Daughters of the Storm (52 page)

‘Prisoners' cells are unlocked at six in the morning and locked at eight in the evening. Make sure you are in the right place. If you need anything, I am sure I can arrange things for a suitable fee.'

‘A woman,' Héloïse hesitated. ‘I would like someone to attend me.'

‘If you ask in the corridor, there will be someone willing to work.'

She placed a coin in his outstretched hand. With that he departed, leaving Héloïse to survey her new abode. The cell was a narrow rectangle and from its dark stone walls rose a chill that would be unbearable in winter. The window opening on to the women's courtyard was barred and open to the air, and the meanest of beds stood ranged against one wall on which was folded a verminous-looking blanket.

Héloïse sat down on the bed, placed her bundle beside her and stared into space. A sob rose to her lips but, angry at this sign of weakness, she bit it back. It would do no good to weep, but her desolation and her longing for Louis threatened to swamp her good intentions.

Unbidden, a memory stole into her mind, the memory of the garden at La Joyeuse. There, lulled by warmth and the drowsy sound of bees, the roses lay turning their blooms to the sky. Behind them massed the startling blue of the lavender beds and the green of the close-clipped hedges which blended with the grey of the statues and seats. The peace was infinite, and Héloïse, clad in her muslin gown, wandered light as a feather through the garden to pick the roses. She could smell their perfume and feel the glossy roughness of their leaves on her fingers. She caressed them, rejoicing in their firmness and cleanness....

It was all so real that she buried her head in her hands.

‘Louis,' she whispered. ‘Where are you?'

Later, she lay on the bed tracing the scrawls on the stone walls left by the women who had occupied the cell before her.

‘Je suis innocente,'
wrote one in a hand that wavered and trailed into nothing.

‘Vive le roi,'
wrote another. ‘The scum can have me.'

‘To lose your head does not mean you will lose your soul,' wrote a third, in a bold and dashing manner.

‘I am Madame de Lavergne,' said the fourth, ‘and I no longer wish to live.'

She had dated it August 15th, 1793.

Héloïse stared at them for a long time, comforted by the shades of these women who refused to go silently into eternity.

‘Your courage shall be mine,' she said aloud into the emptiness of her cell.

By the time she had roused herself to arrange her things, the cell door had banged shut for the night and it was too late to venture out for food. Her stomach, which had tasted nothing since early morning, growled with hunger and she had no candle with which to read the book she had brought with her.

Dragging the bed to the wall under the window, she peered through the bars into the courtyard. The sounds of captivity floated up from the huge building: cries and whispers, a muttered prayer and the sound of desperate sobbing. Here and there in the deepening shadows a shape loomed – someone, having outwitted or bribed the gaolers, was visiting someone else, and in the recess opposite to her cell she was sure she could hear a muttered conversation. A dog barked once or twice. The light faded slowly, deepening into shades of opal and aquamarine and then into the violet of the September night and the beautiful colours mocked the misery of the prison below. It seemed to Héloïse that thousands of hopes and fears were being sent up into its velvet blackness only to vanish. She thought of the queen, incarcerated beside her, and of how that royal lady must look, now a bewildered widow, grieving for her children and – perhaps - glad at the prospect of death.

Would Louis mourn her own death for long? Héloïse sensed that it could not be far away. Perhaps de Choissy would spare her a Mass – her strange, unfathomable husband whom she had hated. Where was he? Had he made it to the border? She pressed her face against the bars. There was no time left to hate, nor was there cause any longer. Many things had become clear to Héloïse during the past weeks. Her love for Louis had softened and chastened her pride, and she realised now that, as much as de Choissy had taken her peace and caused her to suffer, she had failed to try to give him either her trust or her liking. If she had, it might have been different.

Huddled in her blanket, she slept at last and did not stir until, to the accompaniment of keys jangling, the door was flung back. Héloïse rose, struggled out of her dress and removed her chemise. Her body was white and fragile and she was thinner, and her skin more transparent, but she had been lucky in remaining so healthy up to now. She dressed in her spare chemise, glad of its cleanness, and wondered if she could pay someone to wash her clothes. Over the chemise she laced a petticoat of Indian
bazin
decorated with little stripes and over that she threw a dishabille which she fastened with a green sash. Compared to what it had been, her wardrobe was now sparse. This, and a cotton gown
à collet,
was its sum total but they would suffice. Luckily it was so warm at the moment that her two pairs of stockings could be worn in the evenings only and she had a good supply of cambric handkerchiefs. To finish her toilette she wound a muslin kerchief round her shoulders and tucked the ends into her sash. Her hair presented more of a problem, for she had no cap. She solved it by combing it out down her back and then twisting it up as high as she could with a couple of combs. She smiled as she did so. Perhaps she would begin a fashion for the ladies.

Her money tucked out of sight down her chemise, she made her way with her laundry to the corridor that ran between the men's and women's areas of the prison which was already thronged with prisoners, notaries and officials. Money was changing hands as clients briefed their lawyers.

She asked one of the turnkeys the whereabouts of the larger cells and was rewarded with a jerk of his head in the direction of the women's courtyard.

It was difficult to get her bearings and almost impossible to move. Rabbit-warrened with corridors and cabins into which no light ever penetrated, the Conciergerie had been designed to house less than a third of the detainees who spread into every nook and cranny of its odoriferous cells and passages.

On Héloïse's right ran the notorious ‘Rue de Paris' where the poorest slept and the rats crept up at night through the sewage tunnels. Off that lay the ‘mouse-trap', a labyrinth of dungeons and cells that even the gaolers were afraid to penetrate. Truly, thought Héloïse , it was a place of no privacy and no mercy for the ill or unwary, only of misery, disease and despair.

Flanking a courtyard, the women's area was to her left. Male prisoners who wished to speak to the women in the courtyard could do so through a wide iron grille which was set into the wall at a junction of two vaulted arches.

She made for the door under an arch and stepped inside.
Oh my God,
she thought and retched. The smell was appalling: a foul contagion of vomit, excrement, rotting food and moisture-sodden straw. What light there was filtered through an inadequate window and had the effect of bathing the inmates in a green light.

Every square inch of the cell was occupied. The lucky ones had wrested a few extra inches from their neighbours and sat propped up against the wall or huddled in the corner. The rest were jammed together in a parody of patriotic equality. Some of the women were screaming. At the furthest end of the room, two of them fought like wild animals. Others appeared too weak and numb to do other than gaze silently at the situation in which they found themselves. All of them were ghostly pale. Many of the faces were covered in sores, and vermin crawled visibly over them. A few mothers suckled pale, sickly babies.

It was like a charnel house out of hell.

Héloïse fought to control her stomach and summoned the pride which insisted that she face the worst and survive it. She pushed her way further into the room and a howl from a hag near the door went up.

‘A visitor, my friends. A fine lady, if my eyes don't deceive me.'

Héloïse ignored her taunts. Her vision now better adjusted to the gloom, she made for a corner where a group of women sat trying to darn their clothes – which she felt was promising.

One of them had her back to Héloïse. She was wraithlike and covered in sores but there was something familiar about her.

Bending over, she tapped the girl on her shoulder.
‘Mademoiselle
...'

The face that looked up was pale and thin and streaked with grime with huge, purple-rimmed eyes and a set to her mouth that betrayed suffering and knowledge beyond her years. A world of feeling and bitter experience was written into those well-known features – grief, spent passion and a blankness which suggested their owner had finished with life.

Puzzled by the interruption, Marie-Victoire dropped the rags that she was trying to cobble together with the help of a nail. The woman who standing beside her appeared to swim up out of the past, stirring bitter, longing memories.

‘Madame,' she whispered at last.

Heedless of the filth, Héloïse dropped on to the straw beside her.

‘Marie-Victoire,' she breathed. ‘It cannot be you, can it?' She reached out to touch Marie-Victoire in order to reassure herself that she was no phantom. ‘What have you done to be in this dreadful place?'

‘Murder,' replied Marie-Victoire in a voice from which all emotion had been drained. ‘I murdered a patriot. I should have been dead a long while ago, but they said I had to wait for a trial.'

‘Murder?' Héloïse was truly astonished. Pity swept over her. ‘Oh, Marie-Victoire, what has happened to us all?'

Marie-Victoire's thin fingers folded and refolded the rags in her lap. There were no answers, certainly none that she could give, nor did she have the spirit to find any.

Héloïse got to her feet.

‘You are to come with me,' she said. ‘You will share my cell. Come.'

She put out a hand to help Marie-Victoire who stumbled as she rose. Using as much force as she dared, Héloïse ushered her to the door and out into the courtyard. Marie-Victoire gasped in the light and covered her eyes with her arm, but managed to walk steadily enough to Héloïse's cell. On entering, she dropped on to the bed and burst into tears. Héloïse comforted her, and told her that she was safe for the moment. Covering Marie-Victoire with the blanket, she went off to arrange a few things with the turnkey.

After a sleep, the first real one she had enjoyed for months - as she told Héloïse - Marie-Victoire was better and more disposed to talk. It did not take long to relate her story and she told it without embellishment and unemotionally, only breaking down at the part where Marie died. Holding one paper-dry hand in hers, Héloïse listened and thought her heart would break for Marie-Victoire.

‘So, you see,' said Marie-Victoire, ‘there's nothing left, madame. It has all gone, everything that I ever had, and once Marie went, then I wanted to go, to die too.'

‘But if you get out of here, there could be a new life,' suggested Héloïse gently.

The look that was turned on her was full of pity for Héloïse's naivety.

‘You have heard what they say about the Conciergerie?' asked Marie-Victoire. ‘The hell from which there is no route save by the little window of the guillotine. I am a murderess and there will be no mercy for me.' There was a long pause. ‘It is no matter.' Marie-Victoire circled her neck with her fingers. ‘It's quick you know, and I can't feel more pain than I have already done.'

‘Eh bien.
Then, perhaps we'll go together. There's comfort in that thought, is there not, Marie-Victoire? We must practise courage together.' Héloïse sounded more cheeful than she felt. ‘But we must first of all arrange to eat. I have money that will suffice for both of us.'

She wandered over to the window and looked out. ‘Good Lord, Marie-Victoire. You should see this.'

On either side of the grille that divided the women from the men, benches were being arranged to form a dining table, the centrepiece being the iron bars. On each side of the grille, baskets of food brought in by the women who ran commissions for the prisoners were being unpacked by the recipients. The benches filled up, and the sound of laughter and banter filled the court.

‘I'll join them',' she told Marie-Victoire. ‘See if I can pick up any information.'

Down in the courtyard, Héloïse located a spare seat at the improvised table and sat down. She ventured to ask her neighbour, a good-looking woman dressed in the height of fashion whom she recognised as a distant acquaintance of de Choissy's, if she could buy some of her food. The woman agreed and told her to make free with what she had. Héloïse thanked her, cut a piece of cheese for herself, bit hungrily into it and listened while she ate to the repartee flying from one side of the grille to the other. The men on their side vied with each other to pay compliments; the women returned them with some wit. From time to time, a particular delicacy – a ripe peach, or a glass of wine – was handed through the bars and the accompanying sallies had most of the diners shaking with laughter. Héloïse replied to her benefactress's enquiries, promised to rendezvous with her another time and bundled up some food for Marie-Victoire in her handkerchief.

It was a laughter in the face of death and it was to spit into the wind. Yet, the meal had done much to lighten her mood and she felt she was among kindred spirits. The moment ... the conviviality, the generosity, the laughter – was almost enough to obliterate the knowledge of the overflowing cells that lay out of sight of the diners.

That evening, when the cell door had clanged shut, she and Marie-Victoire sat propped on the bed until late. The darkness unloosened their tongues and its blanketing anonymity permitted the luxury of confidences, and they talked as they had once done long ago. Héloïse spoke of Louis and poured out her love for him. Marie-Victoire listened and was reminded, with a painful twists of her heart, of how she had felt for Pierre.