by Kate Forsyth
Six weeks later, the king’s sister Élisabeth was killed. She had been a sweet, devout woman who should not have had an enemy in the world. Viviane cried for her, and worried about the young king and his sister, now in the Temple alone. She hoped their gaolers let them be together, but knew it was in vain.
Pity is treason, Robespierre said.
The small fleet of ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope on the 2nd of June.
It had been a swift journey, with the winds blowing fair. A French squadron was known to be cruising the Straits of Sunda, so a sharp lookout was kept. A few ships had been encountered, but all flew the British flag.
On the 18th, the fleet reached the shelter of St Helena, a tiny island in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. It was a bare, windswept rock, used by John Company as a rest stop and rendezvous point on ships returning to Europe from the East. Many on board were ill, and were glad of the chance to rest and recover. They were able to bury their dead, take on fresh water and food, and hear the news. All anyone could talk about was the situation in France.
‘Not everyone wants this new republic of theirs,’ one man told David. ‘There’s fighting all through the countryside, I’ve heard.’
‘And on the high seas,’ David replied. ‘The French royalists have their own fleet of ships, and whenever they see a boat carrying the new republican flag they give chase. One will shout “Long live the king!” and the other will shout back “Long live the nation!”, and then they fire on each other.’
‘It’s as if they’ve all run mad,’ the man said.
Summer came, and the stink of the buckets was unbearable.
The Conciergerie was crammed, people sleeping on straw flung on the ground, over-laden carts rattling away over the cobblestones every day. Hair cropped to bare their neck for the blade, they were taken out through the iron teeth of the gate and into the seething streets, for the long parade of humiliation and shame before the final swift blow.
Soon the ground at the Place de la Révolution was so saturated with gore the horses dragging the tumbrils could no longer be induced to go near it, no matter how ferociously they were whipped. The people who lived nearby complained that dogs came each night to lap up the puddles of blood. So the guillotine was moved. First to the Place Saint-Antoine, where it stood for only five days. The shopkeepers there complained of the stench and the sound and the horror of it all, ninety-six people having died in just those few days. So then it was moved further south-east, to the Barrière du Trône, at the very limits of the city. A special sanguiduct was built for the blood to pour away.
Viviane did not know why she was still alive. Every day she waited to hear her name read out, and every day she was passed over.
Perhaps it was simply because there were so many others to kill.
Cécile Renault, for example, a young seamstress who went to Robespierre’s house because – she said – she wanted to see what a tyrant was like. When she was searched, two small knives were found in her basket. Cécile and her family and friends – sixty in all – were sent to the guillotine wearing the red shirts reserved for parricides, for Robespierre was considered the father of the Republic. Jean-Baptiste Michonis, the man who had tried to save the queen, died the same day.
On the twenty-second day of the Prairial month of the Year II, a law was passed to enable the guillotine to hack faster. The Revolutionary Tribunal, it said, was created to punish the enemies of the people. Anyone who opposed the Republic was an enemy, and the penalty for all was death.
The rate of executions quickened. From five or six deaths a day, the tempo quickened to sixteen or seventeen, and then to two dozen. Every single day.
Viviane walked around and around the iron-bound perimeter of the prison yard, listening to the beating of drums, and the sounds of the people of Paris. Screaming, weeping, pleading, cheering, taunting, jeering.
Above her the sky was blue. Tiny birds swooped in and out of the eaves, twittering joyously. She watched them longingly, wishing she could be so free.
As a little girl, Viviane had loved to explore the meadows and hedgerows and forest, finding all sorts of secret places she could hide where no-one could find her. She’d crouch low, her hair hanging over her face, making little gardens with twigs and petals, feathers and fallen berries, bright leaves and stones. She would search for treasures, down deep in the tangle of hawthorn, wild rose and bramble, where no-one but her and the little creatures of the field ever ventured. She would crouch so still a hare might lollop past, or a red squirrel with its paws filled with nuts. She’d see dainty balls woven out of grass by field mice, or little nests built of twigs and moss and mud and feathers.
Once she’d found a nest with three tiny eggs in it, blue as the sky, speckled with brown. Very gently she had cradled one in the palm of her hand. It had been warm. The mother had darted about her head, shrieking the alarm, and Viviane had carefully put the egg back where she found it. Later, she had come back and found the eggs had hatched into ugly, bony, ruffled things with yellow gaping beaks, unbearably fragile, starving for love. She had barely dared breathe as she had watched their mother return again and again to feed them. As the summer had passed, those fledglings had grown feathers and, eventually, fluttered outside the warm cup of their home and learned to fly.
Every day Viviane watched the swifts dart in and out of the eaves of the Conciergerie, catching insects on the wing. Their aerial acrobatics and elfin cries were her only joy in long hollow days haunted by darkness.
One morning, two young swifts collided mid-air. The smaller bird tumbled down and crashed to earth. Its wings flapped desperately, but it could not rise into the air again. The guard stepped casually to kick it out of the way. Viviane rushed to stop him. She bent down and picked the little bird up. Its heart trembled against her fingers. It looked up at her, eyes as bright as obsidian beads. Viviane lifted up her hands and unlaced her fingers.
The swift soared away into the sky.
The Lion and the other ships were becalmed for ten long days.
David felt he would go mad with impatience. He paced around and around the deck, till Scotty said he was wearing the wood away. It was a shame the hot-air balloon had been left in China, David thought grimly, else he might have tried to fly back to France.
‘Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil,’ his grandfather had always said. David tried his best not to fret.
So David read, and played endless games of cards and backgammon, and learned to tie knots. Each morning he checked his precious cargo of rosehips. Each night he lay in his hard, narrow bunk and thought of Viviane.
The wind rose at last, but brought mist. The fleet were like ghost ships, their sails and masts looming out of the fog, then disappearing again.
‘Ships to starboard!’ the lookout shouted.
It was feared the ships were French. The drums began to beat out the summonses, and the men were told to make themselves ready in case it came to a fight. Quickly the decks were cleared and the cannons made ready. Pistols were loaded, swords polished.
‘Tom, I want you to go below deck,’ Sir George ordered.
‘No, Father, I want to stay,’ the boy cried. ‘Don’t make me go below. Please, sir. I want to stay with you.’
‘It’s not safe.’
‘I know, sir. But I’d rather not. Surely there’s something I can do to help?’
‘No, Tom. Do as you are told! Your mother would never forgive me if harm was to come to you.’
Just as Tom was disconsolately making his way to the ladder, the mist swirled apart.
‘She’s flying the Union Jack, sir!’ the lookout shouted. ‘She’s one of ours.’
A cheer went up, and Tom came flying back.
‘Aren’t we to have a fight after all?’ he said in a tone of such intense disappointment it made David laugh.
‘Not today,’ his father said, and called for rations of grog to be passed out so the men could all toast the king’s health.
In midsumme
r, Viviane’s name was at last called.
It was her turn to climb the stairs to the courtroom of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Her turn to be accused and given no chance to defend herself. The benches were full of men and women, talking, laughing, eating, knitting. Viviane scanned the crowd, hoping to see Pierrick. She wondered if he knew her time had come. She saw a familiar face, and her heart began to pound.
Alouette’s eyes met hers across the room. She grinned and waved, as if they were at a soiree. When the guilty verdict was passed down, Alouette grimaced and shrugged, as if to say bad luck, then turned back to her neighbour, laughing.
Viviane was taken back down to the Conciergerie. Her hair was hacked off. She had to surrender all her belongings, including her shoes. She was allowed to wear nothing but her loose white cambric chemise.
Barefoot, her arms and legs naked, she was pushed into the waiting tumbril. Her hands bound behind her back. Another half-a-dozen prisoners shoved in beside her, tied in pairs. Three other carts crammed full behind them.
Viviane did not know their names or crimes. One was a pale girl of no more than sixteen.
Her pulse thumped loudly in her ears. The tumbril rattled away over the cobblestones. Viviane kept her feet with difficulty.
The tumbril drove across the Pont Notre-Dame, and turned right on to the Quai de Gesvres. People swarmed around the tumbril, shouting curses. ‘Death to all aristos!’ someone yelled.
Viviane jerked as if stuck with a pin. She knew that voice. But she saw no-one she recognised, no matter how frantically she scanned the crowd.
It was a long drive to the Barrière du Trône, through crowds of sullen-faced people who shook their fists and shouted ‘Death to traitors’. Some threw old shoes, dead cats, rotten vegetables. Others turned their faces away, as if pretending not to see.
The Place du Trône-Renversé – the Square of the Toppled Throne – was seething with people, all shouting and waving their red caps. Viviane could see the guillotine standing tall on its platform. Soldiers guarded it with sharp pikes, and the executioner stood waiting, a tricolour cockade in his hat. His face was white and rigid.
Viviane felt weak, as if her legs might give way.
A series of sharp percussive sounds, like gunshots. Whirling sparks, billowing smoke. The horse reared and neighed. Viviane was thrown down. People screamed. Sudden spouts of flame on either side. People ran for shelter, hands over their heads. Another great bang, and smoke as thick as dust. Suddenly her bonds were cut. The blade nicked her wrist. She jerked herself free of the rope and scrambled out of the cart. Smoke swirled about her. Coughing, she ran forward, her legs unencumbered by skirts for the first time in her life.
Another explosion. The horse bolted, the tumbril jerking wildly from side to side.
Pierrick caught her hand, pulled a red cap down over her cropped head and flung a tricolor sash about her waist. ‘This way,’ he whispered.
Hand-in-hand, they escaped through a haze of smoke, reeking of gunpowder and sulphur.
31
The Red Ribbon
22 June – 18 August 1794
Viviane stumbled along, clinging to her brother’s hand.
He led her swiftly through a maze of narrow cobbled streets, lined with higgledy-piggledy shops and houses. People hurried about their business, their heads bowed, their faces showing the marks of hunger and fear. Many of the men were dressed in long dark robes, with broad-brimmed black hats upon their heads. Even the young men had long hair and beards. They clustered outside a grand stone building with a six-pointed star engraved above the door, a tall iron fence guarding its entrance from the street. Women with shawls wrapped about their faces stood nearby, chattering in a language she did not understand. Viviane felt disorientated, as if she had somehow blundered back in time or into a foreign country.
A street sign nearby read ‘Rue des Juifs’, so Viviane realised they were hurrying through the Jewish quarter of the Marais.
‘It is safer here for Ivo and me,’ Pierrick told her in a low voice. ‘They call these streets ‘the armpit of Paris’. Everyone here is poor and hiding something. It’s hard enough to live from day to day without drawing the attention of the Revolutionary Tribunal. We keep our heads down, and no-one gives us any trouble which is how we like it.’
He turned into a street which followed the curve of an old medieval rampart. Roses tumbled over the crumbling stone, scenting the air. The street was called the Rue des Rosiers, Viviane read, and she thought at once of David. If only she could set out now to Wales, in search of him. But the city gates were still sealed, Pierrick had told her, and travel overseas forbidden.
If she could escape from under the very shadow of the guillotine, she could find a way to escape Paris, Viviane thought with a gurgle of laughter. But not today. She was so exhausted that the ground seemed to undulate beneath her feet.
Pierrick paused before a tall arched doorway, unlocked it swiftly and led her through into a deep shadowed passageway. Locking the door behind him, he showed her through to an inner courtyard enclosed on four sides with high walls lined with windows framed by small iron balconies. A young apple tree grew in the centre of a small vegetable patch, guarded by a low fence woven from willow saplings in the traditional Breton manner.
‘Did you plant this?’ she asked in surprise, for the Pierrick she had known had never liked to get his hands dirty. But it seemed the revolution had changed them all, for Pierrick nodded and showed her his garden with pride.
‘Ivo wanted fresh herbs and vegetables for his cooking, and food is so scarce in Paris now, it seemed sensible to grow our own,’ he told her. ‘Our landlord is glad to be given a few handfuls of sorrel or some broad beans in thanks for the use of the ground.’
They trudged up several flights of steep wooden stairs. Then Pierrick unlocked a low door, and ushered her into a tiny garret. Ancient wooden beams almost grazed their heads, and the roof touched the floor on either side. The furnishings were simple – a thin straw mattress, a wooden table and a few rickety stools, and an old-fashioned stew stove in the corner with an iron flue sticking out the window. However, Pierrick and Ivo had made the room beautiful with an old velvet bedspread and soft pillows, green glazed plates and jugs and confit pots, and richly coloured rugs on the floor. There was a bunch of fresh herbs in a jar on the stove, and a view from the tiny window across the rooftops and chimneys of Paris.
‘It’s lovely,’ Viviane said. Pierrick smiled, looking about him with pleasure.
Luna had been asleep on a rug by the stove, but she leapt up to greet Viviane, whining with joy so intense it seemed to hurt her. Ivo rushed from the stove, an apron tied about his waist, a dripping wooden spoon in one hand. He embraced her, kissing her cheeks again and again, and Pierrick opened up a bottle of apple brandy. Viviane felt utterly boneless with relief. Ivo put her in a chair, and served her a bowl of Breton fish stew, and warned her to be quiet, for a young family lived in the rooms below.
But they could not be quiet. They talked, and wept, and laughed, and danced most of the night. Viviane heard how Pierrick and Ivo had met and fallen in love. She shared something of the terrible cold endurance of this past year, and then told them that David was still – she hoped – alive.
‘But where is he?’ Ivo asked, sitting with Pierrick’s arm draped over his knee.
‘I don’t know,’ Viviane said. ‘But I shall write just as soon as I can. He must think that I betrayed him terribly, marrying so quickly. I need to tell him I thought he was dead, and that my father threatened to send me to prison.’
For some reason, the exquisite irony of this struck her hard. Viviane laughed till she was breathless and aching, and then she cried, and then Ivo put her to bed in a nest made of cushions and rugs by the window, Luna curling up in the crook of her knees.
The next day Viviane went to walk with Luna in the sunshine, glorying in the freedom of breeches and short hair. It was a bright summer’s day, but the streets of Paris were strangely
empty. She saw only two carriages passing by. Most of the shops were shut, their windows boarded up. The few people she saw were dressed in dull colours, and nobody met anyone else’s eyes or called a cheery ‘good morning’. The park was deserted. Viviane began to feel an eerie discomfort, as if hidden eyes were watching her. She made her way home through back streets and alleyways, turning often to make sure she was not being followed.
Pierrick was furious with her when she told him that night. ‘It’s not safe! You don’t understand. Everyone’s suspicious of everyone else. If you were caught … well, we would all die.’
‘Am I to exchange one prison for another? I’ll go mad shut up in this tiny room!’
So Pierrick sighed and said she might come with him to the Opéra National, but she must pretend to be his brother and keep her mouth shut.
So she went each day to the theatre with her brother, and helped carry props, and sew costumes, and bring wine to the artists, and breathe air that smelt of grease-paint and citron hair oil and flowers instead of sewage and death. The Opéra National had been struggling for some months, with one director imprisoned while another had fled. But the Committee of Public Safety had given it 150,000 livres to continue, as long as it only performed patriotic works.
This caused some consternation among the cast. ‘Are we to address the Greek king of the gods as Citoyen Jupiter?’ one man asked sarcastically. ‘And have him wear a cockade instead of a laurel wreath?’
The Opéra was in the process of moving into new premises on Rue de la Loi, just opposite the National Library, and so all were busy carrying boxes and bags back and forth. It was only a block away from the Palais-Royal, and two blocks away from the Tuileries, where the National Convention now met in the apartments once occupied by the murdered Princesse de Lamballe.
