry a little? These last two days have been . . . atrocious. The mob are dragging prisoners into the streets and slaughtering them. Paris is become an abattoir.’

  ‘The fever will pass.’

  ‘No! It will not.’

  He scowled. ‘It will not. They’ve tasted blood, these rebels. Savagery has become normal.’

  ‘And what do your English Government?’

  ‘Nothing they’re telling me about.’ She slipped her hand under his arm, and began to walk him down the path towards the gate. ‘They watch, Emma. We’re not at war yet, and the ministry have wound themselves tight as clocks over radicalism at home. They’ll do nothing unless they have to.’

  ‘And they don’t . . . communicate?’

  ‘Since Gower closed the embassy last month and fled back to London with all the silver, it’s rather harder. Greene used to get the occasional message from friends of his in London . . . ’

  ‘I haven’t seen dear Greene for several days at least.’

  Benjamin slowed; his boots crunched on the stones. A grunt. ‘Probably turning over the prisons with the rest of his ruffian friends.’

  At the gate, a servant handing Benjamin his reins. His lips brushed a kiss on the lady’s hands, and then he swung up into the saddle.

  ‘I worry for you, riding around alone at night.’ There was little worry in her voice.

  ‘Your Revolution’s mighty powerful, Emma. But it hasn’t a faster blade or a faster horse than I.’

  Emma Lavalier listened to the hoof-beats into the darkness.

  In Minister Roland’s office in Paris, the candles are still now that Danton has subsided, and they emphasize the silence of night. ‘There are some questions,’ Fouché says, and Danton and Roland are immediately watching him; ‘there is some ... disquiet.’ Fouché doesn’t speak without he means to achieve something very precise. He gives out words as if he has a limited stock, and knows what each must buy. ‘About the execution of La Porte.’

  Roland watches him. Fouché is a very able man.

  Danton watches him. Fouché is dangerous.

  ‘I have been . . . listening. Among our supporters.’ Danton’s holding himself back, rare restraint. I’ll bet you have. Fouché is counting out his next words. Did they even know you were there? ‘The essence – They feel that the essence of the Revolution is justice. It were wise – that it were wiser – if the first political deaths had been of more certain opponents.’

  Danton watches, ill-restrained. He doesn’t know Joseph Fouché, except to dislike him. A young man; a new man. He has the suspicion that Fouché doesn’t drink.

  ‘Collenot d’Angremont was the King’s provocateur and intermediary for royalist resistance,’ Roland says, reassuring himself. Roland creaks and squeaks when he talks; like a door opening for ever. ‘La Porte was the King’s confidential secretary for all of his most secret dealings. His counter-revolutionary correspondence, his . . . ’ – hesitation; we’re not sure about this word yet – ‘his treasons.’

  ‘A message to the royalists,’ Danton growls. ‘Their world has changed; their games are done.’ He swells, boisterous. ‘This isn’t like you, young Fouché. Usually you’re the hungriest of us all.’

  He regrets it immediately. A cheap and shallow point, and Fouché will suspect it the more. Why does this weasel worry me so?

  Fouché remains placid, but his eyes are bright. ‘I wonder where all that correspondence of La Porte’s has gone.’

  Danton stares at him. You miserable little shit. So quickly the glorious sweep of the Revolution has become individual, private calculations. Will I have to kill you?

  The small hours of the night, the brittle hours; the candles dying, Sir Raphael Benjamin alone in his room and with no distractions to protect him.

  What would I not give for one copper-bottomed certainty? For one true man?

  He took another gulp of wine.

  Pinsent. Dear old Ned.

  Greene?

  He could feel his head fogging. He could feel his mind drifting.

  Emma . . . Ah, what a possibility.

  On the chaise longue a
cross the room, a girl was sleeping. Periodically her breaths would catch in her throat, and the sheet would shiver around her shoulders and hips.

  In a different France; a different life.

  There were times when he could not remember his past, before France; and times when he was able to forget it.

  Now is all the time that there is. This . . . is all the man that I am.

  The pattern on the wallpaper loomed strange. He took another mouthful of wine.

  Greene’s odd obsession with papers. The ruffianery he’d been encouraged to in St-Denis. And now the second name from Greene’s note; the promise of a hell of an escapade.

  He grinned at the shadows on the wall; laughed at them. And downed the wine, held the goblet between finger and thumb for one swaying moment, then let it drop.

  6TH SEPTEMBER, 1792

  Natural philosophy encounters natural scepticism

  Sir, you earlier expressed your interest in the project of the French Academy to measure the meridian from north to south through that portion which is comprised within France and Spain. Confiding that you are concerned lest the French should seek some political advantage from having a more authoritative meridian than Greenwich, or some practical advantage from their scheme to create a new system of measurement, I haste to report that, after a protracted hiatus caused by the persistent upheavals, and by the fluctuating reputations of some of the natural philosophers involved, the project is underway in earnest. The astronomer P. MÉCHAIN is en route southwards from Paris, while J. DELAMBRE works northwards. Your own men will be able to speak better to the reputation and capabilities of these two, but they are reputed diligent and well-equipped.