A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

He kissed the top of her head. “Look at me.” It was the same request, he remembered, that he had made to his wife thirty minutes earlier. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Everything’s wrong.”

“I’ll fix it all.”

“Please.”

Camille lay with his head buried in his arms. “Lolotte?” he said, without looking up. Danton sat down beside him and stroked his hair. “Oh, Georges.”

“Aren’t you surprised?”

“Nothing surprises me,” Camille said wanly. “Don’t stop doing that, it’s the first nice thing that’s happened to me in a month.”

“From the beginning then.”

“You got my letter?”

“It didn’t make much sense.”

“No. No, probably not. I can quite see that.”

He turned around and sat up. Danton was startled. In five weeks, the spurious maturity of the last five years had fallen away; the person who looked at him out of Camille’s eyes was the scared and shabby boy of ’88.

“Philippe is dead.”

“The Duke? Yes, I know.”

“Charles-Alexis is dead. Valaze stabbed himself right in front of me.”

“I heard. They brought me the news. But leave this for a minute. Tell me about Chabot and those people.”

“Chabot and two of his friends have been expelled from the Convention. They’re under arrest. Deputy Julien’s gone, he ran away. Vadier is asking questions.”

“Is he, now?” The head of the Committee of General Security was gaining himself a reputation for a horrible efficiency in the hounding of suspects. “The Inquisitor,” people called him. He was a man of sixty or so, with a long, yellow face, and long, yellow, many-jointed hands. “What sort of questions?” Danton said.

“About you. About Fabre and your friend Lacroix.”

Fabre’s dreary little confession was in Danton’s pocket. He has done … he does not appear to know, himself, what he has done. Yes, he amended a government document, in his own hand, and the amendment has been printed as part of the text; but then again, some unknown hand made an amendment to the amendment … . It makes you tired just to think about it. The possible conclusion is that Fabre is a forger—a common criminal, as opposed to some more refined type. All the indications are that Robespierre hasn’t an inkling what is going on.

He returned his attention to Camille. “Vadier obviously thinks he is about to uncover something damning about you, Georges. I spend my time avoiding Fabre. The Police Committee have had Chabot in. He denounced a conspiracy, of course. Said he’d gone along with it to track it to its source. No one believed that. Fabre has been delegated to produce a report of the affair.”

“On the East India Company? Fabre has?” This is becoming completely absurd, Danton thought.

“Yes, and on its political ramifications. Robespierre’s not interested in crooked stock-market deals, he’s interested in who’s behind them, and where their instructions come from.”

“But why didn’t Chabot denounce Fabre right away—why didn’t he say, Fabre was in it with me from the beginning?”

“What had he to gain? Then they’d be in the dock together. So Chabot kept quiet, thinking Fabre might be grateful, and exonerate him in the report. Another deal struck, you see.”

“And Chabot really thinks that Fabre will remain in the clear?”

“They expect you to use your influence to pull him into the clear.”

“What a mess,” Danton said.

“Anyway, it’s all worse now. Chabot’s denouncing Fabre, and everybody—the only saving grace is that by now no one believes anything he says. Vadier questioned me.”

“Questioned you? He’s getting a bit above himself.”

“Oh, it was all very informal. One good patriot to another. He said, Citizen, no one imagines you’ve done anything shady, but have you perhaps done something a little bit sharp? The idea was that I’d tell him all about it and feel much better afterwards.”

“What did you say?”

“Oh, hardly anything. I opened my eyes and said, me, sharp? My stutter was very bad that day. I dropped Max’s name into the conversation a lot. Vadier is terrified of crossing him. He knew if he put any pressure on me I’d complain.”

“Well done,” Danton said grimly. But he saw the difficulty that he was in; it was not just a matter of what he did about Fabre, it was the rather larger matter of Camille’s conscience.

“I’m lying to Robespierre,” Camille said. “By implication, anyway. I don’t like this, you know. It puts me on shaky ground for what I want to do next.”

“And that is?”

“There is worse news, I’m afraid. Hebert has come out with a story about Lacroix lining his pockets in Belgium last year, when you were on mission together. He claims to have evidence. He has also persuaded the Jacobins to petition the Convention to pull Lacroix and Legendre back from mission in Normandy.”