by Hunter, Seth
Fear, serve and honour you
Unto death . . .
The knots were coming apart and the cords felt loose enough for Sara to wriggle one of her hands free. She kept them behind her back but started working at the ropes on her companion’s wrists. Her nails were not as long—she had been biting them—and it was difficult to prize open the knots. They had entered the long Rue Saint-Antoine heading east, the convoy and its escort strung out over several hundred yards, the street almost empty. Just a few women and some little children watching from the windows of the houses.
Alex, she thought again. She saw him so vividly, even through her tears. There, standing in the windows with Hélène. But it could not be Alex. Hélène would not bring him here.
Suddenly they jerked to a halt. There was a great tide of people rolling down the street towards them, with banners and drums. Many of them armed with pikes and muskets. They swarmed around the tumbrels. Everyone was shouting, some singing the “Marseillaise.” All the prisoners were standing up now and some of them were trying to climb out of the carts but the guards were beating them back with the flats of their swords.
Sara stood up and shouted down to the people.
“Help us, good Citizens, we are innocent.”
The people seemed to be remonstrating with the guards and Sara strained to hear what they were saying. Then one of the other women began to shout almost hysterically.
“They are saying Robespierre is arrested and they must stop the executions!”
Sara finished untying her companion’s hands, working openly now.
But suddenly there was another diversion. An officer was riding up the line of tumbrels, waving his sword, red-faced and shouting. Sara recognised him from the Tribunal. Hanriot, commander of the Garde Parisienne. More troops riding up behind him. And the people falling back, silent now and sullen.
“Move on,” Hanriot was shouting, “move on. Robespierre is at the Commune. There is your duty, Citizens, to the Hotel de Ville to join the Commune.”
The tumbrels began to move again, the cavalry pressing round them, gathering speed, heading across the great square where the Bastille had once stood and onwards towards the Place du Trône, the Place of the Throne where the guillotine now was.
Sara sat down again and the woman with her. She felt drained. The tears started to roll again.
“Don’t cry,” said the woman again. “The one thing that is left to us now is courage. Courage and contempt.”
Contempt? Were they not supposed to show forgiveness to their enemies? But Sara did not feel like forgiving them. And who were her enemies, anyway? She did not even know that. Fouquier? Hanriot? Robespierre? They did not seem real. They all seemed to be playing a part.
“Contempt for who?” she asked her.
“For Death,” the woman answered. “Hold my hand.”
And they held hands, standing up in the cart, as they rode into the Place du Trône and she saw her enemy clearly at last: Death rising up against the terrible sky.
Chapter 46
the Place of Grief
It was strangely quiet in the gardens of the Tuileries, ominously quiet. Black clouds were massing to the east and there was a distant rumble of thunder. The air was like warm soup. Nathan imagined they would be covering the guillotine in its shroud for the night. But with Robespierre on the loose it could be busier than ever in the morning.
He paused at the entrance to the Convention, undecided, wondering whether to walk across the Pont Neuf to the Palais de Justice. Just to make sure that Paine’s name had not been on the list. But even if it was, they had suspended the executions. He would be back in the Luxembourg by now.
He decided to go on into the Convention, to see what they would decide to do.
He passed through the unguarded doorway and climbed the stairs to the gallery. The empty gallery. Below, in the auditorium, the delegates were straggling back from dinner, in far less sanguine a mood than when they had left. The news of Robespierre’s release had clearly reached them by now. They started to pull themselves together and do what they did best—pass resolutions.
The first was to deprive Hanriot of his command of the National Guard. In his place they appointed one of their own—Paul Barras, a former officer in the Royalist Army; Nathan had seen him with Imlay in the Café Carazzo. Then they outlawed all who supported Robespierre and declared the Commune to be illegal.
No one seemed to have confronted the awful truth that their decrees meant nothing outside the theatre of the Tuileries. Perhaps the reality was too fearful to contemplate. Barras was a commander without an army. Of course they had half a million men on the borders of France, the scourge of Europe. But in Paris they looked what they were: two or three hundred frightened men: lawyers and actors and writers for the most part, guarded by a handful of policemen who wished they were somewhere else and in different company.
But now Barras was on his feet, proposing that the delegates arm themselves. There were weapons in the police armoury in the basement, he said. No one seemed very keen. We are not soldiers, said one. But about a dozen delegates followed him out of the hall. Nathan ran down the stairs to join them. He had no desire to go down fighting with the elected rulers of France but whatever happened in the next few hours it would clearly be advisable to have a sword or a pistol to hand, preferably both, and he had lost his own when he went to prison.
The armoury was a long, low room in the vaults, stocked mainly with pistols and swords. But only one keg of powder. Presumably they did not care to keep any more there for fear of an explosion—or a French version of the Gunpowder Plot. Nathan chose a brace of neat little flintlocks no more than about six or seven inches long and known as greatcoat pistols because they could conveniently be carried in the pocket of one.
But he did not return to the Convention. That was not where the battle would be fought. It would be fought in the streets. As he made his way along the river towards the Hotel de Ville he heard the noise. Then he turned the corner into the Place de Grève and saw them: a great mass of people filling the square, men and women, soldiers and civilians, bristling with muskets and pikes. His heart sank. Danton’s gold had been too thinly spread, if it had been spread at all. But then on a more careful observation he saw that there were not as many as he had first thought and there was no spirit in them. The noise was more of the murmuring of bees than the roar of lions. They seemed to be standing in groups, waiting for something to happen.
Nathan threaded his way between them to the steps of the Hotel de Ville. There were a few soldiers standing around in the blue and white uniform of the Garde Parisienne but none of them challenged him and he sauntered into the lobby as if he owned the place. More men here, some in uniform, some not. A flight of stairs leading up to a kind of gallery. Nathan went up the stairs, two at a time. On his right there was a large room, the size of a ballroom, filled with people and in the centre a group of officials gathered around a table covered in papers and maps. Couthon was there, in his wheelchair, and Saint-Just, still looking immaculate in his white waistcoat. But not Robespierre.
Still, clearly, this was the centre of operations. Nathan kept to the sides in the shadows. It was almost dark now and there were only a few candles lit in the chandeliers. People were calling for more lights but no one seemed to be paying much attention. He spoke to a tall, grizzled guardsman leaning on his musket by the fireplace and asked him what was happening. The soldier shrugged and gestured towards the men around the table.
“Ask them,” he said, with a curl of his lip, as if it would not do much good if he did.
Then Hanriot came in, with the usual bluster, trailed by his bodyguard. He was flushed with excitement or drink or both. He was greeted by one of the men at the table. Nathan gathered from his informant that this was the mayor, Fleuriot, a Robespierre loyalist. There was some conferring. Hanriot was w
aving his arms around a lot. Then two guards marched in with a man who looked as if he might be a prisoner. But he had a paper in his hand which he gave to the mayor so perhaps he was a messenger.
The mayor read it and passed it to Saint-Just who handed it back. And then the mayor tore it up and threw the pieces in the messenger’s face.
“Tell the Convention we shall come soon,” he said, in a voice loud enough to carry, “but that we shall bring the people with us.”
There was a small cheer.
Hanriot climbed on a chair and waved his sword.
“The Convention has declared that we are outlaws,” he announced. “I, Hanriot, declare that the Convention are outlaws.”
Not the best speech he had ever made, certainly not what the troops were hoping for. And when he stepped down from the chair his spurs became locked and he had to be saved by Saint-Just from falling over. There were more cheers that could have been interpreted as ironic.
Nathan kept moving around the fringes of the room. There were about a dozen windows running from floor to ceiling, most of them open, and he stepped through one onto a narrow balcony overlooking the square: the Place of Grief where common criminals were executed during the time of the kings; broken on the wheel with iron bars. From this vantage it appeared much less crowded than at ground level. He guessed that there were probably no more than a couple of thousand people down there, less than half of them soldiers: far less than he might have expected after the call to arms. And significantly, no cannon. The sky was now black with thunder clouds as far as the eye could see and suddenly the entire city across the river was illuminated by a flash of lightning. The thunder came on the instant: a great shattering roll that shook all the windows.
Someone stepped out behind him and he turned swiftly with his hand on the butt of his pistol but it was just another soldier, packing tobacco into a short clay pipe.
“Where are they all?” he growled, looking down on the sparse crowd in the square below. “Where is our support?”
He looked at Nathan as if he might know but Nathan just shook his head as if at the folly and mystery of man and said, “More to the point, where is Robespierre?”
The soldier shrugged. “I heard he’s in the Mayor’s house. They’ve sent for him at least three times but he won’t come—the last time they sent a squad of soldiers to drag him here—by the scruff of his neck if he won’t come willing.”
Why would Robespierre not come? Did he think he could hide from the storm and let it pass? He might as well run back to the Duplays’ house and hide under the bed. But Robespierre had never been a man of action. His great talent was in persuading others to act.
Nathan took the opportunity to load his pistols. They were short, stubby affairs with Fabrique en Liège stamped on the barrel. Brand new and well greased, they looked and smelled as if they had never been fired but the butts were satisfyingly solid. They would make good clubs even if they did not shoot straight. He sighted along the barrel at one of the towers of Notre-Dame across the river and as he did so he felt the first drop of rain. He went back into the hall.
And at last here was Robespierre. Just arrived, still in his blue coat and yellow breeches. He was frowning, rather petulantly, as if he did not see why it was necessary for him to be disturbed. They pulled him over to the table with the map of the city spread upon it. He put on his spectacles to look at it but he seemed baffled as if it was a place he had never seen before.
And then Nathan saw Gillet.
He must have come in with Robespierre. He was shaking a few drops of rain from his hat. Otherwise, he looked as bored and contemptuous as ever but there was a sword and a couple of pistols at his waist so presumably he was ready for a fight.
Nathan drew back a little further into the shadows, the blood pounding in his ears. He put his hand in his pocket and slipped his fingers round the pistol. The rain was now pouring in at the open windows but no one made an attempt to close them.
“They’re leaving,” someone said. “They’re running off.”
Nathan tore his eyes away from Gillet and looked down upon the Place of Grief. The rain was dropping like lead shot into the emptying square. The crowd had scattered. A flash of lightning showed them scuttling down side streets and he thought of the rats in the Cloaca. A few were left huddled in doorways or in the lee of the houses all around but they did not look many.
Back in the hall, Fleuriot was trying to get Robespierre to sign a piece of paper but he seemed reluctant. Nathan had the odd notion that they were trying to make him abdicate but he gathered from the onlookers that it was an appeal to the National Guard and the Sections to come to the aid of the Commune. It seemed a little late in the day for that.
Suddenly Nathan thought: this is the wrong place to be, this is a trap. And he would be caught in it, with the wrong people. He began to edge his way towards the stairs but now people were shouting and pointing down into the square. He joined the general rush to the windows. A column of armed men had entered the square, marching in some kind of order, with flaming torches, even in the rain. The flames caught the glint of pikes and bayonets.
“It’s the Guard,” someone shouted.
“It’s the Sections,” said another.
Whoever it was, the general opinion seemed to be that they were friends but Nathan saw the purposeful way they were marching on the building and he did not think it was to shelter from the rain. He made his way to the door again and out on to the landing, peering over the balustrade. The front ranks were coming in through the main entrance and he saw Barras at their head, shouting commands, his ostrich feathers sodden and drooping but a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other. Then they were coming up the stairs, the mob retreating before them, and Nathan found himself forced back into the hall.
It finally seemed to have dawned on the men round the table that the enemy was upon them. Hanriot started to climb on the chair again but then thought better of it and led a stampede for a small door in the far corner of the room with the mayor a step or two behind him. Couthon threw himself out of his wheelchair and started to crawl under the table. Only one man seemed to be prepared to fight. He was waving a brace of pistols in the air but then he put one of them to his head and blew his brains out. Robespierre still had the pen in his hand, poised above the document that Fleuriot had been trying to make him sign. He seemed to be in a state of shock. There was blood and brains all over his powder-blue jacket. Then Nathan saw Gillet again. He was standing just a few yards behind Robespierre and aiming a pistol at his head. There was a flash and a bang but either he missed, which was unlikely at that range, or it was a misfire. Robespierre flinched and turned and picked up one of the pistols the suicide had dropped. He looked at it in much the same way as he had looked at the map; as if he had never seen one before. Then Nathan’s view was obscured and he heard another shot and when he saw Robespierre again he had both hands up to his face and blood was spurting through his fingers.
Now men were pouring in through the double doors. The room was filled with swords and pikes and bayonets. All was smoke and confusion. Nathan saw Gillet fighting his way through the doors towards the stairs. Nathan pushed through the crowd after him and emerged on to the landing just as Gillet reached the bottom step. He shouted, “Assassin!” As if it meant something in this company. But men scattered and Gillet looked back over his shoulder and raised his pistol.
It was not as Nathan had imagined. Pistols at dawn in a clearing. But it would do. He turned sideways as he took the pistol from his pocket, bringing his arm up and sighting down the barrel. He saw the flash from Gillet’s gun and felt the wind of the shot past his ear. Then he fired. Gillet fell back, dropping his gun. But he was up almost immediately clutching his arm and moving in an awkward, crouching run for the door. Nathan bounded down the stairs after him but people were in the way and then he heard a great shout of “Gard
ez vous” from above and whirled to see a group of men at the top of the stairs swinging a screaming figure by the arms and legs. Couthon. Nathan stepped to one side as they launched him into space. He flew halfway down the stairs before he hit the step just below where Nathan was standing. They threw his wheelchair after him, bouncing from step to step and then taking off and smashing on the marble foyer just a few inches from the recumbent figure of its former occupant.
When Nathan reached the door to the square Gillet was gone. He stood in the rain as it streamed down his face, with the unfired pistol at his side.
They carried the torn and mangled bodies into the Pavillon des Fleurs and up to the room where the Committee of Public Safety had always met. Lebas, already dead, half his head shot away. Couthon paralysed from the neck down, his limbs horribly twisted. Robespierre’s brother, Augustine, also crippled after jumping from a third-floor window. Hanriot, his face beaten almost to a pulp and one eye knocked out. And Robespierre himself with his shattered jaw tied in a bandage. They laid him on the table with its green baize cloth and sent a doctor to pull out his broken teeth. Some people took them as souvenirs. Nathan found a wet cloth and wiped the blood from his face.
“Thank you, monsieur,” he whispered through his ruined mouth. Not Citizen, Nathan noted, as if it had been a passing fad. Nathan did not think he recognised him.
He was going down the stairs—the Queen’s Stairs—when he ran into Imlay coming up. Imlay looked at him with a strange expression. He put his hand on Nathan’s chest to stop him but he did not speak.
“What is it?” said Nathan. He thought the man was drunk. Most of Paris seemed to be drunk on something or other, even if it was only euphoria.
“Sara,” Imlay said. Just the one word, Sara.
Nathan felt something like a knife twist inside him.
“What?” he said.
“She was on the List.”
He didn’t understand.