Season of Light (43 page)

‘I had no idea that you even existed,’ Asa protested. ‘Anyway, you got Didier back in the end. His father told me.’

‘I got him back, as you say, but he wasn’t the same. After he’d met you he thought that the French should be rational, like the English. He thought he could bring down the king and change France through
reason
. I had no patience with him or his endless debates. I broke free of him and went with the other women, and when at night I took him back into my arms he loved to smell Paris on my skin and see the dirt of the streets under my fingernails. I marched on the Bastille, I marched on Versailles, and I brought the monarchy to its knees. When he saw me with my bare throat and my bare arms, my eyes full of the things that I had done, he used to shake with passion. He shuddered when I touched him with my hand – the hand that had held the harness of the horse that had dragged the royal family’s carriage back to Paris.’

‘So you had him. You won. Why did you come looking for me in England?’

Madame set down the paintbrush and folded her hands as she always used to, perfectly still, the very picture of acquiescence. ‘After they had killed my brother, I was so sick that I couldn’t raise my head. I don’t remember anything. Didier arranged it all because he wanted to be rid of me. I was scarcely able to think for myself, but when I arrived in England I remembered two names. One was Ardleigh, Thomasina, his English mistress. The other was Shackleford, her cousin and Didier’s former English correspondent. In London I struck lucky and found a woman who got me an introduction to your sister. When I first saw you arguing with those youths by the tailor’s cottage I decided: at least she will be a challenge, it will be amusing to bring her down. Then, when you caught sight of me, I was worried that you had recognised me from that time in the Tuileries, but no, of course not, that day you only had eyes for Didier. And yes, I thought it would be the perfect revenge, to bring you to Paris and tell the authorities that Didier had an English mistress who had smuggled herself across the sea. But then I went to church in Caen – I couldn’t help myself, I had to go back one last time – and it was my undoing because I remembered how my brother had loved that Madonna when he was a little boy, and used to make me take him to visit her, and I was ashamed.’

After a pause, Asa said: ‘Is it at an end now, madame?’

Madame brought her face very close to Asa’s, her eyes shining with tears. ‘I blamed you because I thought Didier didn’t love me enough to save my brother. But it wasn’t you. It was Didier. You should not have come to Paris. You should have stayed in Caen.’

‘What have you done, madame? Tell me. Please.’

But Madame had lain down on the bed with her head in the crook of her elbow, her face covered by her black hair. ‘I have given him one more chance.’

Asa knelt beside her and touched her head. Madame’s scalp was hard under her fingertips. Her eyes closed and she gave a sigh, like a child preparing itself for sleep. Her hair shifted under Asa’s hand and fell back in a thick wave.

The walk back to the rue des Francs Bourgeois seemed interminable. Every raised voice or passing cart jarred Asa’s nerves. She had been foolish to spend so long with Madame; it was late to be out on streets, which had been colonised by youths roaring Marat’s name, or Corday’s, or simply
Liberté
. When at last she reached the house and knocked on the door there was no answer. She tried again. A neighbour stood in a doorway, watching.

‘Do you know if Citoyenne Maurice is at home?’ asked Asa, and knocked again.

Madame Maurice opened the door a crack. At the sight of Asa she picked up her case from inside the passage and hurled it into the street. ‘Get away from here. I told you. I begged you …’

‘Citoyenne, please, there’s no need to be afraid. Let me in.’ The torpor of the street was interrupted by the clop of hooves and the rattle of a carriage. Madame Maurice backed into the house and slammed the door. The carriage stopped and a couple of men climbed out.

‘Thomasina Ardleigh. Are you she?’

At last Didier’s men were here. In a flash Asa saw herself being whisked through the city, on her way home. She picked up her case. ‘I am.’

‘Step this way,
citoyenne
. Let me take your bag.’

She mounted the step and peered inside the carriage, which was very dark, small and plain, with narrow bench seats and a blacked-out window. ‘I presume you have come on behalf of Monsieur … Citoyen Paulin,’ she said, turning to one of the men, the heavier of the two, who’d grasped her elbow.

‘That’s it. In you get.’

‘Please show me your papers.’

‘Just a tick. We need to get moving. Here, allow me.’ He wrenched the case from her hand and threw it inside.

‘Did Didier send me a note?’

‘Just get in and then I’ll find it. Hurry up now.’

Casements were being thrown open in the houses on either side of the street, ears pressed to the cracks in doors. A silent crowd had materialised at the corner. Someone shouted: ‘We don’t know who she is. We’ve seen her hanging about on her own and we don’t think it’s right.’

The men, who wore a uniform of sorts – plain caps and tattered coats in shades of blue – were nudging her into the carriage, which stank of sweat. Her mind was racing. ‘Let me see Didier’s letter.’

Too late, she was inside, and the door was locked. One of the men had propped his backside on the bench opposite, spread his legs wide apart and was grinning.

The carriage lurched forward. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Now now,
citoyenne
, it’s not for you to ask questions. It’s for you to come along with us all quiet and gentle.’

She threw herself at the door and rattled the lock. Her companion didn’t move, simply folded his arms and leaned back.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘You’ll find out, my love. Now just stop clawing at that lock or I’ll have to bind your hands.’

‘Show me your papers.’

‘All right. If you’ll sit still and be quiet I’ll read them to you.’ He reached into his jacket. ‘This is what you’ll be wanting to see, I do believe – the warrant for your arrest.’

‘Arrest? What am I charged with? I’ve done nothing.’

‘Very well. Let’s take a look, shall we? I’ll read the charges out to you. What it says is that you are charged with being an English woman disguised as one Julie Moreau, and therefore a suspected spy. Further, you are associated with the murderess, Corday, having recently arrived from Caen by diligence, travelling under a false passport, and are therefore suspected as being an accessory to murder. Will that do?’

‘But I had nothing to do with Charlotte Corday …’

‘Look, don’t blame me, I’m just doing my job. Now, no more struggling, miss, sit quiet.’

The drive took barely a quarter of an hour. Through a slit of window Asa saw that people steered well clear of this carriage and on the whole were quiet, kept their heads down and looked cowed as it passed by. The streets were settling into evening; goods were brought inside, doors locked, shutters closed. Asa’s mind had gone blank and her ears were ringing. She was aware of being prodded out of the carriage and supported as she almost fell to the ground, of a change of temperature and a smell she recognised – enclosure, neglected human flesh. She was nudged up a flight of stairs and into a little room that was almost completely dark and furnished only with a mattress.

Asa took two panicked steps from one side of her cell to the other, slamming her hands into the damp wall, beating her forehead on the stone. Her own voice cried out over and over: ‘I’ve done nothing. You can’t touch me. I’m English. Please let me go home. I don’t belong here.’

In a wave of sheer terror, she smashed her fists into the wall until they bled. Her throat ached and her hair was wet with her own tears. A distant voice begged her to be calm: Asa, think of Caroline Lambert and how dismayed she would be at this loss of control, think of Mrs Dacre, who behaved with far more dignity under similar circumstances. But how to be calm, how not to crouch and howl, when she had seen Corday’s journey to the guillotine, when she had been aware since arriving in Paris of the thousands of prisoners rattling their bars and the cemeteries in which mass graves had been filled with quicklime to hide the headless bodies of countless people like herself, who had been alive yesterday, last week, last month, and believed themselves to be innocent of any crime?

Perhaps Didier would come. Surely Didier must have been unaware of the danger she was in or he would not have let this happen. He’d probably been sent out of the city again. Or perhaps he had reasoned that there could be no point in acknowledging her, if she was accused of conspiring with Charlotte Corday. Much better to disassociate himself, to save his own skin, and that of his father and sister in Caen. Then Asa thought of an even more terrible prospect: if Madame had betrayed Asa to the authorities, she had probably named Didier too.

You fool, Asa. To pitch yourself against Madame and the Revolution; to be so vain as to think you could change anything.

In the minutes of calm, Asa thought of the yard at Ardleigh, Mrs Dean at the pump, her father stepping up to the mounting block and riding off under the crooked arch over the entrance to the stable-yard. Of Caroline Lambert in the nursery at Morton Hall, her long arms embracing the little boys, her heart grieving for her dear father, and those lovely hours she and Asa had spent together in the cottage parlour at Littlehampton. Of the bewildered Mortons reliving again and again those weeks in Paris when Asa had seemed so buoyant and safe under their care. Of the Warrens disappearing into the morning mist. Of Shackleford’s eyes, which betrayed his love every time he caught sight of her; eyes the colour of tender, familiar things, fresh-made tea, an autumn leaf, amber.

Her own words haunted her, that dismissive letter home. When they heard about what had happened now, what would they say?

Gradually, with the dawn, Asa became conscious of her surroundings. Above the dirty mattress was a square of window, too high to reach. Gradually she grew calmer. You still have choices, Asa, she thought. You can do this well or badly. Be courageous. Remember Mr Lambert. At least make it difficult for them by showing that you are not afraid of justice.

A few hours later the door to Asa’s cell was unlocked – in a moment of wild hope she thought Didier had come – but it was only two women, prisoners, judging by their dull eyes and motley clothes, bringing her a gift of bread.

‘You must keep up your strength, dear. Try to stop crying. We heard you in the night. You never know, it might all come right. Later they’ll let us go down to the courtyard for a breath of air. That’ll do you good.’ So there
was
to be a later, a morning and perhaps an afternoon. ‘Tell, us, lovey, what are they accusing you of?’

‘Of being English, using a false name, of being in Caen where I met Charlotte Corday.’

They frowned, shook their heads and had no further words of reassurance. One, who ran a grocery business, was accused of hoarding honey; the other had made a couple of gowns for Madame Roland, who’d recently been arrested for her Girondin sympathies and for the fact that her husband, formerly a minister, had fallen out of favour. ‘Although Madame Roland, I might add,’ the dressmaker said with a rueful smile, ‘certainly had ideas of her own which irked the powers that be no end.’ Her voice was soft and sibilant and when she moved Asa smelt the faintest whiff of perfume.

Later, in the courtyard, they briefly exchanged the reek and chill of ancient stone for the sweet air of summer. However, as they passed a doorway, the foul smells of the prison reached out to them. Asa was supported on either side by her new friends. ‘They say La Force is haunted,’ said the dressmaker. ‘Not surprising, given it’s one of the most notorious prisons in Paris.’

‘No wonder you cried out in the night,’ whispered the grocer woman. ‘So many terrible things have happened in this prison.’

‘I never thought I’d see the inside of a place like this,’ said the dressmaker. ‘Part of me wants to laugh at what my mother would have said if she could see me now. She brought me up so carefully. And here I am in what used to be the dumping ground for prostitutes.’

‘You meet all sorts in here,’ said her companion. ‘Ladies, whores, anything in between. Women like us – we’re in between.’

‘Look up at the sky. See how blue it is. Above all, don’t look down,’ advised the dressmaker, who was plump and pretty, with beautiful teeth and wide eyes. ‘There are bloodstains on the pavement.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘Have you heard of the massacres that occurred last September?’ said the grocer. ‘La Petite Force was a target, of course. The mob killed five priests in the main prison, behind the gates over there; then they turned on the women’s prison. Ironic that the poor prostitutes they slaughtered would have been locked up for a couple of months and then released under the old regime.’

‘Nothing like that will happen to us,’ said the dressmaker, holding tight to Asa’s hand. ‘That was in the days before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Everything is more civilised now.’

‘The trouble was that the queen’s friend, Princesse Lamballe, was also a prisoner in La Petite Force. People say they held her down and hacked her head from her body, right here in the courtyard. Others talk of rape and lynching. Depends who you speak to,’ said the grocer woman.

‘That’s all nonsense. They simply stuck her head on a pike, carried it to the Temple and thrust it up to the queen’s window. Wasn’t that cruel enough?’

The grocer woman looked offended. ‘Call it nonsense if you like. That’s what I heard,’ and she moved away to join another group.

The dressmaker and Asa leaned against a wall with their feet in shade and their heads in the sunshine. ‘I have a son,’ said the dressmaker, who told Asa her name was Lucie. ‘Christophe. He’s three years old. Do you have a child?’

‘I’m not married.’

‘My husband serves with the National Guard. He’s fighting on the border. I’ve written to him, of course. I’m praying he’ll be back in time to put in a word for me. The trouble is there’s no plan or timetable here. Nobody can predict what will happen next.’