Illumination

by Matthew Plampin

  ‘That’s it,’ said Elizabeth when the news reached the Grand. ‘Something is bound to happen now.’

  ‘Have you noticed, Mrs P,’ asked Montague Inglis, ‘the change that has come over the dogs of this city? No longer will the happy stray sniff around your boots as you wait to cross the road. The pets of acquaintances recoil from a once-welcomed hand, scampering beneath the nearest piece of furniture. They have become wary. They have seen the first pick of horses vanish from the streets and stables, and somehow they know that they’ll be next – that the stranger approaching with an open palm and a kind smile could very easily have a kitchen knife concealed behind his back.’

  Clem tried in vain to move his knees into a comfortable position. The cab was too small, the seats too narrow and close together; it was all they’d been able to find, though, even on the grand boulevards. ‘I’m not sure I could eat a dog,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem decent.’

  Inglis sighed, vexed as usual by Clem’s presence. ‘Yes, well, the rawness of want, Master Pardy, is rapidly banishing the qualms of habit. Only last night, for instance, I dined on ragout of cat. It was so delicious that it made me wonder why the creatures aren’t consumed more generally. I mean, they’re common enough, easy to rear – and a dashed nuisance, for the most part …’

  ‘Gustave Flourens,’ said Elizabeth. ‘The Belleville swashbuckler.’

  Inglis peered out of the window. ‘Ah yes, with those men of his: the Tirailleurs, they call themselves. What a confounded booby.’

  They were parked at the base of the Tour Saint-Jacques, the single surviving section of an ancient cathedral destroyed in some previous expression of French revolutionary wrath. This disembodied bell tower, rendered in the stark angles of the Gothic age, rose up eerily from the middle of a trampled, denuded garden. Past it filed a crowd of thousands, heading east along the rue de Rivoli towards the Hôtel de Ville. Their driver had advised them not to get any closer to the demonstration, intimating that his vehicle, modest though it was, could serve as a magnet for the mob.

  ‘He’s quite right, Mrs P,’ Inglis had opined. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time that a carriage was flipped over by frenzied socialists.’

  It was raining, the cab windows misting almost as fast as they could be rubbed clear. Elizabeth and Inglis were trading observations like a pair of cagey poker players, taking care to keep their best cards hidden. The Sentinel correspondent looked positively scruffy that morning, his beard even having been allowed to overgrow; some pains had been taken, he’d said, to create ‘a toilette sufficiently canaille for the communists’. Clem, too, had invested some of the meagre allowance still granted to him in some second-hand clothes. He was dressed in a simple woollen coat, a worker’s blouse and linen trousers, bought from a stand on the Quai Voltaire and carrying a faint redolence of onions. On his head was the obligatory kepi.

  The three of them studied Flourens as he marched by: a tall, pale man, girlishly slender, kitted out as if he was the grandest field marshal in Europe. A force of several hundred militia, distinguished by a special crimson sash, were arrayed behind him in close order.

  ‘These red guardsmen are having the time of their lives, aren’t they?’ said Inglis. ‘They play at soldiers, doing no work, all the while plotting to overthrow the very government that is paying and feeding them. Amazing behaviour.’

  Elizabeth refused the bait. She opened her notebook and started to write.

  ‘How about your Leopard then, Mrs P, the legendary pantera pardus?’ Inglis spoke lightly, but there was strain around his eyes – something very like a wince. ‘Is he due to make an appearance today? He must be, surely, man of action that he is. Why, after reading that last piece of yours in the Figaro I wouldn’t be surprised if the blighter leaped down from the rooftops and ousted Trochu’s men with a flourish of his bayonet.’

  Inglis’s jealousy at Elizabeth’s recent success was too enormous and too agonising to be hidden. This was sweeter to her than either the restoration of her name or the riches to come. She was envied by her rivals, by Montague Inglis of the Sentinel: her satisfaction was complete.

  ‘Major Allix will be here,’ she said, ‘supporting the people of Paris as always.’

  ‘The people of Paris!’ Inglis exclaimed, seeking solace in angry bluster. ‘What is it that they want, these people of Paris? What is this damned commune that they shout for at every opportunity?’ He began counting items off on his fingers. ‘They would do away with all worship and appropriate church property; stop all the theatres, gag the press, and dismiss the army; repudiate all engagements entered into by previous governments; and, in a word, do everything to prove once more to the civilised world that there is no such tyranny as absolute liberty – the motto of which is “if you do not do as you like, I’ll make you.”’

  Elizabeth wouldn’t hear this. ‘You seem to imply that I am taking their side, Mont,’ she said, snapping her notebook closed, ‘that I am calling for a commune through my sponsorship of Major Allix. This is simply untrue. Do you think for a second that Le Figaro would publish me if I was? No, I merely sympathise with the plight of those who your beloved emperor overlooked entirely and allowed to languish in the most terrible deprivation. It is high time that Paris listened to her workers and permitted them their proper freedoms.’ She lifted her chin with unimpeachable, queenly authority. ‘Besides, you foolish man, in order to have tyranny there must be a tyrant. These people marching today want democracy, a body of elected officials who represent their views, with power shared among ordinary men – rather than that puffed-up libertine you so adore, who appointed himself ruler and then used soldiers and secret policemen to silence any opposition!’

  Clem had heard several versions of this argument already that morning. He moved closer to the window, ignoring it as best he could, scouring the passing multitudes. If Allix was there, Hannah would be as well. Sight of his sister, he hoped, would show him what he should do.

  Suddenly he was pitched forward into the rain. The door he’d been leaning against had been opened from the outside. He just managed to grip the frame, halting his fall; but then his collar was seized and twisted, someone pulling him the rest of the way down. Stumbling to an ungainly crouch, he looked up to see Laure in her vivandière uniform, framed by one of the Tour Saint-Jacques’s pointed archways. Her arms were crossed, two fingers drumming on an elbow. It was more than a week since they’d last seen each other; she was waiting for an explanation. Clem got to his feet. Now, standing before her, he couldn’t begin to account for all this time. Absence had only sharpened her appeal – refreshed that misleadingly delicate beauty of hers. What, precisely, had he been thinking? The reservations he’d tried to communicate to Besson were lost to him completely. Her unimpressed expression, even, was beguiling: very slightly ironic, as if on some level this lovers’ confrontation amused her.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘truly sorry. Um – désolé. It was not my intention to—’ He stopped. ‘I simply needed to be by myself for a while. You understand, don’t you? I needed to clear my thoughts, to—’

  Laure rolled her eyes, miming a yapping mouth with her hand; then she moved in, step by step, putting on a mock-innocent smile as she fitted her body against his. Clem’s mind emptied. She kissed his neck, pressing their hips together. He was being reclaimed.

  Something caught her attention, past his shoulder. She shifted to one side, drew in her breath and blew the most enormous raspberry Clem had ever heard. He looked around to see Elizabeth and Inglis watching them through the cab’s open door; and when he turned again Laure had gone, making for the rue de Rivoli. It was plain that she wanted him to follow her. He told his mother that he was going to get a better look at the demonstration. She sat back in her seat, shaking her head.

  All along the avenue were signs that trouble was brewing. Concierges were at their gates; shutters were going on shop windows; demagogues were doing their level best to whip those who passed them into a state of violent dissati
sfaction. The narrow square in front of the Hôtel de Ville was crammed with workers and red militia. Many held umbrellas; their flags and banners hung limp, heavy with rainwater. The Hôtel itself, a vast baroque manor house, sat solid and splendid before their chants.

  ‘Vive la France!’ they cried. ‘Vive la commune!’

  There was an authentic revolutionary crackle in the air: the peasants were about to storm the castle. This is a tale for the memoirs, thought Clem – how I once pursued a girl into the heart of a genuine French revolt. Laure was worming further away from him, though, showing no actual desire to be caught. Keeping her in sight wasn’t too difficult; the plait of hair that poked from under her kepi stood out like orange-peel on asphalt. Her kiss lingered on Clem’s neck, tingling against the skin. He pushed after her as politely as he could manage, ‘pardon’ constantly on his lips. The sheer density of people was astonishing, a warm, breathy crush, rich with human smells. Along with the umbrellas were a good number of rifles, worn with their stocks upward: a gesture with its origins in the first revolution, Elizabeth had informed him earlier, to display support for the people. Frock-coated speakers, ministers of the provisional government Clem guessed, appeared at first-floor windows to appeal to the crowds. They could barely be heard over the calls for their downfall.

  A battalion’s worth of regular soldiers was guarding the Hôtel’s grand double-doors, arrayed on the steps with guns ready in their hands. Clem heard singing in Italian; a man in militia uniform was up on a stone bollard, treating them to a solo in a professional-sounding tenor. A senior army officer slid out through the double-doors and attempted to make a speech from the top step. It was none other than General Trochu, Governor of Paris and acting President of France, coming before them without ceremony or escort – without even a cap to keep off the rain. Bald, with a pristine little moustache, Trochu spoke like a man who imagines that he is popular, easily capable of winning over a mob with his oratory. Those massed before the Hôtel de Ville disabused him of this notion at once.

  ‘À bas Trochu!’ they screamed, surging forwards. ‘Vive la commune!’

  The governor promptly disappeared back into the building. Clem tried to remain calm, to preserve a sense of detachment. This is not your fight, he told himself; you are here for Mademoiselle Laure and that’s all. But Trochu had distracted him at a critical moment – he’d lost sight of her. She’d been ducking beneath an umbrella over to the left, and now she was gone. His beacon was put out. What the devil was he to do now?

  The pushing got stronger, more determined, the red militia snarling and sloganising as if girding themselves for a great collective effort. Clem abandoned the chase, deciding to return to the neutral ground of the rue de Rivoli; he could track Laure down later. Upon turning, however, he discovered an impassable barrier of kepis and dirty blue jackets, hemming him in on every side. Pleas and protestations yielded no results. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  A shot sounded up ahead, then two more; there were fearful cries and yells of baissez-vous, baissez-vous! The crowds heaved away from the Hôtel like a wave thick with flotsam retreating messily from the rocks. Clem struggled to stay on his feet, grabbing at arms and shoulders. As he lifted his head to gasp in a lungful of air he spotted Laure. She was off safely to the side, under a large black umbrella with three or four others; they were laughing at something, passing around a cigarette. He wiped the rain from his eyes. She’d done this on purpose.

  They were moving forward again, breaking the line of soldiers and bashing apart the double-doors, funnelling into the Hôtel de Ville. Clem was caught in the mob, unable to do anything to alter his course. One moment he was out in the driving rain; the next he was in a high stone corridor, deafened by a thousand echoing shouts, charging into darkness.

  IV

  The cordon around the Hôtel de Ville opened immediately to admit Jean-Jacques. Hannah stayed directly behind him, barely resisting the urge to hold onto his coat. Something white flapped past her face; stacks of government papers were being thrown from the windows of the Hôtel, scattering onto the National Guard below and being tramped to mush beneath their boots. They advanced through several layers of armed men into the covered central courtyard. The first of the occupiers had already been inside for a couple of hours. Everyone was talking very loudly. Militia were present in large numbers, of course, but Hannah also saw workers in blouses and a handful of better-dressed gentlemen she took to be newspaper correspondents. Women were a distinct yet vocal minority; hard-eyed, dressed in rough peasant clothes, they were trying to outdo each other in their declarations of revolutionary zeal. Lists were being drawn up of those who might serve in a new socialist administration. The courtyard resounded with names both familiar and unfamiliar – Pyat, Delescluze, Rollin – whilst off in a corner a lone trumpeter was sounding a flat reveille.

  Jean-Jacques was given an enthusiastic welcome. He was saluted, slapped on the back, offered weapons; there were cries of ‘Vive le Léopard!’ The general assumption was that he was there to cut down Trochu and his ministers – to serve as their executioner. He went to the grand staircase in the middle of the courtyard, stopping on the landing to address the crowd.

  ‘We will shed no blood today,’ he announced. ‘We are here to negotiate.’

  A few booed or groaned, but someone said ‘he’s right’; another ‘it’s necessary’.

  ‘We will get fairness, however. I promise you that. We will secure the freedom of the people. And we will get action against the invader. We will get our sortie.’

  This word was gaining in power; mere mention of it was enough to prompt a cheer and a spirited rendition of the ‘Marseillaise’. Jean-Jacques carried on up the staircase as they sang, covering three steps with each stride. As Hannah went to follow, someone grasped the leg of her pantaloon through the balustrade and would not let go. It was Clem, wearing the panicked expression of someone who’d accidentally boarded the wrong ship. Rather less surprised than she might have anticipated, she ran back down the steps and punched him on the arm.

  ‘You really are an idiot, Clem,’ she hissed. ‘You are too thick-headed to live. You are like an exceptionally stupid child.’

  ‘Please, Han,’ he begged, ‘please listen to me. I’ve been stuck in here for an absolute age. The rogues on the door won’t let me out. All they’ll tell me is that I need to see somebody called Blankey – Blankey, for Christ’s sake!’

  A grin nudged through Hannah’s exasperation. ‘Blanqui, you dolt. Auguste Blanqui. He’s one of the red leaders.’ She glanced around. Nearby, two guardsmen were bashing in some ornamental stonework with their rifle-butts, apparently just to pass the time. There was no Elizabeth, though, or anyone else she recognised. Her brother was alone. ‘Did she send you in here?’

  Clem had always blushed easily; a deep beetroot colour was now spreading out from beneath his blond whiskers. ‘No, I – I actually came in after Laure. Well, I followed her to the gate. She gave me the slip, though, and I was swept inside. It’s all been a terrible mistake.’

  ‘Laure Fleurot still. Honestly, you goose.’ Hannah sighed. ‘I should leave you here. That’s what Elizabeth would do. Let you learn your lesson.’

  He clutched at her sleeve. ‘Oh dear God, Han, please don’t. I need to get out. This place isn’t for me, it really isn’t.’

  The sound of English was beginning to draw unfriendly attention. Hannah affected confidence, as if this was her element and she was in complete control – as if she was not almost as apprehensive as Clem was.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘Stay close – keep quiet. We’ll go to Jean-Jacques. He’ll be able to help you.’

  Clem scratched his head. There was a reluctance about him; Hannah saw that her twin would never be comfortable with Jean-Jacques. Perhaps he’d developed a misguided sense of brotherly protectiveness, as everything started to gather pace – or was simply aware of how insufficient he seemed by comparison. It passed, at any rate; Clem recognis
ed that he was in no position to be particular.

  ‘I’d be most grateful,’ he said.

  They set off up the staircase. At its top was a shadowy labyrinth of tiled landings and marble-clad corridors. Hannah couldn’t tell which way Jean-Jacques had gone. Red militia were everywhere; whichever loyalist force had been guarding the Hôtel had long since departed. On these upper floors the disorder of the courtyard was turning into something darker. Looting had begun, any objects of value vanishing into National Guard knapsacks. Furniture was being overturned and stamped to bits. The few remaining symbols of older regimes, imperial, royal or otherwise, were meeting violent ends – stone torn down, portraits shredded, wood scored and scratched.

  ‘We have to get out, Han,’ Clem whispered. ‘We have to get out before they burn the bloody place to the ground.’

  Gustave Flourens went by with a company of his Tirailleurs, all flashing brass buttons and brightly coloured sashes. Although he’d met Hannah on numerous occasions he showed no sign of recognising her. He’d certainly be heading towards the centre of things – towards Jean-Jacques.

  ‘This way,’ she said, starting after them.

  Flourens and his men burst into a large oak-panelled room, poorly lit and packed with people. The provisional government, caught by surprise, had been trapped in their seats; twenty or so ministers and their aides were still in place around a baize-topped conference table. Only Vice-President Jules Favre was on his feet, dapper in a grey frock coat, arguing fiercely with the intruders. In front of him were the socialist leaders; Blanqui was foremost, a tricolour cockade pinned to his kepi, shouting at Favre with as much strength as he could muster. Jean-Jacques had taken up a position nearby, applauding Blanqui, watching everything.

  Flourens didn’t speak or wait for a moment to introduce himself to the debate. Instead he pulled out a chair, using it as a step to climb onto the table. This won him the attention of the room; he paced back and forth, kicking over inkwells, crunching pencils and pens beneath his boot-heels, all the while reeling off his demands with aristocratic carelessness. There was nothing surprising in what he said – dismissal of the current cabinet, immediate municipal elections, expedited planning for a massed sortie against the Prussians – but his swaggering delivery served as an additional provocation. Favre went scarlet; several other ministers rose from their chairs. Many among the reds were also displeased by Flourens’s performance, Blanqui looking as if he’d gladly shove the dandy guardsman from the table and bloody his nose. The only person to remain calm and quiet was General Trochu, the target of so much of his fellow citizens’ wrath, who smoked a cigar as if he sat by his parlour fire.