One Thing More (22 page)

He laughed, and it risked going out of control, hysteria more than humour. What delusions of importance! He was being absurd! The Commune was supreme. In two days they would send the King of France to the scaffold like any common criminal. On the battlefield they were prepared to defy Europe—hopelessly, perhaps, but they did not seem to realise that. What did one minor dissenter matter to them? Fun of the chase, perhaps, but little more, forgotten the moment it was no longer succeeding.

He had eight sous left. If he could find bread, it was usually about three sous a pound, but he was far too late in the day now. To stand in a queue for it was out of the question. Memory of queues pinched his stomach more than hunger.

He went into a café and sat in the corner. He bought a bowl of stew and a slice of bread for four sous, and was glad of the warmth.

He ate alone, careful to catch no one’s eye. Then outside in the cold night air again, he walked towards St-Sulpice. He made his way through alleys and up and down stone steps, through a deserted garden, to find Alphonse le Bon. A month ago, on what used to be Christmas when religion was legal, the two of them had shared half a chicken and a bottle of very good wine.

It began to rain. Was there any point in all their careful checking of details, the miles of walking, the finding of new people, a new wagon, searching Bernave’s room for the passes? Without the man who was prepared to replace the King in the carriage, and die for him when the crowd realised the substitution, there was no plan. Only Bernave had known who he was—that is, if he really existed. They had two days in which to find another.

Georges came across le Bon in the yard behind a hairdresser’s shop. He had a bundle of outdated newspapers and pamphlets in his arms, and looked surprisingly cheerful.

‘Still got your head, I see,’ he remarked with a smile. He was a thin, fair-haired man with a handsome nose. He was probably about thirty. He surveyed Georges up and down as if assessing him for a new suit. ‘You look wet. I might know where I can find a new pair of boots for you, if you like? Your feet are bigger than mine. Commune’s full of boots that should have gone to the army, poor sods!’ He sniffed. ‘But I suppose you know that! I don’t fancy their chances of fighting the Spanish barefoot!’

‘Thank you,’ Georges accepted, although he had no idea if either of them would survive, or meet again to give or take the gift.

Le Bon shrugged, almost dropping his papers. ‘I don’t know why I hang around Paris, except that I’m compulsive about hearing the news, and this is where everything is happening. Centre of the world—at the moment. God knows what it will be next year.’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Heap of ruins, I should think. “City of blood, lust and lies,” wasn’t that what Madame Roland called it? Or something like that. I must be mad.’ He smiled cheerfully, but Georges could see behind the mask of humour a deep despair.

He remembered how much he had liked le Bon, how they had laughed together over silly jokes, as if that were all that mattered. For a while they had pretended that the September Massacres and the war and the hunger and chaos did not exist. It had been a supreme act of will, because they both knew so much better.

Instinctively Georges put out his hands to take half the newspapers, and clasped le Bon’s arm.

‘I’ll help you carry them,’ he stated. ‘Wherever you’re going is good enough for me.’

‘Thanks,’ le Bon accepted, passing them over. ‘What the hell have you done to your hands?’ He surveyed the cuts from the slates.

‘Nothing that matters,’ Georges replied with a shrug.

Le Bon smiled, knowing not to pursue it. He gestured to the papers. ‘Roll them up tight, they’ll do a little while as fuel. More use than their original purpose. Did you know anybody talk or write as much drivel in your life?’ He started to walk towards the gate to the alley and Georges went with him. ‘The hot air put out by the Girondins could warm France, if it could only be directed!’

‘If you could face all the Girondins one way at the same time, then you could probably part the Red Sea as well,’ Georges said bitterly.

‘If you could face all the Girondins in one direction it would be a bigger bloody miracle than parting the Atlantic!’ le Bon responded.

Georges laughed; for a moment it rang of true humour.

‘It’s going badly,’ le Bon said. ‘Fellow I know, good man, not frightfully clever, just an ordinary chap, but decent, came back from the Austrian front the other day. Lost his arm. Nobody gives a damn. Said it’s chaos out there.’

They crossed a small courtyard and went under an arch into another alley.

‘No guns,’ le Bon went on. ‘Not much ammunition, short rations all the time. Coats that wouldn’t keep a dog warm.’ He glanced sideways. ‘What’s happened to us, Georges? We had such dreams ... but we haven’t made anything any better. It’s worse in some ways. I used to know who my enemies were. Now I don’t even know that.’

‘Marat!’ Georges said helpfully.

‘Robespierre!’ le Bon answered. ‘He doesn’t believe in us any more—hadn’t you heard? The Convention told him we didn’t exist.’ He sniffed. ‘Or perhaps they told us he didn’t? Either way, we don’t know each other any more.’

‘God help us!’ Georges sighed.

He hitched up the papers a little higher. They were heavy and slipping. He had no idea where he was going. He liked le Bon, but time was too short for indulgence of mere conversation.

Georges followed him across a swirling gutter and into the shelter of a vacant, rambling shed.

Le Bon dropped the papers and invited Georges to sit down. An old stove in the corner gave off a little heat.

‘Can’t stay here long,’ he said ruefully. ‘Owner’s away, so it’ll do for a few days. Everything could change by then anyway.’ He peered at Georges in the gloom, trying to read his expression. ‘What’s wrong? You look like hell!’

‘Victor Bernave was murdered last night,’ Georges answered. ‘I need to know if the place in St-Sulpice is still all right?’

‘Was he?’ Le Bon’s voice rose in surprise. ‘By whom, do you know?’

‘No, I don’t ... nor why. What about the house in St-Sulpice? Who else knows of it?’

‘No one. Listen to everything. Say nothing.’ Le Bon began rolling the damp papers up tightly and produced several lengths of string from his pockets to tie them into rough logs. ‘Duplicitous devil, Bernave. I thought he was clever, but looks as if he wasn’t so clever after all. Played them off against each other one time too many.’

‘Off against each other ...’ Georges repeated. ‘Who? Royalists against Commune? Danton against Robespierre? Girondins against each other?’

Le Bon grinned, looking up from his papers. ‘Probably all of that, but mostly royalists against the Commune. Right hand never knew what his left was doing. Pity ... I mean pity he’s dead. He was interesting. He had a sense of humour, of the absurd. Never trust a man who can’t laugh—and cry. And that’s most these days.’

‘He was knifed in the back in his own house.’ Georges watched le Bon, and continued rolling papers himself.

Le Bon was startled. He stiffened and looked up sideways at Georges. ‘Then how can you not know who did it?’ he asked. ‘It wasn’t domestic, surely? Not Bernave! I don’t see him as a deceiving lover! Although I’ve been wrong before. In fact probably more often than I’ve been right—or I wouldn’t be crouching here in somebody else’s damn shed. If a toad like Marat can have a mistress, then anyone can.’

‘I doubt it.’ Georges finished a bundle and tied it as tightly as he could. He wished le Bon would put one on the stove now—he was frozen—but perhaps they were too precious to be used until the last already burning was almost gone. ‘More likely political,’ he went on. ‘Someone thought he was on the wrong side.’

‘Interesting you should say that,’ le Bon replied thoughtfully. ‘You aren’t the only one asking about him, you know.’

Georges stopped what he was doing, his fingers motionless. ‘Someone else is? Who? Commune or royalist?’

Le Bon was curious. It showed in his eyes and the tilt of his head. ‘You care a lot who killed him. Why? What was he to you?’

‘The master behind the only plan which has even the ghost of a chance of working,’ Georges answered. ‘Perhaps “ghost” is the right word now. And yes, you’re right, I care who killed him. And I care even more which side he was on ... or if he was playing both sides, or would come down for whoever wins ... or whoever will pay him the most.’

Le Bon looked at him gravely. ‘I think that warrants something on the fire,’ he observed, opening the stove door and putting the last completed bundle in, then slamming it shut. He squatted on his heels, regarding Georges curiously. ‘You think he could have betrayed the plan to the Commune?’

Did he really think that? No ... but the fear of it would not go. It was possible. Perhaps his disbelief was only the slowness of his imagination to grasp what had really happened? He was still finding it hard to accept that Bernave was dead.

‘I don’t know any more,’ he admitted, rubbing his hands together to keep the circulation going, then stretching them out to the fire. The warmth was making the cuts and scratches smart as circulation returned. ‘I thought I was certain of him. Now I’ve learned a lot about him I didn’t know ... none of it good. Who else was asking about him, anyway?’

‘I can’t tell you because I don’t know,’ le Bon confessed. ‘It was just a question here, a question there, all very discreet, but I got the impression, from the bit I overheard, that it was also pretty angry. Whoever it was, was no friend.’

George said nothing. His mind raced. Who else suspected Bernave? From which side? How much did any of them really know about St Felix? Could he have been a genuine royalist, and discovered Bernave was using him against his own cause? That would have been the ultimate betrayal, with the bitterest irony laced in.

How that would hurt Amandine! He could hardly bear to think of it. She had always wanted to believe so much of people. He could see her as a little girl, long ago on the banks of the Loire, listening to the stories of the old man in the long evenings, wide-eyed, taking in every word, slow to realise when she was being teased, and then laughing as hard as anyone.

But that had been meant in kindness.

As she had grown up she had been quick to give her friendship, but slow to give her heart. He could remember her first real love—sweet, hesitant, wildly unsuitable. It had ended in an innocent parting. She had told him about it, in whispers, one summer evening in the hay loft. He had ached for her sadness, and smiled in the dark that it had gone so cleanly, with nothing to regret.

Célie had said Amandine cared very deeply for St Felix, and admired him intensely. This would leave a bitterness behind, something that would not heal over. Amandine was not a fighter, like Célie.

But he could hardly blame any man for killing someone who used him in such a fashion. But to knife him in the dark, in his own house, was a little cold-blooded, and a little careless of other people’s involvement.

‘You don’t know what this questioner discovered?’ he said aloud.

Le Bon shook his head. ‘Sorry. It was only snatches here and there, a word or two overheard.’ He grimaced. ‘I get to stand on street corners a lot these days, and hanging around alleys in a way I wouldn’t normally choose. I’m a watcher and a listener, because I don’t know what to do!’

‘Who does?’ Georges said with a wave of hopelessness. ‘Every time I take a step, the ground moves from under me.’

‘Something else about Bernave,’ le Bon said quietly. ‘I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard there was a royalist plan to rescue the King from the Temple prison.’

Georges looked up. It was a crazy idea. The Temple was an enormous, virtually impregnable building, guarded day and night.

‘Surely even they have more sense than to try that!’ He felt a flutter of sharp, sickening fear. ‘Obviously it didn’t succeed—but the very fact that they tried will have warned Marat, the Commune, everyone!’

Le Bon put out his hand and grasped Georges’ wet sleeve. ‘Don’t worry! They didn’t do anything. The plot was foiled before it got that far. I didn’t learn how—but I did hear by whom.’

Georges swallowed. ‘Who?’

‘Victor Bernave.’ A wraith of humour lit le Bon’s lopsided face. ‘I don’t know whether he was preventing the King from escaping, preventing the royalists trying to put him back on the throne, or preventing them all from setting out on a plan which couldn’t possibly succeed, and would forewarn Marat and the Commune, and ruin our chances.’

Georges shook his head, overwhelmed. It seemed as if every certainty was shifting even as he reached for it.

‘Have a piece of bread,’ le Bon offered. ‘At least that doesn’t change. We still have to eat.’

Georges hesitated. It was not a time to eat another man’s food.

‘Go out in style!’ le Bon urged. ‘I’ve a bottle of pretty decent Bordeaux. Its owner won’t need it any more, poor devil. You can feed me tomorrow—if there is a tomorrow.’ And without waiting for Georges’ reply, he straightened up and went over to a ledge in the wall, into the shadows, and took down a dusty bottle, and a loaf of bread wrapped around with a clean towel. There was also a fair size piece of cheese. He divided them scrupulously and offered Georges half.

‘Are we still going on?’ he asked after a few moments.

‘Yes,’ Georges replied with his mouth full. ‘Just changing it a little. Different places, different people.’ He grimaced. ‘Can’t change the time.’

Le Bon laughed abruptly. ‘Still want my help?’

‘Yes.’ Georges watched le Bon’s face. ‘Discreet place for a gentleman to change his clothes before leaving Paris in a hurry, and privately.’

Le Bon smiled, turning the corner of his lips down.

‘Not for Varennes, I trust?’

‘No, not Varennes,’ George agreed quietly, remembering the royal family’s abortive attempt to escape. They had very nearly made it as far as the Austrian border before they were caught and brought back.

Le Bon looked at Georges steadily. ‘We don’t have much chance, you know. Quite apart from Bernave—’

‘I know,’ Georges cut across him, not wanting to hear it. ‘But can you think of anything better?’