"It falls, Citizen President!" thundered Raoul. "And so shall we!" He had them now. The entire hall was listening. "And so shall we! And why? Because we have not bound Might to Justice. Citizen President, fellow deputies, I propose that an army of professional soldiers be formed to protect the Republic." The pounding of feet shook the hall in applause. "And, what is more, I propose those men, those brave soldiers of France, be paid a fair wage. Forty sous a day, patriots!" He moved through his arguments briefly, not needing to say what was obvious, and left the speaker's stand to huzzahs.
Deputy Delacroix sprang to his feet. "I personally will support the proposal and recommend that my fellow committee members do the same." The vote was taken.
"Carried!" Hérault leaned forward. "Perhaps, Citizen de Villaret, you would like to convey the good news to the national guard." Stooping, he retrieved the dress sword from the floor and proffered it to Raoul. "Next time," he muttered, "use someone else for your theatricals. You nearly scared me witless. Go! I hope your idea works."
Passed to one of the national guards in the lobby, the message of regular pay and permanent status was instantly conveyed to their commander. Any intelligent soldier could read the blatant purpose in the dew-fresh legislation but such lawful bribery might make Commander Hanriot more sympathetic to his civilian masters. Worth a try.
The gallery, too, had done their arithmetic by the time Raoul returned and, restless, were muttering with mistrust.
"Enough shillyshallying, you blockheads! Expel the Girondins!" shrieked a woman with biceps worthy of a laundress.
"Remove 'em! Remove 'em!" chanted the gallery. Their pounding feet shuddered the gallery joists.
The Girondin deputies looked fit to wet themselves. Two sansculottes on the floor of the hall were beating drums, their faces grotesque masks of malevolence leering at the cowering men.
"Order! Silence!" Even God would have needed a thunderbolt to quell the hubbub, and Hérault, far from divine, was reduced to mortal contingencies. He directed an urgent expression at Danton and Robespierre but both men sat immobilised, their faces adamantine.
"Order!" bellowed Hérault once more. "ORDER!"
"Ajournez! Ajournez!" chanted the gallery.
Deputy Paul Barère rose, held up his palm to the gallery for silence and with his other hand pointed towards the twenty-two accused Girondins. The spectators hushed.
"Let those deputies be suspended!"
"Suspend 'em from the lampposts!" guffawed one of the Mountain and the Girondins exploded in protests like outraged chickens.
"A la lanterne!A la lanterne!" The deadly drumming crescendoed.
Pushing past the sans-culottes who cluttered the aisle, Barère craned up to the president's table. After a whispered conversation, Hérault rose.
"We shall adjourn for an hour," he announced, ringing the bell, and then he cupped his hands and shouted to all the deputies above the roar of the gallery: "Patriots, go outside and congratulate our soldier-citizens. They are doing a fine task of keeping order out there. Those of you who need a breath of air, please follow me."
Barère clapped Raoul's shoulder as everyone except the Girondins filed out.
"Let's see, eh?"
It might work: the calculated fraternising to make it clear to the mob leaders that the army and the Convention held the peace together. Some hundred and fifty or so of the deputies followed Hérault out of the hall to cram the foyer, but when the huge doors were thrown open, Raoul wondered if he looked as white as Hérault did. Beyond the small breathing space of steps were the national guard and, beyond them, the mob. The deputies would need to want martyrdom badly to step down into that colosseum. The soldiers didn't look friendly either, but dangerously insubordinate, the higgledy teeth a row of grins beneath the military whiskers. Their shiny Roman helmets, like props from David's paintings, seemed incongruously virtuous. And where in hell was Fleur?
"Play Cupid, will you, de Villaret, since you're obviously feeling brave this morning." Paul Barère drew Raoul into a triangle of whispers. They wanted him to wing his way to Hanriot! As if that would work!
"Sergeant!" Hérault summoned a soldier over. "Escort Citizen de Villaret to your commander."
"Yes, citizen." The man saluted and led Raoul through the cordon to where Hanriot sat astride his horse, a narrow-shouldered king for the hour. Not a face for a painting. A lampoon maybe. That nose with the pitch of a mitre roof on too small an under-storey. The dark eyebrows wriggling towards each other like veering caterpillars.
"Citizen Captain."
"Citizen Deputy."The plumes nodded.
"The Citizen President of the Convention sends his greetings and requests that you put an end to this intimidation. He reminds you that the Convention represents the people and it will not be dictated to."
"I received your message. Forty sous a day! It will take more than that, de Villaret, but a nice try." The commander leaned down: "Tell your fucking president that he and the assembly can go fuck themselves, and if he doesn't surrender the twenty-two deputies to the people within an hour, we will blow 'em all up."
Freezing his features in an inscrutable expression, Raoul resumed his place facing the soldiers at Hérault's left hand. He smiled tightly at Hanriot. Hanriot smirked. And the Hieronymus Bosch faces lapping the horse's flanks were gloating too. All save one. He saw Fleur beyond the cannons, her lips a tight seam of fear. For him. She had come because of him. Oh, my brave girl. He forced himself to appear serene, willing the air to play his messenger and carry his reassurance to her.
"What did he say?" Hérault's voice shook him back to the moment.
"You wish me to say it aloud?"
"Yes," Barère snorted on the President's left.
"Very well," and Raoul repeated the insulting reply with a deliberately flat voice. With everyone watching, it helped his colleagues preserve stoical expressions.
Hérault turned to the deputies crowding the steps behind him and spoke softly: "Paul, Raoul, come with me to speak with Hanriot. The rest of you fraternise with the nearest soldiers, and skirt what little grounds are left to us. If any of you discover some exit that has been overlooked or any guards that will guarantee to let us through, come back and tell me." Then with a smile that had helped to topple a monarchy, he ignored the cannon that were being roped round muzzle-first to face him and bravely stepped forward, walking out past the rank of soldiers, his fingers clasped behind his back like a commander. Raoul and Barère followed like loyal lieutenants.
"Bonjour, Hérault de Séchelles," Hanriot smiled; the hands more used to handling ledgers were surprisingly at ease with the horse's reins.
"My dear Hanriot, we understand what a difficult job you have here, but you are under obligation from the Convention to keep the exits to the Tuilleries free."
"And you are free to leave, my dear Citoyen President, we have no quarrel with you. We want the twenty-two guilty men."
"You are forgetting these men are deputies, representatives of the people. They are not condemned by any court or lawful assembly and I will not surrender them to be torn apart."
The moustache above the tobacco-stained teeth quirked, highly entertained.
"For God's sake, Hanriot, it is more than democracy at stake here," protested Raoul. "It is liberty or death."
"Indeed, it is, Citizen de Villaret, and I've no quarrel with you either."
Nor was Barère some lily-livered coward: "Hanriot, we come in peace. If you disobey the President of the Convention, you will be sending France down a very dangerous path indeed."
"Surrender the twenty-two!"
"No." Hérault was ice calm.
"On your head be it, Citizen President." Hanriot swivelled in the saddle. "Prime the guns, lads."
The peacemakers, feeling not in the least blessed, returned proud-backed to the shade of the building and faced the sniggers of the pikemen who had been watching from the steps.
"There's no way out," the scouting deputies grumbled. "
We've checked everywhere."
Hérault grimaced and led them back into the hall to discover that half the Plain's benches were entirely taken by sans-culottes with muskets across their laps. The Jacobin deputies who had not bothered to leave the chamber were nearly slathering like dogs above a rabbit warren; a killing was due. The silence was almost tangible and then it was broken by the familiar clunking of the ratchets that operated the wheelchair of the crippled deputy, Robespierre's close friend, Couthon, as he waggled the two handles above the chair's arms round and round and propelled his way towards the speaker's rostrum.
"Assist me, friends." Robespierre's brother, Augustus, and his apostle, Saint-Just, hoisted him from the chair and heaved him up the rostrum steps.
Although the strain almost burst his lined face, Couthon anchored his speech notes and hung courageously onto the rostrum.
"Since you have been outside, citizens, and know how 'free' we are," the ironic tone was offensive, "I suggest we get on with what the people demand and accuse the twenty-two. I have an indictment here against these malefactors."And he began to read out his list as though it was no more than a student enrolment. Twenty-nine names, he read out, and ten of them were committee members.
Hérault had no choice but to put it to the vote. Raoul knew his colleague well enough to see with what self-loathing it was done, but surely... The Girondins sprang to their feet roaring a protest. The Mountain victoriously hurled the invective back. Arms rose like an army of pikes. The men designated to make the tally were wide-eyed, finding it impossible to distinguish the votes of the deputies amongst the waving arms of the unlawful invaders. No votes were counted.
"Carried!" shouted Hérault with unnecessary haste, more like a harassed schoolmaster than the temporary helmsman of the nation. It was wrong; it was incredibly wrong.
The Mountain were on their feet cheering. One Girondin fainted. Armand blinked as though he had not heard a word. The gallery was whooping. Raoul would have stormed out then and found a wall to fist. The schoolyard was given over to the bullies! Hérault had bought breathing space but at perilous cost. There was still a chance that the indicted deputies could flee Paris but the mob had loured over the Convention like a monstrous thug.
Marat left the hall to convey his triumph to the people.
As the tumult slowly subsided, the great orator of the Girondins, Vergniaud, rose with a knife in one hand and a glass in the other. "Since you are so thirsty for our blood, President, may I offer you a glass of it now. And—"
The screaming beyond the foyer momentarily halted his peroration. It sounded like Fleur.
* * *
With a demon on his shoulder, Raoul fought his way through the men pouring out into the courtyard. Marat, perched on a cannon's carriage like an organ monkey, was trying to be heard above the melee.
It was the tricoteuses. Like hounds upon a fox, some six or seven had fallen upon a woman with their fists and boots, slamming her head against the pavement. For a moment, Raoul dreaded it was Fleur, but the blood-splashed skirts around the kicking feet were stripped in blue and white. No one interfered, but a hysterical, familiar young woman in black was screaming to free herself from the national guardsmen who held her by the arms. Fleur, oh my darling, Fleur!
"Pull those harpies off!" Raoul snarled to the sergeant with such anger that the man instantly obeyed. Some dozen guards ran in and hauled the women, thistly with nails and teeth, back from their convulsing victim. Clothing torn, a young woman lay shuddering on the gravel; her bloodied face was battered beyond recognition, her eyes wide open to the sky in shock.
Marat sprang down and in the suddenly hallowed hush came to kneel beside the woman. "Hush, Emilie, it's over! It's over, pet."
"Organise a stretcher," Raoul barked at the soldiers.
"Stupid cow was sticking up for a bloody Girondin," spat one of the attackers, arms like legs of mutton thrust akimbo. "That dumb Gensonné arsehole."
Emilie's shuddering had stopped. Marat lifted the girl's thin wrist and felt her pulse. "I'll deal with this. Look after your own," he muttered warningly, and Raoul needed no second bidding. Fleur, struggling against her captors, was yelling angry abuse at them.
"Lucky we didn't start on madame there," bawled one of the harridans.
It needed drama to satisfy this foul audience. With a surly grin, Raoul strode across and, drawing back his hand, slapped Citizeness Bosanquet to instant silence. "Now keep quiet! You are under arrest. Bring her inside!"
* * *
So he had hoisted up his true colours at last and chosen! If anything would have confirmed her as an enemy of the Revolution, his action had. Unfair! Unjust! Fleur furiously kicked over the chair in her cell, wishing it was Raoul de Villaret. Then she flung herself down on the stained ticking mattress, her forefinger knuckle between her lips to staunch her weeping.
Why was she shut in on her own? Not out there where the aristocrat prisoners sat playing cards and gossiping? Did it mean her name would be on one of the terrible lists in the morning? This was where the long road from Caen had led. This was the only reality—the steps up to the bloodstained scaffold and the little window with the basket ready. Not her make-believe world of the café and the Rue des Bonnes Soeurs. What an imbecile she'd been to think that she could survive.
The Revolution! Had she not been a lady, she would have spat. For a while she'd been deluded, wanted to believe Emilie's dream, to love Raoul de Villaret and even concede some good in Marat, but not now. She could only despise herself for the pathetic way her defences had started to crumble every time de Villaret had turned the full cannonade of his charm in her direction. Curse Raoul de Villaret! He was a snake, watching, waiting in the grass, while she hopped around so innocently.
* * *
It was a sullen, silent girl who glared at him from the palliasse in her cell in the Conciergerie with eyes that had seen too much—intensely pained, sea-blue eyes. His hand had left no marks upon her face but there was emotional damage. He could see short-term repairs to her pride had been carried out—that was expected—but he did not like the resilience that newly lacquered her. Patience and sensitivity would be needed to plane it away.
He set the tray down upon the small table and kicked the door shut.
"Go away!"
"Bonsoir, mon coeur. Thomas sent this for you." To tantalise her, he lifted off the covering and fanned the aroma in her direction.
"Take it away!"The slender shoulders heaved, her face was to the wall.
"You are fortunate those disgusting harridans didn't beat you witless as well." Setting the only chair upright with its back to his sulky prisoner, he straddled the seat and leaned round to help himself to a slice of duckling."Have you the sense to stay at home for your own good? No! Whose brilliant notion was it? Yours or the Lemoine woman's?" His tone would have blasted oaks.
"Unless you can tell me how Emilie is, you monster, go away!" Ah, so he was a monster.
"She's in Saint-Pelagie." He licked the orange sauce from his fingers.
"Prison. Prison?" Fleur twisted round, dashing the tears from her eyes. "But those bitches attacked her. Why didn't you lock them up? Oh no, don't tell me, they are to receive medals. Liberty, Equality and Atrocity! Congratulations, Citizen de Villaret, what a wonderful new world you have created."
It was tempting to find some innovative way of stemming the lady's eloquent invective before every troublemaker in the prison heard her, but fortunately she subsided. He raised his glance reluctantly from her lovely breasts, still rising and falling in angry passion, and answered calmly: "Believe me, your friend is safer there, out of harm's way, for what good it will do her. The poor creature hasn't recovered her wits yet. Aren't you hungry?" Another morsel of duck slid down followed by a gulp of wine.
A female fist hit the mattress. "Then send me over there, you brute, so I can help. I'll nurse her."
"I suspect what you know about nursing wouldn't fill one paragraph. Leave it to her mother. She's look
ing after her. What the hell did you think you were doing at the Tuilleries anyway, you harpy? I thought you had more sense than to be hanging round with the likes of her." It was unfair, perhaps, to goad her.
"At least Emilie had the courage to defend someone she cared about, which is more than can be said for the rest of you cowards. Convention! You are just a row of windmills, waving your sails whenever Marat blows." That fist of abuse found its mark.
"I am releasing you in the morning, Fleur," he declared, rising to his feet as though he was a magistrate delivering a verdict, "and I am sorry if I had to hurt you but it seemed the only solution considering we were surrounded by eighty thousand people, not to mention the cannon. However, if you prefer to play the martyr tomorrow, I can arrange a place for you in a tumbril. The first one leaves for the Place de la Revolution at half-past six sharp. I expect you'd like to get it over with early."
"That is not amusing, you devil," she growled and, grabbing up the bucket from the corner, stood poised to hurl the contents at him.
He kept his voice low, his gaze on the pail. "No, nor is there anything amusing about having to rescue you constantly from your own reckless stupidity. That, for instance!" He jabbed a finger towards the pail. "Stop behaving like a nine-year-old and listen to reason."
"Reason has become your harlot," she snarled. "Get out!"The bucket shifted ominously. He knew her capability. He doubted she'd miss.
"I had you brought to this place to learn sense," he informed her sternly, dropping the tureen lid back in place with a satisfying clatter. "Not very friendly, is it?" But his words seemed to consolidate her defiance, for her eyes had become as hard and brilliant as diamonds.
"Adieu till morning. I hope the fleas find you. And from tomorrow onwards you will do as I say if you value your life, citizeness, or you can bloody well marry Felix Quettehou."
Fleur-de-Lis Page 40
