Treason's Spring

by Robert Wilton

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Some . . . concerns? Some problems?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A long way to come.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fouché smiled. Murad didn’t smile.

  ‘We shall be happy to offer you any assistance you may need.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  There was silence. Fouché was irritated, uncomfortable, with this impassive man who even as a guest would make no effort at politesse. In this office, the guests were supposed to be uncomfortable, and their tongues were supposed to be looser.

  One of the companions, looking uneasily between Fouché and Murad, started to say something about the Convention’s recent declaration but Fouché spoke over him. ‘Your embassy has been much caught up in recent events.’ He spoke deliberately sharply.

  The American said nothing. He nodded, very faintly, but it wasn’t clear if it was acknowledgement or appraisal of Fouché.

  ‘The American minister was given a dossier of documents by the former King, before he was overthrown.’ Silence. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Indeed. Perhaps it would be more convenient if we took those documents now. They are the property of the state.’

  Silence. Then one of the companions said, uneasily, ‘Monsoor, are you asking for the documents?’

  Murad’s eyes flicked to him. Then back to Fouché, as he said: ‘I think if Monsieur Fouché knows the documents were given to our minister, then he knows the documents were destroyed.’

  Fouché turned his anger into a smile. ‘Indeed. But – if I may ask explicitly – would you be so kind as to check whether there are any other documents, undestroyed, temporarily in the hands of the American embassy, which we may take back?’

  ‘We will check. We will give back to you any documents that are the property of the revolutionary government of France. We shall keep any documents that are the personal property of Louis, or that have become the property of the American minister.’

  Fouché nodded slowly, forcing the smile into place. ‘Naturally. Much caught up, I said. Unofficially too. Even your Mr Franklin is still a figure.’ For once, he thought he got a reaction. The American’s eyes seemed to narrow. ‘He was a member of a circle of notable correspondents some years ago, and still some of this circle write to each other, and still copies are sent to Mr Franklin. Presumably via your embassy, now that Mr Franklin is no longer minister and has returned to America.’

  Silence.

  Fouché kept the smile; took a deep breath through it. ‘I speculate that you have come to Paris, Monsieur Murad, to make investigations based on those documents from the Tuileries. I speculate that you are on a mission of espionage.’ Murad stayed silent. ‘You don’t answer?’

  ‘You didn’t ask a question.’ Even the sharpest retort came steadily from the big American. His voice never changed. His body never moved.

  ‘You don’t object to my making such an assertion?’

  ‘It’s a free country now. So we are told.’

  Emma Lavalier and Raphael Benjamin considered each other from discreet opposite sides of the stone summer house.

  ‘You’re grown thin, Raph.’

  ‘I’ve been running fast.’

  ‘And discreet. Thank you for finding me here.’

  Benjamin scowled. ‘I’ll be out of the woods soon enough, I fancy. But until then I shouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you.’

  ‘My most charming fugitive.’ They exchanged an old glance. ‘But what’s the point of it all, then? We are merely defending life, when life is grown tedious and empty.’

  He smiled. ‘It will return, that old life. I’ve just been playing the game a little more quietly for a spell. Hal Greene covered us all in shit, somehow. But I’ve now created a much more enticing bait for the authorities. It seems that our strange Scottish acquaintance has been most active in his misdeeds around France, and I’ve made sure there are documents to prove it.’

  She considered this.

  ‘For all of our sakes, Emma.’

  She nodded.

  They stood.

  ‘Was it truly care for my reputation, Raph?’ He frowned. ‘And not your own? You are a private doubt; I am a public question. Who is more dangerous to be seen with?’

  He stepped forwards. He took her hand.

  ‘My poor Emma,’ he said. He kissed the hand, and turned away into the afternoon.

  Later, that evening, Emma Lavalier and Manon Roland found each other in a corner of the salon of Madame Henaut.

  ‘Dear Emma, my vanity sometimes tells me that I am in touch with the real France. And then I see you, and I remember that you know more than anyone.’

  ‘Dear Manon, only the trivial details known by the maid or the foot-soldier; we are all in your shadow.’

  ‘I fear that Paris is gossip only – noise and nothing real. Today all they discussed in the Convention was the squabble between Custine and Kellermann. What of their armies? What of the foreign threat?’ Bewitching smile. ‘But for news of dangerous foreigners I must ask my Emma.’

  Careful. It brought back the conversation with Raph. Her ambiguous position. Her over-prominent reputation.

  She contrived a pose of dignity.

  ‘In truth, dear Manon, I am grown rather distant from my foreign friends. The British, in particular. It no longer seems appropriate for a Frenchwoman to be seen with such people, when one knows a little of their games. One in particular – I know that your dear husband, and Monsieur Fouché, have been most anxious about him – the man Kinnaird . . . He was at my house once, you know. But now I learn him to be most dangerous.’ She shook her head. ‘It is a matter of duty, I think.’

  Manon Roland nodded.

  It will have to serve.

  In a carriage, swaying and jolting over the cobbles, Murad the American was once again the centre of gravity.

  ‘You didn’t feel like confiding in our friend, sir?’ one of his two companions said, head bobbing against the square of daylight.

  ‘I did not, Mr Shields.’

  ‘If the British are reading our correspondence, the French might have useful information about it,’ the other said. ‘British names. Contact men. Channels.’

  ‘I presume they do. That reptilian gentleman didn’t look like anyone’s fool.’

  ‘The French are the closest thing we have to allies. I reckon they rather feel we owe them for supporting us in the war. Now they’re fighting the same fight as us. Same ideals.’

  Murad’s head swung slowly to face the man.

  ‘You ever see one of those machines – those death blades – in Philadelphia?’

  The companion shook his head uncertainly. ‘No, sir.’

  Murad still hadn’t blinked. ‘Uh-huh. You plan on ever seeing one?’

  Surer now. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Reckon I’ve fought for liberty as much as any man.’ The other two nodded. ‘And I believe powerful strong in equality. And in the right company I’ll take a little fraternity. But I won’t tell these people how to run their Revolution; and I’d choose that we be left alone to run our republic likewise.’ He sat back against the upholstery. ‘Now: tell me about the lady.’

  Raphael Benjamin.

  Sir Raphael Benjamin, Baronet.

  Baronetcy tenuous, obliged to fly the roost, temporarily resident in the anus of Europe, where baronetcies and all such are being outlawed.

  Estate: one dashed fine coat, the clothes I stand up in, a change of shirt, a blade, a pistol, a purse of small coins, and promissory notes from a collection of whores, gamblers and dead men; and one of the French royal jewels.

  The tavern ain’t going to accept a diamond for the room. Deference’s gone right out the window.

  Society: none.

  One broken Englishman, farting and snoring on the adjacent palliasse.

  Good old Ned.

  None too glorious, is it, Raph?

  Emma.

  But Emma finds me
. . . what, now? Uncouth? No, she ain’t that snooty. Dangerous? Perhaps, but not in any exciting way.

  Emma finds me unnecessary.

  Society: none.

  Memories of companionship, of glittering roaring evenings, of aces bold in the candlelight, of ivory bodies under the moon.

  A Paris slum, an ageing man on a palliasse, dreaming of flesh that has sagged and died now. None too glorious. One of nature’s aristocrats, now too damned close to nature.

  Ned’s catechism. Smith, and Yeo, and Swan. Good men old and rancid before their time, derelict and embarrassing in tavern bunkrooms.

  Sure I have no more reason to live than they.

  The London shadow-men. Bullies, blackmailers and pimps.

  But a cause. A chance.

  A spree. A sport. A prize.

  Documents. A royal servant fleeing Paris, with the last scraps of his identity and loyalty.

  Well, we’ve all tried that.

  The servant Bonfils, who had died so strangely, in the company of Hal Greene. Also dead; also strangely.

  I shall not cough and slouch my life out. They shall not find me on a lousy blanket in the puddle of my last piss; they shall not throw my corpse out with the night’s pot.

  In the chaos of this new France, there shall be distinction, and brilliance, and glory.

  Fouché rode out of Paris with his habitual unease. The daylight that glared at him as he emerged from the shadow of the St-Denis gate, and the mean smudges of rustic houses in the landscape, seemed as the German forests must have seemed to the legions of Caesar. Simply being on horseback was discomfort enough.

  The beast began to lope and lurch towards St-Denis. Lavoisier had named his copyist – a man in St-Denis, a man who doubled as the apothecary.

  Fouché lived in ideas. In information. The physical was no more real than what it represented: support; treason; possibility. Even faces were only as real as what they showed or hid.

  But he had realized, uneasily, that he needed to see St-Denis.

  He saw the apothecary’s house, and wondered at it. Like many such places, it served as a post office, a point of reference where messages might be held for local people.

  This was the place where the copyist worked for the Friends of Magnetism, copying and circulating their letters to each other. Chosen by their secretary, the late Monsieur Lavalier, who as a local man no doubt knew the place and would have come to a reliable arrangement with the copyist. Near enough to Paris for convenience.

  What is the significance of this?

  Fouché couldn’t find it in the two-storey building, the fading plaster and the slumping window frames, nor in the few men sitting inside.

  Men of prominence, doing work known to the state, contrive an arrangement for their correspondence. There was nothing illegal in it; nothing strange.

  And Lavalier? It was probable that Emma Lavalier knew of the arrangement her late husband had made. Was she in communication with men like Lavoisier, and Bailly, and Guillotin, and the American Franklin? What if she was?

  What could she be to them? Fouché couldn’t see Lavoisier attending one of her dubious parties.

  I am over-thinking this.

  The significance is not in the connection between Lavalier, and Lavoisier, and anyone else. The significance is information. He thought fondly of his desk, back in bustling vital Paris. This is a world where information is power, and where information flows in infinite and unimagined channels. He conceived of the world as a vast net, individuals of greater and lesser significance connected by strings of correspondence, copied and couriered through otherwise useless places like this. Power was not about strength: which person you threatened, or which road you put your army on. Power was how you understood and sensed the movement of information in the net.

  I must read it.

  Guilbert should be instructed: he should use his police agents to control this place. Not the people: but the information that came and went.

  I must read it all.

  He saw the inn at the sign of the Tambour, where the man Greene had lived, and the man Kinnaird.

  The British provocateurs had inhabited these streets. Somewhere here, the woman Lavalier held her notorious salons.

  It seemed a vile place, to Fouché. He gained no new insights from his visit; but what should he have expected of physical things? Reassuringly, the meanness diminished the significance of the people he was trying to understand. They could not be much, in a place like this. The sight of Paris, massive on the horizon as he awkwardly turned the horse around at last, was a great comfort.

  Lucie Gérard saw him, from the shadow of a clump of trees. He reminded her of Kinnaird, so pale and out of place. He made her feel cold.

  Emma Lavalier saw him from her window, and wondered if every day he visited every street in France.

  Once again, Raphael Benjamin went to call on the sister of the late Xavier Bonfils. This time he wrote first – a visit of courtesy, of condolence; the hope that the community of servants of the master of the servant might demonstrate their continued concern for one of their number in her sorrow.

  She’d taken the bait. Even in these times, the possibility of charity outweighed caution. Again, Benjamin found her face behind the door, pale in the gloom of her mean home. She let him in to the parlour this time, and she was silent until he was seated.

  She’d prepared a little speech, he could tell. As soon as he’d sat down she was off, fists clutched together in front of her and eyes blinking hard as she recited. It was very kind of the gentleman to call. It was very heartening that she was not alone in the saddest moment of her life. She knew nothing of politics, she would not say anything about the King or about the government, but she hoped that in these difficult times there might still be rewards for loyalty, for men of good heart and honest faith.

  Benjamin had a speech of his own, and it followed accordingly. What it must mean to lose a brother. Bonfils as a symbol of loyalty in the most uncertain times. The importance of those who were left preserving – in a most discreet way, naturally, Madame – their values and fellowship. Regrettably in these hard times there was so little to spare, but if she would overcome herself enough to accept a tiny gift of sympathy from one who admired her brother . . . No, he insisted – and he really had to, and it bloody hurt, and he wondered again how much he was going have to spend to buy back his name. Damn sure that Louis and London could afford this better than I can. If he, Keith Kinnaird, could ever assist her, she had only to write to him in St-Denis or mention his name to other sympathizers.

  She accepted: a little curtsey, and he saw her desperation in the tight clutch at the purse. Monsieur must accept some wine; she was sorry that it was not of the best.

  It was of the worst, but Benjamin suffered a polite couple of sips.

  Then he asked – perhaps a strange request, Madame, but we pay our respects as best we can to the spirits of those who have gone before – to see where dear old Xavier had stayed while he’d been here. She hesitated, then nodded, and ushered him out. He didn’t take the wine with him.

  The bedroom was on the second floor, tiny and barren. Benjamin walked to the centre of it, trying to seem solemn.

  He didn’t know what he was looking for.

  Something about the man, Xavier Bonfils. Something about his character, or his habits. Something about the book he’d been carrying when his sister had last seen him, a book obviously special to him. What might have happened to it, between the moment when he walked out of this house with it tight under his arm and when he arrived in the inn in Meaux without it. What it might have been, to be so precious.

  The walls were whitewashed; the timbers were bare. The bedstead was crude, and the bedding had been removed. There was a chair beside the bed, splay-footed and rickety, with a crucifix lying on it. There were two spindly iron candlesticks on a bare mantelpiece. It was a skeleton of a room.

  He turned a full circle, slowly: trying to show gravity, trying to take in t
he room. The woman was watching him from the doorway.

  Between the two candlesticks, a nail had been driven into the wall. Something no bigger than a hand’s breadth or two had hung here. The whitewash had covered the nail.

  He had no idea what the book might be. But – particularly if he decided to keep a hold of the second jewel for rather longer – this strangely important souvenir of the royal palace would be something to sweeten London.

  The crucifix had a hook at its head; so that the son of Mary could take one more nail. The crucifix usually hung on the wall.

  Bonfils’s sister was still in the doorway, watching.

  Your brother was a man of faith, Madame, I think.

  Yes, he most certainly was. Nothing excessive, of course. Nothing showy. A good Catholic. The little he had he gave to the Church for charity. He always sought the company of men of the Church. Thoughtful, dignified men. Like poor Xavier.

  Benjamin could hear the emotion rising in her voice, could feel himself getting irritated. There might be something in it. ‘And, dear Madame – contain yourself, I beg you, for his sake – did our poor Xavier receive any letters before he left?’

  Through red-nose sniffs, she nodded, and Benjamin felt his excitement grow. ‘I remember, because it seemed such a relief to him. As he read it he kept saying “a good man, a good man”, over and over.’ Benjamin waited, heart thumping his impatience. ‘The librarian of Meaux, he called him. A good man.’

  Her voice was breaking again, at the thought of the good men. Benjamin was remembering his games as Kinnaird in the inns of Meaux, tracking the last journey of Bonfils to his death in Montmirail. And he remembered now the cathedral looming over Meaux. He made his courtesies as fast as he could.

  ‘My trail grows cold, Guilbert.’ Fouché’s hands moved like a magician’s over the papers in front of him. ‘The ink begins to fade on these. No pattern. And nothing new.’

  Guilbert nodded. Guilbert stayed silent.

  ‘The secrets of the royal correspondence of France are as far from me as ever.’ His voice was soft; a pale voice, to match skin and hair. ‘There must be so much. And it’s somewhere in Paris. Or am I wrong, and everything was destroyed?’