Time of Terror

by Hunter, Seth

  He adjusted his spectacles and gazed around his audience through the green-tinted lenses as if to give himself time to think, or to ensure that everyone was listening.

  “France is the champion of freedom. The men of this chamber have been its greatest defenders. But there is a conspiracy to destroy it. Orchestrated by foreign tyrants but supported by the enemy within. Even in this very chamber.”

  He deliberately did not look up towards Danton and his friends on the highest levels of the Mountain but others did. His authority now was complete. He seemed to have grown in stature as he gazed reprovingly out from the tribune, the green lenses of his glasses like large, gleaming eyes . . .

  “If freedom is to be defended, the most extreme measures must be taken against those who would destroy it. We must harden our hearts. We must fight Tyranny with Terror, the cold, pure, virtuous Terror of the state . . .” He glanced now with defiance towards Danton. “There must be no indulgence for the enemies of the people.”

  He left the tribune to thunderous applause. Especially, Nathan noted, from those on the Plain who had clapped loudest for Danton.

  The President rang his bell for order. Then he addressed the Americans standing at the bar of the Convention, with their hats still in their hands . . .

  The alliance of France and America was a vital weapon in the war on Tyranny, he began. “But Thomas Paine . . .” He drew his brows together and leaned over his desk, peering down at the Americans over his spectacles like a schoolmaster surveying a class of hopeless dunces. His face was cadaverous, his complexion yellow in the light of the lamps. “Thomas Paine is not an American. Thomas Paine is an Englishman. Born in a country with which we are at war!” The delegates on the floor of the chamber and the spectators in the galleries were now united in their fury and the President’s voice could scarcely be heard above their clamour. “An enemy of the people, marching with the enemies of France and Revolution. He will be judged by the tribunes of the people. And if he is found guilty, he will pay the price demanded by the people.”

  And the howls were like the fury of the mob, baying for blood.

  “Well,” said Nathan, “I suppose it was worth a try.”

  He stood with Sara in the gardens of the Tuileries waiting for Mary who had gone off to find Imlay. It was properly dark now and a chill wind moved the lanterns in the trees. There was still a thin layer of snow upon the ground and icy flakes swirled in the wind and stung the face like gravel.

  “They are afraid,” she said. She was shivering and he wanted to put his arm around her and take her home to bed.

  “Of Robespierre?” He seemed such an unlikely man to inspire fear, and yet . . .

  She nodded vigorously. “And the mob. Those in the galleries. They are brought here by the Jacobins. Some of them are paid. Paid thugs, that is all they are.”

  Nathan turned sharply as he heard a sound in the trees. It might have been the sighing of the wind but there was something else, like the hiss of a blade drawn from leather. He saw a figure standing in the shadows and called out.

  “Who’s there? Imlay—is that you?”

  One of the lanterns swung in the trees and in the brief light he saw the features of the officer who had arrested Paine: Commissioner Gillet. Nathan whirled round as he heard the footfalls in the snow, expecting to see gendarmes closing in on him. But they were not gendarmes. He heard the sharp intake of breath from Sara. He stooped swiftly for the knife in his boot—but it was not there. It was not permitted to carry weapons in the Convention or anywhere in the vicinity.

  This did not seem to have troubled the men in the trees. He caught the glint of steel as they closed in on him. Five or six of them, armed with knives. No, not knives, hooks. The hooks he had seen the stevedores carrying on the waterfront. He had seen them slashed into a bale of cargo and could imagine what they would do to human flesh. I cannot win this, he thought as he prepared to run at them.

  And then the dog was there.

  A large dog with glaring eyes and a slobbering jaw. More the size of a colt and sleek with muscles that rippled in the glow of the lanterns. A mastiff.

  It snarled.

  The men drew back.

  A shout from the direction of the palace. The dog fixed them with its eye for a moment as if to impinge them on its memory and emitted a low growl before turning and trotting obediently back up the path.

  Whence came a curious procession.

  It was led by an urchin carrying a flambeau. Behind him came several of the same species, barefoot even in the cold and dressed more or less in rags. Behind them came a smallish man in a long coat and a tall hat picking his way rather delicately across the lingering clumps of snow on the footpath. And behind him four much larger men carrying staves.

  The procession halted. The small man raised his head so the light caught it and Nathan saw that it was Robespierre.

  He looked at Nathan with a frown and then at the men with the hooks. They melted back into the shadows. Nathan looked round for Gillet but he was no longer there.

  The procession continued, now led by the dog. As Robespierre passed he nodded curtly at Nathan. Nothing was said.

  “What,” said Nathan when they had gone, “was that?”

  “That was Robespierre,” said Sara. She sounded short of breath and he saw that her fists were clenched.

  “I know that. But who was with him?”

  “The animal is his dog, Brount,” she said. She drew a deep shuddering breath but when she spoke again her voice was even. “The little ones are the children of the Savoyards who run messages for the Convention, and the men are apprentices who work for Robespierre’s landlord, the carpenter Duplay. They always escort him to and from the Convention, in case he is attacked.”

  “Very wise,” said Nathan, “though he could probably get by with just the dog.”

  “But who were the others?”

  He shrugged. “Footpads. Some of your paid thugs. Who knows?” He saw no point in mentioning Gillet. He wondered now if he had imagined him but he did not think so. “We had better move back into the Convention. Or at least wait by the door.”

  He took her arm and they headed back towards the palace. He felt her trembling slightly but he was impressed at how she had comported herself.

  First Paine, he thought, now him. Was it coincidence or did they know why he had come to Paris? Or was it something personal between him and Gillet? Either way, he needed allies.

  “Tell me,” he said when they had reached the door of the Convention with its armed guards outside and a huddle of delegates in the hallway within. “What did Imlay mean about you and Danton?”

  She drew back from him and gave him a look as frosty as the night air.

  “You said something about Danton, that he had stopped chasing women, and Imlay said, ‘Even you, Sara,’ I thought . . .”

  “Well, you thought wrong,” she said, turning away.

  “I did not mean . . . I only meant that . . . if you knew him . . .”

  She turned back but her expression remained cold.

  “And if I did?”

  He shrugged as if it did not matter. “I wondered if it might be possible to meet him, that is all.”

  She continued to gaze at him in silence for a moment. Then she shook her head and he saw the sadness in her eyes and the disappointment. “Mary warned me that you were not what you seemed to be,” she said in a low voice. “But I suppose in Paris these days, very few people are.”

  He tried to say something to reassure her but in truth he did not know what it could be. And then he saw Imlay coming towards them through the lobby with Mary on his arm and the moment passed.

  Imlay was looking remarkably pleased with himself for someone who had just suffered a defeat.

  “I have been talking to Camille,” he said. “We are
invited to dinner.” He beamed at them genially. “The four of us.”

  “Camille?”

  “Camille Desmoulins,” supplied Mary. “I thought everyone knew Camille, even in America,” she added with a sly glance at Nathan. “He is the man who rallied the mob to march upon the Bastille.”

  “And the best friend of Citizen Danton,” said Sara in the same low murmur as if she were talking to herself. “So you will have your wish, Mr. Turner, after all.”

  Chapter 19

  the Bull of Arcis

  Camille Desmoulins was in his early thirties but looked younger, with something of the street urchin about him or the gypsy boy. Sallow complexion, high cheekbones, liquid brown eyes. His long hair was tied back with a ribbon but it had either strayed or he had pulled a few strands loose for effect. He had a way of tossing them back from his eyes as he spoke as if they were an irritant but it was more likely a piece of theatre, Nathan thought, who had heard a great deal about Camille Desmoulins from Sara and Imlay, more than he perhaps wanted to know. Everyone knew Camille and everyone called him by his first name: even his enemies. It was as if he had never really grown up. The spoilt brat of the Revolution. Or the mascot. Petted, indulged, never quite taken seriously. Yet he was credited with rousing the mob to storm the Bastille at the very start of the Revolution and he had been involved in most of its twists and turns since.

  His apartment was in the Rue de Cordeliers just a few blocks from where Sara lived and quite close to the Luxembourg Palace. It was elegantly furnished with silk-covered armchairs, a velvet chaise longue, an Oriental carpet and tasselled drapes of blue and gold—but it looked lived in. Worked in, even. News-sheets were stacked in a corner, page proofs piled on a sideboard. Camille’s wife, Lucille, said it was like a print shop most of the time. People walked in and out all day with copy or news. She had tried to tidy up before they came but it was hopeless. And she shot a dart at Camille as if he was.

  Lucille was said to be a beauty but she looked tired and nervous. They had a young child called Horace and they had kept him up late so he could say hello. He said hello and they all said, “Hello, Horace” or “Hello, my little one” as the mood took them, and Sara picked him up and kissed him and Lucille took him off to bed. Camille poured champagne and Imlay toasted the Vieux Cordeliers which was the name of the newspaper apparently, of which he was editor. Camille pulled a face and said it was as well Lucille was out of the room. She thought it would be the death of him.

  “She’s terrified that I’ll fall out with Max,” he told them.

  “I thought you had fallen out with Max,” said Imlay.

  It was a moment before Nathan made the connection with Robespierre. He was confused. He had entertained the notion that Camille was the friend of Danton—not Robespierre—and that this was why they were here. Now it appeared that he was a friend of Robespierre. Could you be friends with them both?

  The answer to this, apparently, was yes—if you were Camille.

  “Max and I go b-b-back a long way,” he said.

  “They went to school together,” explained Sara who had not entirely abandoned her role as tutor, though she was definitely in a pet about something or other . . . “Robespierre looked after him and stopped him from being bullied and it has been the same ever since. Except when he is being bullied by Danton.”

  Camille tossed his hair back and looked cross.

  “All the same,” said Imlay, “he can’t have been pleased with what you wrote about him in the last issue.”

  “I d-d-didn’t even m-m-mention him,” said Camille. “It was a-b-b-bout the Emperor T-T-Tiberius.”

  “I think people made the connection,” commented Mary drily.

  “If people want to m-m-make c-c-connections, that’s up to them,” declared Camille sulkily.

  Imlay had warned Nathan about Camille’s stammer on the way over.

  “His friends say that’s why he writes,” he said. “His enemies say he talks like he’s constipated and writes like he has diarrhoea but it’s the same old crap.”

  Imlay clearly knew Camille well. Well enough to be invited to supper and to treat him like an irresponsible playmate. Quite why he had invited Nathan was still something of a mystery but it would no doubt be solved before the evening was over.

  The one thing Nathan was sure of was that it was not purely a social occasion.

  “He’s frightened,” Camille said over dinner. “He doesn’t know which way to turn.”

  They were still talking about Robespierre.

  “He’s frightened?” repeated Imlay in astonishment. “What about the rest of us?”

  “Everything’s going wrong for him,” Camille explained. “He had this dream, you see. The dream of Rousseau. A Republic of Virtue. A free people devoted to justice, community, self-sacrifice. Gentle, learned, bucolic, working their own land. No more hunger or thirst, no more superstition. But it’s not happening. Everywhere he looks he sees greed, ignorance, suffering. The people don’t care about freedom. They just want to eat.”

  “How unimaginative of them,” murmured Sara softly. “How maddening for him.”

  “But that’s the root of the problem,” Camille continued. “Food. People are starving and he can’t do anything about it.”

  He contemplated the remains of the chicken. A black-market chicken. In the mellow light of the candles he looked like a petulant child who has stayed up too late. They were wax candles, the best, exuding a scent of sandalwood.

  “It’s the price controls,” Imlay argued. “They don’t work. The farmers hide everything they grow. They’d rather let it rot than sell at a loss. So there’s no bread and the poor starve.”

  “Don’t you think he knows that?” said Camille with a passion that clearly took his stammer by surprise. “But what can he do? If he gets rid of the price controls he’ll have riots on the streets. If he doesn’t there’s no bread—and more riots. He’s f-f-f-fucked.”

  “We’re all fucked,” said a voice from the door. “What I can’t stand is to be fucked by a fucking eunuch.”

  “Evening, Georges,” said Lucille. “I see you’ve brought your own salt with you. I thought everything was a little bland.”

  “How did you get in?” said Camille.

  “You left the door unlocked. I suppose you might as well. When Vadier sends his thugs for you, they won’t have to kick it in.”

  Danton. The Bull of Arcis. Larger and uglier than he had looked at the tribune even. If he had filled the Convention with his presence, in an average-sized dining room he was devastating. They made a place for him at the table but he was incapable of sitting still. They offered him food but he refused it and then helped himself from Camille’s plate. He paced about behind them making the occasional pounce to grab a bottle and refill his glass. And all the time with a stream of invective—against Robespierre, his disciples on the Committee of Public Safety, Vadier . . . Did they hear what Vadier had called him? A fat turbot.

  “And he’s going to have me gutted, he says. Vadier. That nobody. I’ll cut off his head and piss in the skull.”

  “Yes, Georges,” said Lucille. “So you have said. Many times.”

  “I thought we were going to stop cutting off heads,” said Sara quietly.

  Danton glared at her.

  “ ‘He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression,’ ” quoted Mary, “ ‘for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach unto himself.’ Thomas Paine. Who is still in the Luxembourg, in case you were wondering.”

  “What ever happened to that fine old tradition of the ladies leaving the gentlemen after dinner?” inquired Danton with deceptive mildness. Then he ran to the window and pulled it open.

  “Vadier, do you hear me, you fucking scorpion? I’ll cut off your tail and stuff it down your
throat.”

  “For God’s sake, Georges, what are you doing?” Camille pulled him back by his coat-tails and slammed the window shut.

  “He’s got men watching the house,” said Danton. “I’m letting them know I’m here.”

  “They know you’re here, Georges,” said Lucille. “They can hear you in Marseilles. You don’t have to open the window.”

  Finally they went into the sitting room, which had more space for him to move around in, but he’d had a change of mood by then and slumped sulkily in an armchair with his wine. He told them he was sorry for being a bore but it was because he had been crossed in love. He had loved Lucille from the moment he first saw her, he declared, but she had spurned him for a sop like Camille. No wonder he was crazy.

  “You’re crazy about your wife,” Lucille reminded him. “You were telling us only yesterday. Remember?”

  “That was yesterday,” he said.

  This would be the second wife, Nathan presumed, the first having died a year ago while Danton was in Brussels with the army. His grief was in character. She’d been dead a week when he came back to Paris but he ordered them to dig open the grave so he could cover the corpse with kisses. He had retired from politics and buried himself in the country. A few months later he was back in Paris and married again—to the girl who looked after his children. Louise, a girl of sixteen.

  Now he was singing Sara’s praises.

  “Is she not the wonder of Paris?” he demanded. “Her complexion, her hair, her . . . ” He made a shape with his hands but clearly thought better of expressing it in words. “The sultry Mediterranean beauty meets the bold Scottish adventuress, do you not think?” He gazed benignly around the company. “What does our American friend think?” With a dart in Nathan’s direction—the first time he had looked at him, or even acknowledged his presence.

  Nathan cleared his throat and tried to clear his brain. Danton made him nervous. It was one thing to express a desire to meet him, quite another to confront him in the flesh. He did not know what Imlay had told him. Or how much Imlay himself knew of his mission.