Hearts Beguiled

by Penelope Williamson

  The mob spilled into the Place Maubert. Normally filled with the stalls of fishmongers, greengrocers, and butchers, the square looked eerily empty this morning. The rioters spotted a bakery and began to take up the chant—"Cheap bread! Bread for two sous!"

  French Guards, in their fringed cocked hats and blue coats with furled skirts, with bayonets fixed in their muskets, had ringed the shop. A group of men in the forefront of the mob, armed with pikes and shafts, surged forward, and the soldiers lowered their muskets. Everyone could see by the looks on their faces that they were more frightened of the people than the people were of them.

  The baker had shoved a barricade of chairs in front of the door to his shop, and he climbed up on it to address the crowd.

  "Please!" he tried to shout above the clamor for cheap bread. "I've no bread to give you. I don't even have any flour to make it with!"

  "To the warehouse!" someone shouted, and soon the shout was taken up by others. "To the warehouse!" The crowd surged forward again, pulling Gabrielle and Simon with them like so much flotsam:

  The warehouse was a massive, rectangular building, three stories high, made of brick, and with a sloping slate roof and iron-grilled windows. It covered the entire south end of a tiny square that was known for its pastry shops. The square had been turned into a fortress by a troop of French Guards, a hundred strong, ordered there by the governor of Paris to maintain order and protect private property.

  The captain of the French Guards, however, had no sympathy for the aristocrat who supposedly owned this warehouse and was speculating with the grain stores inside it, and he had a lot of sympathy for his hungry fellow Frenchmen. "Open the doors, monsieur," he growled to the warehouse overman.

  The overman, a plump fellow with a head that bobbed up and down on his thick neck like that of a turtle, swayed back and forth on his feet, moaning and wringing his hands. "I can't, mon capitaine. I haven't got the key."

  The captain thought he could feel the earth shuddering beneath the thin soles of his fancy officer's boots. The din of the ringing church bells seemed to be causing the very air to vibrate. There was a strange roar in the distance, like the low growl of a lion. It was the roar of the approaching mob.

  "To hell with the key!" he shouted. "Break down the doors, if you must, but get the goddamned doors open before we all get ourselves goddamned killed!''

  The overman didn't want to be killed. He also didn't want to account to Monsieur Hachettc for a pair of damaged doors and an empty warehouse, the cost of which was sure to come out of his salary. Dieu! Didn't he have six children, all under the age of ten, and four of them girls too puny to work?

  He gnawed on his lower lip, drawing blood. "Perhaps Monsieur Hachette should be sent for."

  The captain whirled around, swearing, and kicked at the brick wall with his boot, ruining the glossy polish. "We haven't time to send for anybody!" He pointed down the length of the square. "Listen!"

  The roar had grown steadily in volume. The captain had never fought in an actual battle, but in his daydreams of glory he had imagined the thunder of artillery would sound just like this. But this wasn't a dream; it was a bloody nightmare. "I'm going to get an ax and break down the door," he said, though he stood with his feet welded to the ground and watched in horror as the first wave of the mob poured toward him.

  The first of the rioters to spill into the square were momentarily diverted by the sight of the pyramids of iced cakes and rows of glistening tarts in the windows of the pastry shops. Rocks and stones sailed through the glass and soon the succulent desserts were being passed from hand to hand. But the windows were soon emptied and those in the back of the crowd became even more incensed and began to push forward, demanding their share of the loot. One man had found a barrel and was beating on it like a drum. Again the chant was taken up. "Open the warehouse! Cheap bread!"

  Some of the rioters took to the surrounding roofs and lampposts to throw a hail of tiles, rocks, and cobblestones onto the captain and his troops. One of the pastry shops had caught or been set on fire and now a stinking, oily smoke filled the air, obscuring everyone's vision. The guards began nervously to finger the triggers of their muskets even though the captain had ordered them to hold their fire. In respect of the muskets and bayonets, the rioters had so far kept a careful distance from the cordoned warehouse.

  A coach came rumbling through the alley in back of the warehouse and careened into the square. The overman tugged on the sleeve of the captain's blue coat and shouted above the chants and the screams and the crackle of flames. "It's him! Monsieur Hachette! With the key!" The captain lifted his eyes to heaven in thanks.

  A tall, imposing young man alighted from the carriage, followed by a frail old man who looked positively terrified, and whom the captain took to be me nobleman's factor. He ignored the old man, addressing the younger. "I hope to God you've brought the key, monsieur, because—"

  Max's hand fell on Abel Hachette's shoulder and he hauled the old man forward. "Open the doors, Abel. Now."

  Hachette was mesmerized by the sight of the turbulent mob. In all his visions of a revolution he had never imagined it to be like this. The power of violence such as this was awesome. If only, he thought, if only it could be controlled, why a man truly could topple a throne with power such as this. Topple it, or seize it.

  The sight of the carriage with its well-dressed occupants had whipped the mob into a frenzied rage. One woman, with sores on her face and black, toothless gums, began to shout, "Kill, kill, kill," and others took up the chant, stamping their feet, making a ditty out of it that ended with a final cry of "Hang the bloody aristocrats!"

  Hachette jerked free of Max's grip and started toward the rippling edges of the crowd, which had so far left a space of about twenty feet between themselves'and the guards with their bayoneted muskets. Max started after him, only to be restrained by the captain and two of his men.

  "Forget him!" the captain bellowed in Max's face, his eyes white with fear. "Get the goddammed door open before we have a massacre!"

  "Kill the aristocrats!" the mob chanted. "Hang the rich!"

  "No, wait!" Hachette was shouting, his palm upraised in the universal symbol of peace. "I'm not an aristocrat. I'm one of you. I'm one of the people."

  The mob didn't hear him, or didn't believe him. Or perhaps they were beyond caring. A young boy who had climbed a lamppost took aim with his slingshot and sent a rock spinning for Hachette's head. It struck him directly between the eyes, driving him stunned to his knees, blood pouring down his face. When they saw him go down, the mob fell upon him with their makeshift weapons.

  Max strained against the hands that held him. "Let me go, damn you!" Then he abruptly ceased his struggle and could only watch, horrified, as a pike rose in the air, flashing in the sun, and descended in a wide, slow arc—to bury its tip in the small of Abel Hachette's back.

  "Max!"

  At first Max thought it had been Hachette, screaming his name in his death throes. Then he caught a flash of flaming hair and heard her scream again and, amid all that press of roiling humanity, his eyes locked onto hers.

  "Gabrielle!"

  She stretched out an arm to him and nothing, not even three strong men, was going to keep him from her. He literally tore himself free of the soldiers' rough embrace. He ran toward her, just as the mob—made savage by their first taste of blood—surged forward toward the warehouse. The guards, outnumbered and frightened, opened fire.

  A flash of bright light blinded him, and a searing pain in his head made him gasp. Sheer, desperate will carried him two more steps toward his beloved before he fell to his knees. But he kept his head up and his last image before the world was covered with a bloodied haze was of Gabrielle, his Gabrielle, her eyes and mouth open wide in terror and the mob surging around her, engulfing her.

  ❧

  Maximilien de Saint-Just lay still and white in Simon's bed above the pawnshop in the Palais Royal. His head was wrapped turban-style with a banda
ge, hiding the deep groove in his head left by a musket ball. The doctor hadn't been at all helpful. "If he wakes up, he'll probably live," the man had said. "But first he's got to wake up."

  Gabrielle sat beside the bed with her husband's hand pressed between hers, as if she could transmit her strength, her life, to him, palm to palm. From time to time, Simon or Agnes would appear in the door, but she always sent them away. Once she heard the sound of raised voices coming from downstairs, and she knew they were arguing over Simon's part in the riot. But Gabrielle thought that no matter what Agnes said, Simon wouldn't stop now. That morning, like a lot of people in Paris, Simon Prion had discovered the power of the mob.

  To Gabrielle, this day had taught her the true meaning of terror. She had seen her love, her whole reason for being, be struck by musket fire and go down. Although she had tried to bite and scratch and claw her way to his side, she had known she would be too late, was already too late, that she had lost him again . . . this time forever.

  She had prayed, not coherently, but a cry of anguish sent up to heaven, offering to trade her life for his, begging for a miracle. And a miracle had occurred. For just when she thought the mob was going to tear him apart, a troop of cavalry, riding five abreast, had burst onto the square from each of the surrounding streets, swinging their sabres, and the rioters had fled, terrified.

  Among the chaos of the screams and the drifting pall of smoke and the litter of pikes and staves, Gabrielle had knelt beside Max and put her hand on his heart, and she had thought that if it no longer beat, then her own heart would surely stop as well.

  Now, her eyes fastened on his face, his hand clutched in hers, she willed that heart to go on beating.

  He stirred and moaned and opened his eyes, and she saw a terrible fear in their dark gray depths. She squeezed his hand and leaned over him. "Hello, my beloved."

  The fear left his eyes. "Gabrielle ..." One corner of his mouth twisted upward. "My head hurts like bloody hell."

  She smiled, not even realizing that tears were streaming down her face. "Hush. You're not supposed to talk."

  "No . . . things I must say."

  She brought his hand to her mouth, pressing her lips against his knuckles. "Later. Sleep now."

  He sighed and his eyes drifted closed. He mumbled something, and she leaned closer.

  "... love you, Gabrielle."

  She thought he had said it, but she could not be sure.

  ❧

  It was late the next afternoon before he awoke again. This time his breathing was regular and his eyes were clear. Gabrielle's own eyes were bloodshot, and her back ached from sitting up all through a night and a day in the chair. She felt a mess. Max thought she had never looked more beautiful.

  She tilted his head up and held a steaming cup to his lips. He sniffed at it and wrinkled his nose. "What is it?"

  "Drink it. Or do you want me to pour it down your throat?"

  "You are a vengeful woman," he accused. He drank it down, but not without a lot of gagging and grimacing.

  "I am very angry with you, wife," he said, trying to recover some of his manly authority. "You gave me the fright of my life when I saw you caught up in that mob. Do you realize how close you came to being killed this morning?"

  "It was yesterday morning, and you are the one, Maximilien de Saint-Just, who has been lying there bleeding all over Simon's bed!"

  "Simon ... is that where I am?" He looked around the room, which was filled with the clutter Simon couldn't or hadn't the heart to sell. "How did I get here?"

  "Simon and some of his friends carried you." She gave him a trembling smile. "The soldiers wanted to arrest you for inciting the riot." Gabrielle had clung to him at the time, shielding him with her body, calling out that she was the vicomtesse de Saint-Just, and the soldiers, seeing her fine clothes, didn't dare not believe her.

  He patted the blankets beside him. "Come lie by me."

  "Only if you promise to behave yourself."

  He gave her his most devilish smile and promised nothing.

  She stretched out on the bed beside him. He pulled her closer until her head leaned against his shoulder. He buried his face in her hair.

  "You smell all smoky," he said.

  "And you're burning up with fever." She raised up on one elbow and stroked his cheek, roughened by two days' growth of beard. His skin was hot and flushed.

  She started to draw away, but his arm tightened around her, surprisingly strong. "Don't leave me. I have a confession to make."

  She leaned over and kissed his lips. They were dry and cracked, but they were his and they felt wonderful. "Should I summon a priest?" she teased, although a part of her cringed inside. Was he in some terrible pain he was hiding from her? Did he fear he was going to die?

  In the next instant she was relieved to feel his chest rumble with laughter. "God, spare me those priests with their eternal babbling in Latin." He threaded his fingers through her hair and rubbed his thumb across her temple. "I have a confession to make to you, ma mie. "

  He fastened his eyes on hers. They were filled with such sadness they brought sympathetic tears to her own eyes. "I should never have married you," he said, and Gabrielle's heart plummeted.

  She lowered her gaze and addressed his neck. "I understand, Max. You've made it very plain these last months that you no longer love me."

  His hand tightened in her hair and he pulled her head up. "But I do love you,"

  She shook her head. The shameful tears threatened to gush from her eyes and she squeezed them shut. Her throat felt as if a vise had been tightened around it. For a moment she couldn't breathe or swallow and words were impossible.

  "Gabrielle, dammit, I said I love you!"

  She drew in a shuddering breath. "You-you only w-want me physically."

  "Hell, yes, I want you physically. And every other damned way there is." He brought his other hand up to her face. "Gabrielle, Gabrielle . . . You'd have to be an idiot not to see how much I love you."

  She was an idiot. Joy filled her. Again she couldn't breathe or swallow because of the thick lump in her throat, and her eyes started leaking tears like a rusty ladle.

  "Why are you crying? Gabrielle, say something. Jesus." He spoke gruffly, but he was smiling.

  She stuttered and blubbered, but she finally got the words out. "But if you love me still, then why did you say you should never have married me?"

  The smile left his face. His hands drifted down her neck and settled on her shoulders. "Because you deserve better than a man like me, Gabrielle. It didn't really surprise me when I came home to find you gone that day. I knew I was never worthy of you."

  "Not worthy of me! Oh, Max, I'm the one not worthy of you. I let you marry me knowing I would only bring you trouble. I—"

  "No. Let me finish. Why can't you ever be obedient and submissive like a proper wife, and allow me to have the last word?"

  She thrust out her chin and her eyes flashed. "Why, I'm so very, very sorry, my lord and master. I try to be a good wife. It's just so hard sometimes, especially when you men get to make up all the rules."

  A corner of his mouth twitched, and his eyes filmed over with a strange wetness. His hands squeezed her shoulders and he gave her a tiny shake. "God, Gabrielle, I do love you."

  "Oh, Max—"

  "Be quiet, woman. There are things I have to say, things I should have said months ago, and I'm going to say them if I have to rip the cover off this pillow and gag you with it."

  But first he made her help him sit up, supported by the pillows. Then he drew her down to sit beside him, their left hands entwined, her head within the crook of his right arm. The room grew dark while he spoke and a spft breeze came up, bringing with it the scent of printers' ink and frying crepes from the gardens below. He told her first about his childhood in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and the days of his youth spent as a brigand. Then he told her all about Abel Hachette and the cabal and the spying he had done for them over the years.

  "
I Jiad myself half convinced I was doing it for France, but a part of me always saw through the hypocrisy of Hachette and the cabal. But at the time none of it mattered, because I was more interested in getting revenge on my father by dragging the noble name of Saint-Just through the mud." He sighed, shifting the arm that held her, and his fingers and thumb began to caress her ribs. "Then you knocked on my door that day and suddenly I began to care what sort of a man I was. I couldn't bear the thought of letting you down, of failing you. And, of course, that's exactly what I did."

  Her fingers tightened around his. "But you didn't, Max. It was my own stupid fault for jumping to the wrong conclusion—"

  He stopped her words with his mouth. But when she started to respond to his kiss he pulled away.

  "Let me finish, ma mie ... I hated you for leaving me only because I knew I deserved it. I blamed you for believing I had done the very despicable acts I knew in my heart I was capable of doing. Hell, why should you have trusted me? There was nothing I had done in my entire life up until the moment of our meeting that made me worthy of your trust. Or your love."

  She put her palm against his cheek and turned his face back within reach of her lips. She kissed his eyes and rubbed her nose around his cheek, stroking his mouth lightly with her own. "You judge yourself too harshly, my darling. I'm sure a lot of what you did for the cabal, whatever their motives, was good for France. Percy told me once you've the best scientific mind this country has." She had her lips to his ear, and he could feel her smiling. "You certainly are the best lover in all of France. Probably in all the world,"

  His chest heaved in a soft grunt. "How would you know? You've only had me and that Martin fellow of yours, and he couldn't tell his yard from a dyemaster's stick."

  She flung up her head. "Max!"

  "Don't turn all wide-eyed innocent on me, Gabrielle. You know I'm right. Besides, Agnes said so."