Where the Light Falls

by Allison Pataki

  The glorious tales that had come from Paris to his home in the south had stirred within him an exhilaration and sense of patriotic duty that he had answered—tales that had quickly turned dark and macabre when he beheld the street executions for himself. But the past few weeks had brought rumors of even more sinister events, stories that curdled his blood. Whether or not two thousand prisoners from across the city had been dragged from their cells and torn to pieces in the middle of the night, he could not be sure, but he had to believe that this was just a passing fever. A scourge of bloodletting that would soon be over, replaced by the original ideals of hope and freedom. It was as he had just told Marie: they could not give up on freedom, on the new nation. Not yet.

  His law offices were a few blocks north of the Seine and a stone’s throw from the hulking carcass of that infamous tower of torment, the Bastille. Indeed, if he needed a reminder of why he was here, Jean-Luc could look to the Bastille for affirmation. For four hundred years that great stone fortress had served as a prison, the physical embodiment of the great and arbitrary power of the ancien régime of Bourbon kings. With nothing more than a dreaded royal summons, anyone of common birth, whether guilty of a crime or not, could be accused, seized from his home, and locked away forever. On a hot summer’s day three years prior, a massive and well-armed mob had marched from the Saint-Antoine quarter and laid siege to the great fortress. After a ferocious struggle, and with the aid of rebellious National Guard soldiers, the poor men and women of Saint-Antoine eventually succeeded in lowering its drawbridge and seizing the structure. Thus the Revolution had been born out of a desperate struggle, consecrated in the blood of its weary and starved citizens.

  Jean-Luc worked in a massive administrative building several streets away. Its long corridors were crowded with legal clerks, bankers, and secretaries—bureaucrats of the new regime, most of them happy simply to have employment, to accept paltry salaries with which they could feed their families and brag of a place in the new government.

  It was a busy building, a hive of purposefulness and gossip varying in its degrees of legitimacy. On this morning, however, the front halls were quieter than usual. Nodding a greeting to a pair of guards—“Citizens, good day”—Jean-Luc walked up a wide staircase. On the second floor he clipped quickly down the familiar hallway until he reached the chamber that served as a meeting room for his department.

  He paused in the doorway. A small crowd had assembled in the office. Several of the faces were familiar to Jean-Luc, colleagues who worked in adjacent offices. However, there were more than those few in here. From the looks of it, Gavreau, his supervisor, had gathered the entire building for this assembly. Whatever the meeting’s purpose, Jean-Luc was late.

  “St. Clair!” Gavreau saw him enter and waved him forward. He was addressing the crowd from the front of the office. “Citizen St. Clair, I was just sharing the morning’s news with your compatriots.”

  “What news?” Jean-Luc instantly regretted his response, and how plain he had made it that he had not heard whatever it was that had caused such a stir among his peers. The only thing he had observed so far that morning was that the heat had finally broken and the people of Paris still seemed hungry and angry. The manager, thankfully, didn’t note his ignorance but instead continued to address the full room. “As you know, the past three months have seen the people rising up and demanding that their voices be heard with more potency than ever before.”

  Several men in the office thumped their fists against the desks, grunting their support for Gavreau’s assertion. The supervisor ignored the interruptions and continued.

  “Every prison in the city is overflowing, and those perfumed dukes and duchesses know, at last, what it means to be hungry.”

  The crowd muttered and nodded its approval as Jean-Luc shifted his weight, having grown uneasy with rousing talks such as these. He had seen many stirring speeches begin with earnest enthusiasm, only to be overtaken and unleashed as a mob’s fury and the thirst for violence.

  Gavreau’s cheeks flushed red. “Just last month, our fellow patriots stormed the Tuileries Palace, where Louis and Marie-Antoinette—”

  “You mean Citizen Capet and the Austrian Whore!” A man whom Jean-Luc didn’t recognize interjected with the nicknames that Paris had given to the country’s disgraced king and queen.

  “Call ’em whatever you want.” Gavreau waved a hand. “The point is, as of last month, the Bourbons are done getting fat off our starvation and sacrifice. And they are no longer sitting in the Tuileries Palace, hiding behind their hired Swiss guards, as if that’s prison enough.”

  “They’re in Le Temple dungeon with the rest of the rats, where they belong,” a voice called out. The crowd cheered in response.

  Gavreau lifted his arms, attempting to quell the mounting fervor. “Brothers, my fellow citizens, today, for the first time, an assembly of free Frenchmen, endowed with the full power of the people, will sit in Paris. They, like the rebels in America, will draft a new constitution and will begin an era of liberty, equality, and fraternity!”

  The room shook now with the sound of yelps and fists landing on the oak desks. Even Jean-Luc, on thinking about this achievement by the French people, could join in the celebrations. “Vive la liberté!” he shouted.

  Gavreau let them revel in their euphoria a moment, his expression indicating his own deep satisfaction, but when he raised his arms, they went quiet once more, greedy for more news. “It’s been a good summer for the people, that is certain enough. Hundreds of our brothers have joined our new government in the National Convention. And thousands fewer of those noble wretches have their heads, thanks to our friend Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.”

  Several people in the room laughed and jeered, but Jean-Luc bit his lower lip. His job gave him a front-row viewing to just how many noblemen and women had been toppled, and to think that a severed head corresponded to each of his daily cases made his stomach turn.

  “And yet, our Revolution—our very nation—is in danger.” Gavreau’s face grew somber as the room fell silent. “I told you there was news today, and there is. It seems that all of Europe has taken note of the speed and force of our Revolution. And our neighbors to the east are scared.”

  Jean-Luc leaned closer; he hadn’t heard this news.

  “Everything we have fought for could soon be lost, if we don’t look to what’s happening less than a hundred miles to the east. The enemy is close,” Gavreau explained. “The Duke of Brunswick has assembled an alliance of forty thousand Prussians, Austrians, and Hessians and is marching toward our city at this very moment.” Gavreau spoke softly, but he no longer competed with any stray voices; the entire room was hushed, all eyes fixed intently forward. “Since we plucked Louis and Marie-Antoinette from their plush palace prison, the Habsburgs and their friends have seen just how serious our Revolution is. And they don’t like the look of it. The crowns of Europe are shuddering in fear, and now they’ve decided to bring their hired swords across our borders.”

  Jean-Luc felt his chest tighten at the thought of foreign soldiers marching across their land, into their city.

  “This foreign duke…Brunswick…has declared, no, he has vowed”—Gavreau picked up a pair of glasses from his desk and began to read from a parchment—“to put an end to the anarchy in the interior of France, to check the attacks upon the throne and the altar, to reestablish the legal power, to restore to the king the security and the liberty of which he is now deprived, and to place him in a position to exercise once more the legitimate authority which belongs to him.”

  At this, the room erupted in outraged groans and roars.

  “Let the bastards try!”

  “Death to the Habsburg tyrants and their foreign mercenaries!”

  “We’ll take their crowns next! We’ll march right into the Habsburg throne room and show them what we free Frenchmen think of—”

  “You’re a fool, Pierrot, if you think it will be that easy,” Jean-Luc interjected, turnin
g to the loud man beside him, a brash colleague who generally seemed to prefer speaking to listening.

  Gavreau nodded at Jean-Luc, allowing him to continue. “What do you think, Citizen St. Clair?”

  Jean-Luc paused a moment, clearing his throat. Crossing his arms, he ventured: “Citizen Capet and his Austrian wife were rich and have many powerful friends. The kingdoms of central Europe will not stand idly by as a Habsburg princess is forced to sit behind bars.”

  “That’s right, St. Clair,” Gavreau agreed.

  “So what is happening?” Jean-Luc asked his supervisor, wondering whether he ought to return home to Marie and take her and the baby from Paris.

  Gavreau lifted his chin as if in defiance. “It’s come to war.”

  The room now filled with curses and mutters, boasts and declarations, but the supervisor continued over the din. “Fifty thousand brave Frenchmen stand between us and those promising to wipe out all the liberties we’ve won these past three years.”

  Jean-Luc let out a long, slow exhale. Many of those soldiers, he knew, had joined the ranks of the French army only within the past few months or even weeks, as the threat of invasion by the united monarchs of Europe escalated from whispered rumor to bona fide peril. They lacked discipline, training, and, in most cases, proper uniforms. Jean-Luc hoped they might somehow make up for their deficiencies of skill with patriotic fervor and democratic zeal, but he, like everyone else, was unsure.

  Gavreau looked straight into Jean-Luc’s eyes as he said: “You are all good citizens here. I am honored to work with each and every one of you, and I know we shall all do our part for the republic. If we should hear the tocsins or the bells, it means the enemy stands at our gates. Every man in this city…hell, every woman, too…will be expected to take up arms and defend our home. We must not forget: it was a band of patriots, women and men alike, who conquered the great Bastille fortress. It was a band of starving mothers and daughters who marched on Versailles and took the Bourbons off their gold piss pots. We will be France’s last line of resistance. We will shed every last drop of blood in her defense.”

  The men offered replies to Gavreau’s battle cry with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Jean-Luc considered the possibility in silence. Would he take up arms if the enemy marched on Paris? Against this new force that threatened the safety of his family and his nation? Yes, he supposed he would.

  Beside him, Pierrot was red-faced and appeared as though he hoped the enemy would make it to the Parisian barriers, so he’d have the occasion to shed his blood. Or perhaps he was simply fuming that Jean-Luc had called him a fool.

  Gavreau stuffed his hands into his pockets as he continued. “Right now our thoughts go out to our brothers to the east. Our generals Dumouriez and Kellermann have marched their brave soldiers to meet the enemy near the forests outside Valmy. Very soon or perhaps even this very day, the victory or doom of our Revolution could be decided out in those meadows.”

  Jean-Luc let the news sink deep into his gut as he glanced out the window. Looking east, he saw the river. Just past the Seine the ancient stone spires of Notre Dame Cathedral jutted skyward. In the distance, past where the walls of Paris ceased and the green began, in the old forest hunting grounds of their disgraced king, his fellow patriots waited. Jean-Luc narrowed his eyes and willed himself to see past the city and into that verdant expanse. He could not tell if it was merely a trick of his imagination, but there, in the distance, he thought he could detect a faint wreath of smoke curling up toward the sky.

  September 1792

  The sun sprinkled through the ancient oaks, casting a dancing shadow over the cool, shady wood. Local rumor held that in this copse, in years of peace and plenty, King Louis XVI had liked to spread his blankets to take his nap and his wine while his men chased the boar, stags, and rabbits that occupied these lands. Later, they would present the spoils of the hunt to their monarch, and he would hoist the dead carcasses over his thick shoulders, boasting to his wife as he rode back into the palace grounds that he’d had another glorious day of hunting.

  But on this day, the prey in the forest was not boar, nor stags nor rabbits. These woods were no longer the hunting grounds for royal sport and merriment. Today, men were hunting other men.

  It was almost evening when the dragoon scouts returned to the French camp. They flew in, a cloud of riders and hooves churning up dust, their horses exhausted and slicked in a thin coating of sweat. Several dogs barked out a rough volley of greeting as the nearby aides scurried to receive the returning party.

  Captain André Valière poked his head through the flap of his tent and looked out over the camp. The soft indigo light of dusk seeped over the area, the last few cooking fires sputtering out after the evening meal, but the postprandial quiet of the coming night had now dissipated. The aides were unsaddling the horses and escorting the returning party into camp. André strained his ears to hear as the scouts gasped out their reconnaissance.

  “Where did you cross the river?” an aide asked one of the riders.

  “We crossed at the shallow bend to the northeast, past the crossroads at La Lune. We found one of their horses on the other side.” A windswept dragoon officer, his black boots caked in dust from the dry road, handed off his reins as he dismounted and cut a quick line toward one of the central tents.

  “Just a horse, no rider?” The aide hurried to keep the scout’s pace.

  The scout shook his head. “Just the mount. We found their fires still smoking. They left in a hurry.”

  Another scout was beside them now, panting. “We heard a shout—a Prussian scout, we’re guessing. Brunswick knows we’re here; we’ve been seen.”

  André slipped out of his tent and trailed them from a few steps behind, his interest piqued.

  “So they are moving on Paris. Did you exchange any fire?” The aide tried to walk and scribble notes at the same time.

  “No, we heard the bastards croaking something in German, so we pissed on their fires and grabbed the mount and came straight back here.” The officer who appeared to be in charge took a drink from his canteen and splashed water on his face. “Where is the general?”

  “Which one?”

  “The commander, you fool. Dumouriez.” The officer wiped his face with a dirty hand, blinking several times. He passed the canteen back to one of his scouts and continued, “Or better yet, Kellermann. He at least might have some idea of what is going on here.”

  “They are both inside the command tent, awaiting your report.” The aide turned and led the small group of scouts toward a large tent with a massive, if somewhat tattered, tricolor flag waving from its center post. Two bored-looking soldiers stood at attention outside the entrance. As the scouts approached, the guards crossed their muskets diagonally so the steel of their bayonets clanged together, but they quickly capitulated when the lead scout waved a dismissive hand and walked brusquely past them into the tent. André would have to wait until the evening’s briefing to hear the rest.

  André sighed now, looking in the direction from which the scouts had arrived. He saw, among the brown warhorses, a lone white Lipizzaner, a Prussian cavalry horse, that whinnied and pawed the ground as if defiant in these new surroundings. André surveyed the rest of the camp. Clustered by the fires closest to the command tents sat men who, like André, were dressed in the white and sky blue of the old Bourbon army; these were the holdovers of the army of the monarchy, the regulars who had been trained when there was a king to fund military campaigns and pay salaries generous enough to draw men from the country’s poorest farms and its wealthiest families alike. These men, although their crisp white uniforms still bore the Bourbon fleur-de-lis, had been welcomed into the Revolution and composed well over half of the army’s forces. They had sworn allegiance to the new—albeit ever changing—government, and the Revolution needed men with their training and skill. They were respected and revered, if not included in the casual, threadbare fraternity of the revolutionary guardsmen who sat around the campfire
s a few paces away.

  This latter group sat clothed in whatever mismatching attire they had scrounged up from their own scant wardrobes. Most of them had been issued a dark blue coat with bronze buttons upon enlistment, but the remainder of their uniforms seemed to be patchwork and individualized. Some of them had nothing on their feet but dirty soles and cracked toenails. Formed into the ranks of the new National Guard just months earlier, these men walked about in short breeches, prompting their new nickname of sans-culottes, “men without long pants.” They wore their hair long and unkempt, and cited as heroes the Revolution’s up-and-coming leaders, commoners Maximilien Robespierre and Georges Danton. They had left their lives as craftsmen, laborers, and tenant farmers to answer the call of the Revolution. They were anything but professional soldiers.

  On the eve of battle, they sat around their fires, passing around lewd sketches of tavern girls and skins of watered-down wine. They played card games and shouted obscenities in stark contrast to the quiet, more stoic regulars nearby. Many of this latter group had faced the formidable Prussian and Austrian lines before, and knew what the sunrise would bring. It was an uneasy alliance, this new French army, and tomorrow would be its first true test.

  As André walked back from the command tent to his own, he noticed a rider trotting up from the same direction as the dragoon scouts. He watched as the horseman dismounted, a letter in his hand.