A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  “Oh, hallo,” Hérault said. “I didn’t see you there, Maître Desmoulins.”

  “Of course you saw me. You just wish you hadn’t.”

  “Come, come,” Hérault said. He laughed. He had perfectly even white teeth. What the hell do you want? d’Anton thought. But Hérault seemed quite composed and civil, just ready for some topical chat. “What do you think will happen,” he asked, “now that the Parlement has been exiled?”

  Why ask me? d’Anton thought. He considered his response, then said: “The King must have money. The Parlement has now said that only the Estates can grant him a subsidy, and I take it that having said this they mean to stick to it. So when he recalls them in the autumn, they will say the same thing again—and then at last, with his back to the wall, he will call the Estates.”

  “You applaud the Parlement’s victory?”

  “I don’t applaud at all,” d’Anton said sharply. “I merely comment. Personally I believe that calling the Estates is the right thing for the King to do, but I am afraid that some of the nobles who are campaigning for it simply want to use the Estates to cut down the King’s power and increase their own.”

  “I believe you’re right,” Hérault said.

  “You should know.”

  “Why should I know?”

  “You are said to be an habitué of the Queen’s circle.”

  Hérault laughed again. “No need to play the surly democrat with me, d’Anton. I suspect we’re more in sympathy than you know. It’s true Her Majesty allows me the privilege of taking her money at her gracious card table. But the truth is, the Court is full of men of good will. There are more of them there than you will find in the Parlement.”

  Make speeches, d’Anton thought, at the drop of a hat. Well, who doesn’t? But so professionally charming. So professionally smooth.

  “They have good will towards their families,” Camille cut in. “They like to see them awarded comfortable pensions. Is it 700,000 livres a year to the Polignac family? And aren’t you a Polignac? Tell me, why do you content yourself with one judicial position? Why don’t you just buy the entire legal system, and have done with it?”

  Hérault de Séchelles was a connoisseur, a collector. He would travel the breadth of Europe for a carving, a clock, a first edition. He looked at Camille as if he had come a long way to see him, and found him a low-grade fake. He turned back to d’Anton. “What amazes me is this curious notion that is abroad among simple souls—that because the Parlement is opposing the King it somehow stands for the interests of the people. In fact, it is the King who is trying to impose an equitable taxation system—”

  “That doesn’t matter to me,” Camille said. “I just like to see these people falling out amongst themselves, because the more they do that the quicker everything will collapse and the quicker we shall have the republic. If I take sides meanwhile, it’s only to help the conflict along.”

  “How eccentric your views are,” Hérault said. “Not to mention dangerous.” For a moment he looked bemused, tired, vague. “Well, things won’t go on as they are,” he said. “And I shall be glad, really.”

  “Are you bored?” d’Anton asked. A very direct question, but as soon as it popped into his head it had popped out of his mouth—which was not like him.

  “I suppose that might be it,” Hérault said ruefully. “Though one would like to be—you know, more lofty. I mean, one likes to think there should be changes in the interest of France, not just because one’s at a loose end.”

  Odd, really—within a few minutes, the whole tenor of the conversation had changed. Hérault had become confiding, dropped his voice, shed his oratorical airs; he was talking to them as if he knew them well. Even Camille was looking at him with the appearance of sympathy.

  “Ah, the burden of your wealth and titles,” Camille said. “Maître d’Anton and I find it brings tears to our eyes.”

  “I always knew you for men of sensibility.” Hérault gathered himself. “Must get off to Versailles, expected for supper. Good-bye for now, d’Anton. You’ve married, haven’t you? My compliments to your wife.”

  D’Anton stood and looked after him. A speculative expression crossed his face.

  They had started to spend time at the Café du Foy, in the Palais-Royal. It had a different, less decorous atmosphere from M. Charpentier’s place; there was a different set of people. And—one thing about it—there was no chance of bumping into Claude.

  When they arrived, a man was standing on a chair declaiming verses. He made some sweeping gestures with a paper, then clutched his chest in an agony of stage-sincerity. D’Anton glanced at him without interest, and turned away.

  “They’re checking you out,” Camille whispered. “The Court. To see if you could be any use to them. They’ll offer you a little post, Georges-Jacques. They’ll turn you into a functionary. If you take their money you’ll end up like Claude.”

  “Claude has done all right,” d’Anton said. “Until you came into his life.”

  “Doing all right isn’t enough though, is it?”

  “Isn’t it? I don’t know.” He looked at the actor to avoid Camille’s eyes. “Ah, he’s finished. It’s funny, I could swear—”

  Instead of descending from his chair, the man looked hard and straight at them. “I’ll be damned,” he said. He jumped down, wormed his way across the room, produced some cards from his pocket and thrust them at d’Anton. “Have some free tickets,” he said. “How are you, Georges-Jacques?” He laughed delightedly. “You can’t place me, can you? And by hell, you’ve grown!”

  “The prizewinner?” d’Anton said.

  “The very same. Fabre d’Églantine, your humble servant. Well now, well now!” He pounded d’Anton’s shoulder, with a stage-effect bunched fist. “You took my advice, didn’t you? You’re a lawyer. Either you’re doing quite well, or you’re living beyond your means, or you’re blackmailing your tailor. And you have a married look about you.”

  D’Anton was amused. “Anything else?”

  Fabre dug him in the belly. “You’re beginning to run to fat.”

  “Where’ve you been? What have you been up to?”

  “Around, you know. This new troupe I’m with—very successful season last year.”

  “Not here, though, was it? I’d have caught up with you, I’m always at the theater.”

  “No. Not here. Nimes. All right then. Moderately successful. I’ve given up the landscape gardening. Mainly I’ve been writing plays and touring. And writing songs.” He broke off and started to whistle something. People turned around and stared. “Everybody sings that song,” he said. “I wrote it. Yes, sorry, I am an embarrassment at times. I wrote a lot of those songs that go around in your head, and much good it’s done me. Still, I made it to Paris. I like to come here, to this café I mean, and try out my first drafts. People do you the courtesy of listening, and they’ll give you an honest opinion—you’ve not asked for it, of course, but let that pass. The tickets are for Augusta. It’s at the Italiens. It’s a tragedy, in more ways than one. I think it will probably come off after this week. The critics are after my blood.”

  “I saw Men of Letters,” Camille said. “That was yours, Fabre, wasn’t it?”

  Fabre turned. He took out a lorgnette, and examined Camille. “The less said about Men of Letters the better. All that stony silence. And then, you know, the hissing.”

  “I suppose you must expect it, if you write a play about critics. But of course, Voltaire’s plays were often hissed. His first nights usually ended in some sort of riot.”

  “True,” Fabre said. “But then Voltaire wasn’t always worried about where his next meal was coming from.”

  “I know your work,” Camille insisted. “You’re a satirist. If you want to get on—well, try toadying to the Court a bit more.”

  Fabre lowered his lorgnette. He was immensely, visibly gratified and flattered—just by that one sentence, “I know your work.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Sell out? I
don’t think so. I do like an easy life, I admit. I try to turn a fast penny. But there are limits.”

  D‘Anton had found them a table. “What is it?” Fabre said, seating himself. “Ten years? More? One says, ‘Oh, we’ll meet again,’ not quite meaning it.”

  “All the right people are drifting together,” Camille said. “You can pick them out, just as if they had crosses on their foreheads. For example, I saw Brissot last week.” D’Anton did not ask who was Brissot. Camille had a multitude of shady acquaintances. “Then, of all people, Hérault just now. I always hated Hérault, but I have this feeling about him now, quite a different feeling. Against my better judgement, but there it is.”

  “Hérault is a Parlementary judge,” d’Anton told Fabre. “He comes from an immensely rich and ancient family. He’s not more than thirty, his looks are impeccable, he’s well traveled, he’s pursued by all the ladies at Court—”

  “How sick,” Fabre muttered.

  “And we’re baffled because he’s just spent ten minutes talking to us. It’s said,” d’Anton grinned, “that he fancies himself as a great orator and spends hours alone talking to himself in front of a mirror. Though how would anyone know, if he’s alone?”

  “Alone except for his servants,” Camille said. “The aristocracy doesn’t consider their servants to be real people, so they’re quite prepared to indulge all their foibles in front of them.”

  “What is he practicing for?” Fabre asked. “For if they call the Estates?”

  “We presume so,” d’Anton said. “He views himself as a leader of reform, perhaps. He has advanced ideas. So he seems to say.”

  “Oh well, Camille said.” ‘Their silver and their gold will not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord.’ It’s all in the Book of Ezekiel, you see, it’s quite clear if you look at it in the Hebrew. About how the law shall perish from the priests and the council from the ancients. ‘And the King will mourn, and the Prince shall be clothed with sorrow …’—which I’m quite sure they will be, and quite rapidly, too, if they go on as they do at present.”

  Someone at the next table said, “You ought to keep your voice down. You’ll find the police attending your sermons.”

  Fabre slammed his hand down on the table and shot to his feet. His thin face turned brick-red. “It isn’t an offense to quote the holy Scriptures,” he said. “In any damn context whatsoever.” Someone tittered. “I don’t know who you are,” Fabre said vehemently to Camille, “but I’m going to get on with you.”

  “Oh God,” d‘Anton muttered. “Don’t encourage him.” It was not possible, considering his size, to get out without being noticed, so he tried to look as if he were not with them. The last thing you need is encouragement, he thought, you make trouble because you can’t do anything else, you like to think of the destruction outside because of the destruction inside you. He turned his head to the door, where outside the city lay. There are a million people, he thought, of whose opinions I know nothing. There were people hasty and rash, people unprincipled, people mechanical calculating and nice. There were people who interpreted Hebrew and people who could not count, babies turning fish-like in the warmth of the womb and ancient women defying time whose paint congealed and ran after midnight, showing first the wrinkled skin dying and then the yellow and gleaming bone. Nuns in serge. Annette Duplessis enduring Claude. Prisoners at the Bastille, crying to be free. People deformed and people only disfigured, abandoned children sucking the thin milk of duty: crying to be taken in. There were courtiers: there was Hérault, dealing Antoinette a losing hand. There were prostitutes. There were wig makers and clerks, freed slaves shivering in the squares, the men who took the tolls at the customs posts in the walls of Paris. There were men who had been gravediggers man and boy all their working lives. Whose thoughts ran to an alien current. Of whom nothing was known and nothing could be known. He looked across at Fabre. “My greatest work is yet to come,” Fabre said. He sketched its dimensions in the air. Some confidence trick, d’Anton thought. Fabre was a ready man, wound up like a clockwork toy, and Camille watched him like a child who had been given an unexpected present. The weight of the old world is stifling, and trying to shovel its weight off your life is tiring just to think about. The constant shuttling of opinions is tiring, and the shuffling of papers across desks, the chopping of logic and the trimming of attitudes. There must, somewhere, be a simpler, more violent world.

  Lucile: inaction has its own subtle rewards, but now she thinks it is time to push a little. She had left those nursery days behind, of the china doll with the straw heart. They had dealt with her, Maître Desmoulins and her mother, as effectively as if they had smashed her china skull. Since that day, bodies had more reality—theirs, if not hers. They were solid all right, and substantial. Woundingly, she felt their superiority; and if she could ache, she must be taking on flesh.

  Midsummer: Brienne, the Comptroller, borrowed twelve million livres from the municipality of Paris. “A drop in the ocean,” M. Charpentier said. He put the café up for sale; he and Angélique meant to move out to the country. Annette did her duty to the fine weather, making forays to the Luxembourg Gardens. She had often walked there with the girls and Camille; this spring the blossom had smelt faintly sour, as if it had been used before.

  Lucile had spent a lot of time writing her journal: working out the plot. That Friday, which began like any other, when my fate was brought up from the kitchen, superscribed to me, and put into my ignorant hand. How that night—Friday to Saturday—1 took the letter from its hiding place and put it against the cold ruffled linen of my nightgown, approximately over my shaking heart: the crackling paper, the flickering candlelight and, oh, my poor little emotions. I knew that by September my life would be completely changed.

  “I’ve decided,” she said. “I’m going to marry Maître Desmoulins after all.” Clinically, she observed how ugly her mother became, when her clear complexion blotched red with anger and fear.

  She has to practice for the conflicts the future holds. Her first clash with her father sends her up to her room in tears. The weeks wear on, and her sentiments become more savage: echoed by events in the streets.

  The demonstration had started outside the Law Courts. The barristers collected their papers and debated the merits of staying put against those of trying to slip through the crowds. But there had been fatalities: one, perhaps two. They thought it would be safer to stay put until the area was completely cleared. D’Anton swore at his colleagues, and went out to pick his way across the battlefield.

  An enormous number of people seemed to be injured. They were what you would call crush injuries, except for the few people who had fought hand-to-hand with the Guards. A respectably dressed man was walking around showing people the hole in his coat where it had been pierced by a bullet. A woman was sitting on the cobblestones saying “Who opened fire, who ordered it, who told them to do it?” demanding an explanation in a voice sharp with hysteria. Also there were several unexplained knifings.

  He found Camille slumped on his knees by a wall scribbling down some sort of testimony. The man who was talking to him was lying on the ground, just his shoulders propped up. All the man’s clothes were in shreds and his face was black. D’Anton could not see where he was injured, but beneath the black his face looked numb, and his eyes were glazed with pain or surprise.

  D’Anton said, “Camille.”

  Camille looked sideways at his shoes, then his eyes traveled upwards. His face was chalk-white. He put down his paper and stopped trying to follow the man’s ramblings. He indicated a man standing a few yards away, his arms folded, his short legs planted apart, his eyes on the ground. Without tone or emphasis, Camille said, “See that? That’s Marat.”

  D’Anton did not look up. Somebody pointed to Camille and said, “The French Guards threw him on the ground and kicked him in the ribs.”

  Camille smiled miserably. “Must have been in their way, mustn’t I?”

  D’Anton
tried to get him to his feet. Camille said, “No, I can’t do it, leave me alone.”

  D’Anton took him home to Gabrielle. He fell asleep on their bed, looking desperately ill.

  “Well, there’s one thing,” Gabrielle said, later that night. “If they’d kicked you in the ribs, their boots would have just bounced off.”

  “I told you,” d’Anton said. “I was inside, in an office. Camille was outside, in the riot. I don’t go in for these silly games.”

  “It worries me, though.”

  “It was just a skirmish. Some soldiers panicked. Nobody even knows what it was about.”

  Gabrielle was hard to console. She had made plans, settled them, for her house, for her babies, for the big success he was going to enjoy. She feared any kind of turmoil, civil or emotional: feared its stealthy remove from the street to the door to her heart.

  When they had friends to dine, her husband spoke familiarly about people in the government, as if he knew them. When he spoke of the future, he would add, “if the present scheme of things continues.”

  “You know,” he said, “I think I’ve told you, that I’ve had a lot of work recently from M. Barentin, the President of the Board of Excise. So naturally my work takes me into government offices. And when you’re meeting the people who’re running the country”—he shook his head—“you start to make judgements about their competence. You can’t help making judgements.”

  “But they’re individuals.” (Forgive me, she wanted to say, for intruding where I don’t understand.) “Is it necessary to question the system itself? Does it follow?”

  “There is really only one question,” he said. “Can it last? The answer’s no. Twelve months from now, it seems to me, our lives will look very different.”

  Then he closed his mouth resolutely, because he realized that he had been talking to her about matters that women were not interested in. And he did not want to bore her, or upset her.