My hand tensed, arching up on the table. “Izette’s a good, sensible girl. She knows she doesn’t have the strength.”
“She’ll get other women to help her with the heavy work.”
The soldiers and jailors were staring down at us. I turned to each, managing smiles. “It’s my old lady’s maid. She’s going back to being a laundress.”
Of course that wasn’t what Sir Robert was telling me. He was informing me that Izette intended carrying out the rescue plan we’d worked out for the Comte. I’d never been convinced that any disturbance caused by mere women could distract the armed men guarding a tumbrel. Still my pulses throbbed.
But how could I let Sir Robert know that André and I were going to the Place de la Révolution together? And that I refused a rescue that didn’t include him?
The four men peered down at us. There was no chance to whisper. Panicked, I began to weep.
“My dear, my dear,” Sir Robert said.
This endearment, used so often by the Comte, reminded me too vividly of the guillotine, and my panic overwhelmed me. Think! Think! Instead, I sobbed the harder. And abruptly realized that Izette’s plan was our last hope. Desperation prodded me.
Drying my eyes, I said to the four men, “Pardon my weakness. Is it possible for me to send my brother a note through this gentleman?”
“It’ll be read, I warn you,” a soldier replied without rancor.
“I understand. Of course,” I said. At the far end of the table a woman sat writing. I called, “Madame de Chaumont, might I borrow your quill and a sheet of paper?”
“Comtesse, please,” she replied.
Sir Robert rose to get the writing implements for me.
I scratched out a note, sanded it, giving it to a jailor.
The four men passed it around. None could read. A soldier went to the door, asking through the grating if anyone knew his letters. I held my breath. The note was doomed if no literate servant of the Revolution could be found. After an interminable moment one of the sentries spoke up, unlocked the door, relocked it, handed over his musket, and held the paper at arm’s length, hesitatingly sounding out words.
“‘My dearest André,’” he read. “‘Do you remember how we rode together, the two of us, in the hay wagon? Do you remember how we swam together in the river Aube? Think of those good times, my brother, when the two of us were always together. And do not think of anything else. Just the two of us together. May God bless you. Your loving sister, Manon.’”
During the slow reading I gazed at Sir Robert.
“You’re from Champagne, Citizeness?” inquired one of the soldiers.
My heart skipped a beat. “As a girl, yes. Why? Are you?”
“Your name?”
“D’Epinay. Manon d’Epinay.”
What if—despite all chances against the coincidence—this man came from the country around our village? Surely he would know the d’Epinay name, and know just as surely that my brother was called Jean-Pierre, not André.
“My grandfather came from Arcis sur l’Aube,” the soldier replied. “To hear the old man tell it, the only food and wine not fit for hog swill comes from Champagne.”
“Does your grandfather live in Paris now, Citizen?” I asked.
“He did. He passed on at a ripe old age. Sixty-one.”
I let out a shuddering, relieved breath. “There.” I smiled. “Doesn’t that prove the quality of our fare?”
The soldier chuckled, winking at me. The note was handed to Sir Robert.
The Englishman folded it. “You may be sure this will be delivered promptly,” he said.
“My brother, André.”
“I know how close you are.” Saxon blue eyes twinkled. Sir Robert understood the rules of the game. He rose, bowing.
After the soldiers led him out, every emotion—including hope—drained from me. I leaned my elbows on the table, resting my face between my palms. I’d seen the crowd lining Rue St. Honoré. I knew its temper. Even granting that it was indeed possible for the guards to be distracted enough to halt the tumbrel, there was no chance. The crowd was thirsty. The Comte had been popular with his former soldiers; however, even they couldn’t have wrested him from the mob.
Much as I yearned to live, I knew that the mob permitted no escapes without blood sacrifices. I shuddered, remembering the unspeakable barbarism of the September Massacres. Some of those deaths made a public guillotine appear blessed.
I returned the writing implements, moving slowly back to my cot. The sound of rain was louder. I curled my aching body on the straw pallet and let the tears come.
Chapter Fifteen
As the chill scissors touched the back of my neck I was overcome with terror.
Two mornings after Sir Robert’s visit, the jailor had just read what was called The Prison Newspaper: the names of those who on this day would make the journey to the Place de la Révolution.
Manon de Créqui was the only name on the women’s list.
I had stepped to the long table, and around me the ladies had acted as if I, like them, would make my normal toilette.
The scissors moved on my nape, cold. Death would come so, by cold steel.
“Is it all right if I cut it?” My final words were run together in a gasp. IfIcutit?
The jailor replied by handing me the scissors. I was not too benumbed to realize the Conciergerie jailors, common, uneducated men with every reason to despise their aristocratic prisoners, had never been cruel, and for the most part had behaved toward us with respect and kindness. Holding out the hair from my neck so the scissors wouldn’t touch my flesh, I cut.
“That’s enough,” said the jailor. “It’s such pretty hair, shiny as midsummer moonlight.”
I handed him a curl as I returned his scissors.
“Now for the chain,” he said.
He’d been good about letting me use the scissors. I didn’t argue. I lifted the chain over my head, briefly weighing the ruby wedding band that I could not remember being placed on my finger, and the heavy gold that Louis XV, by divine right King of France, in his fifty-third year had given to his beloved womanchild. A second jailor took the chain and rings, listing them in his ledger.
I combed the remaining hair over my bared shoulders—I wasn’t permitted a fichu. There was something terribly wrong with my heart. The pauses fluttering between each beat shortened my breath, and I gasped, sighing. I’d hoped to go to my death with brave amusement, like the Comte, and here I was, gasping for air like a poor fish thrown up on a riverbank.
The Duchesse de Gramont approached, holding out two enameled boxes. “Comtesse, may I offer you maquillage?”
“I’ve never painted,” I replied breathlessly.
“Then will you permit me to demonstrate?”
I must be very pale, I thought, and nodded.
The Duchesse had been served by three personal maids, yet now her slender, wrinkled fingers skillfully applied rice powder and scented rouge. As her touch moved lightly on my face, it was borne forcibly on me that her handiwork would soon be held up on display to the crowd, and this realization would have brought violent shudders had I not pressed my back hard against the ladder of the chair.
Our fellow prisoners gathered around. One offered me a touch from her scent flacon, another a gold pillbox with laudanum, a third murmured that I looked charming.
I stood to bid them farewell. My mind was working as erratically as my heart. I couldn’t properly remember names or titles, yet each of these women had become very dear to me.
All at once I was hurling myself against one, then the other, as if I were caught in a current, pressing my cheek to this blooming young matron, kissing that rosy fifteen-year-old, hugging this delicately wrinkled dowager. Wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend. Gently reared, sweet-scented, quiet-voiced, with soft white hands. Useless, maybe. Yet each, knowing in her heart she was already a ghost, gallantly faced the hours in this long smoke-drabbed tunnel that led to the grave.
; “Goodbye,” I murmured, “goodbye. I love you all.”
“Ready?” asked the jailor.
I was ready—if only my heart would return to normal. Settling my cape about my bared shoulders, I stepped forward.
We went to the Conciergerie’s enclosure.
Here, André must have passed the night, for the cot was rumpled and dishes were pushed in a corner.
His hair, too, had been clipped. The back of his neck band was slit.
“Good morning,” I said, and found it possible to manage a smile.
His arms went around me, and I pressed my poor, weakly fluttering heart against him. How sweet to embrace without bars separating us. At the same time how shattering to know that never again would I feel his warm, mortal flesh. Never again, never again, the words echoed inside my head, and I prayed: Sweet God, don’t let me cry. Spare me. I’m insufficient, and have sinned in too many ways and too many times, sinned much, but I beg You, spare me from weeping, for then, surely, I will break.
It was André who began to make the awful, gasping sound. His chest shuddered against me. He’d wept like this for his nephew’s death. It was then I realized, for the first time, that only the strongest of men can permit a show of weakness.
My arms tightened around him.
“I’ve killed you,” he said in a choked voice. “You pretend it isn’t so, but in this last hour we must be honest. Had you not witnessed at my trial, you’d have been safe.”
Not denying this, I stroked his quaking shoulders. “I wouldn’t want to live,” I said, “in a world where you’re not.”
We stood holding each other for several minutes. I heard the guard unbolt the door.
“André,” I said, “we still have quite a bit of time. The cart moves slowly, the ride takes over an hour.” Even now, I couldn’t resign myself to the inevitable. The minutes of life seemed to stretch out, an eternity.
“Let’s say our goodbyes here,” he said.
We said we loved each other and then, sweetly, calmly, he kissed my lips. I could feel his warm, moist breath. Farewell to breath that smells of apples and sleep. One last gentle kiss of the poet who dreamed of a world free, farewell to earthly consummation, farewell to love. Why, why, must I still yearn after the transitory flesh?
Our hands were tied with rope behind our backs. A guard settled my cloak again about me. We were led to a narrow door.
As it opened, a great burst of sound exploded in the courtyard. My heart was giving me trouble again. We exited to the left of the Palais de Justice staircase. Men and women sat on the steps, clapping, stamping, laughing. Shouting.
The crowd that once had cheered André, their fervent poet of the Revolution, their Égalité, their Incorruptible, now hurled insults at “Capet Bastard!” “Whoreson!” “Tyrant!” I moved closer to him, my arm touching his. “It’s the beautiful prostitute who defended him!” someone screamed, and the obscenities were turned on me, too.
We were helped into a wood-wheeled cart that smelled of manure. A dozen heavily armed soldiers on horseback stationed themselves around us. To me, they seemed not guards but a defense against the palpable malevolence of the roaring voices. Once more I knew for certain that Izette’s plan was pitiable. What other than blood could satisfy this mob? Beyond the courtyard—the Cours de Mai—massed others, shouting insults.
I said to André, “We seem to have begun and ended in coaches.”
“If I could turn back the clock to that night, darling, I’d take you with me to the United States, and we’d be there now, safe, across the sea, on the other side of the world, safe.”
“In a state called Georgia,” I said. “It’s on the Susannah River.”
“Savannah,” he corrected. His gray eyes were warm, his mouth formed a smile.
And with his smile, my heartbeat returned to normal.
The driver touched his whip to the decrepit old plow horse, the poor animal strained, unoiled wheels creaked, and we jolted forward.
André, to comfort me, talked of the Americas. I listened to the cadence of his voice, but not his words.
The places we passed were a weaving of the threads of my life. We lurched out of the courtyard. Near these finely gilded wrought-iron gates I’d waited through the cold night for admission to André’s trial. In the distance I glimpsed the Hôtel-Dieu; there, with Izette, I’d discovered that I couldn’t leave her crippled little brother. We jostled over Pont Neuf, passing Rue Maupin. Once I’d raced up this street to seek refuge with Monsieur Sancerre from the Comte’s aristocratic rage that he wouldn’t be my first lover. We skirted the Tuileries Gardens: in happier days here had toddled my CoCo, plump, cloudy-haired, imperious. There, in the Manège, André’s voice had exhorted the Assembly to moderation. We crossed a street that led to the cul-de-sac where the Comte had rented a house for dear Aunt Thérèse, Jean-Pierre, and me, the house where CoCo had been born and died, where the Comte had loved me too passionately, the house where each Friday night the now scattered money, wit, and demimonde beauty of Paris had gathered. We lurched slowly down Rue St. Honoré. Clenched fists were raised, tricolors waved against the cloudy sky, and occasional bits of offal dropped into the cart. That refectory there was home to the Jacobin Club; in that building the Jacobins, including Goujon, had planned the September Massacres.
An old man was shoving through the crowd to keep up with us. He shrilled words. It took me a while to realize it was Old Lucien. Yes, Izette once had told me that whenever a woman rode in the tumbrel, the old man was there, shouting obscenities.
For a moment his filmed eyes met mine. More memories, these of childhood, flooded over me. Old Lucien’s toothless mouth trembled. “Bad ’un! This time there ain’t be nobody who can save you, bad ’un!” He kept spewing out the same words. He’s mad, I realized, mad as any locked in the dungeons of Hôtel-Dieu.
He fell behind us. Here, the crowd was thicker and more vituperatively shrill in its cries for blood royal. Almost all females, a legion of harpies and fishwives. Yet many, doubtless, were good women. And it occurred to me that in each of us there exists a locked-away lunatic. Who in this Reign of Terror could remain completely sane? The Revolution, with its carnage and bloodlusts, had unlocked our universal madman.
Similar thoughts occurred to André.
“I wanted to set people free,” he said. “What I’ve accomplished is freeing their baser instincts.” Hopelessness weighted his voice.
To keep our balance, we were leaning against the rail. I pressed my tied-back arm closer to his.
“This hatred’ll burn itself out,” I said. “The children will have better lives. André, think of the cruel old laws. The children will be free men and women. They’ll stand tall and straight and won’t feel inferior to anyone.” Was I paraphrasing Goujon? I didn’t care. I couldn’t let André die believing his life worse than wasted. “There’ll be no more starvation, everyone’ll be schooled—”
My predictions of hope were halted by a penetrating shriek. We both turned to where the cry came from.
Maybe a hundred yards ahead of us, atop a carriage block, stood Izette. Both her shapely arms were raised to the sky. Even from this distance I could see that her face blazed white.
Chapter Sixteen
“It’s Izette,” André said.
“Whatever happens, promise you’ll do as she says.” My voice was urgent. Yesterday, when I’d whispered through Conciergerie bars of Sir Robert’s night visit, I’d explained to André about the plan originally designed to rescue the comte. “Promise?”
“We aren’t leaving this cart.”
“She’s risking her life.” As I spoke, my hands were at work under my cape. “Can you untie your hands?”
“Darling, do you know what that mob can do to you?”
“See? Up ahead it’s almost all women. Her club.”
“How do you know?”
“They have to be.” The knots were careless, less bondage than symbolizing bondage. The rope slipped apart and I held it.
“André, we’re loosely tied. Hurry.”
He spoke with the same urgency. “There’s no way to be sure it’s her club. All we can see is a mob. In the Assembly I’ve had to listen to reports of mutilations, live disembowlings.”
I felt none of the paralyzing and merciful shock that eases many to the guillotine. In this moment, with André, I affirmed life. I yearned with all my heart to live.
“It’s our only chance!” I hissed fervently.
We jolted on a pothole. He gazed down at me and said quietly, “From the beginning you’ve had a little too much courage.” And slowly his hands began working at his ropes.
The cart grumbled toward the thick crowd of women. Their faces glistened in the cloud-dulled light, and the shrill notes of their voices struck horror in my heart.
What if André was right and there was no plot? What if these women were as they appeared, a malevolent force intent on wreaking upon us a far more hideous death than that ordained for us.
Yet there stood Izette in her red wool cap, her arms upraised. The tall body was never more voluptuous. In this pose she was one of those maiden goddesses who hover above battles, leading the bravest warriors to victory. Something glittery was tucked into her belt. A knife, I thought. The women around her shoved and yelled.
The driver slowed his decrepit horse. The dozen soldiers guarding the tumbrel glanced uneasily at one another. The leader, a long-jawed corporal, moved his hand on his musket. The private behind him, a boy with fine blond hair and round face, reined his horse so it reared up.
“So this is the first time you’re out?” called the elderly soldier next to him.
The boy’s eyes were fixed on the women.
“Afraid of a bunch of tricoteuses?” asked the old soldier.
The boy replied, his voice cracking. “The knitters sit by the guillotine.”
“Then these’re nursing mothers. You ain’t going to wet your new breeches over a bunch of nursing mothers, are you?”
Izette never moved. Maybe it was her upraised hands that made me glance upward. The houses were tall. Over her were open windows with people watching for our cart. Alone in a fourth-story window stood a huge, red-bearded, red-haired figure. Goujon. Coatless, the many pockets of his waistcoat showing, and his wide-sleeved shirt, he seemed yet more gigantic. Like Izette, he was absolutely still. He gazed down at her. Above the window ledge showed the top of a rifle.
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