by Seth Hunter
Behind them came four young men of exceptional beauty and muscularity, wearing nothing but a pair of goatskin breeches and playing pan pipes. And behind them came a long line of open carriages and cabs carrying the Jeunesse Dorées—the Gilded Youth of Paris—in oversized coats with enormous collars and exaggerated cravats that covered not only the neck and breast but most of the chin; flesh-coloured nankeen breeches so tightly moulded to the limbs that they appeared to be wearing nothing below the waist save their gleaming boots: the new sans culottes of Paris, following the route to the guillotine.
Nathan had taken much the same route from his hotel: past the studio of the artist Jean-Baptiste Regnault where Sara had studied—and occasionally posed nude if Imlay could be believed; past the old disused priory where the Jacobins had met to debate the cause of Revolution and chart its uncertain course; past the boarded-up doorway of the Duplays’ workshop where Robespierre had lodged when he was the greatest man in France and which the mob had anointed with ox-blood for his own final journey to the guillotine. He walked with a head full of memories, ignoring the shop windows with their latest fashions, the leaflets proclaiming the delights of some new dance hall or theatre, the prostitutes who openly accosted him at every step. More than twenty thousand, according to one report, were now operating on the streets of Paris. Where had they been at the time of the Terror when they were not bundled into the death carts; how had they made a living? On into the Place de la Révolution where the guillotine had once stood: an open meadow where sheep and cows now grazed and couples walked arm in arm. Impossible not to think of the blood that had been spilled here and the heads that had rolled. Of Marie Antoinette, the golden Queen of France, sketched in the tumbrel by the artist David as a toothless, grey-haired crone; and the dignified, if puzzled gentleman who had been its King and was brought here in a closed carriage lest his bearing incite the crowds. Of Charlotte Corday who had stabbed Marat in his bath and Madame Roland who had done nothing very much but speak out of turn and serve sugared water at her salons instead of champagne which was quite enough, according to Danton, to make an end to her. Of Danton himself, who had been the voice of Revolution, and Desmoulins, its stammering scribe. Of the thousands of others, some famous, most not, who had trod these same bloody boards, thinking what to say, or simply struck dumb, wondering how they came to be here and very much wishing they had a smaller part in the drama. But not a sign, not a stain, no statue or memorial stone remained to mark their passing, nothing to remind the strolling couples what had happened here at the time of the Terror: just the grazing cows and the sheep and the wild flowers growing in profusion amongst the sun-bleached grass.
Nathan had been in Paris for three days now and still he could not credit it: the difference from the city he had left a year before in the hothouse summer of ’94 when thirty, forty people a day, sometimes more, were butchered by that tireless blade. So many, there had been complaints about the stench of blood and the machine had been moved, temporarily, to the Place du Trône on the far side of the city, where Sara had been sent on the day it ended.
But now the guillotine was put away, like a toy that had outlived its owner’s infancy, and there were new men on the throne of Republican France: widely known as the Thermidorians, after the month of their victory—though as Nathan recalled, every one of them had been a terrorist when it was the thing to be, making their violent speeches in the National Convention and signing warrants for execution and lining their pockets, when they thought Robespierre wasn’t looking.
But now Robespierre was dead and it was business as usual. There were fortunes to be made by those who had access to the men of the moment. And the women.
Nathan was on his way to attend a “soirée” at the home of Madame Tallien on the Champs Elysées, the written invitation having arrived at White’s Hotel within a day of sending round his card and the letter of introduction from Imlay to announce his presence in this city of sin and his desire for an audience with its ruling deities. He had been advised to take a cab but felt he owed it to his memories to walk, talking his time, letting the past walk with him, whispering, pointing, wondering, sharing his astonishment. He had walked this way when he had heard the news of Sara’s execution, on the very day that Robespierre had been overthrown and the Terror ended. Out of the city and beyond, through the Champs Elysées and along the river, walking all day, scarcely noticing where he was going or what he saw. And walking back in the darkness, wishing he would meet with some footpad or Jacobin on whom to vent his anger and his grief. And shortly afterwards, he had left for England, thinking never to return.
He had no idea what to expect, business or pleasure, though the two seemed inextricably conjoined in the Paris of the Thermidorians. But judging from the procession he had seen heading in the same direction, pleasure was very much on the agenda this evening. He supposed the carriage might have contained Our Lady of Thermidor herself, for he had heard that she travelled in style and with a view to entertainment.
He followed the directions he had been given across the Place de la Révolution and through the woods of the Champs Elysées, dappled green and gold by the light of the setting sun, until he found the little lane leading down towards the river. It was a quiet, secluded place; it might have been buried deep in the countryside, except for a certain, what was it? Artifice? Yes. For there were coloured lanterns among the trees, barely noticeable in the still bright sunlight, and a profusion of flowers that did not seem entirely natural on either side of the lane, and little red-and-white toadstools so preposterous he bent down to examine them more closely and found they were made of waxpaper.
At the end of the lane were wooden gates, entwined with ivy, and two attendants, clad in goatskin breeches and high cloven heels. They eyed him balefully for he was no Gilded Youth—and certainly no faun—but attired like a respectable gentleman of New England, in a beige-coloured coat and matching breeches, with brown-and-black Hessian boots and a brown, wide-brimmed felt hat. Brown? Beige? These were not the colours of the Thermidorian. And he was on foot. But his invitation was in order and he spoke a polite, respectable French, so they let him pass, directing him down what appeared to be a rutted farm track with more wild flowers and even bigger toadstools with lights in them. And so, at last, he came to La Chaumière, the fabled home of Our Lady of Thermidor.
It was a thatched cottage, with walls of wood and brick, set among rambling roses and honeysuckle, like a cottage in England inhabited by a modest class of yeomanry. There was even a cabbage patch and unlike the toadstools, the cabbages were real for Nathan could see real butterflies flitting among them and the holes that real caterpillars had made. The door of the cottage was open and two pretty young women awaited him in the porch wearing similar dress to the charmers that had followed the royal carriage, and with the same consideration for decency. They each carried a tray of fluted glasses containing what was almost certainly champagne—for the fashion for sugared water had gone the way of Madame Roland’s head. Taking one and murmuring his thanks, Nathan ducked through the low lintel of the open door.
But it was the wrong door.
Or the wrong house. It had to be. He almost stepped out again to make sure.
He had been expecting some bucolic retreat, entirely bogus but in keeping with the rustic artifice of the exterior. Well, here was artifice, sure, but there was nothing of the rustic about it. At first glance the room appeared to be at least double the size of the exterior, its dimensions fl attered by a large panorama of woods and fields, vineyards and faraway hills glimpsed between the classical columns that supported the high painted ceiling. So cunning was this trompe l’oeil he might have been deceived into thinking the landscape was real and that he had entered some kind of pagoda set in the open air had it not been for the mythological creatures that gambolled about its phony fields: nymphs and satyrs romping with hippogriffs and centaurs under an azure sky where gods and goddesses looked down in benevolent approval from among fluffy clouds. And in t
he centre of this wonderland a fountain—a real fountain with real water—from which Neptune, armed with a trident, glowered less amiably, rather as Robespierre might, had he been suddenly revived and transported hither, his head stitched back upon his shoulders and a false beard attached to his frosty countenance.
Otherwise, the room was empty.
Nathan looked around carefully to make sure. Yet he cannot have been entirely alone for above the sound of the running water he could hear music and laughter. He touched one of the stone columns tentatively, as if it might disappear or make the walls fall down like a house of cards. It did not do either of these alarming things, though it revealed itself, not entirely to his surprise, to be made of stiffened paper, like the toadstools. He sipped cautiously from his glass but it was, indeed, champagne, and looked about him warily, searching for the human life he knew must be here somewhere: cunningly concealed among the landscapes and the columns. And indeed it was. For between two painted Nubian slaves with etruscan vases and little else to hide their nudity, he espied another open door, revealing a tantalising glimpse of moving figures beyond. He advanced towards it, half expecting to find more artifice, and emerged on to a stone terrace, crowded with people: real people of flesh and blood, though their authenticity might have been disputed by one who had not observed the cortège upon the Rue Saint-Honoré. Muscadins and Merveilleuses and other of their kin, were eating and drinking, talking, laughing and dancing, while a large orchestra, dressed as gypsies, played the polka.
Nathan moved through this assembly as if in a dream or fairy tale, murmuring his excuses and retreating shyly when he ventured to brush against a portion of human anatomy not normally exposed to sight or touch. And yet on close acquaintance there was something asexual about these women: something of the macabre, with their short hair and their rouged cheeks and the blood-red ribbons they wore about their necks imitation of the decisive line drawn by the guillotine. Their eyes and smiles were just a little too bright, their complexions a little too sticky with paint and powder, but steely, too, like painted, mechanical dolls designed by a confectioner.
Beyond the terrace was a long meadow sloping gently down to the river. There were people here, too, though spread more thinly on the ground, and white-clothed tables, filled with delicacies and adorned with wild flowers. Nathan was tempted to make the best of it and eat his fill, for he had not had a decent meal since leaving London; there were great food shortages in Paris, or so he had believed until now, but he resolved to seek out his hostess first; she was, after all, his sole purpose in coming here. He had a rough description of her: young, dark-haired, beautiful, a taste for exotic dress … He looked about him, his senses reeling. Where was he to find her in such a crowd? And what would he say if he did, for he could scarce talk business on such an occasion?
And then he saw her. She was moving among a circle of admirers, tall as an Amazon; gracious as a queen, and dressed in a Grecian tunic that reached to just above the knee but was slashed to the waist to reveal a glimpse of naked thigh. Her hair was short and tightly curled and there was something about her that was both boyish and brazenly feminine. Nathan thought of Cleopatra—the girl Cleopatra who had seduced Caesar—though he knew immediately, if only from the ornamental dagger she wore at her waist, that this was his hostess, the celebrated Thérésa Tallien, Our Lady of Thermidor.
He watched as she strode through the meadow, just below where he stood upon the terrace, listening to a young man at her side, with the other women trailing behind her like the Queen’s wardrobe. She was laughing, or at least showing her teeth which were as near perfect as the rest of her body, for this was no candied doll or automaton. She walked like a ballet dancer or an athlete, and there was a bloom about her, a glow almost, that was part attributable to her youth—for she cannot have been much above twenty—and part to health and sheer exuberance. She wore Grecian sandals tied with thongs almost to the knee and rings on her toes and he remembered that it was widely reported that these were to hide the rat bites she had suffered whilst in prison during the Terror. Though she appeared to be listening attentively, her dark eyes never stopped moving among the crowd and finally she looked up and saw Nathan watching her from the terrace. Though he was by no means the only spectator, she appeared startled. Her glance flickered away, almost shyly, but then returned and held his gaze for a moment with a question in her eyes. She said something into the ear of one of her female attendants, who fixed Nathan with her own stare, quite rudely and almost aggressively, so that he turned and moved away through the crowd—but slowly, feeling their eyes still upon him, pausing to take another glass of champagne from a passing nymph. Then he felt the pressure on his arm.
“Monsieur, where are you going? There is one who would speak with you.”
She was an older woman than their hostess and dressed more demurely in a long muslin robe, though it hung so low upon her breasts that the word “demure” could only be used by way of a comparison; it seemed that the slightest untoward movement would cause it to drop like a curtain, leaving her entirely exposed. He stared into her eyes with almost desperate fervour lest his own be dragged to the nether regions where they so much desired to be.
She cocked her head to one side and surveyed him curiously.
“You are a stranger, I think, to our little gatherings.” She spoke in a gentle lilting voice with a slight lisp.
“I am, madam.”
There were probably wittier things he might have said but they did not occur to him instantly. He was relieved that he could make any kind of noise at all, beside a low moan or a bleat.
“Then permit me to introduce myself, for we do not stand upon ceremony here. My name is Marie-Josèphe de Beauharnais.”
And she made him a little curtsy, her eyes brimming with humour as if it was all a wonderful joke—him, her, her name, her appearance, this place, Paris, the Revolution … even the fanatics who had come so close to killing her, for he knew her now as the woman the banker had spoken of in London: the Creole from Martinique who had shared a prison with General Hoche and escaped the guillotine by a whisker and was now the lover of Barras and the intimate of Our Lady of Thermidor. The woman whom Coney had called Rose.
He took off his hat and bowed, catching her hand and touching it to his lips for he saw that he must play the gallant.
“My name is Turner,” he informed her. “Captain Nathaniel Turner, from New York.”
The smile did not falter but he noted a sudden sharpness in her eyes, swiftly masked by the long lashes.
“Captain Turner,” she repeated softly, as if it were a caress, “and newly arrived in Paris?”
“Is it so obvious?”
“Not at all, but you stand out from the crowd, sir, and you have caught the eye of our hostess. Come, let me introduce you, for she has seen that you are alone and no-one must lack for company at La Chaumière.”
And so he was led down the steps from the terrace into the heart of the new Republican court of France and it opened for him as if his fairy godmother guide had waved her magic wand, and he found himself gazing into the appraising, angelic eyes of Our Lady of Thermidor. Rose murmured an introduction. Again, that wary look, swiftly masked.
“Captain Turner, so glad you could join us.” Her voice was husky, not as attractive as her friend’s, but then she did not need it to be; her voice was irrelevant. She gave him her hand and he lowered his head over its elegant arch, trying not to look too fixedly at the twin peaks beyond. He had not paid court to a queen before and it was disconcerting, for the first time, to find her almost naked.
“You have come directly from New York?”
“Not directly.”
“By way of Mars, perhaps?”
“But of course. And now I am in Venus.”
Oh la. And the merry laughter. For there was as much artifice in the conversation at La Chaumière as in the décor. Rose, he noted, had bad teeth and raised her hand to her mouth to conceal them. But the eyes remained sharp
.
“And we have a mutual friend …”
“Indeed.”
“He is well, I trust?”
“He is very well and bids me present his most sincere respects.”
“He is in America?”
“No. He is in England at present.”
The courtiers had drawn back a little, perhaps sensing something more than idle chatter, all bar Rose and the young man, who was looking upon him more shrewdly than Nathan might have expected, though now he shot a glance at Thérésa who mouthed the one word, “Imlay.”
“But he has been to America very recently,” continued Nathan, “and has news of your mutual interests.”
Had he said too much, he wondered, for the eyes clouded slightly and it was the man who answered for her.
“Well, we will be pleased to hear it, will we not, my dear?” With a brilliant smile but without taking his eyes off Nathan’s for an instant—and there was something in them, for all their liquid charm, that made Nathan think of Robespierre. “Perhaps we will have an opportunity later, Captain, when you have had a chance to enjoy yourself a little.”
Was this a putdown? It could very easily have been, but there was a swift glance to Rose that seemed to contain some unspoken instruction for Nathan felt her hand upon his arm once more and she led him off towards the tables for she felt sure he needed feeding, she lisped.
Indeed he did, and had no objection to being fed by such a one, for there was a supple voluptuousness about her, an overt sensuality that made her even more alluring to his eyes than the other nymphs, with the exception of Thérésa herself. Every movement she made threatened his precarious composure, just as it threatened to dislodge the precarious muslin from her breasts.