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Authors: Hilary Mantel

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“No,” Fabre said. “No, I should have realized that you would make the connection for yourself. You intend to order arrests?”
“I think not.” Robespierre looked around the table, expecting no contradiction. “As we are fully aware of their maneuvers now, we can afford to let them exhaust themselves in their labors for a week or two.” He glanced around again. “In that way we will discover all their accomplices. We will purify the Revolution once and for all. Have you heard enough?” One or two people nodded, their faces strained, at a loss. “I haven’t, but we won’t take up any more of your time.” He stood up, tapping his papers together with his fingertips. “Come,” he said to Fabre.
“Come?” Fabre said stupidly.
Robespierre motioned with his head towards the door. Fabre got up and followed him. He felt weak and shaky. Robespierre turned into a
small room, barely furnished, rather like the one they had occupied on the day of the late riot.
“Do you often work in here?”
“As occasion demands. I like to have somewhere private. You can sit down, it’s not dusty.”
Fabre saw an army of locksmiths, window cleaners, old women with brooms, scouring the attics and cellars of public buildings to make clean hiding places for Robespierre. “Leave the door open,” Robespierre said, “as a precaution against eavesdroppers.” He tossed his notes onto the table; Fabre thought, that’s an acquired gesture, he got that from Camille. “You seem nervous,” Robespierre commented.
“What—I mean, what more would you like me to tell you?”
“Just whatever you like.” Robespierre was accommodating. “Minor points we could clear up now. The real names of the brothers Frei.”
“Emmanuel Dobruska. Siegmund Gotleb.”
“I’m not surprised they changed them, are you?”
“Why didn’t you ask me in front of the others?”
Robespierre ignored him. “This man Proli, Hérault’s secretary, we see him at the Jacobins. Some people say that he is the natural son of Chancellor Kaunitz of Austria. Is that true?”
“Yes. Well, quite possibly.”
“Hérault is an anomaly. He’s an aristocrat by birth, yet he is never attacked by Hébert.” Hérault, Fabre thinks: and his mind drifts back—as it tends to, these days—to the Café du Foy. He’d been giving readings from his latest—
Augusta
was dying the death at the Italiens—and in came this huge, rough-looking boy, shoe-horned into a lawyer’s black suit, whom he’d made a sketch of in the street, ten years before. The boy had developed this upper-class drawl, and he’d talked about Hérault—“his looks are impeccable, he’s well traveled, he’s pursued by all the ladies at Court”—and beside Danton had been this fey wide-eyed egotist who had turned out to be half the city’s extramarital interest. The years pass …
plus ça change
,
plus c’est la même chose …
“Fabre, are you with me?” said Robespierre.
“Oh, very much so.”
Robespierre leaned forward and plaited his fingers together; and Fabre, dragged up from the deeps of ’87, ’88, began to sweat. He heard what Robespierre was saying, and it was enough to chill the blood. “As Hérault is never attacked by Hébert, I feel they must have a common allegiance. Hébert’s people are not just misguided fanatics—they are in touch with all these foreign elements you denounce. The object of their violent
speeches and actions is to produce fear and disgust. They set out to make the Revolution appear ridiculous, and to destroy its credibility.”
“Yes,” Fabre looked away. “I understand that.”
“Hand in hand with this go the attempts to discredit great patriots. For example, the allegations against Danton.”
“It is clear,” Fabre said.
“One wonders why such conspirators should approach you.”
Fabre shook his head: wonderingly, glumly. “They have already met with some success, in the very heart of the Mountain. I suppose it encourages them. Chabot, Julien … all trusted men. Naturally, when these are examined, they will claim I’m implicated.”
“Our orders to you,” Robespierre put his fingertips together, “are to keep a careful eye on those people you’ve named—especially those you suspect of economic crimes.”
“Yes,” Fabre said. “Er—whose orders?”
Robespierre looked up, surprised. “The Committee’s.”
“Of course. I should have known you spoke for all.” Fabre leaned forward. “Citizen, I beg you not to be taken in by anything Chabot says. He and his friends are very glib and plausible.”
“You think I’m a complete fool, do you, Fabre?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You may go now.”
“Thank you. Trust me. Over the next month you’ll see everything come to fruition”
Robespierre dismissed him with a wave of his hand, as thoughtlessly peremptory as any anointed despot. Outside the door Fabre took out a silk handkerchief and dabbed his face. It had been the most unpleasant morning of his life—if you excepted the morning in 1777 when he’d been sentenced to hang—and yet in another way it had been easier than he’d expected. Robespierre had swallowed every suggestion, as if they merely confirmed conclusions he had already reached. “This foreign plot,” he’d kept saying. Clearly he was interested in the politics, and hardly at all in the East India Company. And will it, as he promised, come to fruition? Oh yes: because you can rely on Hébert to rant, on Chabot to cheat and lie and steal, on Chaumette to harass priests and close down churches—and now, every time they speak they’ll condemn themselves out of their own mouths; all these separate strands he sees as knotted together in conspiracy, and who knows, perhaps they are, perhaps they are. A pity he suspects Hérault. I could warn him, but what use? Life anyway is so precarious for the
ci-devants,
perhaps his days were already numbered.
And the main thing is this—
he trusts Danton
. I’m Danton’s man. And
so perhaps I’ve cleared myself. By telling him what he wants to hear.
Saint-Just smiled when he saw him. I’m in favor, he thought. Then he noticed the expression in his eyes. “Is Robespierre in there?”
“Yes, yes, I’ve just come from him.”
Saint-Just shouldered past. He had to flatten himself against the wall. “Leave the door open as a precaution against eavesdroppers,” he called. Saint-Just slammed it behind him. Fabre began to hum. He was working on a new play called
The Maltese Orange,
and it suddenly came to him that he might turn it into an operetta.
Inside the room Robespierre looked up. “I thought you were getting ready for your trip to the frontier?”
“Tomorrow.”
“What do you think?”
“Of Fabre’s plot? It fits all your preconceived ideas. I wonder if he knows that?”
Robespierre bridled. “You cast doubt on it?”
“Any pretext,” Saint-Just said, “will do to rid us of foreigners and speculators and Hébertists. As long as you bear in mind that Fabre himself is unlikely to be free from blame.”
“So you don’t trust him.”
Saint-Just laughed; as much as he ever did laugh. “The man’s old in deception. You’re aware that he calls himself ‘d’Églantine’ in commemoration of a literary prize from the Academy of Toulouse?” Robespierre nodded. “In the year when he claims to have taken the prize, no prize was awarded.”
“I see.” Robespierre looked away: a delicate, sly, sidelong glance. “You could not be mistaken?”
Saint-Just flushed. “Of course not. I’ve inquired. I’ve checked the records.”
“No doubt,” Robespierre said meekly, “he thought he ought to have won the prize. No doubt he thought he had been cheated.”
“The man’s founded his whole life on a lie!”
“Perhaps more a self-delusion.” Robespierre smiled distantly. “After all, despite what I said, he’s not a great poet. Just a mediocre one. This is petty, Saint-Just. How much time have you wasted on it?” The satisfaction wiped itself out of Saint-Just’s face. “You know,” Robespierre went on, “I’d have liked to win one of those literary prizes myself—something distinguished, not local stuff—Toulouse or somewhere.”
“But those prizes were institutions of the old regime.” Saint-Just sounded hurt. “That’s done with, finished. It’s from before the Revolution.”
“There was such a time, you know.”
“You are too much wedded to the manners and appearances of the old regime.”
“That,” Robespierre said, “is a very serious accusation.”
Saint-Just looked as if he would rather back down. Robespierre rose from his chair. He was the shorter by perhaps six inches. “Do you wish to replace me, with someone more thoroughly revolutionary?”
“I have no such thought, I protest.”
“I feel you wish to replace me.”
“This is a mistake.”
“If you attempt to replace me, I will look for your part in this plot and I will demand your head in the Convention.”
Saint-Just raised his eyebrows. “You are deluded,” he said. “I am going to the armies.”
Robespierre’s voice reached out to him as he crashed out of the room: “I’ve known about Fabre’s prize for years. Camille told me. We laughed about it. What does it matter? Am I the only one who knows what matters? Am I the only one with any sense of proportion at all?”
 
 
M
aximilien Robespierre: “Over the last two years, 100,000 men have been slain as a result of treason and weakness; it is our feeble attitude towards traitors that is our undoing.”
 
 
T
he Palais de Justice: “You seem unhappy, cousin,” Camille said.
Fouquier-Tinville shrugged. His dark face was morose. “We’ve been in court for eighteen hours. Yesterday we started at eight in the morning and finished at eleven at night. It is tiring.”
“Imagine what it’s like for the prisoner.”
“I really can’t imagine that,” the Public Prosecutor said truthfully. “Is it a fine night?” he asked. “I could do with some fresh air.”
He had no feelings, one way or the other, about trying women on capital charges; he was sensitive, however, to the questions it raised in some minds. The guillotine allowed some dignity in death; the ordeal came beforehand. He liked his prisoners in better condition than this one—scruffy, in need of medical attention. He had organized a man to stand by and fetch her glasses of water, but so far water had not been needed, and neither had the smelling salts. It was after midnight now; a jury retiring at this hour was unlikely to agonize over their verdict.
“Hébert, yesterday,” he said abruptly. “Terrible mess. What he has to do with it, why I had to call him, God knows. I take a pride in my
work. I’m a family man—I don’t want to hear that sort of thing. The woman showed dignity in her replies. She got sympathy from the crowd.”
Hébert had alleged yesterday that, in addition to her other crimes, the woman prisoner had sexually abused her nine-year-old son; that she had taken him into bed beside her, and taught him to masturbate. His guardians had caught him at it, Hébert said, and—tut-tut, where did you learn such behavior? Mama taught me, said the shifty, frightened little boy. Hébert adduced documentary evidence—the child had freely signed a statement about it. The child’s writing—the ancient, wavering hand—had given Citizen Fouquier a moment’s disquiet. “One has children oneself,” he murmured. Citizen Robespierre had done more than murmur. “That fool Hébert!” he said, enraged. “Has any more unlikely allegation come before a court in our lifetime? Depend on it—he’ll save the woman yet.”
I wonder, Fouquier thought, what sort of a lawyer was Citizen Robespierre, when he practiced? A bleeding heart, I’ll be bound.
He was turning back to his cousin when President Hermann appeared, crossing the hall from the darkness into the pool of candlelight that bathed the lawyers, the prisoner’s chair and the empty place where the witnesses stood. The president held up one finger for Fouquier to follow him.
“Have a word with Chauveau-Lagarde,” Fouquier said. “Poor devil, he defended the Marat girl too. I doubt his career will ever recover.”
Lagarde looked up. “Camille—what are you doing here? I wouldn’t be here if I could be anywhere else.” Still, he was glad to see him. He was tired of trying to talk to his client. She was not forthcoming.
“Where else should I be? Some of us have waited a long time for this day.”
“Yes—well, if it suits you.”
“I should think it suits us all to see treason punished.”
“You’re pre-judging. The jury is still out.”
“There’s no chance the Republic will lose this case,” Camille said. He smiled. “They do give you all the best jobs, don’t they?”
“No lawyer in Paris has more experience of impossible defenses.” Lagarde was twenty-eight years old; he tried to put the best face on things. “I asked for mercy,” he said. “What else could I do? She was accused of being what she was. She was charged with having existed. There was no defense to the charges. Even if there had been—they gave me the indictment on Sunday night, and said you’re in court tomorrow morning. I asked your cousin for three days. No chance. When her
husband was tried, those were more leisurely times. And when she goes to her death, she’ll go in a cart.”

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