The Sparks Fly Upward

by Diana Norman

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Barras asked.

  ‘I was explaining to this citizen that he was to make himself scarce,’ the Irishman said, ‘for reasons that you and I have discussed.’

  ‘Hello, Vicomte,’ Ffoulkes said.

  Deputy Citizen Barras stared at him before turning away. ‘Get him out of here.’

  The big Irishman took Philippa and Ffoulkes by the arm and scooped them towards the gates. ‘Now’s not the time.’

  They had to wait while jailers sallied out onto the Quai to clear a path through the crowd—not for them but for a procession arriving from the Right Bank. Riflemen were among a large contingent of National Guard trying to march in, none of them able to keep step for the push of people looking to see what they were escorting.

  A boy who’d climbed up onto one of the gateposts shouted, ‘It is him. That’s his blue coat.’

  The column edged through the gates. In its center men were carrying a stretcher. The figure lying on it was clutching a bandage that wound around his face, like a child with mumps, obscuring most of it and seeping blood. His stained coat had been a pretty blue and his stockings were rumpled round his ankles, showing bare calves of an almost greenish whiteness.

  ‘Christ Almighty,’ she heard Ffoulkes say. ‘It is Robespierre.’

  The stretcher bearers laid their burden on the stones and went back to help the rest of their column through the press.

  The little fat man edged up to the stretcher and looked down at the figure of Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre before guards shoved him out of the way. ‘So there is a God,’ he said.

  Other men were being escorted in and the crowd chanted their names as they passed.

  ‘Saint Just.’ A calm, point device man.

  ‘Couthon.’ In a wheelchair, groaning.

  ‘Robespierre Le Petit.’ Maximilien’s younger brother, Augustin, hopping on his one uninjured leg.

  ‘Dumas.’ Hatless, still attempting to give orders. He’d been the president of the tribunal that had tried her and Ffoulkes.

  Someone shouted, ‘Give me back my father, you bastard.’

  It was a war cry and the crowd answered it in a roar that was taken up along the quay, then the island, crescendoing across the bridges to Right and Left banks as if all of Paris had been orphaned and wanted the dead returned to it. The guards were having to fight against hands and fists in order to get the rest of the prisoners through, dragging in the human detritus that had once ruled France. Two of them were corpses.

  As each was hauled past the gates, he was put straight into a tumbrel. Robespierre was already in one; Philippa saw his bandage trailing over its side. The crowd was trying to get in to reach him. It would tear him to bits.

  It was the Irishman who prevented a massacre. He placed himself in the middle of the gates and shouted, ‘Patience, now, patience, citizens. They’ll be on their way soon.’ An enormous voice, trained to carry, caught the attention of the people trying to get through the gates and silence spread. ‘You can accompany them to Madame La Guillotine,’ the Irishman said. ‘Her most justified feast and, by Jesus Christ Our Lord, let us hope, her last.’

  There was a collective sigh, a sound like a huge beast satisfied. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me . . .’ The Irishman looked round to see that Ffoulkes and Philippa were behind him and used his body like a battering ram to make a path for them out onto the quay.

  He led them quickly to a corner of the Pont Neuf overlooking the Left Bank where there was a tiny park off what had once been the Place Dauphine and sat them down on a bench under a chestnut tree. It was a quiet place; the noise from the Quai de l’Horloge came to it reduced to a beat, like far-off machinery.

  ‘May I know your name, sir?’ Ffoulkes asked.

  ‘At the moment I’m Citizen Deus Ex Machina as far as you’re concerned. Sir Mick, for short.’

  ‘We appear to have much to thank you for. And now, perhaps you’d tell us what’s happened,’ Ffoulkes said. He was still angry. She realized he’d been angry all the time, suppressing it only to be brave for her; angry at his humiliation and powerlessness, angry at the banal, bungling, viciousness of it all. She wondered where he found the energy.

  At the river’s edge an angler was hunched over his line, incurious about all but fish. A woman had set up an easel on the grass and was painting the view, watched by some children. Philippa rested her eyes on them.

  ‘. . . and then, as far as I can gather, he made a mistake,’ the Irishman was saying. ‘He went to the Convention and accused unnamed deputies of . . . I don’t know what it was—lack of virtue, maybe. Said he’d unmask them on the morrow. Not a bad man, Robespierre, a good one actually, so good he was sure he only had to sweep France of its sinners and how happy a little Republic it would be. That’s what a monster is, d’ye see, a man who knows he’s infallible. Thought he was a political Messiah, so he did. But what he didn’t understand and what Jesus, God love um, knew is that we’re all sinners. So when he accused unnamed deputies of sin, each man-jack of them thought: “Is it me? Will it be my skeleton he pulls from the cupboard?” And they had to do something about it.’

  ‘Is it over?’ Philippa asked, ‘Is the Terror over?’

  The Irishman leaned forward to look past Ffoulkes at her. ‘Ah well ...’

  ‘What happened then?’ Ffoulkes snapped.

  ‘Barras happened.’ The Irishman leaned back. ‘Citizen Deputy Barras, a man with whom I’ve had dealings in the past.’

  ‘Vicomte de Barras,’ Ffoulkes said. ‘We’ve met before.’

  ‘So I gather, but since he’s your passport home, I don’t think we’ll drag up his title at the moment.’

  They’re both angry, Philippa thought. How can everybody stay so angry?

  ‘Anyway, he’s renounced it,’ the Irishman said, more gently. ‘And he was the one with the bowels to organize against Robespierre, so he was. Took command of the troops, ordered the arrest of our Maximilien and his cohorts. He expected to have to fight, thought there’d be alarums and excursions, calls to arms. There weren’t any. Not so much as a whistle against him.’

  One of the children with the woman who was painting wandered towards them, a little girl, her head to one side. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Hello.’ Philippa smiled at her and held out her hand. The child looked at it and ambled back to her mother.

  Perhaps I’ll have a little girl, Philippa thought. Or a little boy. One or the other would be nice.

  ‘. . . not a soul raised a finger. The tocsins rang and went unanswered. À moi, à moi. He could call till the cows came home and none but the cows would hear him. Either he shot himself or somebody else shot him, but his jaw’s shattered whatever way.’

  Sir Mick put a dramatic palm up against his ear; the noise like a machine had changed, become deeper and was accompanied by the tattoo of drums. It seemed to be moving. ‘God love him, he’ll not be kept in suffering much longer, nor the others. He’s on his way. Barras is getting rid of them quick. We should hear the cheer when the blade drops.’

  He leaned forward again to look at Philippa. ‘And in answer to your question, Miss Dapifer, whether it’s the end of the Terror, I don’t know. Barras doesn’t know. I’m not even sure he and the Convention intended to end it when they set out to arrest Robespierre; they were just hitting back first to save themselves, if you know what I mean. It’s what’s happened since has amazed them. D’you see, the people believe it’s the end of the Terror. They want it to be, they’re sick of it to their souls. They’re greeting Barras and Co like saints from Paradise sprinklin’ holy water. And I’m thinking that’s an expectation not to be disappointed—or face the consequences.’

  He stood up. ‘But nobody knows.’ He stretched his fingers and waggled his hand. ‘I’d not like to bet on the next few days . . . Ah.’

  The silence was so sudden it was as if the city had drawn in its breath and was holding it. They could hear birds twittering from the bran
ches overhead. From across the river came a gull’s scream, or perhaps it was a man’s, then a howl from human throats blasting the sky apart.

  The children looked up at the noise and ran towards their mother. She stopped painting and talked to them.

  She doesn’t know, thought Philippa. What is she telling them? Just another head, my dears, they always fall about this time of day. She doesn’t know it’s the head of heads and the last of heads.

  The Irishman was crossing himself. Ffoulkes was saying something.

  But I don’t feel anything. I should feel hope but I don’t; they killed it when they killed Mr Glossop and Lavoisier and de Vaubon and the couple from Saint Omer and Lulu . . . when they killed hope for all of us. It will never be any different, some other man will come along and want to rule other men and be prepared to kill to do it. I’m numb.

  ‘. . . which is why I want the two of yous out of Paris and quick,’ the Irishman was saying. ‘Barras is keeping his options open, like the sensible man he is, and you, me dear Baron, are one of those options. If things go wrong, he’ll feel the necessity to travel—and fast. To England maybe. I’ve persuaded him it won’t do any harm to have a grateful soul like yourself speak for him to Prime Minister Pitt, saying he was the boyo tried to stop the Terror.’

  ‘I suppose I owe the bastard that much,’ Ffoulkes said.

  ‘All things considered, I think you do.’ The man became brisk, feeling in his pockets. ‘Now then, here’s a purse and some shiny new papers for yourself and the lady. They should get you through to Gruchy; you’ll be running alongside the news so I don’t imagine you’ll encounter too much efficiency at the barriers—the guards’ll be staggering nine ways from Sunday. You’ve a safe house for tonight? I thought so.’

  He picked up Philippa’s hand and carried it to his lips. ‘You’re to wait for me at Gruchy. I’ve some business but it’ll be settled in a day and I’ll follow you up. Take care now; I promised the missus I’d bring ye both home and that’s not a woman to break a promise to.’

  Philippa held onto his hand. ‘Mr Machina,’ she said. ‘Is there any word about the Marquis de Condorcet?’

  He smiled down at her; he had a good smile. ‘Did ye not find him? No, I’ve heard nothing. Ach, but with the Terror over—if it’s over—he’ll be grand.’

  They watched him walk away. Before he disappeared, he turned and waved his hat at them, like an actor taking applause.

  ‘Who is he?’ Philippa asked. ‘Did he drop from the clouds?’

  ‘I don’t know. An Irishman, that’s who he is,’ Ffoulkes said. ‘Told me he has dealings with the French government. I don’t like the Irish getting secretly together with the Frogs, it always means trouble for us.’

  ‘Why don’t we give them back their damn country then?’ she asked, wearily.

  ‘They wouldn’t know what to do with it.’

  So it goes, she thought. On and on. ‘We owe him our lives,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  They sat where they were, trying to get the will to move. The angler caught a fish, a little flapping shard of silver, and put it in his creel.

  It’s going to take him years to get over this, she thought. I could help him. Please God, don’t let Félicie encourage him to hate. Shall I tell him about the baby? I can’t. I can’t split him in two. He’d never let me go; whether he left Félicie or he didn’t, we’d be a sordid couple and he’s too honorable a man for that. I’d love him less; he’d love me less.

  She considered the irony; she hadn’t been able to tell him because they were going to die; now she couldn’t tell him because they were going to live.

  I’ll have to manage without him. Outcast from society—Reverend Deedes and his friends will see to that. I’ll have to go away. Where did the Duchess of Devonshire go to have her illegitimate baby? Oh, yes, France. Well, that’s out.

  Ma will see me through, she thought. Bless her, she sent the Irishman to bring us back; she’ll be waiting. One thing about Ma, she’s never cared for society’s rules. Or causes. Causes kill people. She’s right. It’s individuals that matter, seeing the person not the principle. Like Ma does. Like Mme Vernet.

  She felt a minute pulse begin in her veins; she’d thought it had stopped.

  There is hope, she thought. ‘. . . independently of any power that would like to stop it, so long as our globe exists, the tempo may differ but we shall never go back.’

  He’s out there somewhere, she thought, bumbling along, certain of humanity’s ultimate good.

  Ffoulkes got up from the bench and walked down to the river’s edge, watching the angler.

  It’ll be worse for him than it is for me; I’ll have Ma and the baby. God, I love him so much.

  She went to join him.

  He stooped and threw a pebble into the water. ‘I suppose we’ve got to go back?’

  ‘There’s nowhere else to go. Not for us.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘No coral island for Lord Ffoulkes and Mrs Fox.’

  ‘Shorn lambs,’ she said. ‘They might have taken you and not me. Now we’re both alive and the sun’s shining and it’s a day of amazements. You followed me into hell and you’ve carried me out, they can’t take that away from us.’

  ‘I did, didn’t I? I’m a marvellous fellow. You know what was one of the worst things?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Letting Blanchard get away with it. Spoiled my sleep, that did.’

  She should have known. ‘Now you’re not to challenge him to a duel. It’d be silly to die the moment you’re home. What would happen to the turnips?’

  ‘I’m not going to challenge him to a duel, he’s a better swords-man than I am. No . . .’ He looked lovingly around at the view. ‘That shit-sack owes me money, lots of money. I’m going to bankrupt him and then I’m going to kick his lungs out. No, I’ll kick his lungs out first and then I’ll bankrupt him.’ He might have been picking a particularly splendid meal from a menu. ‘I’m not vindictive, I may let him out of debtor’s clink on his sixty-fifth birthday.’

  ‘I am,’ she said. ‘Make it his seventieth.’

  ‘Very well.’ He tucked her hand under his arm and patted it. ‘We’d better go, my love.’

  They ambled off together towards the bridge.

  ‘Another good thing,’ he said. ‘At least those lady natives on our island won’t be given the opportunity to vote me off it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They might. One day.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  SHE did a lot of fishing, not catching many fish, just dangling rod and line over the edge of her rowing boat and allowing the tide to drift her to the mouth of the cove and back again.

  She’d wondered if Jacques would miss the theater but he’d begun to work again on the steam engine that would raise water from the well of the Pomeroy Arms without Dell or Tobias having to wind it up. As long as he could mess about with machines, he didn’t mind anything much.

  When they’d first arrived, the two of them had carried agitation with them; they had been betrayed, they would be pursued, government agents were on their way to arrest Jacques and send him back to France.

  Babbs Cove had remained calm. ‘What you gettin’ in a tizzy for?’ Jan Gurney had asked. ‘Think any bugger’s going to get at un here?’ The village had spent generations thwarting government agents in the form of excisemen and no unwelcome visitor could come at it by the clifftop path or the long, long lane from the road or by sea—its three approaches—without warning being given and preparations made.

  Nor had any such visitor appeared, which meant that Luchet had kept his mouth shut about the place that had been his port of entry into England.

  Jacques himself favored Mme de La Pole as the one who had given him away. That former lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette had been particularly imperious in ordering him about and spoken slightingly of his stage effects, thus qualifying herself, as far as he was concerned, as a Messalina.

  M
akepeace let him believe it. The boy had been shaken by being betrayed at all; it was healthier for him to attribute it to someone with a political motive and unpleasant disposition than to learn so early that villainy could assume a friendly form.

  She still didn’t understand why Blanchard had done it but was convinced that he had. Murrough had never trusted him, nor had Ninon. And he had hampered Philippa in every way he could. Spite, she thought, and had lain awake at nights wondering if, over the years, Andrew had ever mentioned the name of Babbs Cove to his friend. As peaceful day had followed peaceful day and no magistrate’s men came for Jacques, she’d been able to assume that he had not.

  It had seemed the obvious place to lie up. She and the boy would not only be protected while she decided what to do but, should that necessitate going abroad, they were in a position to sail away immediately.

  So far she had made no decision of any kind—other than to let Dell cut her hair. It had grown overlong and troublesome now that she had to dress it herself, so off with it. Dell, for whom Tobias bought the The Gallery of Fashion on his weekly trips into Plymouth to fetch supplies and the newspapers, said that short hair was ‘in.’ Even the gray among the red in the heap of curls on the floor when the operation was finished hadn’t bothered Makepeace as it would have done once. She was old, she told herself dully, she was lucky to have hair at all.

  The accumulated alarums and excursions and losses of the past weeks had been so severe that now, in the sudden peace, she was afflicted by a sort of acceptant numbness. She felt like a sponge; no thought, just absorbent as if, in the nature of sponges, it was her function to soak up what God sent her without protest.

  Apart from sending letters to Aaron, Jenny and Sally back with Sanders—who returned to Reach House so as to be at Aaron’s disposal—telling them her whereabouts and situation, she did nothing, initiated nothing, felt very little except lassitude.

  At nights she sat in the taproom playing cribbage with Jacques or Jan or Tobias before climbing the Pomeroy’s cupboard stairs to bed. She slept late, dressed in the first thing that came to hand, put on the large straw hat that protected her from freckles and the sun and wandered down to the beach for another aimless day, chatting to the children piling seaweed on their sledges to spread on Gurney’s fields up the hill, sometimes helping the women collect their lobster pots, but mostly spending it alone in her boat.