Fleur-de-Lis

by Isolde Martyn

  "I never found out who authorised his arrest but I suspect it was because he was a retired military officer and there were fears he might be one of those likely to take command if there was an insurrection. Anyway, at least I was able to promise Maman I would find out where he was being held. She wanted me to make my peace with him. I told her it was impossible—we hadn't set eyes on each other for years—but in the end I agreed for her sake. In return I insisted she must not return to her lodgings but stay with friends where the authorities could not find her.

  "I escorted her to their house. The mood in the streets was ugly and dangerous. The rumour that Verdun had fallen had reached the city the day before and there were placards everywhere with inflammatory slogans."

  "Marat, I suppose!" Fleur interrupted in disgust.

  "Marat was behind most of it. People were frightened. We thought that the Austrians and Prussians were advancing on Paris and would put us all to the sword. Lots of men enlisted. Troops were sent to man all the barrières. Everyone was whetting their pikes and daggers, wondering how soon the attack would be, and there were so many rumours that we didn't know what to believe.

  "Marat had his own agenda. He'd been stirring up the rabble against the imprisoned clergy for days. He had Paris believing that we had a potential enemy hidden in our midst and that if the prisoners were set free they would turn on us. There was much talk of hidden arsenals of cannon and bayonets. Suspicion was rife. The prisons were crammed and more suspects like my father were being brought in by the hour.

  "The hotheads in the sections were like a powder keg with a lit fuse, just burning for the opportunity to make trouble. Once things really started happening, it was anarchy. The mob you experienced when you first arrived in Paris, Fleur, was nothing in comparison. The city was a hysterical creature out of control. That's why I wanted Maman safely off the streets."

  "But up until then you are saying there had been no—"

  "Incidents?" he interrupted dryly, his expression tainted with self-mockery. "Madame will permit me to rise?"

  Fleur nodded with a frown, steeling herself. Raoul leaned an elbow on top of the cupboard where he kept his files and stroked a finger down the grain of the door.

  "The first trouble—another nice word—began the day before my father was arrested. The Jacobin Club was buzzing with the news when we met next morning but we all thought it was a single incident. What happened was that a mob of section malcontents saw a party of priests being escorted to L'Abbaye Prison and followed them there and butchered them. Do you know where that is?" he asked, coming across to scowl at the map.

  She was trying not to imagine the horror.

  "It's here, see, in the Quatres Nations section." He pointed to the church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Just a few streets north of the Palais de Luxembourg gardens where she had walked with M. Beugneux. The tiny block of colour looked so innocent.

  "But when that was reported, Raoul, didn't anyone try to prevent the situation getting further out of hand?"

  "The Inspector of Prisons, my senior at the time, went to see Danton, who was Minister of Justice, but Danton didn't want to know. No, Fleur, don't give me that what-do-you-expect expression. Danton's always steered excessively close to the wind," he patted his pocket, "and it would be simplistic to say he believed that Paris was ill and blood needed to be let to calm it down—he wouldn't have been alone in that—but who knows, maybe he was just bloody scared."

  "And you can respect a man who stood by while innocent people were slaughtered?" Fleur stared sternly up at him.

  "All Paris stood by." He paced to the door before he turned to challenge her. "You know as well as I that there have been countless circumstances in history when princes and generals, even supposedly civilised ones, have stood by and let innocent people be slaughtered."

  "I reckon he should be brought to trial for it. And Marat. That's really what the Girondins have been trying to get him for, isn't it?"

  "And they've failed. How would you prove it, madame accusateur? Look, people accepted there was a royalist conspiracy." You were not here, his fierce expression told her.

  "So what did you do?"

  "My fears for my father were mounting. I made a list of the five most likely prisons he could have been taken to and I went to each of them, but it was hard to get information, to even get beyond the turnkey at two of them, but I finally bribed my way in. I left L'Abbaye to last, not thinking that the militants would return but, oh Christ, they had.

  "The light was fading as I crossed the Pont Neuf. I stopped a soldier coming from that direction and asked him for news. He told me he'd heard the mob had been to L'Abbaye a second time. It was happening here." Raoul tapped the map at the junction of streets south of the church's chancel wall. "The old place for hangings and whippings. By the time I reached Saint-Germain, it was worse than a medieval painting of hell. Have you ever heard of the Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch? No? Well, it was utter carnage, beyond imagination, but... but it was the orderliness of it, the silent efficiency that horrified me. They were hauling out the condemned prisoners through the turnkeys door, one by one, like beasts to be butchered for market. Any garments and shoes were removed from the prisoners and tossed onto a pile, and then the prisoner was made to run between two rows of sabres. As he fell, the onlookers cheered, 'Vive la nation!' It was not trial and execution but a process devoid of any humanity, or if this was a new guise of human, Fleur, then it made humanity despicable."

  He returned to lean upon the cupboard rubbing his injured hand as the images rose in his mind. "I recognised the soldier in charge, a former hairdresser, would you believe, but I did not want to have any dealing with him. Instead I walked straight into the room the committee of inspection were using as a tribunal. No one bothered me so I hung around for an opportunity to question the man presiding. Some of the prisoners waiting to be examined had been brought up into an adjoining room, and I peered through the bars of the grille in the door hoping my father might still be alive, but most of them were priests. I am not sure what I would have done if he had been among them. You see, at that point I didn't know whether I had been elected a deputy and I didn't have any letter of authority. They did actually acquit someone while I was there and the guards escorted him out and we could hear everyone outside whooping and shouting, 'Vive la nation! Vive le patriot!'"

  "Did you have to wait long?"

  "It seemed like forever, and all the while I was staring at the pile of pocketbooks, valuables and handkerchiefs piled up on the long table and wondering if Papa's were already there. It was smoky and there were lots of empty bottles and dirty glasses." He drew breath to add something and then changed his mind.""Just don't defend yourself from any of the blows, cure," I heard a guardsman say to one elderly man. 'It's quicker if you keep your arms down.' Oh God, Fleur!" He realised he was offloading the ugly story onto her as though she were a priest.

  "Go on," she encouraged, understanding his need.

  "The president of the section told me my father had already been judged and dealt with. 'Who wanted to know?' he asked. I felt like St Peter denying Christ, Fleur, but I was scared for my own life by then. I retorted sternly that I was standing as a deputy and that I was a loyal patriot, unlike some members of my family. God knows, I wished the ground would swallow me up but I was fortunate, for at that instant the local commissaire arrived with a small force of soldiers demanding to know what was going on. By heaven, he was a brave man or else out to clear his own name from any later repercussions; either way, he had a lot of courage to intervene. He ordered them to halt the executions and demanded to see their letters of commission. I seized the opportunity to return to the street and search for my father's body. He deserved an honourable burial not to be thrown in some mass—" He broke off, and drew his ungloved hand across his mouth, swallowing hard before he continued.

  "Many of the corpses had already been carted away but there were still dozens of people lying there. I was stunned with shock.
I hardly knew where to start but I had to act quickly in case it all started again, and then I heard a man calling me. I knew the voice and I stopped and turned. In that brief respite when they had all been ordered inside to speak with the commissaire, the poor wretch had managed to drag himself to a doorway—no distance really, just a few paces, but sufficient to go unnoticed. He called out to me again, begging my mercy as a gentleman, pleading with me to hasten his death. It was hard to see his face but I didn't need to."

  "It was your father."

  "No, it was yours." He held her gaze without flinching."I have to tell you this to exonerate myself."

  She swallowed, dreading to hear."Then you must go on."

  "I borrowed a lantern from one of the carters. Your father was wounded beyond saving, bleeding profusely and in terrible pain. I hardly recognised him without his wig and finery. I-I wanted to run away, Fleur, not just because it was him, but I was so disgusted with mankind that I didn't want to know or think, or in any way be part of this horror, but your father pleaded with me again."

  "What did you do?"

  "I knelt beside him. There was no chance of getting him to safety. There were plenty of onlookers and I'd have been cut down. As it was, one woman yelled out: 'What are you pilfering, fellow? Did we miss something?'

  "I pressed my thumbs onto his windpipe and took his life. I suppose that is why your brother wanted my death. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I looked upwards to the sky cursing God and, believe it, there were even people watching me from the upstairs windows. Perhaps your witness was one of those. God knows, there were plenty of people standing around. And then..." he faltered, "and someone behind me said in execrable French, 'Do you want a drink, mon sir?' And I swear there were two Englishmen there, drunk as lords. One of the carters said they had been swigging wine with the executioners and inciting them to kill faster. The English Prime Minister has deep pockets, don't you know. Anything to make us butchers."

  "Are you suggesting the English agents might have provoked the massacre?"

  "No," he answered wearily after a deep silence. "No, it was still our patriots who signed the warrants and held the sabres. By Christ, Fleur, the locals were selling wine and lemonade as though it was a fête."

  "And your Papa?" It was a whisper, not enough. She could count a score of heartbeats before he answered.

  "In some mass grave beyond the Porte Saint-Jacques. I did not seek further. It was night and I was world-weary and," he sighed, "you may not believe me, Fleur, but somehow helping your father was almost as if I had held my own papa and made my peace. Or so I fool myself." His chill expression at that moment might have taught lessons to the north wind. "So it was not quite what you thought, was it?"

  Her own guilt rose up like a mirror. Fleur could not answer, not yet. The true horror of her father's death drove into her like a savage arrowhead.

  "No, it is not quite what I thought. I played the ostrich while you played the hero."

  "Hero!" His self-contempt lashed them both. The room was silent. Beyond the walls a blackbird fluted; out in the yard heavy boots stamped to attention on the cobbles.

  "You are forgetting your lines, madame royalist," Raoul observed cuttingly, casting her a hostile look. "What else shall you accuse me of? Ah yes, murdering your half-sister, the Vicomtesse de Nogent, familiar of queens and sycophants." He came across to lour down at Fleur, leaning his palms upon the printed outskirts of Paris. "As far as I'm aware, she was held at La Force with the Princesse de Lamballe, and all the world knows their fate. I was in the vicinity, yes, but it was the men's prison I visited looking for my father."

  Fleur stared down miserably at the streets meshing the Chat Rouge. Somewhere there Marguerite had died and nothing was left, no gravestone to lay the flowers on. His breath stirred the curls along her forehead as he ground out: "Still, never mind, blame me for that as well. I'm omnipresent like God, squeezing life out of the rich and idle. Let me see, who else? Your stepsister, Henriette, who broke her neck when her horse threw her. I was in London at the time but don't let that consideration bother you. Ah, damn, but then you might suspect me of starving Cécile to death in her Soho garret. Do you suppose I gave her the gleet as well or was it Henri de Craon? Marat's written an excellent treatise on gleet and the abuse of mercury if you want to know more but I'm sure Henri de Craon's the expert."

  Fleur flinched, and he mistook her surprise for condemnation.

  "Well, you have to blame someone accessible, don't you, Fleur." His gloved hand clenched. "I do. In the quiet of the night I forever cross the cobbles outside La Force looking for my father among the dead. The others, Hérault, Gensonné, they didn't see what happened, didn't see—" His voice grew more ragged with every breath, the brown eyes glinted, fierce as an eagle's. "What happened to your father and mine is a stain on the honour of France. The unborn will think of this generation with shame. They won't understand how hard we are struggling to get it right. But, Christ Almighty, how can we manage it? In four little years, after a millennium of servitude? It's not just loaves and fishes the multitude want, but finery and carriages. And if we cannot deliver them, September will happen again."

  His hand rose to mask his eyes as if the gesture would shut off the memory. "My mother blames me for my father's death. She thinks I should have warned him to leave Paris. There are thousands like her and you, who abhor the Republic, but we did not want it to come to this, we didn't."

  Compassion was both finite and infinite; it was possible also he might loathe any tint of pity in her voice. She fought the urge to go to him. It was expected and, on her part, offered freely but it was not the answer, not yet.

  He sat frozen before her, a breathing sculpture, one beautiful hand steady as though carved from the same wood his fingers touched. She rose and stood with pilgrim patience until Raoul finally spoke.

  "Will you join me in hell?" His words ruffled through the peace like golden, wind-blown leaves.

  Her heart told her what to say. "It takes two hands to make peace, two voices, two hearts. It's your turn, citizen. I am guilty until you prove me innocent." Holding her wrists crossed against her thighs as though some invisible rope bound them, she waited for his questions.

  Raoul raised his head slowly as though his mind was being drawn back to the present by her request. "You want to do this?"

  She met his look evenly. "Isn't it necessary?"

  "To assuage my self-loathing."

  "Your guilt and mine. For all your laws, we carry it. From the font and in our natures."

  "Then speak softly, mon coeur. The walls listen in this place." He stood up and his proud stance took her back to Caen. The authority he could exude at will streamed out like swirling energy to engulf Fleur. Power and desire both thrilled and frightened her.

  "Begin, sir," she whispered, moving round to take the other chair.

  "When did your brother return to Paris, citizeness?"

  It was necessary to swiftly break the lock of gaze. He knew about Philippe! Already she was retreating, fleeing in her mind.

  "Answer, Fleur!"

  "V-very recently." Swallowing, she continued. "My aunt and I quarrelled over my reopening the Chat Rouge. She left to seek my uncle in Coblenz. Philippe was there and she told him about my new circumstances. She felt I was keeping company with the wrong people." You, her eyes told him. "Philippe, since he is now the head of my family, felt some responsibility for me and decided to come back to France." She didn't blame her interrogator for looking sceptical."I daresay he had other reasons too. It was actually him following me that night at the Palais-Royal. Anyway I saw him several times after that. He—he was trying to arrange a marriage for me."

  "God's sake, with whom?" Raoul's indignant reaction pleased her.

  Her face dipped in newfound shame."Henri de Craon."

  "Christ!" Raoul's curse prickled her flesh.

  "Philippe thinks upon him as a friend," she babbled defensively. "You really believe that he and Cécile...
" She gave him a sharp look. "Is gleet the same as soldier's pox? Is that what killed her?"

  He shook his head. "No, but it would have set its mark on her child. Diable! You've gone as pale as... Don't tell me the bastard's back in Paris? Is he? Has he laid hands on you? No? Thank Christ for that! That cur leaves more than his calling card."

  Fleur forced her fists to unclench as Raoul subsided in his chair behind his desk.

  "So your brother made himself known to you."

  "Yes, he wanted me to... to find out information."

  "From me?" The harsh words were like a dagger slicing through the soft remembrances of hands and lips.

  "Yes, Raoul, from you, but I refused."

  "No, you didn't."

  The accusation writhed between them like a lit fuse.

  "It is doing something for the right reasons that measures us as human beings." Like a marksman, she held her gaze steady and continued, her voice even:"It would be a way out to think otherwise, is that what you want?"

  The flicking bitterness stilled. "No," he answered with a long, sad breath that disturbed the papers lying beside the map. His dark lashes hid his soul from her.

  Fleur ran her fingers unseeing along the southern boundary of the city. "The night you held me in your arms, Raoul, was for us, not a dead king I don't respect. Raoul! Raoul?" She looked down in astonishment, observing that his shoulders had begun to shake, and then she realised it was not distress that capriciously moved him.

  "Diable!" exclaimed her mercurial antagonist lifting his face, laughter leaf-veining the corners of his eyes. "I should hate to think you sacrificed your virginity for the Bourbons."

  Outraged virtue on a pedestal! Fleur's indignation tumbled earthwards with a thud and she thrust a knuckle to staunch her own laughter and then succumbed.

  "I didn't interrupt your rhetoric," she protested as her giggles subsided, marvelling that the delicate alliance with this man was stronger than she'd imagined.