Illumination

by Matthew Plampin

  The Strasbourg statue occupied a plinth on the Concorde’s eastern side. It depicted a seated woman in a toga, rendered in pale stone; the statue’s lap was heaped with flowers, a victory garland had been placed on its head and around its feet glittered hundreds of candles. A huge congregation had assembled before it, enclosing the gold-tipped obelisk in the centre of the square, reaching all the way back to the Seine. There were chants – Vive la France! À bas les Prussiens! – and the impassioned cries of a dozen competing speakers. Hannah was amazed. She’d visited the Strasbourg statue on many occasions, but never before had there been such numbers, such an armada of banners and flags. All Paris had turned out in defiance of the Prussian guns. Automatically, she began to arrange a composition – the bloated sea of hats and bare heads; the first few torches held aloft; the white statue, lit from beneath, luminous against the heavy sky.

  This remarkable solidarity was short-lived. The working people from the north of the city, conditioned by lifetimes of antagonism and oppression, were soon harassing those around them. As evening came they roared out songs that exalted the poor and damned their masters; shoved and spat at the frock-coated bourgeois who’d gathered at the mouth of the Champs Elysées; hissed the arrival of ministers from the Hôtel de Ville. Hannah looked for Jean-Jacques, expecting him to be raised above the crowds, working as hard as he could to bring focus to the aggression and ill-will – to correct the pervasive feeling of anticlimax. He was nowhere to be seen.

  Across the square, a detachment of mounted soldiers appeared on the Quai des Tuileries, heading for the Strasbourg. To the workers they represented the regular army, the men who’d routed in the face of the enemy that morning; the hoots and jeers reached an incredible level, obscuring even the Prussian artillery. Word spread that among these soldiers was General Louis Trochu, president of the provisional republic and governor of Paris, the man who was leading them against the Kaiser. Hannah craned her neck, leaning out from her lamppost; and there he was, a tiny uniformed shop dummy atop a skittish bay, trotting behind a torch-bearer with his right arm lifted in salute. Some sections of the Concorde applauded, but the workers, who’d welcomed Trochu’s appointment a fortnight earlier, now judged him a coward and a fraud. As his party drew closer to the statue it was pelted with litter, rotten vegetables and balls of manure, obliging the general to curtail his observances and withdraw from the square.

  The satisfaction of having vanquished Trochu did not last long. The men and women beneath the red banners had lost interest in paying tribute to the Strasbourg. Many were spoiling for further confrontation – and Raoul Rigault was on hand to offer it to them. From another lamppost back towards the rue Royale, he announced that a column of the morning’s deserters was being brought up from 14th arrondissement for interrogation in the Louvre – and that it was their patriotic duty to ensure the worthless pigs never got there.

  ‘Enough of Imperial justice,’ the agitator cried, his full cheeks scarlet, ‘that miserable sham, where cowards prospered and traitors were given generals’ epaulettes! It is time, my fellow citizens, for revolutionary justice! It is time for the enemies of the people to get what they truly deserve!’

  This met with a frenzied yell: Death to the enemy! The most rabid and reckless of the reds thronged to Rigault, who threw out a few dramatic gesticulations before leaping among them. They circled the Strasbourg statue, plainly intending to cut across the Jardin des Tuileries – the shortest route to the bridges that connected the Louvre with the Left Bank. These gardens, until recently the outdoor lounge of fashionable Paris, were being converted into a barracks-ground and artillery park. Army-issue lanterns glowed along the promenades; teams of soldiers were at work among the parterres and fountains, putting up dormitory sheds and hacking back the fragrant shrubs.

  Rigault barrelled by Hannah’s lamppost, continuing with his overheated oratory as he went. Among his followers, hanging to the rear, was a familiar black hat – Jean-Jacques. Why, after his earlier absence, had he joined this vengeful mob? It made no sense. Hannah called to him, but he didn’t hear; she dropped from the lamppost and gave chase, shouldering her way through the baying crowds.

  The reds ran forward through the main entrance of the Tuileries, flowing around an ornamental pond and starting down the bright central avenue. Ahead was the emperor’s palace; site of a thousand luxurious debauches, it now stood empty and unlit, its broken windows gaping blackly, another husk of Louis Napoleon’s Paris. The soldiers stationed in the gardens watched these intruders with a mixture of amusement and circumspection. They’d heard the songs in the Concorde; they’d witnessed the dismissal of Trochu and his escort. Hannah saw a number reach for weapons, mallets and tent pegs, and turn to a sergeant for instructions. They were ready to box ears.

  ‘You are slaves!’ Rigault called to them. ‘Slaves of the state, paid killers! Cast off your shackles and be free! Reclaim your citizenship – your brotherhood!’

  This of course provoked the opposite response; a loose company formed and advanced with menaces. The reds scattered, reversing or scrambling for cover. A woman screamed, twisting out of her jacket as a gunner gripped the sleeve. Everywhere people were ducking and cursing as they tried to escape. Hannah broke into a run, a blind dash that took her off into an area of the gardens still awaiting military renovation. It was dark here; she fell to a crouch by a stand of slight, well-pruned trees. For several minutes she stayed very still, her heart beating thick and raw in her throat, trying to remain as quiet as possible.

  Searching soldiers pushed through foliage; shadows slid across the tree trunks at Hannah’s side. She placed a hand on the gravel beneath her, sinking her fingers among the stones. This could be ended at any time. She could stand up and tell these men that she was English; that she’d entered the Jardin des Tuileries by mistake, and then fled from them in a fit of feminine distress. She could even reveal that her mother was a guest at the Grand Hotel. More than likely, they’d assume that she was what she’d been taken for by so many – an indulged daughter playing at artistic life in Paris – and escort her back to the gate.

  No. It was too late. Jean-Jacques was nearby; he wouldn’t have fled the soldiers, that much was certain. Hannah had made her choice. Among the noises of the gardens she heard Raoul Rigault, delivering his tirade with more vehemence than ever. He was behind her, towards the river. Several pieces of gravel had stuck to her palm; she brushed them off, gathered her breath and ran.

  They were on the quay, at the corner of the vandalised palace: a couple of dozen militia and male civilians standing in a dense ring, lit from within by a lantern stolen from the camp. Rigault himself had stopped talking. He’d been challenged by one of his comrades – who was telling them all something they didn’t want to hear, to judge by their shifting and scowling. Hannah came closer. It was Jean-Jacques.

  ‘We cannot do this,’ he was saying. ‘We cannot kick men to death in the street, or string them up from lampposts. We cannot take our revenge in this way.’

  Striking and severe, he projected an authority that made Rigault seem like a clownish parody. Hannah wanted to laugh with relief. Jean-Jacques was not lending himself to the agitator’s violence. He was halting it.

  ‘You all know me. You know what I’ve done. Nothing disgusts me more than a coward. But Frenchmen should not be killing Frenchmen, not when there are Prussian divisions massed at our doorstep. That is madness.’

  Hannah left the gardens. She saw that they were encircling three or four kneeling soldiers. These prisoners had been beaten; their faces, glimpsed between the reds’ legs, were smeared with fresh blood.

  ‘They fled when they should have fought,’ a guardsman said.

  ‘They are dogs,’ stated another.

  ‘I don’t dispute that,’ Jean-Jacques replied, ‘but we must not become distracted by punishing the weak in our own ranks. This is not the right time. There are too many of them – too many tainted by the Empire and its corruptions.’

 
There was a murmur of agreement.

  ‘We, though, we are not tainted. We are working people, my friends, pure of heart and pure of soul. The Imperial army has shown today how it got us to this miserable point – where we stand by the Seine, by the damned Seine, and can hear the guns of the enemy. It has shown very clearly that the salvation of France will fall to us. We need a sortie.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the reds. ‘Yes.’

  ‘We need to fight. Every one of us. A mighty counterattack. Paris in all her ferocity. This is where our energies should be directed.’ Jean-Jacques gestured contemptuously at the soldiers. ‘Not here. Not at these poor fools.’

  The point was conceded; the mob deterred. Rigault, off to the side, had lit a cigarette and was affecting nonchalance. The battered prisoners were dragged to their feet. Hannah noticed that they weren’t even from Zoave regiments; actual guilt was plainly irrelevant when administering Rigault’s revolutionary justice. Before they could be released, however, a curt command sounded from the darkness of the gardens.

  ‘Stay where you are. If you’ve harmed those men, by God you’ll hang for it.’

  Soldiers charged onto the quay – at least fifty of them in open order, dressed for battle with rifle-butts raised. They reached Hannah first, engulfing her. She tripped and landed badly, slapping hard against the stones. As she tried to move a knee was planted between her shoulder blades. Someone started to rummage in her skirts; she felt hairy knuckles rubbing at her thigh.

  ‘See this, lads,’ growled a voice above her, in a thick southern accent. ‘See what I got myself here!’

  Hannah managed to look up. There wasn’t a single red among the infantry tunics. Discouraged from acting against the regular army, and outnumbered two to one, they’d clearly opted to flee. Her fright turned to terror. They hadn’t seen her approaching from the gardens. They wouldn’t know she’d been caught. She could barely move or breathe and she was alone, the sole captive, at the mercy of the regular army. These fighting men – this wiry, foul-smelling man crouched atop her now, running his callused palms up her legs – were said to be little more than beasts, brutalised by their experiences on the battlefields of the east and brimming with resentment towards the ungrateful city they were being forced to defend. Laid out on the quay, there was no limit to the punishment Hannah could imagine them inflicting upon her. She bucked and writhed, screaming through her gritted teeth.

  ‘Quiet now,’ ordered her captor. ‘It’s over.’

  And then he was off her, wrenched off it seemed; she scrabbled onto her elbows and gulped in a desperate breath. The soldier was on his back, covering his face, moving with the slowness of someone who’d just been hit immensely hard. A black-gloved hand extended towards her.

  ‘Hannah,’ said Jean-Jacques, ‘quickly.’

  They ran. Another soldier attempted to block their path; Jean-Jacques felled him without interrupting his stride, his arm whipping around in a tight arc. Beside them was the endless flank of the Louvre, its upper windows illuminating the quay. Hannah was steered to the right, onto the Port Saint-Nicholas, and down a shadowy flight of steps. A row of shuttered laundry boats were roped to the moorings; beyond, dim fragments of lamplight blinked across the surface of the Seine. They pressed themselves against a damp stretch of wall. This was a risk. If they’d been spotted their only option now would be to submit to capture or plunge into the water.

  No one appeared. There were shouts from the Tuileries, soldiers calling to each other to report a lack of success; a faint ‘Marseillaise’ from those who’d remained at the Strasbourg; the stuttering thuds of the Prussian guns. After a few minutes they sat, their boots only two steps from the lapping river. Hannah was panting, trembling; Jean-Jacques drew her close. She couldn’t help smiling as her head dipped towards him. This man had conversed with Elizabeth, in English, and ceded no advantage; he’d calmed a vicious gang; he’d knocked down soldiers with rapid ease. There were parts of him she was only just beginning to see.

  ‘You – you came for me.’

  ‘Of course. Always.’

  The kiss was urgent, like one of reunion after many perilous months apart. Hannah felt dizzy, as if she was slipping – tilting from a ledge into empty space. She pulled back very slightly and opened her eyes.

  ‘Where were you before? I thought I’d see you at the Strasbourg.’

  Jean-Jacques hesitated, reluctant to answer. ‘I was searching for your mother,’ he admitted, ‘over on the rue Royale. I didn’t find her.’

  ‘For my mother? For Elizabeth?’ All happiness vanished. Their embrace went cold; Hannah struggled from it and edged a few inches along the step. ‘Why would you do that? Isn’t she a bourgeois, Jean-Jacques? Isn’t that what you said?’

  ‘Please, Hannah – listen. I was with Félix Pyat, an important man for our cause, recently returned from exile.’ He was speaking carefully, as if still trying to comprehend it himself. ‘I mentioned that I had met Mrs Pardy and he urged me to introduce him. He claimed that she was a great opponent of the Empire in the English press, and in her books – that she was calling for justice in France while your Queen was showering the tyrant Napoleon with gifts of friendship.’

  Hannah knew all this. Although her primary motive for settling in Paris had been artistic, she’d been well aware of Elizabeth’s public pledges – as a true friend of the French people – to stay away in protest for as long as Napoleon III was their ruler. Consequently, Mrs Pardy’s works had been banned from sale or public loan by the Imperial censors, and her presence declared officially unwelcome; liable, even, to result in deportation. Paris under the Empire had not been somewhere she could come to look.

  ‘That was merely a pose,’ Hannah said, ‘designed to foster ties in the literary circles of London. That is how Elizabeth operates, Jean-Jacques. Her postures are hollow. The end is always the same.’

  Jean-Jacques nodded; he didn’t quite believe her. ‘Pyat said that she could help us. He was sure of it. He said that she still has an international audience, and is known at several of the main newspapers here. Apparently they’ll print anything she chooses to write.’

  Hannah looked out at the river. Something terrible had been set in motion. ‘Monsieur Pyat exaggerates,’ she said angrily. ‘And besides, Elizabeth is not interested in helping anyone. She wants only to resurrect her career.’

  ‘But she’s here for you. That letter is the reason she travelled to Paris.’

  ‘She wrote it. She wrote the letter. Or had it written.’ This notion had been forming in Hannah’s mind since the march; voicing it now made her certain. ‘I had thought it was Laure Fleurot, but that doesn’t fit. She’d be wanting to embarrass me as publicly as possible, not just turn my brother into her latest pet. No – it was Elizabeth.’

  Jean-Jacques remained sceptical. ‘How did she do this?’

  ‘Her friends in Paris would have sent the letter itself. These newspaper contacts your Monsieur Pyat mentioned, perhaps; or Mr Inglis, the Englishman who was with her earlier. They found me in Montmartre. They chose the moment for her. It’s all a trick, Jean-Jacques, a plan for a damned book.’

  ‘You really think her so devious?’

  ‘She knows too much.’ Hannah was becoming exasperated. ‘About you, about my painting. She wanted me to go to Edouard Manet, would you believe, and flash my petticoats. This is the sort of thing she proposes. This is why I had to leave London. Don’t you understand?’

  Jean-Jacques glanced over his shoulder, towards the quay; he’d talked about Elizabeth Pardy enough. ‘You mustn’t be upset by Pyat’s interest, Hannah. It is nothing. Before very long we will have our sortie. The Prussians will be driven off. Your mother will return to London. France will be free again – we will be free. Everything will change.’

  Hannah hugged her knees, suddenly spent, too tired to argue or think. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It will.’

  PART TWO

  The Goddess of Revolt

  I

  ‘Six hours,
Clement.’

  Elizabeth was in front of him. He moved his hand, peering between his fingers. She’d opened the velvet curtains, her back to the window; she seemed almost to dissolve in the late afternoon sunlight.

  ‘Six hours confined to a prison cell with only Montague Inglis for company. Can you imagine how aggravating he became?’

  Clem swallowed. His tongue was an alien object, something dead and dry lying in his mouth. ‘What happened?’

  His mother paused, considering how to begin. ‘We were outside the wall, on the west of the city, taking a morning drive through the Bois de Boulogne. It is in an awful, awful state – a plain of shattered stumps and shredded grass, utterly demolished. The generals intend for it to serve as a buffer against the Prussians, should they attack from that direction. Many of the ancient trees are down. Soldiers are billeted in the restaurants and camped upon the racecourse. Now, I have fond memories of the Bois, of summer evenings when I was younger; and that Imperialist rake Inglis plainly regards it as his personal property. I suppose we both grew quite animated, which won us the attention of a detachment of National Guard. They took a single look at our notebooks, at Mr Inglis’s binoculars, and demanded the right to conduct a full search. Naturally we refused, and made it clear that we resented the impertinence.’

  The scene was easily pictured, even in Clem’s present condition. ‘So they arrested you.’

  ‘It was preposterous, Clement – spiteful. Motivated by hatred towards the English, nothing more. Would real spies be so stupid as to actually look foreign? Would they behave in a way that might attract notice? Of course they wouldn’t.’

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  Elizabeth became magnanimous. ‘I cannot blame the Guard. They are under siege, for goodness’ sake. Their regular army, what remains of it, has shown itself to be worse than useless. They are bound to be sensitive. Over-cautious.’ The storm clouds returned; she began to talk very quickly, caught up in her narration, reliving her fury. ‘What is harder for me to excuse is Montague Inglis keeping me in a cell with him for six hours when all the while he had papers in his coat from none other than the Prefect of Police. Six hours of him droning on about the damned emperor. Sniping at the labours of my pen. Making ham-fisted attempts to revisit the love affairs of the past – matters involving a number of departed souls that are best left alone.