One Thing More (5 page)

‘Put it on the table,’ Célie told her. ‘And get me hot water and a clean cloth.’

‘You can’t do this any more!’ Amandine turned to St Felix, her voice trembling. ‘He’s wicked to send you! You could have been killed! And for what? Another deal? A few more sous?’

‘He didn’t know this would happen,’ St Felix argued.

‘Rubbish!’ she snapped, her face crumpled with fury and distress, the shadows around her eyes dark as her hair. ‘Anyone with two wits to rub together would know there were going to be mobs around last night. Where did he send you, anyway? What was there that couldn’t wait until daylight?’

‘Get me the water!’ Célie ordered briskly. ‘You can argue about it later.’

‘Errands that are safer at night,’ St Felix replied, evading the issue.

‘Oh, yes!’ Amandine said witheringly, turning away to obey, although she already had water on to heat. ‘I’ve only to look at you to see how safe they are!’

‘It wasn’t a personal attack,’ he told her, ignoring Célie, who was now opening his shirt and looking carefully at the purpling bruises on his body to try to judge whether any ribs were broken. ‘Just exuberance and clumsiness,’ he went on. It was perfectly apparent that he had been struck hard several times, almost certainly knocked over and kicked and rolled.

Amandine’s disbelief was clear in her face as she returned with a bowl of water and set it on the table. Clear also was her pain for him as if it were her own body that had been injured.

‘It wasn’t meant that way,’ he insisted, his face softening as he looked at her distress. ‘I was just in the wrong place and they mistook my intention. They were drunk. Poor devils! They dreamed of so much for so long, and the realities are thin ... and bitter. They don’t understand, and it frightens them.’ His voice was tired but there was a sudden vibrancy of emotion in it, of pity and total belief. ‘It’s so easy to make mistakes when you’re frightened.’

Amandine’s eyes reflected her admiration for him, and her impatience for a gentleness that would defend even its own attackers.

‘Celebrating the King’s coming execution, no doubt,’ she said. ‘And wanting to beat anyone who looked like an aristocrat, however plainly dressed. Does it never occur to them that you can’t help your ancestors any more than they can help theirs?’

‘I very much doubt it,’ he answered, wincing again as Célie touched a red weal across his chest where a boot had landed. ‘Hate doesn’t rest on reason, Amandine.’ He spoke her name softly, as if the sound of it pleased him, breaking some tiny part of his loneliness. Célie did not need to turn and look to imagine the pleasure in her eyes as she heard it.

Célie left them and went back into the front room and up the stairs to fetch ointment and salve from her bedroom, and a mixture of restorative herbs she had kept with her from her days with Madame de Staël. She must clean the knife wound without making it bleed again. Somehow she must keep it closed, though she had no way of stitching or plastering it. She would have to bind it with linen. Fortunately the wound was in his arm and not in his chest. All the things she needed were locked in her cupboard, safe from the inquisitive eyes or fingers of the rest of the household.

It took her several minutes to go up and down two flights of stairs, creeping in the near dark, knowing every loose board. When she returned Amandine and St Felix were sitting opposite each other, leaning over the wooden table talking earnestly. He had his hands cupped around his mug—another hideous piece of revolutionary pottery—every now and then taking a sip. Amandine watched him, her face filled with a gentleness which transfigured her, giving a strength to her delicate features and lighting the beauty that was already there.

‘It was only dangerous by accident,’ he assured her again, looking down at the chocolate. ‘Mischance. If I had gone round the other way I wouldn’t have passed them, and then it wouldn’t have happened.’ He raised his eyes to hers. ‘You mustn’t blame Bernave.’ Now there was urgency in his voice and in the angle of his body, resting on one elbow, shoulders tight. It seemed to matter to him very much that she understood.

‘That doesn’t excuse him,’ she insisted, her face in the light filled with concern and fear.

Standing in the doorway Célie wondered if St Felix recognised it, or if his mind was so full of ideals he imagined she shared, and that her passion was impersonal, revolutionary visions for some perfect society. Dreamers such as he was could be blind to the ordinary, everyday feelings of others.

She came in and went to the stove, taking down a heavy iron pan from the rack to brew an infusion that would help restore his strength. Then she returned to him and carefully, painstakingly, cleaned as much as she could of the dried blood from the wound, put balm on it, and bound it up.

‘You must refuse to do this any more,’ Amandine said suddenly, her voice thick with emotion. ‘You don’t have to! Let Bernave carry his own messages.’

St Felix did not reply. Célie knew he did not dare trust Amandine with the knowledge that his actions were part of saving the King’s life. He would want to safeguard her. Or perhaps he had simply given his word to Bernave. Had he any idea how much Célie knew? Probably not. What would he think of Bernave trusting a laundress?

But why not? Weren’t these supposed to be the days of equality?

That was a new and enormous idea. To talk about it was one thing, to practise it quite another. Anyway, equality between all men, between aristocrat and labourer, academician and illiterate, was still quite a different thing from equality between a man and his wife, let alone his maid. There had been a few white-hot arguments about that already. Célie had seen pamphlets and posters on the subject in the streets. There was one woman called Claire Lacombe, who had caused a great stir demanding rights, and some Dutch woman, Etta something, had as well. One day when there was time she would learn more about that! Madame de Staël would have approved.

The water was boiling. She took it off the stove and poured it over the mixed leaves, waiting while it steeped.

Amandine was still smouldering on about Bernave as she left the table and began to prepare breakfast for everyone, cutting bread and cheese and banging the chocolate tin to try to get out every last bit of the powder. Sometimes the whole household ate together; it was more economic, particularly with fuel.

St Felix looked at Amandine, his face sombre. ‘I am doing what I have to, what I believe to be right,’ he said grimly, his voice soft, closed off within himself.

The discussion was over. He had withdrawn into that inaccessible region where his dreams lay, and his pain.

Célie understood that he believed the same as Bernave, that he saw beyond Paris to Europe and the world, and knew the danger of war, invasion, even the possibility of defeat. He also knew he could not explain that to Amandine or anyone else who believed in the revolution, who wanted and needed to. And perhaps he was afraid of the power of her feelings. He would try to protect her from herself, and her anger against Bernave.

But Célie did not understand why he accepted the worst tasks so meekly, or why Bernave gave them all to him, instead of doing some himself. There was a cruelty in it that confused her. It was so unlike everything she knew of either man. Bernave was full of intelligence and power, smooth-boned, his grey hair lean to his head. He read voraciously, and there was always humour just behind his words, as if he knew some cosmic joke that he could share with no one else.

St Felix was a little taller, slighter of build. His face had an elusive beauty to it, as if he had seen a great vision and was on an eternal quest to find its reality. He would be incomplete until he did, and open to pain. She imagined him in the dark alleys of the Faubourg St-Antoine where the abattoirs of the tanneries were, coming round a corner and without warning running into the mob, drunken, hysterical with the taste of blood—a king’s blood. They would have no thought for what they were doing, only hatred, and the thrilling, surging knowledge of their own power. They held Paris in their hands, and they could do anything they wanted. No law could touch them. God was gone, the Church was gone ... who was there to deny them anything at all?

She strained the brew off the leaves into a cup and handed it to St Felix.

‘That will make you feel better,’ she promised. ‘You should sleep for an hour or two at least.’

‘Until noon,’ Amandine corrected her, stirring the chocolate powder into a paste with the last of the milk.

St Felix drank down Célie’s brew steadily, only flaring his nostrils very slightly at the smell, and then replaced the empty cup on the table. ‘There’ll be things to do before then,’ he answered, standing up slowly, and wincing as the movement caused the fabric of his shirt to touch his wounds. He looked at Célie. ‘Thank you. You are very kind.’ He smiled at her, then at Amandine, and walked stiffly out of the kitchen towards his room, his footsteps uneven on the stone floor.

Célie turned to clear away the ointment and dishes she had been using.

Amandine’s soft mouth thinned with loathing. ‘Bernave does it because it amuses him,’ she said between her teeth. ‘He likes the taste of power, to see if St Felix will obey him! Give him a little strength over someone, and he uses it to satisfy his cruelty. He’s like the worst of the revolutionaries, and just as tyrannical as any king!’

‘Be quiet!’ Célie snapped, afraid for Amandine above any concern for St Felix. ‘Haven’t you the wits you were born with?’

It needed no explanation. Amandine stared at her, eyes wide, lips tight. ‘It’s true,’ she repeated fiercely, but this time in a whisper.

Célie put her hand on Amandine’s arm. ‘So are a lot of things that are better not said.’

As if to emphasise her words, the door was pushed open and Marie-Jeanne Lacoste stood in the entrance, a candle in one hand, and holding her baby, wrapped in a cot quilt against her shoulder with the other. She was Bernave’s daughter, but she had little of his suffering in her face, and none of his sharp, probing nature. She looked tired and confused now, and more than her twenty-three years. Her brown hair straggled across her brow and her eyes were full of fear. She was used to broken nights. She had three small children. It was a constant battle to keep them fed, clothed and as safe as possible in these violent and uncertain times. No one could plan for a future with any idea of what it would be, except more cold and more shortages.

‘Has anyone heard if they are going to kill the King?’ she asked, looking from Célie to Amandine and back again. She had no idea Célie had been to the Convention; she was merely asking for news anyone up early might have heard on the doorstep.

‘Yes,’ Célie answered quietly. ‘They are. In three days.’

‘Fernand said they would.’ Marie-Jeanne was referring to her husband. She held the sleeping baby a little closer to her as she came over to the table. ‘He’ll be pleased. He was afraid they would lose their nerve.’

‘Marat wouldn’t let them,’ Célie said cuttingly, putting the last of the dishes over on the bench. They would be washed together with those from breakfast, when there was more water heated.

The meaning was lost on Marie-Jeanne. ‘Fernand is sure he’ll be the saviour of Europe yet,’ she answered, folding the quilt into a place for the baby on the floor near the hearth. ‘I wish he wouldn’t keep saying it in front of my father.’ She spoke the word with almost no emotion, as if it were a mere title, not a relationship. ‘Of course Papa Lacoste agrees,’ she went on, a strange mixture of respect and dislike filling her expression.

‘You should warn him to be careful,’ Amandine responded, returning her attention to the chocolate. ‘Citizen Bernave may have different feelings. These days it’s best to be discreet.’

‘That’s what I keep saying,’ Marie-Jeanne nodded, putting the baby down gently, smiling at her and tickling her very gently until she gurgled. Then she rose to her feet and began to set the table with new revolutionary crockery, with its painted political symbols: ancient Roman faces; red, white and blue cockles; a cannon with a crowing cockerel on top. If she thought they were ugly or absurd she was too tactful to say so.

She saw the extra candle Célie had lit to see St Felix’s arm more clearly and, realising it was unnecessary, pinched it out. She was a frugal housewife. Perhaps Fernand did not realise what a blessing he had in her. She was good-natured, energetic, and she could make acceptable meals for the whole family out of vegetables and herbs, and each time they would be a little different.

She had no interest whatever in politics, but in the kitchen she had style, flair and ingenuity, even a kind of inventiveness which could be called wit. Like many ordinary women all over France, her family was what mattered to her. What they did in the Palace of Versailles, in the hall of the Convention, or in the Place de la Révolution where the guillotine stood stark, were of importance to her only as it reflected upon her home here in the Boulevard St-Germain.

Célie had often wondered if she were also like most women in having a religious belief. It went hand in hand with the ordinary decencies of so much of family life. She would not dare to mention it in front of her husband or father-in-law, but Bernave would not have objected. But then perhaps Marie-Jeanne did not know that. Maybe only Célie had seen the old, well-fingered breviary inside his desk, and noticed that he never took the name of the deity lightly or in vain.

‘It will all be over in a few days.’ Amandine smiled bleakly at Marie-Jeanne. ‘Then we can begin to get back to normal.’

‘We can’t go “back” to anything,’ Célie contradicted her. ‘We can only go forward to whatever happens when we’ve no Church and no king.’

Amandine shot her a look of warning.

Marie-Jeanne turned to Célie, her china-blue eyes widening a little with surprise. ‘Don’t you think it’ll be better?’

Célie realised how easily her tongue had run away with her. She must be more careful. Without meaning any harm, Marie-Jeanne could repeat her words.

There was a heavy tread on the floor outside in the next room, and a moment later Monsieur Lacoste opened the door. He was a man of few words, his emotion contained within himself. He was in his early fifties and the scars of life were deeply imprinted on his bony face. Self-pity was unknown to him, but anger lay close beneath the thin surface of his patience. What pain or injustices he had seen were hidden in his memory and he shared them with no one. He was dressed in dark brown breeches, a faded shirt and leather jerkin, ready for work.