Liberty's Fire

by Lydia Syson

  Anatole came over to join him. ‘You didn’t really get a chance to talk to her at the fair, that’s the problem. But please trust me. She has a friend, too, Rose, and she wants me, us, to meet. She’s the one who helped her after her grandmother died – did I tell you her grandmother died?’

  Jules nodded.

  ‘And I was also thinking …’

  ‘You can be such an innocent, can’t you?’ Jules said, shaking his head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Never mind.’

  Anatole stood up again, and stretched. His head was still buzzing. ‘I’m worn out, but I still don’t think I’ll sleep yet. Would you mind if I practised for a while? Would it disturb you? I’ll shut the door of course.’

  ‘It wouldn’t disturb me. You know I like to hear you play.’

  ‘Oh. Good. But put some slippers on if you’re going to stay in here. And listen … you mustn’t fret about me and Zéphyrine.’

  Anatole wanted to smooth away every last bit of tension between them. He had persuaded himself that he could, that everybody could be happy.

  Jules was accommodating. ‘I’ll try not to,’ he said. Then, just as Anatole was leaving, he added: ‘It’s just that … falling too deeply, too quickly … it can be like an addiction. And once you’re obsessed, well, you’re trapped, aren’t you?’

  ‘Stop, Jules, there’s nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.’

  18.

  10th April

  For the first time in ages, Zéphyrine did not feel the emptiness of her room. She actually forgot to fear for the future. The gingerbread pig was propped up on the beam of the attic, just missing a few bristles of icing, knocked off in her pocket on the journey home. The mice hadn’t found it yet, and Zéphyrine certainly wasn’t tempted to nibble. For once she felt light-headed with something that wasn’t hunger.

  Outside, she could hear brooms sweeping steps, and the soft, repetitive thud of dust being thumped out of a rug. Madame Mouton, probably. With all pressure from the landlord now removed thanks to the latest decrees of the Commune, and the faint tension that had always persisted between Gran’mère and the concierge gone too, Madame Mouton couldn’t be friendlier. As Zéphyrine left for work, the concierge broke off her cheerful singing to tell her the latest. Two of the Montmartre battalions had made a surprise attack on the Versailles forces in the night, and even beaten them back a little way. A cork in a bottle, said Madame Mouton, that’s what this would be. Just you wait. They wouldn’t be hemmed in like this much longer. You couldn’t mess with Paris and expect to get away with it. The National Guard would show Versailles what real fighting was.

  Zéphyrine went off singing too. So much to sing about today, she thought cheerfully. She was on an early shift and had told Anatole she would meet him after work. Not right away, she had warned him, though she’d be as quick as she could. There was something else she had to do first. His face had clouded when she told him.

  It wasn’t easy to find real flowers to take to the grave. Every branch of blossom she spotted was just out of reach, so all she managed was a sprig of pink, brought down by shaking. On the way to the cemetery, Zéphyrine began to panic, as if Gran’mère could somehow still tell her off for being late. In her head, Zéphyrine explained her long absence – explained, not excused, she tried to remind herself; Gran’mère just seemed to shake her head. ‘It’s not been easy. I was going to come before. I wanted to. It’s just, just, just …’

  Just that everything seemed to have gone out of her head these past few days. Even with a queue of children waiting with bowls in hand, her thoughts kept drifting. She’d find herself standing like a statue, her ladle poised but not pouring, until someone jogged her elbow, and she splashed the soup. At the Vigilance Committee her sewing slowed to a halt. Her needle rested motionless between her fingers, for seconds on end, only brought back to life when Rose, or one of the other girls, clapped their hands in front of her face, and made her blink and splutter out apologies. At the slightest excuse, Anatole seemed to sneak into her thoughts. Everything made her think about him. What would he say to this? She must tell him about that.

  She reached the cemetery gates, and stopped. Coming here for the first time since the funeral was bound to be hard. Then it would get easier. Soon she’d be visiting every week, looking after things as she was supposed to. As Gran’mère would have expected. As she used to look after Papi’s grave, until she became too ill herself. So that meant the sooner Zéphyrine got it over with, the easier it would be the next time. She took a deep breath. Then she heard her name, and her heart danced. She turned to see Anatole jumping down from a cab, one arm behind his back. But he couldn’t reach up to pay the driver without revealing what he was trying to hide. The fiacre drove off with a crack of the whip, and Anatole walked towards her holding out a huge bouquet of hothouse flowers. She ran up to take them.

  ‘These aren’t for you – they’re for your grandmother!’ He pretended to whisk them out of her way for just a second, so that she had to grab his hands in her own to hold them still, to sink her face into their intensity. When she looked up, grinning, he reached a finger out to wipe a speck of lily pollen from her nose. They gazed at each other, suddenly becalmed, and the gatekeeper stared at them suspiciously, and sucked on his pipe. A group of children had been playing prisoner’s base, until their game was interrupted by the arrival of Anatole’s cab. Now they formed a semi-circle and watched intently to see what the couple would do next. One of the boys whistled. Zéphyrine whisked round to scowl at him, put an arm through Anatole’s, and then flounced into the cemetery and past the mortuary house.

  ‘Where did you get them?’ she asked as soon as they were out of earshot. She sniffed the flowers again and sighed, almost queasy with the heavy smell of them, so sweet and sickly. Her grandmother had taught her to make flowers just like these. She knew exactly how each stamen fitted together, how to curl every silken petal and sepal. ‘They’re so … grand.’

  ‘I stole them. Well, not quite. One of the singers at the theatre has an admirer with more money than sense, luckily for us. He’s besotted and simply won’t believe that she left Paris weeks ago.’ He shook his head in despair at the idiocy of some people. ‘So every day he brings her more flowers, and every day the doorkeeper winks and says she isn’t there but takes them anyway and sells them as soon as he can. Today I managed to intercept the flowers before he got his hands on them.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Anatole smiled, then frowned. ‘But are they too grand? And would you prefer to visit your grandmother on your own? I can wait for you. I’m quite happy to wait here for you.’

  ‘No, of course you mustn’t,’ said Zéphyrine quickly, walking faster and pulling him with her. ‘I’m glad you’re here now. It means I can introduce you to Gran’mère. In a way. Sort of.’ Then she admitted how little she had wanted to come by herself, and that she had begged Rose to keep her company but Rose was late for a meeting.

  Anatole shivered sympathetically. They turned left at the grand circle and headed down the hill. Tall family sepulchres rose like sentry boxes on either side. Their shadows cut across the path, alternating with blinding shafts of sunlight which shot out between monument after monument.

  Zéphyrine shaded her eyes, and hopped over a shadow. ‘It feels as if you’re walking over a grave,’ she said. ‘I really don’t like it here.’

  ‘All these doorways,’ agreed Anatole, holding her arm a little more tightly.

  ‘Yes. They look as if they must lead somewhere.’

  A Gothic arch followed a vast flat tomb and then another upright one, with a pointed roof. They passed metal doors and wooden ones, and even some stained-glass windows. Behind the formal avenues, graves were heaped haphazardly, tightly packed and tumbling down the hillside, an overcrowded stone city. ‘I’m not so silly as to think anything’s about to come out of one,’ she said firmly. ‘But they do make me feel …’

  Her voice trailed away. Zé
phyrine didn’t want to admit it. They made her feel angry, and jealous. Even in death, it was different for some people. Some families had a home waiting for them, and some didn’t. Famille Grandjean. Famille Chardon. Famille Maigne. How did it change your life to know that your name had been carved on stone before you were born and would be there long after you were dead?

  ‘Some of these look neglected.’

  ‘Their families have run away from Paris,’ said Zéphyrine, glancing at him, then back at the scrambling ivy, shiny and pale from the recent warm weeks. ‘It doesn’t take long for the creepers to take over.’

  It was a reasonable walk right down to the lower section of the cemetery, where the poor were buried. The bouquet felt heavier and heavier, and more and more out of place. They left the solid stone tombs and paved walkways behind them, and moved onto a wide dirt track, and Anatole fell silent. Zéphyrine suddenly realised why. He thought her grandmother was buried in the paupers’ pit. He thought that was where those grand flowers were heading.

  ‘Gran’mère is over there, look!’

  They stopped at a gap in the middle of a row of plain wooden crosses, and stood looking down at a pile of earth. It was bare and raw, like a scar on the grass, and you could see roots and bits of rock, she supposed.

  ‘It will sink down soon, they say. In about six months.’

  ‘In six months?’ he echoed.

  ‘And then we can put the cross back. Do you know, after all my worries, it turned out that she had already bought the plot for Papi? Maybe she knew she’d be following him soon. I wish she’d told me.’

  Zéphyrine looked at the grave and thought of her grandfather. She had thought of him the day she first met Anatole, the moment she had looked up at the glass roofs of Les Halles, and realised he had brought her to the very place where Papi had lost his life. She pictured again those tiny ladders that led to upper rooftops so high it made your neck ache and your head spin just to look at them. She imagined a man up there, a man like a bird, working on the roof. Zinc flashings, slippery in a sudden shower of rain. And once you started to fall, there was little to catch hold of. If you had been inside, looking up, at just that moment, could you have seen him? Had anyone caught a glimpse of her grandfather’s startled face – shock turning to horror, hands scrabbling on smoothness, eyes wild – sliding through rain-smeared glass? You could think you had dreamed a sight like that. Yet if Papi had not slipped, she would not be here with Anatole now. So that was the moment that had changed Zéphyrine’s life forever too.

  She knelt down, and gently laid the flowers on the earth. They would wither without water of course, but it couldn’t be helped now. She tried to concentrate on what lay beneath, under the petals and the earth and the wooden coffin lid. She ought to say a prayer, she supposed. ‘In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,’ she mumbled at last, feeling the dampness of the ground seeping into the knees of her stockings. It was so quiet she could hear Anatole breathing, and then swallowing awkwardly, almost in a gulp. He moved his feet slightly. She should have come alone. It was too difficult to think about her grandmother in the right way with him there beside her. Old bones and shrivelled flesh so close to his warm skin and pumping heart, all that rushing blood that made her blood run faster too.

  19.

  Marie decided to take Jules’s advice. She would go the following Monday, waste no more time. But there were things you had to do before paying a visit to one of the most powerful men in the Commune. Getting ready for somebody as important as the head of the police would take a while.

  After several hours in front of the mirror, Marie looked around at the chaos in her rented room. Stockings and petticoats overflowed from pulled-out drawers, and discarded gowns covered the bed. The half-hoops of her second-best crinolette writhed like a defeated sea monster on the floor, and seemed about to gobble up a pile of rejected shoes she had hurled into the corner. Marie found it hard to contain her clothes since moving to this place, so much darker and pokier than the last. But with nobody paying her visits these days – nobody who would care – the mess didn’t bother her much. As long as she looked the part when she left the building.

  She didn’t miss the banker’s visits: the constant requirement to make oneself available at all times, no matter how late, or how tired she was from a performance. Always having to put on another act. There had been a price for that apartment. But as Zéphyrine had said the first time they met, and she had pretended to ignore, a girl’s got to live. Though the eviction notice had come as a shock, there were certainly advantages to living within your means, and paying your own rent. Of course Marie missed the little luxuries, but she could eke out what was left if she had to. She planned to take her time before rushing under the wing of a second ‘protector’.

  Marie examined herself in the mirror again. She was determined to make exactly the right impression today. The problem was that she couldn’t work out what that might be. Was it better to dress up to the nines and act the coquette? Or should she opt for her oldest, plainest, most workmanlike cotton, and play the serious supporter of the revolution? Eventually she opted for something in between. A final glance in the glass reminded her to remove the delicate gold crucifix round her neck. Then, just as she picked up her shawl, yet another thought struck her, and she dashed to her sewing basket for the embroidery scissors. It was a shame to ruin a good bonnet, but she’d had no desire to wear this one since the Commune took over. A single red rose pinned to her bosom – an immortal red rose – that should prove her loyalty to Monsieur Rigault most decisively … shouldn’t it?

  After a half-hour walk, she arrived in sight of the spiked railings that sealed the dark cul-de-sac leading to the Prefecture of Police. Even to reach that huge fence she had to get through a mass of loitering soldiers. Marie’s courage wavered. Did they have nothing better to do? They seemed such a ragged bunch, these Guardsmen, leaning against walls, idly hurling stones down into the river. Marie sniffed, expecting to smell brandy fumes, and wondered what Emile would have had to say about their down-at-heel boots and torn jackets. All the time he’d been a prisoner of war, she’d been imagining him in his usual gleaming uniform, leather and brass all polished to a sheen. But how could that be true, she suddenly wondered, in a prison camp? What did captives wear?

  A metallic crash behind her made her clutch her throat.

  A clumsy young Guardsman had dropped his rifle. He grinned at her as he bent to pick it up, and then began to inspect it for damage. ‘Didn’t mean to scare you, mam’selle.’

  Marie smiled feebly, and turned away from him to press her face between the bars. How on earth were you supposed to get through?

  ‘Just a minute.’ He was calling her back. ‘Your pass. I’m meant to ask for your pass. Then I can let you in here.’

  ‘I don’t have one,’ said Marie, pulse racing. ‘That’s what I’ve come for. I need to see Monsieur Rigault.’

  He looked her up and down. Not quite unpleasantly. She froze.

  ‘I’m sure he’d be very pleased to see you,’ he said at last. ‘It’s this way.’

  He opened a small gate next to a large iron one, and Marie found herself in a narrow courtyard filled with yet more soldiers. All staring at her.

  ‘Where do I go now?’ she whispered to the Guardsman who had let her in. He seemed about to abandon her, his duty done. He gestured towards a sentinel guarding a large door on the far side of the courtyard with wall lanterns on either side. Marie kept walking. Some signal must have been exchanged between them. The door swung open and her footsteps echoed down an immensely long corridor, which she hoped was leading her to the chief of police’s office, though she couldn’t be sure. Yet another guard stood at the far end of this passage. Each one seemed better dressed than the last, she noted.

  ‘I don’t have a pass, not yet,’ she quickly explained. ‘I need to see the prefect. Himself.’ Best to be insistent. You can act, she reminded herself. ‘I have an appointment,’ she lied.

/>   ‘Wait here.’

  The waiting must be part of the trial, Marie decided. Fifteen minutes went by, and nobody returned. There was nowhere to sit. Her mouth felt coated in cobwebs when she tried to swallow. She thought of Emile and she thought of Anatole. She clenched her jaw and stood her ground. She must think of it as an audition, she decided. A part she had to win, no matter what.

  Distant doors continued to open and shut in the bowels in the building. This time the banging noises sounded closer. The door right in front of her finally opened again, and she was confronted by another new guard.

  ‘This way.’

  Seven more doors opened and shut behind her, watched by seven more guards, before Marie finally reached the sanctuary of Citizen Raoul Rigault. In a large, nearly empty room, the prefect of police sat writing at the only table. A pair of yellow gloves lay neatly folded on the green leather surface. His jacket, fringed with scarlet and gold, was nothing less than spectacular.

  Two gendarmes stood behind his chair, clearly waiting for orders. Another man – young, clean-shaven – was leaning against the mantelpiece at the far side of the room. Rigault did not look up.

  Marie stared at his dark bushy beard and wondered if this was what it had been like to stand before Robespierre during the Reign of Terror. It was impossible to forget the first revolution, how violently virtue had turned to bloodshed. Rigault was the man who boasted of having invented a guillotine that could cut three hundred heads off in an hour. Secret agents were his speciality. He was obsessive about hunting down the spies from Versailles, who seemed able to carry back to Thiers, within hours, every decision the Commune made. This was Rigault’s revenge perhaps, for the secret police who’d plagued his revolutionary activities for several years. He even bragged of having issued a warrant for God’s arrest.