Daughters of the Storm (46 page)

Then nothing. Only the outline of the city, guarded by its grey stone walls, and the muffled conversations of the bored guards.

Sophie was cold. A frost iced the air and night was falling.

‘You must come,' she prayed. ‘William, you must come.'

She glanced back over her shoulder and saw that Héloïse had dismounted and was rubbing down the horses with a handful of grass.

A shout from the
barrière
made her turn around. Something was happening. One of the guards was endeavouring to drag shut the heavy gates and was shouting furiously to his companion who had wandered out of sight. There was a scuffle, a stream of curses, and a horse broke away from the gate and galloped towards the watching girls. Two figures clung to its back. Sophie recognised de Choissy and, perched precariously behind him, William.

Regardless of the danger, she picked up her skirts and ran towards the road, waving her plumed hat. The rider reined in his horse and swerved.

‘It's Sophie,' yelled William. ‘Stop!'

De Choissy brought his sweating, terrified beast to a halt and William jumped down and ran towards Sophie. Careless of anything else, they met and clung together.

‘You came for me,' he panted.

‘Yes.'

‘No time,' shouted de Choissy. ‘Get going. Tell my wife I had to go. I will make for the border.'

He jerked savagely at the bridle and, turning, drove his spurs into his horse's flanks and disappeared across the fields.

Sophie caught at William's hand and pulled him towards Héloïse. Bent almost double, they sprinted towards the trees, Sophie's skirt hampering her. Héloïse stood waiting, the horses ready. She swung up on to her horse and William swept Sophie up on to hers and then scrambled up behind her.

‘Follow me,' said Héloïse, and urged her horse into a furious canter back the way they had come. The whole incident had taken only a few minutes.

William clung on to Sophie's waist and ducked to avoid the trailing branches. Sophie stooped over her horse, concentrating on keeping her seat, and kicked her overburdened mount to greater and greater speeds. It took all of her skill to stay on and more than once William's hand saved her from falling. Choosing the quickest routes across the fields and through the woods, Héloïse led them on without faltering. At last, she turned west and began the descent to the house. Their speed slackened. Close to the gates, Héloïse stopped.

‘Get down,' she told William. ‘Follow the wall round to the left and go through the kitchen garden. No one will see you. I will let you in through the door into the library. It is better so. Just in case one of the servants is not as reliable as we supposed.'

William vanished into the falling dusk.

Back in the stables once more, Sophie and Héloïse slid off their horses and handed them over to the surprised groom.

‘I am afraid we over-exercised them,' remarked Héloïse lightly to Sophie, loud enough for the groom to overhear. ‘We must take more care in future.'

Sophie forced an inane laugh. ‘Quite so, cousin. How careless we are.'

William was already waiting in the library. ‘Upstairs,' said Sophie. ‘We'll talk upstairs.'

Louis met them at the door of the salon.

‘What the devil...?' he demanded, and stopped in his tracks when he saw William. He seized Héloïse by the arm.

‘Where have you been?' he asked and he was not pleased. ‘I've been worried.'

‘Later,' said Héloïse. ‘I will explain everything. Let William talk.'

Paris was in turmoil, William informed them. A revolutionary tribunal had just been set up to try all the so-called enemies of the state and they included foreigners suspected of working for enemy governments, émigrés and those who had tried to smuggle their capital out of the city.

‘The category includes Monsieur le Comte,' said William quietly. ‘When he presented himself at the Hôtel de Ville, he discovered that he had been denounced. By a former servant of your father's. I believe, Madame Héloïse.'

Héloïse gave a start.

‘I'm sorry, madame,' continued William. ‘I am truly sorry because this puts you in danger also. Monsieur le Comte managed to arrange to return to the Hôtel de Choissy. I met him there, and I managed to hide him for a day up in the Place Royale. Then we stole a horse and made for the gates. We were lucky to break through the guards. He will make for La Tesse, and he told me to tell you he had plenty of friends who will help him.'

‘So,' said Héloïse, ‘Monsieur le Comte and I are enemies of France.'

‘I am afraid so, madame. If it comforts you at all, you are in good company.'

Héloïse shrugged. ‘A cross I must bear,' she said, determined to keep her sense of humour at least.

‘As for me – for us,' William corrected himself and glanced at Sophie, ‘I've had no luck in obtaining visas. I'll go back and try again.'

Sophie shuddered. ‘No.'

He smiled at her tone.

‘Not yet, at least,' she said. ‘We must think and plan before you go back.'

Her relief was so overwhelming that she could think of little else. Even the knowledge that her happiness was gained at the expense of Héloïse's did little to dim it. A joy consumed her and a lightheaded excitement that flushed her cheeks and lit up her grey eyes.

Later that night, she bathed in front of the fire and asked that her hair be brushed until it shone. She left it flowing in a cascade down her back and dabbed perfume on to her wrists and neck. She dismissed the maid and scrutinised herself in the mirror. She wanted to remember this moment.

I, Sophie, am doing this.

Holding a candle in her hand, she crossed the corridor and knocked at the room opposite.

William was sitting by the fire in his shirt sleeves. His hair was still tied back but his shirt hung open at the neck, revealing smooth, unblemished skin. When he saw who it was, he drew in his breath and got to his feet.

‘I have been hoping,' he said, and drew her close. Sophie laid her cheek on his shoulder.

‘Am I forgiven?'

‘There is nothing to forgive.'

His lips were travelling down her neck.

‘Sophie. If you knew how much I have longed for this.'

She smiled and raised her arms. Her nightdress fell open at her breast. William tightened his grip.

‘Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?' he asked her.

She was trembling as she pressed closer to him: with desire and with her own daring.

‘I am sure,' she said. ‘But you will have to help me.'

She did not have to worry. William was tender, passionate and careful. Careful to allow her to find her own way towards knowledge, he led her towards a kind of oblivion, but not, that left her shaken with passion and gratitude. Tasting the limits of the flesh for the first time, Sophie found that there were no limits, only endless love and delight, and that what had seemed to her a narrow pathway was, in fact, nothing of the sort.

There were her tears and William's words of love sounding gently in her ear; there was the feel of his strong shoulders and narrow thighs, the bruising on hers, the touch of his fingers and surrender of her body beneath his – these were impressions that added up to something greater.

Gazing down at her tangled hair and graceful limbs, running his hands down over her breasts and curving waist, knowing that intelligence and courage lay behind the closed eyelids, William knew he had been right. Sophie was his and... he prayed... his for life.

‘You know what this means?' he said many hours later when they lay quietly in in each other's arms.

Sophie sighed and stretched a hand up towards the ceiling.

‘Tell me.'

Reaching across her to the table beside the bed, he took the signet ring out of the drawer and pressed it on to her finger. It hung loosely and she was forced to clench her fist.

‘It's yours.'

She kissed his mouth.

‘If you are asking me to marry you, I will,' she said.

‘Soon?' he asked.

‘Soon,' she said drowsily.

They were asleep when the knocking began at the door.

‘Get up,' called Louis from outside. ‘Someone has betrayed us. They have sent from Paris. I must go. Goodbye.' Héloïse appeared, her face drained of colour. ‘They have come to arrest us. All of us.'

Europe united against the regicidal French republic, and soon France was at war with England, Holland and Spain. This coalition was also joined by German and Italian princes. Under the Prince of Coburg's banner, a new spring offensive was launched against the ‘murdering' French. Pressed on all sides, the French armies, who had made considerable inroads into Germany and Belgium after their victory at Valmy, now found that their progress was considerably harder.

At home the cost of living rose sharply, the
assignat
fell in value and food was short. The call for a conscription of 300,000 men caused widespread discontent. In the Convention, formerly the National
As
sembly, extremists, or
enragés,
struggled to gain the upper hand over Girondins and Jacobins. In the Vendée, thousands of peasants took up arms against the Revolution and declared their intention of opening the port of Rochefort to the British fleet. Elsewhere, in the cities of Lyons, Nantes and Marseilles, violence simmered and tensions reached breaking point.

Desperate to maintain authority, the Convention decided to act. In doing so, it laid the seeds of the Terror. Captured rebels bearing arms were to die. Émigrés returning to France were to meet the same fate – and there were many slipping back into France in order to beat the sequestration orders on their property. Foreigners were to be closely watched. Priests were to be deported.

Most sinister of all was the creation in March 1793 of the Revolutionary Tribunal – ‘to judge without appeal the disturbers of the public peace'. ‘Let us be terrible,' thundered Danton, remembering the September massacres, ‘to spare the people being so...' Under the auspices of Fouquier-Tinville, the new public prosecutor, the tribunal went to work in the Grande Chambre of the Palais de Justice. Fouquier-Tinville was permitted to prosecute either by virtue of his office, or on the accusation of the authorities, or simply on the denunciations of ordinary citizens. Letters addressed to him were posted free of charge, thus ensuring that all citizens could reach him. The first sitting of the tribunal began on April 6th, 1793. It ushered in one of the most bloodstained periods in French history.

The extremist element in the Convention was slowly gaining an upper hand. In April the Committee of Public Safety was set up, with Danton as one of its nine members. In time, it was to exercise a terrifying power. The influence of the Girondins was on the wane and they were further discredited when Général Dumouriez, with whom they were closely associated, defected to the royalists. The Girondins had also tried too obviously to whip up support for themselves in the provinces. However, they made their biggest mistake when they denounced Marat, an extremist and a popular figure with the sansculottes. Marat undertook his own defence in front of the tribunal and the jury acquitted him. Borne shoulder-high through the streets amid cheering crowds, Marat and his cohorts won the day.

From then on, it was a spectacle of dog eat dog in the Convention. The Girondins steadily lost ground and credibility. The
enragés
whipped up support among the sansculottes and demanded Girondin blood. Playing one faction off against another, the Jacobins, with Robespierre as their leader, sat waiting in the wings. In June the Girondins went on the run, pursued by warrants for their arrest.

Chapter 3

Without saying goodbye to Marie-Victoire, Jacques Maillard banged the door shut behind him and turned left into the Rue St Honoré, stomach tightening in anticipation of the day ahead on the tribunal. At the Rue St Denis he turned right and walked towards the bridge and on to the Île de la Cité,

Being a judge on the tribunal suited Maillard. It was, if you like, a crowning touch to his ambitions and, he believe, his finest moment. Since it had been set up in April of that year under the direction of the prosecutor-general, the tribunal had grown in power, and its name struck fear into the hearts of all those who passed under the portals of the Palais de Justice.

It took courage to stand up and to be counted, and Maillard was not short of that commodity, unlike many of his
confrères
who preferred not to accept such a dangerous honour. Thus, when he had been called from his position on the commune, he had not hesitated.

Maillard straightened his sash and quickened his pace. In his view, it didn't matter that neither he, nor his fellow judges were ignorant of law – one of them was an agriculturalist, the other had been, successively, a naturalist, a surgeon and a gunner in his time. Maillard knew, as those who toiled to process the increasing number of suspects knew, that justice in the real sense had little to do with the proceedings. After all, what price the refinements of a properly conducted trial when the future of France was at stake? Nothing. His part called for him to eliminate traitors as fast as the law allowed, and now the law had been made conveniently flexible. So be it. Maillard did not care. It seemed to him supremely right that he could sit and pass judgement of death. Particularly when dealing with scum like the de Guinots.

Yes. He had travelled a long way from the boy who had risen, bloody and ashen, from the whipping ordered by Héloïse, to vow vengeance on her and her kind and it had worked out better than he dreamed. Having seen to it that the marquis was finished off, he would see to it that the marquise would rot away in prison. Now all he had to do was to continue his investigations into the
ci-devant
Comte de Choissy – investigations that would, of course, include his wife. Citoyen de Choissy had disappeared. With a bit of luck, he was still in France. Meanwhile he had the wife confined to house arrest, and the English woman too. The Committee of Public Safety would be interested in her.