One Thing More (21 page)

It had been a long walk in the cold. Georges thought of Célie having to go all the way to the Faubourg St-Antoine. He could picture her in his mind, not her pale, beautiful hair, but her eyes—the anger, the courage and the guilt in them—and the soft generosity of her mouth. Her legs would ache far more than his by the time she got all the way to St-Antoine and back. And how would she explain her absence for such a time to Madame Lacoste?

But he could not go. It was too far to risk in daylight. Too many people could recognise him from the posters around, naming him as an enemy of the revolution, or from a sketch in one of the pamphlets, like
Père Duchesne
or
L’Ami du Peuple.
He had seen one or two of them. Even in the rough strokes of the pen, a few lines, they had caught his brow and the angles of his cheek and nose, the way his hair grew from his brow.

He had kept mainly to the busy streets where there was plenty of traffic, hoping to be unnoticed, but now he must go up the Rue Cambon.

All the usual shops were open, and there were queues of people for bread, coffee, candles, soap and sugar. Some stood silently, faces set hard in lines of despair, others were quarrelsome, ill-suppressed anger spilling over at the slightest provocation.

He started up the street, walking at what he hoped was a normal pace, avoiding meeting anyone’s eyes. He intended looking for a man called Romeuf who owned the stable inherited from his brother who had been killed on the Austrian front. He had no love for the Girondins, despising their incompetence, their cowardice and the personal ambitions which tore them apart and rendered them totally ineffective in controlling the Convention. He had protested against Pache’s diversion of boots and guns from the army to the Commune, and incurred Marat’s personal wrath for his temerity. A considerable number of very ordinary people had taken up his cry. He was no lover of royalty, but he had a larger vision of patriotism than the gratification of a local hunger for power, whatever the cost. He had been close to his brother, and proud of him. He saw his life sacrificed senselessly, not through a military defeat which was inevitable, but because he was sent to fight and then robbed of the means to do it by the Paris Commune.

Georges had never mentioned Romeuf to Bernave. He told no one anything they did not need to know. Still, could Bernave know Romeuf’s name and his connections to the royalist cause from some other source? Had he betrayed him to the Commune? Georges must at least warn him.

He stepped off the kerb to avoid a group of women talking together, their voices raised, but he did not swing quite wide enough. He brushed past the basket of one of them, knocking it sideways.

She swore at him.

He turned to apologise. ‘I’m sorry, Citizeness.’

She was a sharp-faced woman of almost fifty, her clothes drab, sagging over her thin body. Her eyes narrowed. ‘I know you ... I’ve seen yer somewhere!’ It was almost an accusation.

It was ridiculous to be afraid. There were a hundred reasonable explanations. He swallowed.

‘Probably. I come now and then. Good day, Citizeness.’ He took a step to continue.

‘Just a minute!’ she challenged him, her voice shrill.

Should he stop, or keep on as if he had not heard? No, that would look like running away. And yet why should he stop for her? She was a stranger to whom he owed nothing.

‘What is it, Citizeness?’ Better to placate her if possible. A few yards would make no difference anyway. His heart was pounding and he could feel the sweat on his skin.

‘Yer got a familiar look about yer.’ The woman screwed up her eyes, peering forward. ‘Summink about yer I seen on a poster.’

‘I’ll lay yer odds ’e’s wanted,’ the woman next to her said knowingly, glaring at Georges. ‘Think ’cos we got nothing, yer can come ’ere, live in our ’ouses, an’ eat our bread. Well, yer can’t!’ She stuck her chin out aggressively. ‘We’re just as loyal ter the revolution as anyone! Any o’ them fancy poets an’ lawyers in the Cordeliers! Your days is numbered, they is! Our day’ll come, you see! Marat’s for us. This is our revolution, an’ don’ yer forget it!’

They all moved a little closer to him, their attitude threatening, arms akimbo, faces set.

‘I know it is,’ he agreed, forcing himself to smile. He hoped it did not look as sickly as it felt. ‘Citizen Marat gains more power all the time. One day we’ll have a government truly of the people.’ He did not add that he hardly expected Marat to live to see it.

There was a rumble of assent.

He smiled very slightly and turned away again.

‘Coigny!’ One of the women said loudly. ‘I knew I seed that face somewhere! ’E’s wanted! Grab ’im!’

Georges took to his heels and ran, hearing them shouting after him, at least two of them yelling for the National Guard. He went wide round the corner of the Rue Cambon into a side alley. He shinned up a wall and over the top, dropping down the other side into a stonemason’s yard. He could hear feet in the alley behind him.

There was no time to hesitate. He ran forward again, dodging round the stones, startling a man with a hammer and chisel in his hand. He passed him without a word, and went out of the gates into a side street. Left or right? He did not know this area. There was a thread-work of narrow passages towards the Rue des Capucines. He had gone down one once with Romeuf. He must be sure not to lose his sense of direction and come out again where he went in.

He swivelled on his heel and started running, feet clattering and sliding on the last of the ice. There were more footsteps behind him. He had no idea whether they were anything to do with him or not, and no time to find out. He ducked in a narrow doorway and scrambled up a flight of stone stairs. He put his shoulder against the door at the top and forced it open. There were half a dozen people in the room.

‘Sorry!’ he shouted, half jumping over them and lurching against the wall, regaining his balance and going up another flight of stairs, this time inside. If he could get up and out over the roof he could come down anywhere, the Rue des Capucines, or the Place Vendôme. But he must be quick, or they would have the whole block surrounded and he would be trapped.

He stopped at the top; he could not hear anyone following, only his own breath rasping in his throat. That meant nothing.

He went up another flight and into the attic. Damn! It faced on to the Rue Cambon. He was not even certain he had not been seen. The street seemed to be full of people. Even in one short instant he saw half a dozen red, white and blue cockades.

He stepped back so quickly he almost fell. He burst open the door on the further side and ran to the window. Thank heaven! That looked out over crazily angled rooftops. There was no time to weigh a decision. He opened the casement and clambered out. The slates were wet and he slid several feet before finding his grip and beginning to move sideways along towards the east and the tanneries.

He was watching his handhold and looking towards the outline of dormers and gables beyond, when the first shot crashed on to a slate a couple of yards away. It ricocheted with a sharp whine and ended rattling down into the valley between the roofs.

Georges scrambled forward, up to the ridge as if the devil were behind him. He found strength he never knew he possessed. His fingers reached the ridge tiles and he hauled himself up as the second shot struck a chimneypot and the third splintered a tile on the dormer to his left.

He rolled over the ridge, lost his balance and glissaded down the other side, landing hard at the bottom of the valley, bruising his back and shoulders. But there was no time for thought of injury. He scrambled to his hands and knees, then up to a crouching position, and ran forward as fast as he could to the junction of the next two valleys, looked to see which was the larger, chose it and made his way along it as fast as he could.

He heard gunfire, but it seemed further away now. One more turn and he found a drainpipe. It gave him something to hold on to, to guide himself as far as another ledge, then a ten-foot drop down to the top of a stone stair and into a courtyard.

He landed with a jar which shook his bones. Which way now? His hands were skinned and bleeding. His trousers were soaked with rain. He had very little idea of where he was, or even how far he had come from the queue of women who had started the alarm. His heart was thumping so wildly he felt as if he must be shaking all over and he had to work hard to get enough breath. He was horrified to find his legs were weak.

He felt a sharp stab of guilt for having regarded Célie’s trip over the rooftops so lightly. He had been concerned for her, but had not realised just what risks she ran on his account.

Except, of course, it was not really for him, it was for the cause she believed in, and more than that, underlying everything, the guilt for having betrayed herself by being so much less than she wanted to be. He was incidental; she would have felt the same for whoever it was. That hurt more than he would have expected. He wished it had been for himself, that it was he who mattered to her.

He had had long enough to get his composure back. He could not wait here. Someone would see him and wonder who he was.

He walked past the well in the centre of the yard and out of the arched gateway into the street ahead. Thank God! It was the Rue des Capucines. Opposite was a basket-maker’s shop, then a harness-maker and saddlers, a cutlers, a button-maker on the near side, and a man standing selling copies of a political pamphlet.

The other way there was a currier, a grocer, and a little further along a pewterer. There was a queue outside the grocer. He should avoid that. He started the other way quickly.

He crossed over and headed back towards the Rue St-Honoré.

He kept to the alleys and passages parallel to the main street, fear tensing his body and making his gait stiff and tiring. Every time he heard a shout or saw a knot of people he felt a chill.

The women in the queue would move up as the goods were sold. They would not willingly lose their places. To the hungry, food is everything. In half an hour, or maybe an hour, they would be gone, replaced by others. He would return to the Rue Cambon, perhaps coming from the other direction.

It was nearly ten o’clock by the time he found Romeuf, working at the back of his small shop making candles. The smell of tallow was strong in the enclosed air, but it was at least warm over the vat. Everything seemed to be surrounded by hanging candles, running and dripping pale gobbets.

Georges told Romeuf the news of Bernave’s death. Romeuf was shaken, but it did not slacken his resolve to play his part in the plan, only to change it a little. He would still find a wagon, only a different one. His brother’s stable yard was still the best place to change clothes.

‘It shouldn’t surprise me,’ he said bitterly. ‘I heard whispers. What the hell is one more disillusion?’ His agreeably ugly face with its broken nose was ghostly yellow in the reflected light. ‘Long ago I believed in the possibility of persuading the King to govern with a parliament, like the British King.’ He was working with the tallow as he spoke. ‘I thought we could institute reforms, get rid of the court at Versailles, the ridiculous privileges of the aristocracy and the financial stranglehold of the Church.’ He kept stirring the liquid. ‘I dreamed of a day free from corrupt taxation and the incessant delays of the law. France is an enlightened country, full of wit and imagination, art, science, literature, music and theatre. It should have a just government for the benefit of all the people.’

Georges made no reply. There was none to make. There had been so many promises, so many steps forward: the renunciation of feudal rights in the National Assembly back in August of ’89, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, Church property nationalised. The next year religious orders had been suppressed, except those engaged in teaching or charitable works. The titles of the hereditary nobility had been abolished. A decree had imposed the civic oath on the clergy.

In ’91 the King had fled to Varennes, and been brought back by force. In September he had accepted the Constitution.

Then it had started to go wrong. The King had gone back on his word, vetoing the decision against the emigrés, then against the non-juring priests.

It had been worse in 1792. In March the ministry had been replaced by the Girondins. In April war had been declared. In June the King had dismissed the new ministry.

In July the terrible Marseillais had marched into Paris. All the Paris sections but one had petitioned for the deposing of the King. An insurrectionary Commune had been formed. In August the mob had stormed the Tuileries and the King had been suspended from all functions. The ministers had all been reappointed.

That same month that Lafayette had defected to the Austrians, the Duke of Brunswick had led his armies across the frontier into France. Longwy had fallen to the Prussians. Verdun had surrendered.

Then had come September ... blood-soaked, nightmare September, never to be forgotten and perhaps not even forgiven either.

On the twentieth, the same day as the battle of Valmy, the Convention had been constituted. The day after, it had abolished the monarchy.

And now in two days’ time the King would go to the guillotine, and France would enter a new age of chaos.

Nature and violence had taken everyone from Georges, almost everyone he loved. The gentle, beautiful world in which he had grown up was lost. Of the past, its ignorance and its beauty, its tarnished understanding, only Amandine was left.

He talked with Romeuf a little longer, then thanked him and took his leave, going out into the alley with his collar turned up as far as possible and his hat pulled down.

He was hungry, but he had only a few sous left. He realised with a jolt just how much he had relied on Célie since September. It was a frightening knowledge. Unconsciously he increased his pace, retracing his steps back towards the Île de la Cité, not sure where he was heading. Dare he go back to the attic in the Cordeliers? Or might the whole area be alerted to watch for him?

But he must. He must check on the safe house at St-Sulpice.