A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  December 1790: Claude changed his mind. He changed it on an ominous December day, when iron-colored clouds, potbellied with snow, grazed among the city’s roofs and chimneys.

  “I just can’t take it anymore,” he said. “Let them get married, before I die of the fatigue of it all. Threats, tears, promises, ultimata … I couldn’t take another year of it, I couldn’t take another week. I should have been much firmer, long ago—but it’s too late now. We’ll have to make the best of it, Annette.”

  Annette went to her daughter’s room. Lucile was scribbling away at something. She looked up, startled and guilty, put her hand over her work. An ink blot grew on the page.

  When Annette gave her the news, she stared into her mother’s face, her dark eyes wide, hardly comprehending. “So simple?” she whispered. “Claude simply changes his mind, and everything comes right? Somehow I’d started thinking it was very much more complicated than that.” She turned her head. She began to cry. She put her head down onto her diary and let tears flow over the forbidden words: let them salt her paragraphs, let them turn the letters liquid. “Oh, it’s relief,” she said. “It’s relief.”

  Her mother stood behind her, took her by the shoulders, gave her an incidental but vindictive pinch. “So, you’ve got what you wanted. Let’s have no more of your nonsense with M. Danton, either. You behave yourself, now.”

  “I’ll be a paragon.” She sat upright. “Let’s get organized then.” She scrubbed the back of her hand across her cheeks. “We’ll be married right away.”

  “Right away? But think what people will say! And besides, it’s Advent. You can’t get married in Advent.”

  “We’ll get a dispensation. As for what people will say, that is a matter for them. I shall not be worrying about it. It is beyond my control.”

  Lucile leapt up. She seemed no longer able to contain herself within civilized bounds. She ran through the house, laughing and crying at the same time, slamming the doors. Camille arrived. He seemed mystified. “Why has she got ink on her forehead?” he asked.

  “I suppose you might see it as a second baptism,” Annette said. “Or the republican equivalent of anointing with holy oil. After all, my dear, there’s so much ink in your lives.”

  There was in fact a spot of it on Camille’s cuff. He had very much the air of a man who has just written an editorial, and is worrying about what the typesetter will do to it. There was the time he’d referred to Marat as “an apostle of liberty” and it had come out as “an apostate of liberty.” Marat had arrived in the office, foaming with rage … .

  “Look. M. Duplessis, are you sure about this?” Camille said. “Good things like this don’t happen to me. Could it be some mistake? A sort of printing error?”

  Annette couldn’t stop the images—didn’t want them, but couldn’t stop them. The swish of her skirts as she strode about this room, telling Camille to get out of her life. The rain pattering against the windows. And that kiss, that ten-second kiss that would have ended, if Lucile had not walked in, with a locked door and some undignified gratification on the chaise-longue. She cast her eye on it, the same item of furniture, upholstered in fading blue velvet. “Annette,” Claude said, “why are you looking so angry?”

  “I’m not angry, dear,” Annette said. “I’m having a lovely day.”

  “Really? If you say so. Ah, women!” he said fondly, looking at Camille for complicity. Camille gave him a cool glance; said the wrong thing again, Claude thought, forgotten his Views. “Lucile seems equally confused about her feelings. I hope—” He approached Camille. He seemed to be about to put a hand on his shoulder, but it wavered in the air and dropped loosely at his side. “Well, I hope you’ll be happy.”

  Annette said, “Camille, dear, your apartment is very nice, but I expect you’ll be moving to somewhere bigger? You’ll need some more furniture—would you like the chaise-longue? I know you’ve always admired it.”

  Camille dropped his eyes. “Admired it? Annette, I’ve dreamt of it.”

  “I could get it re-upholstered.”

  “Please don’t think of it.” Camille said. “Leave it exactly as it is.”

  Claude looked faintly bemused. “Well, I’ll leave you to it then, if you want to talk about furniture.” He smiled, gallantly. “I must say, my dear boy, you never cease to surprise.”

  The Duke of Orléans said: “Are they? Isn’t that wonderful? Do you know, I never get any nice news nowadays?” Some months previously Lucile had been brought for his inspection; he had passed her. She had style, almost the style of an Englishwoman; be good to see her on the hunting field. That toss of the head, that supple spine. I’ll give them a good present, he decided. “Laclos, what’s that town house of mine standing empty, the one with the garden, bit shabby, twelve bedrooms? Corner of thing street?”

  “Oh, wonderful!” Camille said. “I can’t wait to hear what my father says! We’re going to have this amazing house! Plenty of room for the chaise-longue.”

  Annette put her head in her hands. “Sometimes I lose hope,” she said. “What would happen to you if you didn’t have so many people to look after you? Camille, think. How can you accept from the Duke a house, which is the largest, most visible bribe he could come up with? Wouldn’t it be a shade compromising? Wouldn’t it lead to a little paragraph or two in the royalist press?”

  “I suppose so,” Camille said.

  She sighed. “Just ask him for the cash. Now, speaking of houses, come and look at this.” She unfolded a plan of her property at Bourg-la-Reine. “I have been making some sketches for a little house I should like to build for you. I thought here,” she indicated, “at the bottom of the linden avenue.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because I value my holidays, and I don’t intend to have you and Claude in the same house sneering at each other and having meaningful silences. It would be like taking weekend excursions to Purgatory.” She bent over her drawings. “I’ve always wanted to design a sweet little cottage. Of course, I may in my amateur enthusiasm leave a few vital bits out. Don’t worry, I’ll remember to put in a nice bedroom for you. And of course, you’ll not be exiles. No, I’ll come tripping down to see you, when the mood takes me.”

  She smiled. How ambivalent he looked. Caught between terror and pleasure. The next few years will be quite interesting, she thought, one way and another. Camille has the most extraordinary eyes: the darkest gray, as near black as the eyes of a human being can be, the iris almost merging with the pupil. They seem to be looking at the future now.

  “At Saint-Sulpice,” Annette said, “confessions are at three o’clock.”

  “I know,” Camille said. “Everything’s arranged. I sent a message to Father Pancemont. I thought it was only fair to warn him. I told him to expect me on the dot of three, and that I don’t do this sort of thing every day and I don’t expect to be kept waiting. Coming?”

  “Order the carriage.”

  Outside the church Annette addressed her coachman. “We’ll be—how long will we be? Do you favor a long confession?”

  “I’m not actually going to confess anything. Perhaps just a few token peccadilloes. Thirty minutes.”

  A man in a dark coat was pacing in the background, a folder of documents tucked under his arm. The clock struck. He advanced on them. “Just three, M. Desmoulins. Shall we go in?”

  “This is my solicitor,” Camille said.

  “What?” Annette said.

  “My solicitor, notary public. He specializes in canon law. Mirabeau recommended him.”

  The man looked pleased. How interesting, she thought, that you still see Mirabeau. But she was having trouble with this notion: “Camille, you’re taking your solicitor to confession with you?”

  “A wise precaution. No serious sinner should neglect it.”

  He swept her through the church at an unecclesiastical pace. “I’ll just kneel down,” she said, lurching sideways to get away from him. It was quiet; a gaggle of grannies praying for the old days
to come back, and a small dog curled up, snoring. The priest seemed to see no reason to lower his voice. “It’s you, is it?” he said.

  Camille said to the notary, “Write that down.”

  “I didn’t think you’d come, I must say. When I got your message I thought it was a joke.”

  “It’s certainly not a joke. I have to be in a state of grace, don’t I, like everybody else?”

  “Are you a Catholic?”

  A short pause.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because if you’re not a Catholic I can’t confer on you the sacraments.”

  “All right then. I’m a Catholic.”

  “Have you not said”—Annette heard the priest clearing his throat—“have you not said in your newspaper that the religion of Mahomet is quite as valid as that of Jesus Christ?”

  “You read my newspaper?” Camille sounded gratified. A silence. “You won’t marry us, then?”

  “Not until you have made a public profession of the Catholic faith.”

  “You have no right to ask that. You have to take my word for it. Mirabeau says—”

  “Since when has Mirabeau been a Church Father?”

  “Oh, he’ll like that, I’ll tell him. But do change your mind, Father, because I am dreadfully in love, and I cannot abide even as you abide, and it is better to marry than to burn.”

  “Whilst we are on the subject of Saint Paul,” the priest said, “may I remind you that the powers that be are ordained of God? And whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God, and that they that resist shall receive unto them damnation?”

  “Yes, well, I’ll have to take my chances on that,” Camille said. “As you know very well—see verse fourteen—the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife. If you’re going to be obstructive, I’ll have to take it to an ecclesiastical commission. You are just putting a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in your brother’s way. You’re not supposed to go to law, you’re supposed to rather suffer yourself to be defrauded. See chapter six.”

  “That’s about going to law with unbelievers. The Vicar-General of the Diocese of Sens is not an unbeliever.”

  “You know you’re wrong,” Camille said. “Where do you think I was educated? Do you think you can get away with talking this sort of rubbish to me? No,” he said to his lawyer, “you needn’t write that down.”

  They emerged. “Strike that out,” Camille said. “I was being hasty.” The notary looked cowed. “Write at the top of the page ‘In the matter of the solemnization of the marriage of L. C. Desmoulins, barrister-at law.’ That’s right, put some lines under it.” He took Annette’s arm. “Were you praying?” he said. “Get it to the commission right away,” he said over his shoulder.

  “No church,” Lucile said. “No priest. Marvelous.”

  “The Vicar-General of the Diocese of Sens says I am responsible for the loss of half of his annual revenue,” Camille said. “He says it was because of me that his chateau was burned to the ground. Adèle, stop giggling.”

  They sat around Annette’s drawing room. “Well, Maximilien,” Camille said, “you’re good at solving people’s problems. Solve this.”

  Adèle tried to compose herself. “Haven’t you a tame priest? Someone you were at school with?”

  Robespierre looked up. “Surely Father Bérardier could be persuaded? He was our last principal,” he explained, “at Louis-le-Grand, and he sits in the Assembly now. Surely, Camille … he was always so fond of you.”

  “When he sees me now, he smiles, as if to say, ‘I predicted how you would turn out.’ They say he will refuse the oath to the constitution, you know.”

  “Never mind that,” Lucile said. “If there’s any chance …”

  “On these conditions,” Bérardier said. “That you make a public profession of faith, in your newspaper. That you cease to make anti-clerical gibes in that publication, and that you erase from it its habitually blasphemous tone.”

  “Then what am I to do for a living?” Camille asked.

  “It was foolish of you not to foresee this when you decided to take on the church. But then, you never did plan your life more than ten minutes ahead.”

  “On the conditions stipulated,” Father Pancemont said, “I will let Father Bérardier marry you at Saint-Sulpice. But I’m damned if I’ll do it myself, and I think Father is making a mistake.”

  “He is a creature of impulse,” Father Bérardier said. “One day his impulses will lead him in the right direction; isn’t that so, Camille?”

  “The difficulty is that I wasn’t thinking of bringing an issue out before the New Year.”

  The priests exchanged glances. “Then we will expect to see the statement in the first issue of 1791.”

  Camille nodded.

  “Promise?” Bérardier said.

  “Promise.”

  “You always lied with amazing facility.”

  “He won’t do it,” Father Pancemont said. “We should have said, statement first, marriage after.”

  Bérardier sighed. “What is the use? Consciences cannot be forced.”

  “I believe Deputy Robespierre was your pupil too?”

  “For a little while.”

  Father Pancemont looked at him as one who said, I was in Lisbon during the earthquake year. “You have given up teaching now?” he asked.

  “Oh, look—there are worse people.”

  “I can’t think of any,” the priest said.

  The witnesses to the marriage: Robespierre, Pétion, the writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier and the Duke’s friend, the Marquis de Sillery. A diplomatically chosen selection, representing the left wing of the Assembly, the literary establishment and the Orléanist connection.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” Camille said to Danton. “Really I wanted Lafayette, Louis Suleau, Marat and the public executioner.”

  “Of course I don’t mind.” After all, he thought, I shall be a witness to everything else. “Are you going to be rich now?”

  “The dowry is a hundred thousand livres. And there’s some quite valuable silver. Don’t look at me like that. I’ve had to work for it.”

  “And are you going to be faithful to her?”

  “Of course.” He looked shocked. “What a question. I love her.”

  “I only wondered. I thought it might be nice to have a statement of intent.”

  They took a first-floor apartment on the rue des Cordeliers, next door to the Dantons; and on December 30 they held their wedding breakfast for a hundred guests, the dark, icy day nuzzling in hostile curiosity at the lighted windows. At one o’clock in the morning they found themselves alone. Lucile was still in her pink wedding dress, now crumpled, and with a sticky patch where she had spilled a glass of champagne over herself some hours earlier. She sank down onto the blue chaise-longue, and kicked off her shoes. “Oh, what a day! Has there been anything like it in the annals of holy matrimony? My God, rows of people sniffing and groaning, and my mother crying, and my father crying, and then old Bérardier publicly lecturing you like that, and you crying, and the half of Paris that wasn’t weeping in the pews standing outside in the streets shouting slogans and making lewd comments. And—” Her voice tailed off. The day’s sick excitement washed over her, wave on wave of it. Probably, she thought, this is what it’s like to be at sea. Camille seemed to be talking to her from a long way off:

  “ … and I never thought that happiness like this could have anything to do with me, because two years ago I had nothing, and now I have you, and I’ve got the money to live well, and I’m famous …”

  “I’ve had too much to drink,” Lucile said.

  When she thought back on the ceremony, everything appeared to be a sort of haze, so that she felt that perhaps even by then she had had too much to drink, and she wondered in momentary panic, are we properly married? Is drunkenness an incapacity? What about last week, when we looked over the apartment—was I quite sober then? Where is the apartment?

  “I thoug
ht they’d never go,” Camille said.

  She looked up at him. All the things she’d been going to say, all the rehearsals she’d had for this moment, four years of rehearsals; and now, when it came to it, she could only manage a queasy smile. She forced her eyes open to stop the room spinning, and then closed them again, and let it spin. She rolled facedown on the chaise-longue, drew up her knees comfortably and gave a little grunt of contentment, like the dog at Saint-Sulpice. She slept. Some kind person slid a hand under her cheek, and then replaced the hand by a cushion.

  “Listen to what I will be,” said the King, “if I do not uphold the constitutional oath on the poor bishops.” He adjusted his spectacles and read:

  “ … enemy of the public liberty, treacherous conspirator, most cowardly of perjurers, prince without honor, without shame, lowest of men …” He broke off, put down the newspaper and blew his nose vigorously into a handkerchief embroidered with the royal arms—the last he had, of the old sort. “A happy new year to you, too, Dr. Marat,” he said.

  CHAPTER 3

  Lady’s Pleasure

  ’91: “Lafayette,” Mirabeau suggests to the Queen, “is walking more closely in the footsteps of Cromwell than becomes his natural modesty.”

  We’re done for, Marat says, it’s all up with us; Antoinette’s gang are in league with Austria, the monarchs are betraying the nation. It is necessary to cut off 20,000 heads.

  France is to be invaded from the Rhine. By June, the King’s brother Artois will have an army at Coblenz. Maître Desmoulins’s old client, the Prince de Condé, will command a force at Worms. A third, at Colmar, will be under the command of Mirabeau’s younger brother, who is known, because of his shape and proclivities, as Barrel Mirabeau.

  The Barrel spent his last few months in France pursuing the Lanterne Attorney through the courts. He now hopes to pursue him, with an armed force, through the streets. The émigrés want the old regime back, not one jot or one tittle abated: and a firing squad for Lafayette. They call, as of right, for the support of the powers of Europe.