watch, a thimble, a reel of white thread, a few loose coins. A passport, a birth certificate; a handkerchief edged with lace; the cardboard sheath of a kitchen knife. On the dusty rug by her feet was a black hat with three brilliant green ribbons.
He stood against the wall, watching her. She had that kind of thin, translucent skin that reddens and marks easily, catches every nuance of the light. A healthy full-breasted girl, fed on fresh farm butter and the cream of the milk: the kind of girl who smiles at you in church, beribboned and flower-scented on the Sundays after Easter. I know you well, he thought; I remember you from when I was a child. The remains of an elaborate coiffure hung about her face: the kind of hairdo a girl from the provinces would have before she went out to commit a murder.
“Yes, make her blush,” Legendre said, “you can easily make her blush. But blush for her crime, she won’t blush for that. I thank Providence that I am alive, because she was at my house earlier today. She denies it, but she was there. They were suspicious, wouldn’t let her in. Oh, she denies it, but I was her first choice.”
“Congratulations,” Camille said. He knew that the girl was in pain because of the way they had tied her hands.
“She won’t blush,” Legendre said, “for assassinating our greatest patriot.”
“If that was what she had in mind, she would hardly have wasted her time on you.”
Simone Evrard was outside the door where they had the body. She had collapsed against the wall, wracked, tear-stained, hardly able to keep her feet. “So much blood, Camille,” she said. “How will we ever get the blood off the floor and the walls?”
As he opened the door she made a feeble motion to stop him. Dr. Deschamps looked swiftly over his shoulder. One of his assistants stepped forward with an outstretched arm to bar Camille’s way. “I have to know for sure …” Camille whipered. Deschamps turned his head again. “I beg your pardon, Citizen Camille. I didn’t know it was you. Be warned, it’s not pleasant. We are embalming the body, but in this heat … with the condition of the corpse after four, five hours,” the doctor wiped his hands on a towel, “it’s as if he were decaying while he was still alive.”
He believes, Camille thought, that I am here from the Convention, on some question of protocol. He looked down. Dr. Deschamps put a hand under his elbow. “It was instantaneous,” he said. “Or almost so. He had just time to cry out. He can’t have felt anything. This is where the knife went.” He indicated. “Into the right lung, through the artery, piercing the heart. We couldn’t close his mouth, so we had to cut out the tongue. All right? You see, he’s still quite identifiable. Now, let me get you out of here. I’m burning the strongest aromatics I can find, but it is not a smell for the layman.”
Outside Simone was still propped against the wall. Her breath rasped. “I told them to give this woman an opiate,” Deschamps said crossly. “Do you want me to sign anything? No, I see. Look, I assume you have an official escort? I don’t know what this nonsense is, everyone knows that Marat is dead. I’ve already had someone from the Jacobins throwing up over my assistants. You look like the fainting type, so I should get outside as soon as you can. Order something done about the wife, or whoever she is, will you?”
The door clocked shut. Simone slumped into his arms. From the next room came voices raised in curt questioning. “I was his wife,” Simone moaned. “He didn’t marry me in church, he didn’t take me to City Hall, but he swore by all the gods in creation that I was his wife.”
What is it, Camille thought, does she want me to advise her on her rights? “You will be recognized as his relict,” he said. “No one these days pays much attention to the formalities. It’s all yours now, the printing press and the paper for the next edition. Be careful with it. I should think the state will be paying for the funeral.”
Outside in the street he looked back once, to the windows where the busy shadows of Deschamps and his assistants moved against the light. Rain began to fall, big warm drops. There was thunder somewhere in the distance—over Versailles perhaps. The crowd stood, patient, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for what would happen next.
David took charge of arrangements. The body was to be sealed in a coffin of lead, and enclosed in a larger sarcophagus of purple porphyry, taken from the Collection of Antiquities at the Louvre. But for the funeral procession, it was desired to carry the deceased on a bier, swathed in a tricolor (the cloth drenched in spirits). One bare arm, sewn on from a better class of corpse, bore a laurel wreath; young girls dressed in white and bearing cypress branches surrounded the bier.
After them the Convention, the Clubs, the People. The procession began at five in the afternoon; it ended at midnight, by the light of torches. He was to be buried as he had preferred to live, underground, the cellar-like tomb overhung with blocks of stone and fenced about by iron.
The heart, embalmed separately, was placed in an urn; the patriots of the Cordeliers Club bore it away, to keep it on their premises forever and ever, till the last day of the world. “Sacred heart of Marat,” the people wailed.
HERE LIES MARAT
THE PEOPLE’S FRIEND
KILLED BY THE PEOPLE’S ENEMIES
13 JULY 1793
The demeanor of Robespierre in the funeral procession was remarked upon by one observer. He looked, the witness said, as if he were conducting the corpse to a rubbish tip.
CHAPTER 9
July 25: Danton threw his weight back in his chair, threw his head back, laughed uproariously. Louise flinched; she was always worrying about the furniture, and he was always assuring her that there was plenty of money for replacing it. “The day I parted company with the Committee,” he said, “I saw something I thought I’d never see—I saw Fabre d’Eglantine deprived of speech.” Danton was slightly tipsy; every so often he would lean across the table to squeeze the hand of his new wife. “So, Fabre, still struck dumb, are you?”
“No, no,” Fabre said uncertainly. “It’s true, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, sitting on a committee with Saint- Just. And it’s true, as you say, that Robert Lindet’s elected, and he’s a solid patriot who we can trust. And Herault’s elected, and he’s our friend …”
“You’re not convinced. Look, Fabre, I am Danton, can you get that through your skull? The Committee may need me, but I don’t need the Committee. Now, allow me to propose a toast to myself, since no one else has the grace to do it. To me—the newly elected president of the Convention.” He raised his glass to Lucile. “Now more toasts,” he demanded. “To my friend General Westermann, may he prosper against the rebels in the Vendee.”
He was lucky, Lucile thought, to get Westermann his command back, after that last defeat; Westermann is lucky to be at large. “To the Sacred Heart of Marat,” Danton said. Louise gave him a sharp look. “I’m sorry, my love,
