Treason's Spring

by Robert Wilton

  Benjamin slipped out through the convent door into the porch.

  ‘Hold!’

  His heart burst in his chest, and he felt the jewel thumping back against it.

  Unspent, damn it.

  A man close in front of him, men; and a voice. ‘We sent the empty message to the apothecary’s, and we waited for you to call for it. And now we can pick up your contacts too, and whatever they brought you.’ Benjamin felt his whole body, a screaming tempest of senses. Sir Raphael Benjamin has lived, and damn you all. ‘So: you are the one called Kinnaird.’

  ‘Y- No!’

  The final flickering of a candle in the darkness; a last gasp of individual passion and pride. His blood was up and his blade was out; but Sir Raphael Benjamin died quietly.

  4

  The Saltpetre Factory

  IN WHICH TWO TRADING GENTLEMEN FIND AN UNLIKELY SYMPATHY, MME LAVALIER REFLECTS ON THE NEW AGE, A PRUSSIAN MASTERPLAN REACHES ITS CLIMAX, AND THE COMPTROLLERATE-GENERAL FOR SCRUTINY AND SURVEY TAKES A HAND

  The Memoirs of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

  (extract from unpublished annex)

  As the chaos grew within the borders of France, so it spread without. On the 6. of November the volunteers of Dumouriez beat the Austrians at Jemappes. Ironic that, had I been the healthy braggart so desired by my illustrious father and my illustrious uncle and all of their illustrious forebears, I would have been commanding such a battle – or perhaps slaughtered in some pointless skirmish early in the Revolution. Militarily it was a nonsense in every way – even the stupidest of the Talleyrands could have seen that – a victory of irrational incredible charges, by idiots against regular soldiers, causing vastly greater casualties among the French than were suffered by the Austrians, who prudently withdrew, and followed by an equally imprudent French advance into the Low Countries, after which ensued within months both a more dramatic and lasting military reverse and the complete alienation of the population.

  But at the time, such an empty-headed euphoria for the Revolution! Brussels fell within a week. The bizarre confidence of the Revolution grew, in both its leaders and in the wild instinctual mind of the mob. The territory of France was definitively cleared of foreign foe, and became thus susceptible to domestic division. And the army learned the power of its over-passionate volunteers, which was a doubtful lesson, and the power of artillery, which was wiser and more enduring.

  In Paris, this ensured the apparently irreversible advance of the bloodthirstiest elements, the Marats and the Robespierres and the St-Justs, and consequently the impossibility that a prominent man of reason and discretion should quit the tranquil avenues of Kensington for the ensanguined gutters of Les Halles. Having unchained the mob, the leaders of the Revolution grew increasingly desperate to find red meat to feed it; corpse after corpse was flung into the insatiable jaws, and the administrators continued their investigations to discredit the very men who had done most to ensure the stability of the realm for so long. When I learned, from my hosts in London, of the ministry’s pursuit of the royal correspondence of Louis, I knew that I could not in safety re-cross the Channel.

  [SS G/66/X3 (EXTRACT)]

  ‘Intriguing business this morning.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Our latest guest from Paris: Mademoiselle de Charette.’

  ‘Ah, she’s supposed to be quite the peach. Breeches already straining all along Pall Mall.’

  ‘As you say. Anyway, she asked to call on me.’

  ‘My dear fellow; is there nothing you will not endure for your country?’

  ‘She insisted. Discretion of the service be damned. Swans in, demure curtsey if you please, and polite thanks for what we’d done to get her and the old man out.’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, says I, and hope to see you both in the park sometime. Then – this the more interesting part – she reaches down into her top hamper, and – ’

  ‘She what?’

  ‘Well, one’s met a few more French girls in the last year or two, but this was new on me too. Reaches down, and then pulls something out. A damned great jewel, if you please; a blue diamond.’

  ‘You had to refuse, alas.’

  ‘Here’s the point. It wasn’t a touch, and this ain’t just any bauble: it’s the bauble. One of the French crown jewels. One of Louis’s royal diamonds. I think it’s the one they call the Bleu de France.’

  ‘Smuggled out of Paris in Mademoiselle’s tits! But we thought – ’

  ‘Disappeared one dark night, terribly unfortunate and suddenly the revolutionary government’s flush with cash. Seems it wasn’t quite like that. Not with this piece, anyway. It transpires that an English hand found its way into the machine. Got hold of this diamond, and saved it from the mob.’

  ‘Whose hand?’

  ‘You’ll blink at this: Benjamin.’

  ‘What? Not Raph Benjamin?’

  ‘He.’

  ‘I assumed him dead of the pox in Naples. That or hanged.’

  ‘He’s been knocking around France a while now, between the guillotine and glory. We’ve had our eye on him. The way La Charette tells it, he had a hand in her escape. And he gave her the jewel to bring out.’

  ‘What a blood.’

  ‘Ain’t he? Jewel to be passed on to me, for our safe-keeping. Thing is, I rather think the girl ought to get the chance to tell her tale discreetly at court; otherwise she’ll have it all over Kensington in a week.’

  ‘We can’t have that.’

  ‘She’s quite emotional about it all; especially about him.’

  ‘All rather a romance for an impressionable French chit, no doubt. But that’s worthy service by Benjamin.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Might be time that name was welcome in the drawing rooms again.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  At this time, the workshop of François Gamain, locksmith, is easily found. Gamain is known for his skill, and by diligence and courtesy of manner he has built up, over fifteen years, a reputation among the finest houses in Paris. Gamain is only a craftsman, of course. But he’s a discreet craftsman and, if a locksmith should embody one quality, surely it’s discretion.

  Gamain’s workshop is on the rue de Rennes. The street is definitely not of gentlemen, but the northern end of the street – and in the rue de Rennes this is what matters – is close enough to St Germain to have caught a little of its affluence. Gamain’s workshop is on the ground floor, behind an elegantly painted sign and a sturdy door.

  Gamain’s home is harder to find. It hides underneath the workshop, reached through a small door in one corner of it.

  At precisely noon, on any day when he is not summoned by a commission to work on site somewhere, he passes through the small door and down into his lodgings, and as he settles onto the stool Madame Gamain’s arm swings in with a bowl of soup and he lifts the spoon and begins with even sips and the steady rhythm of the spoon, down and up, to take his lunch.

  Madame Gamain makes good soup.

  Two decades of craft – fitting locks, fixing locks, designing locks, making locks, and occasionally picking locks – have trained Gamain’s mind to see the world as a lock. The mechanism behind the plate. Behind any problem, behind any situation, he sees the axles, the pins, the wheels, the cogs, the springs. A blockage he feels as a tightness in the muscles of his chest and stomach. The unblocking he feels as a great breath of air. He, he knows, is the key. For whatever challenge his customers present, he is precision and delicacy and easy in and hup! open.

  Madame Gamain makes good soup. There’s fullness to it, but not a heaviness, and that’s important, especially for the noontime meal: sustenance that does not dull the faculties. Keep the fingers strong, keep the brain turning.

  Madame Gamain is talking. About how she cut her finger in the cramped kitchen space, doing work that the maid should have been doing but wasn’t, and it’s all because their lodging is so small and dingy and isn’t it inappropriate that a man
of his success should still be huddling under the stairs like this? Gamain is aware of the noise of her, like the chatter of a customer behind his shoulder as he kneels on his old felt mat and works at a lock.

  The Revolution has been winding itself up like some gigantic mechanism. Gamain attends meetings and discussions. Meetings of like-minded men, men of craft and men of discretion, who interest themselves in the proper functioning of their world. Gamain feels the springs tightening and straining; he senses the distortion in the fibres of the metal. Himself, he slips through the mechanism smoothly. Even in the Revolution, there are still doors of difference and distinction; there are still secrets. Trade is steady, for a locksmith of repute.

  At a quarter after twelve, Madame Gamain swings around her husband’s shoulder, still talking, and the bowl swings away and Gamain rises and turns and climbs back to his workshop, with measured steps.

  Roland found himself calling into Fouché’s office more often than Fouché called into his. He acknowledged it wearily. He had never been a man on whom other men tended to call.

  ‘Another coup, Fouché?’ Fouché saw him, stiffened – Ah, but how long will my little authority last amid these jackals? – and stood. ‘Another success?’

  They stayed standing. Uncomfortably, Roland realized that there was another man in the room, off to his side, a dirty smudge on the edge of his vision. Fouché’s creature; Fouché’s brute. The man Guilbert. Roland nodded vaguely at Guilbert. Guilbert seemed not to see him.

  ‘I claim no great glory, Monsieur le Ministre. We make progress. The Revolution – ’

  ‘Of course!’ I begin to loathe these bon mots. When did the Revolution become a person, anyway? ‘You thwarted a counter-revolutionary plot. You destroyed a foreign agent. A fine night’s work, surely.’

  Fouché shrugged. His modesty becomes false; I must watch that. ‘I would have preferred him alive, to answer to justice and to reveal more to us of royalist schemes. But satisfactory, Minister. Satisfactory.’ He stood and, two-handed, presented a small leather bag. ‘I have the honour, Minister, to return to an officer of France one of her prize jewels, recovered from the British thief.’

  Roland, all fingers: checking it, startled, and then looking up again in wonder. Fouché felt warmth in his chest. He’d contemplated some grander performance in the Convention, and then doubted he could carry it off. He trusted Roland to advertise the credit fairly, and he knew this approach would strengthen his own reputation for discretion; for humility.

  Roland was grabbing his hand, shaking it flappily. ‘Wonderful, dear Fouché! My compliments. My compliments. I shall . . . And – and what of the book?’

  Now Fouché felt discomfort. He looked down. The book was perfectly centred on the table, and open.

  ‘Some prize, is it? Codes, or treasons?’

  Fouché shook his head, uneasy. Still the book started up at him. ‘It is . . . It seems trivial, Minister. It is the steward’s register; his log book – his account of what comes in and out of the palace, which tradesmen visit, what is purchased and delivered – ’

  ‘Any record of those documents – the secret correspondence?’

  Of course not, Fouché thinks. ‘No, Minister. I have studied it most carefully. I fear there is no mystery in here. The steward Bonfils kept the book out of some . . . some foolish instinct of duty. A souvenir of his service, no more; his last attention to his vanished life.’

  ‘Visitors significant, perhaps.’

  ‘And the visitors are not people of significance, Minister. The steward was not exposed to the visits of the King’s courtiers. These are nobodies: the men who come to fix new carpets; the men who gild the banisters; a visit from a locksmith; an architect’s assistant making plans for an extension; a doctor for the royal pets. It is a record of the obscenity of the court – you could feed the army on what Louis’s palace devoured in a week. But no treacheries.’

  Roland was nodding. He’d lost interest. He turned to go. ‘The King was always mad about locks. That locksmith would be his tame one.’

  Fouché’s eyes came up: ‘His – ?’

  ‘He was fascinated by locks, Fouché!’ Roland had turned back. ‘The mechanism, you know. Liked to think he could design such things himself. He was always inviting locksmiths – to show off their newest device. Used to send the Queen insane with boredom; the King and his toys.’ Roland smiled benignly at the idea. ‘He had the ridiculous affectation of being somehow sympathetic with the heart of the artisan.’ He shook his head. ‘A foolish world, now happily passed.’

  He left.

  ‘You were hasty, Guilbert!’ Fouché was immediately back into their conversation. His obsession with the palace and the steward was feeling like a foolishness itself. ‘He were better alive. Now he can give us nothing.’

  Guilbert was impassive. Monsieur has come round to torture fast enough. ‘Regrettably it is not always possible, Monsieur.’

  Fouché was circling the table. ‘The great British spy, the centre of all of their recent ga-’

  ‘There is some confusion, Monsieur. It seems this is not the man Kinnaird. This is Benjamin.’

  Fouché stopped. ‘Benjamin? I seem to know the name.’

  ‘One of the circle of the woman Lavalier. Sir Raphael Benjamin. A gambler. A philanderer. A flaneur.’

  ‘A spy?’

  ‘A ten-sou adventurer. A scoundrel only. Certainly not the man we wanted.’

  Fouché was standing still, looking through Guilbert. ‘This Kinnaird. He grows more mysterious. More elusive. A wizard, truly.’

  ‘I’m no one, Lucie, truly. And I have no idea what’s happening around me.’ Kinnaird shifted his back against the tree trunk. A beetle considered his outstretched boot, and then began to climb over it. ‘And I’ve nothing to hide.’

  ‘Nothing to hide? No one believes that, Monsieur. Everyone has something to hide.’

  ‘I’m innocent of all they believe.’

  ‘That’s the weakest defence of all.’ She was pacing the ground, as usual.

  They were in the glade by the river. The sun was playing pale among the branches again, but the branches were barer now, and it was much cooler than when Lucie had first brought him here.

  Kinnaird considered the faint sense of damp under his backside, and shook his head. ‘It’s madness. By association with Hal Greene I am assumed to be complicit in whatever he was doing. And by continuing to exist in France, just by living from day to day, I am complicit in mysteries and plots I know nothing about.’

  Lucie stopped pacing. ‘There’s an answer.’ Kinnaird looked up. He wondered at her. She never seemed to settle in this place, however pleasant. ‘Simple. Leave France.’ Perhaps it was freedom, not restlessness, that kept her moving. ‘Or cease to exist.’

  He smiled. ‘There’s a third answer.’ She frowned. ‘Find out the mysteries and the plots.’

  She growled and spun away. Then immediately she was back, coming for him and dropping into the leaves beside him. ‘Monsieur, you’re a fool. You’re . . . you’re like a child here. You play a game you don’t understand, and you’ll get hurt.’

  He nodded. ‘I’m also Scottish, Lucie. And we’re the worst fools of all. We will not – will not – be told. Tell me to run; I stay. Make a game of me, with plots and tricks, and I will defeat you.’

  Now Lucie looked rather scared.

  In an attic flat in Les Halles district, on the mattress which was the only furniture, Edward Pinsent slumped and drank.

  The loneliest man in Europe, he thought.

  ‘The loneliest man in Europe,’ he said out loud.

  ‘Fuck Europe,’ he said. And took another mouthful from the bottle.

  Keith Kinnaird didn’t have to knock. He pushed cautiously at the door, remembering suspicions and a loaded pistol.

  The opening door revealed the bare boards, then the mattress, and then the body of Pinsent. Pinsent took a moment to focus. When he realized who it was, he closed his eyes. Eventually – he d
idn’t know if it was a second or an hour – he opened them again. The Scotsman was still standing in the doorway.

  Edward Pinsent laughed. It was a Falstaff laugh, old and dirty and world-battered. ‘How is it,’ he said, apparently holding his head up with difficulty, ‘that whenever I am in the shit – whenever and wherever the shit is shittiest, wherever I run – the door opens, and you have come to pay a social call?’

  ‘It’s easy, Mr Pinsent. I follow the smell of shit.’

  He stepped in, and closed the door. ‘Or perhaps I’m your one true hope.’ Slowly, the door swung open again. It was warped, and the catch hadn’t engaged. Kinnaird pushed it back firmly with his heel and this time it stuck. ‘And you’ve just never noticed.’

  ‘How in hell did you find me?’ Pinsent looked like a sulky child.

  The clumsiness, Kinnaird thought. The stink, even.

  ‘You cut rather a distinctive figure, Mr Pinsent. Not to belittle your skills of deception, but you don’t pass easily for a Frenchman.’

  Pinsent chuckled. ‘Perhaps I don’t, at that.’ He fought a skirmish with his own limbs and scrambled upright from the mattress. By some extraordinary feat of self-possession, some deep-buried decorum, he became controlled and almost sober. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said with resonance. ‘My manners. Please to come in.’ He reached up a large hand, and at the second attempt gripped Kinnaird’s shoulder. ‘This might surprise you as much as it does me, but I’m genuinely glad to see you. Friendly face.’ He opened a sweeping arm. ‘I’d offer you a chair, but . . . ’

  Other than the mattress, the room was bare. The mattress, a sprawling bag in one corner that appeared to contain Pinsent’s limited wardrobe, and – against the ripped and damp grey wallpaper over the mantelpiece – the drawing of two girls.

  Kinnaird said, ‘But the chair was stolen?’

  ‘Furniture stolen, linen in the laundry, and I’ve pawned the silver to fund the revolutionary army. You’re welcome to the mattress, but I confess my fear that it has prior occupants who bite.’ His face twisted. Kinnaird saw that it was real anger. ‘Look,’ he said, and bent and gathered the clothes back into the bag, and pushed it into the form of a large cushion. ‘Settle yourself on that. Everything I have is yours.’