A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  Camille didn’t sleep much: no time. When he did, his dreams exhausted him. He dreamt, inter alia, that the whole world had gone to a party. The scene, variously, was the Place de Grève: Annette’s drawing room: the Hall of the Lesser Pleasures. Everyone in the world was at this party. Angélique Charpentier was talking to Hérault de Séchelles; they were comparing notes about him, exploding his fictions. Sophie from Guise, whom he had slept with when he was sixteen, was telling everything to Laclos; Laclos had his notebook out, and Maitre Perrin was at his elbow, demanding attention in a lawyer’s bellow. The smirking, adhesive Deputy Pétion had linked arms with the dead governor of the Bastille; de Launay flopped about, useless without his head. His old schoolfriend, Louis Suleau, was arguing in the street with Anne Théroigne. Fabre and Robespierre were playing a children’s game; they froze like statues when the argument stopped.

  He would have worried about these dreams, except that he was going out to dinner every night. He knew they contained a truth; all the people in his life were coming together now. He said to d’Anton, “What do you think of Robespierre?”

  “Max? Splendid little chap.”

  “Oh no, you mustn’t say that. He’s sensitive about his height. He used to be, anyway, when we were at school.”

  “Good God,” d’Anton said. “Then just take it that he’s splendid. I haven’t time to pussyfoot around people’s vanities.”

  “And you accuse me of having no tact.”

  “Are you trying to start an argument?”

  So he never found out what d’Anton thought of Robespierre.

  He said to Robespierre, “What do you think of d’Anton?” Robespierre took off his spectacles and polished them. He mulled over the question. “Very pleasant,” he said at length.

  “But what do you think, really? You’re being evasive. I mean you don’t just think that someone is pleasant, and that’s all you think, surely?”

  “Oh, you do, Camille, you do,” Robespierre said gently.

  So he never found out what Robespierre thought of d’Anton, either.

  The ex-minister Foulon had once remarked, in a time of famine, that if the people were hungry they could eat grass. Or so it was believed. That was why—and reason enough—on July 22 he was in the Place de Grève, with an audience.

  He was under guard, but it seemed likely that the small but ugly crowd, who had plans for him, would tear him away. Lafayette arrived and spoke to them. He had no wish to stand in the way of the people’s justice; but at least Foulon should have a fair trial.

  “What’s the use of a trial,” someone called out, “for a man who’s been convicted these thirty years?”

  Foulon was old; it was many years since he had ventured his bon mot. To escape this fate he had hidden, and put about rumors of his own death. It was said that a funeral had been conducted over a coffin packed with stones. Tracked down, arrested, he now looked beseechingly at the general. From the narrow streets beyond City Hall, there came the low rumble which Paris now identified as marching feet.

  “They’re converging,” an aide reported to the general. “From the Palais-Royal on one hand, and from Saint-Antoine on the other.”

  “I know,” the general said. “I can hear on both sides of my head. How many?”

  No one could estimate. Too many. He looked at Foulon without much sympathy. He had no forces on hand; if the city authorities wanted to protect Foulon, they would have to do it themselves. He glanced at his aide, gave a minute shrug.

  They pelted Foulon with grass, tied a bunch of it on his back, stuffed his mouth with it. “Eat up the nice grass,” they urged him. Gagging on the sharp stalks, he was dragged across the Place de Grève, where a rope was tossed over the iron projection of the Lanterne. For a few moments the old man swung where at dusk the great light would swing. Then the rope snapped; he plummeted into the crowd. Mauled and kicked, he was hoisted back into the air. Again the rope broke. The mob’s hands grasped him, careful not to deliver the coup de grace. A third noose was placed about the livid neck. This time the rope held. When he was dead, or nearly so, the mob cut off his head and speared it on a pike.

  At the same time, Foulon’s son-in-law Berthier, the Intendant of Paris, had been arrested in Compiègne and conveyed, glassy-eyed with terror, to City Hall. He was bundled inside, through a crowd that peppered him with crusts of sour black bread. Shortly afterwards he was bundled out again, on his way to the Abbaye prison; shortly after that, he was bundled to his death—strangled perhaps, or finished with a musketball, for who knew the moment? And perhaps he was not dead either when a sword began to hack at his neck. His head in turn was stabbed onto a pike. The two processions met and the pikes swayed together, bringing the severed heads nose-to-nose. “Kiss Daddy!” the mob called out. Berthier’s chest was sawn open, and the heart was wrenched out. It was skewered onto a sword, marched to City Hall and flung down on Bailly’s desk. The mayor almost collapsed. The heart was then taken to the Palais-Royal. Blood was squeezed out of it into a glass, and people drank it. They sang:

  A party isn’t a party

  When the heart’s not in it.

  The news of the lynchings at Paris caused consternation at Versailles, where the Assembly was absorbed in a debate on human rights. There was shock, outrage, protest: where was the militia while this was going on? It was generally believed that Foulon and his son-in-law had been speculators in grain, but the deputies, moving between the Hall of the Lesser Pleasures and the well-stocked larders of their lodgings, had lost touch with what is often called popular sentiment. Disgusted at their hypocrisy, Deputy Barnave asked them, “This blood that has been shed, was it so pure?” Revolted, they shouted him down, marking him in their minds as dangerous. The debate would resume; they were intent on framing a “Declaration of the Rights of Man.” Some were heard to mutter that the Assembly should write the constitution first, since rights exist in virtue of laws; but jurisprudence is such a dull subject, and liberty so exciting.

  Night of August 4, the feudal system ceases to exist in France. The Viscomte de Noailles rises and, voice shaking with emotion, gives away all he possesses—not a great deal, as his nickname is “Lackland.” The National Assembly surges to its feet for a saturnalia of magnanimity; they slough off serfs, game laws, tithes in kind, seigneural courts—and tears of joy stream down their faces. A member passes a note to the President—“Close the session, they have lost control of themselves.” But the hand of heaven can’t hold them back—they vie in the pandemonium to be each more patriotic than the last, they gabble to relinquish what belongs to them and with eagerness even greater what belongs to others. Next week, of course, they will try to backtrack; but it will be too late.

  And Camille moves around Versailles spreading a scatter of crumpled paper, generating in the close silence of the summer nights the prose he no longer despises … .

  It is on that night, more so than on Holy Saturday, that we came forth from the wretched bondage of Egypt … . That night restored to Frenchmen the rights of man, and declared all citizens equal, equally admissible to all offices, places and public employ; again, that night has snatched all civil offices, ecclesiastical and military, from wealth, birth and royalty, to give them to the nation as a whole on the basis of merit. That night has taken from Mme. d’Epr—her pension of 20,000 livres for having slept with a minister … . Trade with the Indies is now open to everyone. He who wishes may open a shop. The master tailor, the master shoemaker, the master wig maker will weep, but the journeymen will rejoice, and there will be lights in the attic windows … . O night disastrous for the Grand Chamber, the clerks, the bailiffs, the lawyers, the valets, for the secretaries, for the under-secretaries, for all plunderers … . But O wonderful night, vera beata nox, happy for everyone, since the barriers that excluded so many from honor and employment have been hurled down forever, and today there no longer exist among the French any distinctions but those of virtue and talent.

  A dark corner, in a dark bar: Dr.
Marat hunched over a table. August 4 was a sick joke, he said.

  He scowled at the manuscript in front of him. “Vera beata nox—I wish it were true, Camille. But you’re myth-making, do you see? You’re making a legend of what is happening, a legend of the Revolution. You want to have artistry, you see, where there’s only the necessity—” He broke off. His small body seemed to contract in pain.

  “Are you ill?”

  “Are you?”

  “No, I’ve just been drinking too much.”

  “With your new friends, I suppose.” Marat shuffled back on the bench, the same expression of tension and discomfort on his face; then he considered Camille, his fingers tapping arhythmically on the table top. “Feeling safe, are we?”

  “Not especially. I’ve been warned I might be arrested.”

  “Don’t expect the Court to stand on formalities. A man with a knife could do a nice job on you. Or on me for that matter. What I’m going to do is move into the Cordeliers district. Somewhere I can shout for help. Why don’t you move in there too?” Marat grinned, showing his dreadful teeth. “All neighbors together. Very cozy.” He bent his head over the papers, scrabbling through them, stabbing with his forefinger. “What you say next, I approve. It would have taken the people years of civil war, at any other time, to rid themselves of such enemies as Foulon. And in wars, thousands of people die, don’t they? Therefore the lynchings are quite acceptable. They are the humane alternative. You may be made to suffer for that sentiment, but don’t be afraid to take it to the printer.” Thoughtfully the doctor rubbed the bridge of his flat nose: so prosaic, the gesture, the tone. “You see what we must do, Camille, is to cut off heads. The longer we delay, the more we will have to decapitate. Write that. The necessity is to kill people, and to cut off their heads.”

  First tentative scrape of the bow on gut. One, two: d’Anton’s fingers tapped the pommel of his saber. His neighbors stamped and shrilled under his window, flourishing seating plans. The orchestra of the Royal Academy of Music was tuning up. Good idea of his, hiring them, gives the occasion a bit of tone. There’d also, of course, be a military band. As president of the district and a captain in the National Guard (as the citizens’ militia now called itself) he was responsible for all parts of the day’s arrangements.

  “You’re fine,” he said to his wife, not looking at her. He was sweating inside his new uniform: white breeches, black top boots, blue tunic faced with white, scarlet collar proving too tight. Outside, the sun blistered paint.

  “I asked Camille’s friend Robespierre to come over for the day,” he said. “But he can’t take time off from the Assembly. Very conscientious.”

  “That poor boy,” Angélique said. “I can’t think what kind of a family he comes from. I said to him, my dear, aren’t you homesick? Don’t you miss your own people? He said—serious as may be—‘Well, Mme. Charpentier, I miss my dog.’”

  “I rather liked him,” Charpentier said. “How he ever got mixed up with Camille I can’t imagine. Now,” he rubbed his hands, “what’s the order of the day?”

  “Lafayette will be here in fifteen minutes. We all go to Mass, the priest blesses our new battalion flag, we file out, run it up, march past, Lafayette stands about looking like a commander-in-chief. I assume he will expect to be cheered. I should think there’ll be enough oafs to make a respectable din, even in this cynical district.”

  “I’m still not sure I understand.” Gabrielle sounded aggrieved. “Is the militia on the King’s side?”

  “Oh, everybody is on the King’s side,” her husband said. “It’s just his ministers and his servants and his brothers and his wife we can’t stand. Louis is all right, silly old duffer.”

  “But why do people say that Lafayette’s a republican?”

  “In America he’s a republican.”

  “Are there any republicans here?”

  “Very few.”

  “Would they kill the King?”

  “Heavens, no. We leave that sort of thing to the English.”

  “Would they keep him in prison?”

  “I don’t know. Ask Mme. Robert when you see her. She’s one of the extremists. Or Camille.”

  “So if the National Guard is on the King’s side—”

  “On the King’s side,” he interrupted her, “as long as he doesn’t try to go back to where we were before July.”

  “Yes, I understood that. It’s on the King’s side, and against republicans. But Camille and Louise and François are republicans, aren’t they? So if Lafayette told you to arrest them, would you do it?”

  “Good God, no. I’m not going to do his dirty work.”

  And he thought, we could be a law unto ourselves in this district. I might not be the battalion commander, but he’s under my thumb.

  Camille arrived, breathless and ebullient. “The news couldn’t be better,” he said. “In Toulouse my new pamphlet has been burned by the public executioner. It’s too kind of them, the publicity will certainly mean a second edition. And in Oléron a bookshop that was selling it has been attacked by monks, and they threw out all the stock and started a fire and carved up the bookseller.”

  “I don’t think that’s very funny,” Gabrielle said.

  “No. Quite tragic really.”

  A pottery outside Paris was turning out his picture on thick glazed crockery in a strident yellow and blue. This is what happens when you become a public figure; people eat their dinners off you.

  There was not a breath of wind when they ran up the new flag; it lay around its pole like a lolling tricolor tongue. Gabrielle stood between her father and mother. Her neighbors the Gélys were on her left, little Louise wearing a new hat of which she was unsufferably proud. She was conscious of people’s eyes upon her: there, they were saying, that’s d’Anton’s wife. She heard someone say, “How handsome she is, have they children?” She looked up at her husband, who stood on the church steps, his prize-fighter bulk towering over the ramrod figure of Lafayette. She worked up some contempt for the general, because of her husband’s contempt. She could see that they were being polite to each other. The commander of the battalion waved his hat in the air, raised the shout for Lafayette. The crowd cheered; the general acknowledged them with a spare smile. She half-closed her eyes against the sun. Behind her she could hear Camille’s voice running on, talking to Louise Robert exactly as if she were a man. The deputies from Brittany, he was saying, and the initiative in the Assembly. I wanted to go to Versailles as soon as the Bastille was taken—she heard Mme. Robert’s muffled agreement—but it should be done as soon as possible. He’s talking about another riot, she thought: another Bastille. Then from behind her, there was a shout: “Vive d’Anton.”

  She turned, amazed and gratified. The cry was taken up. “It’s only a few Cordeliers,” Camille said, apologetically. “But soon it will be the whole city.”

  A few minutes later, the ceremony was over and the party could begin. Georges was down among the crowd, hugging her. “I was thinking,” Camille said. “It’s time you took out that apostrophe from your name. It doesn’t suit the times.”

  “You may be right,” her husband said. “I’ll do it gradually—no point making an announcement.”

  “No, do it suddenly,” Camille said. “So that everyone knows where you stand.”

  “Bully,” Georges-Jacques said fondly. He was acquiring it too: this appetite for confrontation. “Do you mind?” he asked her.

  “I want you to do whatever you think best,” she said. “I mean, whatever you think right.”

  “Suppose they did not coincide?” Camille asked her. “I mean, what he thought best and what he thought right?”

  “But they would,” she said, flustered. “Because he is a good man.”

  “That is profound. He will suspect you of thinking while he is not in the house.”

  Camille had spent the previous day at Versailles, and in the evening had gone with Robespierre to a meeting of the Breton Club. It was the forum now for
the liberal deputies, those inclined to the popular cause and suspicious of the Court. Some of the nobles attended; the frenzied Fourth of August had been calculated quite carefully there. Men who were not deputies were welcomed, if their patriotism was well known.

  And whose patriotism was better known than his? Robespierre urged him to speak. But he was nervous, had difficulty making himself heard. The stutter was bad. The audience was not patient with him. He was just a mob orator, an anarchist, as far as they could see. All in all it was a miserable, deflating occasion. Robespierre sat looking at his shoe buckles. When Camille came down from the rostrum to sit beside him, he didn’t look up; just flicked his green eyes sideways, and smiled his patient, meditative smile. No wonder he had no encouragement to offer. Whenever he stood up in the Assembly, unruly members of the nobility would pretend to blow candles out, with a great huffing and puffing; or a few of them would get together and orchestrate their imitation of a rabid lamb. No point him saying, “You were fine, Camille.” No point in comforting lies.

  After the meeting was closed, Mirabeau took the rostrum, and performed for his well-wishers and sycophants an imitation of Mayor Bailly trying to decide whether it was Monday or Tuesday: of Mayor Bailly viewing the moons of Jupiter to find the answer, and finally admitting (with an obscene flourish) that his telescope was too small. Camille was not much entertained by this; he felt almost tearful. Finishing to applause, the Comte strode down from the rostrum, slapped a few backs and wrung a few hands. Robespierre touched Camille’s elbow: “Let’s get off, shall we?” he suggested.

  Too late. The Comte spied Camille. He caught him up in a ribcracking hug. “You were grand,” he said. “Ignore these provincials. Leave them to their poxy little standards. None of them could have done what you did. None of them. The fact is, you terrify them.”

  Robespierre had faded to the back of the meeting room, trying to get out of the way. Camille looked so cheered up, so delighted at the prospect of terrifying people. Why couldn’t he have said what Mirabeau had said? It was all perfectly true. And he wanted to make things right for Camille, he wanted to look after him. Nearly twenty years ago he’d promised to look after him, and he saw nothing to suggest he’d been relieved of the duty. But there it was—he didn’t have the gift of saying the right thing. Camille’s needs and wishes were a closed book, largely: a volume written in a language he’d never learned. “Come to supper,” he heard the Comte say. “And let’s tow the lamb along, why don’t we? Give him some red meat to fall on.”