Time of Terror

by Hunter, Seth

  He was still looking thoughtful. She knew he was not what he appeared to be; but then nor was she.

  She walked to the window and looked down into the street. Empty at this time of the afternoon. Shadows falling. Soon she would have to go and find Alex or he would come to find her.

  “It is all pretence,” she said, as if to herself. “A masquerade.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Do you know the meaning of sans-culottes?”

  “I think so.”

  “That it does not mean running around with their lower parts exposed like Cannibals in the South Seas, though they may at times behave like them?”

  “I believe it means without breeches, such as a gentleman wears.”

  “So they wear baggy striped pants and red shirts and the Phrygian cap with the tricolour and wooden sabots on their feet and they carry a pike, often with a head on it?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Except that they do not. Anyone dressed like that, you may count on it he will be a student at the university or a man of letters, a journalist or an actor or some such impostor. The workers and the poor are to be found in the cast-off finery of their betters: tall hats and tricorns and frock coats and waistcoats picked up for a few sous in the flea markets or took from a corpse strung up from a lamppost. Nobody in Paris is who you think they are. It is all make-believe. Theatre. A masquerade.”

  She felt his arms around her waist.

  “You are sad,” he murmured in her ear.

  She squirmed round and buried her face in his chest for a moment and let him hug her.

  “There is a little town called Tourrettes,” she said. “Near where we lived in Provence. I used to go there as a child. To the market with my father. Tourrettes-les-Vence. A walled town on top of a hill. It is very beautiful. I used to love going to Tourrettes. There is a café in the square where I drank lemonade and ate the little cakes—made of oranges—and watched the people coming to market.”

  He stroked her hair gently. She felt the tears in her eyes. She looked up at him: “If I leave Paris,” she said, “that is where I would go. To Tourrettes-les-Vence. That is where you would find me. With Alex. In Tourrettes drinking lemonade and eating little cakes made of oranges . . .” And then she added after a moment: “and waiting for you there.”

  Chapter 25

  the Pavilion of Flowers

  Wrapped in his cloak with his hat pulled low over his brow, Gilbert Imlay hurried through the gardens of the Tuileries towards the west wing—once called the Pavillon des Flores but now the Pavillon de l’Égalité. In the days when the Tuileries was a royal palace, these had been the private rooms of the King and Queen—Marie Antoinette had the ground floor, Louis the floor above—with a staircase between that was still called the Queen’s Stairs. But now they were the offices of the Committee of Public Safety: the twelve men who ruled revolutionary France. Clearly they were working late. Though it was close to midnight lights blazed in several of the windows on the upper floor and the guards at the main entrance had lit the flambeaus for the two 6-pounder cannons that stood there night and day, loaded with grape.

  Imlay showed his pass and hurried across the marble lobby and up the stairs. Directly ahead of him was a double door with two sentries on duty. Imlay paused for a moment on the landing. He had only once entered the room behind the closed doors but he had committed every detail to memory in case it should prove of use: the magnificent Gobelin tapestries, the elegant furniture, the green baize table and the men who had been sitting round it at the time: Robespierre, Saint-Just, Lindet, Carnot, Barrere and the crippled Couthon in his wheelchair . . . They would be there now with the other six, recently returned from the provinces where they had been dispensing revolutionary justice. Marseilles, Toulon, Lyons, Nantes, Bordeaux, the whole of Brittany, all had felt the cleansing virtues of the Terror.

  Meetings of the Committee were often routine but not tonight. Tonight Robespierre was back after an absence of several weeks with some mysterious malady—and if rumour could be believed, the leading members of the Committee of General Security had been summoned to join the debate. A joint meeting of the Robespierre Committee and the Vadier Committee. What great crisis in the nation’s affairs had brought about such an alarming assembly? An uprising in the provinces? A new declaration of war? But who else was there to fight? Russia? America?

  No. Imlay had a feeling that he knew what this was about and it was of far greater moment than insurrection or foreign war: to him, at least.

  The guards were staring at him and he turned to his right and walked briskly along the corridor and into the rooms reserved for Citizen Robert Lindet, the member of the Committee with special responsibility for food supplies.

  There were two clerks sitting at their desks, copying documents by the light of several candles. They looked up when Imlay entered but he was a familiar figure and they did not stop their work. There was a good fire with a murmuring kettle on the hob and he went to warm himself for a moment, rubbing his hands over the blaze before moving to the window. From here, if he pressed his face to the glass, he had a view across the gardens to the Louvre and a small strip of riverbank with the lanterns bobbing in the wind. He stayed there for some minutes watching the reflection of the room behind him. Eventually the door opened and a man entered. Without looking to right or left he walked straight over to Imlay and handed him a file. Imlay glanced at the cover. It was headed “Estimated Food Reserves, Paris Saint-Antoine, Germinal X, Year II.” Imlay nodded briefly, tucked the file under his arm and left the room.

  At the bottom of the stair he paused again and opened it. It contained ten pages. Nine were filled with columns of figures and scribbled notes in a hand he recognised as that of Citizen Lindet. The last page contained a list of names in the same hand. At sight of them Imlay felt the blood drain from his face. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed but he was alone in the lobby. He put on his hat and left the building.

  Louise answered the door. She was in her nightdress, carrying a candle, and she looked like a frightened child, which was what she was. He saw from her face that she already knew or suspected.

  “Where is he?” Imlay asked her.

  He was kneeling in front of the fire in his dressing gown poking the embers into life.

  “The servants have retired,” he said to Imlay, like an aristocrat—or a lawyer with pretensions—caught doing the work of a menial.

  “I’ve come from the Committee,” Imlay said.

  “I know,” said Danton. “I’ve just heard.” He turned but did not get up. “I’ve just seen Paris.”

  Imlay stared at him, uncomprehendingly, thinking he meant the city. Had he been looking out of the window, was this some poetic sentiment of his, some vision of the future? Then he remembered. Fabricius Paris was the name of his old law clerk, now Clerk of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

  “They mean to accuse me before the Convention,” Danton said calmly. “Tomorrow morning. Saint-Just has prepared the charges. Well, I will look forward to it. It is what I have been waiting for.”

  But Imlay was shaking his head. “They won’t let you anywhere near the Convention. They’re not that stupid.”

  Danton shrugged. “Saint-Just is. He wants to accuse me publicly. He has his speech all prepared. There was an argument about it. They know I’d tear him to pieces. Paris said he stamped his feet and threw his hat in the fire—”

  “He did what?”

  “He threw his hat in the fire and his notes, too . . .” Danton’s smile was infectious, a genuine merriment that bubbled over into his eyes and into Imlay, too. God knows, there was little enough to laugh at, but what there was, you could be sure Danton would find it and have you laughing with him. “Only someone snatched them out,” he managed to say, “in case they needed them.”

  He wiped his eyes.


  “I expect they will give the job to Robespierre,” he said. “And we will see if he does any better.”

  Imlay shook his head. “Georges, please, listen to me. They are still meeting but Lindet managed to send me a message. He is at the meeting.”

  He pulled the papers from his pocket, dropping some on the floor in his nervousness and haste and stooping to pick them up.

  “An emergency joint meeting of the two Committees. They’ve ordered your arrest.” He found the page and began to read out the names: “Danton, Lacroix, Desmoulins, Philippaux—”

  “Camille?”

  Danton stood up, the poker gripped in his fist like a sword. For a moment, looking at him, massive in the light of the fire, Imlay felt hope. This was Danton. They had sprung their little mousetrap and caught a lion.

  “Was Robespierre there?”

  “Of course Robespierre was there. Do you think they would dare without Robespierre?”

  “And he let them arrest Camille?” He fell back in a chair as if deflated, all the fight knocked out of him.

  “His name is on the warrant,” said Imlay.

  “I saw him with Camille this afternoon. He had his arm around him.” He began to pull himself up from the chair. “I have to warn him.”

  “I’ve already sent to warn him. I’ve a cab waiting.” Imlay turned to Louise who was watching from the shadows.“You should grab some things,” he said. If he could just get Danton and Camille away tonight, Louise and Lucille could follow later, with the children.

  “But we have immunity,” Danton was saying. “They cannot arrest a delegate without a full vote of the Convention.”

  “They’ll do that later,” said Imlay. “When they have you under lock and key. They have sent the warrant to the mayor with the order for your arrest.” He recalled the phrase in Lindet’s hasty scrawl: “ ‘To execute immediately.’ ” An unfortunate choice of words. “Georges, you don’t have much time. They may be on their way already.”

  Danton had been staring at the dying embers of the fire, still with the poker in his hand but it no longer looked like a sword.

  “Where would I go?” he said.

  Imlay shrugged. He did not think it mattered where they went, as long as they went.

  “England,” he proposed, “Or—”

  “I went to England before. But we were not at war then.”

  “America, then. England and then America.”

  But Danton was shaking his head.

  “You cannot take your country on the soles of your feet,” he said.

  This sounded like something he had said before or prepared for an eventuality such as this, but he seemed to take heart from it. He straightened his shoulders.

  “Where is your friend, the American?” he asked. “The one with the money.”

  Imlay felt a small surge of hope. Perhaps it was not too late. They could be at the border by morning.

  “Why?” he said.

  “Only, I would like him to hear my speech. To tell Thomas Jefferson.”

  Imlay stared at him in amazement. “Georges, they won’t let you speak. They are going to arrest you and then they are going to cut off your head.”

  “If they arrest me they must put me on trial,” Danton insisted. “And if they will not hear me at the Convention, they will hear me at the Revolutionary Tribunal. And then—we will see if the people love me more than they fear Robespierre.”

  Chapter 26

  the Bull at Bay

  Nathan stepped out into the little garden at the back of the house in the Rue Jacob. It was barely dawn. He had been woken more pleasantly than was normal by Sara’s lips tickling his ear and the gentle but resolute suggestion that he might find another berth before the house awoke.

  “You are turning me into the street,” he complained.

  She assured him that he need go no further than the room at the end of the landing where he had slept the night of his arrival in Paris.

  “Very well,” he agreed, struggling to rise. At once she threw a naked leg over him, trapping him on the bed and covering his face with kisses, causing more of a rise than he had contemplated but as he began to respond with some enthusiasm she pushed him firmly in the chest.

  “Go,” she said. “Go. Before you run into Hélène at the door.”

  His new bed was perfectly comfortable and the circumstances more pleasant than his last visit after the incident of the mob and the rope but mind and body were considerably agitated from more recent adventures and he found himself unable to sleep. His more erotic imaginings were neutralised by considerations of his precarious situation in Paris and the certain prospect of an abrupt ending to his bliss.

  After he had delivered his precious cargo to Danton he would have no good reason to remain in the city. This might not have troubled him—reasons might be invented as readily as excuses—were it not for the presence of the Speedwell in Le Havre. For once Imlay had been waiting to greet them at the quayside with a lighter to take their precious cargo on to Rouen and a pair of barges waiting there to bring it up the Seine to Paris. He had not been pleased to discover that Nathan intended to accompany it and obtain a receipt for its delivery.

  “Have I given you any reason not to trust me?” he admonished him severely.

  “I am under orders,” Nathan replied with a shrug.

  “Then they do not trust me, which I must say I take very ill.”

  “Possibly they do not trust Danton,” Nathan countered, “or what intercourse we may encounter on the way.”

  “And you seriously expect Danton to sign a receipt that would cost him his head were it to be discovered?”

  “It is not quite a receipt, more a letter confirming delivery of an unnamed consignment. But the signature is to be compared with one already in their possession. Besides,” he pointed out, “when the gold is in his possession he need have no fear for his head—or anyone else’s—if he is as resolute as you have suggested.”

  This had thrown Imlay into some confusion. Danton, it appeared, was not as resolute as his supporters might have wished. He vacillated wildly. One day he wished for an accommodation with Robespierre; the next he was for marching on the Pavilion of Flowers and throwing him out of the window.

  This was not the news Nathan wished to hear but Imlay had cheered up considerably on the journey to Paris, drinking and carousing with the crew of the barges and telling long stories of his adventures in Kentucky and other wastelands while Nathan sketched by day and watched the stars by night and felt morally superior without deriving as much satisfaction from that condition as he might have hoped.

  It occurred to him now that he might justifiably insist on remaining in the city to observe whether the gold was used for the purpose for which it was intended but he had no such instruction from his superiors and he would have to send word to Tully. Besides it would secure only temporary relief. His feelings for Sara were more than merely erotic, or so he assured himself. He loved her. He did not wish to leave her. Not today nor next week.

  Then would he marry her? A small but insistent voice in his ear.

  Yes, he sternly replied; if she would have him. He would marry her and take her back to England with little Alex.

  But would she be prepared to leave Paris?

  The sun peeped between rooftops and flooded the garden with a soft golden light. The trees were a mass of pink blossom and he remembered the apple blossom in Rye almost exactly a year ago. And yet it was strange to recall a world in which he had not known the woman now lying in the bed upstairs; a world in which it was possible for him to feel inexplicable, heedless joy . . . or to contemplate a liaison with another woman. His brief passion for Tully’s fiancée now seemed to him impossibly childish and trite.

  So he was to return to England with a wife and child? A Fren
chwoman some ten years older than himself with no property or income?

  He found himself gazing into the importunate eyes of the carp. They were quite small carp which was presumably how they had survived the pot. He showed them his empty hands.

  He had to be honest with himself. He was not burning to marry. But the alternative was unthinkable . . . Unless the romance be prolonged.

  If Danton succeeded in his bid for power there would be peace. And if there was peace he could leave the Navy or at least take a long leave of absence. He would be able to stay in France as long as he wished. His relationship with Sara could be nurtured without undue pressure to make a decision before he was entirely ready for it.

  The carp were still watching him and he detected a hint of suspicion in their fishy regard.

  “What?” he said.

  But he knew what. A mistress in Paris was a more attractive proposition than a wife in London. It was no use pretending otherwise.

  But if it came to it, he vowed, he would marry her tomorrow.

  It was the only honourable course and he was an honourable man.

  Or at least he was not a complete satyr.

  And you think she would have you?

  It was entirely possible, he supposed, that she wished only to be pleasured by him and would be amused if he offered to make an honest woman of her. She was after all a widow, a woman of some experience. He recalled the stories Imlay had told him on their journey to Le Havre in the summer. What if they were true? What if one half, or one quarter of them were true?

  The thought agitated him considerably—and for a variety of reasons. There was jealousy, sure, but also excitement. More than that. He looked up towards her bedroom window. He was not sure exactly which one it was but it was there somewhere and she was lying there naked. Warm and naked and . . . perhaps thinking of him as erotically as he was thinking of her.

  He could not give her up; not now, to resume her life before they met, whether Imlay’s stories were true or not. For if the prospect of continuing their liaison was enticing, the thought of sacrificing her to another was entirely insupportable.