Treason's Spring

by Robert Wilton

  Now she stood cold in front of him. Her dress was some sculpted fashionable thing, in a blue so pale as to be grey, mingling with the dust that drifted in the light from the windows. The collar was high, and tight around her neck: he saw beauty not in the grace and elegance of that neck, but in the discipline that had closed and fastened it. She had been interrogated by the Revolutionary Tribunal, and her response was this greater composure. And her face . . . he saw it beautiful not because of its fine bones and cool complexion, but because in this time of chaos and danger it had become more austere and more serene. He had the impression he was seeing a truer Emma Lavalier than he had before.

  ‘I apologize for the intrusion, Madame. I had heard of your seizure by the authorities, and your return, and came to enquire after you.’

  ‘Here I am.’

  ‘Well enough, I am relieved to see.’

  ‘You show greater solicitude than any of my intimates.’

  ‘Perhaps they are turned more cautious precisely because they are your intimates, Madame.’

  ‘You are surely more cautious than any, Mr Kinnaird.’

  ‘Your circle of acquaintance is hardly a secret, Madame, and the regime is all-seeing. If they want me they will find me easily enough.’

  ‘Please pardon a discourtesy, Mr Kinnaird. But I do not believe that you came here solely out of concern for me.’ The ‘solely’ said ‘at all’. And still the extraordinary poise.

  Kinnaird bowed his head in acknowledgement. ‘I came to France to seek an acquaintance. Those who have been his closest intimates deny sight of him, and evade me. Now I learn that he has been seen in the fringes of the outrage that has all Paris talking. I wondered if your experience today had . . . helped you to find yourself more ready to talk to me; or if you had learned any more of Greene today.’

  She watched him.

  Her face was absolutely still. But he knew it was thinking hard.

  ‘My experience today has certainly affected me. It has certainly not made me more likely to talk to you, Sir. And no, I learned no more of our dear friend Greene.’ Kinnaird breathed. Waited. ‘It was not what you might expect, Mr Kinnaird. No tortures. No abuses. The greatest terror in the world is, it transpires, an unsleeping bureaucracy backed by an unstoppable mob.’ She pulled her chin up. ‘They did not have to harm me to persuade me to name my friends.’ The hint of a smile in the ice. ‘My lovers.’

  ‘Indeed, Madame, you were surely telling them nothing they did not already know.’

  Now she smiled, brilliant and cold.

  ‘Where is Henry Greene, Madame?’

  The eyes, the voice, hardened. ‘I do not know. And now I do not care.’

  ‘Revolutionary Paris is not a place for solitary speculators, Madame, or highwaymen. Whatever his enterprise, however disreputable, if Henry is active he is active in league with others.’

  At last she showed the faintest surprise. ‘You are a child, Mr Kinnaird. Or a simpleton. In the most dangerous city on earth, you pursue a social inconvenience. Like a man in a fire or a battle, who worries that his pocket-watch has stopped. And as we scramble and scuffle you persist in asking us for the time of day.’

  ‘Or like a woman who dances, as her friends disappear and her people are slaughtered.’

  ‘They will not shake me from myself.’

  ‘Nor me, Madame.’

  ‘Our mutual friend Greene is a rogue, Mr Kinnaird. An opportunist, a gambler, a speculator. A dealer in anything he thinks will pay: a silk or a secret.’ Kinnaird nodded equably. ‘He has danced the line between England and France, between trade and fraud. The intimacies he whispers are of nations as often as women.’ Kinnaird was unstirred. ‘All this I told them today.’ She considered him again, coolly. A shadow of a man. ‘I wonder if I mentioned you.’

  His eyes hardened through her affected levity. ‘Did you mention me, Madame?’

  Now she was interested. ‘Would that worry you?’

  He shrugged slightly. ‘Not especially. It is merely useful to know, in order better to calculate my position.’

  He was unshakeable. ‘You are an insignificant man, Mr Kinnaird. An unremarkable thing, a shadow, a murmur.’

  ‘Yes. It has served me well these years.’

  ‘You’ll pardon me, but it seems rather a miserable existence.’ He does not flinch. He does not waver.

  ‘No doubt, Madame. But it is mine. I was born without name, money or’ – he nodded his head slightly – ‘beauty. I can not command success, nor buy it, nor charm it. I make my way on my wits, and my character.’

  ‘Admirable. Do they carry you far?’

  ‘Far enough.’

  ‘I dare say.’ It sounded more sneering than she had intended, and she regretted it.

  ‘Pardon me, Madame, but it is not I who is hunted by the Tribunals.’

  She scowled slightly, and resettled herself on her sofa. Her dress spread evenly around her, the only colour in the room.

  ‘You don’t thrill one.’

  ‘I don’t seek to.’

  ‘Do you dance, Mr Kinnaird?

  For the first time, something flickered at the edges of his mouth.

  ‘Satisfactorily, Madame.’

  ‘Hah! Satisfactorily, is it?’ The life was in her eyes, the movement of her face. ‘I’ll bet it damn well is. Do you have pleasures of any kind?’

  Now he did smile. ‘Certainly, Madame. But they do not depend on the regard of others.’

  At this she stopped. It came like a slap, and it came like illumination. Once again, she felt the dream of solitude, of impregnability.

  Slowly, she stood. Once again, he watched her poise with admiration: a mastery of muscles and of self, and yet again he wondered at her life.

  She walked towards him, hand outstretched. It was gesture of courtesy and dismissal. He took her hand, bowed over it, and didn’t lower his eyes from hers.

  Emma kept her hand in his a moment longer. She recaptured the lightness in her voice. ‘Two cold ruthless ghosts in one day is too much, Mr Kinnaird. Where are my bright glorious men?’

  ‘Consigned to the past, perhaps, Madame.’ She listened to him as to a death sentence. ‘It is the age of the mob. Your men of glamour and colour will rise on the backs of the mob for an hour, or a month; but then they will fall, and fall hard.’

  She considered it. And said, with wonder, ‘And it will be the quiet, subtle men who endure.’

  On 2nd October, to mark the heroic resistance of Lille against foreign siege, Madame Roland held one of her legendary soirées.

  It was a phenomenon with which Fouché was neither particularly familiar nor particularly comfortable. But the invitation, delivered earnestly via his chief, was now natural; and the opportunity, for a man of ambition, irresistible.

  The Interior Minister was notionally the host, of course, but when Fouché reached the top of the gentle spiral of steps Roland could not be seen. Instead, Madame alone received him, taking his hand and matching his little bow.

  ‘My husband tells me you are become, Monsieur Fouché, the very ideal of the servant of the Revolution.’

  Fouché, with alarm, felt himself flushing – not in humility, but the certainty that he would not find the right thing to say to such a platitude.

  ‘Madame, I . . . if I might emulate Monsieur Roland’s intellect, and Madame’s spirit, I might hope to become a better servant.’ Thin smile, bow, and he stepped away.

  When he glanced back, he saw that she was still watching him. What has Roland told her of me?

  A little glow of pride, which he tried to quash. To be considered noteworthy by Madame Roland was a prize indeed.

  He lurked uncertainly near the entrance, near his hostess. Courteous nods – brief exchanges of politesse – with those arrivals whom he knew. Villers. Fréron. Lefebvre de Chailly. More than one congratulated him on his election to the Convention. He was as struck by the number he didn’t know, as by the number he did. There was a Paris – there were Parises – influen
tial and important, of which he was yet ignorant. I have more reading to do. And then the realization that he had more socializing to do.

  Which drew his attention back to his hostess. The heart, and some even said the brains, behind Interior Minister Roland’s political skill. Amongst other things, she had written the speech a few months back in which Roland had pressed – arguably threatened – the King. It had cost the Interior Minister his position; and a very timely fall it had been, for now the King was a prisoner and the minister was returned to position – and his wife more influential than ever.

  Not conventionally beautiful – so he had overheard; and so he could perceive if he thought about it – but the dark eyes, wide in the face, held him. Her open neck was wrapped in a foam of lace that swooped down her exposed chest to a single and large rose. Fouché caught himself; brought his gaze up again. Am I becoming as other men? Uneasy thought. ‘Monsieur Fouché!’

  He looked up, startled. Madame herself. ‘The Minister’ – her husband, but it was typical she should refer to his official title – ‘is buried in business somewhere. Would you oblige me by escorting me in?’

  And so it was on Fouché’s hand that Madame made her ceremonial entrance to her salon. Her status as hostess, and her reputation as revolutionary, earned her a polite fluttering of applause from her guests. The applause was not for Fouché – except – and she would have been careful in this – as the man selected to escort her in, he was the one honoured after all.

  A moment of alarm in Fouché: she and Roland had broken publicly with the Jacobins; Roland’s position was precarious; am I being adopted by a faction?

  Joseph Fouché, of whom much was murmured in the corridors of Paris: his least comfortable moment since arriving in the great city; and at the same time a stiff-necked cold-faced triumph.

  Fabre d’Églantine. Robert. Philippe-Égalité himself. Joviality about the performance of the Convention in its first days. Ignorant speculation about the Austrians and the Prussians and what Dumouriez was doing. Then, inevitably, Danton.

  There was some glamorous creature beside him, but it was to Danton that they all looked. His height, his bulk, his noise, drew the room.

  Fouché looked at the faces gathered around the man, scorning their butterfly minds. What is happening? What do I think? I must ask Danton ... Yet I too am here in attendance.

  ‘We stubbornly maintain that our genius defines the Revolution, but Lille shows that our true genius is stubbornness!’ Witty enough to seem brilliant; loud enough to seem irresistible. Fouché watched the performance; considered himself as attendant. Is he what I must become? Is he what I must follow? At last Danton happened to see him, and the eyes and face seemed to swell in recognition. Is he what I must destroy?

  ‘I’m afraid I’m rather a hot-head, dear friends: throwing up the political battles, rushing out to face the Prussian monster; leaping for the stars!’ He had clutched the arm of the woman beside him, a shrewd pose of comradeship, of drawing strength from lesser people. ‘But damn me if I don’t look down to find that the likes of young Fouché here have built a ladder up after me!’

  Fouché flinched at the reference; assumed a slight. But then amid the murmurs of amusement he saw the approving nods in his own direction.

  More confused: Danton is complimenting me?

  More of his brain was rehearing Danton’s words. Well-judged, of course: a vigorous polishing of his image, and his commitment, while offering seemly credit to those less glamorous than himself; respect for the necessary business of order and administration, behind his own claim to the heart of the Revolution. Very well-judged. I respect this in him.

  But such a performance! All – And once again Fouché forced himself to look beyond his irritation.

  This was all imposture. So where was the truth?

  What is the opposite of the pose?

  Danton is not hot-headed but rational? Danton never gives up politics? Danton does not think the Prussians are monsters? Danton is not amused and satisfied by my work in the shadows of the Revolution? No. Danton is . . . Danton is uneasy about me.

  Faintly, unseen, Fouché smiled.

  Danton at last released the arm of the woman beside him, and turned with elaborate show of patience to listen to a question, and Fouché glanced to the woman for the first time.

  She was looking at him. She was, faintly, smiling. She saw me smile.

  It was Emma Lavalier.

  Fouché’s face held cold. How could she possibly be here? Then he remembered Guilbert’s reports of her connections, and Roland’s, and her own claims.

  He contrived a little nod. Restored the thin smile to his face. She must be shocked to see me here! A reminder of her shame, surely; of her vulnerability.

  Emma Lavalier had slipped away from Danton’s side, and was walking straight towards Fouché, hand outstretched to accept the greeting that he must surely offer her.

  ‘Why, Monsieur Fouché! How nice to see you again. It was my great pleasure to have the chance to call on you. I trust I may continue to aid you in your vital work.’

  Slowly, in spite of himself, Fouché lifted his hand to take hers; bent over it in courtesy. Then his face came up into hers and, oblivious to the features and expressions around them, the eyes locked on each other.

  Fouché felt himself cold – and somehow thrilled.

  Danton is an amateur compared to this woman.

  Emma Lavalier was gleaming: bright eyes and dangerous energy; Benjamin knew the signs. She was exhilarated by how she had managed to make her place in the salon – she felt that she was catching up with Paris again. In the small hours of the morning – a house in Aubervilliers, a private room and a deaf-mute girl dealing and counting for them – she and Benjamin were playing piquet, she for higher and wilder stakes than he.

  ‘Tonight, Raph, it behoves you to be losing to me a little more generously.’

  ‘Always. In élan as well as cards.’ He glanced at his hand. ‘You breathe triumph. You are so relaxed?’

  She considered it. ‘No. No, Raph, I’m not. But I find that a game I thought closed to me has re-opened.’ She smiled. ‘More intricate than ever; more exciting.’

  He smiled back, then said through it: ‘More dangerous.’

  She sniffed. ‘Perhaps.’ Nodded slightly. ‘They haven’t knocked on your door yet.’

  ‘Perhaps they can’t find it.’ He revived the smile. ‘Perhaps I should knock on theirs.’ His glance dropped to his cards again, and his voice with it. ‘I have wondered at that.’

  ‘With the army fighting the Prussians, they haven’t enough men to face you?’

  He bowed. ‘No doubt. More likely they are still cautious about bringing in foreigners. And they don’t know what exactly to accuse us of. They won’t provoke a scandal with the English yet, not if they can help it.’

  ‘You think so?’

  He shrugged. ‘For now . . . ’ Eyes up again. ‘In truth, they could come for me when they chose. They may not know all of the games that I play, but they must have my name, from any of half a dozen channels.’

  Emma Lavalier’s glance dropped to her own hand. ‘Raph,’ she said quietly; ‘you haven’t asked if I – ’

  ‘A gentleman, Emma, does not ask a lady about her interrogation.’ To the cards again. ‘Point of three.’

  Guilbert always appeared with the air of the gutter somehow clinging to him; the dungeon. His habitual silence echoed with the pains of others. When Fouché looked at his strangely white hands, he immediately wondered what Guilbert had washed off them.

  Here, in a corridor of the Tuileries outside the Committee room, he was a reminder of a grubbier France, or its envoy.

  ‘You were not satisfied with the interrogations of the thieves of the Garde-Meuble, Monsieur.’ Fouché glanced to left and right; Guilbert’s eyes were steady on him. ‘Your instincts were sound, of course.’ The voice flat as ever. ‘Monsieur the Prosecutor is an amusing actor, but a poor interrogator.’

 
Fouché waited.

  ‘The thieves are insistent’ – for once a faint emphasis; it resounded with what the thieves had had to undergo to maintain this insistence – ‘that they stole many treasures, but did not steal the great jewels. They did not enter that part of the Meuble where the great jewels were kept. They did not properly know of it.’ A pause. ‘They have little reason to lie about this point.’

  Fouché, mind still half in the Committee’s discussion of the role of the police in dealing with deserters from the army, took a moment to follow the implications. ‘But that would mean . . . a second robbery, Guilbert? Some great coincidence, or some double deception?’

  ‘I mistrust coincidence, Monsieur.’ There was a distant hint of distaste. ‘Likewise the over-elaborate.’

  Fouché nodded, trying not to seem naive. ‘So . . . ?’

  ‘They insist they were put on to the business by a man unknown to them. A man always shadowed or masked. A Frenchman.’

  ‘He incited their grand outrage as cover for his own quieter affair with the jewels?’

  ‘A clever arrangement, Monsieur.’

  ‘But what manner of Frenchman, Guilbert?’ Guilbert had nothing to add; he stayed silent. ‘One working in the royal interest, perhaps? Recover their treasures – for bribery?’ Fouché’s eyes widened at his own thoughts. ‘For escape?’

  Still silence. Guilbert does not speculate; is it a wise habit? ‘But the English, Guilbert! An English voice heard in the shadows. The Englishman seen in the carriage outside.’ He felt himself fluttering around Guilbert’s stolidilty. ‘Three robb-?’ He stopped before Guilbert could re-express his mistrust of the over-elaborate. ‘An Englishman in concert with a Frenchman?’

  And always, striding away in front of him, the shadow of Danton in the night. Why was he so distracted? Is that merely his habit? Is that the extent of his distraction at the Prussian threat to France?

  Why does Danton haunt me?

  From the suite of His Serene Highness the Duke of

  Brunswick, as at Verdun, the 3. October

  Sir,