A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  “And when you are forty,” her mother told her, “it will be time enough for you to be pert. Back to your bed.”

  He leaned over Gabrielle, kissed her, squeezed her hand. He stood back to let Louise pass, but she brushed against him, and looked up for a second into his face.

  The dawn was late, late and very chill, and his son cried pitifully when he came into the world, with the frost riming the windows, and the icy winds of battle scything the empty streets.

  On March 9 the Emperor Leopold died. For a day or two, until the views of the new Emperor became known, peace seemed possible.

  “Stock market’s up,” Fabre said.

  “Are you interested in the stock market?”

  “I dabble, when I have the cash.”

  “In the name of God,” said the Queen. “Escape in the carriage of Necker’s daughter? Take refuge in Lafayette’s camp? One could almost laugh.”

  “Madame,” said the King, “Madame, they say it is our last chance. My ministers advise me—”

  “Your ministers are mad.”

  “It could be worse. We are still dealing with gentlemen.”

  “It could not be worse,” the Queen said, in frank disbelief.

  The King looked at her sadly. “If this administration falls …”

  It fell.

  March 21: “So, Dumouriez,” said the King, “you think you can hold a government together?” Nagging in the back of his mind, the thought: this man was two years in the Bastille. Charles Dumouriez bowed. “Let us not …” the Kind said hurriedly. “I know you are a Jacobin. I know it.” (But who else is there, Madame? Who else?)

  “Sire, I am a soldier,” Dumouriez said. “I am fifty-three years old. I have always served Your Majesty faithfully. I am Your Majesty’s truest subject and I …”

  “Yes, yes,” said the King.

  “ … and I will take the Foreign Office. After all, I know Europe. I have served as Your Majesty’s agent—”

  “I don’t query your abilities, General.”

  Dumouriez allowed himself a very small sigh. Time was when Louis heard his ministers out. Louis had less and less appetite for the business of state, no relish for the distasteful details; this was the day of the incomplete statement and the quick payoff. If the King and Queen were to be saved, it was a good thing for them not to know too much: or they would reject his help, as they had rejected Lafayette’s.

  “For Finance, Clavière,” he said.

  “He was a crony of Mirabeau’s.” The King’s face was expressionless; Dumouriez did not know whether it commended the man or not. “For the Interior?”

  “This is difficult. The really able men are in the Assembly, and deputies may not be ministers. Give me a day’s grace, if you please.”

  The King nodded curtly. Dumouriez bowed. “General …” The unregal voice trailed after him. The dapper little man turned on his heel. “You aren’t against me, are you …?”

  “Against Your Majesty? Because I attend at the Jacobins?” He tried to catch Louis’s eye, but Louis had fixed it at some point to the left of his head. “Factions rise and fall. The tradition of loyalty endures.”

  “Oh yes,” Louis said absently. “I don’t so much call the Jacobins a faction, more a power …as once we had the church within the state, now we have the club. This man Robespierre, where does he come from?”

  “Artois, sire, or so I understand.”

  “Yes, but you know, in a deeper sense …where does he come from?” Louis shifted his heavy body uncomfortably in his chair. Of the two men, he looked rather older. “Like you, I recognize you. You are what we call an adventurer. And M. Brissot is a faddist—he is a man who holds all the ideas of his time, just because they are current. And M. Danton I recognize—for he is one of those brutal demagogues we find in our history books. But M. Robespierre … You see, if only I knew what the man wanted. Perhaps I could give it him, and that would be an end of it.” He slumped. “Something of a mystery there, don’t you think?”

  General Dumouriez bowed again. Louis did not notice him go.

  A corridor away, Brissot waited for his favorite general. “You have your government,” Dumouriez told him.

  “You seem depressed,” Brissot said sharply. “Something gone wrong?”

  “No—just the epithets His Majesty has been hanging on me.”

  “He was offensive? He is not in a position to be.”

  “I did not say he was offensive.”

  Their eyes rested on each other, just for a second. They did not trust each other, even slightly. Then Dumouriez touched Brissot on the shoulder, with a sportive air. “A Jacobin ministry, my dear fellow. Seemed unthinkable, only a short while ago.”

  “And on the question of war?”

  “I did not press him. But I think I can guarantee you hostilities within the month.”

  “There must be war. The greatest possible disaster would be peace. You agree?”

  Dumouriez turned his cane about in his fingers. “How not? I’m a soldier. I have my career to think of. Wonderful opportunity for all sorts of things.”

  “Try it,” said Vergniaud. “Give the court the fright of its life. Can’t resist the idea.”

  “Robespierre—” Brissot called.

  Robespierre stopped. “Vergniaud,” he said. “Pétion. Brissot.” Having named them, he seemed satisfied.

  “We have a proposal.”

  “I know your proposal. You propose to make us slaves again.”

  Pétion held up a placating hand. He was a larger, stouter man than when Robespierre had first known him, and satin success had settled in his face.

  “I think we need not traffic in the small change of the debating chamber,” Vergniaud suggested. “We could have private talks.”

  “I want no private talks.”

  “Believe me,” Brissot said, “believe me, Robespierre, we wish you would come with us on the war question. The intolerable meddling in our internal affairs—”

  “Why do you think of fighting Austria and England, when your enemy is here at home?”

  “You mean there?” With a motion of his head, Vergniaud indicated the direction of the King’s apartments in the Tuileries.

  “There, yes—and all around us.”

  “With our friends in the ministry,” Pétion said, “we can take care of them.”

  “Let me go.” Robespierre pushed past them.

  “He is becoming morbidly suspicious,” Pétion said. “I used to be his friend. Not to mince matters, I fear for his sanity.”

  “He has a following,” Vergniaud said.

  Brissot pursued Robespierre, took him by the elbow. Vergniaud watched them. “A good ratting dog,” he observed.

  “Eh?” Pétion said.

  Brissot was still at Robespierre’s heels.

  “Robespierre, we were speaking of the ministry—we are offering you a situation.”

  Robespierre broke away. He pulled down the sleeve of his coat. “I want no situation,” he said somberly. “And there is no situation suitable for me.”

  “Fourth floor?” said Dumouriez. “Is he poverty-stricken, this Roland, that he lives on the fourth floor?”

  “Paris costs money,” Brissot said defensively. His chest heaved.

  “Really,” Dumouriez was irritated, “you don’t have to run after me if you can’t stand the pace. I would have waited; I have no intention of going in alone. Now: are you quite sure about this?”

  “Proven administrator”—Brissot gasped—“and record of service—and sound attitudes—and wife—great capabilities—utter dedication—to our aims.”

  “Yes, I think I followed that,” Dumouriez said. He did not think they had many aims in common.

  Manon answered the door herself. She was little disheveled, and she had been very, very bored.

  General Dumouriez kissed her hand with an excess of old regime politeness. “Monsieur?” he inquired.

  “He is just now sleeping.”

  “I thin
k you could put it to Madame,” Brissot suggested.

  “And I think not,” Dumouriez muttered. He turned to her. “Be so good as to rouse him. We have a proposition which may be of interest.” He looked around the room. “It would mean your moving house. Perhaps, m’dear, you’d like to pack your china or something?”

  “But no,” Manon said. She looked very young, and on the verge of frustrated tears. “You are teasing me. How can you do this?”

  There was a slight abeyance of the grayness on her husband’s face. “I hardly think, my sweet, that M. Brissot would joke about so serious a subject as the composition of the government. The King offers the Ministry of the Interior. We—I—accept.”

  Vergniaud had also been asleep, in his apartment at Mme. Dodun’s house, No. 5 Place Vendôme. But one got out of bed for Danton. What he knew of Danton compelled his reluctant admiration, but he had one glaring fault—he worked too hard.

  “But why this Roland?” Danton said.

  “Because there was no one else,” Vergniaud said, listless. He was bored with the subject. He was tired of people asking him who Roland was. “Because he’s pliable. Believed to be discreet. Who would you have us take up? Marat?”

  “They call themselves republicans, the Rolands. So do you, I think.”

  Vergniaud nodded impassively. Danton studied him. A year under forty, he was not quite tall or broad enough to cut an impressive figure. His pale, heavy face was slightly marked from smallpox, and his large nose seemed to have slight acquaintance with his small, deep-set eyes, as if either feature would just as soon belong in some other face. He was not a man who would be noticed in a crowd; but at the tribune of the Assembly or the Jacobins—his audience silent, the galleries craning—he was a different man. He became handsome, with an assured graceful integrity of smooth voice and commanding body. There he had the presence supposed to belong only to aristocrats; a spark kindled in his brown eyes. “Note that,” Camille said. “That is the spark of self-regard.”

  “Oh, but I like to see a man doing what he is good at,” Danton had answered warmly.

  Of Brissot’s friends, he decided, this man was much the best. I like you, he thought; but you are lazy. “A republican in the ministry—” he said.

  “—is not necessarily a republican minister,” Vergniaud finished. “Well, we shall see.” Carelessly he turned over a few papers on his desk. Danton saw in it a reflection of some slight contempt for the people they spoke of. “You will have to call on them, Danton, if you want to get on in life. Pay your compliments to the lady.” He chuckled at Danton’s expression. “Beginning to think you’re out on a limb? With Robespierre for company? He’d better reconcile himself to war. His popularity has never been lower.”

  “Popularity is not the issue.”

  “Not with Robespierre, no. But you, Danton, where do you go from here?”

  “Up. Vergniaud, I wish you would throw in your lot with us.”

  “Who exactly is ‘us’?”

  Danton began to speak, then paused, struck for the first time by the disreputable quality of the names he had to offer. “Hérault de Séchelles,” he said at length.

  Vergniaud raised a heavy eyebrow. “Just the two of you? Messieurs Camille and Fabre d’Églantine suddenly excluded from your confidence? Legendre too busy butchering? Well, I dare say these people are useful to you. But I don’t seek to attach myself to a faction. I favored the war, so I sat with the others who favored it. But I am not a Brissotin, whatever that may be. I am my own man.”

  “I wish we all were,” Danton said. “But you will find it does not work out like that.”

  One morning, late March, Camille woke up with a certain thought going around in his head. He had been talking to soldiers—General Dillon amongst others—and they said if there is going to be a war anyway, what is the point of standing out against public opinion and the tide of the times? Was it not better to put yourself at the head of an irresistible movement, rather than be trampled in the rush?

  He roused his wife and told her. “I feel sick,” she said.

  At 6:30 a.m. he was in Danton’s drawing room, pacing the carpet. Danton called him a fool.

  “Why do I always have to agree with you? I’m not allowed any independent thoughts. I can think what I like as long as it happens to be what you think.”

  “Go away,” Danton said. “I am not your father.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean that you sound like a fifteen-year-old and what you are trying do is pick a fight, so why don’t you go home for a few days and quarrel with your father? We would be spared political consequences.”

  “I shall write—”

  “You will not put pen to paper. You do try my temper, exceedingly. Go away, before I make you the first Brissotin martyr. Go to Robespierre, and see if you get a better reception.”

  Robespierre was ill. The raw spring weather hurt his chest, and his stomach rejected what he fed it.

  “So you desert your friends,” he said, wheezing a little.

  “This need not affect our friendship,” Camille said grandly.

  Robespierre looked away.

  “You remind me—what’s the name of that English King?”

  “George,” Robespierre snapped.

  “I think I mean Canute.”

  “You will have to go away,” Robespierre said. “I can’t argue with you this morning. I have to conserve my strength for important things. But if you commit yourself to paper, I shall never trust you again.”

  Camille backed out of the room.

  Eléonore Duplay was standing outside. He knew she had been listening, because of the sudden vivacity in her dreary eyes. “Ah, it’s Cornélia,” he said. He had never in his life spoken to a woman in that tone; she would have excited cruelty in a mouse.

  “We wouldn’t have let you in if we’d known you were going to upset him. Don’t come again. In any case, he won’t see you.”

  She ran her eyes over him. I hoped you would quarrel, they said.

  “You and your ghastly family, Eléonore. Do you think you own him? Do you think because he condescends to stay under your roof you have the right to decide who comes and goes? Do you think you are going to keep him away from his oldest friend?”

  “You are so sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  “With reason,” Camille said. “Oh, Cornélia, you are so transparent. I know exactly what your plans are. I know exactly what you think. You think he’ll marry you. Forget it, my dear. He won’t.”

  That was the only spark of satisfaction in the day. Lucile sat waiting for him sadly, her little hands resting on the draped bulk of the child. Life was no fun now. She had reached the stage when women looked at her with lively sympathy: when men’s eyes passed over her as if she were an old sofa.

  “There’s a note from Max,” she said. “I opened it. He says he regrets what happened this morning, he spoke hastily and he begs you to forgive him. And Georges called. He said, ‘Sorry.’”

  “I had a wonderful row with Eléonore. They’re predatory, those people. I wonder, you know, what would happen to me if Danton and Robespierre ever disagreed?”

  “You have a mind of your own.”

  “Yes, but you will find it doesn’t work out like that.”

  On March 26 the Queen passed to the enemy full details of France’s war plans. On April 20, France declared war on Austria.

  April 25, 1792—Scientific and Democratic Execution of Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, highway robber.

  There are bigger crowds than for any ordinary execution, and an air of anticipation. The executioners, of course, have been practicing with dummies; they look quite buoyant, and they are nodding to each other, putting each other on their honor not to make a blunder. Yet there’s nothing to fear, the machine does everything. It is mounted on a scaffold, a big frame with a heavy blade. The criminal ascends with his guards. He is not to suffer, because in France the age of barbarism is over, superseded by a machine, a
pproved by a committee.

  Moving quickly, the executioners surround the man, bind him to a plank and slide it forward; swoop of the blade, a soft thud and a sudden carpet of blood. The crowd sighs, its members look at each other in disbelief. It is all over so soon, there is no spectacle. They cannot see that the man can be dead. One of Sanson’s assistants looks up at him, and the master executioner nods. The young man lifts the leather bag into which the head has fallen, and picks out the dripping contents. He holds the head up to the crowed, turning slowly to each quarter to show the empty, expressionless face. Good enough. They are placated. A few women pick up their children so that they can see better. The dead man’s trunk is cut free and rolled into a big wicker basket to be taken away; the severed head is placed between the feet.

  All in all, including holding up the head (which will not always be necessary), it has taken just five minutes. The master executioner estimates that the time could be cut almost by half, if time were ever important. He and his assistants and apprentices are divided over the new device. It is convenient, true, and humane; you cannot believe that the man feels any pain. But it looks so easy; people will be thinking that there is no skill in it, that anyone can be an executioner. The profession feels itself undermined. Only the previous year, the Assembly had debated the question of capital punishment, and the popular deputy Robespierre had actually pleaded for it to be abolished. They said he still felt strongly about the question, was hopeful of success. But that deep-thinking man, M. Sanson, feels that M. Robespierre is out of step with public opinion, on this point.