Treason's Spring

by Robert Wilton

the indecisive engagement near the place called Valmy has made appropriate a reconsideration of the military and political position of His Serene Highness’s forces. There is, naturally, no change in the strength or spirit of our Prussian troops, but His Grace’s prudence and greater vision make him averse to rashness or mere adventurism at this delicate time, and the excitable situation in France, the unpredictability of their irregular troops, and the proper military concern – so different from our opponents – at the possibility of so substantial a force as our own trying to live off unknown terrain so recently scoured by the French horde, do counsel against any hasty incursion.

  Arnim has had a whole plum in his mouth for the duration of this paragraph, working and sucking at its flesh until the juice and the fibre are all swallowed. Now he leans forwards slightly, and spits the stone in an arc towards the fireplace. It drops silent into the ash. He wipes his mouth.

  Your position and our hopes in you are accordingly unchanged. Prussia will soon lead the advance of stable government back into France, but will naturally do nothing injudicious for her own interests or fighting men while the position and attitude of Louis of France is unresolved. This proper patience while we await the moment most propitious for victory, and the undesirability of any diplomatic complication intervening, makes it more essential than ever that no embarrassments be allowed to emerge from the historical relations of the Court of France and the Court of Prussia.

  [BUNDESARCHIV BERLIN-LICHTERFELDE, RESERVE COLLECTION; AUTHOR TRANSLATION]

  It is, in its way, so magnificently full of half-truth and deception that they might stand as a second layer of encypherment. Arnim’s tongue explores his teeth, seeking the fugitive plum flesh. From all he’s heard – from all he’s read between the lines of the revolutionary bulletins, with their uneasy bravado and their clumsy deployment of military terminology – the Duke of Brunswick has no need to retreat. But he’s obviously not advancing at any imminent moment. The lines of strategic nonsense can be ignored. Brunswick has some larger game. The matter of the position and attitude of Louis . . . Arnim smiles. Berlin and Brunswick don’t want revolution triumphant; but they’re happy to wait for a while as the King, and the Revolution, and royalist rebels eat away at each other, swallowing French money and lives.

  And at last he considers those potential embarrassments. He reaches for another plum, stroking the bruised velvet skin. Never far from Karl Arnim’s mind these last months: the secret correspondence of the King of France; and the dangers and the opportunities it contains.

  Why does Danton haunt me?

  Danton: all of the loud bullies of Fouché’s life.

  Sitting behind Roland, Fouché watched over the minister’s shoulder as he spoke to the Committee. He was aware of the blur of faces beyond. If he were in the minister’s position, this would be his view.

  An odd uncomfortable exposure, this presentation before the Committee. A schoolboy with his catechism.

  Fouché the schoolboy had liked it to be known that he knew things. He liked better the knowing of something that no one knew.

  He knew what the minister was saying. They had discussed it. Roland’s voice warbled indistinctly ahead of him.

  Question: what could Danton be worried about? What could he have done that would make that vast character shameful – fearful? There have long been rumours of Danton’s improprieties, his financial peccadilloes, his lavish life. ‘Who is that well-dressed fellow?’ ‘A friend of Danton.’ The catch-phrase that eats at the purity of the Revolution.

  Refined question: as Danton is not a melancholic, a catcher at fancies, what practical thing is it that he fears? What discovery does he fear?

  More refined question: what proof might there be of some misdeed? Either a witness, or a . . . a document.

  Fouché dreamed of documents. He lived in them. He devoured them, digested them, and built the matter and pathways of his mind from their smallest details.

  Now, as the minister’s carefully modulated voice sounded somewhere nearby, against the background of blurred faces, Fouché wondered about the power of documents. And he wondered at Danton and documents.

  Witnesses have died: Laporte, the King’s confidential secretary, on the guillotine; the go-between Maupuy in a brothel, his corpse slung on a dunghill. The Princesse de Lamballe, closest confidante of the Queen, savaged in the street.

  It was getting harder to investigate the royal correspondence. A challenge, to a man who lived on documents.

  The stranger, the man who called himself Kinnaird with such apparent discomfort in his strangled accent, proposed a walk. Lucie had not found a reason to refuse.

  That alarmed her. Normally the lie – a commission, a malady – would have come instinctively, natural reaction to the prospect of uncomfortable company. But the stranger seemed to hold her. Polite concern after her appearance before the Tribunal. Dull blank face. Cold sharp eyes.

  There was still some summer in the warmth of the air. But the sky was autumn: white; dead.

  It was an ugly time for a walk.

  The stranger led them out of St-Denis town, past the dyeing factory and towards the river. He didn’t speak.

  It took a while for Lucie to notice it.

  She knew where they were going.

  She walked a pace behind him, and to the side. She could see his profile, and she wondered what he was thinking.

  The river appeared through the trees; a pale wall. Lucie felt her heart thumping in her.

  ‘Where now?’

  He stopped, and turned to face her. Dumbly, she gestured to the left, towards the glade. ‘Very well,’ he said, and started to move again.

  They came to the glade. The stranger hesitated, then walked to its centre, and turned. Lucie had stopped.

  ‘Well, this is charming.’

  He didn’t say it as if it was charming. So quiet; so steady. The glade spread around him. The light coming off the river made him look colder. Lucie looked past him to the trees fringing the glade, to the rough undergrowth; not to him.

  ‘What are those buildings? Downstream there?’

  She glanced. ‘Mills. For spinning.’

  ‘Must be a pleasant place to come of an evening.’

  The banality was unnerving. He cannot be so mild. He cannot be so tame. He was watching her still. What is in the undergrowth of this man?

  She shrugged.

  ‘And the Paris road . . . must be just up there, beyond the wood?’ He gestured.

  She nodded.

  ‘Convenient place to meet someone coming from the city, I guess.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Henry use this place sometimes, do you think?’ He anticipated the shrug. ‘I’m trying to understand his habits, Mademoiselle.’

  ‘Yes he met people here sometimes. Different people. Yes I could name some of them, but it won’t do you any good because he met lots of different people in different places.’ Now he looked a little startled. ‘And yes, he was supposed to meet someone else here, that same day he was supposed to meet me, but I don’t know who.’

  He didn’t know where to go with it. ‘Had he been anywhere – met anyone before that?’ It was a stupid question, and her scowl told him so. ‘I suppose you don’t – ’

  ‘He’d been away the night before. No, I don’t know where.’

  ‘You weren’t sure about the day. But you seemed sure there was a party at Madame Lavalier’s in the evening. What do you think of her?’

  Not the kind of question she was used to. He was waiting for an answer. ‘Does what she wants. Doesn’t care what people think.’

  It was said dead. ‘That doesn’t sound good to you?’

  Now there was life in her voice. ‘You have to be rich to be free.’

  He nodded, soberly. ‘Is there a reason why you would remember there was a party that evening?’

  Lucie looked down, and continued to look down.

  ‘Mademoiselle?’

  She looked up. ‘Guests. Foreigners.
At her house.’ She glanced down, and up again. The stranger was still waiting. ‘I hear these things. Invitation messages. Interesting for the local fingers. And – ’

  ‘Fingers?’

  She held his eyes. ‘Pickpockets, Monsieur. All those horses needing holding, all those carriage doors needing opening. Beg a sou, lift a franc.’

  ‘And you tell the . . . fingers, about such occasions.’ Cold smile. ‘You’ve never gone in for pickpocketing, I’m sure.’

  ‘Never, Monsieur. The boys used to like me to do the talking for them – allow my brother to carry your bag, Madame – they trust it more with a girl – but that’s completely different. And years ago.’

  The stranger was looking lost again. And again it made her feel more comfortable.

  Still he was unknown. And still she wanted to know what he knew.

  There is something odd in Guilbert’s face. Normally a man silently at ease in his environment, Guilbert is ... uncomfortable. It’s so unusual as to be startling. Paris is supposed to be celebrating confirmation of the news that Brunswick is retreating beyond the Rhine; Guilbert seems unimpressed.

  ‘A problem, Guilbert?’

  The face settles at Fouché’s challenge; the discomfort disappears. Admirable self-control. ‘An inconvenience, Monsieur. An irritation.’ Fouché’s expression invites more. ‘You asked after the Tourzel women – Madame the royal governess, and her daughter.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Fouché’s mind is ahead of his words, beginning to feel the strangeness. ‘Imprisoned in La Force.’

  ‘No longer, Monsieur.’ The words are flat.

  Guilbert watches their effect on Fouché. The face hardens. More like a skull than ever. The hawk eyes widen and darken. The eyebrows rise. It’s not surprise: it’s distaste; it’s a reconsideration of a servant’s usefulness.

  ‘Have I misunderstood the purpose of a prison, Guilbert? Have I underestimated the power of revolutionary liberté?’

  ‘The prison is not well-administered, Monsieur, I regret. Habits are bad. The morale and morals of the custodians are poor. In this time of . . . change, Monsieur, the routines and responsibilities of interrogation and imprisonment are chaotic. Different authorities have different influence, and the custodians are trying to keep everyone happy.’

  ‘All true. And?’

  ‘Sometime in early September – the killings had started in the streets – the two women disappeared.’

  ‘I don’t pay you for fancy, Guilbert.’

  ‘Monsieur. There are no records. No authorizations. But no escape was noticed. So – ’

  ‘Nothing was noticed? This happened in early September – two of the closest intimates of the royal family yet living, enemies of the Revolution – and no one notices when they disappear from La Force?’ Fouché’s anger is at the situation he cannot control. At something he does not yet understand.

  ‘Naturally I have investigated, Monsieur. A custodian who remembers an unknown visitor. Arrangements that allow the authorities to commit and remove prisoners without bureaucra-’

  ‘We are the authorities!’

  ‘We are some of them, Monsieur. If I may, Monsieur, the structures of authority are complicated.’ Fouché’s face is stone. ‘I judge that over the course of two nights, the two women were removed from the prison, by someone who knew the place enough and had enough authority to get in and get them out.’

  Somewhere in Fouché, glowing within his frustration and bafflement, an admiration is growing for the daring and skill of men who can make Paris work in this way.

  Guilbert sees the face soften, sees the reflectiveness. ‘If Monsieur will tell me more of this context, I can try to serve him better.’

  Fouché pulls himself straighter in his chair – a scarecrow; a skeleton. He folds his hands in front of him.

  Guilbert loathes the performance; mistrusts the inhuman nature.

  ‘I interest myself, Guilbert, in the documentation of royal espionage. The correspondence, in and out, of those in concert with the King. His familiars, his collaborators, his co-conspirators. Those in France who participated in his corrupt government; those involved in the financial games and frauds that sustained his regime and enriched its creatures. Those abroad with whom they dealt. I am interested in uncovering something of this correspondence, Guilbert, because someone else seems interested in covering it up. There are no facts, no traces, no grounds for suspicion that might be levelled at any man. But I am interested in why so many men and women connected with royal communications seem to have disappeared.’

  Fouché smiles a death’s smile, over-stretched lips and sharp teeth. ‘I am interested, Guilbert, in Danton.’

  And now there’s the faint discomfort in Guilbert’s face again. Hallo . . . Very cautiously, flexing his toes in his boots, he finds himself reconsidering his position. Here’s trouble.

  FROM THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY

  TO FRANCE

  To the Secretary to the Congressional Committee on

  Trade and Diplomacy, Congress of the United States,

  meeting in Philadelphia

  October 4th, 1792

  Sir,

  the National Convention of France has produced its latest novelty. Declaring the Republic ‘one and indivisible’, it has reaffirmed its rejection of monarchy and offered a new provocation to its opponents. A skeptic might say that these defiant bravadoes do generally accompany some new sensation of external threat or vulnerability, but this Republic continues, if yet sure neither of its oneness nor its indivisibility, hale enough. As if in emulation of the robust spirit of the declaration, the town of Lille, in the north of the country, is declared in the latest reports from that district to have resisted the Austrian siege. If that be true, and if, as is anticipated, the Austrians withdraw to regather their strength and find a new district to supply their commissary needs, it is like to be succeeded by some new French expansion in that direction. For the Revolution, though it go sometimes forwards and sometimes backwards, seems never inclined to stand still.

  I had the honour to attend last night the latest soirée of Madame Roland, wife of the Interior Minister and the somewhat brittle heroine of the moderate revolutionaries. Danton was there, which suggests that Roland and Madame are still close enough to the main thrust of the movement – or, indeed, that Danton still covets the impression of moderation, or more likely the impression of ubiquity. Roland and Brissot and the old moderate Jacobins hope for an easing of the tensions and a reconsolidation around steady government – by themselves. More radical voices represent the hunger of the populace for stronger measures – or, I would suggest, they follow it. For the massacres of September, inside and outside the prisons, have given the people a taste for blood and not satisfied it. Thousands of persons of quality have been slaughtered, the example of Paris carried to the provinces and eagerly emulated; I learn of one datum recording that in August and September 1,395 persons died in Paris of whom 420 could not be identified because their bodies were so mutilated or burned. Generations of jealousy at the privileges of the rulers, combined with fear at the threat from Prussia, have been unleashed and the men who presently claim that they lead the Revolution are more in the position of the man who keeps a wild beast and must either find food for it or himself become its supper.

  You will recall from my earlier reports that the King had entrusted to me, near the end of July, a small portfolio of his correspondence – some two dozen documents pertaining mostly to our relations, which I elected to destroy, and a few papers of personal sentiment for his family but no political significance, which I continue to preserve. My informal researches have shown that on the night of his flight from the Tuileries Palace last month, he entrusted to Madame Campan, of his entourage, another portfolio, which she has in like wise burned. Clearly, the bulk of the royal correspondence was elsewhere – and presumably is so still. I learn that more than one party, French and other, is eagerly after it.

  I continue to hold in trust for the King t
he residue of the funds which he also entrusted to me on that occasion in July, and to account diligently for the expenditures which I have drawn from those funds either to secure the advantage of fugitive adherents of the former regime or to pay the expenses of those members of his retinue to whom I am pleased to continue to offer the hospitality of the Legation.

  Morris.

  (DECYPHERED; US NATIONAL ARCHIVES, DEPARTMENT OF STATE RECORDS RG 59)

  A private supper for Fouché, at Roland’s home. The food was indifferent, which meant nothing to Fouché; the intimacy, in this fortress of political respectability, was everything.

  And as quickly the thought followed: have I been seen? Will it become known that I was here? Does that remain desirable?

  ‘Monsieur Mi-’ The door opened behind Monsieur Minister and a pair of satin-wrapped breasts appeared in the centre of Fouché’s vision. By the time he’d looked up further, Madame Roland was standing beside her husband. Fouché rose – thigh catching under table top and knife rattling off plate and onto floor – to greet her.

  ‘Monsieur Fouché: we make you too busy a servant of the Revolution, I fear.’

  ‘Your hospitality – Madame – your hospitality is reward too much. Madame, I cannot sleep while the minister is awake.’

  She smiled gravely – handsomely.

  ‘We would welcome your conversation, my dear.’ Roland’s sincere partnership with his wife. Yes! Fouché thought instantly. Then worried at whether he really could have the conversation he wanted, with her present.

  ‘I would not dream of interfering,’ she said. ‘And I have a guest of my own. Good evening, Monsieur Fouché.’

  Fouché had started to sit, stood again, caught his fork as it teetered, and took her offered hand.

  As he watched her pulling the door closed behind her, Fouché’s unconscious mind took up his sentence. ‘Monsieur Minister, I concern myself with the royal correspondence.’

  Roland’s eyes came up from his plate. He waited, silent.

  ‘Monsieur Minister, what was found in the Tuileries after the departure of the King? Have we everything?’