Kilgorman: A Story of Ireland in 1798

by Talbot Baines Reed

  CHAPTER NINETEEN.

  THE COURTYARD OF THE CONCIERGERIE.

  "Hush!" said Captain Lestrange, before I could utter a word. "Theladies are not safe here; they are marked down by the spies. They mustescape at once."

  "My lady is still in a faint," said I.

  "Faint or no, she must come. Tell them I am here."

  He spoke as a soldier with authority; and a pang of jealousy smote me asI looked at his handsome presence in spite of its disguise.

  I went to my lady's room and announced him. She lay half stupified,with her eyes open, her bosom heaving, and a choking sob in her throat.Miss Kit kneeled at the bedside and held her hand.

  Both were too numb and dazed to express much amazement at the news Ibrought; and when Captain Lestrange followed me in, no breath was wastedon empty greetings.

  "I lodge in an attic six houses away. If you could only get on to theroof," said he, "you would reach it easily."

  "We are not far from the roof already," said I, pointing to a corner ofthe ceiling through which, even as we spoke, flakes of snow weredrifting into the room.

  Captain Lestrange took a log of fuel and poked the hole, till it waslarge enough to let a person through.

  He bade me tear the sheet, make a band of it, and fasten it round mymistress, while he clambered through my window on to the roof. It was aperilous climb, but the captain was lithe and active as a cat. In aminute we saw him looking in through the hole in the ceiling.

  "Now hand me the end of the band," said he, "and come here and help meto haul.--Nerve yourself, cousin, and all will be well."

  Between us, we had no difficulty in drawing the poor lady through theopening on to the roof; and when we let down the band for Miss Kit, herlight, little form followed readily enough.

  "Down," said the captain, crouching in the gutter of the parapet andbeginning to crawl along it.

  We followed painfully and slowly, finding the journey very long, andexpecting any moment to hear the pursuer behind.

  Presently we came to a halt, and saw our conductor remove some slatesand discover an opening into the house below.

  Once more the linen band came into requisition. The ladies were loweredinto the room. The captain and I paused to set the slates, so that noone should be able to detect the place of our entrance. Then he swunghimself over the parapet on to the ledge of the little window below,bidding me follow. Next moment we stood, all four of us, in a tinychamber, no bigger than a cupboard, with nothing in it but a little bed,a chair, and a shelf, on which stood a loaf and a bottle of wine.

  "Welcome to my humble quarters, cousins," said he. "They are neitherlarge nor water-tight, but I natter myself they are airy and command anextensive view. We will be safe here till night, but then we must seeksomething more spacious and secluded."

  And with all the grace in the world, he poured out a glass of wine formy lady and begged her to drink it.

  Presently Miss Kit said, with the first smile I had seen on her facethat day,--

  "I am too bewildered to ask questions, otherwise I should like to knowhow all this has come to pass."

  "Not now," said he. "I am as bewildered and perplexed as you are.--Gallagher, go to your daily work, but return early; and bring withyou,"--here he handed me a gold piece--"provisions for a journey."

  It was hard to be dismissed thus at a moment of peril. But my littlelady's words and the smile that accompanied them made up for it.

  "Yes. Come back early, Barry. We shall feel short of a protector whileyou are away."

  And she held out her hand, which I kissed with a glare at the captain,who only laughed, and said,--

  "Don't forget the provisions."

  Little I thought as I groped my way down the tumble-down staircase howmany weary months were to elapse before I was to hold that gentle littlehand in mine again.

  I had reached the stables, and was rubbing down a spent horse, when Ibecame aware that a woman was standing at the gate. I recognised her atonce as the woman who had pointed us out that morning when we enteredour house, and my heart filled with forebodings as I saw her.

  It was a relief when my employer presently ordered me to take a horseround to the house of a citizen in the suburbs. The woman had gone whenI started, and after half-an-hour's trot I almost dismissed her from mymind. My orders were, after delivering the horse at its destination, toreturn on foot, calling on my way at the hay merchant's with an order.This I duly performed; and was hastening back by way of the Rue SaintHonore, when two muskets were suddenly crossed in front of me, and aharsh voice said,--

  "Regnier, you are arrested by order of the Committee of Public Safety."

  "On what charge?" faltered I.

  "On the accusation of the Citoyenne Souchard, who denounces you as thefriend of royalism and of the miscreant Bailly."

  "I am no friend of either," I exclaimed. "I do not--"

  "Silence! march!" said the soldier.

  Resistance was hopeless, escape impossible. In a daze I marched on,pointed at and hooted at by the passers-by, amid cries of,--

  "_A bas les mouchards! Mort aux aristocrates_!" [Saint Patrick! that Ishould be taken for an aristocrat.] "_Vive la guillotine_!"

  I cared not what became of me now, but when presently my conductorsactually turned towards the Island of the City, and I caught sight ofthe high roofs of the houses on the Quai Necker, a wild hope of seeingmy little mistress once more took hold of me. Alas! it was but for amoment. The cold muzzle of the soldier's gun recalled me to myself.

  I longed to know if the accuser, who seemed to know my name and all mymovements, had joined the names of the ladies in my denunciation. Ifso, woe betide them and all of us. In the midst of my trouble the onethought that cheered me, despite the pang of jealousy that came with it,was that they were not without protection; and that Captain Lestrange,who had shown himself so ready of resource in the morning, might succeedeven without my help in rescuing those innocent ones from the bloodyhands of "the terror."

  A chill went through me when it dawned upon me at last that I was beingconducted to the fatal Conciergerie--that half-way house between lifeand death towards which so many roads converged, but from which onlyone, that to the guillotine, led.

  An angry parley took place at the door between the jailer and mycaptors.

  "Why here?" demanded the former; "we are packed to the bursting point."

  "To-morrow you will have more room by fifty," said the other.

  "This is not to-morrow," growled the hard-worked official.

  "The _detenu_ is your parishioner," said the soldier.

  "It is scandalous the slowness with which the Committee works," said thejailer. "Fifty a day goes no way; we want one hundred and fifty."

  "You shall have it, Citizen Concierge. Patience!--Now, Regnier, enter,and adieu," said he, with a push from the butt-end of his gun.

  Beyond entering my name and assigning me my night's quarters, no noticewas taken of me by my jailers. I was allowed to wander on into thecrowded courtyard, where of the hundreds who prowled about like cagedanimals none troubled themselves so much as to look up at the newunfortunate. Men and women of all sorts were there: gentlemen who heldthemselves aloof and had their little _cercle_ in one corner, withservants to attend them; rogues and thieves who quarrelled and gambledwith one another, and made the air foul with their oaths; terrifiedwomen and children who huddled together for shelter from the impudentlooks and words of the ruffians, who amused themselves by insultingthem. Sick people were there with whom it was a race whether disease orthe guillotine would claim them first. And philosophers were there, wholooked with calm indifference on the scene, and jested and discussedamong themselves.

  Among this motley company I was lost, and, indeed, it would havetroubled me to be anything else. I found leaning-room against the wall,and had no better wish than that the promised fifty who to-morrow wereto feed the guillotine might count me in their number.

  As soon as the shor
t February day closed in, we were unceremoniouslyordered within doors. Some of the more distinguished and wealthyretired to their private apartments; the women (though I heard they werenot always so fortunate) were shut up in quarters of their own. Othersretired in batches to chambers, for the use of which they had clubbedtogether in bands of twenty or thirty. The rest of us, comprising allthe poorer prisoners, were huddled into great foul, straw-strewn roomsto sleep and pass the night as best we might.

  Rough countryman as I have been, the thought of those nights in theConciergerie turns my stomach even now. The low ceiling and smallwindows made the atmosphere, laden as it was with dirt of all sorts,choking and intolerable. The heat, even on a winter night, wasoppressive. The noise, the groaning, the wrangling, the fighting, thepilfering, were distracting. Only twice in the night silence, and thatbut for a few moments at a time, prevailed.

  Once was when the guard, accompanied by great dogs, made their nightlyround, kicking us who lay in their way this side and that, and testingevery bar and grating of our prison with hammers and staves. For thesake of the dogs, who were stern disciplinarians, we kept the peace tillthe bolt was once more turned upon us.

  The other time the hush was of a more terrible kind, as I discoveredthat first night. A jangle of keys without imposed a sudden lull on thenoise. The door opened, and in came the concierge and his turnkeys.Every eye turned, not on the man or his myrmidons, but on the paper thathe held in his hand. It was the list of prisoners who to-morrow were toappear before the Tribunal--that is to say, of the victims who the dayafter to-morrow were to ride in the tumbrels to the guillotine.

  A deadly silence prevailed as the reading proceeded, broken only by theagonised shriek of some unfortunate, and the gradual sighs of relief ofthose whose names were omitted.

  The ceremony over, the door (on the outside of which a turnkey hadchalked the doomed names) swung to, and all once more was noise andbabel. The victims drew together, embracing their friends and utteringtheir farewells. The others laughed louder than ever, like schoolboyswho have escaped the rod. Morning came, and with it the summons. Thosewho quitted us we knew we should never see again. They would spend thatnight in the dungeon of the _condamnes_; the next day the lumbering rollof the tumbrels would announce to us that they were on their way to thePlace de la Revolution.

  The first night, I confess, I was disappointed that the fatal list didnot contain my name; but as days, and then weeks, and then monthspassed, the love of life rose high within me, and I grew to tremble forthat which I had once hoped for. Day by day I scrutinised the newarrivals in the vague expectation of seeing among them those I lovedbest. But they never came.

  I made few, if any, acquaintances, for I resolved to keep my mouth shut.Spies, I knew, infested the prisons as they did the streets, and many achance word uttered in the confidence of the dungeon was reported andused as evidence against the victim. Now and again we were thrown intoexcitement by the arrival in our midst of some notable prisoner, beforewhose name, a few short weeks since, all Paris, nay, all France hadtrembled, but who now was marked down and doomed by his rivals in power.And sometimes rumours of convulsions without penetrated the walls ofour cells, and made us hope that, could we but endure a while, the endof "the terror" was not far distant.

  I remember one night when a new prisoner whispered to me that the greatRobespierre, at whose nod any head in Paris might drop into the dreadfulbasket, had been blown upon within the walls of the Convention itself.

  "Death is marked on his face," said he; "and when he falls there is hopefor us, for the people are sick of blood."

  Alas! this same poor whisperer heard his name called out that verynight, and fell grovelling at my side, as if I could help him.

  Still my name was held back. Either they had overlooked it in thecrowd, or had marked it through as dead already, or considered it lessimportant than others who had more pressing claims on the executioner'sknife.

  Hope rose within me. I became so used to being passed that I ceased toexpect anything else, and only counted the days till the blood-red cloudshould have drifted past and left me free.

  When, therefore, on the very night that news had come in thatRobespierre had indeed fallen, and was even then before his judges, Iheard the name "Regnier" read off the fatal list, I broke into a coldsweat of amazement and terror, and fancied myself in a dream.

  My name was the last on the list. With a dreadful fascination I watchedthe turnkey chalk it on the door and the governor fold up his paper andstick it in his belt. Then as they turned to the door despair seizedme. But before they could leave, a sudden clamour at the far end of theroom detained them. One of the condemned, driven mad by theannouncement of his doom, had sprung to the window and was tearing atthe bars with such superhuman force that they promised at any moment toyield.

  The jailer and his men made a dash to seize him, and in that moment Islipped out of the half-closed door, stopping only to wipe out my namewith my cap as I passed, and crept into the courtyard.

  No one could have seen my departure, for though I lay hid an hour underthe shadow of the wall, and even saw the jailer and his men cross thecourt, there was no hue and cry or alarm of an escape. Nor, I surmise,did any one even of my fellow-prisoners, distracted as they were bytheir own concerns and the excitement of the madman's attempt, miss me.

  My only hope now lay in patience and prudence. To scale the wall I knewwas impossible. To steal through the governor's office would meaninstant detection. But to wait where I was was my only chance.

  I had studied the ways of the place enough to know that on the stroke ofsix the outer gates swung open to admit the carts which were to carry tothe scaffold the victims of the day. I knew, too, since the horse-master I had served had often supplied carts on an emergency, that thesevehicles were usually sent in charge of common carters, one man oftenbeing in charge of two or three. These men, having deposited theircarts in the yard, were wont to go off to breakfast and return in anhour to convey their freight under an escort of Guards to the place ofexecution.

  Their daily arrival was now so common an occurrence that it attractedlittle attention inside or out. Indeed, the gate was often leftstanding open a minute or two while some parley was taking place; for noprisoners were allowed in the court till after the departure of theprocession, and no precautions therefore seemed necessary for closing itwith special celerity.

  This, then, was my hope. Could I but lie _perdu_ beside the gate tillthe time of opening, I might in a happy moment slip out. As if tofavour me, a cart of straw intended for the floors of the prison roomshad been admitted into the court the night before, and stood drawn upclose to the gate. It was not difficult to conceal myself at the tailof this, under the straw, and so remain unseen, not only by the cartersthat entered, but by the turnkey that let them in. By equal goodfortune, the owner of the cart had left his coat and whip and cap behindhim, thus giving me just a disguise that suited me best.

  The night--it was July then--seemed interminable; and with morning adrenching rain set in that found its way through the straw and soaked meto the skin. I heard the city without gradually waking up. Market-carts rumbled in the roads, the shrill cry of the street vendors soundedin the air, and above all was the heavy splash of the rain.

  At last a long low sound fell on my ear, which I knew only too well toproclaim the approach of the carts crawling in our direction. Nearerand nearer they came till they stopped at the gate, and the familiarbell tolled out. I heard the footsteps of the warder plashing acrossthe yard, growling at the rain. Then I heard the grating of the boltsas they were slowly drawn back, and the creaking of the gates on theirhinges. Then the rumble began again, and one by one the carts drew upinto the yard. There were eight of them, and as I peeped out I couldsee that the last three were all in charge of one driver, who rode onthe leader. The warder, impatient to return to shelter, called to thisman to see the bolts made fast after him, which the man, a surly fellowand hardly so
ber, grumblingly promised to do at his own convenience.

  Now was my chance. I slipped from my hiding-place, clad in the driver'sblouse and peaked cap, with a whip over my shoulder and a straw betweenmy lips, and strolled quietly and to all appearance unconcernedly outinto the street. If any saw me come out, they probably set me down asone of the tumbrel drivers on his way to breakfast, and paid me no moreheed than such a fellow deserved; indeed less, for on that day of allothers Paris was in a tremendous ferment. The tocsin was ringing fromthe steeples, there was a rush of people towards the Tuileries, andcries of "_A bas Robespierre_"--the most wonderful cry Paris had heardyet.

  In the midst of it all I walked unchallenged to the Quai Necker. Alas!any hopes I had of comfort there were vanished. The familiar top storeystood empty, with the hole still in the roof, and six doors away, whereI had left them last, the attic was empty too.