Before the Storm (28 page)

Their maid, Barbe, had not yet arrived and the tables were covered with half full wine glasses and torn political pamphlets. They’d had some of Lucien’s friends from the Convention over last night and they’d stayed until the early hours, drinking, shouting and singing patriotic songs with the windows wide open. Some of the neighbours had stuck their heads out to complain but then darted quickly back inside when they spotted several notable members of the Convention, including Danton and Robespierre on Phoebe’s green painted balcony.

‘You have become a hostess of some distinction, my love,’ Lucien had whispered to her as she proudly surveyed the party, hugging herself as she counted no less than two dozen men of note and authority in her sitting room.
 

‘Have I?’ she’d said with a cheeky look up at him. ‘This wouldn’t happen in England, you know. Politicians there are only interested in the grand society ladies.’

‘Perhaps they should have a Revolution there as well,’ he murmured, kissing the side of her neck.

Phoebe laughed. ‘We already did. Remember? We cut off our King’s head.’

She walked the length of the bright sunlit room, tidying up glasses, straightening paintings and closing curtains, while enjoying the bustle of the busy street below where traders were already out and about, calling up to the windows above about their wares - scented Marseilles soaps, bunches of lavender, pies and wine. She didn’t think that she had ever been so content in all her life.

They’d bought their apartment just before their wedding a year earlier from Madame d’Estrades when she was busy cashing in her various assets before leaving the country. Lucien had been hesitant, of course, about the wisdom of buying property from an emigrating aristocrat but then had grudgingly changed his mind when Phoebe had cajoled him into looking around, pointing out its closeness to the Convention, which was still meeting at the Tuileries.

As she looked down at the busy street, savouring the smell of freshly brewed coffee that drifted up from the café downstairs, Phoebe found herself thinking of her wedding at the nearby City Hall. The Convention had banned religious wedding ceremonies in France so only civil ceremonies were allowed, unless the couple felt so strongly that they sought the services of a priest for a secret second ceremony. Phoebe knew for a fact that Lucien’s friend, Camille Desmoulins had done this at the insistence of his formidable mother-in-law but she had imposed no such whim on her husband.

The wedding had lacked the ornate tradition and opulence of Eliza’s but she hadn’t cared about that - they had their closest friends with them and as she placed her hand resolutely in that of Lucien, it had proved impossible not to feel moved by the gravity of the occasion. In the eyes of many, they were not properly married at all as there had been no blessing before God, but Phoebe had no patience with this.

She stepped away from the window and went to look at herself in the huge mirror above the red marble fireplace, patting her dark ringlets back into place and briefly touching her pale cheek. Lucien had started asking when they could have a child together and it was becoming increasingly difficult to put him off. ‘Not yet,’ she had told him so often. ‘There is still so much for us to do, my love.’
 

Eliza had recently had her third baby and watching her friend, who had the benefit of several nursemaids to look after them, still struggle to cope with her brood of demanding, messy noisy children had served to strengthen Phoebe’s resolve to wait a while longer before giving in to Lucien’s longing to become a father.
 

He had woken up and silently stole into the room, making her jump as he came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. ‘I have to go to the Convention this morning,’ he murmured into her hair, kissing her neck and the lobes of her ears. ‘Promise me that you’ll stay indoors today?’

Phoebe sighed and leaned back against him. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘You can’t say that and expect me to obey.’ She turned around in his arms. ‘Is something going to happen today?’ The faubourgs of Paris had been restless for months, with a constant threat of violence simmering in the air. The cheerful, optimistic, breezy mood of 1789 seemed to be gradually changing into something altogether darker and more threatening.

Lucien shrugged. ‘There was some talk yesterday of a march to the Tuileries,’ he said with feigned indifference in an attempt not to alarm his wife. ‘Danton and the others are planning a coup to take over the City Hall and then the Convention. It may fall flat on its face but Sancerre has been going about the place claiming that he will have thousands marching on the palace if things go according to plan.’

‘Again? For what purpose?’ Phoebe pulled away from him, remembering the last march on the Tuileries earlier that year when the King and Queen had been cornered in their apartments by a furious mob. ‘To make a stand or to cause harm?’

Lucien shook his head. ‘I do not know,’ he lied. Sancerre had been quite open about the fact that they intended to finish the royal family once and for all. ‘That fat pig Louis won’t know what hit him,’ he’d claimed with an awful, toothless grin.

‘I must warn Clementine,’ Phoebe said. ‘She is on duty with the Queen at the palace this week.’

Lucien hesitated for a moment then nodded. His loathing for the decadent iniquity of the aristocracy had not abated at all but he had a grudging sympathy for Clementine and had often expressed a wish that she would see sense and divorce the Duc. ‘Yes, tell her,’ he said. ‘Advise her to remain at home today if she can.’

Phoebe did not wait to hear more and immediately ran back to the bedroom to hurriedly dress herself in a simple gown of white cotton with a crimson watered silk sash around her waist. ‘Why is my maid never here when I want her?’ she joked nervously to Lucien through the double doors, as he paced in the
salon
. Her hair was still in soft ringlets from the previous evening and needed only a red velvet ribbon tied around them to make them look presentable.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Lucien said from the doorway. He’d pulled on a pair of boots and shrugged a black coat on over last night’s linen shirt. ‘I know what you are like, Phoebe.’

She laughed and put her arms around him. ‘I suppose that I ought to be affronted by that summation of my character,’ she said, kissing him and wincing at the rasp of stubble against her chin.
 

‘Nothing offends you,’ her husband said with a grin, tenderly arranging a yellow and black cashmere shawl around her shoulders. ‘It’s one of the things that I love about you.’

‘One of the many things, I trust?’ Phoebe retorted as they went together out of the apartment and down the stone steps to the street door below, which led out to the busy Rue Saint-Honoré.

Phoebe pulled her shawl close as they walked down to the Place Louis le Grand. It was a gorgeous day but the atmosphere was heavy and threatening. Phoebe, walking arm in arm with Lucien, a well known member of the Convention had nothing to fear but even she felt a chill of fear as they pushed through the crowds gathering on the streets around the Tuileries. Word had clearly spread that something was going to happen very soon and people were staring up at the palace windows with belligerent curiosity.

They turned onto the Place Louis le Grand and hastened to the Hôtel de Coulanges. Phoebe had gasped with astonishment the first time she had visited the square with its tall stately pale stone houses and huge statue of Louis XIV seated on a cantering horse in the centre, but now she barely accorded it with a glance.
 

‘I’m surprised that the statue is still here,’ Lucien remarked as they went past. ‘I will mention it in the Convention.’

Phoebe shook her head. ‘Oh don’t,’ she said, reaching up to kiss him. ‘It does no harm. Concentrate on ridding the country of the real king, not the marble ones.’

Clementine was climbing into her carriage as they arrived at the Hôtel. She looked pale, thin and anxious but smiled brightly when she caught sight of Phoebe and Lucien hurrying towards her. ‘What brings you here?’ she asked, stepping away from the carriage, which had once proudly borne the family crest but was now completely plain.

‘There’s going to be an attack on the Tuileries this afternoon,’ Lucien said. ‘The people are marching on the palace and intend to seize the King and the rest of the royal family.’

‘Another attack?’ Clementine looked at him blankly. ‘They want to seize the King?’ she repeated dully.

‘It won’t be safe,’ Phoebe interjected. ‘Please stay at home today, Clementine. Send word to the Queen that you are indisposed.’

‘I can’t do that.’ Clementine shook her head. ‘I have duties there.’ Her eyes briefly flickered up to the windows of the Hôtel, which overlooked the square and Phoebe guessed that the Duc was there, lurking behind the brocade curtains and watching them all.

‘Why don’t you leave?’ she whispered. ‘You could go back to England and be happy there.’ She too looked quickly up at the window, where the curtain seemed to twitch a little. ‘After all there is nothing to keep you here...’
 

Clementine gently shook her head. ‘You are right, but I am more frightened of my mother than a whole mob of murderous Jacobins.’ This last was said with a wry trace of her old humour. ‘I am sorry, Lucien.’

Lucien, an ardent member of the Jacobin club, laughed. ‘Maybe we should bring your mother over here,’ he remarked. ‘Perhaps she could scare the King into abdicating.’

‘Please don’t.’ Clementine turned back to Phoebe and leaned forward to kiss her. ‘I must go to the palace today,’ she murmured. ‘The Queen has been steadily abandoned by everyone else. I would hate to leave her alone.’

‘Surely you don’t care about that woman! She doesn’t give a damn about you!’ Phoebe exclaimed. ‘You must think of yourself, Clementine! There is always Italy or Switzerland if you don’t want to return to England!’

Clementine hesitated, thinking of the trip to Rome that she and the Duc had once planned to make, then shook her head again. ‘No, I must stay where I am needed.’ She turned away and walked back to the carriage, where a plain coated footman was waiting to help her up. ‘I’m sorry, Phoebe.’

Chapter Thirty-Two

As she watched a silent crowd gathering in front of the Tuileries much later on, Clementine found herself wondering if she had made the right decision by not taking Phoebe and Lucien’s well meaning advice and remaining at home.

‘There’s so many of them and more arriving all the time,’ another young lady in waiting breathed in wonder at her shoulder, her blue eyes wide with surprise. ‘I wonder how many there will be in the end.’

Phoebe shrugged. ‘Thousands, I should imagine, Juliette’ she replied, turning away from the window. They’d marched in silence from their own neighbourhoods until they arrived at the palace and now they simply stood, watching and waiting. ‘I wonder what they are waiting for?’ she said with a shiver.

‘I would have preferred it if they shouted or made a nuisance of themselves,’ Juliette said, still staring down at the crowd. ‘This silence is unnerving.’ She looked across at Clementine who was trying to distract herself by folding some of the pieces of embroidery that the Queen and her sister in law, Madame Elisabeth were currently working on: fanciful designs involving garlands of roses, forget me nots and cupids. ‘Were you there at Versailles?’ she asked in a low, frightened voice.

Clementine nodded. ‘I still remember the shouts and screams,’ she said. ‘The sound of running feet.’

The other girl shivered. ‘I still have nightmares about it,’ she whispered, looking around to make sure none of the royal family was nearby. They didn’t like to be reminded of what had happened at Versailles in October 1789. ‘All those terrible screams and the blood in the courtyard where the guards had their heads cut off.’

Clementine put her hand over Juliette’s and took a deep breath. ‘It won’t be like that today,’ she promised, remembering Lucien’s words, which she had not really believed. ‘They don’t want to hurt us.’

‘Then why is there so many of them?’

Clementine couldn’t answer and turned away in relief when the door opened softly behind them and Madame Élisabeth, the King’s sister stole into the room in her usual shyly diffident way. ‘My sister is asking for her embroidery,’ she said with a smile, approaching the table. ‘She says that it soothes her nerves.’ There was a shout from outside and she turned nervously to the window. ‘I wonder how long they will remain outside?’ she said, putting her hand to the muslin
fichu
arranged around her plump shoulders.

Juliette shrugged. ‘They can stay out there all day long,’ she remarked, ‘so long as they make no attempt to get inside.’

Élisabeth smiled. ‘Oh, we have been assured that there is no possibility of their getting inside,’ she reassured them. ‘My brother’s brave Swiss Guards will see to that.’ The princess turned to Clementine. ‘My sister has been asking for you, Madame la Duchesse,’ she said. ‘The English Ambassador’s wife has sent over a box of new English books and she would like you to read to her for a while as she sews.’

Clementine curtsied. ‘I shall come at once,’ she replied. Reading aloud to the Queen from her favourite English novels was one of her main duties at the Tuileries and the reason that she had retained her post when so many other faithful retainers of the old court had been dismissed. Many of them had gone after the royal Family’s abortive attempt to flee France over a year earlier, when they had almost made it as far as the Austrian border before being caught and brought back to Paris in disgrace and ignominy.