“Who is the president of the Convention?”
She tried to think; the office revolved, it changed every fortnight. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, Georges.”
“Where are my friends? Where are they when I need them? Robespierre would be informed, he only has to snap his fingers for anything he wants.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” They hadn’t heard Camille come in. “I know I should be at the Riding School,” he said, “but I couldn’t bear the speeches about Louis. We’ll go together later. Why were you—” Antoine launched himself from the floor, trampling his soldiers. He ran to Camille, impending screams stiffening his face. Camille picked him up. “What’s happened, Georges? You were fine an hour ago.”
Gabrielle’s lips parted. She looked from one to the other. “Oh, you were there first. You went to Lucile, before you came to me.”
“Stop this,” Danton said ferociously. The child began a red-faced wail. His father bellowed for Catherine, and the servant came, clasping and unclasping her hands. “Take the baby.” Catherine made clucking noises, unthreading the child’s little fingers from Camille’s hair. “What a homecoming. You go away for a month and your sons have attached themselves to another man.”
Catherine carried the child away. Gabrielle wanted to cover her ears to shut out his panic-stricken screams, but she was afraid to move and make herself conspicuous. Rage seemed to be running from his pores. He took hold of Camille, and pushed him down on the sofa beside her. “Here.” He tossed the letter onto her lap. “From Bertrand de Molleville, the ex-minister, who is now ensconced in London. Read it together. You two can suffer for me for a bit.”
She took it, smoothed it out on her knee, fumbling with it, then holding it up for Camille’s short-sighted eyes; but he had the gist of it while she was puzzling over the first sentence, and turned his face away, his thin, fine hands flying to his forehead, holding his skull poised as if it were disaster about to break out. “Very helpful, Camille,” her husband said. Slowly she looked away from Camille’s horrified face, and returned her eyes to the letter.
I do not feel, Monsieur, that I should any longer keep you ignorant of the fact that, among a pile of papers which the late M. Montmorin left in my care towards the end of June last year—and which I brought abroad with me—I found a memorandum detailing various sums paid over to you from the British Foreign Office Secret Fund, complete with dates of payment, the circumstances in which you received them and the names of the persons through whom …
“Oh yes,” he said, “I am precisely what you thought.”
She ran her eye down the page: “‘I have a note in your own handwriting … . I hereby give you warning that both documents are attached to a letter I have written to the president of the National Convention …’ Georges, what does he want?” she whispered.
“Read,” he said. “The letter and the two documents are sent to a friend of his here in Paris, to be forwarded to the president of the Convention, if I do not save the King.”
Her eyes skimmed over the threat, and the terms: “ … if you do not comport yourself, in the matter of the King, as befits a man whom the King has paid so handsomely. If, however, you render the services in this matter of which you are well capable, be assured that they will not go unrecompensed.”
“It is a blackmail letter, Gabrielle,” Camille said flatly. “Montmorin was Louis’s Foreign Minister; we forced him out of office after the King tried to escape, but he was always in Louis’s inner circle. He was killed in prison in September. This man de Molleville was Louis’s Minister of Marine.”
“What will you do?” She put out a hand to Danton, as if to offer comfort; but there was only dismay in her face.
He moved away from her. “I should have killed them all,” he said. “I should have slaughtered them while I had the chance.”
In the next room, Antoine was still crying. “I have always believed,” Gabrielle said, “that your heart was not in this Revolution. That you were the King’s man.” He turned and laughed in her face. “Keep faith with him. You’ve taken his money and lived on it, bought land—please keep faith now. You know it’s the right thing to do, and if you don’t do it—” She didn’t know how to finish. She couldn’t imagine what would happen. Would it mean public disgrace? Or worse? Would they put him on trial? “Surely you must save him,” she said. “You have no choice.”
“And do you really believe they would reward me, my dear? You really think that? The child would know better. If I save Louis—and they’re right, I can do it—then they’ll put their evidence back in safekeeping, and hold it over me, and use me as their puppet. When I’m no more use to them, when my influence is lost—then they’ll bring their documents out. They’ll do it out of spite, and to sow confusion.”
“Why don’t you ask for the documents back?” Camille said. “Make it part of the bargain? And the cash too? If you thought you could get away with it, you would, wouldn’t you? As long as the money’s right?”
Danton turned. “Say exactly what you mean.”
“If there were some way to work it—to save Louis and to keep your credit with the patriots and to extract more money from the English at the same time—you’d do it.”
Time was when he’d have said mildly, I’d be a fool not to; Camille would have smiled, and thought, he always pretends to be worse than he is. But now he saw, perplexity growing on his face, that Danton did not have a reply, did not know what he was going to do, had lost control of himself. He moved. Gabrielle stood up suddenly; she took the openhanded blow full in the face, and it knocked her off her feet, sprawling back onto the sofa. “Oh Lord,” Camille said. “That was valorous.”
Danton covered his face with his hands for a moment, gasping, blinking back tears of humiliation and fury. He had scarcely wept since before the bull gored him, since he was a tiny child who could no more control his tears than his bowels. He took his hands away; his wife was looking up at him, dry-eyed. He crouched down beside her. “I shall never forgive myself for that.”
She touched her lip, gingerly. “You could smash crockery,” she said, “not people. We’re not even the right people. We just happen to be here.” She clenched her hand so that she wouldn’t put it to her face and let him see how much he’d hurt her.
“I don’t deserve you,” he said. “Forgive me. It wasn’t meant for you.”
“I wouldn’t think the better of you for knocking Camille around the room.”
He straightened up from beside her. “Camille, I’ll kill you one day,” he said simply. “No, come here. You’re all right, you’ve got a pregnant woman to protect you. You dropped me in the shit in September, when the prisoners
