Minuet

by Joan Smith

  “Not a common ancestor in the lot.”

  “Roberta. You have the grand misfortune to have a lady’s name. Your mama wanted a girl.”

  “No.”

  “Robin, like the little bird.”

  “No.”

  “Robinovitch? You have Russian blood?”

  “No, I have a French name actually.”

  “Not Robert?”

  “Unfortunately no.”

  “There is no French—Degan!” she shouted, coming to an upright position. “It cannot be! You are not, surely not Robespierre! How did you get such a name?”

  “From an uncle, who had a friend in France, not from Arras, of the same name. But I prefer to be called the Incorruptible.”

  “Mon Dieu!” she said, yawning and returning her head to her pillow. “How can I marry a man named Robespierre?”

  “You’re up to anything, Sal,” he answered with a chuckle, relieved to have his secret out. Then they slept peacefully till dawn began to show through the dirt-streaked windows.

  Chapter Nineteen

  By morning, Degan found himself an equal partner in the joint rescue operation facing them. With the real manager gone, it was up to them—a frightened girl and a stranger in the country unable even to speak the language—to achieve what was becoming every day more difficult.

  “What shall we do now, Pierre?” Minou asked him, having settled in her own mind that she liked his having a French name, but not quite the entire one he had been christened with.

  “Get a bite of breakfast and get away from here. It’s better for us not to stay too long in one place.”

  “Where shall I dye my hair, and where shall we change our clothes?”

  “Dyeing will take too long. We can’t waste a minute. We’ll souse it with dust and dirt as it was when first I saw you, and pick up some rags at a secondhand shop. This plaster can come off my eye. The wound still shows, but with some hair hanging over it, it won’t stick out as the bandage does.”

  “Your beard is beginning to cover the other, on your chin.”

  They went below to eat hard bread and drink turbid coffee, before taking once again to the streets. The only disguise attempted yet was for Minou to cover her hair with her shawl, and for Degan to carry his coat over his arm to diminish his shoulders. They had no trouble finding a secondhand store in this run-down quarter where life’s necessities were largely acquired by barter, but getting them on their backs was a little more difficult, as they could hardly let on in the store the clothing was for themselves.

  They walked along, carrying the bundle, till they came to a lot empty but for a shack with the door gaping open. “In here,” Degan said, and when the coast was clear, they slipped in, with Degan standing guard till Minou had changed, and vice versa.

  “Better wrap up the other clothes and take them with us in a pack,” he suggested.

  “Dangerous if we should be discovered,” she pointed out.

  “I can’t call on your mother in this smock. I doubt if I’d be let in, and I told her I’d be back today to check up on Edward. We’ll risk it. If we think we’re being followed, we’ll drop them and run.”

  “Yes, this is best,” she said at once, taking his word as law, though he was by no means sure himself that it was wise to risk carrying them. Being caught with two cartes civiles was also dangerous. Agnès Maillard’s card was wrapped up with the skirt and blouse, ready for discarding if necessary, and Minou’s hair was generously powdered with dry earth.

  They were ready to begin the long walk back into the city, and increased danger. No heads turned to look closely at a tall, stooping man wearing the smock of a workman, with a shock of hair falling over his eye, at whose side taggled a waif of a boy, half running to keep pace with his long strides. They exchanged few words, but occasionally an encouraging eye.

  “Where would be the best place to start looking?” Degan asked her.

  “They could tell us at the Conciergerie what homes have been requisitioned for extra prisons.”

  The very word struck ice into both their hearts. “Could the Luxembourg tell us?” he asked. While it was equally dangerous, the Luxembourg had not quite the horrible connotations of that medieval dungeon the Conciergerie. “You’ll have to do the talking, François. I’ll be right at your side.”

  “The Luxembourg is closer. On the south bank, at least. The Hôtel de Ville might be... but it’s even farther than the Conciergerie.” Even these things he didn’t know. “We’ll ask first at the Luxembourg, and if they don’t tell us, we’ll have to go on to the Île du Palais, to the Palais de Justice or the prison. They adjoin. Say nothing, more ami. I shall do the talking. I’m good for that, if nothing else.”

  They continued their trek, walking northwest to the rue d’Enfer till finally the Luxembourg loomed on their left. Degan swallowed a lump in his throat and gave her arm an encouraging squeeze. He noticed her cheeks were a brighter-than-usual shade of pink; she was frightened to death, poor thing, but holding her chin up at the insouciant angle of a street urchin as they entered the imposing main doorway of the building. There were throngs of people milling about, officials of the state, soubrettes, seamstresses, marketmen, simple peasants and laborers of their own counterfeit status. He was at a loss as to how to proceed, but Minou began elbowing her way through to a clerk who sat at a desk, looking vastly important as he shuffled papers and stared haughtily at the crowd.

  “Hein, citoyen,” she said in a loud voice, untinged with respect, “I hear that rascal Mérigot was caught yesterday. Is that right?”

  “So I hear,” he answered indifferently.

  “Where have they got the pig locked up?”

  “I don’t know, lad,”

  “Where do you think?”

  He hunched his shoulders in apathy.

  “Who would know?” she persisted in the face of his total indifference.

  “Don’t bother me. I’m busy. What do you want to know that for?”

  Degan felt his stomach tremble, fearing the man had become suspicious, but she answered in an annoyed voice, “I want to go and spit in his face. For twenty years my family worked like dogs for his family.”

  “Maybe Citoyen Robarts could help you,” the man told her, pointing across the hall to a closed doorway.

  “Merci,” she said cockily, and turned away, to walk straight to the closed doorway. Somehow a man behind a closed doorway seemed more ominous than a petty clerk sitting in an open lobby. She trembled to approach it, and Degan felt every sympathy for her, but together they went to the closed door. She cast one terrified glance at her companion before reaching up and giving the door a sharp knock.

  “Entrez!” the man called. They went in, shuffling in the apologetic manner of the humble approaching the mighty. The man had a fine office, with a clerk sitting beside him writing. Much the same conversation ensued as had taken place with the other clerk. Robarts seemed well pleased with the notion of someone spitting in Mérigot’s face, however, and condescended to glance at a list before him.

  “Mérigot is incarcerated at the home of the former comtesse de Beaufort on the rue d’Amiens, between St.-Honore and the Champs Élysées. He is under close arrest; you will not be able to see him.”

  “Merci, citoyen,” she said with a little bow. “Sorry to have disturbed you.” The two dashed from the office, unable to maintain their shuffling gait with their eagerness to get out.

  They left the building, walking quickly northward. “I thought I would faint of fright,” she said, her voice still uneven.

  “You were superb, as usual. I wish I could speak the language better. I am coming to understand a great deal more of what is said, but can’t master the pronunciation. I guess it’s that frozen tongue you mentioned.”

  “Mademoiselle Lange at the asylum taught me a few useful tricks about acting. She said when she plays a role that is very difficult for her, she ceases to be Mademoiselle Lange, and becomes whatever character she plays. Me, I have cease
d to be Mademoiselle Sally, and become François Blanchard, vaurien.”

  “What is this vaurien you keep speaking of?”

  “Worth nothing—useless. It is a term of contempt.”

  “Inaccurately applied to François Blanchard, or any of his aliases,” he said with a smile.

  “François thanks you, citoyen. We have ten blocks to walk. You might rename your racehorse François when you get home, after the famous steed—me. But don’t slacken your pace. Just slouch your big shoulders a little more forward. Look how these streets are crawling with gardes. Do you think they are looking for us?”

  “They don’t seem to be.” They passed quickly through the busy streets without being singled out in any way, over the Pont Neuf at the west end of the island.

  “There are all kinds of sights I could be showing you. Notre Dame back there—you can see the spires. The Conciergerie too is on this island, but we shall be invited there soon enough I think. Les Halles, the Louvre—bah, who cares for art at such a time. That is for civilization. We racehorses keep our eyes ahead, non?”

  “We’ll come back sometime, when this is over.”

  “Me, I think I have seen enough of France to last me forever,” she said in a bitter voice. “You don’t know how I wish we were back in safe, cold, foggy, dull England, Degan.”

  “We soon will be,” he encouraged wantonly, wondering if they ever would.

  They asked directions once they reached the rue d’Amiens, and were soon standing in front of what had once been a fine old mansion. The only indications that it was a prison were the uncurtained windows, a piece of tricolor bunting across the doorway, and two large, ugly gardes carrying the long, pointed pikes. They were visible a block away, the white belt forming a cross over their blue tunics.

  They walked up to one of these gardes; it was again Sally who had the unpleasant duty of speaking. “I hear you have that rat Mérigot inside,” she said.

  The garde turned his head aside and spat. “Where did you hear that lie?” he asked.

  She blinked in surprise. “They told me at the Luxembourg. Citoyen Robarts told me.”

  “He was mistaken. We haven’t got Mérigot here. They took him away early this morning.”

  “Where did they take him?” she asked quickly—too quickly; too much anxiety. Degan, wishing to caution her, gave a little harrumph.

  “I do not know. To a better-guarded spot, I believe, to prevent his accomplices from attempting to rescue him. They don’t want to let that one get away. You are very much interested in Mérigot. Why is that, son?”

  The man was suspicious, narrowing his eyes at them, even bringing his pike to a ready position. Did he suspect the accomplices stood before him? They knew at least they had been found out as accomplices. “I don’t want to miss his execution,” she said.

  This appeared to settle the man’s hackles down. “Be at Madame La Guillotine this afternoon, I suggest, and you won’t miss it.”

  “I haven’t read of any public hearing,” she said.

  “An outlaw of the Republic,” was the explanation.

  “Merci,” she said, but her cheeks had paled at the news, and the garde still looked with suspicion that was becoming sharper.

  “Who is this fellow with you? Has he got no tongue? What is your name, eh?” he said to Degan.

  Degan opened his mouth to speak, and found his mind a blank. He couldn’t remember the name on his card. “Well, what’s your name?” the garde asked, becoming impatient.

  He felt the sweat on his back, read the sheer terror in Minou’s eyes, and felt a foolish urge to say Robespierre. He reached in his pocket and handed the card to the garde. “Philippe Ferrier,” the man read. “What do you...”

  Degan knew that what he had experienced thus far this day was but a tremor. A veritable earthquake was brewing up inside him at this moment. He would have to talk—and his accent would give the whole show away. Then the front door of the building opened, and a man in uniform called down, “What’s keeping the coffee? It’s eleven o’clock. Get a move on.”

  The garde handed Degan back his card, threw down his pike and issued a few accomplished curses on the airs assumed by a vaurien who got made a clerk because his wife slept with a member of the Commune. Then he stalked away, and Minou and Degan slunk off silently in the opposite direction, their knees turned to jelly and their hearts in their mouths.

  “If we live through this day at all, we will both have snow-white hair and a faceful of wrinkles,” Minou said, her voice quavering. “I aged ten years in the past five minutes.”

  “How could I have forgotten my name?” Degan asked, disgusted with himself. “I’m no good at this.”

  “I’m sorry I involved you in it.”

  “I didn’t mean that!” he said, reaching out for her hand, then remembering just in time not to grab it. “I’m so little help to you. That’s all I meant.”

  “You’re my moral support,” she said. “I wouldn’t have the courage to face it alone. We learned nothing about Henri, but the worst is confirmed. It is to be the guillotine, and today, without even a trial.”

  “That’s only a formality in any case.”

  “It’s a delay. It would give us a little time.”

  “Let’s pick up a newspaper and see when the executions are to be held. The garde could be wrong. Robarts was. Everything is in a state of confusion. I wonder who’s running the ship.”

  They walked to a kiosk on the corner, gave over an assignat and snatched up a paper. As they walked along to a crowded park, Minou glanced at the headlines. “The members of the Commune are to lose their heads today, to get rid of any supporters Robespierre left behind.” They found a seat and settled down to a closer perusal. There was a good deal of writing about yesterday’s proceedings, the execution of Robespierre and some twenty-one lesser personages.

  “Here it is,” she said excitedly, finding the pertinent article more quickly than Degan. She glanced down the sheet while he followed more slowly, pondering over unfamiliar words.

  “Not a word about Henri,” she told him when she had finished. “It says the entire Commune is to be beheaded, seventy people altogether, a new record, but if Henri was to be executed with them it would be mentioned. Virais is a big name in France, newsworthy. They’ll save him for another day; the Commune members are sufficient to ensure a good crowd at today’s performance. They have nearly run out of noblemen to put to the ax.”

  “This gives us a little more time to find him,” Degan said.

  This was a little better than they had expected, but still, how were they to find him, and how to rescue him, as he had been taken into special security to prevent that very thing they hoped to accomplish? And how inadequately they were provided for the task—not even any money, to attempt to bribe or hire recruits to aid them.

  They spoke dejectedly a few moments, trying to remember whether there were any old friends who might help them, but Degan of course had no acquaintances in the country, and Minou’s were either dead or scattered to she knew not where. Any ex-friend of Mérigot’s who had survived had done so by supporting the Republic. They were alone in a hostile city, facing the impossible.

  “What we have to do is get a list of all the private homes being used to house prisoners,” she told him.

  “The Conciergerie?” he suggested, hating even to mention it.

  “No, we don’t have to go into the lion’s den. The Hôtel de Ville—ah, but it won’t be up-to-date at all, probably days behind. We’ll go back to Robarts. He was less frightening than the gardes. He had a list there; it might have been updated. We went very early, and they moved Henri only this morning. I wish Agnès Maillard might have a go at him.”

  “Better not. We don’t know who it was at the inn yesterday getting our description. They might be looking for us. Well, they are.”

  Back to the Luxembourg, another long trek, where Monsieur Robarts was gone off to lunch, not to return for an hour. “We do the same. It is t
ime to eat,” Minou decided.

  Their pockets were becoming woefully empty, but they could still afford a loaf of bread and cheese. A bench in the park was free, and thus heavily populated. Three other persons shared it with them, talking about all the great doings in Paris. One of them was an official, a très petit bourgeois, a little better dressed than the others, and condescending to expound on his job, which could not have been at all prestigious or he would have been able to afford a restaurant. Degan ate mechanically, but Sally sat with her ears perked, listening. When the official had stopped speaking, she craned her neck beyond the intervening people and asked, “Did I hear you say, citoyen, the Convention has taken over three more houses for prisons?”

  “Yes. They will be billeting them on you common folk next,” he answered, laughing.

  “They’ll have trouble shoving any of them onto us, eh, Philippe?” she asked, giving Degan’s elbow a jovial shove. “Already me and my brother here and four sisters living in two rooms. Whose house have they taken over now?”

  She listened with apparent mild interest to the three names. “All on the rue de Tournelle, did you say?” she asked.

  “No, two there and one on St.-Honore,” the man replied.

  As he was apparently a person of no importance, she trusted he was not bright enough to suspect another question. “Any idea which one they put Mérigot in?”

  “The former comte de Virais, you mean?” he asked.

  “Yes, the last of that hateful tribe. They’re going to put an end to them.”

  “He was one of the names on the list, but I don’t remember which place he was taken to. I heard they accidentally put him in one of the Virais mansions on d’Amiens, and had to move him in case he knew a secret passageway or something. Belonged to an aunt, the comtesse de Beaufort. He’s safe in any case. They’re all well guarded.”

  “Is that why they moved him?” Sally asked, wondering if she and Degan had managed to escape suspicion after all.

  “Yes, I hear they caught him climbing up some secret passageway to a roof. They say there is to be an attempt to rescue him. Two men, one posing as a woman wearing a red wig and the other as a boxer. Both of them English, I think. Mérigot is here spying for the English, of course.”