A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

in his lower back, and take to his bed.

“Camille, what are you thinking?” Lucile says.

Camille looks up. “I was thinking there’s no pleasing some people.”

The women give Claude poison-dart glances, and gather around and adore Camille.

“If I had failed,” Danton said, “I would have been treated as a criminal.”

It was twelve hours since Camille and Fabre had woken him up and told him to take charge of the nation. Dragged out of a disjointed dream of rooms and rooms, of doors and doors opening into other rooms, he had clutched Camille in incoherent gratitude—though perhaps it wasn’t the thing, perhaps a touch of nolo episcopari was in order? A touch of humility in the face of destiny? No—he was too tired to pretend reluctance. He commanded France, and this was a natural thing.

Across the river the urgent problem was the disposal of the bodies, both living and dead, of the Swiss Guard. Fires still smoked in the gutted palace.

“Keep the Seals?” Gabrielle had said. “Do you now what you’re doing? Camille couldn’t keep two white rabbits in a coop.”

Here Robespierre sat, very new, as if he had been taken out of a box and placed unruffled in a velvet armchair in Danton’s apartment. Danton called out to admit no one—“no one but my Secretaries of State”—and prepared to defer to the opinions of this necessary man.

“I hope you’ll help me out?” he said.

“Of course I will, Georges-Jacques.”

Very serious, Robespierre, very attentive; superlatively himself this morning when everyone should have woken up different. “Good,” Georges-Jacques said. “So you’ll take a post at the ministry?”

“Sorry. I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t? I need you. Very well, you’ve got the Jacobins to run, you’ve a seat on the new Commune, but we’ve all got to—” The new minister broke off, and made a consolidating, squeezing gesture with his huge fists.

“If you want a Head of Civil Service, Francois Robert would do the job very well for you.”

“I’m sure he would.” Did you imagine, Danton thought, that I wanted to make you into a functionary? Of course I didn’t; I wanted to attach you in some highly paid but highly unofficial capacity, as my political adviser, my third eye, my third ear. So what’s the problem? Perhaps you are one of those people who’s made for opposition, not for government. Is that it? Or is it that you don’t want to work under me?

Robespierre looked up; light eyes, just touching his would-be master’s. “Let me off?” He smiled.

“As you wish.” So often he’s aware, these days, of his pseudo-refined barrister’s drawl, of the expressions that go with it; and of his other voice, his street voice, just as much the product of cultivation. Robespierre has only one voice, rather flat, unemphatic, ordinary; he’s never in his life seen the need to pretend. “But now, at the Commune, you’ll be taking hold of things there?” He tried to soften the tone to one of suggestion. “Fabre is a member, you should consider him at your orders.”

Robespierre seemed amused. “I’m not sure I’ve your taste for giving them.”

“Your first problem is the Capet family. Where are you going to keep them?”

Robespierre inspected his fingernails. “There was some suggestion that they should be kept under guard at the Minister of Justice’s palace.”

“Oh yes? And I suppose they’ll give me some attic, or perhaps a broom cupboard, to transact affairs of state from?”

“I said you wouldn’t like it.” Robespierre seemed interested to have his suspicions confirmed.

“They should be shut up in the old Temple tower.”

“Yes, that’s the view of the Commune. It’s a bit grim for the children, after what they’ve been used to.” Maximilien, Danton thought, were you once a child? “I’m told they’ll be made comfortable. They’ll be able to walk in the gardens. Perhaps the children would like to have a little dog they could take out?”

“Don’t ask me what they’d like,” Danton said. “How the hell would I know? Anyway, there are more pressing matters than the Capets. We have to put the city on a war footing. We have to take search powers, requisition powers. We have to round up any royalists who are still armed. The prisons are filling up.”

“That’s inevitable. The people who opposed us, this last week—we now define them as criminals, I suppose? They must have some status, we must define them somehow. And if they are defendants, we must offer them a trial—but it is rather puzzling this, because I am not sure what the crime would be.”

“The crime is being left behind by events,” Danton said. “And, of course, I am not some jurisprudential simpleton, I see that the ordinary courts will not do. I favor a special tribunal. You’ll sit as a judge? We’ll settle it later today. Now, we have to let the provinces know what’s happening. Any thoughts?”

“The Jacobins want to issue an agreed—”

“Version?”

“Is that your choice of word? Of course … People need to know what has happened. Camille will write it. The club will publish and distribute it to the nation.”

“Camille is good at versions,” Danton said.

“And then we must think ahead to the new elections. As things stand I don’t see how we can stop Brissot’s people being returned.”

His tone made Danton look up. “You don’t think we can work with them?”