TheEnglishHeiress

by Roberta Gellis

  Thus, both were happy, and although they sometimes talked of escape, neither really wanted to leave. Within the satisfaction of each was a shadow, but not so dark a shadow as had lain there previously. Roger was beginning to hope that he might win Leonie. Solange had done him great damage, but bitter as he was, he could not completely dismiss Leonie’s response as all gratitude. A few times he had been on the verge of asking her to marry him. He had checked the impulse sternly, knowing it to be completely unfair. There were two big roadblocks.

  The age difference was large, but it was common enough for twenty years to separate marital partners without unhappiness. His stepmother was more than twenty years his father’s junior, and no one could doubt Lady Margaret’s satisfaction with her husband. Unfortunately, Roger could not lean too hard on that happy example. Lady Margaret had been a widow, a mature woman in her thirties, when his father had courted her. Leonie was an inexperienced girl, under twenty. He could not take advantage of her innocence. He must give her a chance to enjoy the courtship of the many gentlemen who would flock to her. She was also the heiress of Stour, fit by birth and wealth to a far more exalted social position than the youngest son of a baronet.

  Every time Roger thought of that, he found a new excuse not to seek an escape from Paris. Leonie had a very similar feeling. She too, was beginning to hope she could keep Roger. It was true she did not expect to marry him. She believed that if he had wanted marriage, there was nothing to stop him from suggesting it. However, his efforts to please her in every way, his praise and caresses, clearly indicated that he was not bored or losing interest. Leonie had not yet needed to employ any of the devices she knew for stimulating a lover. Roger was eager enough without. In fact, his techniques had such an effect on her that it was only before and after they made love that she could think of exciting him further.

  Actually, the only reason that the subject of escaping Paris came up was that the political climate seemed to be growing more and more extreme. After the panic and massacres inspired by the fall of Verdun, relative quiet settled on the city. Although the signs of the breakdown of authority were everywhere—gangs roamed the streets at night assaulting passersby and looting houses while the agents of the commune stood by and even joined them—no large-scale violence took place. In this period, Roger and Leonie made a quiet visit to Fouché so that Roger could leave letters to his father and son with him to be transmitted if and when it would be safe to do so. The letters said little—nothing that could cause any trouble to Fouché or his messenger if there were opened—only that Roger was well and safe and had Henry’s (he did not further identify de Conyers) daughter with him.

  Fouché assured him that if he were able to get the letters to England he would and, if they went with a messenger from his firm, that the man would be instructed to take the letters personally and give Sir Joseph a reassuring account of Roger’s actual circumstances. As he was seeing Roger and Leonie to the door, a man entered. Fouché smiled a welcome, greeting the newcomer as “cousin”. His words drowned Leonie’s slight gasp and Roger’s good manners were sufficient to conceal a start of surprise, because the young man Fouché addressed as Joseph was an albino. On a later visit to Fouché, they learned that the cousin, also a Fouché, was the deputy from the town of Nantes to the National Convention, which was about to convene in a few days to replace the useless assembly, by now held in contempt by all.

  “You can imagine,” Fouché said, “how very happy I was when he came here and claimed cousinship. Thank God I was able to ask him to live with us. He is clever—you would never guess it from his looks, but he is the most astute man with whom I have ever dealt. For the first time,” again Fouché lowered his voice and looked around to guard against eavesdroppers, “since everything went mad, I feel a sense of security. Joseph will warn me of trouble, I am sure.”

  “I’m pleased that things are going better for you,” Roger said politely, not much interested although Joseph’s physical oddity had, of course, made him memorable.

  “Perhaps to your benefit also,” Fouché said with a smile. “I told Joseph the story we agreed upon, except that I said we had done considerable business together and had become—through letters—friends. I have a feeling about that young man. He is no visionary. If he establishes influence for himself, he may be able to help you. We shall see.”

  “Thank you very much,” Roger replied sincerely. Fouché was no fool, as Roger had known for years. If he said his cousin Joseph might be a good man to know in the future, he was very likely right.

  “Meanwhile,” Fouché went on, “I have more immediate good news for you. Your letters went off three days ago. I suppose that is what you came about.”

  “No, although I’m glad to hear it. My father would have begun to expect me to return ‘any day’. At his age I don’t like to have him worried. What I came for, however, is to return part of the money you gave me for those assignats—which I know were near worthless. I’m in a good way of trade now.” Roger laughed heartily. “In fact, if I must remain here much longer, I will end a rich man.”

  Fouché did not wish to take the money. He did not need it and knew Roger and his family would be good for it. If he should need to flee to England himself… In the end, he said he would be Roger’s banker for it and return it at any time if Roger should find he needed money. Then he nodded.

  “Actually, that will work out quite well,” he said. “There is no reason why I should not be your man of business. You would naturally come to me if we had done business before. It will be an excellent excuse for you to come here.”

  Roger agreed heartily, and it was through Fouché that he and Leonie learned what was really happening. The first news was good. Charles François Dumouriez had been sent to take charge of the army that faced the Prussians. A republican himself, he understood the troops he led. They were a mixture of volunteers, National Guard, and old army regulars, and they could not be expected to obey blindly or respond to the same discipline as the armies of the past. He changed both tactics and the way orders were given and, on September twentieth, his army met the Prussians at Valmy and threw them back.

  A vast sense of relief swept the city. As a happy coincidence, the newly convened Nation Convention began its operation at noon on September twenty-first publishing the news of this victory as its first duty. In a reaction to new hope and horror of what had been done, the Commune of Paris was abolished. However, the final efficacy of this move was very doubtful, Roger said to Leonie when they were at home and considering the news.

  “Since all the worst radicals, even that diseased monster Marat, have been elected to the convention, I do not see that much has been accomplished in curbing the commune. It will merely operate from a new base.”

  The truth of his words became apparent soon enough. By October sixteenth the question of the king’s fate had been raised and Bourbotte, a deputy from Auxerre, had called for the deaths of the whole royal family. Most of the deputies drew back, temporizing, but on November sixth Valazé made a report on papers found in a secret safe in the Tuileries and accused Louis XVI of treason. He called for a trial of the deposed monarch. There were a few who protested, but Valazé’s report had inflamed many and the Jacobins seized their chance. The Girondists, always split into violent factions, were still uncertain of which way they wanted to jump and played for time. They compromised on setting a date for debate on the matter.

  On the fifteenth of November the subject was open for discussion. The aim of the Jacobins was to avoid any trial and pass a sentence of death without public discussion or pleading. However, they could not push the convention that far. Too many voices were raised in support of mercy. Thomas Paine, who had left the newly born nation of the United States because it was not sufficiently republican, offered an impassioned plea in favor of banishment rather than death, as did a number of others. Finally, the Jacobin faction was forced to accept a trial.

  Leonie had been attending the bulletins concerning this di
scussion with close attention and was overjoyed when she heard this. She was surprised then hurt, when Roger did not respond in any way to her attempts to discuss the matter but continued to eat his dinner, one of Leonie’s successes, with his eyes fixed on his plate.

  “Perhaps the subject is not very interesting to you because you are English,” she said rather sharply.

  At first Roger seemed to pay no attention to this remark either. He was aware of how strongly Leonie felt and was reluctant to say what he must. In a way, he had hoped the Jacobins would succeed in their purpose. The end, he knew, would be the same, and if the Jacobins had their way, the agony would be short, no one would be deluded by false hopes or by the pretense of legality. Roger raised his eyes at last. The surface hurt Leonie felt at his seeming indifference had not extinguished the hopeful expectation underneath. He could not permit her to cling to that. Roger knew personally that, under certain circumstances, hope was the greatest of all evils rather than the single good that had been packed into Pandora’s box to be let loose on humankind.

  “It has nothing to do with being English,” he said. “Englishmen are men like any others. It is only that—Leonie, I am sorry, but this trial can have only one conclusion. Perhaps I see the more clearly because I am English.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A deposed king cannot be allowed to live.”

  “Why?” Leonie cried. “God knows, I have little enough love for Louis. He is stupid, and he permitted an extravagance that had already ruined the country to continue, even to increase. He stood in the way of every reasonable reform that was suggested. No one except a lunatic could believe that he should be allowed to rule this nation absolutely. But it was wrong to depose him—”

  “You have said it,” Roger interrupted. “The constitution your father helped to write was a reasonable compromise. If only there had been time enough… But it is no help to talk of might-have-beens. Once Louis was deposed, his death warrant was signed.”

  “I cannot believe that! They have not condemned him. There is to be a trial. Roger, you know the king is not really guilty of all those silly things. They say he shed the blood of Frenchmen. It is ridiculous! If he had not been so anxious to avoid bloodshed, he would not be where he is. If he had ordered the Swiss and the troops to fire on the mob, probably they would have run away.”

  “Yes. That is another reason he must die.” Roger sighed. “Think, Leonie. If the king is innocent, then those who deposed him must be guilty of a crime. Can the republic admit that it had no right to depose and imprison Louis—whether or not he is innocent?”

  “But the deputies agreed to a trial. The majority of the convention voted for it. Many spoke against death and suggested banishment. They could say he was guilty of conspiring with the émigrés to restore the absolute monarchy—”

  “That is treason,” Roger pointed out.

  “Oh nonsense,” Leonie protested. “If someone took away something I always believed was mine, would it be wrong for me to try to get it back?”

  “In law, yes. Even morally, if it had been explained very carefully that it was not yours and why it was not yours…” Then Roger shook his head. “No, it does not matter. Even if he had not conspired, even if he had done his very best at all times to act in accordance with the constitution, it would not matter. Once he was deposed only two choices remain. Give him back his throne or kill him.”

  Leonie was neither weak or silly, but she had abundant evidence that Roger always knew what he was talking about. Tears rose in her eyes. She did not give a thought to the first possibility. After what had been done and said, it was out of the question. Louis had been a kind and merciful king, but even he could not overlook the insults and disrespect with which he had been treated. No one in the government could afford to consider restoration.

  “But why death?” Leonie asked. “So many have spoken for banishment. If he were sent away and made to swear he would not return…”

  “You must know Louis’ character and realize he would never give such an oath. He would rather die than—”

  “He permitted himself to be deposed,” Leonie interrupted.

  “My dear, he could do nothing to prevent that, except what we have already said—he was either too weak or unwilling to do—but he never agreed to it either. Anyway, I tell you, it does not matter. Even those who spoke for banishment will vote for death when the vote is taken. Leonie, at this point I would vote for death myself—if I had a modicum of common sense, which I begin to fear I have not.”

  He pushed his chair back impatiently and began to stride around the small room. Leonie watched him, the horror she had felt at his saying he would vote for death fading as she saw his agitation and recalled the final part of his sentence.

  “There is nothing I can do!” he burst out.

  “No, of course not!” Leonie cried, also jumping to her feet. She had forgotten, in her absorption in the fate of a person she felt was being grounded to bits between the millstones of an inexorable force, that Roger, like her father, always felt responsible for things that happened.

  “And even if I could, I know I should not,” he went on, not seeming to have heard her. “It is one man, one life. Is it right to preserve that one life when thousands and thousands would die because of it? I don’t know. When is justice wrong? Is it a thing that can be measured in terms of cost, like a bushel of corn?”

  “What are you talking about?” Leonie caught at Roger and stopped his pacing.

  “A deposed king must not live,” Roger repeated. “Charles I was executed—that was wrong, an injustice, although he was a foolish man—but his death ended the civil war in England and the country was at peace. Perhaps it was not such a peace as many could have wished for, but the bloodletting was ended. Then James II fled the country and was deposed. That saved the nation the blood of one stupid man and brought us instead a torrent of blood—the Boyne, and Culloden, and the massacre at Glencoe, not to mention the many little hopeless risings and the heads on Traitor’s Gate. As long as the deposed king lives—or his acknowledged heirs—there are those who will try to restore him.”

  Leonie put her hands to her mouth.

  “Think about it,” Roger urged, “and do not be so quick to call ‘monsters’ all those who vote for death. Some are monsters—Marat, Danton, perhaps that ‘incorruptible’ block of ice Robespierre—but most are only men, torn apart among what they know is just, their fears for themselves and their own families and their knowledge of what is good for the country. When the last two agree on an answer and overshadow the first so greatly, does that make a man who accepts the answer a monster?”

  Shivering, Leonie pressed herself into Roger’s arms, and he held her and kissed her, “I am sorry to kill your hope,” he whispered against her hair, “but it will hurt you less if you understand.”

  That was true. As the weeks passed and Leonie saw the moves, like a stylized dance of death, she grew to accept what Roger had said. On December eleventh Louis was arraigned, on the nineteenth he and his lawyers had finished examining the documents to be used as evidence against him. Sometime during that period he said to Lamoignon de Malesherbes, an old friend and ex-minister who had petitioned to help defend him, “They will put me to death. I am certain of it. For all that, let us engage in the trial as if I were about to gain. I shall gain really, because justice will be paid to my memory.”

  This statement and others made their way mysteriously from Louis’ closely guarded prison and aroused considerable sympathy for him. Nonetheless, Leonie was not seduced into hope again, and on December twenty-sixth the trial was held. A few, moved by the logic of the defense and the quiet dignity of the king, forgot practicalities. A deputy called Languinais even pointed out that the tribunal that had boldly declared itself the author of the event of August tenth, which had resulted in Louis’ deposition, could not, in reason, also be his “impartial” judge, and cried in fury that he would rather die himself than condemn to death, by a vi
olation of all legal forms, the most detestable tyrant.

  However, these voices were drowned in the more vocal radical outpourings of St. Just and Robespierre. St. Just cried passionately, “To pardon the tyrant is to pardon the tyranny.” But it was Robespierre’s cold, quiet, unemotional voice that really drowned resistance to the judgment against Louis. “So far as I am concerned,” he had said, “I abhor the punishment of death of which your laws are so profuse, and I ask for its abolition… I have for Louis neither love nor hatred. I only hate his crimes and therefore pronounce with regret the fatal truth. Louis must die because the country must live.”

  Voting on the verdict began on January sixteenth and on the seventeenth the sentence of death was announced. A movement for reprieve was voted on and rejected on January nineteenth with a much greater majority than the original vote.

  When they had that news, Leonie said to Roger, “You were right—although you are too generous, I think. The more they thought about it, the more they realized it would not be practical to let him live. Only I think what turned the tables was their fear for themselves, not for the nation.” She shivered. “Roger, can we escape from here? I want to go to England.”

  “England isn’t any better,” he soothed, hugging her to him. “We did it too, although that was a long time ago. Still, it isn’t likely to happen again. Poor old George is just as stupid as Louis, but everyone knows he’s mad, and Prinny—he’s too clever and too weak-kneed to cause any real trouble.”

  Nonetheless, Roger went to see Fouché the very next day. He agreed with Leonie, in spite of some reluctance, that it was time to get out of France. There were aspects of the situation that he had not mentioned to her because he did not wish her to be frightened. Roger was reasonably sure that Louis’ execution would cause a reaction in other nations that would result in an intensification of the war. On that front, things had been going well. There had been another French victory, at Jemappes, which had driven the Prussians off French soil completely. It seemed to Roger the best opportunity to leave Paris. There was no war panic, he had been in the city for four months and might reasonably wish to visit his home for a few days. There would be, he hoped, a period of quiet before the king was executed during which he might obtain a pass.