Glaring at the giggling widow, Raoul swore and, setting assertive hands around her waist, swung her back up onto the driver's board before she could squeak out an argument.
"Well, Citizen Quettehou will be happy," she exclaimed cheerfully to nettle him further. "And you can set me down near the Place de Vendôme as well."
"It is no hardship to take you straight to your lodging." Raoul's hands stayed long enough on her waist to feel the quick intake of breath. So she was far from immune to his pursuit! Or was she fearful of his suspicion rather than his desire?
"You mistake my meaning, Citizen de Villaret," the widow in her lied primly. "Thank you for the experience this morning. It was quite... unforgettable and I would not have missed it for the world, but I have no wish for our names to be linked further." He was pleased to see her face and throat had turned to rose. "I'm sorry about your balloon. And I appreciate your... your offer, but I am afraid deepening our acquaintance is out of the question."
"I think you are in error, citizeness." He seated himself beside her again and the farmer flicked the whip. The oxen started stoically.
"Error? That is a very sinister word, Deputy de Villaret, but I am not afraid of you."
"I am delighted to hear it," returned Raoul. They progressed in silence.
She tugged the veil of her hat down but people were staring, putting two and two together and making a dozen. The cart's load and passengers had become an entertainment. Oh, there would be hell to pay for this. Raoul's mind slid into ways and means of diluting the damage, and then with a pang of guilt he remembered the citizeness's tale of some attempt on her life. He must look into this, question her and the chef further. It would give him better reason to annoy her at the café.
"I am sorry about this," he said, wondering why he was apologising, and reached out a hand to her tense fists.
"Don't be," she said cryptically. "But it wasn't my fault either."
Confident that only she could hear him above the rattle of carts and bawl of stall-keepers, Raoul warned her, "I don't give up easily. Don't run from me unless... unless Hérault has already cozened his way into your affections with perfume and gewgaws?"
"Do you imagine I am so easily bought?" No anger but a sigh. "To be plain with you, Citizen de Villaret, I... I met someone once that I would like to meet again." Each word was weighed out for him with an apothecary's care.
"A ci-devant lord with a pretty face." Raoul could not resist the sneer.
"A thief, actually." She lifted her chin—Joan of Arc, smug after conquering Orleans, might have looked just so—and she was clearly relishing his astonished expression. "He-he helped me once. I-I could have been killed."
"A thief elevated to hero?" he laughed, with a cynical memory of his own."And if this criminal comes knocking at the door?"
"I would not let him in," she murmured coyly, her gaze sliding away as the cart halted in the jam of vehicles. Mysterious behind her veil, she added breathily: "Besides, he won't. He will enter by the window unasked, I'm sure." Before he could stop her, she sprang up, stepped past him and swung herself down onto the cobbles. "Au revoir," she beamed with a mocking twirl of skirts, and kissed her hand to Robinet and the officer.
"No!" Raoul stayed the farmer's whip hand, in two minds whether to pursue her. Liked thieves, did she? Well, he wasn't without experience.
"Hola, Citizen Deputy!" An insolent hand buffeted his head. "Are we going to hold up the traffic all day while you daydream?" Robinet stepped over the backboard and landed beside him in an aroma of garlic, sweat and cow dung.
Raoul shook his mind from a reverie that had him slowly freeing La Coquette from a gauzy peignoir and surfaced to the torrent of invective from the cooper's cart queued behind them. "Oh, d'accord, we're going!" he shouted back, giving a Parisian gesture.
"Well, now you've no choice, Deputy." Robinet clapped Raoul's bruised shoulder with deliberate glee."Looks like you'll have to go in by the window as well."
Chapter 12
Concealed behind a Passy water stall, Fleur watched as the cart, snared between a fiacre and a cartful of lashed barrels, was herded down the Rue Saint-Honore. If that was an end to her association with de Villaret she should have been glad, but by the time she reached her house, she was feeling as abandoned and deflated as the unroped balloon.
"Good God!" exclaimed M. Beugneux, relief flooding his face as he flung open the door with Thomas in his wake, "I thought p-pastoral activities went out of fashion when the ci-devant Queen left Versailles."
Fleur stared down wryly at her spattered skirt as she drew each of her soles across the boot-scraper. "Haven't you heard of mode à la crotte?"
The gentleman's thin mouth twisted in impious pity as he plucked a hatpin of impertinent straw from her hair. "My dear child, I really think you should come inside before the trend sets P-Paris ablaze. Thomas here has almost been reduced to a nothingness."
"Patronne." The large man was in tears as he embraced her. "What happened to you? The deputy's friends and I tried to follow but—"
"It is all right, Thomas, we all survived, but I am sorry I caused you such concern." Ushered into the small salon, she sank down on a chair and gratefully accepted a café noir. "I am back to earth as you can see but, believe me, there were moments—" The two men listened without interruption as she told of her adventure.
"Formidable," applauded M. Beugneux afterwards, "but, as you will have observed, the trouble with dirt is that it adheres to all manner of things. I really think you should see this." He unfolded a pamphlet from his coat pocket. "As you see, the ink is hardly dry. Your acquaintance Emilie Lemoine brought it round shortly before your return."
It was Marat's broadsheet L'Ami du Peuple.
My brothers, my friends, it should be drawn to your notice that two of our deputies are wasting money on hot air to impress their charms upon a femme galante. The people want to know, nay, demand to be told, the source of their funds for such an expensive enterprise. Have these citizens another, more lucrative sideline—like dipping into the public coffers or diverting army supplies? What says La Minette Rouge or, judging by her modiste, should we say, Noire? 'Alors, people of Paris, it will take more than getting a balloon up to impress me!'
Black pussycat! Fleur gasped. Marat meant her."But this is lies," she exclaimed in outrage. "I have never... Why I... I only met Citizen Boissy... today."
M. Beugneux refilled her coffee cup. "Hmm, you understand the phrase femme galante, of course, my dear?"
Oh, she did: actresses, mistresses, the "other" women who made men's relationships triangular. Fleur felt her face growing hot. "This is absolutely vile," she exclaimed, rising from her chair in fury.
"I daresay Marat has been longing to bring the aristocrat Boissy d'Anglas down and this is his moment. Where are you going, petite?"
Fleur paused at the door. "Why, I am going round to the Jacobin Club to tell Marat what he can do with his broadsheet."
M. Beugneux frowned and set aside his cup and saucer. "I suppose there is no hope of dissuading you, my child? There has been enough hot air about today and M-Marat doesn't need any more to inflate him to the heights of Mount Olympus. Besides, while your appearance is charmingly rural, it lacks..." he raised his quizzing glass at her dishevelled appearance, "shall we say, authority."
* * *
The exertion of the hasty walk creamed off some of her fury but on reaching the Jacobin Club just as the session was conveniently breaking up, Fleur, now cleanly gloved and gowned, cranked herself up to take on the enragé of enragés. The broadsheet in her hand like a bayonet, she charged in, scanning the chamber for Marat with as much ferocity as a well-paid dragoon ordered to search the undergrowth for royalists.
"Fleur!" With a gleaming shake of her hoop earrings, Emilie caught her arm. "It is you. Bonjour! I heard about the balloon. What sport, eh?"
"That's why I'm here. Where is Marat?" It was a wonder she couldn't smell him—except that she'd heard he bathed daily to
relieve his skin condition—but there he was, scruffy as ever, debating some point with the tall—unusual for a native of the Auvergne!—Deputy Jean-Baptiste Carrier and two other men below the rostrum. Fleur marched on past the benches and straight into the cluster. Carrier, shocked at her audacity, paused in midsentence.
"Miaow!" said someone.
Cheeks burning, Fleur tried to shake off Emilie's restraining hand. "I wish to speak with you, citizen, in private."
"Want to levitate with him as well, ma belle?" Carrier asked snidely.
"Here will do, citizeness," replied Marat, his gnome's eyes wicked.
The amused male audience was disconcerting but Fleur took a deep breath and brandished L'Ami du Peuple. "If you call yourself a writer, you should be better informed... and accurate!"
The beloved of the people sucked in his cheeks. "Moi, chérie?"
"Yes! You made up most of this." She rattled the paper."Where is your integrity? This is just gossip to titillate the ignorant."
"Wooohoo."The cluster of listeners about her was multiplying.
"You imply I am an adulteress. You slander me without any thought for the truth or how this may put me out of business."
"I should imagine it will bring customers racing in, sweetheart." The impudent hack was smiling.
"But you quote me, Citizen Marat. I never said these things! How can you justify such vilification? Oh, I was prepared to have respect for you, citizen, but such utter rubbish convinces me you are prepared to prostitute truth just to sell more of this." She crumpled it and shook the contents of her fist. "You owe me an apology, Citizen Marat."
"Ma petite fille, this is, shall we say, a little revenge for La Coquette's impertinence."
Ignoring Emilie's warning tug, Fleur held her ground. "I do not mind apologising for that, Citizen Marat. At least my actress didn't misquote or cheapen you. And as for you saying that the Republic does not need balloons, well, let me—"
"Oh, hold your tongue, you trollop," Felix Quettehou drawled, materialising at Marat's side like a pantaloned guardian angel. "Shall we ban her from the club, citizens? Give her a spanking and send her home?" He smirked at her astonished face.
"I'm a good hand with a slipper," threw in Deputy Carrier, but the great man flung up a hand to silence them both.
"Young woman, are you telling me that this morning's expensive little enterprise served any purpose?"
"Yes, it did, Citizen Marat, if you want France to win this war against Austria. Don't you know balloons can be steered over the enemy's line or into citadels and forts and... well, someone has to pay the money and take the risks and—"
"—impress whores?" Quettehou sneered, making full use of their audience to add, "If you are so virtuous, Citizeness Bosanquet, go home and sew for the army!"
Trying to ignore the humiliation, Fleur straightened her shoulders, unable to think of any words acid enough to hurl in his face. "This is none of your business, Citizen Quettehou."
"Isn't it?" Receiving an encouraging nod from Carrier, her horrid nephew continued: "You seduce an old, dying man into signing my inheritance over to you and now you are dragging his good name through the gutter."
Fleur stepped back as though he had slapped her; the expressions around her were no longer indulgent.
"I did not seduce your uncle, Citizen Quettehou. I tried to save his life and my involvement in the whole business this morning was an accident."
"Grieving widows do not go to balloon ascents."
The despicable cur! Fleur stared bleakly at her own defeat. It was time to retreat with tattered banners and a huff of virtue—or she could try fainting. But before she could even employ the first strategy, Marat said quietly: "I hear someone set fire to your café premises, citizeness."
"Yes, citizen."
"It wasn't me, Citizeness Bosanquet. I appreciate good food too much. "With a hand on the small of her back, the great man steered her out of the group and walked her towards the door. "I have some terrible faults, sweetheart, but arson isn't one of them."
"I never accused—"
"No, you didn't, child. I am glad you didn't think I was responsible."
It was necessary to ask one more question. She swallowed, her gaze modest, and asked: "They won't march anyone into a tumbril, will they, because of this? I should not want that to happen. If the people believe—"
"Sentimental about de Villaret, are you?"An ink-stained finger flicked her cheek. "Oh, I know he's pursuing you. I should cut a wide berth round that young blade if I were you. Take my advice. Go home and forget about him. He's like the rest of us. The Revolution is our wife; our mistresses are just... mistresses." Then, with a chuckle, he tugged the pistol from his belt and playfully aimed it at one of the neighbouring windows. "It's not de Villaret but Boissy d'Anglas I have my sight trained on. Money to burn and friends across the Rhine." He fired. The window pane cracked and a whole platoon of outraged pigeons took to the skies. "You have good nerves, ma fille. Have I made my point?"
Fleur, white as a flag of surrender, recovered her deafened wits. "Someone could have been behind that glass," she accused.
"What is one life to save many," Marat's gaze was piercing now, "so long as France is served? By the way, de Villaret needs to arm himself. The Girondins are after me, but for now they'll be pleased with whatever Jacobin bird they can shoot at, and he'll do nicely."
* * *
"Why are you putting yourself through the mangle, Raoul, pretending that it was only you who financed the balloon enterprise? Boissy's a big lad. He should look after himself." Armand, for once laden with a tennis racquet rather than a work of philosophy, encountered Raoul next morning in the forecourt outside the wing of the Tuilleries Palace where the Convention was in Sunday session.
Raoul smiled. The fastidious Boissy would shudder at being likened to a stable hand. "It's all right, Armand. I can defend myself." And I have a debt to repay, he added silently. When Raoul's father had cut off his defiant son's allowance, it had been his godfather, Boissy's papa, who had persuaded the famous David to take Raoul on as an apprentice. "I imagine your Girondin friends have their knives already whetted," he added.
"I am sorry, Raoul. You know they've been waiting for an opportunity like this. Even Manon Roland is in the gallery."
"Then I had best get this over with. Are you coming in?"
"No, this is one debate I will not be part of. Good luck, my friend." He embraced him in Gallic fashion. "Ah, wait, I forgot. Did you know your rural Venus accosted Marat at the Jacobin Club last night?"
"She did what?"
"Accused him of vilifying her. You'd better go. Hérault's over there waiting for you. At least your friends are rallying."
But Hérault, with Marat's broadsheet poking out of his redingote pocket, did not look in the least sympathetic."Have you read L'Ami du Peuple?" he growled, unfolding his arms and falling in beside Raoul as they entered the vestibule.
"Oh, I saw it."
"Insufferable! You must deny everything they throw at you and let Marat have Boissy's head if that's what he wants. It'll keep the Girondins off our backs."
Raoul stopped and swung round on him. "For God's sake, Hérault, I am not going to let Marat crucify Boissy just because he worked for royalty. I am playing this my way!" and he strode through the great doors alone.
It was an hour later when he finally left his seat among the Mountain deputies to take the rostrum. If the word "balloon" was mentioned any more today, he wouldn't be keeping his fists in his pockets, he vowed silently as he climbed the steps to answer the volley fired at him by the Girondin deputies.
The latter were jubilant. They had been bombarded with so many accusations of filching government funds, collaborating with the Austrians and selling army supplies to fill their own pockets in the last weeks that they were now squawking like exuberant carrion crows at having a Jacobin to pick at. Salauds!
"You may proceed, citizen."
Raoul calmly inclined his head t
o the president and began to present his answers. Lucidly, he hoped. For every government jeer, he hurled back chapter and verse on the use of balloons in war and commerce. He bared his breast for the Girondins to shoot at, claiming that it was he who had financed the entire ascent.
"You're a liar, de Villaret," roared Marat.
"Audit my papers then!"
It was honest. This morning, despite Boissy's protests, Raoul had paid the bills for yesterday's bricks and cables; but now, facing the tough men who had weathered the Revolution, he wondered if that had been enough. The squabbling Convention was out of control. Nothing less than an exorbitant donation to the public coffers would dampen this fire—unless they demanded his head as well.
When he finally stepped back down onto the floor of the assembly, he knew what it felt like to be crossed off the morning's tumbril list. He was going to be a lot poorer by sunset but at least the Girondin government needed money more than it needed executions.
Georges Danton took the rostrum after him and in tones that a Pericles or Marcus Antonius would have been proud of, grandly began to defend the cause of love. Raoul, roused by pokes from his companions, listened in growing horror. It would have been rather amusing had he not been the "damsel in distress" this particular Saint-Georges was rescuing.
"Diable! Hérault, is this your doing?" he muttered behind his hand. It was tempting but ill-advised to march his companion outside behind a hedge and punch that well-bred nose.
"Saved you a fortune, haven't I?" chortled Hérault. "Isn't Danton a marvel? Look up there, mon brave, have you ever seen so many women snivelling?" It was a wonder Hérault had not solicited Citizeness Bosanquet to go into a dramatic swoon in the gallery while she tossed out broadsheets advertising breakfast. At least she wasn't here, thank God.
"Would you like your face rearranged now or later, Hérault?"
"Such ingratitude! At least you cannot rearrange Danton's. It's already been done."
Moved by Danton's stentorian magnificence, the session broke up moist-eyed and forgiving, and Raoul, with a coterie of sentimental Jacobins protecting him as though he were a prize stud at a horse fair, ended up in a tub-thumping, drunken haze in Danton's wine cellar singing "Ça Ira."
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