A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  “There was nothing you could do,” the young man kept saying. “Please, Camille, I should have come before, they were royalists anyway and there was really nothing you could do.”

  Lucile had been out to buy some bread for breakfast. No point in asking Jeanette to go; with daylight, the woman’s nerve had snapped, and she was running round the apartment, as Lucile said, like a hen without a head.

  Lucile put her basket over her arm. She draped a jacket around her, though it was warm, because she wanted to put her little knife into the pocket. No one knew she had this little knife; she hardly allowed herself to know, but she kept it on her person in case of need. Just think, she said to herself. I could be living on the Right Bank. I could be married to a senior clerk at the Treasury. I could be sitting with my feet up, embroidering a linen handkerchief with a rambling-rose design. Instead I’m on the rue des Cordeliers in pursuit of a baguette, with a three-inch blade for comfort.

  She looked into the eyes of her familiar neighbors. Who would have thought our Section contained so many royalists? “You murderer’s whore,” a man said to her. She kept a smile on her face, a particularly maddening smile that she had learned from Camille, a smile that taunted and said, all right, just try it. In imagination, she eased the knife’s smooth handle into her palm, pressed its point against yielding flesh. As she was on her way back, and outside her own front door, another man recognized her and spat in her face.

  She stopped inside the front door, to wipe the saliva away, then wafted up the stairs, sat down, the bread in her lap. “Are you going to eat that?” Jeanette said, wringing her apron between her hands in a pantomime of anguish.

  “Of course I am, since I went to such trouble to get it. Pull yourself together, Jeanette, put some coffee on.”

  Louise called from the drawing room “I think Gabrielle is going to faint.”

  So possibly she never got her breakfast; afterwards she didn’t remember. They got Gabrielle onto the bed, loosened her clothes, fanned her. She opened a window, but the noise from the street was agitating Gabrielle even more; so she closed it again, and they endured the heat. Gabrielle dozed; she and Louise took turns at reading to each other, and gossiped and bickered gently, and told each other their life stories. The hours crept on, until Camille and Fréron came home.

  Fréron flopped into a chair. “There are bodies—” he indicated a height from the ground. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Lucile, but Louis Suleau is dead. Yes, we saw it, we saw it happen, we saw him killed before our eyes.”

  He wanted Camille to say, Fréron saved my life; or at least to say, Fréron stopped me doing something very very stupid. But Camille only said, “For the love of Christ, Rabbit, save it for your memoirs. If I hear any more about this morning I’ll do you an injury. And not a trivial one, either.”

  At the sight of him, Jeanette pulled herself together. The coffee was produced at last. Gabrielle came staggering from the bedroom doorway, fastening the bodice of her dress. “I haven’t seen François since early morning,” Camille told Louise. His voice was unnaturally flat, without the trace of a stutter. “I haven’t seen Georges-Jacques, but he is signing decrees from City Hall, so clearly he is alive and well. Louis Capet and all his family have deserted the palace and are at the Riding School. The Assembly is in permanent session. I don’t think even the Swiss Guard knows the King has gone and I’m sure the people attacking the palace don’t know. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to tell them.” He stood up, held Lucile in his arms for a moment. “I am going to change my clothes once more, because I have got dried blood on them, and then I am going out again.”

  Fréron looked after him gloomily. “I’m afraid the reaction will set in later,” he said. “I know Camille. He’s not cut out for all this.”

  “You think not?” Lucile said. “I think he thrives on it.” She wants to ask how Louis Suleau died, how and why. But now is not the time. As Danton had said, she is not a silly girl; no, no, she is the voice of common sense. Maria Stuart, on the wall, approaches the headsman; nubile, shapely, Maria wears a sickly Christian smile. The pink silk cushions are looking the worse for wear, as Camille could have predicted but didn’t; the blue chaise-longue has a knowing air, like a piece of furniture that’s seen a lot in its time. Lucile Desmoulins is twenty-two years old, wife, mother, mistress of her house. In the August heat—a fly buzzing against glass, a man whistling in the street, a baby crying on another floor—she feels her soul set into its shape, small and stained and mortal. Once she might have said the prayers for the dead. Now she thought, what the fuck’s the use, it’s the living I have to worry about.

  When Gabrielle felt strong enough, she said that she would like to go back to her own house. The streets were packed and noisy. The porter had panicked and closed the big gate to the Cour du Commerce; Gabrielle hammered and banged and rang the bell, yelling to be let into her own home. “We can go in through the baker’s if he’ll let us,” she said, “in at his front door and out through his back kitchen.”

  But the baker wouldn’t even let them into his shop; he shouted into their faces and pushed Gabrielle in the chest, bruising her and winding her and sending her flying back into the road. Dragging her between them, they retreated to the big gate, huddled against it. As a group of men crowded around them Lucile reached into her pocket and felt that the knife was there and caressed it with her fingertips; she said, “I know you, I know your names, and if you approach one step nearer your heads will be on pikes before nightfall and I will take the greatest pleasure in helping to put them there.”

  And then the gate opened for them; hands pulled them inside; bolts slammed home; they were inside the front door, they were on the stairs, they were in the Dantons’ house, and Lucile was saying crossly, “This time we’re staying put.”

  Gabrielle was shaking her head—lost, utterly exhausted. From across the river the gunfire was heavy and constant. “Mother of God, I look as if I’ve been three days in the tomb,” Louise Robert said, catching sight of herself as they once again plumped pillows and disposed Gabrielle to the horizontal.

  “Why do you think the Dantons have separate beds?” she whispered to Lucile, when she thought they were out of earshot.

  Lucile shrugged. Gabrielle said in a drugged voice, “Because he lashes his arms about, dreams he’s fighting—1 don’t know who.”

  “His enemies? His creditors? His inclinations?” Lucile said.

  Louise Robert raided Gabrielle’s dressing table. She found a pot of rouge, and applied it in round scarlet spots, as they used to do at Court. She offered some to Lucile, but Lucile said, “Come, you minx, you know I am beyond improvement.”

  Midday passed. The streets fell silent. This is what the last hours will be like, Lucile thought; this is what it will be like when the world ends, and we are waiting for the death of the sun. But the sun did not fail; it beat down, and beat down at last on the blazing tricolor, on the heads of the Marseille men, on the singing victory processions and the loyal lurking Cordeliers who’d had the sense to stay indoors all day and who now poured onto the streets, chanting for the republic, calling for the death of tyrants, calling for their man Danton.

  There was a pounding at the door. Lucile threw it open; nothing could worry her now. A big man stood propping himself in the doorway, swaying a little. He was a man from the streets: “Forgive me, Monsieur,” Louise Robert said, laughing. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

  “They’re smashing the mirrors at the palace,” the man said. “The Cordeliers are kings now.” He tossed something to Gabrielle. She caught it awkwardly. It was a hairbrush, heavy, silver-backed. “From the Queen’s dressing table,” the man said.

  Gabrielle’s forefinger traced the embossed monogram: “A” for Antoinette. The man lurched forward and caught Lucile around the waist, spinning her off her feet. He smelled of wine, tobacco and blood. He kissed her throat, a sucking, greedy, proletarian kiss; he set her on her feet again, clattered ba
ck into the street.

  “Goodness,” Louise said. “What a legion of admirers you have, Lucile. He’s probably been waiting two years for the chance to do that.”

  Lucile took out her handkerchief and dabbed at her neck. It wasn’t my admirers I met this morning, she thought. She wagged a finger and dropped her voice a tone, for her well-rehearsed Rémy imitation: “I just say to them, now boys, stop quarreling over me—liberty, equality, fraternity, remember?”

  The Queen’s hairbrush lay where Gabrielle had dropped it, on the drawing-room carpet.

  Danton came home. It was late afternoon. They could hear his voice out in the street. He came home with Fabre the genius of our age, with Legendre the butcher, with Collot d’Herbois much-the-worst-person-in-the-world; with François Robert, with Westermann. He came home with his arms around the shoulders of Legendre and Westermann, unsteady on his feet, unshaven, exhausted, reeking of brandy. “We won!” they shouted. It was a simple chant—as slogans go it was right to the point. He gathered Gabrielle into his arms, hugged her fiercely, protectively; once again she felt her knees give way.

  He propped her into a chair. “She’s had terrible trouble staying upright at all,” Louise Robert said. Her skin glowed now, beneath the rouge; François was back at her side.

  “Get out, the lot of you!” Danton said. “Haven’t you beds to go to?” He crashed into his own bedroom, threw himself down on his bed. Lucile followed him. She touched the back of his neck, took him by the shoulders. He groaned. “Try me some other time,” he advised. He flopped onto his back, grinning. “Oh, Georges-Jacques, Georges-Jacques,” he said to himself, “life’s just a series of wonderful opportunities. What would Maître Vinot make of you now?”

  “Tell me where my husband is.”

  “Camille?” His grin broadened. “Camille’s at the Riding School, fixing the next bit of the Life Plan. No, Camille’s not like humans, he doesn’t need sleep.”

  “When I last saw him,” she said, “he was in a state of shock.”

  “Yes.” The grin faded. His eyelids fluttered closed, then opened again. “That bitch Théroigne slaughtered Suleau within twenty yards of where he stood. You know, we never saw Robespierre all day. Perhaps he was hiding in Duplay’s cellar.” His voice began to trail off. “Suleau was at school with Camille. Small world, so was Max. Camille is a hardworking boy, and will go far. Tomorrow we shall know … .” His eyes closed. “That’s it,” he said.

  The Assembly had begun its current sitting at 2 a.m. The debate was attended by some inconveniences: drowned out intermittently by gunfire, and thrown into confusion by the arrival of the royal family at about 8:30 in the morning. Only yesterday it had voted to suspend any further discussion on the future of the monarchy, yet it did seem now that the vestiges of the institution had been left behind in the smashed and devastated palace. The Right said that the adjournment of the debate had been the signal for insurrection; the Left said that when the deputies abandoned the issue they also abandoned any claim to be leaders of public opinion.

  The King’s family and a few of their friends were squashed into a reporters’ box which looked down on the deputies from behind the President’s dais. From mid-afternoon onwards, a constant procession of petitioners and delegates jostled through the corridors and overflowed the debating chamber. The rumors from outside were frightful and bizarre. All the bolsters and mattresses in the palace had been slashed, and the air was thick with flying feathers. Prostitutes were plying their trade on the Queen’s bed: though how this fitted with the earlier story, no one could say. A man had been seen playing the violin over the corpse of someone whose throat he had cut. A hundred people had been stabbed and clubbed to death in the rue de l‘Échelle. A cook had been cooked. The servants were being dragged from under beds and up chimneys and tossed out of windows to be impaled on pikes. Fires had been started, and there were the usual dubious reports of cannibalism.

  Vergniaud, the current president of the Assembly, had long ago given up trying to distinguish truth from fantasy. Below him, on the floor of the House, he counted rather more invaders than deputies. Every few minutes the doors would burst open to admit begrimed and weary men staggering under the weight of what, if it had not been brought straight to the Riding School, would have been loot. Really, Vergniaud thought, it was going too far to place inlaid night-stools and complete sets of Molière at the feet of the Nation. The place had begun to resemble an auction room. Vergniaud tried unobtrusively to loosen his cravat.

  In the cramped, airless reporters’ box, the royal children were falling asleep. The King, who believed in keeping his strength up, was gnawing at the leg of a capon. From time to time he wiped his fingers on his sad purple coat. On the benches below him a deputy put his head in his hands. “Went out for a piss,” he said. “Camille Desmoulins ambushed me. Pushed me against the wall, made me support Danton for Pope. Or something. Seems Danton might stand for God, they haven’t decided yet, but I’m told I’d better vote for him or else I might wake up with my throat cut.”

  A few benches away, Brissot conferred with ex-minister Roland. M. Roland was yellower in the face than he used to be; he hugged his dusty hat to his chest, as if it were his last line of defense.

  “The Assembly must be dissolved,” Brissot said, “there will have to be fresh elections. Before this session breaks up, we must nominate a new cabinet, a new Council of Ministers. Yes, now, we must do it now—someone must govern the country. You will return to your post as Minister of the Interior.”

  “Really? And Servan, Clavière?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Brissot said. He thought, this is what I was born to do: shape governments. “Back to the situation as it was in June, except that you won’t have the royal veto to hamper you. And you’ll have Danton for a colleague.”

  Roland sighed. “Manon won’t like this.”

  “She must make her mind up to it.”

  “Which ministry do we want Danton to have?”

  “It hardly matters,” Brissot said bleakly, “as long as he has the whip hand.”

  “Has it come to that?”

  “If you’d been on the streets today, you couldn’t doubt it.”

  “Why, have you been on the streets?” Roland rather doubted that.

  “I’m informed,” Brissot said. “Very fully informed. I’m told he’s their man. They’re yelling their throats out for him. What do you think of that?”

  “I wonder,” Roland said, “whether this is a proper beginning for the republic. Shall we be chivvied by the rabble?”

  “Where is Vergniaud going?” Brissot asked.

  The president had signaled for his substitute. “Please make way for me,” he was asking pleasantly.

  Brissot followed Vergniaud with his eyes. It was entirely possible that alliances, factions, pacts would be proposed, framed, broken—and, if he were not everywhere, party to every conversation—the dreadful possibility arose that he might forfeit his status as the best-informed man in France.

  “Danton is a complete crook,” Roland said. “Perhaps we should ask him to take over as Minister of Justice?”

  By the door Vergniaud, faced with Camille, had been unable to get into his proper oratorical sweep and stride. One quite sees, he said, and one does appreciate, and one fully understands. For the first time in his three-minute tirade, Camille faltered. “Tell me, Vergniaud,” he said, “am I beginning to repeat myself?”

  Vergniaud released his indrawn breath. “A little. But really what you have to say is all so fresh and interesting. Finish what you’ve started, you say. In what way?”

  Camille made a sweeping gesture, encompassing both the Riding School and the howling streets outside. “I don’t understand why the King isn’t dead. Plenty of better people are dead. And these superfluous deputies? The royalists they’ve crammed into the prisons?”

  “But you can’t kill them all.” The orator’s voice shook.

  “We do have the capacity.”

  “I
said ‘can’t’ but I meant ’ought not to.’ Danton wouldn’t require a superfluity of deaths.”

  “Would he not? I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for hours. I think he arranged for the Capet family to be brought out of the palace.”

  “Yes,” Vergniaud said. “That seems a reasonable supposition. Now, why do you think he did that?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps he’s a humanitarian.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “I’m not even sure if I’m awake.”

  “I think you should go home, Camille. You are saying all the wrong things.”

  “Am I? You are kind. If you were saying the wrong things I’d be, you know, making mental notes.”

  “No,” Vergniaud said reassuringly. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Yes,” Camille insisted. “We don’t trust you.”

  “So I see. But I doubt you need spend anymore energy frightening people. Did you not think that we might want Danton anyway? Not because of what he might do if he were denied power—which I am sure would be quite as distasteful as you imply—but because of a belief that he’s the only man who can save the country?”

  “No,” Camille said. “That never occurred to me.”