A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

CHAPTER 4

Blackmail

The rue des Cordeliers, January 13: “Do you think,” Fabre asked, “that Mr. Pitt will send us some money? For the New Year.”

“Ah,” Camille said, “Mr. Pitt only ever sends his good wishes.”

“The great days of William Augustus Miles are over.”

“I think we’ll be at war with England soon.”

“You’re not supposed to look like that about it, Camille. You’re supposed to burn with patriotic fervor.”

“I can’t see how we can win. Suppose the British populace doesn’t rise in revolt, and so on? They might prefer native oppression to liberation by Frenchmen. And now, of course”—he thought of recent decisions of the Convention—”it seems to be our policy to annex territories. Danton approves it, at least in the case of Belgium, but to me it just seems the way Europe has always been run. Imagine trying to annex England. People who bored the Convention would be sent as special commissioners to Newcastle-on-Tyne.”

“You’re in no danger of boring them, my dear. All my years of careful training, and you never open your mouth.”

“I spoke in the debate about attaching Savoy. I said that the republic should not behave like a king, grabbing territory. No one took the least notice. Fabre, do you think that Mr. Pitt really cares whether we have Louis executed?”

“Personally? Oh no, no one gives a damn for Louis. But they think it is a bad precedent to cut off monarchs’ heads.”

“It was the English who set the precedent.”

“They try to forget that. And they will declare war on us, unless we do it first.”

“Do you think Georges-Jacques has miscalculated? He had this idea that he could use Louis’s life as a bargaining point, keep him alive as long as England stays neutral.”

“I don’t think they care about the man’s life, in Whitehall. They care about commerce. Shipping. Cash.”

“Danton will be back tomorrow,” Camille said.

“He must be aggrieved that the Convention has sent for him. Another week and Capet’s trial would have been over, he wouldn’t have needed to commit himself one way or the other. Besides, such a good time he’s been having! A pity the stories had to come to his wife’s ears. She should have stayed in Sèvres, away from the gossip.”

“I suppose you have not been passing it on to her?”

“What interest would I have, in adding to their difficulties?”

“Just your normal day-to-day malice would suffice.”

“I do no damage. This is damage, this.” He picked up a paper from Camille’s desk. “I can’t read your writing, but I take it the general tenor is that Brissot should go and hang himself.”

“Ah well. As long as your conscience is clear.”

“Quite clear. You can see that I am developing a paunch. It shows how comfortable I find myself.”

“No you don’t. Your palms sweat. Your eyes flit from face to face. You are like a counterfeiter passing his first gold piece.”

Fabre looked at Camille intently. “What do you mean by that?” Camille shrugged. “Come now.” Fabre stood over him. “Tell me what you mean.” There was a pause. “Ah well,” Fabre said, “I doubt you meant anything, did you?”

“So,” Lucile said, coming in. “You have been at your meaningless prattle again, have you?” She held some letters, just arrived.

“Fabre’s had a bad fright.”

“It’s the old story. Camille has been heaping scorn on me. He thinks I am not fit to be Danton’s dog, let alone his political confidant.”

“No, that is not it. Fabre has something to hide.”

“More things than one, I imagine,” Lucile said. “And no doubt they had better remain hidden. Here is a letter from your father. I didn’t open it.”

“I should hope not,” Fabre said.

“And here is one from your cousin Rose-Fleur. I did.”

“Lucile is jealous of my cousin. We were going to be married, at one time.”

“How quaint of her,” Fabre said, “to be jealous of one woman, and that one so far away.”

“You can guess what my father says.” Camille was reading the letter.

“Yes, I can guess,” Lucile said. “Don’t vote for Louis’s death—abstain. You have so often spoken against him, and you have already published your opinion on the case. Thus you have prejudged him, which is excusable in a polemicist but not in a juror. Decline therefore to be part of the process. By declining you will also safeguard yourself.”

“In case of counter-revolution. Yes, exactly. He means that I could not be charged with regicide then.”

“The dear, whimsical old man,” Fabre said. “Really, your family are quaint altogether.”

“Do you find Fouquier-Tinville quaint?”

“No, I had forgotten him. He becomes a person of consequence. He makes himself useful. No doubt he will soon attain high office.”

“As long as he remains grateful.” There was an edge to Lucile’s voice. “They can’t bear their subservience to the scapegrace, this family of yours.”

“Rose-Fleur can bear me, and her mother has always been on my side. Her father, though …”

“History repeats itself,” Fabre said.

“Your father couldn’t imagine how we laugh at his scruples here,” Lucile said. “Tomorrow Danton will come back from Belgium and vote to condemn Louis the following day, without having heard a scrap of the evidence. What would your father say to that?”

“He’d be appalled,” Camille said, seeing it in that light for the first time. “So would I. In fact, I am. But then, you know what Robespierre says. It isn’t a trial at all, in the usual meaning of the word. It’s a measure we have to take.”

“For the public safety,” Lucile said. This was an expression that was coming up in the world; for the last few weeks it had been on everyone’s lips. “The public safety. But somehow, whatever measures are taken, one never feels any safer. I wonder why that is?”

The Cour du Commerce, January 14: Gabrielle had been sitting quietly, waiting for Georges to finish sifting through the pile of letters that had come while he was away. He took her by surprise, appearing in the doorway, filling it with his bulk. His big face was deathly white.

“When did this arrive?” He held the letter out to her, at arm’s length.

Antoine looked up from the game he was playing on the carpet. “He’s worried,” the little boy informed her.

“I don’t know,” she said. She looked away from the pulse hammering at his temple. She had seen him for a moment as a stranger might see him, and she was afraid of the violence contained by his massive body.

“Can’t you remember?” He held it under her nose. Did he mean her to read it?

“December 11. That’s more than a month ago, Georges.”

“When did it arrive?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. Someone has slandered me,” she said. “What is it, what have I done?”

He crumpled the letter in his fist with a sound of sneering impatience. “This is nothing to do with you. Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

She looked up warningly, indicating Antoine with a weak little gesture. The child pulled at her skirt, whispering into it: “Is he cross?”

She put her finger to her lips.

“Who is the president of the Convention?”

She tried to think; the office revolved, it changed every fortnight. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, Georges.”

“Where are my friends? Where are they when I need them? Robespierre would be informed, he only has to snap his fingers for anything he wants.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” They hadn’t heard Camille come in. “I know I should be at the Riding School,” he said, “but I couldn’t bear the speeches about Louis. We’ll go together later. Why were you—” Antoine launched himself from the floor, trampling his soldiers. He ran to Camille, impending screams stiffening his face. Camille picked him up. “What’s happened, Georges? You were fine an hour ago.”

Gabrielle’s lips parted. She looked from one to the other. “Oh, you were there first. You went to Lucile, before you came to me.”

“Stop this,” Danton said ferociously. The child began a red-faced wail. His father bellowed for Catherine, and the servant came, clasping and unclasping her hands. “Take the baby.” Catherine made clucking noises, unthreading the child’s little fingers from Camille’s hair. “What a homecoming. You go away for a month and your sons have attached themselves to another man.”

Catherine carried the child away. Gabrielle wanted to cover her ears to shut out his panic-stricken screams, but she was afraid to move and make herself conspicuous. Rage seemed to be running from his pores. He took hold of Camille, and pushed him down on the sofa beside her. “Here.” He tossed the letter onto her lap. “From Bertrand de Molleville, the ex-minister, who is now ensconced in London. Read it together. You two can suffer for me for a bit.”

She took it, smoothed it out on her knee, fumbling with it, then holding it up for Camille’s short-sighted eyes; but he had the gist of it while she was puzzling over the first sentence, and turned his face away, his thin, fine hands flying to his forehead, holding his skull poised as if it were disaster about to break out. “Very helpful, Camille,” her husband said. Slowly she looked away from Camille’s horrified face, and returned her eyes to the letter.

I do not feel, Monsieur, that I should any longer keep you ignorant of the fact that, among a pile of papers which the late M. Montmorin left in my care towards the end of June last year—and which I brought abroad with me—I found a memorandum detailing various sums paid over to you from the British Foreign Office Secret Fund, complete with dates of payment, the circumstances in which you received them and the names of the persons through whom …

“Oh yes,” he said, “I am precisely what you thought.”

She ran her eye down the page: “‘I have a note in your own handwriting … . I hereby give you warning that both documents are attached to a letter I have written to the president of the National Convention …’ Georges, what does he want?” she whispered.

“Read,” he said. “The letter and the two documents are sent to a friend of his here in Paris, to be forwarded to the president of the Convention, if I do not save the King.”

Her eyes skimmed over the threat, and the terms: “ … if you do not comport yourself, in the matter of the King, as befits a man whom the King has paid so handsomely. If, however, you render the services in this matter of which you are well capable, be assured that they will not go unrecompensed.”

“It is a blackmail letter, Gabrielle,” Camille said flatly. “Montmorin was Louis’s Foreign Minister; we forced him out of office after the King tried to escape, but he was always in Louis’s inner circle. He was killed in prison in September. This man de Molleville was Louis’s Minister of Marine.”

“What will you do?” She put out a hand to Danton, as if to offer comfort; but there was only dismay in her face.

He moved away from her. “I should have killed them all,” he said. “I should have slaughtered them while I had the chance.”

In the next room, Antoine was still crying. “I have always believed,” Gabrielle said, “that your heart was not in this Revolution. That you were the King’s man.” He turned and laughed in her face. “Keep faith with him. You’ve taken his money and lived on it, bought land—please keep faith now. You know it’s the right thing to do, and if you don’t do it—” She didn’t know how to finish. She couldn’t imagine what would happen. Would it mean public disgrace? Or worse? Would they put him on trial? “Surely you must save him,” she said. “You have no choice.”

“And do you really believe they would reward me, my dear? You really think that? The child would know better. If I save Louis—and they’re right, I can do it—then they’ll put their evidence back in safekeeping, and hold it over me, and use me as their puppet. When I’m no more use to them, when my influence is lost—then they’ll bring their documents out. They’ll do it out of spite, and to sow confusion.”

“Why don’t you ask for the documents back?” Camille said. “Make it part of the bargain? And the cash too? If you thought you could get away with it, you would, wouldn’t you? As long as the money’s right?”

Danton turned. “Say exactly what you mean.”

“If there were some way to work it—to save Louis and to keep your credit with the patriots and to extract more money from the English at the same time—you’d do it.”

Time was when he’d have said mildly, I’d be a fool not to; Camille would have smiled, and thought, he always pretends to be worse than he is. But now he saw, perplexity growing on his face, that Danton did not have a reply, did not know what he was going to do, had lost control of himself. He moved. Gabrielle stood up suddenly; she took the openhanded blow full in the face, and it knocked her off her feet, sprawling back onto the sofa. “Oh Lord,” Camille said. “That was valorous.”

Danton covered his face with his hands for a moment, gasping, blinking back tears of humiliation and fury. He had scarcely wept since before the bull gored him, since he was a tiny child who could no more control his tears than his bowels. He took his hands away; his wife was looking up at him, dry-eyed. He crouched down beside her. “I shall never forgive myself for that.”

She touched her lip, gingerly. “You could smash crockery,” she said, “not people. We’re not even the right people. We just happen to be here.” She clenched her hand so that she wouldn’t put it to her face and let him see how much he’d hurt her.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said. “Forgive me. It wasn’t meant for you.”

“I wouldn’t think the better of you for knocking Camille around the room.”

He straightened up from beside her. “Camille, I’ll kill you one day,” he said simply. “No, come here. You’re all right, you’ve got a pregnant woman to protect you. You dropped me in the shit in September, when the prisoners were killed. All organized, you told Prudhomme and everybody within earshot. It’s all organized, no problem—when I was trying to deny any knowledge of it. The filthy business was necessary, but at least I had the grace of soul to pretend it was nothing to do with me. You, you’d have fluttered up to take the credit for the Massacre of the Innocents. So don’t look down on me from whatever ledge of higher morality you’re perched on today. You knew. You knew it all, from the beginning.”

“Yes,” Camille said, “but I didn’t expect you to be caught out like this.” He backed away, smiling. Gabrielle stared at him.

“Oh Camille,” she said, “you’d better take this seriously.”

“Bathe your face, Gabrielle,” her husband said. “Yes, because if those documents are made public, my future won’t be worth two sous, and neither will yours.”

“I think it might be bluff,” Camille said. “How would he have a note in your own handwriting?”

“Such a note does exist.”

“You’ve been a fool then, haven’t you? But look now, it is possible that de Molleville has at one time or another seen these documents—but would Mortmorin part with such a thing? For safekeeping, de Molleville implies—but what’s so safe about being on a cross-channel boat, and carried around in an émigré’s luggage? Why would Montmorin have sent the document to London? It’s no use to him there. It only has to be sent back. And he didn’t know he was going to be killed, did he?”

“You might be right, it’s possible you are, but de Molleville’s allegations could ruin me. If they’re circumstantial. If they’re detailed. They’ve been saying for long enough that I work for Pitt. In fact, at this moment—they will be expecting me in the Convention, now.”

“There’s no point in panicking, is there? If it is a bluff, if there are no documents, anything de Molleville says will carry much less weight. All you can do is hope it is. But I wonder—which president of the Convention is he talking about? Because today’s president is Vergniaud.”

Danton turned away. “Christ,” he said.

“Yes, I know. You’ve neglected either to bribe or to frighten him. How could you have been so remiss?”

“You’d better go now,” Gabrielle said. “Go now and speak for the King.”

“Give in to them?” Danton said. “I’d rather be dead. If I step in now, at this stage, they’ll say I’ve been bought, just as surely as if the documents become public. Either way, as soon as I turn my back I’ll get a patriot’s dagger between my shoulder blades. Ask him,” he yelled. “He’d put one there himself.”

The absurd question held in her eyes, Gabrielle turned her face to Camille.

“No doubt they’d ask me to help with the arrangements. After all, I wouldn’t want to share your fate.”

“Why don’t you go back to Robespierre?” Danton said.

“No, I’m staying with you, Georges-Jacques. I want to see what you do.”

“Go on, why don’t you run and tell him everything? You’ll be all right, he’ll look after you. Or are you afraid you’ve been replaced in his affections? You shouldn’t worry. You’ll always find somebody to run to. With your attributes.”

Gabrielle stood up. “Is this the way to keep your friends?” She had never spoken to him like this before. “You lamented the absence of your friends, but when they come to you, you insult them. I think you are trying to destroy yourself. I think you are conspiring with this man de Molleville to destroy yourself.”

“Wait,” Camille said. “Listen to me, Gabrielle—listen, both of you, before there’s a massacre. I’m quite unused to being the cool voice of reason, so don’t test my abilities in that line.” He turned to Danton. “If Vergniaud has the documents you’re finished, but would Vergniaud wait so long? Today is the last day when you could intervene in the debate. These are the last hours. He has been president three days now—we must wonder why he has not acted. We must wonder, at least, if he has the papers at all—or if it is some earlier president who has them. What is the date of the letter?”

“December 11.”

“Defermon was president.”

“He’s—”

“A worm.”

“A moderate, Gabrielle,” Danton said. “Surely though—he’s no friend of mine—and after all this time, four weeks, he’d have said something, done something … ?”

“I don’t know, Georges-Jacques. Perhaps you don’t know how much you frighten people. Why don’t you go to his house, and frighten him some more? If he has the papers, you’ve everything to gain. If he hasn’t, you’ve nothing to lose.”

“But if Vergniaud has them—”

“Then it will hardly matter, if you’ve terrified Defermon gratuitously. Nothing will matter, then. Don’t think of that. And don’t wait. Defermon may have a tender conscience. Because he has not spoken out so far doesn’t mean he will never speak. He may be waiting till the voting begins.”

Fabre missed the last words. “You’re back, Danton. And whatever has happened here?”

His immediate impression was that the quarrel—the inevitable quarrel—had come about at last. He had already heard that Danton had arrived in town and gone straight to the Desmoulins’s apartment. How the whole business had moved around the corner, he had yet to find out, but the air of the room was clogged with violence. He did not see de Molleville’s letter, because Gabrielle was sitting on it. “My dear, your face,” he said.

“I got in the way.”

“It was ever thus,” Fabre said, as if to himself. “Danton, one would never take you for the guilty party. No, you have the face of someone who has been wronged.”

“Fabre, what are you talking about?” Danton said.

“Guilty?” Camille said. “Never. His innocence shines forth.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Fabre said.

“There’s a letter—” Gabrielle began.

“Be quiet,” Camille said. “Before he hits you again. On purpose, this time.”

“What letter?” Fabre said.

“No letter,” Camille said. “There never was a letter. I hope not, anyway. You know, Georges-Jacques, a good deal depends on whether the courier was intelligent. Most people aren’t intelligent, don’t you find?”

“Trying to confuse me,” Fabre complained.

Danton bent to kiss his wife. “I may yet save myself.”

“You think so?” She averted her face. “Yet you are still destroying yourself.”

He looked at her intently for a second, then straightened up. He turned to Camille and put a hand into his hair, pulling his head back. “You won’t wring any apologies from me,” he said. “Fabre, do you know a deputy, timid and obscure, they call him Defermon? Can you find him for me? Tell him that Danton will visit him at his own house one hour from now. No excuses. He must be there. It is Danton in person who requires to see him. Be sure to stress that. Go on. Don’t stand about.”

“Just that? No other message?”

“Go.”

Fabre turned at the door and shook his head at Camille. He talked to himself, as he hurried along the street: think they can fool me, do they, I’ll soon find out what’s what.

Danton walked into his study and slammed the door; later, they heard him moving about, in different rooms of the apartment.

“What will he do?” Gabrielle said.

“Well, you know, with other people a complicated problem needs a complicated solution, but with Georges-Jacques solutions are usually rather simple and quick. It’s true what I said, people are frightened of him. They remember August, when he dragged Mandat around City Hall. They don’t know what he might do next. It’s true, you know, Gabrielle. Money from England, from the Court—all that.”

“I know. I’m not much of a simpleton, even though he’s always taken me for one. He had an expensive mistress and a child when we married. He thinks I don’t know. That’s why we were so poor at first. He bought his practice from his mistress’s new lover. Did you know that? Yes, of course you did, I don’t know why I’m saying all this.” Gabrielle lifted her arms, began repinning her hair; an automatic action, but her fingers were clumsy, looked swollen. Her face, too, looked swollen, quite apart from the damage that Georges had done, and her eyes were shadowed, without life. “I’ve annoyed him, you see, all these years, by pretending to keep some form of integrity. So have you—that’s why he’s angry with us both, that’s why he’s persecuting us together. Both of us knew everything and wouldn’t admit it. Oh, I’m no saint, Camille—I knew where the money came from, and I took it, to make a more comfortable life for us. Once you’re pregnant for the first time you don’t mind what happens, you just think about your children.”

“So you don’t really care—about the King, say?”

“Yes, I do care, but I’ve had to be very accommodating this past year, very tolerant, very easy. Or he would have divorced me, I think.”

“No. He would never have done that. He’s an old-fashioned sort of person.”

“Yes, but—we see this all along—his passions take a greater hold on him than his habits do. It would have depended—if Lucile had been as compliant as she pretends to be. But she would never leave you.” She turned to ring the bell for a servant. “When he brought out the letter—so angry—I wondered what I had done. I thought it was one of those anonymous letters, and that someone had slandered me.”

“Libeled you,” Camille said automatically.

Marie came from the kitchen, wrapped in her large linen apron, her face drawn. “Catherine has taken the child upstairs to Madame Gély,” she said, without being asked.

“Marie, bring me a bottle of something from the cellar. I don’t know—Camille, what would you like? Anything, Marie.” She sighed. “Servants grow familiar. I wish, I do wish that I had talked to you before.”

“I think you were afraid to admit that we had a common predicament.”

“Oh, that you are in love with my husband—I’ve known that for years. Don’t look so stunned—be truthful now, if you had to describe your own feelings towards him, what else could you say? But I don’t think I’m in love, not anymore. Today has been the day I met someone I’ve been waiting to meet for a very long time. I’ve been thinking—I’m not such a feeble creature that I needed to marry that kind of man. But what does it matter now?”

Danton stood in front of them. He held his hat in his hand, and his caped greatcoat over his arm. He had shaved; he wore a black coat, and a very plain white muslin cravat.

“Shall I come with you?” Camille said.

“God, no. Wait here.”

He marched out. Again, “What will he do?” Gabrielle whispered. Conspiracy seemed to have set in between them. She sat drinking deeply, her glass cupped in her palm, her face still and thoughtful; after five minutes had passed, she reached out and took Camille’s hand in hers.

He said, “We must suppose, we must hope it is Defermon who has the letter. We must suppose he has been trembling over it for a month, waiting for Louis’s trial to begin. He’ll have thought, ‘If I take this letter seriously, if I read it out in the Convention, the Mountain will fall on me. And Deputy Lacroix is fast friends with Danton since they were in Belgium, and Lacroix has influence with the Plain.’ Defermon will see that the only people he will please are Brissot and Roland and their cronies. And he will say, Danton comes here boldly, not like a guilty man, and he says it is a forgery, a trick—Defermon will want to believe him. We are supposed to be such thugs, that if he upsets Danton he will fear for his life. You heard the message that Fabre took—’It is Danton in person who requires to see him.’ Defermon will be waiting for him, thinking, ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’ He will begin to feel guilty, simply because the letter has been delivered to him. Georges-Jacques will—overbear him.”

Darkness fell. They sat still, their fingers plaited together. She thought of her husband, overbearing people. Every day since .’89, his corpulence flung into the breach. She ran her fingertips along the edges of Camille’s carefully kept nails. She could feel his pulse racing, like a small animal’s.

“Georges is not frightened anymore.”

“Yes, but I come from the meeker portion of humanity.”

“Meek? Stop acting, Camille. You’re as meek as a serpent.”

He smiled and turned his head away. “I used to think,” he said, “that he wasn’t a very complicated person. But he is—very complicated, very subtle, in himself. It’s only his wants that are simple. Power, money, land.”

“Women,” Gabrielle said.

“Why did you say, just now, that he was destroying himself?”

“I’m not sure now what I meant. But at the time—when he was so angry and sneering and insulting—I saw it very clearly. This view he has of himself—he thinks, people may call me corrupt, but I’m just playing the system, I’m still my own man, nothing touches me. But it doesn’t work like that. He’s forgotten what he wanted. The means have become the end. He doesn’t see it, but he’s corrupt all through.” She shivered, swirled her glass with the last half-inch of wine settling red and sticky. “Oh,” she said, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Danton came home. Catherine walked in before him, touching a spill to tall wax candles in their branched silver sticks. Pools of sweet yellow light washed through the room. His great shadow stretched itself across the wall. He sank to one knee at the hearth and produced papers from his pocket.

“See?” he said. “Bluff. You were right. It was almost an anticlimax.”

“After the scene you made here,” Camille said, “I shall find the Last Judgement an anticlimax.”

“The timing was just right. The letter was with Defermon, as you said. The letter in my handwriting wasn’t enclosed. Nor the receipts. There was just this.” He held the papers to the blaze. “Just a tissue of denunciations from de Molleville. Everything made to sound as sinister as it possibly could be, claims that documents exist—but no actual evidence. I raged about, I said to Defermon, ‘So, you have letters from émigrés, do you?’ I pounced on it, I said, ‘See how they libel me.’ Defermon said, ‘You’re right, Citizen. Oh dear, oh dear.’”

Camille watched the flames eat the pages. He didn’t, he thought, allow me to read it; what else has de Molleville been saying? Gabrielle thinks we know everything, but you’ve got to be good to keep up with Georges-Jacques. “Who was the courier?”

“The worm did not know. It was no one the concierge recognized.”

“It would not have been so easy with Vergniaud, you know. It might not have been possible at all. And these documents—perhaps they do exist somewhere. Perhaps they are still here in Paris.”

“Well, whatever,” Danton said. “There’s not much I can do about that. But I tell you one thing—when de Molleville signed that pathetic letter of his, he signed Louis’s death warrant. I’ll not lift a finger for Capet now.”

Gabrielle dropped her head. “You lost,” her husband said to her. He touched her lightly on the back of the neck. “Go and rest,” he said. “You need to lie flat. Camille and I will drink another bottle. Today has wasted my time and effort.”

And tomorrow everyone will behave as if nothing has happened. But Danton moved restlessly about the room. He had not quite recovered his color, since the shock of opening the letter. Only now self-control seemed to be coming back, seeping to muscles and nerves. He would never be so sure of it again. He was going downhill now. He knew it.