by C. S. Quinn
‘Everyone can be seduced. You’re not trying hard enough.’
He snorts at this. ‘Not Madame Roland. Ask any man here. Don’t waste your time,’ he says. ‘There’ll be a Swiss army around Paris by sunset. If you tarry too long here the way back to Paris will become impassable.’
I’m looking harder at Madame Roland now. I slip my hand down into the tight pocket of Jemmy’s breeches.
‘On second thoughts,’ he says, ‘we can stay as long as you like.’
I hold up the tricolour Republican cockade. Jemmy’s face falls.
‘We’ll see how incorruptible Madame Roland is,’ I say, pinning it to my dress. ‘Wait here.’
CHAPTER 44
GRACE IS RUNNING. HER PARTY DRESS IS TORN, HER SATIN shoes are bloody.
He is chasing her. He will catch her. It is only a matter of time.
Grace slows to a walk, trying not to draw attention to herself. She has got out of the chateau and limped in her soft footwear to a small village on the outskirts of the Rolands’ grand estate.
Grace knows she is being followed again. The one who she had seen kill and worse. He wears the uniform of a King’s musketeer.
After she heard the key turn in the lock, she went to the window. It wasn’t long before she saw him striding across the ground.
She tries not to picture his hideous metal hand streaked with blood. Grace has no illusions. It’s only a matter of time until he tracks her down. And she is so conspicuous out on the street, her English accent giving her away at every turn.
The village is tiny, more of a hamlet. Even so it is crowded with people, a crush of recently arrived farmers, shocking in their terrible rags, the barest skin on their bones.
For much of her life Grace has been poor, living eight people to a house, scraping for a toehold in respectable circles. And now, here she is, eyeing the peasant classes with faint terror because of the great treasure she has hidden.
But she has to get off the streets. Every pair of eyes looking could identify her to him. And if he finds her ... Grace walks faster, biting back the pain as blood slides between her toes.
She stops. A carriage with black windows is rolling along the cobbles. A dark, shuttered thing, doing the rounds. People’s heads turn in terror. It is a Bastille carriage, Grace realizes, come to make an arrest.
Its purpose is to remind the people of Paris that the terrible prison is only a letter away.
She watches, mute, as people duck inside their homes, close shutters.
This is how the King controls his people. Fear.
Her heart sinks, when she sees the musketeer. He holds up his metal hand in a half-salute, as though they are old friends who have arranged to meet.
The musketeer has followed her from the house as she knew he would. He had been toying with her all along.
His single eye is fixed on her and even from this distance she can see he expects her to crumble, perhaps to collapse in terrorized defeat.
A steely anger burns in Grace. Ever since she met Godwin, she has been acting a part, being no trouble to anyone. She remembers, with sudden boiling rage, how she was tricked into smuggling a priceless necklace. How the men in the Rolands’ house tried to auction her like a sheep in a marketplace.
Grace feels the fear that paralysed her ebbing. She thinks: I am not some perfumed girl to be toyed with. I did not grow up in drawing rooms, learning pianoforte. I was raised in the Bristol docks and I know a thing or two about the streets.
I’ve had enough of you, she decides savagely, looking at Janssen. There’s worse than you who sleep in the gutter outside my mother’s house.
She turns, watching wagons and riders trot past. Her eyes settle on the prison carriage. Grace approaches the vehicle. She waves down the driver and mutters something urgent, her face earnest.
He signals his thanks and spurs the horses. And Grace steps behind whilst his back is turned and enters the blacked-out vehicle.
It is dark inside, there are iron plates securing the doors. Grace breathes a sigh of relief. She peaks through a crack in the boarded window and feels a peculiar satisfaction to see the musketeer standing with his mouth open. She has found the only place in Paris he cannot possibly get to her.
Grace leans back on the hard bench. She is being driven to the Bastille.
CHAPTER 45
AS I MOVE NEARER TO MADAME ROLAND’S LITTLE GROUP of gamblers, Jemmy vanishes away into the crowd. Her dice table is small and wooden, the kind you find in the local wine shows. The chairs too are humble and hard looking.
People in this part of the room are less concerned with debauching themselves. It’s an oasis of serious gaming in the wider frivolity.
Since the winner holds the table and chooses their opponent, men are standing in line, waiting to be called. None of them looks like they are relishing the opportunity to lose.
Teresa Roland is a plain woman who I can imagine having a youthful prettiness. Her brown hair is soft with a few strands of grey, twisted up in curls and painstakingly dressed with rubies. She is holding court, speaking in a confident, rasping voice, a torrent of clever words weaving around a small audience of ardent listeners. Her fashionable dress falls loosely around her shoulders. The matching red-velvet gloves wave in time to her conversation, their deep amber-musk perfume scenting the play.
I hover at the sidelines, watching the dice fly. It’s a game similar to the English Hazard, but more complicated. Players must keep a running mental tally of complex mathematical percentages with every throw and simultaneously try to distract the opposition from calculating correctly.
I watch for a few minutes as Madame Roland roundly defeats every player. She’s impressive, hurling the dice with graceful speed whilst her opponents sweat and twitch and bow out one by one; she throws personal observations like daggers. No one can keep up.
I insinuate myself into the line of men, making certain my Republican cockade is clearly visible.
Teresa’s brown eyes have a kind of puppy-dog droopiness about them, I notice, which is at odds with her intellectual way of speaking. She tilts her head, taking me in.
The downturned eyes observe the cockade then lift to my face.
‘I presume you haven’t met my husband,’ she says, ‘if you dare wear that in his house.’
‘I have not had the misfortunate,’ I reply, ‘of meeting him.’
I tilt my head and give her an insouciant half-curtsey.
‘I’ll play her,’ she says, pointing a finger.
The men are giving me their full attention now, grumbling.
‘Come now, Teresa,’ complains one, ‘we must see something of a game. We all know you’re the only woman for Hazard.’
Teresa doesn’t deign to reply, watching me with interest as I sit, my gauzy dress rustling. She takes in my indeterminate origins but doesn’t ask where I’m from.
‘That’s a dangerous symbol you wear to this party,’ she observes, looking to the cockade once more. ‘Republican colours.’
I pick up the dice cup. ‘Perhaps I like a little danger.’
She looks amused by this, as though I’ve said something rather childish.
‘I can see you’re new to us,’ she says. ‘I must warn you, I never lose.’
‘Neither do I.’
Teresa laughs. ‘Unless you are hiding a genius for sums beneath that lovely face, I fear you have been playing duller gamers than you realize.’
I smile at this, but don’t reply. Ever since I can remember I’ve had an affinity with numbers. In the code-breaking of my youth, I deciphered algebra like others read letters.
‘Of course, you know I am Madame Roland.’ She says this in the expectation I’ll know of her famed salon. ‘But who might you be?’
‘Attica Morgan.’
‘Oh.’ She looks hard at my face. ‘I believe I know Lord Morgan. He was in Paris perhaps fifteen years ago. Is he a relative of yours?’
I wonder in what circumstances she encountered him. By
my understanding, my father’s limping journey from southern Spain back to England was in the worst depths of his laudanum depravity. It was shortly after he’d been told my mother was dead.
‘Lord Morgan is my father.’
‘Is that so?’ She’s looking at me more deeply now, in the way people do when they’ve met my father. ‘A brilliant and unhappy man, your father,’ continues Teresa with a slight frown. She extends her hand in the English style of introduction. ‘I didn’t know he had a daughter.’
‘No,’ I say, ‘I’m not generally acknowledged.’
It takes a moment for realization to dawn. Lord Morgan’s scandalous liaison with an African princess was the talk of society and the arrival of his half-breed offspring to England news enough to reach French nobles.
‘The slave daughter,’ she says. ‘I have heard of you, of course. There are tall tales of your daring escape from Virginia in every noble house in Europe. You look nothing like I expected. Do you take more after your father, do you think?’
‘In some ways.’
She’s staring into my face.
‘I think I see the resemblance,’ she decides. ‘You are darker, but those green-grey eyes are his. Or maybe the expression of them.’
This takes me aback. When I first met my father I thought his eyes were the saddest I’d ever seen.
‘Perhaps we shall have some sport after all.’ Teresa sweeps a magnanimous hand. ‘Please do favour us with the first roll of the dice.’
‘What shall we play for?’ I ask.
‘Oh, I never play for money,’ says Teresa, ‘it’s a tawdry business.’
‘If not for money, then you must play for love,’ I say.
She hesitates, looking into my face, wondering, I suppose, how much I know about her.
‘I don’t play for that either,’ she says, swallowing slightly. ‘I’ve no idea how such a thing might be won,’ she adds with a forced laugh.
‘Perhaps you’ll find out when I win,’ I reply, smiling at her challengingly.
‘Gambling is a depravity of the old order,’ she replies primly. ‘You should hear Monsieur Robespierre speak on the subject, he is quite compelling.’ She smiles to her gentleman watchers, but I notice she is breathing faster.
‘If you never lose,’ I say lightly, ‘what does it matter?’
The assembled men enjoy this hugely, laughing and teasing Teresa for her cowardice.
‘Have you finally met your match, Teresa,’ grins one. ‘A challenge from the fairer sex too strong for your marrow?’
Teresa’s expression is stony. ‘Then here are my terms,’ she says thoughtfully, ‘Monsieur Robespierre is interested in an Englishman. Someone he believes has recently arrived in Paris.’ She holds my gaze. ‘His name is Le Mouron: the Pimpernel, in English.’
My heart beats faster. How can she know this?
‘Paris has emptied of les Anglais,’ she adds, ‘yet here you are. A new arrival. Rather a coincidence, don’t you think?’
‘I can only imagine you have a great deal of spare time to dwell on such things.’
Madame Roland smiles. ‘Us women have always been adept at listening, don’t you agree? And you seem to me a good listener.’
Her eyes fix on mine. ‘Lose and you must tell me what you know about Le Mouron.’
I look back into her eyes and give the smallest nod of acceptance.
She raises a hand and a servant appears.
‘You’ll take something to drink?’ she asks me.
‘Brandy. With a little water.’
‘Very good. A brandy for Mademoiselle Morgan.’
‘Nothing for you?’
‘Oh, I never drink when I’m gaming. Perhaps a little Champagne to wake me up if it’s after midnight.’
She picks up the dice, playing to her audience.
‘I’ve a nose for scandal, gentleman,’ says Teresa, eyeing the assembled men. ‘This lovely little creature didn’t come all the way to Paris for a new dress.’ I notice people appear a little afraid of Madame Roland. Her eyebrows lift. ‘I look forward to earning Monsieur Robespierre something more valuable than love.’
‘We shall see,’ I reply. ‘But first you will need to roll better than an eight.’
CHAPTER 46
IN ROBESPIERRE’S QUIET OFFICE IN LES COURS DES MIRACLES, the door bangs open.
Without looking up, Robespierre knows it is his old friend Georges Danton. The man enters every room as though he is arriving in a brothel by way of a tavern.
A hot-blooded revolutionary, Danton has become famous all over Paris. Every freedom fighter recognizes the booming voice and solid barrel chest, his giant head like a malformed potato and his scarred and pockmarked face.
Robespierre stands.
‘Maximilien.’ Danton embraces his old friend, kissing him on both cheeks. His usually jubilant manner is subdued. Danton is not noticeably drunk, therefore Robespierre deduces he must be hungover.
It has been thus since they attended law school together, Robespierre spinning his high ideals, the inebriated Danton considerately thumping anyone who mocked skinny little Max. Robespierre loves him dearly, yet still can’t quite bring himself to trust him.
‘How was Versailles?’ enquires Robespierre, his face puckered in distaste.
‘Ah,’ Danton opens his wide hands, ‘larger than life, more golden than gold.’ He smiles. ‘The Queen has had herself a little peasant village built in the grounds so she can pretend to be common.’
Robespierre picks up a pen, shaking his head, and jots a note for his next speech. The preposterous wealth never fails to stagger him. He occasionally makes the twelve-mile journey in his mind, past hollow-cheeked farmers on parched fields to the golden-gated land of clipped lawns and splashing fountains.
‘And it still stinks,’ adds Danton, wrinkling his nose. ‘The King has nobles wait, hours and hours, sometimes days, for an audience. People shit behind curtains, in stairwells. Everywhere!’
Robespierre has heard this before, but enjoys it all the same.
‘And here we are,’ concludes Robespierre, ‘the common people who pay for all their splendour, with the audacity to desire our own vote.’ He makes a small, humourless smile.
‘Well,’ Danton seats himself, throwing up the tails of his black lawyer coat, ‘I have bad news on that front, I am afraid.’
‘Oh?’ Robespierre’s face is perfectly neutral.
‘I have it from our friend at Versailles that the Paris weapons cache is better hidden than we thought.’ Danton watches Robespierre’s reaction. When there is none, he presses. ‘If we don’t know where the gunpowder and guns are, there is no way of raiding them. I’m afraid His Majesty has outwitted us, Max.’
The quill between Robespierre’s fingers bends in two with an audible snap.
‘You have a secondary plan,’ decides Danton, looking at the broken pen. ‘You always do.’
Robespierre nods. He glances absently at his hand.
‘I have been cultivating certain friendships,’ he concedes. ‘But I have been preoccupied of late.’
‘Still hunting those mythic diamonds?’ Danton smiles indulgently. ‘Imagine if the necklace existed. There’d be some better horses on your carriage, eh?’ He winks.
Robespierre’s mouth presses to a thin line. ‘You think I want diamonds, to buy horses?’
‘Stop being so proper.’ Danton waves a hand. ‘Of course the necklace would arm the men, feed hungry mouths, help move things along, as we all want.’ He tilts his big head. ‘But if a few small gems should fall off, who would notice?’
‘Your avarice will be your undoing,’ Robespierre says disapprovingly.
‘Whores will have their trinkets, men will have their wine,’ replies Danton, un-offended. ‘Admit it, Max. It’s not even the diamonds you want. You’re obsessed with besting the English. It’s all about this mysterious spy-fellow, isn’t it? The one whose codes you can’t crack.’
‘The Pimpernel.’
Danton’s eyebrows rise.
‘The little flower?’ He shakes his head, appalled. ‘Leave it alone, Max. You do battle with a man who names himself after a hedgerow plant; you’ll come off the worst.’
He assesses Robespierre’s face for a moment, hoping he might get even this one joke. But his friend’s pale face is thoughtful.
‘It’s a sad thing, Gaspard’s end,’ sighs Danton, changing the subject. ‘I know he was a great supporter of yours. It seems a compromise with the nobles is necessary, Max. They show their ruthlessness.’
Robespierre’s eyes flash. ‘Nobles would have us model France on England,’ he says. ‘A King with some unspecified role. Merging old and new laws like a patchwork quilt.’ His nose wrinkles. ‘Messy. Untidy.’ His eyelid twitches. ‘We shall create a new France. A true democracy, with the best of the ancients and enlightened thinking.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Danton’s eyes have glazed slightly. ‘No need to practise your speeches on me, Max.’ He slaps his broad thighs. ‘Well! Look to the future. There’s no denying Gaspard’s demise has galvanized the troops, eh? A few more men willing to go to death and glory now they know the aristos will stoop to murder.’
‘Fear is not always bad,’ agrees Robespierre.
Danton narrows his rather piggy eyes, considering Robespierre. ‘If you want your perfect France, free from corruption,’ he says, choosing his words, ‘you must be certain to go about things the right way in the beginning. Start with terror, we will end with terror.’
‘You think I favour bloodshed?’ Robespierre speaks deliberately. ‘Violent means?’
‘Of course not,’ says Danton, ‘we all know you don’t have the balls for that kind of thing.’
He glances at Robespierre. If he is offended by the observation of his cowardice he gives no sign of it.
‘Just be careful,’ says Danton. ‘That is all.’
Robespierre picks up a fresh quill. ‘I always am.’
CHAPTER 47
