"You mean he's a member?"
"Of course, everyone worth knowing is a cardholder here."
Jean-Paul Marat! Fleur gazed wide-eyed at the hateful bête noire of Charlotte's circle. The man made a great show, repeatedly thumping fist against palm, as he spoke against the Girondin government. His language, punctuated by vulgarities, was fast and passionate and the mournful dark eyes were lit with fury. Fleur, not informed like her neighbours on assignats, public works programmes on government corruption, listened intently but Emilie drummed her heels and shrieked her approval along with the women upstairs.
The man who spoke after Marat, however, had a voice as flat as Holland and Fleur's mind began to drift back to her own problems. She was not even aware of Marat ringing the time bell or a new speaker mounting the platform until Raoul deVillaret's voice crashed through her reverie like a fist slamming down upon a table.
"Of course women have a right to education," he exclaimed, "but expanding our schools and colleges to accommodate them is an expensive process that may take decades. It is the boys who are our future. They must be educated first if we are to ensure we have men of vision who will lead us into the next century."
"Pooh!" bawled Emilie.
"What about women of vision?" shouted a woman in the gallery.
"There's no such thing," guffawed one of the men.
"Give us votes!" shouted another female voice.
"Yes, give us a chance to vote against male idiots."
"Not if you're not educated," a man yelled at the gallery, and was applauded by his male companions.
"Patriots!" De Villaret held up his hand to quieten the furore. "Patriots, it has taken over seventeen centuries since the birth of the sans-culotte Jesus for many of our brothers gathered here this afternoon to be given the right to vote. Change is necessary, certainly, but it must be gradual. Our republican sisters cannot expect either equality or education at the scratch of a quill."
It was reckless of Fleur to draw attention to herself but she could not stand such masculine dogma. Besides, it was not being anti-revolutionary. Her heart was palpitating and she would probably tumble headlong in the first sentence but...
"Citizen," she cried, springing vehemently to her feet. "Are you blind?" The sudden hush of interest around her was disconcerting. Had her voice carried so clearly? "Are you deaf too? Half of France is composed of women and yet you seek to muzzle us, to make obedient lap-dogs of us."
"Woof, woof," bawled a youth and Fleur felt her cheeks heating at the male chuckles.
"Go on." DeVillaret's unemotional tone carried authority that quietened the chamber. He leaned his forearm along the lectern, his unreadable gaze settling disconcertingly on her. Fingers like a pianist. For an instant her mind froze, but the female cogs and wheels inside her seemed to tighten her breathing and create mayhem in all sorts of surprising places. Imagine posing for him in gauzy draperies. She forgot the rows of people separating them.
"Go on! He won't eat you."A female hand was tugging insistently at the lower edge of her bodice jacket. "Keep going!"
"We—women—are not spaniels!"
"No, but you can lick my toes any day, cherie," sniggered a male voice.
Other crude comments bombarded her but she could be dogged too. "Why are we women not allowed to vote?"
"Because, sweetheart," bellowed one of the men, waving his pipe, "when we get home after a day's work we want supper, not yapping about politics! And what's more, Rousseau's Sophie would agree with me."
"Yes, that's your place there!" A male forefinger pointed towards the painted ploughman's wife.
"No, there!" guffawed a man on their bench, casting lascivious eyes at France's nakedness on the other wall. Emilie clouted him.
Was it worth trying to make herself heard when the fathers and husbands in the audience were resolved not to take her seriously? Still Fleur kept on her feet. "I despise Rousseau's 'Sophie' and I completely endorse Citizen Condorçet's suffrage proposals and so should all of you! Is any man here denying that women have souls or feelings or minds?" she demanded, but it was to her enemy on the rostrum that she flung the question.
With a disturbingly sensual grace, Raoul de Villaret pushed back the lock of hair that had loosened from his queue and smiled across at her with what she took for despicable condescension. Or was it pity?
"Citizeness, I am not denying any of that. You must admit, however, that very few of you women have been educated to have any real grasp of the difficulties of government and yet you would vote, despite that ignorance." He let that sink in and added: "On what grounds will you elect a deputy, citizeness? Because you like his swagger, because he smiled up at you in the gallery. You are blushing, citizeness." Compassionately, he swung his gaze from her and looked up to include all the other women. "Oh, I will concur that girls need to be educated, but I totally abhor giving women voting rights in the present situation." The drumming of heavy masculine heels supported him.
"When will you give us equality?" snapped Fleur. "It took only a quick scratch of a quill to overthrow a thousand years of monarchy."
"A lot of scratches of the quill, my pretty troublemaker." De Villaret's smile was unmistakably patronising. "You are not wrong..." He paused for the laughter to hush. "You are not wrong to demand equality but let us educate you first, citizeness." His voice descended to a sensual purr of masculine conceit, and then he straightened, waiting for the applause, his expression of triumph withheld as laughter and shouts of "Bravo!" echoed around the hall, rocking Fleur as if the very air vibrated.
Fleur subsided onto the bench beside Emilie, who was bouncing up and down, applauding her.
"I'll volunteer to educate you, darling!" A neighbouring male paw slapped the only available part of her backside. "What about tonight?"
Shame scorched her face, but the agent provocateur of her humiliation, de Villaret, bestowed a smile gleaming with white teeth in her direction. "You wish to add anything, citizeness?"
"Yes," she shouted, rising to her feet again. "You are old-fashioned despite your youth, citizen, and you are a coward. I do not know what few experiences with women have given you this blinkered attitude towards my sex but I suggest that you are carrying ancient values like the ass you are." She sat down heavily, her heart thumping as though it was trying to escape her rib cage. The laughter around her was suffocating. It was tempting to flee the hall but that would be a female thing to do. Dear God, why was she thinking so treacherously? Female? This female would sit it out.
Deputy de Villaret was laughing as he stepped down but the other men were not finished with Fleur. One of the Jacobins sitting near the front stood up, swung round to face the audience, and waggled his fingers behind his head like donkey's ears.
"Hee-haw," yelled someone and then most of the men were doing it either at the women upstairs or at the back bench.
It was Emilie who jumped to her feet now."You salauds! Asses the lot of you! Come on, citizenesses of France! Will you listen further to such imbeciles?" The women in the gallery rose from the benches like a flock of squawking rooks and clattered down the stairs in their wooden sabots as heavily as they could. Emilie grabbed Fleur's arm and they marched out together. It was wrong. They should have stayed.
"Nice speech," said one of the sans-culotte women, tapping her pipe out on the fence protecting the Tree of Liberty. "Will you come and enjoy a beer with us, citizeness?"
Fleur was amazed; they were actually asking her. Two days ago some of these furies might have been willing to hang her from a lamppost. "W-what time is it, please?" she answered hesitantly.
"Quarter to four, ange." Someone pulled out a gentleman's watch. Who had owned that—a tumbril victim?
"Oh, that late. Forgive me, I have to meet someone." The sudden scowls showed they did not like her refusing. "Truly, a business matter." And just as well; they seemed a touchy lot, and with her past she was bound inadvertently to say something to offend them. Emilie's disappointment seemed genuine
, and on impulse Fleur gave her a hug. "Thank you for supporting me."
The round face beneath the gathered cotton cap shone with pleasure. "I always come here when I can get away from the stall. I sell used clothing—not doing badly either, if you need something. You coming tomorrow?"
"I'll try to."
Fleur arrived back at the Rue des Bonnes Soeurs somewhat grazed from having run the masculine gauntlet, but with a delicious idea unfurling.
"I have decided," she announced to M. Beugneux, who blinked up sleepily from his armchair like a noonday owl, "I am going ahead with reopening the Chat Rouge and we are going to put on a performance that all Paris will talk about."
"Just as well," replied M. Beugneux dryly, straightening his velvet sleeves over his frothy cuffs, "for a fellow called Thomas has arrived to manage it and the man's too large to argue with. And what shall we do with the donkey?"
"Donkey!" shrieked Fleur with immense delight. "Thomas and Blanchette!"
"Your friend has gone across the street to negotiate some temporary accommodation for the long-eared madame. I take it she is a friend of yours as well?" He held up a finger and listened. "Voila! They are back, I believe."
Fleur hurtled down the stairs and threw open the front door.
Weathered, bald as a pebble but no less rotund, the large, kindly man who had escorted her to Caen stood there grinning, with Blanchette drawn up beside him.
"Oh, Thomas! Thomas!" Fleur flung herself into his arms. He gave her a smacking Gallic embrace and whirled her up into the air.
"Bonjour, ma petite!" he laughed, scuffing the tears of joy from her cheek as he set her down.
"Oh, Thomas, and you brought Blanchette!" She could hardly breathe for happiness as she turned to fling her arms about the little donkey.
"All it needs is the thief of Clerville," chuckled the underchef dryly, "and we have quite a reunion. Guillaume sends his regards. He says the gypsies also send their good wishes. Ah, bonjour, madame," he called up to Tante Estelle, who had leaned out of the upstairs window to investigate the hubbub. "Hasn't she grown into a beauty?"
"Are you talking about my niece or the donkey?" her aunt retorted. "Because I tell you this, Thomas, they both lack brains coming to Paris and so, I fear, do you."
The underchef gave her a cheeky bow and turned back to Fleur. He stared at her across the donkey's pelt, his levity vanished. Perhaps he could read the struggle and hunger of the recent years in her face as she could in his.
"I am glad to be here, Fleur," he said, close to tears. "Bayeux was..." his large, capable hands flexed, "a struggle."
"It won't be easy here, either," Fleur warned him gravely. "It could be far worse."
"Ça ira," he reassured her, quoting the Marseillaise. It will be all right. "Besides, petite," he added immodestly, his cheerfulness bursting irresistibly forth, "who else makes food as delicious as I do! Something the Parisians are about to find out, hein?"
* * *
Fleur's aunt, dressed for hours of tedious travel in a diligence, confronted her niece at breakfast a few days later. A different aunt, a shoulders-back aunt, a most unusually up-early aunt. Fleur braced herself for a scolding.
"I have been doing some common-sense thinking about our conversation the other day, child, especially what you said about not being afraid any more, which was quite an admirable sentiment, given the circumstances, and I have decided that I must stop behaving like a coward." She then spoilt her speech by adding disgustedly, "Heavens, Fleur, you have straw in your hair."
"Oh, have I?" Fleur bit her lower lip apologetically. "That is from feeding Blanchette. Thomas and the carpenter, Jacques Caillou, have been making a byre for her, and Caillou's children think she is wonderful. They are going to lead her through the streets with a placard showing the Chat—"The avalanche of words rolled to a halt. "But you are still leaving?" she asked solemnly.
"Yes, I thought you understood I had made that decision. But I am not going back to Calvados, not yet. I am going to do something for myself. I am going east to Coblenz to find your uncle. There is a diligence leaving for Rheims in two hours. I daresay I shall find some way to cross the frontier."
"But that is wonderful." Fleur threw her arms round her. But what of a pass? Would the authorities grant her one?
"Wonderful!" scoffed her aunt after a dutiful embrace. "Utter madness, like walking in front of a firing squad. But it is missing Charles that is destroying me. If I haven't much time left and he is still alive, I want to spend every moment with him."
"You will have years and years together." In genteel poverty! Her uncle's few letters lamented a lack of money. Everyone said the émigrés lived on nostalgia, revenge and air. Her aunt shrugged but Fleur assured her, "No, no, I am sure he will rejoice to see you."
"Well, we shall see. You were right to remind me that my duty to you is done. It has set me free." It was bravely said, although one could see her aunt's resolve was like a custard but newly set.
"You will find Oncle Charles," exclaimed Fleur. "Oh, I know you will."
Her aunt made use of a handkerchief. "I shall see Philippe, of course, and seek news of your sister too. I vow I'll find some means to send you word." Then she held Fleur back from her. "Dear me, if times were not amiss you would scarcely be launched into society." Or married off.
"I will manage. And I have friends to advise me now."
"Mansart and Thomas, yes, but I would give Beugneux notice, him and the snake. There is a definite similarity between them." She shuddered. "Ugh. He has that same narrow-eyed glint as though he is laughing at me. Oh, you may giggle, child. "There are none so deaf as those that will not hear." But he has his uses. Look! Here is my pass."
"Let me see." Fleur examined the paper in amazement. It looked quite genuine.
"He acquired it for me. See, it says I am needed to oversee the birth of my first grandchild." M. Beugneux clearly had hidden talents. Perhaps he was anxious to be rid of Tante Estelle.
"Oh dear," sniffed her aunt. "I do not know what your brother will say to my abandoning you. He will not be pleased with either of us."
"It is none of Philippe's business any more."
"It will be if you find yourself in trouble. No, do not interrupt me. You are older than your years, Fleur, but be very careful. People can be malicious. I mean those who use the power of gossip like a surgeon's knife and can make fast work of your reputation. Versailles was like that. You may scoff. Maybe the butterflies that fluttered prettily among the rosebushes are all gone now, but it is not just the dung beetles who marched on the palace that want to fly, it is the scorpions and the spiders you must be careful of."
"Aunt!" spluttered Fleur, hugging her again." That was quite a speech. I will watch where I tread, I promise."
"There is a reckless streak in most of the Montbullious." Her aunt sucked in her cheeks with the knowing observance of an in-law and set her niece aside. "Now, if you will kindly fetch my bag down... and," her expression became somewhat sheepish, "I was wondering if there is something from the house that we could pawn to pay for my fare."
"However did you manage to reserve a seat on the diligence without any money?"
A gloved hand waved airily. "Oh, Monsieur Beugneux arranged all that. Now what about the money, dear?"
There was just the picture in M. Bosanquet's bedchamber—an old-fashioned, frothy painting of a simpering girl and her beau flirting on a garden seesaw by an artist called Fragonard.
"I'll go straightaway."
The shopkeeper where Fleur took the picture made an immediate offer. He said that it might be one of a set.
By the time she handed a tense aunt up into the diligence, Fleur was tempted to persuade her to stay. It was not easy saying farewell to the woman who had given her so much. For not only had Tante Estelle and Oncle Charles taken her in when she had arrived on their doorstep with Thomas back in '89, they had paid for her schooling. Their house in Caen, the wonderful library, the musical evenings, the play rea
dings, had brought Fleur such happiness after the lonely months at Clerville. But in '91 when Oncle Charles had decided to leave France to join the King's brothers in Coblenz, her world disintegrated for a second time. As punishment for her uncle's desertion, the revolutionaries demanded everything he owned be surrendered to the state. She and Tante Estelle had been forced into the streets with muskets. Next day an order had been issued for their arrest and, forewarned by friends, they had left Caen for the hardship of Grimbosq.
"God keep you safe, dearest aunt," Fleur stepped back from the diligence moist-eyed, fearful she might never see her again. Although the travelling pass had been scrutinised without a comment, it would be inspected at least twenty times before the coach reached the disputed border district and Tante Estelle still had to contrive to pass across the enemy lines. "Au revoir," Fleur called out, wiping away her tears. It was not easy; like casting off in a longboat from the mother ship and watching her sail away, and yet Fleur also felt a wondrous sense of liberation.
* * *
Fleur drove herself like a galley slave for the rest of the morning, mostly because she felt guilty that she had driven Tante Estelle away, and partly because the trickle of creditors dirtying the doorstep was increasing to a flood. Leaving an obliging M. Beugneux to fob them off in his distrait fashion, Fleur escaped with Thomas to inspect the Chat Rouge.
Even seeing the café in the déshabillé of daylight, Thomas began to stride around the cutting block in the kitchen, his mind cooking up the future, while Fleur scuffed the mouse droppings under the cupboard with the back of her heel and watched him in delighted relief. His enthusiasm was no surprise. After helping run an all-weather, sausage stall at Bayeux, management of a Paris café was definitely a carrot worth munching.
Fleur spent the rest of the rainy afternoon trotting after him through puddles at the Parisian produce markets until they finally surrendered to complaints from sore feet and decadently indulged in hot chocolate and crepes on the Pont-Neuf. A good place to debate whether the Chat Rouge could afford to serve more substantial fare such as tourte de saumon frais or rognons de mouton au vin de Champagne, for the plethora of cafés along the boulevards and the Palais Royal arcades provoked daunting comparisons. It would mean increasing her debts by a hundredfold. Dare she risk it? Unlike his holy namesake, however, Thomas had no doubts. Parisians were going to taste the cuisine of la belle Normandie as they never had before, and what was more, they were going to adore it. Vachement!
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