by Dudley Pope
The main enemy, the one said to lurk round every corner, was the anti-Revolutionary. To be so denounced to the local Committee of Public Safety or the police put any man’s life in peril, since all too many tribunals set up by the Committees—there was one in every town—listened to the charges and, like Joseph Le Bon, either refused to listen to the evidence or disregarded it, along with any defence. The general view was that the guillotine settled any doubts: the thump of a head dropping into the basket was the sound that secured the Revolution from plotters. The guillotine was also a great boon to a man heavily in debt, Louis had said bitterly. It was surprising how many creditors were strapped down on the “Widow” after being denounced by debtors, and equally surprising how many grocers and bakers and butchers expanded their businesses after their rivals were judged to be plotting against the Revolution.
All the facts that Louis had told him last night in that tiny room at the Chapeau Rouge in Boulogne, all the horrifying examples he had cited of the tribunals at work (not least the one that sent his own wife to her death), seemed to take on a new and more immediate meaning as the horses trotted towards Amiens. In Boulogne there had been risks. He never forgot for a moment that he was in an enemy country—the sudden unexpected arrival of the gendarme at the door yesterday morning had been a frightening enough reminder. But somehow Amiens seemed different; although for the moment he was not sure why, he was beginning to feel uneasy. Was it because Amiens was well inland, away from escape by sea? No, that was absurd; he was not a turtle that had to be near water. Nor was it due to the sheer size of the city.
It must be the atmosphere which, even from this distance and viewed from a jogging ‘chaise, seemed sinister and full of foreboding. If he was taken prisoner and locked in the room of a house, with an armed sentry at the door, obviously he would feel trapped and more than aware of the danger he was in. But supposing he was taken prisoner in the same circumstances and locked in a cell in a fortress with an armed sentry at the door: he would be in no more and no less danger—but the heavy, cold atmosphere of a fortress cell would frighten him more, as if the sheer bulk of a fortress was menacing.
He wished he could talk about it to Louis; he was certain the Frenchman would understand his uneasiness. But whispered conversations as they approached the city would puzzle the coachman and might arouse his suspicions, even though he had been a jovial enough fellow so far. That was another reason for unease: everyone had been comparatively jovial while the ‘chaise rattled along the road from Boulogne, but once it approached the shadows of Amiens itself the joviality had vanished—even the coachman had flared up at the postmaster at Picquigny—and for Ramage it had been replaced with a grey fear that came like evening mist in a valley, something that just formed without apparent effort or movement.
Louis pulled out his watch. “We will be in just before the curfew, unless one of these horses goes lame.”
The Hotel de la Poste was in a street barely a hundred yards from the Cathedral, whose spires, more than 350 feet high, made the few clouds in the darkening sky seem torn pennons streaming from cavalrymen’s lances. The owner, a surly man with sharp, shrewd eyes and who bore no resemblance to his Corporal brother in Boulogne, made no secret of the fact that his inn was almost empty, although he made it clear that that was no reason why anyone should expect the kind of service given in Paris. From the way he said it, he obviously had a hatred of Paris which extended to anyone who might be going to or coming from the city.
He rubbed the palms of his hands on his green baize apron as he inspected the three small bags the coachman handed down and then gave a contemptuous sniff, and Ramage guessed that despite his Revolutionary fervour, m’sieur le patron still judged the prosperity of his guests by the reliable ancien régime yardstick of the quantity and quality of their baggage.
Ramage left Louis to arrange the rooms and the Frenchman went into one of his now familiar winks-and-nods consulations with the owner, ending up by producing an almost cheerful look on the Norman’s face when he heard they would be staying several days, accepting without question the explanation that the Italian wanted to visit some of the factories to look into the possibility of arranging a regular supply of the plush, woollen stuffs and goat-hair costumes for which Amiens was famous and all of which were hard to buy in Italy, though in great demand. Louis then spoiled the effect by adding a last flourish, saying that once his business was done here, Signor di Stefano would go on to Paris to conclude his business with the Ministry of Marine. The Norman gave a prodigious sniff which made it clear that nothing good ever happened in Paris, least of all to Italians. Picking up the lightest of the bags he led the way to the staircase.
There had been no sign of the innkeeper’s daughter, although the Corporal’s description of the shrewdness of his prosperous brother had proved accurate so far. Ramage wished he knew which room the Lieutenant-de-vaisseau occupied during his twice-weekly visits: he had the impression that it would always be the same one, so that the linen need not be changed too frequently. The Corporal’s brother would be up to all those tricks, and probably more of his own devising—as became a successful hotelier, the Corporal would say with pride.
The room he was to share with Stafford was large and high-ceilinged, a domed bedstead standing in one corner with faded blue silk curtains and counterpane. Another bed, little more than a wooden frame made up with a mattress and a matching counterpane, stood in another corner, with a chest of drawers against the wall between them. A round table with four chairs in the centre of the room completed the furnishings apart from long and faded green velvet curtains at the windows which had been washed so often that the remaining nap looked like patches of incipient mildew, and a threadbare carpet covering most of the floor. Ramage was relieved to notice that none of the floorboards creaked. Would the Lieutenant-de-vaisseau’s room be furnished in the same way—with equally silent floorboards? He was thankful for Louis’s shrewdness in demanding to be shown several rooms before deciding which they would take: the first two, on the floor above, were too small; two others on this same floor (the door of a third remained locked) were the same as the room he was in: a large and small bed, one chest of drawers, one table and four chairs. All the windows were tightly shut, so that each room smelled musty with the hint of trapped odours from the kitchen reminding Ramage that meals would be served in their rooms. It was a French habit for which he was thankful: dining-rooms were a danger because it was too easy for gendarmes to glance round at the diners as often as they wished, and conversation had to be guarded, with Stafford silent.
As Louis and the innkeeper left the room they were discussing the supper to be served for all three of them in Ramage’s room in half an hour’s time, and when Ramage shut the door behind them Stafford whispered: “All right if I talk, sir?”
“Yes—just keep your voice down and listen for footsteps in the corridor.”
Ramage waited, and when the Cockney began unpacking his bag, emptying the contents on to the smaller bed but remaining silent, Ramage said: “What were you going to say?”
Stafford looked round in surprise: “Oh, there wasn’t nothing I wanted to say right now, sir; it’s just sitting in the coach not being able to say nothing that’s so aggravatering.”
“Aggravating,” Ramage corrected automatically, long since accustomed to the Cockney’s mispronunciations. “Well, make the best of this evening because you’ll have to be silent tomorrow.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Stafford said, walking over to the door and kneeling down, as though looking through the keyhole. He opened the door quietly and just enough to be able to look at the edge of the lock. Then he shut the door and walked back to his bed, picking up a small bag made of soft leather and pulling open the drawstring. He shook out several small strips of metal which had the ends bent into various shapes, picked one up and examined it, grunted and put them all back in the bag.
Ramage was unsure how to interpret the grunt and asked: “Can you manage that kind o
f lock?”
Stafford looked hurt. “Wiv a bent pin held in me toes, sir,” he said contemptuously.
That evening, after the innkeeper and his painfully thin wife had cleared away the supper and left the room, Ramage said, “I haven’t eaten a meal like that for a very long time. At least some good chefs survived the Revolution!”
“Wait until you see the bill,” Louis cautioned. “Innkeepers are the new bankers …”
Ramage patted his stomach reflectively. “Jowl of salmon, sole, roast pigeon, bouillie beef—I haven’t had that for years—and roast fowl. Picardy beer—not much body to it, admittedly, but nice enough if you treat it as small beer—and Volnay wine. Better than salt pork and pease, eh, Stafford?”
The Cockney belched happily, his eyes slightly out of focus. “Never tasted sole like that, and that there bully beef, or whatever you call it. Beer ain’t up to much, like you say, sir, but the wine—” he looked down at his empty glass, “well, it’d ease the journey down a bumpy road, I reckon. Thought they was short of food!”
“Make no mistake,” Louis said, “they are. There were food riots in many towns last year. This man Jobert knows where to get the delicacies—and he pays a high price. You can get anything—if you have the money. The ordinary people though: many of them have less than your people in England.”
“Nice to be rich,” Stafford commented contentedly, “even if only for a few hours!”
Ramage pushed the carafe towards him. “You and Louis had better finish that up, but don’t expect to eat like that every night we’re here!”
Stafford shook his head. “Once in a lifetime’s enough, sir. Cor, wait until I tell the lads.” He topped up Louis’s glass and then filled his own, and after putting the carafe down, carefully he raised his glass and looked Ramage straight in the eye.
“‘Ere’s to you, sir, an’ the Marcheezer, an’ may you both live to a ripe hold hage—”
Louis reached for his glass, but Stafford had not finished. “I’m a bit tipsy, sir, an’ I ain’t very good wiv words, but the other lads—not just Jacko and Rosey, but all the rest of them—well, they’d want me ter thank you for gettin’ them out of trouble so often—” He saw the puzzled expression on Ramage’s face and hurriedly explained. “Well, like when we rescued the Marcheezer, and then when that Don rammed us in the Kathleen, and the privateers at St Lucia with the Triton, an’ the ‘urricane, an’ that skylarking in the Post Office brig …”
As if startled at the length of his speech he hurriedly gulped his wine, followed by Louis, and put his glass down nervously.
Ramage held out his own empty glass, and Louis poured some wine.
“Here’s to you and the lads,” Ramage said soberly, not trusting himself to say more.
Louis finished his glass and said: “Before we sleep, we should think of our plan for tomorrow.”
Ramage nodded. “Since it’s a Saturday, the patron won’t expect us to try to do any business at the factories, so we’ll establish ourselves as visitors. We can have a look at the Cathedral—after all, it’s the biggest in France, and even though the Church is not popular here, we Italians are God-fearing people! After that we’ll make sure we know all the roads leading away from this hotel, and you must find out where we can hire horses in an emergency—steal them, if necessary.”
He paused for a minute or two, deep in thought. “Stafford has his picklocks; we have wax in case we have to break and repair a seal, candles, and the little lantern. You have that thin-bladed knife and each of us has a heavier one. Pen, paper and ink to copy any documents. Plaster and some boxwood in case we have to carve a copy of a seal, and the chisels and gouges. You have the sheets of notepaper with the Ministry of Marine heading … Can you think of anything else?”
When Louis shook his head, Ramage asked Stafford: “You have everything you might want?”
“Me picklocks, some thin wire, a spatula an’ me fingers; that’s all I need, sir.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NEXT morning Louis left them after explaining that he was going to make the necessary arrangements while Ramage and Stafford wandered through the city, establishing themselves as innocent visitors. The short walk to the great Cathedral was almost frightening. The whole city seemed to be silent and foreboding; silent although horses’ hooves clattered over the cobbles and cartwheels rumbled; although people walked the streets talking to each other and shopkeepers stood at their doorways, calling out greetings and trying to beguile prospective customers.
There were a few of the noises one would expect in a city; but in an almost deserted city. These were not the noises of a normal city going about its daily business, and he and Stafford had almost reached the Cathedral before Ramage realized exactly what was missing: no one was laughing and no one was bustling: it was as though everyone had a secret guilt and feared that the pairs of gendarmes who seemed to stand at every corner were watching and waiting to make an arrest; that they knew only too well there was among the quiet streets of Amiens a building with barred windows where a man who laughed loudly or joked or behaved in a carefree manner might be dragged before a tribunal and accused of being an enemy of the Revolution.
But surely these people in the streets were the Revolution: surely it was for them, the sans-culottes, that the Revolution had been staged? With the aristocrats dead or exiled and their estates sold off to the people, with every man proclaimed as free and equal as his neighbour, and the armies of France standing astride Europe from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, surely now was the time for the people to be happy? Yet Ramage sensed that these people in Amiens were far from carefree; they were nervous and suspicious of each other, and looked at those gendarmes not as protectors against burglars, cutpurses and pickpockets but as honest men might be wary of large and unknown dogs.
Louis had told him all this; indeed, he had explained it with great care. Ramage admitted to himself that it had been easy enough to listen but too hard to visualize; one had to see it to believe it.
The majority of the French people had supported the idea of the Revolution: for generations under the monarchy taxation had been harsh and arbitrary, with the poorest always paying the most. But there had been such a struggle for power after the Revolution: such almost unbelievable cruelties and injustices committed with chilling cynicism in the name of the Revolution by those very leaders, as each struggled for personal power, that the people were bewildered and disillusioned. Debtors denouncing their creditors to avoid paying their bills, vicious men settling old scores by the same means—the people had seen too much of it. Louis must be right—the majority of them were sick of the metallic hiss and thud of the guillotine, sick of passing a tumbril laden with white-faced men and weeping women. This was an aspect of the Revolution they had never visualized and never wanted—seeing former neighbours (and often former friends and sometimes relatives) dragged off to the Widow … This bore no relation to getting rid of the tyrannical landowners and the iniquitous tax collectors of the ancien régime; it had nothing to do with driving out the grasping priests and seizing the vast lands owned by the Church.
But in several cases the grasping priests had cast off the soutane, snatched up the Red Cap of Liberty and returned in the role of rabid Revolutionaries. Joseph Le Bon, the former curé, had probably killed more innocent Frenchmen in the time of the Revolution than Bonaparte’s Army of Italy lost in the march to Rome; and Joseph Fouché, former abbe of Nantes and professor at its university, was now the Minister of Police and the most feared man in France. It was, Ramage reflected, as though the old fierceness of the Inquisition readily converted into Revolutionary zeal; merely a question of changing the Church’s rack for the State’s guillotine in the determination either to command men’s souls or kill their bodies. As with the Inquisition so with the Revolution: mere acceptance was not enough; one had to be a zealot.
As he and Stafford side-stepped to avoid three pimply boys who were begging, watched without interest by the gendarmes, he reali
zed that although no one seemed to be starving, few were wearing clothes which had not been carefully darned.
A cool and supercilious look at the outside of the Cathedral. Two more gendarmes standing fifteen yards from the main door watching lethargically, although a strange face was a reason for them slowly swivelling their heads to relieve the boredom. One removed his tricorn and inspected the inside before replacing it on his head.
The outside of the Cathedral had suffered the sort of damage you would expect from excited schoolboys drunk for the first time on Calvados: the heads of all the saints had been smashed off and sculptured groups had been crudely mutilated in an attempt to make them look ridiculous. Yet it was an attempt that was itself ridiculous, since the Cathedral had stood for nearly 600 years, massive and graceful. Disfiguring the small, sculptured groups had as much effect on its majesty as a man relieving himself against a buttress.
Ramage walked through the main door, and despite the gloom saw at once that the great altarpiece spreading the whole breadth of the Cathedral was untouched. As he noted that the beautiful chapels on either side of the choir also appeared to be undamaged he saw five people kneeling. Four seemed to be old women, the fifth a crippled man, one of his legs stuck out sideways. A wooden leg. Their presence emphasized the vastness and the emptiness and the silence: there was none of the distant chanting or murmuring that you usually heard the moment you entered the main door of a great cathedral: simply the chilling silence of an abandoned building … As he walked towards the altar he saw that the famous marble statue of the weeping child had been damaged. The altar was bare—not surprisingly the Revolutionaries had taken the gold and silver candlesticks, and the rich red and purple hangings had vanished. Yet the stained-glass windows were mostly intact—a gap here and there in the delicate lacework of coloured glass showed where an eager fellow with a strong arm had lobbed a brick or fired a fowling-piece.