Memory of Flames

by Isabel Reid (Translator) Armand Cabasson

  Margont knelt on one knee and scraped the edge of the button on the ground leaving a light tracing of gold dust. Then he slipped it into his pocket.

  He went out and caught up with Catherine de Saltonges, who was walking slowly home. He reflected on the strangeness of the little family: a woman who had almost thrown herself into the Seine, a child dead before it was born and a man of whom nothing was known but this damaged button.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE needles were lined up on the table along with the terracotta pots. Their geometrical neatness reassured him. The first needle had been soaked in curare forty-eight hours earlier, the next one thirty-six hours, then thirty, twenty-four, eighteen, twelve, nine, six, five, four, three, two and finally one hour previously. He picked up the oldest one and went over to the rabbit he had bought at Les Halles. The animal was trembling in its cage, trying to squeeze out through the bars ... The man injected it. The beast squealed and began to leap about its prison. The movement should have accelerated the circulation of blood and hastened the action of the poison. But the rabbit continued to thrash about and bang into the sides of the cage. Failure. After forty-eight hours the curare must have evaporated or mutated on contact with the air and was no longer effective. He had expected problems like that ... Little was known about curare, partly because it was so hard to come by and partly because there were so many variants.

  He took the next needle and injected his victim again. Another failure. The animal’s movements, more erratic than ever, contrasted with the irreproachable order of the lined-up needles. A third attempt led to a third failure. Had the product deteriorated in the pots? A fourth injection, still no result. He started to lose his temper. He would have liked to wring the stupid rabbit’s neck, making its vertebrae crack so that it would be rendered as motionless as the other objects in the room. But he controlled his mounting rage. He was used to doing that.

  The four-hour needle was effective: instantaneous death. So once the needle had been soaked in curare he would have to try to take action within four hours. That was not very much ... As a result he would have to have the pot with him, in case too much time elapsed and he had to impregnate the needle again. What did it matter? He had the poison, everything else was just a question of organisation and method.

  CHAPTER 19

  MARGONT was pacing about his room. After the wide open spaces of the desert during the Egyptian campaign and the endless plains of Russia, he was suffocating in his chicken coop. Sometimes the interplay of his vivid imagination and the shadows contrived to change the colours in the small space. The walls took on a slight ochre hue and seemed to close in on him, crushing him, and transporting him back to his monastic cell at Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert. Lefine, stretched out on his straw mattress, seemed to belong to another world. Margont had insisted that he come back with him.

  ‘Can I go now, Chevalier?’ Lefine now asked sarcastically.

  ‘No, I need you.’

  ‘It’s not very nice of you to keep me here.’

  ‘There’s no more time for being nice. Or rather, we have to be nice in a different way.’

  Lefine got up smartly, like a cat bounding to its feet as it scented

  danger, and went over to his friend. Margont looked him in the eye.

  ‘You’re not obliged to agree to the plan I’m about to propose.’

  ‘I want to refuse already ...’

  ‘We’re in a race against time because of the military situation, and I fear we are being overtaken.’

  ‘Of course, Joseph’s limping devil ...’

  ‘If people realised that the war was at our doors, they would be out buying everything edible and the cost of food would soar! But prices haven’t gone up, not by a sou! All Paris is blind! Almost no one is preparing defences. Our ill-preparedness offers a wide margin of manoeuvre to determined monarchist groups ...’

  Lefine reflected that here was a fantastic business opportunity. Perhaps he could buy chickens today and sell them for five times the price in two weeks?

  ‘What is your new plan that apparently involves me?’

  ‘As a result of all that they’ve been through, our royalists are adept at protecting themselves. I’m under no illusion - their acceptance of me is only partial. They’re prepared to listen to me, but they won’t reveal anything to me. Everything is partitioned; each member knows something that his neighbour doesn’t and vice versa. The group functions a little like a chest of drawers full of secrets where each person has access only to his own two drawers. Only Louis de Leaume has an overview of all the plans of the group — and I’m not convinced even he knows everything! I’ve been accepted onto the committee, but I haven’t been told a word about the plan to carry out a series of murders to destabilise the defence of Paris. I must admit I had hoped that they would be so keen to enlist my help that they would have told me more. Of course, they’re suspicious of me. But they’re also anxious to act. So, to sum up, the group are working on two plans. The first is to distribute propaganda to rouse part of Parisian society to support the King. The second is their campaign of murders - but fortunately some of their members are not yet in favour of that. But what if they have a third plan?’

  ‘What makes you think they might?’

  ‘Louis de Leaume and Jean-Baptiste de Chatel are both men of action and prone to violence, albeit for different reasons. They’re ultras, and the two plans I’ve just mentioned are probably not extreme enough for them.’

  ‘Isn’t killing people enough proof of the group’s intransigence?’ ‘No. Not for fanatics like them.’ Margont added, ‘I feel I understand those two, you know, because I share one of their defining characteristics - idealism! Of course, our ideals are not the same. Which means I feel both close to them and repelled by them. Nothing is more beautiful than idealism. But there is nothing worse either. If you consider history, idealism has resulted in great progress, in leaps forward and improvements ... but it has also brought untold carnage and other abominations. For these two men the two plans are not enough to quench their thirst for action.’

  Lefine tried to gather his thoughts. Half an hour ago he had had a clear picture of the situation. Now he was confused. His mind was like a calm pond into which Margont had just thrown his hypotheses, stirring up mud and silt.

  ‘But Charles de Varencourt keeps us informed, and he likes his money, that fellow.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t know about it. Or maybe he’s frightened to speak, or else he’s waiting for the best moment to exact the highest price ... Or perhaps he’s playing both sides to make sure he doesn’t lose out, whoever wins.’

  ‘I don’t always understand what it is that you want me to do ...’ ‘When things aren’t moving fast enough, sometimes you have to administer a kick to the ant hill.’

  ‘And I suppose I’m the kick.’

  ‘The group is like a liquid bubbling on the fire of events. If we wait until the flame is big enough to show itself, it will be too late. So I propose to add an ingredient - that’s you! - to create an instability that will force them to lower their guard.’

  ‘Oh, I see, you want to play the alchemist! But do you know how many of those, by playing with sulphur in the hope of turning lead to gold, blew themselves up with their concotions?’

  ‘You’re not obliged to accept. If you agree, all you have to do is stay with me. I know that I’m regularly watched, so eventually they will spot you. If you don’t agree, you are free to leave now.’

  Lefine was more torn than ever. His instinct for survival was shouting at him to make for the door. But there was another part of him ... He always worried that if confronted with a difficult situation, Margont would not escape without his help. And he did not want to lose his best friend. Because once the Napoleonic dream had been comprehensively shattered, once everything had collapsed and the Revolution was nothing but a distant memory that no one dare evoke, what would be left for him apart from Margont, Saber, Brémond and Piquebois? Whilst Margont thought
in the abstract terms of universal ideals, Lefine thought in concrete terms of his own wellbeing. Margont was trying to look as if he were thinking through his hypotheses, but Lefine could see that all he was thinking about was whether or not his friend was going to accept. Although Margont had tried to produce elaborate justification, sometimes he was easy to read, even though he was unaware of it.

  ‘All right, I agree. But it’s going to cost Joseph dear! They’re going to have to pay my wages for the end of 1812, for 1813 and for the beginning of 1814, with interest on top!’

  ‘Thank you, Fernand! But then who will have access to the police reports?’

  ‘That will still be me. I’ll just make sure that it is impossible to follow me when I go to see Natai.’

  ‘Very good. All you have to do is to be seen with me from time to time and the Swords of the King will soon notice you. Let’s take stock. How far, in fact, have the police got?’

  ‘I read a copy of the report from the inspectors of the civilian police in charge of investigating Berle’s death. Their inquiry - interrogations of the servants, friends and relatives, verification of his fortune, and reading his correspondence - has revealed nothing. No liaison, debts, no enemies so annoyed with him that they would mutilate him and assassinate him ...’

  ‘Why do you put it in that order when we know he was burnt after

  death? Haven’t the inspectors of the general police discovered that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have they finally heard that there was a royalist emblem pinned to the victim?’

  ‘Not that either.’

  ‘Joseph has divided the investigation in two, and only we know both parts.’

  ‘It’s us he’s counting on,’ said Lefine. ‘As we thought, nothing of value was taken. The only things that disappeared were the colonel’s notes on the defence of Paris. The civilian police have ruled out the possibility of a privately motivated crime and have reached the conclusion that the murderer or murderers were royalist partisans. The inspectors have reached the point where we started.’

  Margont told him what he had discovered that day. Then he tossed the button to Lefine with a challenging look. Lefine caught it, clapping his hands. He examined it carefully, turning it over slowly close to his eyes.

  ‘It’s a military button ... There’s a number or a letter, or several ... It’s too worn to see ...’

  He looked disappointed. The button hid the solution to an enigma, but was like a nut they were unable to crack.

  ‘So you also think it’s the button from a uniform,’ said Margont. ‘But hundreds of soldiers wear uniforms with decorated gold buttons. The foot artillery of the Imperial Guard have buttons that are decorated with two crossed cannon barrels surmounted by the imperial eagle. The grenadiers of the Old Guard also have the imperial eagle on theirs. Our friend Jean-Quenin still has his button from 1798, even though it’s no longer regulation, and it has the words “Military hospitals” and then “Humanity” with a Phrygian cap above it. His other buttons have a staff entwined with a serpent surmounted by the mirror of prudence and surrounded by an oak branch and a laurel branch. Customs-house officers are similarly decorated, but I don’t know the exact details. The light infantry have the number of their regiment inscribed inside a

  hunting horn. Normally they’re silver, but I can’t be certain that there aren’t any light regiments who have gold buttons. Just as the infantry of the line is supposed to have gold buttons but several regiments have silver ones. And I have no idea about other buttons - the navy, for example, or the engineers ...’

  ‘We don’t get paid but we all have these expensive uniforms. Why can’t all soldiers have the same buttons? And anyway, the regulations for uniforms are not always respected. Each regiment has its own foibles and traditions and variations according to what comes to hand. If Saber suddenly says, “I want all my soldiers to have uniform buttons with the number of our legion in roman numerals preceded by an ‘S’ for Saber,” we’d all have to pay for them from the little money we have left...’

  ‘Perhaps we’re barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps it’s the button from an expensive civilian suit. I don’t know what a count or a baron would have worn under the ancien regime ... You’ve got so many contacts, do you know anyone who could help us?’

  ‘I know the perfect person. I have a friend who works in the

  commissariat. If anyone knows about military buttons, he does.’ ‘I’m relying on you. Then there’s the fire - what clues can we draw from that?’

  Margont brandished a Bible. Lefine remembered being dragged, in tears - of rage! - to church by his father who hoped that God would put the little miscreant back on the straight and narrow. Ever since, he had given the Holy Scriptures as wide a berth as possible. Margont, on the other hand, was turning the pages with the practised ease of a preacher. ‘Job, chapter l, verse 16: “While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, ‘The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.””

  His fingers flicked back a bit further. ‘Leviticus, chapter 10, verses l and 2: “And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them,

  and they died before the Lord/”

  Lefine felt uncomfortable. He did not believe in Cod. But if He did in fact exist and if the Bible was His word, He did not seem exactly ‘the God of bounty and love’ which He was usually taken to be ... Margont, undeterred, went on and his apparently random quotes started to form a coherent and unsettling whole.

  ‘Deuteronomy, chapter 5, verses 23 and 24: “And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, (for the mountain did burn with fire,) that ye came near unto me, even all the heads of your tribes, and your elders; And ye said, ‘Behold, the Lord our Cod hath shewed us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth.”’

  ‘Isaiah, chapter 66, verses 15 and 16: “For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord shall be many/”

  More pages turned. The more the passages mounted up the more impact they made as if each were a fire, which, added to all the others, formed a blazing inferno.

  ‘Jeremiah, chapter 5, verse 14: “Wherefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts, because ye speak this word, behold, I will make my words in thy mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall devour them.”

  ‘And finally, of course, Revelation, chapter 8, verse 5: “And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.” What do you conclude from all that?’ ‘That I prefer to think about the button ...’

  Margont slammed the Bible closed. ‘Fire has a double symbolism in the Holy Scriptures. It is either a positive force, the incarnation of the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God ... Or, it’s the opposite, the illustration of his all-powerfulness, the instrument of his anger, the Anger of God ... And supposing Jean-Baptiste de Chatel believes he’s been charged with a divine

  mission? To overcome the Antichrist, Napoleon, with fire.’

  ‘But what exactly is the Antichrist?’

  ‘A man in the pay of the devil. He starts off quietly, then launches into a frenetic series of conquests. “He shall subdue three kings” - according to Daniel - and will himself become a king. His power will grow still greater and will spread “over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations,” as Revelation says.’

  There are strange similarities, actually ... coincidences ... but that’s all th
at would be needed to stir up a religious fanatic.’

  ‘He will wage war on God and the Church - Napoleon annexed the pontifical states to the Empire and, by his order, Pius VII spent almost five years in a supervised residence, at Savone, then at Fontainebleau. He will try to pass himself off as a god. But his reign will not last. God will easily and rapidly overturn it. Most of that comes from Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse of St John, because it’s the coming of the Antichrist that sets off the Apocalypse.’

  He paused for a moment before going calmly on: ‘Jean-Baptiste

  Chatel seems to want to follow the Bible to the letter. Because of that, when I immerse myself in the Bible it’s as if I can read his thoughts ... If you think about it, it’s hardly surprising that he has nothing in his head except for the Holy Scriptures. He spent several years imprisoned by the Inquisition with only the Bible for company.’

  ‘So you think that’s the “third plan” - to assassinate the Emperor with flames?’

  ‘Aren’t the damned supposed to burn in hell? It’s a suggestion. Chatel would have mystical motives but the other members might support it for political reasons. However, there is someone else who might well be influenced by the Bible ...’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Louis de Leaume. Like all aristocrats, his childhood would have been steeped in religion. His family must have taken him to church, spoken of Cod, quoted the Bible ... I don’t know how much importance he attached to his faith at the time. But later he was in a way dead, and then brought to life again. He pulled

  himself out from amongst the dead ... It’s unimaginable that he would not have made a connection between his resurrection and that of Christ. So the question is: what sort of connection exactly? Did he just see it as a coincidence? Or a sign from God? Did it tip him into religious fanaticism as well?’

  ‘One should never mix religion and politics ...’

  ‘How right you are.’