A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  “I shall propose that until the elections are over, an hour a day be given to a public discussion of the candidates’ merits.”

  “Oh, a discussion,” Legendre said, relieved. For a moment he’d thought Robespierre might be planning to put a warrant out for Kersaint. Last week, you’d known what kind of a man you were dealing with; this week, you didn’t know. It put him up in your estimation, in a way.

  Danton grinned. “You’d better make a list of Camille’s merits, and circulate it. We aren’t all so inventive as you. I don’t know how you’d justify Camille, except under the heading ‘exceptional talent.’”

  “You do want him elected?” Robespierre demanded.

  “Of course. I want someone to talk to during the boring debates.”

  “Then don’t sit there laughing.”

  Camille said, “I wish you wouldn’t discuss me as if I weren’t here.” On the next ballot, Citizen Kersaint, who before had received 230 votes, now mysteriously found that he had only thirty-six. Robespierre shrugged. “One does try to persuade people, of course. There’s no more to it than that. Congratulations, my dear.” For some reason, an image comes into his head, of Camille at twelve or thirteen years old: a violent, whimsical child, given to stormy outbreaks of tears.

  Meanwhile the volunteers, in their thousands, march to the front singing. They have sausages and loaves of bread stuck on the end of their bayonets. Women give them kisses and bunches of flowers. Do you remember how it used to be when the recruiting sergeant came to a village? No one hides now. People are scraping the walls of their cellars for saltpeter to make gunpowder. Women are giving their wedding rings to the Treasury to be melted down. Many of them, of course, will be taking advantage of the new laws to get divorced.

  “Pikes?” Camille said.

  “Pikes,” Fabre said sullenly.

  “I don’t wish to appear legalistic, a pettifogger as it were, but is it the business of the Minister of Justice to purchase pikes? Does Georges-Jacques know we’ve got a bill for pikes?”

  “Oh, come on, do you think I can go running to the minister with every trifling expense?”

  “When you add it all up,” Camille pushed his hair back, “we’ve spent a lot of money over the past few weeks. It worries me to think that now we’re all deputies there’ll be new ministers soon, and they’ll want to know where the money has gone. Because really, I haven’t the least idea. I don’t suppose you have?”

  “Anything that causes difficulty,” Fabre said “you just put down as ‘Secret Fund.’ Then nobody asks any questions, because they can’t, you see—it’s secret. Don’t worry so much. Everything’s all right as long as you don’t lose the Great Seal. You haven’t lost it, have you?”

  “No. At least, I saw it somewhere this morning.”

  “Good—now look, shall we reimburse ourselves a bit? What about that money Manon Roland is supposed to be getting for her ministry to issue news sheets?”

  “Oh yes. Georges told her that she’d better ask me nicely to edit them.”

  “He did, I was there. She said perhaps her husband would see you, and decide if you were suitable. Our minister, he began to bellow and paw the ground.”

  They laughed. “Well, then,” Camille said. “One Treasury warrant …” His hand moved over his desk. “Claude taught me this … they never query anything, you know, if it has Danton’s signature.”

  “I know,” Fabre said.

  “What did I do with the signature stamp? I lent it to Marat. I hope he brings it back.”

  “Speaking of Queen Coco,” Fabre said, “have you noticed anything different in her manner lately?”

  “How could I? You know I’m forbidden the presence.”

  “Oh yes, of course you are. Well, let me tell you … There’s a certain lightness in the step, a certain bloom on the cheek—what does that betoken?”

  “She’s in love.”

  Fabre is now around forty years years old. He is neat, pale, built on economic lines: actor’s eyes, actor’s hands. Bits of his autobiography emerge, late at night, in no particular chronological order. No wonder nothing fazes him. In Namur once, aided by army-officer friends, he eloped with a fifteen-year-old girl called Catiche; he did it, he explains, to preserve her virginity from the girl’s own father. Better that he should have it … . They had been apprehended; Catiche had been hastily married off, he had been sentenced to hang. How is it, then, that he lives to tell the tale? All these years on, and with so much excitement in between, he can hardly remember. Camille says, “Georges-Jacques, we have lived sheltered lives, you and me.”

  “Monk-like,” the minister agrees.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Fabre says modestly.

  Fabre follows the minister as he stamps through public buildings, his large hands slapping backs and desktops, wringing the necks of all compromise solutions, all the tried and tested methods, all the decent ways of doing things. Power becomes him, fits him like an old topcoat; his little eyes glitter if anyone tries to dispute with him. Fabre feeds his ego in all the unsubtle ways he likes best; they are comfortable together, sit up drinking and discussing shady inter-departmental deals. When dawn comes, Danton find himself alone with the map of Europe.

  Fabre is limited, he complains, he makes me waste my time. But his company is never exacting, and the minister is used to him, and he is always there when he’s wanted.

  This morning the minister was thoughtful, chin on fist. “Fabre, have you ever planned a robbery?”

  Fabre darted at him a look of alarm.

  “No,” Danton said good-humoredly, “I know petty criminality is a pastime of yours. We’ll come to that later. No, I need your help, because I want to steal the Crown Jewels. Yes, do sit down.”

  “Perhaps, Danton, a word of explanation?”

  “You’re entitled to that—but I want no ifs or buts. Use your imagination. I do. Now, consider the Duke of Brunswick.”

  “Brunswick—”

  “Spare me your Jacobin diatribe—I’ve heard it. The truth is that Brunswick, as a man, is not wholly unsympathetic to us. The July manifesto wasn’t his—the Austrians and the Prussians made him sign it. Think about him. He’s an intelligent man. He’s a forward-looking man. He has no tears to waste on the Bourbons. He is also a very rich man. He is a great soldier. But to the allies he is—what? A mercenary.”

  “What does he aspire to be?”

  “Brunswick knows as well as I do that France isn’t ready for republican government. The people may not want Louis or his brothers, but they want a King, because Kings are what they understand, and sooner or later the nation will fall to a King, or to a dictator who will make himself King. Ask Robespierre, if you don’t think I’m right. Now there might have been circumstances in which—having established a constitution—we were scouring Europe for some reasonably regal old buffer to come and uphold it. Brunswick would perhaps word it differently—but there is no doubt that he wished to play that role.”

  “Robespierre alleged this.” (And you, Fabre thought, pretended not to believe it.) “But then in July, with the manifesto—”

  “Brunswick wrecked his chances. We use him as a swear word. Why did the allies make him put his name on their manifesto? Because they need him. They wanted to make him hated here, so that his personal ambitions were quashed, and he was secured to their service.”

  “They succeeded. So what about it?”

  “The situation’s not—irretrievable. You see, I’ve considered whether Brunswick might be bought off. I’ve asked General Dumouriez to open negotiations.”

  Fabre drew in his breath. “You’re reckless with our lives. We’re in Dumouriez’s hands now.”

  “That’s possible, but that’s not the issue. The issue is the result for France, not the unfinished business between me and the general. Because … it appears that Brunswick can be bought off.”

  “Well, he’s human, isn’t he? He isn’t Robespierre, or even the Virtuous Roland, as the newspapers cal
l the Minister of the Interior.”

  “Don’t banter,” Danton said. Suddenly he grinned. “I take your point. We do have a few saints on our side. Well, when they’re dead, the French will be able to march into battle with their relics for protection. In lieu of cannon, of which we are rather short.”

  “What does Brunswick want? How much?”

  “His requirements are specific. He wants diamonds. Did you know he collects them? We know, don’t we, what lust diamonds can inspire? We have the example, dear to our hearts, of the woman Capet.”

  “But I can hardly believe—”

  Danton cut him off with a gesture. “We steal the Crown Jewels. We convey to Brunswick the stones he especially covets, and we allow the others to be recovered. For use on future occasions.”

  “Can the thing be done?”

  Danton scowled. “Do you think I’d have got so deep in, if it couldn’t? The theft itself would pose very few problems, for professionals, if they have a bit of help from us. A few slipups on the security side. A few blunders with the investigation.”

  “But all that—the security of the jewels, the investigation—all that would come under Roland’s jurisdiction.”

  “The Virtuous Roland will fall in with our scheme. After he’s been told a certain amount about it, after he’s implicated, he won’t be able to betray us without betraying himself. I will bring him to that point, I will make sure he has the knowledge he doesn’t want to have—you can leave that to me. But in fact, what he knows will be very little—we’ll wrap the affair up so that he has to guess who is involved and who isn’t. If things get difficult, we’ll stick him with the blame. After all, as you say, his department is responsible.”

  “But he’d simply say, Danton originated this—”

  “If he lived long enough.”

  Fabre stared. “You are a different man, Danton.”

  “No, Fabre, I am a filthy patriot, as I always have been. What I am buying from Brunswick is one battle, one battle for our poor underfed barefoot soldiers. Is that wrong?”

  “The means …”

  “The means I will set out to you, and I have no time to waste discussing ends. I want no cant about justification. The justification is the saving of the country.”

  “For what?” Fabre looked stupefied. “Saving it for what?”

  Danton’s face darkened. “If this day fortnight an Austrian soldier takes you by the throat and says, ‘Do you want to live?’ will you say, ‘For what?’”

  Fabre looked away. “Yes …” he muttered. “To survive at all will be the thing now. And Brunswick is willing to lose a battle—with his reputation at stake?”

  “It will be managed so that he doesn’t lose face. He knows what he’s doing. So do 1. Now, Fabre, some professional criminals. I have contacts already, which you must follow up. They mustn’t know who they’re working for. They will all be,” he waved a hand, “dispensable. We can allow Roland to direct the police in a certain amount of inept investigation. Of course, we can expect the matter to be taken very seriously. Death penalty.”

  “What’s to stop them talking at their trial? Because we may need to let the police catch somebody.”

  “As far as you can, make sure they have nothing to talk about. We shall have a blanket of obfuscation between each stratum of this conspiracy, and between each conspirator. So see to that. Obfuscate. If anyone should begin to suspect government involvement, the trail should lead to Roland. Now, there are two people in particular who must know nothing of this. One is Roland’s wife. The woman is innocent of practical politics, and very loud-mouthed. The trouble is, he doesn’t seem able to keep anything from her.”

  “The other person is Camille,” Fabre said. “Because he would tell Robespierre, and Robespierre would call us traitors for talking to Brunswick at all.”

  Danton nodded. “I can’t divide Camille’s loyalties. Who knows? He might make the wrong choice.”

  “But both of them are in a position to find out so much.”

  “That’s a risk we take. Now, I can buy one battle—and by doing so, I can hope to turn the tide of the war. But after that I can’t remain in office. I would be open to blackmail, by Brunswick or more likely by—”

  “General Dumouriez.”

  “Quite. Oh, I know you don’t like the odds, Fabre. But consider yourself. I don’t know how much you’ve embezzled from the ministry in the past few weeks, but I take it to be more than a trifle. I—let us say as long as your ambitions remain on a reasonable scale—I won’t thwart them. You are thinking, what use will Danton be to me out of office? But Fabre, war is so lucrative. You’ll never be far from power now. Inside information … just imagine. I know what you’re worth to me.”

  Fabre swallowed. He looked away. His eyes seemed unfocused. “Do you ever think, does it ever bother you … that everything is founded on lies?”

  “That’s a dangerous thing to say. I don’t like that.”

  “No, I didn’t mean on your part, I was asking … on my own account … to see if one might compare experiences.” He smiled wanly; for the first time in all the years he’d known him, Danton saw him at a loss, mystified, a man whose life has been taken out of his control. He looked up. “It’s nothing,” he said lightly. “I didn’t mean anything, Danton.”

  “You can’t afford to speak without thinking. No one must know the truth about this, not in a thousand years. The French are going to win a battle, that’s all. Your silence is the price of mine, and neither of us breaks the silence, even to save our own lives.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Robespierricide

  “I fell in love with you the first time I saw you.” Oh, Manon thought, not before that? It seemed to her that her letters, her writings, should have prompted some quickening of sensibility in the man who—she now knew—was the only one who could ever have made her happy.

  This was no hasty process. Rivers of ink had flowed between them, when they’d been apart; when they’ve been together—or, let us say, in the same city—they have seldom had a private moment. Salon conversation, hours of it, has been their lot; they spoke the language of legislators, before they spoke the language of love. Even now, Buzot did not say much. He seemed perplexed, torn, tormented. He was younger than she was, less tutored in his emotions. He had a wife: a plain woman, older.

  Manon ventured this: her fingertips on his shoulder, as he sat with his head in his hands. It was consolatory; and it stopped her fingers from trembling.

  There was a need for secrecy. The newspapers nominated lovers for her—Louvet, often. Until now she’d reacted with public scorn; have they no arguments, have they not even a higher form of wit? (In private, though, these skits and squibs brought her near to tears; she asked herself why she was meted out the same treatment as that peculiar, wild young woman Théroigne, the same treatment—when she thought about it—as the Capet woman used to get.) The newspapers—just—she could bear; what was harder to bear was the activity of the gossip circus that centered on the Ministry of Justice.

  Danton’s comments were relayed to her; he claimed her husband had been a cuckold for years, in every moral sense if not the physical one. But how could he imagine her situation; how could he appreciate, acknowledge the delicate satisfactions of a relationship between a chaste woman and an honorable man? It was impossible to think of him in any context but that of the grossly physical. She had seen his wife; since he became a minister he had brought her once to the Riding School, to sit in the public gallery and hear him roaring at the deputies. She was a dull type of woman, pregnant, probably with no thought in her head beyond gruel and baby mush. Still, she’s a woman—how could she bear it, she asked out loud, how could she bear to have that bully’s overweight body stretched on top of hers?

  It was an unguarded remark, a remark almost shocked out of her by the strength of her own repulsion; next day it was of course repeated all over town. She went scarlet at the thought of it.

  Citizen Fabre d’Églan
tine called. He crossed his legs and put his fingertips together. “Well, my dear,” he said.

  This ghastly assumption of familiarity was what she resented. This unserious person, who associated with females who trembled on the outer fringes of polite society: this creature with his theatrical affectations and his snide remarks out of earshot; they sent him here to watch her, and he went back and made reports. “Citizen Camille is saying,” he told her, “that your now-famous remark suggests that you are in fact greatly attracted to the minister—as he has always suspected.”

  “I can’t imagine how he presumes to divine the state of my feelings. As we have never met.”

  “No, I realize this: why won’t you meet him?”

  “We would have nothing to say to each other.”

  She had seen Camille Desmoulins’s wife at the Riding School, and at the public gallery of the Jacobins; she looked an accommodating sort of girl, and they said she accommodated Danton. They said Camille condoned it or did rather more … . Fabre noticed that little, flinching movement of the head, that flinching away from knowledge. And yet, what a cesspit the woman’s mind must be; even we, he thought, do not speculate in public about what our colleagues do in bed.

  Manon asked herself: why do I have to put up with this man? If I must communicate with Danton, couldn’t there be some other go-between? Apparently not. Perhaps, she thought, Danton doesn’t trust as many people as his expansive manner suggests?

  Fabre looked at her quizzically. “Your loss,” he said. “Really, you have the wrong impression; you’d like Camille much better than you like me. Incidentally, he believes that women should have been allowed to vote in the elections.”

  She shook her head. “I disagree. Most women know nothing of politics. They do not reason—” she thinks of Danton’s women—“they have no constructive thoughts at all. They would simply be influenced by their husbands.”

  “Or their lovers.”