Read A Place of Greater Safety Online
Authors: Hilary Mantel
A Place of Greater Safety (70 page)
“Well, he’s human, isn’t he? He isn’t Robespierre, or even the Virtuous Roland, as the newspapers call the Minister of the Interior.”
“Don’t banter,” Danton said. Suddenly he grinned. “I take your point. We do have a few saints on our side. Well, when they’re dead, the French will be able to march into battle with their relics for protection. In lieu of cannon, of which we are rather short.”
“What does Brunswick want? How much?”
“His requirements are specific. He wants diamonds. Did you know he collects them? We know, don’t we, what lust diamonds can inspire? We have the example, dear to our hearts, of the woman Capet.”
“But I can hardly believe—”
Danton cut him off with a gesture. “We steal the Crown Jewels. We convey to Brunswick the stones he especially covets, and we allow the others to be recovered. For use on future occasions.”
“Can the thing be done?”
Danton scowled. “Do you think I’d have got so deep in, if it couldn’t? The theft itself would pose very few problems, for professionals, if they have a bit of help from us. A few slipups on the security side. A few blunders with the investigation.”
“But all that—the security of the jewels, the investigation—all that would come under Roland’s jurisdiction.”
“The Virtuous Roland will fall in with our scheme. After he’s been told a certain amount about it, after he’s implicated, he won’t be able to betray us without betraying himself. I will bring him to that point, I will make sure he has the knowledge he doesn’t want to have—you can leave that to me. But in fact, what he knows will be very little—we’ll wrap the affair up so that he has to guess who is involved and who isn’t. If things get difficult, we’ll stick him with the blame. After all, as you say, his department is responsible.”
“But he’d simply say, Danton originated this—”
“If he lived long enough.”
Fabre stared. “You are a different man, Danton.”
“No, Fabre, I am a filthy patriot, as I always have been. What I am buying from Brunswick is one battle, one battle for our poor underfed barefoot soldiers. Is that wrong?”
“The means …”
“The means I will set out to you, and I have no time to waste discussing ends. I want no cant about justification. The justification is the saving of the country.”
“For what?” Fabre looked stupefied. “Saving it for what?”
Danton’s face darkened. “If this day fortnight an Austrian soldier takes you by the throat and says, ‘Do you want to live?’ will you say, ‘For what?’”
Fabre looked away. “Yes …” he muttered. “To survive at all will be the thing now. And Brunswick is willing to lose a battle—with his reputation at stake?”
“It will be managed so that he doesn’t lose face. He knows what he’s doing. So do 1. Now, Fabre, some professional criminals. I have contacts already, which you must follow up. They mustn’t know who they’re working for. They will all be,” he waved a hand, “dispensable. We can allow Roland to direct the police in a certain amount of inept investigation. Of course, we can expect the matter to be taken very seriously. Death penalty.”
“What’s to stop them talking at their trial? Because we may need to let the police catch
somebody
.”
somebody
.”
“As far as you can, make sure they have nothing to talk about. We shall have a blanket of obfuscation between each stratum of this conspiracy, and between each conspirator. So see to that. Obfuscate. If anyone should begin to suspect government involvement, the trail should lead to Roland. Now, there are two people in particular who must know nothing of this. One is Roland’s wife. The woman is innocent of practical politics, and very loud-mouthed. The trouble is, he doesn’t seem able to keep anything from her.”
“The other person is Camille,” Fabre said. “Because he would tell Robespierre, and Robespierre would call us traitors for talking to Brunswick at all.”
Danton nodded. “I can’t divide Camille’s loyalties. Who knows? He might make the wrong choice.”
“But both of them are in a position to find out so much.”
“That’s a risk we take. Now, I can buy one battle—and by doing so, I can hope to turn the tide of the war. But after that I can’t remain in office. I would be open to blackmail, by Brunswick or more likely by—”
“General Dumouriez.”
“Quite. Oh, I know you don’t like the odds, Fabre. But consider yourself. I don’t know how much you’ve embezzled from the ministry in the past few weeks, but I take it to be more than a trifle. I—let us say as long as your ambitions remain on a reasonable scale—I won’t thwart
them. You are thinking, what use will Danton be to me out of office? But Fabre, war is so lucrative. You’ll never be far from power now. Inside information … just imagine. I know what you’re worth to me.”
them. You are thinking, what use will Danton be to me out of office? But Fabre, war is so lucrative. You’ll never be far from power now. Inside information … just imagine. I know what you’re worth to me.”
Fabre swallowed. He looked away. His eyes seemed unfocused. “Do you ever think, does it ever bother you … that everything is founded on lies?”
“That’s a dangerous thing to say. I don’t like that.”
“No, I didn’t mean on your part, I was asking … on my own account … to see if one might compare experiences.” He smiled wanly; for the first time in all the years he’d known him, Danton saw him at a loss, mystified, a man whose life has been taken out of his control. He looked up. “It’s nothing,” he said lightly. “I didn’t mean anything, Danton.”
“You can’t afford to speak without thinking. No one must know the truth about this, not in a thousand years. The French are going to win a battle, that’s all. Your silence is the price of mine, and neither of us breaks the silence, even to save our own lives.”
Robespierricide
“I
fell in love with you the first time I saw you.” Oh, Manon thought, not before that? It seemed to her that her letters, her writings, should have prompted some quickening of sensibility in the man who—she now knew—was the only one who could ever have made her happy.
fell in love with you the first time I saw you.” Oh, Manon thought, not before that? It seemed to her that her letters, her writings, should have prompted some quickening of sensibility in the man who—she now knew—was the only one who could ever have made her happy.
This was no hasty process. Rivers of ink had flowed between them, when they’d been apart; when they’ve been together—or, let us say, in the same city—they have seldom had a private moment. Salon conversation, hours of it, has been their lot; they spoke the language of legislators, before they spoke the language of love. Even now, Buzot did not say much. He seemed perplexed, torn, tormented. He was younger than she was, less tutored in his emotions. He had a wife: a plain woman, older.
Manon ventured this: her fingertips on his shoulder, as he sat with his head in his hands. It was consolatory; and it stopped her fingers from trembling.
There was a need for secrecy. The newspapers nominated lovers for her—Louvet, often. Until now she’d reacted with public scorn; have they no arguments, have they not even a higher form of wit? (In private, though, these skits and squibs brought her near to tears; she asked herself why she was meted out the same treatment as that peculiar, wild young woman Théroigne, the same treatment—when she thought about it—as the Capet woman used to get.) The newspapers—just—she could bear; what was harder to bear was the activity of the gossip circus that centered on the Ministry of Justice.
Danton’s comments were relayed to her; he claimed her husband had been a cuckold for years, in every moral sense if not the physical one.
But how could he imagine her situation; how could he appreciate, acknowledge the delicate satisfactions of a relationship between a chaste woman and an honorable man? It was impossible to think of him in any context but that of the grossly physical. She had seen his wife; since he became a minister he had brought her once to the Riding School, to sit in the public gallery and hear him roaring at the deputies. She was a dull type of woman, pregnant, probably with no thought in her head beyond gruel and baby mush. Still, she’s a woman—how could she bear it, she asked out loud, how could she bear to have that bully’s overweight body stretched on top of hers?
But how could he imagine her situation; how could he appreciate, acknowledge the delicate satisfactions of a relationship between a chaste woman and an honorable man? It was impossible to think of him in any context but that of the grossly physical. She had seen his wife; since he became a minister he had brought her once to the Riding School, to sit in the public gallery and hear him roaring at the deputies. She was a dull type of woman, pregnant, probably with no thought in her head beyond gruel and baby mush. Still, she’s a woman—how could she bear it, she asked out loud, how could she bear to have that bully’s overweight body stretched on top of hers?
It was an unguarded remark, a remark almost shocked out of her by the strength of her own repulsion; next day it was of course repeated all over town. She went scarlet at the thought of it.
Citizen Fabre d’Églantine called. He crossed his legs and put his fingertips together. “Well, my dear,” he said.
This ghastly assumption of familiarity was what she resented. This unserious person, who associated with females who trembled on the outer fringes of polite society: this creature with his theatrical affectations and his snide remarks out of earshot; they sent him here to watch her, and he went back and made reports. “Citizen Camille is saying,” he told her, “that your now-famous remark suggests that you are in fact greatly attracted to the minister—as he has always suspected.”
“I can’t imagine how he presumes to divine the state of my feelings. As we have never met.”
“No, I realize this: why won’t you meet him?”
“We would have nothing to say to each other.”
She had seen Camille Desmoulins’s wife at the Riding School, and at the public gallery of the Jacobins; she looked an accommodating sort of girl, and they said she accommodated Danton. They said Camille condoned it or did rather more … . Fabre noticed that little, flinching movement of the head, that flinching away from knowledge. And yet, what a cesspit the woman’s mind must be; even we, he thought, do not speculate
in public
about what our colleagues do in bed.
in public
about what our colleagues do in bed.
Manon asked herself: why do I have to put up with this man? If I must communicate with Danton, couldn’t there be some other go-between? Apparently not. Perhaps, she thought, Danton doesn’t trust as many people as his expansive manner suggests?
Fabre looked at her quizzically. “Your loss,” he said. “Really, you have the wrong impression; you’d like Camille much better than you like me. Incidentally, he believes that women should have been allowed to vote in the elections.”
She shook her head. “I disagree. Most women know nothing of politics. They do not reason—” she thinks of Danton’s women—“they have no constructive thoughts at all. They would simply be influenced by their husbands.”
“Or their lovers.”
“In your circles, perhaps.”
“I’ll tell Camille what you say.”
“Please don’t bother. I’ve no wish to carry on a debate with him, at first- or second-hand.”
“He’ll be devastated to know that your opinion of him has sunk even lower.”
“Do you take me for a fool?” she said harshly.
He raised an eyebrow: as he always did, when he had provoked her to an outburst. Day after day he watched her, reaping her moods and garnering her expressions.
Secrecy then. Yet there’s a need for honesty, and François-Léonard admitted it. “We are both married, and I see that it’s impossible … for you, anyway … to do anything to dishonor those vows … .”
But if
feeds
so right, she cried. My instinct tells me it can’t be wrong.
feeds
so right, she cried. My instinct tells me it can’t be wrong.
“Instinct?” He looked up. “Manon, this is suspect. You know, we have no absolute right to be happy … or rather, we need to think carefully about what the nature of happiness might be … . We have no right to please ourselves, at the expense of others.” Still those steady fingers rested upon his shoulder; but her face was unconvinced, her face was … greedy. “Manon?” he said. “Have you read Cicero? His essay on Duty?”
Has she read Cicero? Does she know her Duty? “Oh, yes …” she moaned. “Oh, I’m well read. And I know that obligations must be weighed, that no one can be happy at the expense of other people. Don’t you think I’ve been through all this, in my head?”
“Yes.” He looked abashed. “I’ve underestimated you.”
“Do you know, if I have a fault—” she paused minutely, waiting for the polite rejoinder—“if I have a fault, it’s that I speak to the point, I can’t bear hypocrisy, I can’t bear this politeness that detracts from honesty—I must speak to Roland.”
“Speak to him? Of what?”
Fair question. Nothing has happened between them—in the sense that Danton and his friends think of
something happening
. (She pictured Lucile Desmoulins’s little breasts, crushed between Danton’s fingers.) Only his precipitate declaration, her precipitate answer: but since then, he had barely touched her, barely touched her hand.
something happening
. (She pictured Lucile Desmoulins’s little breasts, crushed between Danton’s fingers.) Only his precipitate declaration, her precipitate answer: but since then, he had barely touched her, barely touched her hand.
“My dear”—she dropped her head—“this goes so far beyond the realms of the physical. As you say—in that sense, nothing is possible for us. And, of course, I must support Roland—this is a time of crisis, I am his wife, I cannot abandon him. And yet—I cannot allow him to live in doubt about the true nature of things. This is part of my character, you must understand it.”
He looked up. He frowned. “But Manon, you have nothing to say to your husband. Nothing has occurred. We have simply spoken of our feelings—”
“Yes, we have spoken of them! Roland has never spoken to me of his feelings—but I respect them, I know he has feelings, he must have, everybody has them. I must say to him: here is the truth. I have met the man I was meant to love; our situation is thus, and thus; I shall not mention his name; nothing has occurred; nothing shall occur; I shall remain a faithful wife to you. He will understand me; he will know my heart has gone elsewhere.”
Buzot cast his eyes down. “You are implacable, Manon. Has there ever been a woman like you?”
I doubt it, she thought. She said, “I cannot betray Roland. I cannot leave him. My body, you may think, was meant for pleasure. But pleasure is not of the first account.” Still, she thought of Buzot’s hands; rather robust hands for so elegant, so well kept a man. Her breasts are not like the Desmoulins woman’s; they are breasts that have fed a child, they are responsible breasts.
Buzot said, “Do you think it’s a good idea to tell him? Do you think—” (God help me)—“that there’s any point?”
He had an intimation that he had gone about this the wrong way. But then, he had no experience. He was a virgin, in these matters; and his wife, whom he had married for her money, was older, and plain.
“Y
es, yes, yes!” Fabre said. “There’s certainly someone! How pleasant to find that people are no better than you are.”
es, yes, yes!” Fabre said. “There’s certainly someone! How pleasant to find that people are no better than you are.”
“Not Louvet?”
“No. Barbaroux, perhaps?”
“Oh no. Reputation bad. Attractions obvious. Rather,” Camille sighed, “rather florid and showy for Madame.”
“I wonder how the Virtuous Roland will take it?”
“At her age,” Camille said with disgust. “And she so plain too.”
“A
re you ill?” Manon asked her husband. It was hard to keep the sharpness out of her voice. Her husband had slumped in his chair, and as he dragged his eyes to her face his expression was certainly that of physical pain.
re you ill?” Manon asked her husband. It was hard to keep the sharpness out of her voice. Her husband had slumped in his chair, and as he dragged his eyes to her face his expression was certainly that of physical pain.
“I’m sorry.” Sorry for him, she meant. She did not feel any further need to apologize; she was simply setting out the situation for him, so that there should be no need for demeaning behavior, for pretenses, for anything that could be construed as deceit.
She waited for him to speak. When he did not, she said, “You understand why I won’t tell you his name.”
He nodded.
“Because it would produce impediments to our work. Obstacles. Even though we are reasonable people.” She waited. “I am not a woman who can bridle my emotions. My conduct, though, will be above reproach.”
At last he broke the silence.
“Manon, how is Eudora, our daughter?”
She was amazed, angry at the irrelevance. “You know she’s well. You know she’s well looked after.”
“Yes, but why do we never have her here?”
“Because the ministry is no place for a child.”
“Danton has his children at the Place des Piques.”
“His children are infants, they can be left to nursemaids. Eudora is a different matter—she would need my attention, and at present that is taken up elsewhere. You know she is not pretty, she has no accomplishments—what would I do with her?”
“She is only twelve, Manon.”
She looked down at him. She saw his sinewy hand, clenching and unclenching; then she saw that he had begun to cry, that tears were running silently down his cheeks. She thought, he would not want me to witness this. With a look of puzzled sadness she left the room, closing the door quietly, as she did when he was sick, when he was her patient and she his nurse.
He listened until the clip of her footsteps died away, and then at last permitted himself to make a sound, a sound that seemed to him to be natural, as natural as speech: it was a stifled animal bleat, a bleat of mourning, from a narrow chest. On and on it went; unlike speech, it went nowhere, it had no necessary end. It was for himself; it was for Eudora; it was for all the people who had ever got in her way.
E
léonore: She had thought, when all this is over, Max will marry me. She had hinted it to her mother. “Yes, I think so,” Mme. Duplay had said comfortably.
léonore: She had thought, when all this is over, Max will marry me. She had hinted it to her mother. “Yes, I think so,” Mme. Duplay had said comfortably.
A few days later her father took her aside. With a thoughtful, embarrassed gesture, he smoothed his thinning hair over his scalp. “He’s a great patriot,” he said. It seemed to be worrying him. “I should think he’s very fond of you. He’s very reserved, isn’t he, in his private capacity? Not that one would wish him any different. A great patriot.”
“Yes.” She was irritated. Did her father imagine that her pride in him needed to be bolstered in this way?
“It’s a great honor that he lives here with us, and so of course we ought to do all we can … . The fact is, you’re already married, in my eyes.”
“Oh,” she said. “I see what you mean.”
“I’d rely on you … if there were anything you could do to make his life more comfortable—”
“Father, didn’t you hear me, I said, I see what you mean.”
F
inally, she let her hair down, so that it tumbled over her square shoulders and down her back. She pushed it away from her small breasts and leaned into the mirror to scrutinize herself. Perhaps it is folly to imagine that with my plain face … Lucile Desmoulins had come yesterday, bringing the baby for them to see. They fussed around her and chattered, and she had passed the baby to Victoire and sat alone: one hand drooping over the arm of her chair, like a winter flower touched with ice. When Max had come in, she had turned her head, smiled; and sudden pleasure lit his face. It ought to be called brotherly affection, what he felt for Lucile; but for me, she thought, if there were any justice it ought to be more than that.
inally, she let her hair down, so that it tumbled over her square shoulders and down her back. She pushed it away from her small breasts and leaned into the mirror to scrutinize herself. Perhaps it is folly to imagine that with my plain face … Lucile Desmoulins had come yesterday, bringing the baby for them to see. They fussed around her and chattered, and she had passed the baby to Victoire and sat alone: one hand drooping over the arm of her chair, like a winter flower touched with ice. When Max had come in, she had turned her head, smiled; and sudden pleasure lit his face. It ought to be called brotherly affection, what he felt for Lucile; but for me, she thought, if there were any justice it ought to be more than that.
She smoothed her hand down over her flat belly and hips. She began to take pleasure in the softness of her own skin; she felt what his hands would feel. But when she turned away from the mirror, she saw for a second the square, solid lines of her body, and, as she eased herself into the bed and put her head on his pillow, only a residue of disappointment remained. As she lay and waited, her whole body locked rigid in anticipation.
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