A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  Around the corner in the Cour du Commerce, Danton turned over the warrant, read it with some interest. He was in a hurry. He did not ask if he could say good-bye to his children, and kissed his wife in a cursory way on the top of her head. “The sooner I go, the sooner I’ll be back,” he said. “See you in a day or two.” He stepped out briskly, under guard, into the street.

  Eight a.m. at the Tuileries: “You wanted to see us,” Fouquier-Tinville said.

  “Oh yes.” Saint-Just looked up and smiled.

  “We thought we were coming to see Robespierre,” Hermann said.

  “No, Citizen President: me. Any objection?” He didn’t ask them to sit down. “Earlier this morning we arrested four persons-Danton, Desmoulins, Lacroix, Phillippeaux. I have drawn up a report on the case which I shall present to the Convention later today. You, for your part, will begin preparations for the trial—drop everything else, treat it as a matter of urgency.”

  “Now just stop there,” Hermann said. “What sort of a procedure is this? The Convention hasn’t yet agreed to these arrests.”

  “We may take it as a formality.” Saint-Just raised his eyebrows. “You’re not going to fight me over this, are you, Hermann?”

  “Fight you? Let me remind you where we stand. Everybody knows, but cannot prove, that Danton has taken bribes. The other thing everybody knows—and the proof is all around us—is that Danton overthrew Capet, set up the Republic and saved us from invasion. What are you going to charge him with? Lack of fervor?”

  “If you doubt,” Saint-Just said, “that there are matters of substance alleged against Danton, you are welcome to look through these papers.” He pushed them across the desk. “You will see that some sections are in Robespierre’s hand and some in mine. You may ignore the passages by Citizen Robespierre which relate to Camille Desmoulins. They are only excuses. In fact, when you have finished I will delete them.”

  “This is a tissue of lies,” Hermann said, reading. “It is nonsense, it is a complete fabrication.”

  “Well,” Fouquier said, “it is the usual. Conspired with Mirabeau, with Orléans, with Capet, with Brissot. We’ve handled it before—it was Camille, in fact, who taught us how. Next week, if we have an expeditious verdict, we may be able to add ‘conspired with Danton.’ As soon as a man’s dead it becomes a capital crime to have known him.”

  “What are we to do,” Hermann asked, “when Danton begins to play to the public gallery?”

  “If you need to gag him, we will provide the means.”

  “Oh, dramatic!” Fouquier said. “And these four accused are all lawyers, I think?”

  “Come, Citizen, take heart,” Saint-Just said. “You have always shown yourself capable. I mean, that you have always been faithful to the Committee.”

  “Yes. You’re the government,” Fouquier said.

  “Camille Desmoulins is related to you, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. I thought he was related to you too?”

  Saint-Just frowned. “No, I don’t think so. It would be unsettling to think that it might influence you.”

  “Look, I do my job,” Fouquier said.

  “That’s fine then.”

  “Yes,” Fouquier said. “And I’d be grateful if you didn’t keep harping on it.”

  “Do you like Camille?” Saint-Just asked.

  “Why? I thought we agreed it had nothing to do with anything.”

  “No, I only wondered. You needn’t answer. Now—you recall I said it was a matter of urgency?”

  “Oh yes,” Hermann said. “The Committee will be sweating till these heads are off.”

  “The trial must begin either tomorrow or the day after. Preferably tomorrow.”

  “What?” Fouquier said. “Are you mad?”

  “It is not a proper question to put to me,” Saint-Just said.

  “But man, the evidence, the indictments—”

  With one fingernail, Saint-Just tapped the report in front of him.

  “The witnesses,” Hermann said.

  “Need there be witnesses?” Saint-Just sighed. “Yes, I suppose you must have some. Then get about it.”

  “How can we subpoena their witnesses till we know who they want to call?”

  “Oh, I would advise you,” he turned to Hermann, “not to allow witnesses for the defense.”

  “One question,” Hermann said. “Why don’t you send in some assassins to kill them in their cells? God knows, I am no Dantonist, but this is murder.”

  “Oh come.” Saint-Just was irritated. “You complain of lack of time, and then you use it up with frivolous questions. I am not here to make small talk. You know quite well the importance of doing these things in the public eye. Now, the following people are to be charged with the four I have already named. Hérault, Fabre—all right?”

  “The papers are ready,” Fouquier said sourly.

  “The swindler Chabot, and his associates Basire and Delaunay, both deputies—”

  “To discredit them,” Hermann said.

  “Yes.” Fouquier said. “Mix up the politicians with the cheats and thieves. The public will think, if one is on trial for fraud, all the rest must be.”

  “If you’ll allow me to continue? With them a batch of foreigners—the brothers Frei, the Spanish banker Guzman, the Danish businessman Diedrichsen. Oh, and the army contractor, the Abbé d’Espanac. Charges are conspiracy, fraud, hoarding, currency speculation, congress with foreign powers—I’ll leave it to you, Fouquier. There’s no shortage of evidence against any of these people.”

  “Only against Danton.”

  “Well, that’s your problem now. By the way, Citizens—do you know what these are?”

  Fouquier looked down. “Of course I know. Blank warrants, signed by the Committee. That’s a dangerous practice, if I may say so.”

  “Yes, it is dangerous, isn’t it?” Saint-Just turned the papers around and entered a name on each. “Do you want to see them now?” He held them up between finger and thumb, flapping them to get the ink dry. “This one is yours, Hermann—and this one, Citizen Prosecutor, is for you.” He smiled again, folded them and slipped them into an inside pocket of his coat. “Just in case anything goes wrong at the trial,” he said.

  The National Convention: the session opens in disorder. First on his feet is Legendre. His face is haggard. Perhaps noises in the street woke him early?

  “Last night certain members of this Assembly were arrested. Danton was one, I’m not sure about the others. I demand that the members of the Convention who are detained be brought to the Bar of the House, to be accused or absolved by us. I am convinced that Danton’s hands are as clean as mine—”

  A whisper runs through the chamber. Heads turn away from the speaker. President Tallien looks up as the Committees enter. Collot’s face seems flaccid, unused: he does not assume a character till the day’s preformance begins. Saint-Just wears a blue coat with gold buttons, and carries many papers. A rustle of alarm sweeps the benches. Here is the Police Committee: Vadier with his long, discolored face and hooded eyes, Lebas with his jaw set. And in the small silence they command, like the great tragedian who delays his entrance—Citizen Robespierre, the Incorruptible himself. He hesitates in the aisle between the tiered benches, and one of his colleagues digs him in the small of the back.

  When he had mounted the tribune he said nothing; he folded his hands on his notes. The seconds passed. His eyes traveled around the room-resting, it was said, for the space of two heartbeats on those he mistrusted.

  He began to speak: quite calmly, evenly. Danton’s name was raised, as if some privilege attached to it. But there would be no privilege, from now on; rotten idols would be smashed. He paused. He pushed his spectacles up onto his forehead. His eyes fixed upon Legendre, fixed with their glacial, short-sighted stare. Legendre pressed together his huge slaughterer’s hands, his throat-cutting and ox-felling hands, until the knuckles grew white. And in a moment he was on his feet, babbling: you have mistaken my intention, you have mi
staken my intention. “Whoever shows fear is guilty,” Robespierre said. He descended from the tribune, his thin, pale mouth curved between a smile and a sneer.

  Saint-Just read for the next two hours his report on the plots of the Dantonist faction. He had imagined, when he wrote it, that he had the accused man before him; he had not amended it. If Danton were really before him, this reading would be punctuated by the roars of his supporters from the galleries, by his own self-justificatory roaring; but Saint-Just addressed the air, and there was a silence, which deepened and fed on itself. He read without passion, almost without inflection, his eyes on the papers that he held in his left hand. Occasionally he would raise his right arm, then let it fall limply by his side: this was his only gesture, a staid, mechanical one. Once, towards the end, he raised his young face to his audience and spoke directly to them: “After this,” he promised, “there will be only patriots left.”

  Rue Marat: “Well, my love,” Lucile said to her child, “are you coming with me to see your godfather? No, perhaps not. Take him to my mother,” she said to Jeanette.

  “You should bathe your face before you go out. It is swollen.”

  “He might expect me to cry. He might predict it. He won’t notice what I look like. He doesn’t.”

  “If it’s possible,” Louise Danton said, “this place is in a worse state than ours.”

  They stood in the wreck of Lucile’s drawing room. Every book they possessed was piled broken-spined on the carpet; drawers and cupboards gaped open, rifled. The ashes in the hearth had been raked over minutely. She reached up and straightened her engraving of Mary Stuart’s end. “They have taken all his papers,” she said. “Letters. Everything. Even the manuscript of the Church Fathers.”

  “If Robespierre agrees to see us, what shall we say? Whatever shall we say?”

  “You need say nothing. I will do it.”

  “Who would have thought, that the Convention would hand them over like that, with no protest!”

  “I would have thought it. No one—except your husband—can stand up to Robespierre. There are letters here,” she told Jeanette, “to every member of the Committee of Public Safety. Except Saint-Just, there is no point in writing to him. Here are the letters for the Police Committee; this is for Fouquier, and these are for various deputies, you see that they are all addressed. Make sure they go right now. If I get no replies, and Max won’t see me, I’ll have to think of some new tactics.”

  At the Luxembourg, Hérault assumed the role of gracious host. It had been, after all, a palace, and was not designed as a prison. “Secret and solitary, you’ll find it isn’t,” Hérault said. “From time to time they do lock us away, but generally we live in the most delightfully sociable manner—in fact I have seen nothing like it since Versailles. The talk is witty, manners are of the best—the ladies have their hair dressed, and change three times a day. There are dinner parties. Anything you want—short of firearms—you can get sent in. Only be careful what you say. At least half the people here are informers.”

  In what Hérault described as “our salon,” the inmates inspected the newcomers. A ci-devant looked over Lacroix’s sturdy frame: “That fellow would make a fine coachman,” he remarked.

  General Dillon had been drinking. He was apologetic about it. “Who are you?” he said to Philippeaux. “I don’t know you, do I? What did you do?”

  “I criticized the Committee.”

  “Ah.”

  “Oh,” Philippeaux said, realizing. “You’re Lucile’s—Oh Christ, I’m sorry, General.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t mind what you think.” The general swayed across the room. He draped his arms around Camille. “Now that you’re all here, I’ll stay sober, I swear it. I warned you. Didn’t I warn you? My poor Camille.”

  “Do you know what?” Hérault said. “The thieving Arts Commission have laid their paws on all my first editions.”

  “He says,” said the general, pointing to Hérault, “that against the charges they will bring he disdains to defend himself. What sort of attitude is that? He thinks it is suitable, because he is an aristocrat. So am I. And also, my love, I am a soldier. Don’t worry, don’t worry,” he said to Camille. “We’re going to get out of here.”

  Rue Honoré: “So you see,” Babette said, “there are a great many patriots with him, and he can’t be disturbed.”

  Lucile laid a letter down on the table. “In common humanity, Elisabeth, you will see that this is put into his hand.”

  “It won’t do any good.” She smiled. “He’s made his mind up.”

  At the top of the house Robespierre sat alone, waiting for the women to go. As they stepped into the street the sun burst from behind a cloud, and they walked down to the river in heady green spring air.

  From the Luxembourg prison, Camille Desmoulins to Lucile Desmoulins:

  I have discovered a crack in the wall of my room. I put my ear to it and heard someone groaning. I risked a few words and then I heard the voice of a sick man in pain. He asked my name. I told him, and when he heard it he cried out, “Oh my God,” and fell back on the bed from which he had raised himself. I knew then it was Fabre d’Églantine’s voice. “Yes, I am Fabre,” he said, “but what are you doing here? Has the counterrevolution come?”

  Preliminary examination at the Luxembourg:

  L. Camille Desmoulins, barrister-at-law, journalist, deputy to the National Convention, age thirty-four, resident rue Marat. In the presence of F.-J. Denisot, supplementary judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal; F. Girard, Deputy Registrar of the Revolutionary Tribunal; A. Fouquier-Tinville, and G. Liendon, Deputy Public Prosecutor.

  Minutes of the examination:

  Q. Had he conspired against the French nation by wishing to restore the monarchy, by destroying national representation and republican government?

  A. No.

  Q. Had he counsel?

  A. No.

  We nominate, therefore, Chauveau-Lagarde.

  Lucile and Annette go to the Luxembourg Gardens. They stand with their faces raised to the façade, eyes hopelessly searching. The child in his mother’s arms cries; he wants to go home. Somewhere at one of the windows Camille stands. In the half-lit room behind him is the table where he has sat for most of the day, drafting a defense to charges of which he has not yet been notified. The raw April breeze rips through Lucile’s hair, snaking it away from her head like the hair of a woman drowned. Her head turns; eyes still searching. He can see her; she can’t see him.

  Camille Desmoulins to Lucile Desmoulins:

  Yesterday, when the citizen who brought you my letter came back, “Well, have you seen her?” I said, just as I used to say to the Abbé Laudréville; and I caught myself looking at him as if something of you lingered about his person or his clothes … .

  The cell door closed. “He said he knew I’d come.” Robespierre leaned back against the wall. He closed his eyes. His hair, unpowdered, glinted red in the torchlight. “I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have come. But I wanted … I couldn’t prevent myself.”

  “No deal then,” Fouquier said. His face expressed impatience, some derision; it was impossible to say at whom it was directed.

  “No deal. He says Danton gives us three months.” In the dimness, his blue-green eyes sought Fouquier’s, inquiringly.

  “It is just something they say.”

  “I think that, for a minute, he thought I’d come to offer him the chance to escape before the trial.”

  “Really?” Fouquier said. “You’re not that sort of person. He should know that.”

  “Yes, he should, shouldn’t he?” He straightened up from the wall, then put his hand out, let his fingers brush the plaster. “Good-bye,” he whispered. They walked away in silence. Suddenly Robespierre stopped dead. “Listen.” From behind a closed door they heard the murmur of voices, and over the top of them a huge, unforced laugh. “Danton,” Robespierre whispered. His face was awestruck.

  “Come,” Fouquier said: but R
obespierre stood and listened.

  “How can he? How can he laugh?”

  “Are you going to stand there all night?” Fouquier demanded. With the Incorruptible he had always been warily correct, but where was the Incorruptible now? Sneaking around the prisons with deals and offers and promises. Fouquier saw an undergrown young man, numb and shaking with misery, his sandy lashes wet. “Move Danton’s mob to the Conciergerie,” Fouquier said, over his shoulder. “Look,” he said, turning back, “you’ll get over him.”

  He took the Candle of Arras by the arm, and hustled him out into the night.

  Palais de Justice, 13 Germinal, 8 a.m.: “Let’s get right down to business, gentlemen,” Fouquier said to his two deputy prosecutors. “We have in the dock today a disparate company of forgers, swindlers and con men, plus half a dozen eminent politicians. If you look out of the window, you will see the crowds; in fact, there is no need, you can hear them. These are the people who, if mishandled, could send this business lurching the wrong way and threaten the security of the capital.”