‘Politely put, young man,’ the Frenchman replied with good humour. ‘I recall you had a deft turn of phrase. The offer stands, if you should need it. My home is just along from the Jacobins in the Rue de Faubourg St Honoré. It is open to you should you need it, and you have word that hospitality is all I will offer you.’
‘Thank you,’ John replied, ‘now I must go and see if I can visit my father.’
‘Then I wish you both good luck.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dispirited, he made his way back past the Louvre and along the banks of the Seine, crossing the Pont Neuf once more to westernmost point of the Ile de la Cité, a walk around the Conciergerie depressing him even further. The walls were thick, the windows – heavily barred at ground level – were small, the gates massive, closed and well guarded. Eyeing the place provided no solutions as to how to get someone free, but the escorted tumbrel that came out of the massive gate on the far side, with six miserable looking souls stood up in it, two women and four men, hands tied behind their backs, provided an even more telling reason to do something, though a quick search of the faces relieved him of the worry that his father might be amongst them.
As soon as the passers-by spotted them, they reached for some of the abundant filth that lay in the streets and began to pelt the prisoners, and the names they used to denigrate these poor unfortunates left Pearce in no doubt as to their station or their fate; they were condemned souls, being taken across and along the bank of the river to le Place de la Revolution, where a gathering crowd and a guillotine awaited them. With a sinking heart he watched them as they rattled over the cobbles, only the bonds that lashed them to the cart keeping them upright, drums playing as their solemn escort marched them to their death. One woman sobbed uncontrollably, the others looked straight ahead in studied defiance. The men had their heads bowed and all were in filthy rags that had once been fine clothes, evidence of long incarceration. Who where they, what had they done? Probably little, and certainly nothing to warrant the loss of their heads. He fought a morbid desire to follow them; he had seen enough of executions before he left Paris nearly two months before, including that of the King.
Yet the sight of that tumbrel gave urgency to his needs and he made his way to the Café St Florien, which lay across a short bridge to the Ile St Louis, the place where those with business at the Conciergerie took their refreshments. If food was short in Paris, there seemed no evidence of it here; everyone seemed to be able to eat their fill as long as they had the means to pay. It was busy with noisy advocates, who were determined not to confine their arguments to a court of law, of men with hooded eyes who looked like functionaries of the state, they who would execute the warrants issued by the demagogues who now ruled France, and who looked at him as if measuring him for arrest. There were, too, sad-eyed looking individuals, men and women who, no doubt like him, had relatives behind the massive walls that surrounded the nearby prison. It was they who identified for him the men he must talk to, as they sought favours from the gardiens who manned the world beyond the gates, and who used this place to trade for the right to either news of a relative or a visit.
One seemed more approachable than the rest, a heavy-jowled fellow in a leather waistcoat and a grubby cap of liberty, with a stomach so huge that it defied gravity, that surmounted by a thick belt which had on it a ring for the keys he had left behind. He approached him once the others supplicants had finished, to be greeted by a raised eyebrow and a cynical sneer on a near round face that spoke volumes. Here was a fellow who knew he was cock-of-thewalk, a man who could demand and get obeisance from those to whom he might formally have had to grovel. His love of the power he wielded was so obvious that Pearce had to stifle the temptation to clout him and wipe that smirk off his face, his body shaking with the tension that emotion produced. It was doubly galling that the trembling seemed to be evident in his voice, which was taken by the gardien to represent fear.
‘I want to go in to the prison.’
A flick of the head preceded the reply, given in the kind of gutter French from the eastern part of the city that would have been incomprehensible to anyone who had not lived in Paris, and the smell of his breath was redolent of garlic and stale wine. ‘There be one or two here’ll take you in if you so desire.’
John deliberately juggled a number of coins in his hand, the dull sound of which made the man narrow his eyes, which led Pearce to wonder how often he was offered real money instead of assignats or goods in kind. Clearly he knew the sound of gold from that of copper and silver.
‘My father is in there.’
Suddenly he was all concern. ‘Then keep your voice down, for those same men will have you up. Blood relative to a prisoner is enough. What is his name?’
‘Pearce, Adam. Not French.’
He looked at him keenly then, to see if the name made any impression. There were a lot of people in the crowded prison, probably well over a thousand, that he knew, but someone not of French nationality should stand out. Nothing in the blank expression obliged.
‘A foreigner?’
Pearce nodded, ‘I assume it is possible.’
‘It is, if the fee be right,’ then, annoyingly, he smirked again. ‘Seein’ as it has to get you out again.’
‘English gold.’
That was a risk, but one he had to take. The man did not even blink. ‘As good as any?’
‘One in, and another when I come out.’
The heavy jowled cheeks shook slowly. ‘Two to go in and out, paid here and now.’
That was steep, but being in no position to bargain, Pearce nodded, yet he did wonder at the sense of what he was doing, knowing that he might himself never get out again. Not for the first time since leaving Colbourne’s ship he was conscious of being alone, without support, so he added, ‘I will want to visit him more than once.’
The gardien nodded to indicate he understood the message; that there was more gold to come and Pearce resolved that after he had seen his father, he would ask this turd how much of a bribe it would take to get the old man out. He might not have enough, there might not be a sum that was enough, but there was no harm in knowing. Before they left he bought some bread, cheese and a straw-covered flagon of wine. Having been incarcerated before, he knew that they would be welcome.
Let in through a heavily guarded postern door that opened onto the Rue du Palais, John Pearce was glad he had not given much consideration to a daring rescue. There had been escapes from the Paris prisons, but that had been in the early days of proscription, before those in charge got their regime properly organised. Walking beside the stout, waddling gardien, Pearce surmised he had been a royal gaoler before he had become a revolutionary one; he had that air about him of a man long in his occupation. Nods were exchanged at the next gate, silent looks that no doubt told his fellows warders that there was a share of something good for letting them through. It was how they made their living, that and fleecing the prisoners for every favour granted. They were cast from the same mould as the Bridewell warders he and his father had had to deal with in London, and while one part of Pearce saw that they had little choice if they were to eat, he could not fathom what sort of man would choose such a life as an occupation. The last postern gate led into a vaulted guardroom and the gardien took him through a side door from that.
‘Can’t use the Great Hall,’ he said. ‘Tribunals sitting.’
‘What tribunal?’
As soon as he said that Pearce cursed himself for an unguarded comment, for it had the potential to engender suspicions in the gardien’s mind which he would rather not raise. The Paris he had lived in before was daily awash with rumours of plots and daring rescues, mostly of the royals. Few, if any, were true, but that did not stop the mill of rumour fabricating and disseminating them.
‘Where you been, the moon?’ the gardien sneered. ‘The Revolutionary Tribunal, that God willing, now that it is sitting permanent, is going to chalk the doors and clear some of the folk out of thi
s place, ’cause I tell you no lie when I say it is bursting at the seams.’
‘I have been away from the city.’
‘Then you missed them doin’ what should have been done this last year. Stands to reason you can’t just keep takin’ traitors up without the sods going somewhere, not that a few don’t die right here. The tribunal will do the trick. Drag ’em in and if they’re innocent, not that there’s many of those, they’re free. If not, then it’s straight out the door to execution and good riddance.’
These words echoed off the walls of a series of dank, dimly lit corridors, which finally brought them to a courtyard surrounded by high walls and windows, crowded with humanity, the hub of noise dying as all eyes fixed on the pair just come through the last postern gate. With a shock John Pearce realised that the look on their faces was one of terror, not curiosity. They feared the call to that tribunal the gardien had talked about, to be followed by the tumbrel and the blade, and this is how it would come to them, except it would be a man with their name on a piece of paper.
‘One sandglass, then I’ll come back for you. Be waiting for me, for I shan’t wait on you.’
As he moved forward, the crowd parted, no one, given they had no idea who he was, wanting to make eye or bodily contact, in case he was the representative of the Grim Reaper. In his cloak, hat and his bold tricolour cockade he probably looked like one, and he would have removed the latter so as to appear less threatening if he had not been clasping the provisions he had bought. Scanning the faces, looking for his father, he could not help but notice how much faded grandeur there was in the person and clothes of some of those who looked away, of the same sort as he had seen in that tumbrel. Once beautiful women looking haggard, their dresses turned to rags, men of all ages in ancien régime coats that had once been bright but were now dun coloured and dirty. Those who had once been fat now had folds of skin hanging off them in the same manner as their now too large clothes, and it took no great insight to see that everyone here was close to starving.
He would have asked where they slept and where they eased themselves if the stench and the bundles of untidy straw that lined the outer walls did not make that unnecessary and he surmised that each morning some of the bodies that huddled against that wall at night would not move, would not wake to the new day. They would be carted out, to be thrown into a common grave somewhere outside the walls of Paris; the régime had more ways to dispose of its enemies than ritualised decapitation. It was common knowledge that there were dungeons below his feet, oubliettes, so dank, cold and perennially wet that made this courtyard a place to value.
A series of large chambers, equally crowded, lay off the courtyard; no cleaner than outside they at least had the virtue of shelter from the elements. From one he heard the sound of singing, a sweet young male voice intoning the phrases of a hymn, that in itself, in this place, seeming like an act of defiance. Pushing his way through a watching crowd, John found the source, a young man in a straw-coloured wig that had once been dressed white and a coat that had once been fine, rendering his chanson to an audience rapt with attention, most with their eyes closed, no doubt seeing behind those lids the better life than the one they lived now. Behind them rose a set of stone stairs that led to the landings above, the space between each riser seemingly the home of one prisoner. The landings and tiny cell-like rooms on the upper floor were just as crowded, each enquiry he made met with mostly slack-eyed indifference, at best a slow and weary shake of the head.
He found his father eventually, after many enquiries, in a cot in one of those cells, propped up by a roughly made pillow of straw wrapped in cloth, his appearance shocking, the green coat with pale silk facing he had been so pleased with when new, now just as dull as those of everyone else in this place. The already lined face was now skeletal; sunken eye sockets, prominent jaw bones and a mouth that was slack from the loss of muscle. Taking his cold hand and leaning close John heard mumbled words that were familiar, the same tirade now whispered against all the things the Edinburgh Ranter had opposed all his life; kings, courts, obsequious lackeys, rack-rent landlords and the stupidity of those who maintained them by their refusal to risk change.
‘Father.’
It took several shakes of the hand, and repetition of the word, to open the eyes, and there was a moment when it seemed there was no recognition. Then just a flicker of the bright blue eyes presaged a ghost of a smile, and, as the squeeze was returned, he said, ‘Laddie.’
About to say that ‘he had come to take him home,’ John stopped. How was he going to get him out of here in this condition? He needed to be fed, needed a doctor, for there was little likelihood that the affliction that had kept him in Paris had abated. He felt a flash of anger then. Why had he not been silent? Why had he continued to bait people with the power to do this to him? It did not last long, for John Pearce knew that if his father was stubborn, a man who refused to bend, then it was a trait he had inherited.
‘Who are you?’
Pearce turned to face the gently posed question, to find himself looking into another skeletal face. ‘I am his son.’
‘Ah! He has spoken of you often, with much pride I might add.’
‘Do not all fathers praise their sons?’
‘No, young man, they do not. Most curse them roundly as wastrels until they have sons of their own. Only then do they become indulgent.’
‘Do not argue with the Marquis, laddie,’ croaked his father, feebly trying to raise himself, ‘look what he has reduced me to.’
‘You should remain still, Adam, as I told you. You know how movement causes you pain.’ As he spoke, John Pearce was looking at the face of this Marquis, and what he saw there was genuine concern; indeed, if John had not been there he was sure this man would have come forward to help his father, for he smiled as he said, ‘You will observe he has not lost the power of disobedience.’
‘He will never lose that, monsieur…?’
‘De la Motte,’ the Marquis replied, ‘at your service.’
John Pearce, as he turned back to his father, had the vague sensation that he had met this man before, but he could not place him. Not that such a thing was unusual, for Adam Pearce had been much fêted when he came to Paris by those who had read his writings. Even men who wished only to curb the power of the monarchy, and found his republican ideas too radical, sought out the new arrival.
Old Adam was smiling, albeit weakly, which lifted his son’s spirits. ‘He’s a good man, laddie, even if he has some auld fashioned notions about the way the world should be run. I had nothing but a wee space in the courtyard when I came in, but he brought me to this cell, and gave me his ain bed.’
There was a terrible temptation to ask his father what he thought of the Revolution now, but it had to be fought. This was no time for debates. Instead he asked him how this had come about. ‘I had a few things to say to the Jacobins for no’ standing up to those who called for mair bloodshed, laddie, and that turd Fouché denounced me in the assembly.’
‘I know nothing of him.’
‘A shit o’ the first order. If there’s ony blood in his veins it canna be seen. Religious one minute, then bloodthirsty the next. I tell you, them that has been priests, or near to, are the worst. Purity they call it, when whit they mean is cut off the heid of ony man who dissna’ agree.’
The eyes closed and the head lolled back a bit, as though the effort of speaking those words had drained him. ‘I have brought some food,’ John said, producing the cheese and wine, and half turning to include the Marquis. He did not respond, but there was a great deal of shifting from the two other occupants of the cell.
The reply was soft, a whisper, and a slight movement to cut sight of himself off from Adam Pearce. ‘You brought that for your father.’
‘You know he will share it.’
‘There are too many hungry mouths in this place to make any share worthwhile. Feed him, and perhaps it will restore some of his strength.’
A sudden groan m
ade John spin round again. His father had his hands clutched over his lower belly, and the bony face was screwed up in deep pain. He had seen it before, and in the past had eased it with laudanum, before calling a physician. John pulled the stopper out of the wine bottle, and he put the top of the flagon to the thin, pale lips, easing it down his father’s throat. It was not laudanum by a long way, but it might help.
‘Monsieur, I do not have much time, but I have already indicated to the warder who brought me in here that I would return. I will bring with me some laudanum to ease his pain, but I would enquire is there any way of getting him some medical attention.’
‘There are doctors and surgeons in this prison, and if you were to ask them they would say to you what they have said to me. His only hope is to be put under the knife, to be opened so that the source of his agony can be explored.’
‘It might kill him,’ John replied, not adding the other thought he had that if the affliction did not, the surgeons, in whom he had little faith, would.
‘What he has now will kill him anyway.’ The Marquis saw the pained reaction of John’s face and once more dropped his voice. ‘And that says nothing for those ghouls in the Great Hall who sit in judgement on us.’
‘That was not in existence when I left.’
‘Things change by the day. I fully expect my door to be chalked any day now.’ Seeing the look of mystification in the younger man’s eyes, he added, ‘It is how they select you for their travesty of a trial, in what we already call the Room of the Doomed, for few come out of it to go anywhere but to their death. A chalk mark on the door is a signal to the guards to take you there. They will condemn me for my rank, and my hatred of everything they stand for, even if I helped to bring about the end of the Bourbons. It comes to us all, and it is when we need our faith in a merciful God the most.’
The voice of Adam Pearce was stronger, clearly the wine had revived him a little. ‘Don’t listen to him, laddie. He will corrupt your brain with all that superstitious babble.’
A Shot Rolling Ship Page 19
