Ribbons of Scarlet

by Kate Quinn

  I gritted my teeth at his subtle hint to women’s work. “Not as many are drinking chocolat as we wish. If the men of this revolution wish to sit all day sipping and shouting, I want our share of their coin. How else to come out of this revolution with clothes on my siblings’ backs and food enough in their bellies?”

  “How are your brothers and sisters?”

  I glanced up at him with narrowed eyes. There was only one reason for such small talk. Well, perhaps not among friends, but Théo was not my friend. He was a reveler, a man willing to be unfaithful to my friend, and a potential seducer. Claire leaped down from the table.

  “They are well.” I flicked my gaze back at him for a moment, thoughtful. Théo was handsome, there could be no doubt. Did Claire find him desirable because he believed women should have the right to fight, to be politically active? Because if I were to make a partner of the opposite sex, that belief would be essential.

  A slight smile twitched at the side of his mouth, and he winked, his masculine charms unexpectedly taking my breath. Did he know what I was thinking? I wanted to pound my head into the wall for it. Then Claire was beside us, grabbing his hand and doing a twirl, drawing him into a dance without music. A spike of jealousy lanced through me, and I had to turn away in disgust with them and with myself.

  The door opened and another Enragés leader sauntered in. Claire tugged Théo away with a delighted shout about a speech the other man was preparing. Théo glanced back over his shoulder, a question in his eyes I couldn’t and wouldn’t decipher.

  “Pauline, come help with this.” My mother waved me over, and I carried a stack of crates out back. “Are you ready?” Pride shone in my mother’s eyes.

  “Oui, Maman. We will leave shortly.” I hefted two more crates.

  “Allow me, citizeness.” Théo took another pile from my mother’s grasp and indicated for me to lead the way out the back.

  Cautiously, I allowed him to follow me. “Right here is fine,” I said, setting down my stack. I turned my back to go inside when he stopped me. Why wasn’t he with Claire? Why had he followed me out here?

  “I wish to speak with you about something.”

  I glanced toward the back door of our café. I didn’t want to be alone with Théo. Didn’t want to feel that quickening in my chest that seemed to happen every time he was near me. But I didn’t want him to know he made me uncomfortable, either—to give him that power—so I narrowed my eyes. “I need to get back inside. We are to march.”

  “One moment, that is all.”

  The summer heat was stifling, and the fabric of my clothes quickly started to stick.

  “I have an appointment with Marat this afternoon,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect.

  And it worked, damn him. Because Marat and his newspaper, L’Ami du Peuple, were critical to the revolutionary cause—helping rouse the people, spread important speeches from the Convention, and unify our movement. “Go on.”

  “I am going to ask him to publish this.” Théo pulled a small bundle of papers from his pocket and handed it to me.

  I opened them, hoping to see something about Claire and me and our society of women, how we were forging our way ahead and advocating for women’s rights. If after presenting herself to the Convention, being received at the Jacobin Club, Jeanne Odo, a former slave of Saint-Domingue, was able to affect change for men of color, certainly change was imminent for women, too. Instead, Théo’s neatly scrawled writing proclaimed the Girondins must be found and held accountable for their many sins. That they must meet Madame Guillotine, and after them, in their footsteps, all the hoarders, and everyone with a drop of royal blood must die as well.

  Despite my disappointment, a shiver of excitement coursed through me. If there was one person in all Paris who felt as I did about the Girondins, I thought it must be Théo.

  “This is good,” I said, though it was nothing more than what was in the papers constantly. But for some reason, which I couldn’t explain, I sought to placate him.

  “I was hoping you would think so.”

  I handed him back the papers, avoiding eye contact. “Marat will be impressed.”

  Théo smiled. “I was hoping to impress you, citizeness.”

  “Why?” I eyed him defiantly.

  Without warning, Théo gripped my elbow. Panic knocked the breath from me. The forceful touch an instant reminder of what happened to me before. I tried to shove him away, and he lightened his touch but didn’t let go. Our eyes locked, and the panic ebbed. This wasn’t an attack, but a clumsy attempt at wooing.

  “You fascinate me,” he said.

  I didn’t know if I should be more disturbed by the fact that the closeness between us sent a hot shiver coursing through me, or the disgust I felt at such weakness.

  “What are you doing, citizen?” I asked, trying for formal when all I felt was a base need to grind my body against his. Instead, I halfheartedly shoved at his chest.

  His blue eyes were intent on mine as he skimmed a hand over my cheek and down my neck. How many other women had he touched like this? Taking what he wanted without permission. Why was I letting him? “What I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

  What he wanted.

  I narrowed my eyes, frowning and working hard to seem the tough termagant he knew me to be. “Molest a woman behind her place of work?”

  Théo smiled, his hand gripping my hip and squeezing. “Is my touch unwanted?”

  I wanted to shout oui, but my throat was closed tight, because while half of me wanted him to leave me alone, the other half wanted to feel the power of his longing for me as he crushed my body beneath him.

  “Get off me,” I hissed.

  “We both need this.”

  “I do not need any man.”

  Théo’s grin widened. “Ah, but there you are wrong, ma petite fille, because you do need me. You need me to tell the Mountain that you are worthy of their vote.” He leaned closer, so that his breath fanned on my face and I wanted to pummel him. I did need the support of the Mountain in moving women’s rights forward, and for Théo to dangle it before my nose like a carrot was manipulation at its worst. Was he suggesting I sleep with him to advance my cause? Was that not paradoxical? “You need me to stockpile your weapons. To march beside you.”

  “You flatter yourself.” I’d marched beside women without him and seen our cause through. “We brought the king from Versailles, toppled the Bastille, and raised hell at the Tuileries without you.”

  “But you want me. I don’t flatter myself in that. Your body tells me the truth.”

  I shoved against his chest again, this time harder, and Théo laughed as he backed away. The evidence of his arousal pressed to his pants, and heat flushed my cheeks for having looked.

  “If you want to impress me, citizen, then write about me, write about women, for Marat’s paper.”

  He pursed his lips, studying me. “Perhaps I will.”

  I straightened my bonnet. “Claire would not be happy to find us together like this.”

  “What does Claire have to do with anything? We have done nothing wrong.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Keep your mind on the cause, citizen. It is desires of the flesh that have sunk this country into its current state.”

  “Even warriors need to feel something.” He touched my cheek.

  Again, a wash of yearning clashed with disgust. Why could I not brush him aside? The answer was simple. Because he was the leader of a powerful group and had influence in the Assembly. But to continue to play these games was to betray my friend.

  “I do not,” I lied.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you do.” The truth was, I did want him.

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “No. We must go.” I turned my back on him, on what he offered, and walked inside.

  It was time to march.

  “Citizens!” I called, my blood thrumming, my hands still trembling from my encounter with Théo. “We m
arch for liberté! Égalité!”

  My mother’s admiring eyes looked on from behind the counter as I led everyone out to the street. Excitement and a sense of power thrummed in my veins. “Vive la révolution!” I cried as we marched, the crowd behind me crying out in answer. People joined our ranks until we were hundreds marching on the Champs de Mars.

  We arrived in the center of the Champs, and I climbed onto the back of a wagon with Théo and Claire, who called out to anyone who wanted to witness history being made.

  Then Théo lifted my hand into the air, exposing my long, jagged scar, either intentionally or not. “Behold, the president of the Women’s Revolution!”

  Shouts of approval rippled over the crowd, and I turned to smile at Claire in triumph over what we’d accomplished. The first women-run political group, and I its leader. Then I gazed out over the crowd of women, men, and children who cheered for our progress, my mother among them, eyes bright with unshed tears of happiness.

  I pulled my hand from Théo’s. This was a woman’s moment, not his. I took a step forward, partially blocking him from view of the crowd. “Women, mothers, wives, widows!” I locked eyes with my mother who was all those things and felt her joy radiating. “Sisters-in-arms!”

  The courtyard resounded in a cheer. I could see Louise, unsmiling, in the background with her fruit cart, and purchasing an apple was Sophie Condorcet. The woman watched me attentively, though blank-faced. Would she ever wield a pike, or would she choose an umbrella like her husband?

  Sliding my gaze away from her, I found my mother once more. “We have marched together. We have bled together. We have shared cries of triumph and wiped at each other’s tears of sorrow. Freedom has given us wings! We fly like eagles! No longer will we keep our mouths shut, no longer will we hide in corners like wounded animals. This is our fight. No longer will we allow our children to starve. No longer will we feel the pangs of hunger in our own bellies when hoarders take our bread. Never again will we be victims of the partisans of tyranny. We are the face of this new republic—one, indivisible and indestructible! Fly, my sisters, to the defense of our golden republic!”

  My ears rang with the deafening cries of my sisters, and my throat felt dry and scratchy for having shouted every meaningful word. This was another step on a ladder I built with my own hands.

  No matter what happened in the end, I was going to make a difference for women everywhere.

  * * *

  Charlotte

  I am no stranger to death. No stranger to taking life. I have gutted fish. Chopped the head off a writhing chicken. Suffered the blade of a knife cutting through the bone and sinew of a game animal. Shrunk at the sensation of warm blood spilling over my fingers. But that is not the same as thrusting a knife into a man’s heart. To feel his last breath wash over your skin.

  I am not a murderer. I am a patriot. Like Joan of Arc, I am a savior of France.

  I am stalwart. And it is too late for me now. France needed a hero, and I gave them one.

  Paris, July 11, 1793

  I had hoped upon finally reaching Paris from Caen that I might feel a moment of triumph, but instead, trepidation ran cold in my veins.

  The previous two days spent in and out of a stagecoach had made my bones throb. Worse still was watching France’s beautiful landscape be replaced by the stench of the city. Paris seemed encased in tall buildings of marble hardness, the perfect reflection of the men who ran it. Unfeeling stacks of stone.

  Through the windows of the stagecoach, the noise from the city was overwhelming, and I found myself longing for the quiet gardens of my cousin in Caen who so graciously took me in when I had nowhere else to go. At least I’d brought with me the words of the scholars and poets I’d explored in those gardens. I reminded myself of Plutarch’s words: “Courage consists not in hazarding without fear, but being resolutely minded in a just cause.”

  No one knew I was here. Not my cousin, nor my friends—friends I’d come to love in my twenty-five years of life. My purpose in coming here meant I would lose them all.

  There would be no welcoming face to greet me here in Paris. In fact, I fully expected that once my mission was complete, the rage it was destined to cause would swallow me whole.

  I worried the cuff of my sleeve under which my rosary lay hidden, and I fretted over whether or not my cousin had seen my note of farewell, and whether she’d forgive me for abandoning her when all she’d ever shown me was kindness.

  It’d been nearly two years since the National Convention closed down the abbey that had sheltered my sister and me when Papa cast us out. We were a burden to him in his grief, a grief now over a decade old at the loss of my mother. A constant burden to the little coin he’d ever had. Even before Maman’s death, we’d always been poor and at the mercy of others’ charity.

  Still, all I’d ever wanted was to make my papa proud. Would he notice me now that I’d taken his republican teachings with me to Paris? Would he praise me at the hour of my death?

  I touched the beads beneath my sleeve, rolling their solidness between my fingers. Even now, I could still feel the itch of homespun on my skin, though the gown I wore was made of a finer cotton. The bodies in the stagecoach pressed close, making my lungs hurt from breathing in the stale air.

  I missed the abbey, the companions I’d spent time with there. It was an institution established by William the Conqueror’s wife, Matilda, to educate aristocratic ladies, and the few poor nobles like myself taken in for charity. I’d stayed on when my education was complete in hopes of taking vows. Hopes that were dashed by the radicals in Paris.

  I had a new calling now. France needed me and that bolstered me, especially in dark moments when I reflected on the pain I knew my family and friends would feel when they found out what I’d done. But it was my ancestor Corneille who said, “Treachery is noble when aimed at tyranny.” And I hoped they would understand.

  For I was going to kill a man.

  The man responsible for urging the closings of the abbeys that left my sister, myself, and countless others homeless. The same man who sent nearly a dozen Girondin men to hide in Caen to escape death. Those who had unjustly arrested Madame Roland, whom I knew personally to be gracious, intelligent, and stalwart. I’ll never forget seeing her on the banks of the river in Caen, staring out into the void like I sometimes did. Her support of my political interests bolstered me in seeking out meetings with the Girondins hiding over the past months in our town. How I wish that I could see her now, visit with her, and tell her that soon I would help set her free by taking the life of a monster.

  The madman who encouraged the blood lust that led to the September Massacres, when innocents were yanked from the prisons and hacked to death in the streets. The poor Princess Lamballe, viciously murdered . . . the horror of the images I’d seen in a pamphlet still tormented me when I closed my eyes at night. She might have been royal born, but she did not deserve a death like that. No one did.

  And all this fanaticism could be laid at the doorstep of one man: Jean-Paul Marat, Jacobin leader and owner of a heinous tabloid impersonating a credible paper. A man who cared little for France or human life.

  Marat needed to die, and his newspaper with him. There needed to be an end to his call for terror and his determination to see heads roll while he splashed in his victims’ blood.

  When they heard what I’d done, my family and friends would not understand why I was determined to become Marat’s executioner. But I hoped to show them that my actions were the same as any soldier. The same as any man protecting his country. I prayed that they would trust in me and in God that Marat’s death was the only option to save the country from utter destruction. For just as in a game of dominoes, when one radical leader fell, so too the rest would follow. Continuing, I could only hope, with the so-called l’Incorruptible and his henchman in the Convention, Danton. And I wouldn’t think it unjust for other rabid Jacobin newspapermen like Jacques Hébert to fall either.

  On the ride to Par
is, there had been a moment when I wished I could turn around. That I didn’t have to go into this place of nightmares. This place where riots were daily, and massacres normalized. Staring out the coach window there was a chance I might witness such an atrocity. That a head on a pike might wave past my window. Instead of Princess Lamballe’s, would it be Princess Élisabeth’s or the queen’s? I must make it clear that I was not a royalist, lest my wish for them to retain their lives bring about confusion.

  I corresponded with the princess for some years while I was still at the convent, and she was always kind, trying to uplift my spirits, as well as encouraging me in my pursuit of taking vows. I knew she was not the depraved and villainous soul Marat and his hounds would have us think.

  I crossed myself, remembering the insurrection in Caen when I’d barely avoided watching a man be torn to pieces. Paris, as ugly and violent as it was, was not the only city to suffer horror. No, the contagion of terror spread. Yet, those living outside the city had almost no representation and no voice, because the cry of the Paris Commune’s extremism was so loud.

  And that was why I’d come. To put an end to all of it. The key was Marat, champion of terrorists, voice of the bloodthirsty, and enemy to God.

  Upon every side, factions were breaking. The Mountain alone triumphed by the strength of its wickedness and despotism. Despicable plots that have been hatched by monsters feed on the people of France’s blood, dragging us all into destruction. And Marat, supposedly a man of the people, a representative in the National Convention, watched gleefully as the people tore one another apart at his command. The vilest of scoundrels, Marat, whose name alone conjured images of every kind of brutal crime, had the power to make Danton and Robespierre pale.

  A body pressed closer to me. “Marry me, citizeness.”

  I turned to the lecherous man who’d been pestering me during the whole of our journey. Why would he not take my deflections as a firm answer?

  I narrowed my eyes at him, having grown tired of his songs and watchful eyes. “This is quite a comedy of cross-purposes we are playing at, monsieur. It is a pity that so much of your talent should remain without an audience. Shall I invite the rest of our companions to share in the jest?”