A Shot Rolling Ship

by David Donachie

  John stood quickly, for he feared he had been in this place too long, and it might just be that the man who had let him in, if he delayed, would not be there to let him out. ‘I must leave. I will be back tomorrow with more food. Please, Monsieur, use what is already here, for you know as well as I do that if it is not consumed it will be stolen as soon as you are both asleep.’

  Then he lent down and retook his father’s hand. ‘Drink the wine, eat the food, get your strength back. You will need it for the journey home.’

  ‘Home, laddie? I don’t think we ever had one.’

  ‘How much to get a prisoner out?’ he asked the gardien, as they emerged into the falling darkness.

  The answer was depressing. ‘However much money it takes to replace a head and bring a dead man back to life?’

  ‘Surely there is a way?’

  ‘How many times a day do you think I am asked that? And who do you think it is who sends these folk to this place and sits it judgement on them in the Great Hall. They ain’t fools, and neither, young fellow, am I. A bit of coin for a favour is one thing, but taking a gift to get you in for a visit is pushing it as far as I dare.’

  Pearce thought about a request for extra comfort, but realised that it too was probably beyond the ability of this man; the place was too crowded. So the only thing that presented itself as a possibility was to plead with those who had the power to get his father out. This Fouché being out of Paris would help, and he had good reason to hope that Cambacérès would aid him in getting to the likes of Danton.

  As he looked for somewhere to eat, he weighed the odds and felt more comfortable for doing so. What could they possibly hold against old Adam? If they wanted, he would write a recantation under his father’s name. The reputation of the Revolution was odious enough, it would not be helped by the judicial murder of a foreign national and one with his father’s reputation. He was no threat to their safety or that of the state; the men who ran France now had to be of a practical bent, and that meant they would surely see that Adam Pearce was harmless. Such thoughts were helped by a bottle of good wine and a proper meal, so that by the time he wrapped himself in those torn drapes to try and get some sleep, he was reasonably confident that he could get his father out of Paris and France.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Doubts surfaced with the dawn, to replace the sanguine notions that had comforted John Pearce as he went to sleep and that followed on from troubled dreams of storm-tossed ships, rising and falling steel blades, the contorted face of his father making rabid speeches or screwed up in pain, which were directly related to sleeping on a hard floor and a level of discomfort that made him long for a hammock. The walls of the Conciergerie loomed larger and thicker in his imagination and the previous evening’s practical politicians became, in his mind, blood-soaked demagogues, so that by the time he was washed and shaved, he was in a far from optimistic frame of mind. Taking extra care, he resolved to find a coat and hat that would be more presentable, for he would need to look as good as possible if he were to face members of the Committee of Public Defence. That posed another problem – he only knew three of the names, so he must find out the rest.

  Buying better clothes than those he was wearing was not difficult; as he had seen the previous day there were people on the streets so desperate to find the funds just to be able to eat that they were selling anything they could find that another might buy; chips of stone, supposedly from the destroyed Bastille, ribbons and tricolours, bits of string and used brown paper, of crockery and cutlery, most of which had seen many better days, cracked looking glasses, strips of cloth, clothing in abundance, some of it better classed as rags, domestic and trade artefacts of every description, and that took no account of those selling themselves, either girls or grown women offering their bodies, or men of all ages offering themselves as menial labour, they only outnumbered by the outright beggars. He returned to the Rue St Etienne de Gres with a black coat and breeches, plus a tall hat more in keeping with the present French fashion. That he wrapped in the kind of tricolour band he had seen the previous day when watching the comings and goings from the Jacobin Club, the whole making him look like a man committed to the cause.

  Changed, with his discarded garments hidden away with his pistol and ditty bag, and well aware he was in for a long day, he made sure of a good breakfast, a pigeon pie washed down with a pichet of red wine, and it was while consuming that he first heard, then read, about the new committee that had been set up. Marat’s news sheet l’Ami du Peuple hailed the inception of the Committee of Public Safety to replace Public Defence. What difference it made to the people of France Pearce could not fathom, and he was too well versed in ways of revolutionary slogan-making to pay much attention to Marat’s screaming polemic regarding the threats to the people, the movement, the number of traitors waiting to stab the Revolution in the back, the criminals in the Vendée and the other major cities who were standing in the way of a New World Order, or the need for vigilance on the frontiers of France and more arrests here in Paris. The ugly little swine had been saying the same things for years; to him, perusing the names, it did make one major difference; Cambacérès was not a member.

  That was a problem he would have to deal with later; the time had come to visit the Conciergerie with more food and laudanum, which he bought on the way. The gardien worried him by being late, though he did raise an eye at the changed appearance. That was followed by a grinning allusion to a busy but fruitful morning, which was sickening, for it implied that another batch of unfortunate victims were off to the Place de la Revolution. He then taxed Pearce’s patience in the way he dealt with the other supplicants for his favours, seeming to deliberately take his time as he accepted small parcels, probably mostly of food, for those inside. Eventually he came waddling towards Pearce, with his huge belly and thick thighs, his hand twitching at his side to indicate that payment must be made before anything else. The coins were slipped into his sweaty hand, and Pearce followed him out of the door, heading for the same set of gates by which he had entered the previous day, just in time to see a distant and full tumbrel turning left along the banks of the Seine, its iron-hooped wheels making an audible death knell sound on the cobbled pavé.

  The route was not the same as before; this time the gardien led him through the Great Hall, a huge chamber in which their footsteps, under a high, vaulted timber roof, echoed on the flagstone floor. The walls were lined with armorial decorations, swords, long spears and shields arranged in patterns that were medieval in appearance, with one wall excepted, that covered by three huge drapes of red, white and blue. Set before these was a long table, strewn with papers, the seats thrown back and empty for, as he was informed, the Revolutionary Tribunal had done their work for the morning, and would not again be sitting till the afternoon. In the middle of the hall was a stall, slightly raised on a plinth, which was no doubt the dock where the accused would stand, and passing it, Pearce picked up the smell of human evacuation, caused as the victims voided their bodies on hearing their fate. It was a double indignity that few people would lie under the guillotine blade who had not already soiled themselves in a state of sheer terror.

  Done up to look like a man of the Revolution, Pearce caused even more of a reaction as he entered the courtyard, the door closing behind him with the same admonishment about time and attendance, with those present seeming to shy away from him. It did occur, too late, that such a costume might be unwise in this place, once the gardien went back through the postern gate. With the inmates mistaking him for one of their persecutors, they might well tear him limb from limb, so it was with head held defiantly high that he made his way through the throng, packages of food and medicine held in plain view. There was no singing, and Pearce thought he detected an even greater air of listlessness than he had the day before. Retracing his steps up to the landing, he stopped abruptly when he saw the great slash of chalk marked on the door to his father’s cell, and by the time he got to the doorway, and saw the empty
cot, his heart was in his boots, the parcels dropping out of his hands.

  The Marquis was on his knees on the stone floor, silently praying, while one of the other inmates who had been present the day before sat huddled in a corner looking wretched. There was no time for ceremony, no time to wait on another man’s devotions and Pearce grabbed the penitent by the shoulder and hauled him round, to look into a face streaked with tears and eyes full of despair. A cry came out from those damp lips, an achingly sorrowful sound and John Pearce found himself looking down at the balding head of a man who had put his arms round his knees and was, in a mumbling way, begging forgiveness.

  ‘Tell me?’

  ‘They came for me…they chalked the door for me… but I was not here, and when the guards demanded the Marquis de la Motte…’ He stopped then, too upset to go on. Pearce wanted to strike him, because he knew what was coming and it made him boil with anger. Instead he patted the man gently to encourage him to speak. ‘Your father answered to my name.’

  The wretch huddled in the corner mumbled. ‘He said, let them take a man who is dying anyway.’

  ‘This morning?’

  The head at his knees moved slowly, and Pearce had a vision of that tumbrel rattling over the cobbles and disappearing round the corner of the prison. There was no way of saying that there was only one cart in that batch of the condemned, there could have been several, but he had a horrible feeling that he had, unknowingly, watched his own father on the way to the guillotine. He pushed off the weeping Marquis and he rushed out of the cell, his thoughts in turmoil. Could he get out before the appointed time; had the Marquis, on discovering the mistake, taken any steps to rectify it, or had he merely sunk to his knees to pray to God? What for, deliverance or another man’s soul; what was his father thinking about? Him possibly, the idea that his son might get himself killed trying a rescue. Or was it a last act of defiance? Was he dying? There was no certainty of that. Outside, with proper medical attention, he might have recovered. Maybe they had found him innocent and set him free. Was he now wandering the streets of Paris in a daze? Could he get to the Place de la Revolution and stop the execution if he had been pronounced guilty?

  With these questions rattling round in his brain he rushed across the courtyard and banged on the postern door, suspecting that it would be useless. How many of the people listlessly watching him had done that in the past to no avail? But he pounded on nevertheless, even when one or two of the prisoners started to laugh at his efforts, they were soon joined by others that raised the level of hilarity to such a pitch that, echoing off the high walls, the curious gardien came to investigate.

  Pearce was through the door before the man had time to ask for an explanation and the way he grabbed and tried to drag him away brought forth a string of curses. The breathless explanation did little to enlighten the man, who was determined to stand on what dignity he thought he owned, fists on hips, great belly protruding. Pearce wanted to kill him there and then, but he forced himself to calm down, still breathing heavily as he gave a garbled account of what had happened. The falling face, the look of sadness on the fleshy jowls, had nothing to do with his father’s possible fate, more to do with a realisation of a lost source of income, so that it was with no great hurry that he locked the postern gate and led Pearce out, again going through the empty great hall, where the vision of his father, standing in that dock, was seared into Pearce’s mind. It was tempered by the certainty that Adam Pearce would not have sobbed, would not have soiled himself. He would have looked them in the eye with the boldness that had been the hallmark of his whole life and sneered at their sentence.

  It seemed to take forever to get to the outside of the walls. Hat in hand, Pearce ran like a demon for the Pont Neuf, slowing to a walk as he got clear so as not to alarm those who guarded the crossing looking for suspicious souls. He had to walk across to the Right Bank, his heart pounding, his mood swinging from hope to despair and back again, until he was off and heading for the square that had once been named for King Louis XV , but was now the place of execution. He heard the faint roar of the crowd a long way off, abreast the Louvre, and knew that the blade had dropped and another head had been held up for the canaille who spent their time watching men and women die whom they hated without ever knowing. He heard it twice more before he was past the great open space in front of the Tuileries, and he wondered if, in the building that housed the National Assembly, those representatives of the people could hear through the walls the results of their bloody deliberations.

  The Place de la Revolution was packed, this now a daily diversion for the dregs and perverse of Paris, and trying to elbow his way through the crowd was like swimming in molasses. His size and desperation helped, that and the look in his eye that told anyone who wanted to contest with him that they would have to do so with violence. In his ears another roar, and jumping up he had a vision of a female head held aloft for the edification of the crowd. This was followed by another roll of the drums, the signal for a new victim to ascend the steps, that drowned out by the crowing of the yet to be sated crowd.

  John Pearce was still only halfway to the guillotine, with the crowd even thicker close to, when he heard the voice. His father had always had the ability to command a crowd and the bellow he let out silenced them for a moment, though perhaps his son was the only one present who understood the few words he was allowed to say before he was silenced. Where he got the strength from, not only to stand away from his escorts, but to produce such a stentorian cry was a marvel.

  ‘You who have condemned me will in turn die like me. You have betrayed your principles for your life, but that will not save you. I…’

  He never got to say Adam Pearce, which was what his watching and desperate son thought was coming next, for he was seized and thrown down out of sight on to the sliding plank that would take his head beneath a blade already dripping blood. John froze, knowing he was too late, knowing too that even earlier there would have been nothing he could do. He watched as the angled metal began to drop and closed his eyes as the audible thud declared that it had done its work. His eyes stayed closed, fists clenched, body screwed up in despair as the swine around him cawed their triumph at the sight of another severed head. Then he turned, and with no strength whatever, tried to make his way out to a place where he could breath, and finding himself in the open spaces of the Champs Elysées he leant against a tree and wept.

  Régis de Cambacérès came to his own door as soon as his servant told him of the despairing young man, the look in his eye, as he saw both the identity of his visitor and his state, a clear indication that he could guess what had happened. In the Paris in which he lived, that took no great leap of imagination. Taking an arm, he led John Pearce in to a comfortable if fussily over-furnished room and sat him down on a chaise, then went to pour him a brandy. Sitting down himself, he took the young man’s free hand and squeezed it gently.

  ‘Your father?’

  The story tumbled out, not clear in its order, a mumbled and disordered version of what had happened that morning, much self-castigation mixed with curses at the régime, the prisons and even once his own father for the way he had behaved. The reassuring noises that Cambacérès made, to the effect that he should not blame himself, were wasted on John Pearce, who was sure in his own mind that when he had originally left Paris on his father’s instructions it had been as much for his own good as to fulfil any filial obligation.

  ‘You must, young Jean, see it as an act of great courage. If, as you say, your father was convinced of the imminence of his own death he has granted life to another, and who knows in the confusion of the world we live in, how long that will last?’

  ‘I want to bury him.’

  Perhaps it was the brandy, perhaps the soothing words, but Pearce was aware of a mixture of feelings, self pity as well as grief, and it being in his nature to honestly examine his own emotions the notion that he might be feeling sorry for himself as much as for his father was disturbing.
/>   ‘That will not be easy.’

  ‘Will you help me?’

  Without letting go of the hand, Cambacérès sat back a bit and examined the young man beside him, aware that from under lowered eyelids he himself was likewise being scrutinized. The florid, heavily patterned silk morning coat that went all the way to the floor was the most obvious signal of the Frenchman’s proclivities, but it was in the cast of his features and the movements of his body as well, a softness allied to an arch quality that was most evident in his face; blue, slightly protruding eyes, clear, well cared for skin, but most of all the sensual, almost feminine lips.

  ‘Will you?’ Pearce repeated.

  ‘I am wondering whether you like me?’ That made Pearce look away. ‘I doubt that you approve of me, yet you come in your hour of need to seek my help. Why?’

  Pearce raised his head, to look Cambacérès right in the eye. ‘I come because I know of no one else to ask.’

  ‘And in return you offer?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Had he said that too quickly, too emphatically? Was the shocked look on the Frenchman’s face real or mock, for there was an affected quality to the man? All Pearce knew was that he meant it; he had nothing he was prepared to give this man in return for his help, except gratitude. Cambacérès stood up and going to the mantle rang a bell, before turning and smiling.

  ‘Well, at least you are honest, which is, in itself, a rare commodity these days.’

  ‘I know you are no longer…’ Pearce stopped. He did not know how to say what was in his mind.

  ‘No longer powerful? Is that what you were going to say?’ In the absence of a reply the Frenchman continued. ‘I wonder, my young friend, if I ever was. Let us find out shall we? He went over to an escritoire and began to write. Then the quill stopped abruptly and he turned back to Pearce just as his servant entered. ‘I am sorry, I must ask this, what was your father wearing?’