Time of Terror

by Hunter, Seth

  His deliberations were interrupted by the appearance of the maid, Hélène, at the kitchen door.

  “Citizen,” she called out to him, “Citizen Imlay is here . . .”

  And there he was behind her, with such a black look on his face that Nathan’s troubles lurched into immediate perspective . . .

  The treasure, he thought, as he advanced to meet him.

  But it was not the treasure.

  Imlay flung himself down on the seat by the pool. The carp gathered hopefully again. But it was not their day.

  “Danton has been arrested,” he said.

  Nathan stared at him. He looked exhausted. There were dark shadows under his eyes and he had several days’ growth of beard.

  “They came for him this morning,” he said, “with a warrant signed by Robespierre and Vadier.”

  “But this is Danton.” Nathan still could not believe it. The man had seemed untouchable. “The Convention will—”

  “The Convention,” Imlay made a face as if he tasted something sour, “will do nothing. They met at seven this morning. I was there, in the public gallery. There was some anger when they heard—but then Robespierre came in. He went straight to the tribune and of course everyone made way for him as if he owned it and the rest were only allowed to use it on sufferance; preferably when he was not present. He said Danton was no better than any other citizen. ‘We will have no more privileges here and no more idols,’ he said. He looked at them through his glasses in that way he has. Of course no one had the guts to speak against him. They’re all terrified. Scared stiff they’ll be in the same tumbrel as Danton.”

  “Robespierre cannot send them all to the guillotine.”

  “No. But no one wants to be the next—or the last, before sanity prevails and they rise up against him.”

  “So what now?”

  “The bull is at bay—and they have set the dogs upon him. Robespierre has been briefing Herman and Fouquier to make sure it all goes according to plan.”

  This meant nothing to Nathan. Herman was the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Imlay explained, and Fouquier the Public Prosecutor.

  “They are putting them on trial with the bankers,” he added.

  “The bankers?”

  “They have a number of men held on corruption charges. They are hoping it will confuse the issue to charge Danton with them—and that the people will think he has been lining his pockets. They’ve got it all worked out. Robespierre must have been planning it for weeks. All the time he has been ‘indisposed.’ Camille warned us. He said that whenever Max had to make a decision he went to bed with a cold. Well now he has made his decision and they are to die.”

  “They?”

  “Camille has been arrested, too. And Herault de Seychelles and Fabre d’Eglantine and other of their friends—”

  “And they are in the Luxembourg?”

  “With Tom Paine. He was waiting for them in the prison courtyard with others who had once been representatives of the people. Danton made a speech. Naturally. Wherever two or three people are gathered together, Danton makes a speech.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I have my sources. One of the guards is an admirer of Danton, a member of the Cordeliers Club. He said Danton seemed to think it was all up with him. He told them: ‘I tried to get you out of here and now I’m in here with you.’ He said he had tried to do for France what Paine had done for his own country—by which I presume he meant America and not England—but that it had been all in vain and now they would send him to the scaffold. Not one of his more inspiring speeches. I think I preferred ‘Dare, dare and dare again . . . ’ ”

  “So Danton said it was all in vain.”

  They turned sharply. Sara stood behind them in her robe.

  Even now, with this disaster upon them, her beauty took Nathan’s breath away. He felt a ridiculous exultation.

  “Sara . . .” Imlay moved towards her as if to embrace her and Nathan felt a different emotion.

  Sara pushed him away. She looked like a Fury. Her gown opened a little and he glimpsed her leg. She is naked, Nathan thought, under the gown.

  “He has led them to the point of battle,” she said, “and they have followed like goats and now he has surrendered, without a fight. Damn all men. Oh, poor Lucille. I must go to her.”

  She turned away.

  “Sara,” Imlay called after her. “You know Danton. Sometimes he says the first thing that comes into his head, because he likes the sound of it. I expect he’ll put up a fight. He usually does.”

  Chapter 27

  the Trial

  My name is Danton. It is a name tolerably well known in the Revolution. I am a lawyer by profession and I was born at Arcis in the Aube country. In a few days time my abode will be oblivion. My place of residence will be History.”

  Danton, at the Revolutionary Tribunal, when they asked him for his name and address.

  Nathan rolled his eyes at Sara who was sitting next to him in the public gallery with Lucille Desmoulins. Not Imlay. Nathan had not seen him since the previous morning when he had brought news of Danton’s arrest. There were people he had to see, he said mysteriously, but he had promised to be there for the trial. The gallery was packed with Danton’s supporters. Many more were behind the barriers at the back of the court all the way to the doors and beyond: the crowd outside ran to several thousand. Many were peering in at the windows, or pressing in as close as they could to the walls to hear what they could of the proceedings. Danton pitched his voice so it would carry to the farthest extremities of this vast audience.

  He was the only one standing in the crowded dock. Some of the accused Nathan recognised or knew by repute: Camille, of course; Lacroix and Phillipaux; Herault de Seychelles who had been on the Committee of Public Safety; Fabre d’Eglantine, the playwright who had drawn up the revolutionary calendar . . . all friends of Danton. But the others were unfamiliar to him—and to most of the court. These were the bankers, the swindlers and forgers that Imlay said had been thrown in to confuse the issue. They were charged with fraud or hoarding, currency speculation, conspiring with foreign powers . . . The idea was that people would think Danton and his friends were somehow implicated in their alleged crimes: that they would be tainted by association even if they had only met them for the first time in the dock.

  The charges against the Dantonists had not been made public yet. Doubtless they would be read out in due course, when the President managed to make himself heard. He kept ringing his bell furiously to bring the court to order but it was inaudible above the din. People were chanting Danton’s name, stamping their feet, singing the Marseillaise . . . It was something between a carnival and a riot. It seemed that at any moment the mob would storm the courtroom and free the prisoners by force and carry them shoulder high through the streets.

  Lucille was looking hopeful for the first time since the arrest. Danton’s voice rolled out, overriding every attempt at interruption, rising above the whistles and the cheers.

  “Who are my accusers? Bring them forward. Who dares accuse me, Danton?”

  Nathan felt for Sara’s hand and pressed it encouragingly. But privately he was not optimistic. He felt that it was all scripted—a performance—and that this was the noisy part, the prologue before it properly began. Now Danton had the stage but soon others would. Nathan saw the vulture face of Fouquier, the prosecutor, with his black hat and its patriotic plumage watching Danton carefully, his face impassive, waiting for the corpse to stop moving and waving its arms and shouting so the feast could begin—the real purpose of his life. And he saw the faces of the jury: the hand-picked jury who could be relied upon to do their patriotic duty. And a voice inside his head kept repeating: theatre, pure theatre. Or a bull fight, like one he had seen in the Argentine. There was music and noise and flags and cerem
ony, and the matadors in their garish costumes and the bull rushing into the ring, its head lowered for the charge. And then the shouting would stop and everyone would go quiet and they would get on with the serious business of killing.

  When the court adjourned for the day, with nothing decided, they took the prisoners back to the prison and Sara went off with Lucille to stand in the Luxembourg Gardens in the hope of catching a glimpse of Camille while Nathan walked back to his hotel alone.

  He was no longer staying at the Philadelphia. Most of the Americans had left—with neither idealism nor profit to keep them—and it had begun to have a run-down, end of season look. Besides, it seemed unlucky after what had happened to Thomas Paine and Nathan suspected it was still under surveillance. He had found a different place in the narrow cobbled streets behind Notre-Dame: the Hotel Providence, which, according to the proprietor, was where the great Peter Abelard had lived when he was courting the beautiful Heloise. Nathan wondered if he had been here on the night the girl’s guardian sent his hired thugs to cut off his balls.

  He was sitting in the taproom with a glass of red wine when Imlay slipped into the seat opposite.

  “Drink up your wine,” he said. “There is someone I want you to meet.”

  Chapter 28

  the King of the Catacombs

  His name is Le Mulet,” Imlay announced as they headed south out of the city. “Jacques Le Mulet.”

  “Jackass,” reflected Nathan drily.

  “In fact the English translation of Le Mulet would be the Mule,” Imlay corrected him coldly. “The French for an ass, or donkey, is âne.”

  “I am aware of that. It was a poor play upon words.”

  “Well, I pray that you will not play upon them in Le Mulet’s hearing,” Imlay instructed him, “as he may take offence.”

  “And who exactly is he—this Mule?”

  “Among other things, he is the owner of a limestone quarry on the edge of the city which he uses to bury the dead.”

  Nathan looked to see if he was serious but the interior of the cab was too dark to read his expression. It was a cold night with a hint of mist in the air and a frost forming on the rooftops.

  “He buries the dead?”

  “Yes. Or it would be more correct to say reburies them. He digs them up from the old graveyards in the city and dumps them in the quarry.”

  “Is this a pastime of his—or does it serve some greater purpose?”

  “It is a business, like any other. The graveyards were becoming overcrowded, like the rest of Paris. So they are moving the corpses to a new location. Le Mulet has the contract. However, his true vocation, one might say, is as Worshipful Master of the Grand Trouanderie.”

  This meant nothing to Nathan though it sounded impressive.

  “A literal translation would be the Great Villainy,” Imlay explained. “It is a criminal fraternity. It regulates most of the crime—the organised crime—in the city. Allocates territories, punishes trespass, arbitrates quarrels, settles feuds . . . It is very much like a Chamber of Commerce for criminals.”

  “And why are we going to meet him?” inquired Nathan.

  “Did I not say? Because he is a great admirer of Danton.”

  Nathan pondered this in silence for a while. They pulled into the side of the road to let a convoy of drays go past, the horses steaming in the lanterns, lumbering late into Paris with casks of wine. Whatever else Paris went short of, it was not wine.

  “Le Mulet has a finger in a great many pies,” Imlay resumed. “There is scarcely an underhand deal in the city that does not involve him in some way or another.”

  “I assume that is how you became acquainted.”

  “Correct.” Imlay did not appear to be at all offended by this sally. “He has an affinity with Americans. He claims to have fought in the War of Independence, though I cannot see him as a soldier. His true talent is for smuggling.”

  “I appear to have an affinity with smugglers,” Nathan remarked thoughtfully, “though I have not known many on land.”

  “His natural element is under the ground. He is the King of the Catacombs.”

  Worshipful Master of the Grand Trouanderie, Undertaker, Smuggler and now King of the Catacombs.

  “And who are his subjects?”

  “You will see,” said Imlay mysteriously.

  They were silent for a while; the only sounds the jingling of the harness and the crunch of hooves and wheels on the freezing ruts and the occasional oath from the cabby on his box. Briefly, Nathan glimpsed the dark towers of the Luxembourg but they skirted the prison and its gardens, heading farther south into a less populous area. Here were market gardens, windmills and slaughterhouses and even the occasional field, the frost sparkling in the moonlight. Beyond, Nathan glimpsed the imposing edifice of the Porte d’Enfer—Hell’s Gate—one of the customs posts in the great barrière that had been erected around Paris by the tax farmers to extract duty on all freight passing in and out of the city. The wall itself was long gone, destroyed in the first flush of Revolution and the tax farmers with it but some of the gatehouses remained, manned by citizen soldiers checking passes.

  They drove through a suburb, almost a village with a pretty church and a graveyard and a few farm buildings among newer, uglier tenements and workshops. There were larger industries too across the fields with tall chimneys belching smoke. A sudden eruption hurled flame and sparks into the air like a small volcano.

  “Cannon foundries,” explained Imlay, “built in the last few months. And there is Hanriot’s works for the manufacture of saltpetre. Paris is become an armoury.”

  But Nathan was not interested in Hanriot’s saltpetre works or any other. He was interested in Le Mulet and his catacombs.

  “These catacombs,” he ventured, “are they extensive?”

  “They undermine most of Paris, I am told. The Romans started them for the limestone to build the city and people have been adding to them ever since. But there was a problem of subsidence. A few years ago several streets collapsed and the authorities put a ban on any future extensions.”

  “So they run under the streets? And the public buildings?”

  “So I understand from Le Mulet. In fact he claims that one of them runs under the Luxembourg.”

  Nathan looked at him sharply.

  “Am I to understand that he plans to use it to rescue Danton from prison?”

  “No. The plan is mine. Le Mulet does not yet know of it.”

  Nathan still could not read his expression but he saw that he was smiling.

  “And you think he will oblige—because he is an admirer of Danton?”

  “No,” Imlay said again, in the same patient tones. “I think he will oblige because we will pay him a great deal of money. In gold.”

  “Gold?” Nathan repeated. There was no answer. “Danton’s gold?”

  “It is not much use to Danton in prison.”

  “So you intend to give it to this criminal to get him out.”

  “No. You do. It is your gold. Or at least it is in your charge. That is why I am taking you to see him.”

  “So the plan—your plan—is to get Danton out of prison through the catacombs.”

  “It is. Along with Camille. And Tom Paine. And a great many others. It is to be a mass escape. We have contacts inside the prison who will assist us.”

  Nathan did not at all like the use of the word “us.” But there was plenty to worry him aside from that.

  “And then what?”

  “And then the people will rise up against the present regime and Danton will assume power. Which is also the plan.”

  “I was instructed to ensure that this money reached Danton,” Nathan pointed out, “and to obtain a receipt. That is all.”

  He sounded like a tally man. Perhaps he was.
/>
  “Then we had better get him out of prison,” said Imlay smoothly, “and ensure he gives you one.”

  They turned off the road and into what appeared to be a vast builder’s yard with ramshackle huts and lean-tos, piles of rock and timber discarded on the frosty ground. Gaunt limestone crags rose up in a semicircle around them to form a natural amphitheatre and amid a circle of smoking flambeaus a gang of labourers unloaded what Nathan took to be stones from a cart.

  Why bring stones to a quarry? Then he saw with a shock that they were not stones but skulls. So at least this much of Imlay’s narrative was true.

  They climbed stiffly down from the cab and Imlay asked one of the workmen if he knew where the patron was. The man shook his head without interrupting his labour but another answered for him. He might be in the forge, he said, jerking his head in the direction of a large shed across the bleak expanse of yard. They saw the glow of a fire through a half-open door and heard the distant assault of iron upon iron.

  It was the biggest building on the site, about the size of a small barn, the walls and floor stacked with wounded metal. Pots, pans, cartwheels, a pair of gates, even a coach that had clearly been in some accident. The blacksmith was hammering a glowing horseshoe on the anvil while his assistant held the horse at some distance from the sparks. Imlay raised his voice.

  “I was told the boss was here.”

  The blacksmith gave him a look but didn’t stop. In the confined space the hammer blows exploded in their ears and splintered, like case shot through their heads.

  “You were told right.”

  The reply seemed to come from the coach, parked up among the debris on the far side of the forge. The windows and the wheels had been removed and the axles propped up on timber but the door was open and in the gloom of the interior they could just make out the figure of a man stretched comfortably across one of the plush leather seats with his feet up, smoking a pipe.