Reign of Fear: Story of French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (Cantiniére Tales)

by Longward, Alaric

  Then I noticed a boy who was shivering in the corner, dressed in a dirty shirt, looking at us in a terrible fear. It took me a second to understand why he was scared. He worked in the fort. I scowled at him and advanced towards him. At the last minute, I remembered to get the pike up, its tip trembling under his chin. His eyes ogled at me, and at the men and women around us. ‘The prisoners, where are they?’ I demanded him.

  ‘I don’t know, I mean, which ones? The mad noble?’ He asked, sulking at a girl threatening him. Indeed, there were but two nobles sitting in the old castle. One was imprisoned on the desperate request of his family, for he liked to rape children, and the other one was just plain crazy. Both would be paraded across the city in the coming weeks, until the truth came out, after which they were locked up again, in silence.

  ‘No, not the nobles,’ I hissed.

  ‘The bandit?’ he asked carefully, gazing at me carefully as another guard was pulled by, his fingernails scratching the cold floor in his desperation.

  ‘The forger!’ I said.

  ‘There are two! No, three! One is on the north tower, two on the eastern one!’ he said loudly, as a shot rang out nearby.

  ‘Is there a man called Guillemin?’ I asked impatiently.

  He nodded. ‘One of the bastards in the western tower.’

  I spat. ‘West or east? You babble.’

  ‘Look, yes, east,’ he told me quickly, trying to edge away, as an angry old woman with a gang of dirty men walked by, escorting yet another bleeding guard. On the yard, a savage yell rose, for De Launay had lost his head. Some men rushed by nervously, looking around cautiously. One dropped a coat, a red one. The Swiss Guard was escaping the Bastille. The French Guard on our side, seeing the massacre, would escort most away to safety, but many of the Swiss died.

  ‘Take me there, or you go to the bloody yard, where they punish your kind,’ I told him.

  ‘No!’ he said. ‘Why would they believe you?’

  I glanced around, angry, yet I knew I would not hurt him. I growled ferociously, as I picked up the red jacket, for my devilish mind came up with a solution. ‘I will claim this is your jacket, boy.’ I shook the cloth at his face.

  ‘I am but a lowly servant!’ he said miserably, weighing my threat, but I said nothing, eyeing him angrily. He looked at me, a beautiful girl not to be feared in the street, but now I was swathed in blood from the wounded, had a wicked weapon which no longer trembled, and he was terrified by the sounds of butchery on the courtyard and so he nodded.

  We went up and down, avoiding hiding guards, some pretending to be prisoners, and the number of prisoners in Bastille had spontaneously tripled that day, at least. There were determined gangs going around, looting. I heard angry yells, happy screams, and wild shots. It was like a mad house with no attendants. We went upstairs to the dank east tower; he pushed open the creaky door, and pointed down a corridor where rows of barred doors stretched to the dark.

  ‘One on the right, fourth door,’ he said with a questioning look, and I nodded towards the stairs. He licked his lips and went.

  I did not move, for I saw Henriette there already. She carried a musket with a cool professionalism and faced the cell, which I could not see. I heard someone talking harshly and spitefully at her. She shook her head in disgust, lifted the musket, and fired. A loud bang, a flash, and her face a grimace of hate, and a man screamed. I ran to her as she was rubbing her shoulder from the kick of the gun. I held my hand over my mouth, but when I got there, I saw a man lying in a pool of blood inside a small cell with two beds, a piss-pot, a table, and a little light. The other man, Guillemin, was leaning on the wall, his face white. She had killed the man with father. She had an unhinged look in her eyes, but she was calm. Henriette started to grope in her pockets. ‘Dear,’ she said to me. ‘Some light? The lamp?’

  I glanced at a lamp perched some way down the tunnel on the table, and I skipped that way, eyeing my father curiously. His stubbled and pale face betrayed fear, utter fear as his worst nightmare was standing before him, talking to him calmly, having just shot a man. Henriette was looking for some cartridges as she was taking out the ramming rod. She addressed father. ‘Adam, your brother? He took me twice. He insisted I suck on his dirty cock before he entered me, and I had to suck it after he was done too. He liked that. He enjoyed it, while he put his finger in my rear. He giggled, called me a good whore, and relished, my love, to finish in my mouth.’ She spat. Guillemin attempted to say something, but she interrupted him. ‘You know how that feels like? To be subjected to something like that for an hour, more? Your uncle was easier to please. He just wanted me to ride him. He did that five times, once, while that bitch Fourier watched. He could not come in any other position. He tried, though.’ I heard father whimper in the dark cell.

  I carried that lamp to mother. She bit off the cartridge and held the ball out to me. I took it. She put some powder on the priming pan to prime the gun and closed the steel. I was not sure where she had learned to load a gun, but she was uncannily good at it.

  She glanced at Guillemin, speaking nonchalantly. ‘All that time, from when Colbert asked me to visit him to inform me of my new unsavory duties under that rancid bitch Madame Fourier in her nasty whorehouse, to the moment your fine daughter shot Adam, I prayed hard you would come through the door to save us. All those men I had to serve in Colbert’s whorehouse? I served too many, love. I half expected to see you there. I hear you visited it, sometimes. Fourier got me the clean men, the ones who enjoy not-so-used meat. Some were not-so-nice men, though, especially on the first day, when the bitch wanted to break me in. And she did. She knew which ones could break a woman. One beat me, and then raped me after I decided to go, for I changed my mind, love. After that, I could not. Some did things I did not know about. Things I wish to forget, love.’ She poured the rest of the powder down the barrel, took the shot from my hand, and let it drop after the powder, and then she pushed the empty cartridge paper after them. She grabbed the ramrod angrily. ‘But you did not come, no,’ she said.

  ‘I was here! How could I?’ he shrieked.

  She nodded. ‘How could you have? Indeed. Yet, when we first met, you had a healthy tooth pulled for me. You shirked, cried, groused, but you did that. For me. After that? You whored, gambled like a mad thing, and let everything go to hell. We could have starved. We might have been in the poorhouse, at the mercy of anyone passing by. Or dead.’

  ‘She is alive, is she not?’ he said softly and afraid, looking at me, pleading with his eyes.

  I turned away. ‘The twins,’ I told him, looking away coldly, ‘died.’

  His face betrayed his shock, as mother was ramming the rod down the barrel. We heard footsteps somewhere near, people yelling with joy, running on the level below. I looked around carefully. Perhaps Georges was looking for us, or the men he had mentioned. Then Guillemin cried bitterly. He cried for my lie, and we watched him sob away his misery. ‘Why did you do it?’ Henriette asked, finally. ‘Let everything go to hell?’

  He looked up, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘Because I did not get what I wanted. I wanted to be a rich man, powerful, but I could not do it. It is all I ever wanted. But I am lazy!’

  We saw he was honest.

  Henriette aimed the musket at him, and he begged miserably, cried sadly, and prayed for a minute, perhaps two. Henriette did not shoot.

  ‘Mother?’ I asked, finally. ‘You cannot?’

  She wavered, put the gun down, and leaned back, tired. She swung her head. ‘He deserves it. But I cannot. I am not you. The other one was easy; he called me a rancid whore, but I cannot shoot him. Get the keys.’

  ‘Georges wishes to speak with him,’ I reminded her.

  ‘I do not care. I do not want to see him alive, and I cannot make him a corpse. Keys, Jeanette.’

  I nodded, and saw father’s eyes brighten as a smile played briefly on his lips. He thought he would live. I delayed as I saw that. He would survive this. He was willing to do so, even
if he believed he had caused Jean and Julie to die.

  I hated him then and forgot my happy childhood and the fond memories of him.

  I got the keys from the table, mother backed down the hallway, and I opened the old door with a jingle of the lock and a squeak of the bars. It was dark, and I backed off to mother, as he carefully sneaked up from his cell, like a wary, dangerous animal. He stood crouched there in the shadows, eyeing the musket in Henriette’s hands. I made my decision and threw him the coat I had picked up to threaten my unwilling guide. ‘For you, father. And for the memories of you loving me, when I was younger.’ He nodded and took the coat. It was dark, cold, as he pulled it on.

  ‘This belongs to the Swiss Guard?’ he asked curiously, running his hands over it.

  ‘They joined the revolution, they are heroes down there, father,’ I lied and mother glanced my way thankfully, yet concerned. She must have worried about my soul, Marie, but I only worried about Guillemin getting away with what he had done.

  Henriette gesticulated at the far doorway. ‘Go then.’

  ‘What will you do?’ Guillemin asked.

  ‘I will find a life for myself, and Jeanette.’

  I took the musket from her and gave it to him. ‘Join the revolution, father. Only revolutionaries carry the musket here now, and they will think you one of them. New life for you as well.’ He took it, his lips licking his dried lips. I saw he contemplated hard on shooting at us, but he hesitated. He was potentially strong, inviolable, incredibly crawled up from a hole he was going to die into a man with a gun. He could kill us, but he had no guts for it, and no real reason to, either, other than his fragile honor and the weeping he had done on his knees. It was hard on him, and he wanted to slay us to pay back for the insults, but instead, he smiled, turned, but paused at the door.

  ‘Henriette,’ he said, mother waited. ‘I do not know what changed me, or if indeed anything changed me. But the tooth that was removed? It was not healthy. I was going to have it pulled in any case. In addition, I had plenty of women, it is true. I did care for you, for you were different, purer and prettier than most, but I do not know how to love, I think. I just did what is expected. I married and lived my life. That is the extent of our happiness. Jean and Julie? I am sorry for them, but I did not really know them, or you, Jeanette. Neither one come near me again. However, I thank you for killing Adam! Now, I have to find a seat for myself so I can become comfortable and debtless!’ He laughed and left.

  Henriette cried, uttered vile curses for her weakness and hit the hard, dirty stalls with her fists until they bled. Finally, she put her hands around me and looked me in the eye. ‘Let us go down and see how the crowd likes his new jacket. I hope their thirst of blood is not sated yet. And thank you, love. I believe God will punish me, and not you. I will pray for it.’

  ‘I do not care, mother,’ I told her, and I did not.

  We hiked down to look at an ad hoc festival. They would parade visitors here for weeks, and today, they celebrated in drunken squalor amidst the bloody courtyard. The ones who fell on our side were heroes, soon with inspiring titles, and the ones on the side of the king, well; their heads were placed on rusty pikes and paraded around the city. Mother and I watched how Guillemin’s head started its tour of honor at the end of a pike, at the hands of a burly worker hosting it high, next to that of de Launay, and for some reason, he did not look familiar, and I wondered if I had gone mad.

  Georges saw us, grinned, and began to kiss mother, though carefully, like he would a sister on the cheek. He was married, after all and had to upkeep false appearances. He looked like the devil, and so did Camille, who was giving a speech further off. Danton put his hand on our shoulders. ‘Today, we took over something other than a fort, we took the initiative and Mirabeau be damned, and it will not stop until the king joins his men in the dirt. We will go to the City Hall, and kill the ancient regime sympathizers there, like de Flesselles, and the foul Foulon, the fool who took over for Necker. Is your father here?’ he asked me. ‘I had men look for him.’

  I was going to lie, but Henriette swung her head towards the decapitated heads, and pointed the right one on top of the spike. Georges looked at it incredulously, his face white. ‘That is he,’ I concurred sadly, realizing mother was seeking closure for her doubts about Georges and their budding love, as well.

  He turned to us, face white from anger. ‘Did you see him? Why didn’t you stop them? Curses and blood!’

  Henriette stepped closer to him and showed him his love letter. ‘We met him, we had him killed.’

  ‘You? Did you ask him…’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We did not. If this is true, what lies in these lines,’ she waved the letter in the air, ‘then you must understand. Jeanette and I had to have our vengeance.’ Henriette looked pleadingly at Georges. Here was a chance for him to understand, and love and make an ally out of Henriette.

  He failed.

  He stared at us for a long time, swallowing, starting to talk, then shutting his mouth, grinding his teeth. He was a man who always had to balance between his needs and the ones he loved, and his needs, Marie, came first. ‘You made my life terribly hard, loves. I need that money. And I will get it. I am sorry.’ So, he left us and did not turn. He needed the money, and we had foiled him. He also appointed some men to look over us, and we could not leave.

  For us, that day was the highlight of the revolution. We were not healed, but do not, dear, ever let anyone say that revenge is useless. Taking an offensive man’s life or paying back an insult is like an infinitesimal, yet sweet piece of cake, quickly savored, hardly able to fill your belly, but you needed it, in order to know what it tastes like. It might disappoint you, but one has to sample it. One has to be able to think about it, and tell oneself the scales are balanced. Live as a victim, dear Marie, and you will always have a hole in your soul.

  Revolution changed around us. Foulon was caught several days after outside of Paris, brought to the City Hall and the Place de la Gréve, where together with his son-in-law, he was hung, and after the rope had broken three times, he was hacked to small pieces. Revolution had taken a new, bloody route, and that blood would gush forth crazily until the arteries were spent, and people were tired. I was already tired as I saw Guillemin’s head; my father remains being paraded around.

  Georges was the King of the Rabble and sore with us and I had another ghost to worry about.

  CHAPTER 7

  What followed, Marie was a mad jumble of swift months, years even, and much I will tell you, I learned later, but what is true, is that France changed and became the savage foe to Europe and even to itself.

  Afterwards, speaking with others who took part in the revolution, they felt much the same. Time flew by so fast, it was hard to fathom its passing. As for Danton and Desmoulins, and the rest of the leaders who took matters in their own hands on the 14th, they were all terrified at first, I think, at what had been done. The shocked National Assembly found it had a rivaling force, one that it was answerable to; the angry, determined people. Mirabeau finally took note of the suddenly powerful clubs. Georges, and people in the Cordeliers Club, and others of surprising stature and growing power, like the pamphleteer mad Marat, stoked the scorching embers, tirelessly, with a tigerish ferocity. And to wield such power, Danton, Desmoulins, many others, they found it sweetly intoxicating. I can tell you Marie, that the tumultuous meetings at the Cordeliers Club suddenly seemed as important as the ones in the bloody National Assembly itself. Had they not burned and dismantled the King’s fortress? They had. Had they hung for it? No. Yet, there was a stern look on the face of Georges, one of worry, of frustration and rumors abounded, some speaking of Mirabeau, the old noble making Bastille much less dangerous event it should have been. Some said the old noble, the man trying to keep masses and kingdom apart, had mocked Georges and that meant Georges would have to deal with this nemesis, or we would still have a king, even if he were a more humble one.

  That July, after the f
all of Bastille, and the atrocities of the City Hall, general Lafayette created the solemn National Guard, raised all over France to guard against looting, but in truth to defend the threatened constitutional monarchy that was being planned. The king suddenly worried, Marie, for his dear life, and Mirabeau feared both the shifty king and the irascible people, as he tried to set the two unlikely pieces together. They did recall popular Necker too, for a time. The king tried to appease the people, even accepting the tricolor cockade, which replaced Camille’s green leaves. The National Guard did not, however, stop the great fear that ripped through the country like a swift wildfire. Nearly all through unhappy France, many nobles ran for their lives, as fast as they could as simple peasants looted their finery, killed their families, mauled their property, and generally hurt those they viewed as the cause of all the troubles.

  We still helped in the Club. We were allowed to live there and eat well, but no longer did we enjoy company of Georges. He would see us, occasionally and then turn away in sudden anger, his face clouded. He was thinking hard, I knew, and he thought about lost money and lost mother. Mother did not see his loving letter anymore, but put it away, left it lonely in a drawer for it was a promise that was broken, a long shot from the start, but a painful one to endure, nonetheless.

  That is when Camille stepped up, as he took to visiting us, filling the void left by Georges. He came in, usually with some surprising present that he coyly put at Henriette’s lap, and though she did not enjoy Camille’s flattery as much as she had that of Georges, she liked to talk to him, for he was considerate and witty. They became quick friends, at least, though I saw, whenever Henriette bowed down to pick something up, affording Camille a glimpse of her generous bosom, he nearly fainted. I rolled my eyes at him and he smiled gently back, for he was hopeless. He was happy, sort of. Camille was at the peak of his power as he finally got his pamphlets published, happy to point out how he had anticipated many things before they actually took place. The mighty Cordeliers Club opted for a free republic, and his La France Libre newspaper poured sweetest honey on all those willing ears clamoring for the republic, even by crude violence, for it was justified, as claimed Camille and many others. Camille’s eloquent, fiery writing completed Georges outspoken strength.