A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

thought I did but that was not what I meant at all?”

“Take this paper. Look. Sit here. Write as I dictate.”

She leaned against the back of his chair. The words were prepared, in her head. Precarious, she thought. This was a near thing. If I could shut him away from all counter-persuasion, all other influence—but that’s impossible. I was lucky to get him for an hour alone.

Quickly now—before he changed his mind. “Put your signature. There, it’s done.”

Philippe threw his pen down. Ink spattered the roses, the ribbons, the violins. He clapped a hand to his head. “Laclos will kill me,” he wailed.

Felicite made soothing noises, as if to a child with colic, and took the paper from Philippe to amend his punctuation.

When the Duke told Laclos of his decision, Laclos bowed imperceptibly from the shoulder. “As you wish, Milord,” he said, and withdrew. Why he had spoken in English he never afterwards understood. In his apartment he turned his face to the wall and drank a bottle of brandy with a thoughtful but murderous expression.

At Danton’s apartment he worked around to a comfortable chair, handing himself from one piece of furniture to the next in a manner faintly nautical. “Have patience,” he said. “Any moment now I shall deliver myself of a profound observation.”

“I shall go,” Camille said. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what Laclos had to say. He preferred not to know the finer details of Danton’s entanglements; and, though he knew they were supposed to regard Philippe only as a means to an end, it was very difficult when somebody had been so nice to you. Every time some Cordeliers oaf came tramping through his apartment, yelling from room to room, he thought of the Duke’s twelve-bedroomed wedding present. He could have wept.

“Sit down, Camille,” Danton said.

“You may stay,” Laclos said, “but keep confidences, or I shall kill you.”

“Yes, of course you will,” Danton said. “Now—go on.”

“My observations fall into three parts. One, Philippe is a pea-brained yellow-livered imbecile. Two, Felicite is a nasty, poxy, vomit-inducing whore.”

“All right,” Danton said. “And the third part of your observations?”

“A coup d’etat,” Laclos said. He looked at Danton without lifting his head.

“Come now. Let’s not get over-excited.”

“Force Philippe’s hand. Make him see his duty. Put him in a position where—” Laclos’s right hand made languid chopping motions.

Danton stood over him. “What exactly is it you have in mind?”

“The Assembly will debate, decide to restore Louis. Because they need him to make their pretty constitution work. Because they’re King’s men, Danton, because bloody Barnave has been bought. Alliteration.” He hiccuped. “Or if he hadn’t, he has been by now, after his knee-to-knee trip back from the border with the Austrian slut. I tell you, even now they are working on the most risible set of fictions. You’ve seen the proclamation that Lafayette put out—‘the enemies of the Revolution have seized the person of the King.’ They are speaking of abduction”—he smashed the heel of his hand into the arm of his chair—“they are saying that the fat fool was carried to the border against his will. They will say anything, anything, to save their faces. Now tell me, Danton, when such lies are sold to the people, isn’t it time to spill a little blood?”

Laclos now looked at his feet. His manner became sober and discursive. “The Assembly should be influenced, must be influenced by the people’s will. The people will never forgive Louis for abandoning them. Therefore dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare that the Riding School should do what we tell them. Therefore we will make a petition. Some hack such as Brissot may draft it. It will ask for the deposition of Louis. The Cordeliers will sponsor it. The Jacobins might be persuaded to sign it, I say they might. The 17th of July, the whole city assembles on the Champs-de-Mars for the Bastille celebrations. We get our petition signed, thousands and thousands of names. We take it to the Assembly. If they refuse to act on it, the people invade the Assembly—in pursuance of their Sacred Will, all that. The doctrine behind the action we’ll work out when we have leisure.”

“You suggest that we employ armed force against the Assembly?”

“Yes.”

“Against our representatives?”

“Representatives nothing.”

“Bloodshed, possibly?”

“Damn you,” Laclos said. Scarlet flowed into his fine-boned face. “Have we come all this way to throw up our hands now, to turn into some sort of puling humanitarians—now, when everything’s ours for the taking?” He splayed out his fingers, palms upwards. “Can you have a revolution without blood?”

“I never said you could.”

“Well, then. Not even Robespierre thinks you could.”

“I just wanted to have your meaning clear.”

“Oh. I see.”

“And then, if we succeed in deposing Louis?”

“Then, Danton, divide the spoils.”

“And do we divide them with Philippe?”

“Right, he’s refused the throne once. But he will see his duty, if I have to strangle Felicite with my own hands —and that would be a thrill, I can tell you. Look, Danton, we’ll run the country between us. We’ll make Robespierre