Season of Light (41 page)

Eventually, despite Didier’s instructions, Asa was forced to clamber out of the cab and make her way on foot.

By now the sky was dark. Faces, illuminated by flickering lanterns, were masks of hollows and shadow with gleaming, frightened eyes. Asa had set off in the wrong direction and fell back in a doorway while a mob of men roared past, carrying torches and chanting:
Marat, Marat
. She smelt burning wax, the stink of unwashed clothes, and saw the roughness of their hands, their relentless energy as they bayed for retribution. Women formed a knot behind them, keening and clawing at the fabric covering their breasts.

Nobody noticed when Asa turned her head to the wall. The pain that shot through her was sharp and pure so that the tears came easily, quenching the last spark of the glorious love affair, in which she and Didier, the beautiful and the righteous, had strode forth scattering love and a desire to reform on all they encountered. When she moved on, still sobbing, someone passed her a jar of wine and she took a swig before handing it back. Afterwards she raised her head, wiped her eyes and set off again, fully awake now to all that she had lost.

Four years after the fall of the Bastille the citizens of Paris again took to the streets. It was the day following the murder of Marat – former doctor, radical journalist, member of the Insurrectionary Committee and of late a leading voice in the National Convention.

Despite the chaos, Citoyenne Maurice was relatively unperturbed. She was even a little more friendly towards Asa in her eagerness to show her knowledge of the city and its ways. ‘It’s always happening these days. You can never bank on peace and quiet. One minute we are full of love, holding festivals in the Champs de Mars, the next we are murdering each other or denouncing a neighbour because she’s joked that the red cap doesn’t suit her husband’s complexion.’

‘If Marat was so great,’ Asa said, ‘why was he the object of such hatred? Certainly in Caen I heard people speak of him as the country’s worst enemy.’

‘It doesn’t matter whether he was great or not. Marat’s was the voice people listened to here. Whoever killed him has played straight into the hands of his friends, the Montagnards, who’ll say it’s no use being reasonable because the Girondins and their associates have resorted to treachery and violence by murdering an innocent man. Now the Montagnards will have a cast-iron excuse to cut their enemies down for good.’

‘But who exactly
is
the enemy now? I thought the Girondins had already been banished.’

‘The finger might be pointed at any of us. That’s why we should go straight out and join the mourners. We don’t want anyone to think we’re being unpatriotic.’

‘If you don’t mind, Citoyenne Maurice, I believe it might be better for me to stay inside.’

‘What do you mean? You’ve been running all over the place these past few days.’

‘I was told that as a stranger I should stay indoors.’

‘No, we must show our faces like every other loyal citizen.’

Outside they joined the rush of people heading towards the river. The frenzy of the previous night had been replaced by sobriety, women clutching posies or billets-doux to their fallen hero, Marat. Leaflets printed with unlikely images of his hollow-eyed face and extolling his virtues as a republican martyr were thrust into Asa’s hands. Marat’s embalmed body was to lie in state in the Church of the Cordeliers near the Luxembourg; the crowds were heading there so that they might queue up and file past his body.

Meanwhile, extraordinary rumours about how Marat had been killed were flying from group to group. ‘You’ll never believe what I heard. The poor, sick man was murdered in his own home, in his
bath
. Damnation, is nothing sacred these days?’

‘You’ll never believe who the killer was,’ said another voice. ‘A
girl
. Not a Parisian, thank Christ, but a country wench who’d come all the way to Paris hell-bent on killing our saviour Marat. I’ve always said the provinces can’t be trusted.’

‘Is she still at large? Have they captured her?’

‘Have no fear. She was sitting by his bath when they found him, cool as anything while she watched him, in his death throes, thrashing about in his own blood.’

As they neared the river, more news filtered back: the killer had a name. ‘Cordon, or some such. Charlotte Cordon or Corday … From Normandy. She’s hardly more than a girl, but she wasn’t operating alone, obviously. We all know she must have been put up to the job. Some even say she’s a man in disguise. There’s probably a whole gang of brigands hiding out somewhere in Paris.’

‘Who will they kill next, I wonder?’

‘I’ll be locking my door at night, that’s for sure.’

‘Marat was a politician. Surely they won’t be after people like us?’

‘Don’t you believe it. Weren’t you at the Convention when Marat was speaking the other day? You were cheering him on. Well then, they’ll be after you. I’ve heard they’ve recruited children to carry out their dirty work.’

‘What was that name again? You don’t mean Charlotte
Corday
?’ Asa asked incredulously. ‘From which part of Normandy?’

‘Place called Caen. Have you heard of it? Hotbed of traitors, apparently. The population staged an uprising that took place the very same minute that Marat was killed in his bath. So don’t tell me that this Corday wasn’t part of a conspiracy to destroy our new republic. They should bring back the wheel and smash her to pieces, in my opinion; the guillotine is too good for her.’

Citoyenne Maurice was determined to join the queue that would eventually wend its way past Marat’s corpse – there was always a danger that her neighbours would file an unfavourable report if she neglected this duty – so at the river they parted company and Asa set off towards the Tuileries. On the way she picked up yet another news-sheet. She must have heard the name wrong, she kept thinking. It couldn’t possibly be the Corday she knew. How could Charlotte Corday have got herself from Caen to Paris and murdered Marat in so short a time? Only last week they had been sipping coffee together in the Paulin garden. Charlotte was ardent, angry and perhaps not very clever. But a murderer?

When Asa returned to her lodgings late that afternoon, Citoyenne Maurice was frigid in her manner and ushered her into a little back room where the dresser was stacked with an assortment of pre-revolutionary china. ‘Citoyenne Ardleigh, you travelled from Caen, yes?’

‘I visited Caen before I came here.’

‘This Charlotte Corday, who they say killed Marat, is from Caen. Did you know her?’

‘A little.’

‘Dear God. Please don’t tell me that my friend Professor Paulin knew her too.’

‘She was a family friend.’

‘Dear God.’ Citoyenne Maurice closed the curtains and the door. ‘What have I done, letting you into this house? We are finished.’

‘Madame – Citoyenne – nobody except you knows who I am or where I’m from.’

‘You must go. But not at once, that would draw suspicion. You must behave absolutely normally.’

‘Madame, I hardly knew Charlotte at all. I had no idea what she was planning to do.’

‘That doesn’t matter. They’ll think you’re guilty. I want you out. You must leave in a couple of days, when all the fuss has died down.’

‘Madame, on my life, I swear that I had nothing to do with Marat’s death. But I promise you, I’ll leave as soon as I can. In fact arrangements are already being made – Didier Paulin is seeing to it, and you know he’s well respected. I should be out of the city by tonight or tomorrow at the latest. You mustn’t worry.’

‘Of course I’m worried. Well, I suppose you’d better go on sleeping here, it would look very odd if I turfed you out, but I don’t want you hiding here during the day. You’re to come and go as usual. And if anyone asks, whatever you do, don’t say you’ve just come from Caen.’

The next day, when there was still no word from Didier, Asa left a message with Citoyenne Maurice that she would be in the Palais Royal, where she sat in her customary place, reading a news-sheet, anonymous, she hoped, among the crowds. There was no doubting now that it was Beatrice’s friend, Charlotte Corday, who had committed this extraordinary act, and the papers reported in lurid detail the steps she had taken.

Having arrived in Paris by diligence, just as Asa had, Corday had found lodgings in the rue de la Victoire in the north of the city. On the morning of 13 July, while Asa was visiting the site of the Bastille, Charlotte had set off on a shopping trip here, to the Palais Royal, where she’d bought a hat with green trimmings, a newspaper and a kitchen knife. Such was her desire to strike a public blow that her original intention had been to kill Marat in full view of the National Convention, but because he was ill she’d taken a cab to his house instead and asked to see him. She was told he was too ill to receive visitors.

Later in the day she called again, insisting that she had information for Marat’s eyes only. Marat was so tormented by his skin disease that he currently spent most of his time in the bath, up to his neck in some kind of emollient solution, so it was there that he received Citoyenne Corday. She held out a list of names of those she claimed were citizens of Caen and traitors to the cause of the Revolution. When her victim reached for the paper she took out her brand-new kitchen knife and lunged, striking, by chance or design, the one place in his breast where bone would not impede entrance.

All the papers agreed that Charlotte Corday had simply been a puppet in a wider plot to destroy the Revolution. On the very same day that she had struck Marat, forces from Caen had fired against brave troops from Paris. Fortunately, there had been a wholesale retreat and the insurrection seemed to be over, at least for the time being, but didn’t all this smack of a high-level conspiracy? Paris must be infested with Corday’s co-conspirators, waiting to pounce on the innocent sons and daughters of the Revolution.

Asa read the account again and again until she no longer felt incredulity but a sense that this was what Charlotte had been bound to do. On the hilltop outside the Abbaye des Dames, enthusing about holding the key to the nuns’ door, Charlotte had been enraptured by the memory of her own significance. The detail of the green-trimmed hat, bought on the morning of the murder, was the most telling of all. Charlotte must have regarded her trip to Paris as worthy of celebration, a treat. In her mind, killing Marat was to be the glorious finale to her stay in Paris and an end to the impotence and bewilderment she’d endured in Caen since the first exciting days of the Revolution.

The trouble was that, far from ridding the country of Marat, she had made him more significant in his murdered state than he had ever been in life, just as Madame Maurice had predicted. In the Palais Royal people crowded along the arcades to view the notorious shop where the hat had been bought so that soon the milliner was forced to put up the shutters and disappear from view, in case it should occur to anyone to accuse him of conspiracy to murder. Charlotte Corday’s preposterous intervention had tipped the balance of power still further towards the Montagnards, and now there would be a clampdown. Everyone must be wary of strangers, said the news-sheets. Arrivals from the provinces were to be searched rigorously and anyone who bought an item that might be used as a weapon was to be regarded with suspicion.

Women were particularly anathema. It was quite clear to journalists and politicians and the louts who stood about jeering at groups of women on their way to market that the whole female breed had got well beyond themselves in thinking that they could intervene in national affairs. Charlotte Corday had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that if a woman was given too much leeway she would become deranged. Rules must now be enforced in order to restore the virtuous French female to her proper place: the hearth. No more forming clubs. No more demanding that she should have a voice in the Convention. Her place was at home, breastfeeding babies.

In fact, said the Jacobin press, enemies of the state were springing up like weeds, determined to plunge the fledgling republic into chaos and bloodshed – Girondins, royalists, hoarders, thieves, foreigners, women who talked too much. And here was Asa, recently arrived from Caen, a foreigner with false papers and without ties in the city except for Didier. What would Charlotte Corday, currently under interrogation, say about her associates in Caen? What if she mentioned Beatrice Paulin? Surely the entire family would be at risk, and anyone connected to it.

At first Asa determined to keep away from Didier in case she put him in further danger. But after another day spent pacing the gardens, dashing back to her lodgings – still no message – she weakened and visited his apartment late in the evening. He was not at home so she left a note with the maid.
You of all people will know that I need to get out of the city. You told me I must wait to hear from you, but you should be aware that the situation has become urgent. Soon I will be forced to leave my lodgings
.

At one point she planned a route to the city gates and began walking north. Perhaps she could just keep going, be picked up by some passing coach and transported to the coast. At the very least she would take a look at the kind of checks that were in place. At the corner of rue Charlot she was stopped in her tracks. For some time a couple had been ahead of her, a small child prancing between them, his short arms raised so that he could be swung off his feet by his parents. The family had paused to admire a pyramid of oranges on a fruit stall when a cart rumbled up and three men in uniform leapt out and demanded to see their papers. The woman, clutching the child in her arms, was shoved aside and the oranges went tumbling into the gutter as the man was escorted away, head wrenched back for a last glance at his wife and child.

Another time Asa walked to the inn-yard where she had been set down by the diligence from Caen, only to find it surrounded by men in blue jackets wielding pistols. When a coach arrived its passengers were ushered out and lined up against the wall to have their papers scrutinised and their clothes searched. Asa retreated.