A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  “Is respect so rare a thing for my cousin to command?”

  “Well yes, I think it is really.”

  “Despite his abilities?”

  “People do not respect writers, do they? They think it is one of those things they can do without. Like money.”

  “I don’t think political journalists are expected to sacrifice much for their art. Except veracity. Still, this is trivial.”

  “I don’t think so. We have never had a discussion before.”

  “Well, perhaps it is not trivial, but I have not time for it.” The Revolution, he thought, is suddenly full of disputatious women. Here is this white-skinned beauty, who has equipped herself with a whole repertoire of her husband’s mannerisms; and one hears tales of that gawk Eléonore Duplay; one hears of Danton’s child bride. Fools to themselves, he thinks; the way to save your neck is to keep out of it, and as women they have an excuse for doing so. “However it comes about,” he said, “it seems that your husband could not let Barnave go to his death without speaking with him. He came to the Conciergerie just as Barnave was about to step into the tumbrel. I was out of earshot, and I took care to remain so. Yet I could not help but notice that your husband showed the liveliest distress and regret at the proper punishment of this traitor.”

  “Citizen Fouquier, may one not show distress and regret at the death of a man one has known in happier times? Is there a law to forbid it?”

  Fouquier looked at her appraisingly. “I saw them embrace,” he said. “I could not stop myself from seeing it. Of course, I did not put any construction on it. I shall remind them to tie people’s hands, I cannot think how it was omitted. It is really not a matter of what is permitted. It is a matter of how things appear. Many people would not be able to help putting a construction on such a display of friendship towards a traitor.”

  “Have you a heart?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I do my job, my dear,” he said swiftly. “Now you tell my little cousin from me that his attitude is very dangerous. Whatever he is misguided enough to feel, he cannot afford these extravagant displays of sentimentality.”

  “Why should he hide his pity?”

  “Because he is compromising his friends. If those friends wish to change their policies, no doubt they would like to say so for themselves.”

  “I think you may hear them say so, before long.” I should not have said that, she thought; but he makes me angry, his long face, his hypocrisy. He only worries that he may be out of a job.

  Fouquier smiled bleakly. “If they speak in concert, I shall be surprised. Any relaxation of Terror will split the Committee. It is only the Committee that is holding things together—the revenue, the armies, the food supplies.”

  “The composition of the Committee could be changed.”

  “Indeed? Is that Danton’s plan.”

  “Are you spying for someone?”

  Fouquier shook his head. “I am no one’s agent. I am the agent of the law. All the conspiracies pass through my hands. The Committee, you know, draws its present unity from being conspired against. I do not know what would happen if the policy of believing in conspiracies were changed. Also, some of the members are by now quite naturally attached to it as an institution. The war, of course, is the major reason for the Committee’s existence. And they say Danton wants peace.”

  “So does Robespierre. He’s always wanted it.”

  “Ah, but can they work together? Robespierre would demand the sacrifice of Lacroix and Fabre. Danton would not agree to work with Saint-Just. So it goes. Praising each other is all very well. Let us see how they manage when they get to the stage beyond praise.”

  “It is a grim outlook then, cousin,” she said lightly.

  “All my outlooks are grim,” Fouquier said. “Perhaps it’s the nature of my work.”

  “What would you advise my husband to do? I mean, supposing he were inclined to take your advice?”

  They both smiled; seeing, separately, the unlikelihood of this. Fouquier considered for a moment. “I think I would advise him to do exactly as Robespierre says—nothing less, and certainly nothing more.

  There was a pause. Lucile was disturbed; he had put, for the first time, certain possibilities into her head. Surprising herself, she asked, “Do you think Robespierre can survive?”

  “Do you mean, do I think he is too good to live?” Fouquier stood up. “I don’t make predictions. It’s enough to make a person suspect.” He kissed her cheek, in the manner of an uncle with a little girl. “Concentrate on surviving yourself, my love. I do.”

  DANTON [in the National Convention]: We must punish traitors, but we must distinguish between error and crime. The will of the people is that Terror should be the order of the day, but it must be directed against the real enemies of the Republic and against them alone. A man whose only fault is lack of revolutionary vigor should not be treated as a criminal.

  DEPUTY FAYAU: Danton has, unintentionally I’m sure, employed certain expressions that I find offensive. At a time when the people need to harden their hearts, Danton has asked them to show mercy.

  MONTAGNARDS: He didn’t! He didn’t!

  PRESIDENT: Order!

  DANTON: I did not use that word. I did not suggest showing leniency to criminals. I ask for vigorous action against them. I denounce conspirators!

  In the Luxembourg, the ex-Capuchin Chabot declined to let the state of the nation weigh on his spirits. He missed his little bride, it was true—but one must sleep, drink, eat. On November 17 he had bread, soup, four cutlets, a chicken, a pear and some grapes. On the 18th, bread and soup, boiled beef and six larks. On the 19th he omitted the larks and instead ordered a partridge. On December 7, another partridge; next day, a chicken cooked with truffles.

  He wrote verses, and had a miniature painted by Citizen Bénard.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Old Cordeliers

  Another diary finished: not one of the red books, but one of the little insignificant brown ones. The early works are a feast of embarrassment, Lucile thought; she had taken to ripping the pages out, to burning them, and because of this the books were falling apart.

  Nowadays, what she put in the official diaries—as she thought of them—was very different from what went into the brown notebooks. The tone of the official diaries became more and more anodyne, with the occasional thoughtful or striking passage to titillate or mislead. The private diaries were for dark, precise thoughts: unpalatable thoughts, recorded in a minute hand. When one book was finished she sealed it up in a packet, breaking the seal only to place another one beside it, perhaps a year later.

  On a chilly, misty day, footfalls muffled in the streets, the great buildings distant and shimmering, she went into Saint-Sulpice, to the High Altar where she had been married three years before. On the wall letters in red paint told her THIS IS A NATIONAL BUILDING: LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY, OR DEATH. The Virgin held in her arms a headless child, and her face was battered beyond recognition.

  Perhaps if I had not met Camille, she thought, I could have had an ordinary kind of life. No one would have encouraged my fantasies. No one would have taught me to think. When I was eleven, all the possibilities of being ordinary stretched out in front of me. When I was twelve, Camille came to the house. I was committed to him the first time I saw him.

  Her life is rewriting itself for her; she believes this.

  At the apartment Camille was working in a bad light. He was living on alcohol and sleeping three hours a night. “You’ll ruin your eyes,” she said automatically.

  “They’re ruined already.” He put his pen down. “Look, a newspaper.”

  “So you are going to do it.”

  “I think I must call it more a series of pamphlets, as I shall be the sole author. Desenne is going to print for me. In the first issue—here—I just talk about the British government. I shall point out that, after Robespierre’s recent speech in praise of Danton, anyone who criticizes Danton gives a public receipt for the guin
eas of Mr. Pitt.” He stopped to write down the last phrase. “It will not really be controversial, but it will be another setback to Danton’s detractors, and it will prepare the way for an appeal for mercy in the courts and the release of some of the suspects.”

  “But Camille, do you dare do that?”

  “Of course, if I have Danton and Robespierre to back me. Don’t you think?”

  She put her hands together. “If they are in agreement,” she said. She had not told him that Fouquier had called.

  “They are,” he said calmly. “Only Robespierre is cautious, he needs pushing on a bit.”

  “What did he say to you about the Barnave affair?”

  “There wasn’t a ‘Barnave affair.’ I went to say good-bye to him. I didn’t think he should have been executed. I told him so.” That was what Fouquier escaped hearing, she thought. “Not that it did him much good for me to absolve him, but it did me good to be forgiven, for whatever part I had in bringing him there.”

  “But what did Max say?”

  “I think he understood. It wasn’t really his business, was it? I met Barnave at my cousin de Viefville’s apartment in Versailles. I hardly spoke with him, but he took notice of me, as if he thought he would see me again. That night I decided to go to Mirabeau.” He closed his eyes. “The print order is 50,000.”

  In the afternoon Louise came. She was lonely, though she didn’t admit it. She didn’t want her mother’s company, which was forced on her if she stayed at home. Angélique had taken the children for a few days; in her absence, and especially when her husband was not in the house, she would become once again a shy girl darting up and down the stairs. Danton’s answer to her lack of occupation was, “Go and spend some money.” But there was nothing she wanted for herself, and she hesitated to make any changes in the apartment. She did not trust her taste; besides, she thought that her husband might prefer Gabrielle’s arrangements left as they were.

  A year, eighteen months before, she would have been taken as Danton’s wife to the afternoon salons with their mordant gossip, to sit stiffly among the wives of ministers and Paris deputies, self-possessed women of thirty and thirty-five who had read all the latest books and discussed their husband’s love affairs with drawling boredom. But that had not been Gabrielle’s way; and there was enough of a battle of wits with the visitors she did receive. Either she was tongue-tied, or far too forthright. The things they talked about seemed so trivial that she was convinced that they must have a double meaning to which she was not privy. She had no choice but to join their game; in consideration of her status they had tossed her a book of rules, but they had left her to read it by flashes of lightning.

  So—and she could not have predicted this—the apartment round the corner was the most comforting place to be. These days Citizeness Desmoulins kept to her family and a few close friends; she could not be bothered with the stupidities of society, she said. Louise sat in her drawing room day by day, trying to reconstruct the recent past from hints that came her way. Lucile never asked personal questions; herself, she didn’t know any other kind to ask. Sometimes they talked about Gabrielle: softly, naturally, as if she were still alive.

  Today Louise said, “You’re very gloomy.”

  “I have to finish writing this,” Lucile said. “Then I’ll be with you and we’ll try to cheer up.”

  Louise played for a while with the baby, a doll-like creature who could not possibly have been Danton’s child. He talked a lot now—mostly in a meaningless language, as if he knew he were a politician’s child. When he was taken away to sleep, she picked up her guitar and fingered it softly. She scowled. “I don’t think I have any talent,” she said to Lucile.

  “You should concentrate when you are playing, and do the easier pieces. But I cannot preach, as I never practice.”

  “No, you never do now. You used to go to art exhibitions and concerts in the afternoon, but now you only sit and read and write letters. Who do you write to?”

  “Oh, several people. I have a great correspondence with Citizen Fréron, our old family friend.”

  Louise was on the alert. “Very fond of him, aren’t you?”

  Lucile seemed amused. “More so when he’s away.”

  “Would you marry him, if Camille died?”

  “He’s married already.”

  “He’d get a divorce, I expect. Or his wife might die.”

  “That would be altogether too much of a coincidence. What is all this about dying?”

  “There are hundreds of diseases. You can never tell.”

  “I used to think that. When I was first married, and everything frightened me.”

  “But you would not stay a widow, would you?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Camille wouldn’t want that, surely?”

  “I don’t know why you think he wouldn’t. He is very egotistical.”

  “If you died, he’d remarry.”

  “Within the week,” Lucile agreed. “If my father died too. In your scheme of things, with people passing away in pairs, that would be quite likely.”

  “There must be other men you would like enough to marry.”

  “I can’t think of any. Unless Georges.”

  That was how she ended conversations, when she thought Louise had probed too far—reminding her with a neat brutality of where they stood. She did not enjoy it; but she knew that other people had less scruple. Louise sat gazing into the ruins of the year, in the shifting gray and blue light, trying out pieces that were too difficult for her. Camille was working. The only sounds in the apartment were the dissonant chords and broken notes.

  At four o’clock he came in with a stack of papers. He sat on the floor in front of the fire. Lucile gathered up the papers and began to read. After a while she looked up. “It’s very good,” she said shyly. “I think it’s going to be the best thing you’ve done.”

  “Do you want to read it, little Louise?” he asked. “It says nice things about your husband.”

  “I like to take an interest in politics, but he doesn’t want me to.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, exasperated, “he wouldn’t mind if your interest were an informed one. It’s your silly, vulgar prejudices he doesn’t want to hear.”

  “Camille,” Lolotte said softly, “she’s a child. How do you expect her to know things?”

  At five o’clock Robespierre came. He said, “How are you, Citizeness Danton?” as if she were a grown-up person. He kissed Lucile on the cheek and patted Camille on the head. The baby was brought; he held him up and said, “How goes it, godson?”

  “Don’t ask him,” Camille said. “He makes five-hour speeches, like Necker used to do, and they’re just as incomprehensible.”

  “Oh I don’t know.” Robespierre held the little boy against his shoulder. “He doesn’t look like a banker to me. Is he going to be an ornament of the Paris Bar?”

  “A poet,” Camille decided. “Live in the country. Generally have a very nice time.”

  “Probably,” Robespierre said. “I doubt his boring old godfather will manage to keep him on the straight and narrow.” He handed the child over to his father. He was all business now, sitting in his upright way in a chair by the fire. “When the proofs are ready, tell Desenne to send them straight round to me. I’d read it in manuscript but I detest wrestling with your handwriting.”

  “You must correct the proofs then, or it will all take too long. Don’t mess about with my punctuation.”

  “Ah, Camille d’Églantine,” Robespierre said mockingly. “No one is going to be interested in the punctuation, only in the content.”

  “It is easy to see why you will never win a literary prize.”

  “I thought you were heart and soul in this new paper, I thought you felt passionately?”

  “I do feel passionately, and about punctuation too.”

  “When will the second issue be out?”

  “It will be every five days, I hope—December 5, 10, ci-devant Christmas, so
on—till the job is done.”

  Robespierre hesitated for a moment. “But show me everything, won’t you? Because I don’t want you attributing to me things I haven’t said, and foisting on me opinions I don’t hold.”

  “Would I do that?”

  “You would, and you do. Look at your baby, turning his eyes on you. He knows your true character. What are you going to call it?”

  “I thought the ‘Old Cordelier.’ It was a phrase Georges-Jacques used. ‘We old Cordeliers,’ he said.”

  “Yes, I like that. You see,” he said, turning to the women, “it puts the new Cordeliers—Hébert’s people—neatly in their place. The new Cordeliers don’t represent anything, they don’t stand for anything—they just oppose and criticize what other people do, and try to destroy it. But the Old Cordeliers—they knew what kind of revolution they wanted, and they took risks to get it. Those early days, they didn’t seem so heroic at the time, but they do looking back.”

  “Was it in those days they used to call you ‘The Candle of Arras,’ Citizen Robespierre?”

  “In those days!” Robespierre said. “The child talks as if it were in the reign of Louis XIV. I suppose your husband told you about that?”

  “Oh yes—I don’t know anything by myself.”

  Camille and his wife exchanged glances: strangle her now, or later?

  “It’s quite true,” Robespierre said. “It was because they called Mirabeau ‘The Torch of Provence.’ The idea was,” he added remorselessly, “to bring home to me my own insignificance.”

  “Yes. He explained that. Why do you think then that those days were heroic?”

  “Why do you think that all heroes are people who make a great stir in the world?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. I suppose, because of books.”

  “Someone should direct your reading.”

  “Oh, she is a married woman,” Camille said. “She is beyond education.”

  “I see you don’t like to be reminded of it,” Louise said. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to give offense.”