A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

I asked him, why won’t you talk about Danton? He touched his forehead and said, because he is sub judice.” He turned his head away. “You might think of going abroad.”

“Abroad? Oh no. I went to England in ’91, and you stood in the garden at Fontenay and berated me.” He shook his head. “This is my nation. Here I stay. A man can’t carry his country on the soles of his shoes.”

The wind howled and rattled in the chimneys; dogs barked across the countryside from farm to farm. “After all you said about posterity,” Camille muttered. “You seem to be speaking to it now.” The rain slackened to a gray penetrating drizzle, soaking the houses and fields.

In Paris the swaying lanterns are lit in the streets; lights shine through water, fuzzy, diffuse. Saint-Just sits by an insufficient fire, in a poor light. He is a Spartan after all, and Spartans don’t need home comforts. He has begun his report, his list of accusations; if Robespierre saw it now, he would tear it up, but in a few days’ time it will be the very thing he needs.

Sometimes he stops, half-glances over his shoulder. He feels someone has come into the room behind him; but when he allows himself to look, there is nothing to see. It is my destiny, he feels, forming in the shadows of the room. It is the guardian angel I had, long ago when I was a child. It is Camille Desmoulins, looking over my shoulder, laughing at my grammar. He pauses for a moment. He thinks, there are no living ghosts. He takes hold of himself. Bends his head over his task.

His pen scratches. His strange letterforms incise the paper. His handwriting is minute. He gets a lot of words to the page.

CHAPTER 13

Conditional Absolution

Cour du Commerce: March 31, 10 Germinal: “Marat?” The black bundle moved, fractionally. “Forgive me.” Danton put his hand to his head. “A stupid thing to say.”

He moved to a chair, unable to drag his eyes from the scrap of humanity that was the Citizeness Albertine. Her garments were funereal layers, an array of wraps and shawls, belonging to no style or fashion that had ever existed or ever could. She spoke with a foreign accent, but it was not the accent of any country to be found on a map.

“In a sense,” she said, “you are not mistaken.” She raised a skeletal hand, and laid it somewhere among her wrappings, where it might be supposed her heart beat. “I carry my brother here,” she said. “We are never separated now.”

For several seconds he found himself unable to speak. “How can I oblige you?” he said at last.

“We did not come to be obliged.” Dry voice: bone on bone. She paused for a moment, as if listening. “Strike now,” she said.

“With respect—”

“He is at the Convention now. Robespierre.”

“I am haunted enough.” He got up, blundered across the room. Superstitious dread touched him, at his own words. “I can’t have his death on my hands.”

“It’s yours or his. You must go to the Convention now, Danton. You must see the patriot walk and talk. You must judge his mood and you must prepare for a fight.”

“Very well, I’ll go. If it will please you. But I think you’re wrong, Citizeness, I don’t think Robespierre or any of the Committee would dare to move against me.”

“You don’t believe they would dare.” Mockery. She approached him, tilted up her yellow wide-lipped face. “Do you know me?” she asked. “Tell me, Citizen, when were we ever wrong?”

Rue Honore: “You’re wasting my time,” Robespierre said. “I told you my intentions before the Convention met. The papers for Herault and Fabre are with the Public Prosecutor. You may draw up warrants for the arrest of Deputy Philippeaux and Deputy Lacroix. But for no one else.”

Saint-Just’s voice shook the little sitting room. His fist hammered a table. “Leave Danton at large and you will be locked up yourself tomorrow. Your head will be off before the week is out.”

“There is no need for this. Calm yourself. I know Danton. He has always been a cautious man, a man who weighs a situation. He will make no move unless he is forced into it. He must be aware you are collecting evidence against him. He is no doubt preparing to refute it.”

“Yes—to refute it by force of arms, that will be his idea. Look—call in Philippe Lebas. Call in the Police Committee. Call in every patriot in the Jacobin Club, and they will tell you what I am telling you now.” Scarlet flared against his perfect white skin: his dark eyes shone. He is enjoying himself, Robespierre thought in disgust. “Danton is a traitor to the Republic, he is a killer, he has never in his life known how to compromise. If we don’t act today he will leave none of us alive to oppose him.”

“You contradict yourself. First you say, he has never been a republican, he has accommodated every counter- revolutionary from Lafayette to Brissot. Then you say, he has never compromised.”

“You are quibbling. What do you think, that Danton is fit to be at large in the Republic?”

Robespierre looked down, considering. He understood the nature of it, this republic that Saint-Just spoke of. It was not the Republic that was bounded by the Pyrenees and the Rhine, but the republic of the spirit; not the city of flesh and stone, but the stronghold of virtue, the dominion of the just. “I cannot be sure,” he said. “I cannot make up my mind.” His own face looked back at him, appraisingly, from the wall. He turned. “Philippe?”

Philippe Lebas stood in the doorway between the little parlor and the Duplays’ larger sitting room. “There is something which may help make up your mind,” he said.

“Something from Vadier,” Robespierre said skeptically. “From the Police Committee.”

“No, something from Babette.”

“Babette? Is she here? I don’t follow you.”

“Would you come in here, please? It won’t take very long.” Robespierre hesitated. “For God’s sake,” Lebas said passionately, “you wanted to know if Danton was fit to live. Saint-Just, will you come and listen?”