“Death to the Austrian bitch,” said the drunken singer. “Hang up Louis Capet’s whore. Hang up the beast of Babylon, cut off her tits.”
A chilling cackle ran along the walls. A young voice laughed, high-pitched, tinged with hysteria. “Long live the People’s Friend.”
Then a voice he couldn’t make out; then a voice near at hand: “He says he’s got seventeen prisoners and nowhere to put them.”
“Well, well,” said the young voice. “A laugh a minute.”
A second later the cell was flooded by orange torchlight. He scrambled to his feet. A few heads appeared around the door; to his relief, they were still joined to bodies. “You can come out now.”
“Can I really go?”
“Yes, yes.” A sober, irritated voice. “I’ve more than a hundred persons to accommodate, persons on the street without lawful excuse. We can always pick you up again in a few days’ time.”
“What did you do anyway?” asked the high-pitched young man.
“A professor of law,” Steel Tips announced. He was also the drunk. “Aren’t you, professor? A big mate of mine.” He draped an arm around Robert’s shoulder and leaned on him, breathing sourly into his face. “What about Danton then? He’s the lad.”
“If you say so,” Robert said.
“I seen him,” Steel Tips told his colleagues. “He says to me, seeing as you know all about the prisons, when I get to be boss of this city I’m going to put you in charge of rounding up all the aristos and cutting off their heads. For which you’ll get a good wage, he says, because you’ll be doing a public service.”
“Go on,” the boy said. “Danton never spoke to you. You drunken old sot. M. Sanson’s the public executioner. His father was the executioner and his father before him. You going to put him out of a job, are you? Danton never said that to you.”
Francois Robert at home. The coffee cup wouldn’t stay still in his grasp; it was chinking and chinking against the saucer. “Who would have thought it would put me in this state?” He was trying to smile, but his face would only contort. “Being released was as bad as being arrested. Louise, we forget what the people are like, their ignorance, their violence, the way they jump to conclusions.”
She thought of Camille, two years ago; the Bastille heroes on the streets, the coffee going cold by their bed, the aftermath of panic in his chilling, wide-set eyes. “The Jacobins have split apart,” she said. “The Right has walked out. They’re going to form another club. All Lafayette’s friends have gone, all the people who used to support Mirabeau. Petion remains, Buzot, Robespierre—a handful.”
“What does Robespierre say?”
“That he’s glad the divisions are out in the open. That he’ll start again, with patriots this time.”
She took the cup out of his hands and pulled his head into her waist, stroking his hair and the back of his neck. “Robespierre will go to the Champs-de-Mars,” she said. “He’ll show his face, you can be sure. But they, they won’t go. Danton’s lot.”
“Then who’s going to take the petition? Who’s going to represent the Cordeliers?”
Oh no, he thought.
Dawn, Danton was slapping him on the back. “Good boy,” he was saying. “Don’t worry, we’ll look after your wife. And Francois, the Cordeliers won’t forget this.”
At dawn they had met in Danton’s red-walled study. The servants were still asleep on the mezzanine floor. Sleeping their servant’s sleep, Gabrielle thought. She brought coffee
“Can’t you stop it?” Gabrielle said. “Can’t you stop the whole thing happening?”
“Send the crowds home? Too late. They’re out to celebrate. To them, the petition is only part of it. And I cannot answer for Lafayette.”
“Then are we to be ready to leave, Georges? I don’t mind, but just tell me what to do. Just tell me what’s happening.”
Danton looked shifty. His instinct said, today will go badly—so cut and run. He glanced around the room, for someone to serve as the voice of his instinct. Fabre was about to open his mouth, when Camille said, “You know, two years ago, Danton, it was all right for you to lock your door and work on your shipping case. But it’s a different matter now.”
Danton looked at him: considered, nodded. So they waited. It was fully light, another day beginning in sunshine and moving towards a sultry, growling, hardly bearable heat.
Champs-de-Mars, the day of celebration: a crowd of people in Sunday clothes. Women with parasols, pet dogs on leads. Sticky-fingered children pawing at their mothers; people who have bought coconuts and don’t know what to make of them. Then the glint of light on bayonets, people clutching hands, whirling children off their feet, pushing and calling out in alarm as they are separated from their families. Some mistake, there must be some mistake. The red flag of martial law is unfurled. What’s a flag, on a day of celebration? Then the horrors of the first volley. And back, losing footing, blood blossoming horribly on the grass, fingers under stampeding feet, the splinter of hoof on bone. It is over within minutes. An example has been made. A soldier slides from his saddle and vomits.
Mid-morning the news came; perhaps fifty dead, though this was the highest estimate. Whatever the tally, it’s hard to take in. The red-walled room seemed so small now, and close. There was the very bolt on the door, the one that was locked two years ago: the one that was locked when the women marched on Versailles.
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Danton said, “it’s time we were elsewhere. When the National Guard realize what they have done, they will be looking for someone to blame. It will occur to them to blame the authors of the petition, and they,” he finished heavily, “and they, the authors, that’s us.” He looked up. “Did someone fire a shot from the crowd? Was that it? A panic?”
“No,” Camille said. “I believe Marat. I believe your tip-offs, I think this was planned.”
