Ribbons of Scarlet

by Kate Quinn

  “Pray with me,” I said. They looked at one another as though I’d asked them to eat spiders. It was a great risk to kneel before God within the sight of our oppressors.

  But one by one, they took that risk, sinking to their knees until we made a little circle. We held hands as our words of worship stroked the rays of sun.

  FOR TWO DAYS, I was allowed outside. On the second day I returned to find paper, pen, and ink in my cell.

  My first letter was a request to the Committee of Public Safety to have my portrait commissioned. I wanted the people of France to know and remember what a woman of faith had done for her country. I wanted those who were grateful for my sacrifice to see me for the good citizen I knew myself to be. And for those who were curious or thought me a criminal, I wished to make sure they would never forget that I’d died for them too.

  Then I wrote a much more difficult letter.

  Forgive me, my dear papa, for having disposed of my existence without your permission . . .

  I was not sorry for having acted upon my design, nor did I feel that I needed permission from a man who’d abandoned me at every turn to do with my life what I wanted. But I did so wish for my father’s forgiveness, as every dying person wishes to be absolved of any perceived sin.

  “Papa, can you see me now?” I whispered to a memory of his thin frame.

  I have avenged many innocent victims and prevented many new disasters. Someday, when the people are disabused of their errors, they will rejoice that I delivered them from a tyrant.

  Would he understand? Or would he abandon me to eternity as he’d done in life?

  * * *

  Paris, July 16, 1793

  “Time to go,” a guard from the Convention said.

  I stood up from where I’d been kneeling in prayer and stared up through the tiny window.

  “The Tribunal is ready for your trial. You will be moved to the Conciergerie afterward.”

  I looked around. This cell had never been comfortable and I would not miss it. Only the pen, paper, and ink were to be regretted. But the Conciergerie could be expected to be worse. It was infamous. As I followed the men from my cell, I thought of my lecherous traveling companion whom I’d told when I arrived in Paris that my address would be that notorious prison, and now it would be so.

  My journey to the Revolutionary Tribunal was a blur. I feared facing Antoine Fouquier-Tinville, for he was another monster. At home among the legion of devils dancing as men in Paris at the moment. I wasn’t afraid of the truth, but of how I knew he would try to twist it.

  They ushered me into a room filled with people, their faces hazy because my eyes refused to focus. Despite how shaken I felt on the inside, I would not let these men know. In the crowd I recognized the proprietor of my hotel, Marat’s mistress, the sans-culotte woman named Pauline, and the fruit seller, Louise, who’d accosted me in the Palais-Royal. Sitting higher was a man I recognized from pamphlets as Robespierre himself, surrounded by men and women in red caps.

  I listened to men speak of my crimes and tried to remain calm, as I stood for hours at the bar, my hands bound. Fouquier-Tinville and the president of the Tribunal laced the truth with lies to fit their version of what had happened and my motivations. They made me out to be a villainess whore. The lover of every Girondin who’d fled Paris to Caen and put up to the crime of killing by these men. A crazed madwoman who burst through the doors of Marat’s residence flailing my knife in an attempt to kill anyone in sight. That if I wasn’t shackled at the bar, I might, even now, attempt to maim those in the courtroom.

  They called witnesses I had never met or seen, who claimed to know me so very well. Those false witnesses declared they’d heard me lament of wanting to kill every Jacobin in France. All the men of the Convention. How dangerous they must’ve deemed the truth if they felt the need to so embellish it with all these lies. I stood stoically through it, utterly alone in a room full of my enemies. I was allowed no comment, no response.

  At last, they moved to my interrogation. This I welcomed. For surely now I would have the chance, again, to speak my own truth, to right the lies that had been spoken all morning.

  He placed a paper flat in front of me. My letter to the people. “Did you pen this?”

  I nodded, for there was no denying it, the letter had been found on me.

  “Behold, the writings of a madwoman, in which she admits to being a counterrevolutionist and her desire to see France fall.” Fouquier-Tinville held aloft my address, not reading even one line of it to the people.

  Anger made my heart pound and I leaned forward. “No, citizen, I desire only to see France rise.”

  But he ignored me. “What was the purpose of your journey to Paris?”

  “I came to kill Marat. Despite what others say, I had no other purpose.” I kept my voice steady, strong, and clear but calm, and I stood straight. I’d faced down a monster in his lair; I could face these men too.

  “What was your motive?”

  I jutted my chin forward. “To punish him for his many crimes.”

  My interrogator rolled his eyes, pursed his lips, and then snorted derisively—showing the crowd that he thought me a bad liar and a silly woman. Many in the courtroom chuckled.

  I could not react, for if I did, if I lost my composure, I might be seen as the silly woman he wanted me to be. So I merely sniffed down at him when he turned back to face me.

  “And what crimes can you attribute to Marat, who was such a friend of the people?”

  Friend of the people. It was a crime to call such a monster a friend. I stared out toward Pauline, a woman who claimed to be close with Marat. Why? What could she gain by aligning herself to such men, unless her own lust for blood was just as potent.

  “Treason, monsieur. The betrayal of France.”

  Angry, disbelieving mumbles swelled from those in attendance. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming. I would be worthy in this moment. Men like Marat said every base thing that came to their minds. But people could control themselves. I certainly could.

  “You accuse him of treason, upon what foundation?”

  “He instigated the massacres of last September. He wanted to be chosen dictator amongst the people.” My voice grew louder, stronger, as I continued. “He attempted to infringe upon the sovereignty of the citizens of France by causing the arrest and imprisonment of the Girondin deputies of the Convention in May.”

  “The Girondins are the traitors. And even if they were not, what proof have you that Marat was the orchestrator of their arrest?”

  I bristled. “The opinions of those in Paris are not the same as the opinions of those elsewhere across France. Arresting citizens, men who speak for the people, is a vile offense against the rights of the citizens of France. Marat called for their arrest, and he said to me himself he would see the Girondins sent to the guillotine. Marat hid his designs behind a mask of patriotism, but do not be mistaken, he wished to rule as a tyrant over you all.”

  “Silence!” he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. “I will not allow you to poison our ears with your lies.”

  The room fell silent, and the air became heavy and expectant. Fouquier-Tinville frowned at me for a long moment, then he slapped the surface of the wooden bar in front of me. “Your action, murder, is so atrocious it could never have been conceived or committed by a woman of your age unless you were incited by someone. Tell us who sent you.”

  Why did they refuse to believe that a woman could be capable of heroism? Of soldiering on and taking out an enemy? Again, my eyes found Pauline. She glowered at me, but I could see something inside her breaking when I spoke next. “Do all women act only on the commands of a man? Are women mere puppets? Can we not form our own opinions and act upon them? I tell you again, I did not confide my plans to anyone, nor conceive of them with another person. In killing Marat I did not kill a human, but a wild beast who was devouring the people of my beloved country.”

  A light blinked in the prosecutor’s eye
s. “You assume he was a wild beast?”

  “In the ways in which men possessed by evil are, oui.”

  “I do not believe you did this on your own, Citizeness Corday. No one does. Now, tell us, who instructed you? Who are you so unwilling to name?”

  The prosecutor began to guess at names. And I straightened, refusing to expose friends who had nothing to do with me killing Marat, even as I became unsettled by the names I heard. A neighbor and friend of my dearly departed mother. How far into my past had they gone? Was my sister, my cousin in danger?

  “You, and those who agree with you, show poor knowledge of the human heart,” I managed, even as nerves made my voice waver. It was important for me to insulate my kin as much as I could by convincing these men that I acted alone. “It is easier to carry out such a design upon the strength of one’s own hatred than upon that of others.”

  The prosecutor blustered, his cheeks growing red, clearly frustrated that I was not breaking under his interrogation. “Did the Girondins in Caen not ask you to give them an account of your journey? Did they not know your motive?”

  I swallowed around my outrage. I’d made friends with the Girondins. “No.”

  “Then what is this? Taken from your own cell?”

  He placed my letter to Barbaroux, a Girondin I’d met in Caen on the table. How had they found it? After writing it, I’d slipped it inside my mattress, in a small slit I’d found, certain they would find it if I’d left it out in the open.

  “That is a letter I wrote home to a friend.” I licked my lips, feeling more nervous than before.

  “A Girondin.”

  “No,” I lied.

  “Citizen Barbaroux is a known Girondin. Is he not the person to whom you addressed this letter?”

  I swallowed, seeing his name plainly written in ink. “He is a friend in Caen. I wrote to him of my journey.” Good God . . . Barbaroux and the other Girondins had wanted to know the state Paris was in from someone they could trust. And now they may die, because of me.

  “You wrote of more of your journey, Citizeness Corday. You wrote of your crime. If he was not involved, not the instigator of your crimes, you would not have written him such correspondence. You would not have so openly given him every detail.”

  There was nothing I could say in my defense, because I could see why he would think so, even if it wasn’t true. “You will twist whatever I say to fit your version of the truth, just as you have twisted the words I’ve written.”

  The man bristled. “Did your Girondin friends not warn you that if you killed Marat you would immediately be executed?”

  “No one warned me, as no one knew what I was going to do. But I was convinced that it would be so, yes. It was for that reason I explained my motive in my address to the French, which was found upon my person. I assumed I would have no chance to speak for myself and wanted the truth to be known after my death.”

  His lip curled in derision. “We shall resume again tomorrow.”

  The sun had already set by the time we arrived at the Conciergerie. Outside, a mob had gathered to scream at me. As I was escorted to a new gloomy chamber I received the honor I believed I was due: condemned women and men cheered me. My name was on my fellow prisoners’ lips and the sound of them crying out to me was the sweetest music, for I felt loved, perhaps for the first time. Inside this dark place, I had found light.

  * * *

  Pauline

  Paris, July 16, 1793

  The sun shone off the shirt stained with Marat’s sacred blood, which I held aloft. Beside me, Claire and other women from our Société des Républicaines-Révolutionnaires carried the copper tub Marat had been murdered in. Louise had declined to attend, feigning illness—another of her lies to keep away from the women she’d once fought beside. Behind us, Marat’s lover followed, sobbing for the great man.

  A martyr to our cause.

  And though I myself wished to sob, both for the loss of my friend and for the nation’s loss, this was not the time for tears. The fate of a nation depended on no one man—or woman. The promise of liberty was that when one hero fell, another worthy one might pick up the mantle.

  And so, I have picked it up. And I will try to carry it forward for all France.

  I was drawn back to that moment at the Tribunal when the Corday bitch’s eyes met mine, and she asked if women were puppets. She all but accused me of being one. I hated her for that, for what she saw in me—that I was powerless without men. And she was not wrong. I realized that as our eyes met and bitterness filled me along with that awful truth.

  Overhead, the skies darkened as clouds rolled in, and a rumble of thunder threatened us. How many times had rain poured down on us when we marched? The day of the Women’s March, in 1789, I’d tramped through the muddy streets toward Versailles with Louise by my side, but hour after hour of rain did not stop us, did not send us running home. I missed her desperately, but if she no longer wanted to fight for our cause, how could I still call her a friend? No amount of rain was going to stop women now. The more I thought of it, maybe rain was a sign of rebirth, of feeding the earth. Rain meant we should carry on.

  I was surrounded by people who’d loved Marat and who believed in the cause. My sisters-at-arms, Théo and his fellow Enragés, and Hébert, who the people were already embracing as Marat’s natural and perhaps even more radical successor. I even caught sight of Danton, though he tried to remain inconspicuous. He’d been a good friend to Marat. They’d sat beside each other in the Convention. Commiserated together. Plotted. And now his friend was gone, and he, too, was trying to fade into the background, perhaps before he suffered a similar fate. Coward.

  Waving Marat’s bloodied shirt, I cried, “We Revolutionary Republican Women will populate this country, our nation, the land of liberty, with as many men like Marat as there are children born! We will raise those children in adoration of the Revolution and swear to put in their hands no gospel other than L’Ami du Peuple. And we will teach them to curse the Angel of Assassination, that murderous harlot from Caen!”

  Angel of Assassination was the name they’d given the Corday bitch in the papers. She’d made her mark. She had a moniker that would stick. And worse, even I had to admit she’d been brave. Close to my age, she stood stoic in the courtroom, meeting everyone’s gaze with a pride that was as shameless and terrifying as it was . . . inspiring.

  If ever someone could have rivaled me in dedication to a cause, it was she.

  I hated her all the more for it, because she’d made a name for herself. Even if it was as an infamous traitor. And who was I? Who would remember me?

  On the street, to my friends, to strangers, I called the Corday bitch every vulgar word I’d ever heard. Marat had been one of our cause’s staunchest supporters. His death was a major blow to the Jacobin party. Already I’d heard there were rumblings in the National Convention, from the Jacobins and the Mountain, that women should not have the right to assemble, let alone any other rights we wanted. And without Marat, Robespierre now had more power than before. And he hated me. Hated my society. And could undo all our efforts if he put his influence to it. Turning the people against us—against women.

  What a joke these men were. Wanting to frame a republican nation without half the population’s input. In fairness, I had to admit more than a little agreement with Corday on one point—women could and did form and act upon their own opinions. And even the most progressive men seemed to have difficulty accepting that. At least we had the backing of Théo and the rest of Les Enragés.

  I hoped that was enough. No, I had to do more than hope. I had to make it so.

  * * *

  Charlotte

  Paris, July 17, 1793

  Dressed in the same white gown I’d worn to execute Marat, I was escorted back to the Tribunal shortly after eight o’clock in the morning. More people were present than on the first day of my trial. I searched the faces, looking for anyone familiar, but found solely those who hated me.

  �
�Monster! Murderess!”

  I kept my head high and, when I reached the bar, the crowd quieted, and I steeled myself for another day of false accusations.

  The president of the Tribunal, Jacques Montané, paced before me. “Who have you chosen as counsel for your defense?”

  They knew who. I’d already told them, but my counsel had not come, and I was not surprised. Gustave was a Girondin, one whom I’d known since my days at the abbey in Caen. There was no question that he would abandon me to save himself. A coward, as I might have been if I’d had anything to lose.

  “Gustave Doulcet, deputy to the Convention from Caen.”

  “A Girondin.” He stared at me intently, then turned to face those in attendance. “An enemy of the people.”

  My hands curled into fists until my nails bit into the delicate skin of my palms. “He is no more an enemy of the people than I. You, citizen, are an enemy of our great country.”

  The president’s face flamed, and I immediately regretted letting anger get the better of me. He leaned close, both of his fattened hands pressed to the wooden bar in front of me. “You will meet death soon, citizeness, and we will rejoice in killing you.”

  I rose, my spine straight, face serene. “So it will be.”

  I’d spoken my truth. The rest would unfold as I knew it must. Now all that remained was to have my moment before the people in the square where I would die.

  From the way Montané paced in front of me, I was certain he would like nothing more than to toss me out to the wolves now. “Chauveau de la Garde and his assistant will make an attempt at a defense.”

  I nodded, glancing at them uneasily. I wanted to tell my defender it was not necessary, that he should go home.

  Witnesses were then called by the prosecutor, the first of whom was Marat’s mistress. I listened to her explain the details of that night once more, anger rising in my chest as the woman spoke falsely of my murderous face, my threats and shouts, how I’d come into their home resembling a raving lunatic. For the first time in the trial, I was affected, and not because of the insults she flung. But because she had loved Marat. She was in pain. And it was through her pain that she lied. Perhaps it was through the pain inflicted on all France that we lied, and that is how we got to this place. This betrayal of our revolution. I needed the pain and the lying to end. For love of country.