Time of Terror

by Hunter, Seth

  Danton might be pro-English but he was first and foremost a Revolutionist—and a French patriot. The merest suggestion that Nathan was an English agent and he could have him shot. He might even shoot him himself.

  “I cannot see much in Madame Seton that I think of as Scottish,” Nathan replied with a modest bow in her direction. “But the Mediterranean beauty, assuredly.”

  “Too beautiful for me,” growled Danton. He was too much of a peasant, he said. He needed his women to have something of the peasant in them, too, like Lucille—with a wicked glance in her direction.

  Nathan did not think he had seen anyone less like a peasant than Lucille Desmoulins. She was a Parisienne to her fingernails.

  “Georges has enough of the peasant for both of us,” said Lucille.

  “Pity he’s no good with b-b-bulls,” said Camille.

  A roar of laughter from Imlay in which most of the company joined, even Nathan. Only Mary looked puzzled. She had not heard the story of the bull.

  “I was sucking milk from a cow’s tits,” Danton explained, “and the bull took exception. I cannot say I blame it. It must have seemed an unnatural act from the bull’s point of view, though it is quite commonplace in the region of the Aube. I had probably seen my sisters doing it—but not in front of the bull.”

  “And is it true that you went back the next day to renew the fight?” Imlay prompted him.

  “Certainly not. I was only three at the time but had more sense than that. More than I have now. No, the next day I was trampled on by a herd of swine.” He shook his head. “The country is a dangerous place. Far more dangerous than Paris.” And then with scarce a pause and another glance at Nathan from under his brow, “So my friend, what brings you to Paris, apart from our Paris beauties?”

  “I have business with Mr. Imlay,” said Nathan.

  Danton nodded to himself. “Secret business, no doubt.”

  “Like most business,” Imlay smiled, “in these troubled times.”

  “So you have not come to teach us the meaning of democracy,” Danton continued to address Nathan, “like most Americans?”

  Whatever else Imlay had told him, he had clearly been discreet about Nathan’s nationality.

  “I would not be so discourteous,” said Nathan, “or so arrogant.”

  “A pity. We need someone to instruct us. And at least you have leaders who do not appear to be corrupted by power or startled by the concept of opposition to it.”

  “Give us time,” said Nathan. “It is all very new to us.”

  “It is new to us,” observed Danton, “and we are cutting off each other’s heads. But how would President Washington instruct us, do you think, if he were here?”

  “I cannot speak for President Washington,” Nathan responded cautiously.

  “Oh, can you not? Why are you here then? Why are we listening to you?”

  “Do not be impolite, Georges,” said Lucille sharply. “Any more than you can help.”

  “I believe Captain Turner is speaking for most Americans who are anxious for peace,” Imlay answered for him. “Peace and the freedom of trade.”

  “Ah. Peace.”

  Now we are come to it, thought Nathan. Bravo, Imlay.

  But Danton was still glaring at him.

  “So tell me, Monsieur American, why are we at war? No—let me make it easier for you—why are France and England at war?”

  Mary seemed about to tell him but he continued with scarcely a pause. “You do not know. No one knows. But I will tell you. France declared war on England because they thought England was about to declare war on France. And France can never bear to let England be first with anything.”

  It seemed to Nathan that this was as good an explanation as any.

  “But there is no great issue between us,” Danton continued. “Not at present. There is no reason why we should not make peace tomorrow. Neither of us would have to give anything up, or make any concession whatsoever, except to leave each other in peace.”

  “So why does it not happen?” Imlay prompted him.

  “I will tell you. Because those in power do not wish it. While we are at war everything they do, the laws against liberty, the executions, the Terror, everything is in the interests of national security. If you oppose it, you are a traitor. That is the problem.”

  “Then you must change those who are in power,” said Nathan, greatly daring.

  But he had gone too far.

  “Fine words,” said Danton, “from one who does not have to answer for them. But to risk one’s neck, one needs more than words.”

  He heaved himself up out of his chair.

  “And now I must go home,” he said. “I have to kiss my little girl before she goes to bed.”

  Nathan wondered if he meant his daughter or his wife.

  “I fear,” said Nathan as they walked up the road to Sara’s house, “that I may have offended him.”

  “It is impossible to offend Danton,” said Imlay. “But he is right about one thing: ‘to risk one’s neck, one needs more than words.’ ”

  Nathan showed his empty hands. “What else could I give him?”

  Imlay glanced warningly at Mary and Sara who were walking ahead of them, but not so far that they could not be heard.

  “Have you ever been to the waxworks?” he said.

  “The waxworks?” Nathan looked at him in astonishment.

  “There is a very good one in Paris,” said Imlay. “I often go there. It is a good place to meet with one’s friends, or even one’s enemies. The replica figures are most lifelike and they have this advantage over the genuine object: they cannot hear what you are saying about them, or anyone else.”

  Chapter 20

  the House of Wax

  Nathan arrived at the House of Wax at six in the evening, as Imlay had proposed, and found it closed. He lingered a little at the door, peering at the exhibition in the window that depicted a man being tortured by the Inquisition. Finally he decided to ring the bell in the hope that Imlay was already there.

  After a moment or two his summons was answered by a tall man with pale, gaunt features wearing a sombre black suit who would have looked very much like an undertaker or an apparition had it not been for the large flamboyant tricolour fixed prominently to the bosom. But perhaps even undertakers and apparitions had to advertise their allegiances these days.

  “You would be Mr. Turner?” he suggested before Nathan could embark on an explanation.

  “I would,” agreed Nathan with relief.

  “I am Curtius,” said the man. “The proprietor of the Salon de Cire. Citizen Imlay has not yet arrived but you are welcome to wait for him in the studio.”

  Nathan followed him up several flights of stairs to a large room at the top of the building with a plenitude of tall windows and skylights that admitted what light remained in the sky. There were a number of wax figures standing in various poses or reclining upon the floor: some clothed, some not. A small woman, dressed like the proprietor all in black, was working at a long bench with her back to them.

  “My niece is working on a head,” said Curtius. “I hope you are not at all squeamish.”

  “Not at all,” began Nathan. Then he saw the severed arteries trailing from what was left of the neck.

  “My God,” he said faintly, putting a hand out to the wall for support.

  The woman turned and Nathan saw that she wore a white apron, liberally spattered with blood. Her sleeves were rolled up and her hands and arms red to the elbow. She held an open razor in one hand. In the light of the setting sun she looked like some Hindu goddess in the midst of some gruesome act of sacrifice.

  “Really Uncle Philippe,” she complained, “you might have told him it was a real one.”

  Nathan stared in horror at the object
on the workbench. It was the head of a youngish man who might once have been considered handsome.

  “But what are you doing with it?” he managed to inquire, though his voice sounded oddly constrained.

  “Making a copy in wax. It is a private commission. Something for the family to remember him by.”

  “And who is . . . who was he?”

  “Oh some vicomte or other,” said Curtius. “The name is on the tag.”

  He nodded towards a pile of brown paper beside it which, judging from the stains, had been used to wrap it in.

  “What are you doing with the razor?” Nathan asked the sculptor, moved, despite himself, by a macabre curiosity.

  “I have to get rid of the bristles,” said she. “You’d think they’d shave before they went, would you not?”

  Nathan stared at her in astonishment.

  “Why?” he croaked.

  “Well, you’d think they’d want to look their best.”

  Nathan felt like laughing hysterically but she did not appear to be joking. She was a tiny, almost doll-like woman, possibly in her early thirties, with a long, sharp nose and round spectacles that made her eyes look enormous. She reminded Nathan of an odd little witch or some creature of the forest out of one of Perrault’s fairy tales.

  “I must get on,” she said. “They want the head back in the morning.”

  She turned back to the bench. Nathan looked at Curtius inquiringly.

  “To bury it,” he explained, “with the body.”

  Nathan watched with a mixture of horror and fascination as the woman finished shaving the face, dried it carefully with a towel, and then took a scoop of pomade from a jar to flatten down the hair. She used the same towel to wipe her bloody hands and then anointed them liberally with oil from a bottle and began to massage it into the face, taking particular care with the indents around the nose and eyes. Then she applied plaster of Paris with a small brush to form a white, sepulchral mask.

  “When it is set,” Curtius explained, “it is removed to make a clay mould for the wax. Marie will then work on the clay to reflect the character the face wore in life. It is her particular skill.”

  They heard the sound of the doorbell.

  “That will be Imlay,” Curtius murmured. “If you will excuse me . . .”

  It was Imlay but he was not alone. With him was Camille Desmoulins.

  “So you met little Marie Grosholtz,” said Imlay with a smile. “Extraordinary is she not? I do not think she is quite human. Almost demonic, do you not think, though an excellent sculptor of the human form.”

  They were in a small room off the studio which was clearly used as an office. It was comfortably furnished if a little untidy. But at least it was free of human heads.

  “Her mother is Philippe’s housekeeper and she calls him ‘uncle’ though it is rumoured she is his natural daughter. She certainly has his talent for working in wax. Now—to business.” He sat behind the desk with an assurance that suggested he had been here before. “Danton is ready to act but he needs support.”

  “Support?”

  “Not to p-p-p-put too fine a p-p-point on it,” Camille attempted to elaborate, “M-m-m-money.”

  “If Danton is to act he needs to bribe people,” Imlay explained patiently, “both in the Convention and on the street. You saw yourself what happens when the Jacobins pack the galleries. And they also control the mob . . .”

  “When you say ‘act’ . . . ?”

  “If he is to secure peace, he must first secure power.”

  “I have had no instruction about helping him to secure power.”

  Imlay shrugged. “I fear you cannot have the one without the other.”

  “I understood Danton could always count on the support of the people, that he could bring twenty thousand on to the street with the power of his voice alone.”

  “The people love Danton,” Camille took a run at it, “but they fear the Terror more. In a fight between Danton and Robespierre I am no longer sure who would w-w-w . . .”

  He stumbled and fell.

  Imlay came to his rescue. “Loyalties are divided,” he said. “And as usual in such matters, what may tip the balance is money. There are those whose loyalties can be bought, like any other commodity, with gold.”

  “Gold?” Nathan repeated, to be sure he had it right.

  “Yes. Not paper money. It is becoming worthless. To make something really happen one needs gold. In coin. Louis d’or to be precise.”

  “And where does one find this gold?”

  “In the same place one finds one’s tobacco,” Imlay assured him with a wry smile.

  “You think . . .”

  “I think it must be put to your masters that there are certain people we must have on our side. People in key places. In the National Guard and in the Commune and in the Sections. And that they expect a reward.”

  “Are you seriously telling me they cannot be brought to act without being paid for it? Were they paid to storm the Bastille?”

  “As a matter of fact they were, if what I have been told is correct. At least some of them. They were paid by Philippe Duke of Orleans, the cousin of the King, who had aspirations to wear the crown himself. You have perhaps heard of him as Philippe Égalité which was the name he chose to call himself subsequently, though it did not save him from losing his head. You will find him upstairs. Made of wax.”

  Nathan shook his head as if it was all too much for him; the perfidy of human nature.

  “One does not wish to see Danton here,” Imlay continued regardless. “Or rather, one does not wish this to be the only place one might see him. So you must go back to where you came from and tell the people who sent you that to be in a position to help them, he must have gold.”

  “How much gold, precisely?”

  “Fifty thousand louis d’or,” said Camille, with not the faintest hint of a stammer.

  “Fifty thousand . . .”

  “A little over one hundred thousand English pounds. Or five hundred thousand American dollars,” Imlay translated.

  “The cost of building and fitting out two 74-gun ships of the line.”

  Imlay stared at him blankly. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

  “It means, is Danton as important as all that?”

  Camille shook his head in apparent disgust and made to get up. Imlay put out a hand to restrain him.

  “Let me make something clear,” he began. “Danton will end the war, which will save a great deal more than two ships of the line, no matter how many guns they have. He will also stop the Terror, which is no small item in the accounts.”

  “And yet he is a Revolutionist.”

  “Yes. But he is not a fanatic. In fact, I would say he is probably a little corrupt. Or rather let us say, he is human. And he is not Robespierre. He will save the French from their excesses, he will save Europe from many years of devastation and he will save England a great deal of blood and treasure. So I think we may say Danton is important.”

  “But still,” now Nathan shook his head, “fifty thousand gold Louis is a lot of money.”

  “It is a lot of money. But it is the price of buying a mob. Or, if you wish to be more idealistic, the price of peace.”

  Chapter 21

  the Cook and his Wife

  Peace could not come soon enough for the embattled population of Le Havre—or Havre-Marat as it was now called. Until the war with the British the port had been the thriving centre of Atlantic trade and the headquarters of the French East India Company. Now, thanks to the British blockade it had become a ghost of the busy, bustling giant it once was—a silent witness to the death of commerce.

  Ironically the harbour was still crowded with shipping—but ships that never sailed. Ships without a crew. Ships that stood rus
ting at the quayside or bobbing at their moorings, with masts and yards as skeletal as the trees of winter.

  The Speedwell, by contrast, looked as if she was ready to put to sea upon the instant. Nathan had driven straight down to the docks in the chaise that had brought him from Paris and to his infinite relief the barky was exactly where he had left her when he departed for Paris and looking very much in the same condition. The decks freshly swabbed, the ropes neatly coiled, the shrouds newly tarred; everything shipshape and Bristol fashion . . . But he knew as soon as he stepped aboard that something was wrong. It was there in the looks he encountered from those members of her crew who were about the deck and even in the crooked smile with which Tully greeted his return.

  Nathan congratulated him on the appearance of the vessel before inquiring whether he had encountered any difficulties in his absence.

  “Only, I regret to report, sir, that the cook, Small, has been taken up by the authorities.”

  “The cook!” Nathan almost laughed aloud with relief but the tension about Tully’s face suggested that his celebration was as premature as it was cruel. “On what charge?” he added with a slightly belated frown of concern.

  He anticipated something in the nature of a drunken brawl or a slander upon the Republic—Small’s stature being an inducement rather than an impediment to his aggressions—but it was something much more curious.

  “Well, he has got himself a wife,” said Tully.

  This was startling news but it was not, as far as Nathan was aware, a criminal offence, even by the strict standards of the Committee of Public Safety.

  “It is the fact that he was married in a church,” Tully confided, “with a Popish priest who had not taken the oath.”

  This began to make some kind of sense. Catholic priests were permitted in Revolutionary France only if they had taken an oath of allegiance to the state: an oath that conflicted with their vows to the Church of Rome. Those who declined to break their vows were forced to practise in secret and if discovered subjected to the full penalty of the law. As were those faithful Catholics who continued to apply to them for the sacraments—whether they be for birth, death or in this case marriage.