Reign of Fear: Story of French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (Cantiniére Tales) (10 page)

‘You fancy the small one?’ She asked, gesturing at me lazily, smiling evilly, and I felt all-encompassing fear gnaw at me, as the old man glanced my way. He had always patted my head gently when I passed, and I never thought he had other motives than affection. His eyes sought mine, and likely read what I thought about.

He shook his head, apparently the demon inside him exhausted by the losses he had endured. ‘No, I do not. It’s Jeanette, after all, and it is just a mess, a horrid mess worth crying over. I will not have her, but I will not let her go, and will hire some very insensitive men to take care of them. I know some, many, in fact
,’ he muttered. ‘Make her immobile, then fetch some money from the cache, if you can move it, and hire that butcher’s gang,’ he said casually and pointed at me. I stiffened in fear, considering bolting for the door, but I was dizzy and Madame Fourier was coming quickly, her stiff silk dress swishing as her face had a curious look of perverse pleasure at the violence she was about to engage in. She lifted the brutal pistol, and meant to smack me with it, mother screamed muffled denial and Colbert sighed as he picked up his pants, and glanced out of the window. ‘Nobody seems to care, loves. Very good.’

He was wrong.

A shadow moved from the doorway, as Georges Danton pushed in. He swung a heavy baton at the surprised Madame Fourier, whose face caved in an eye blink, and she fell like a heavy tree trunk. Georges was grinning savagely as he winked at me, softening his face, but he blanched at the sights in the room, and then got truly angry at the disturbing sight of my sweet siblings looking at the whole scene. ‘You were not lying, were you Jeanette. Now, that is the printer?’

‘I am a master in the Book Guild of Paris, you hoodlum, how dare you…’ Colbert started, but Danton carefully walked towards him, and swiftly picked up the gun from the trembling, dying hand of Madame Fourier
. Then he shot my great granduncle in the gaping, surprised mouth. The man suffocated to death, his heels thrumming the floor. While he died, I went to mother, and began to tear at her tight bonds, ignoring the twins who were both staring at the corpses and Danton, who was smiling viciously. He came to help me, and when we tore Henriette free, she spat the gag off her mouth. Danton threw her torn clothes next to her.

She pulled them on, hastily, hugged me, eyeing the large man in alarm. ‘I am very proud of you Jeanette. Very proud.’ She grimaced in pain, doubled over and threw up.

Danton grinned. ‘I want to do that too. What a mess. I will do it later. But your mother has a point. I hope my children will grow up to be as brave. Madame, she took the pistols as if they were simple sweets and came here, swift like an avenging angel Gabriel and I lost her, cursing, for I meant to help her after all. I managed to find the house by asking around and in the nick of time, as well! So, what are your plans now?’ I saw him eyeing Colbert’s corpulent body. He was after coin.

Mother
shrugged, and took the twins on her lap, dazed by the evening. ‘I will rob his apartment, and run.’

He laughed, and gazed at her, moving a stray hair from her lip, and she trembled in fear. ‘They will find you. You look lovely, beautiful as a rose given by a lover, though these are not the words you want to hear in a situation like this, no. But I think you are
also looking a bit ill. I think it is best you come to the safe convent, and play my cousin for a few days, relax, and rest.’

She considered it, tears in her eye. ‘I have relatives in Lyons, and…’

Danton slapped his thigh. ‘Very well. After I have robbed your relatives, we will think how to help you best. Did they have wives, other children?’ He sounded hopeful.

Mother nodded. ‘Adam, the dirt sack there has a wife. Sara. Next floor.’

Danton nodded as he eyed the disgusting nude corpse of Adam. ‘Small penis, he has. I think she will be happy to be a widow and find a bigger one.’

‘I killed their son,’ I said weakly. ‘He was… It was an accident,’ I lied.

He cursed, and began to load his guns, resolve and regret playing on his ugly face. ‘Let us hope she is gone. I will see how to deal with it. Now, go to the convent, and ask for sweet Camille.’ We packed our few things, as Danton knocked resolutely on the door one story down.

We were
at the street, when we heard a shot.

Uncannily, few neighbors came to see what the shooting was about. Some poked their careful head out of the windows, but many knew Georges Danton, most loved him, we would find out. We did too, most of the time, despite him being a bloody murderer and a horrible schemer of
a first class.

Florian came out and saw me, and ran after me, confused. I stopped mother and turned, and he raised his arm, wondering what had happened, his face slack with surprise, and I ran to embrace him fiercely. Mother waited, impatiently.

‘Are you my friend, Florian?’ I asked miserably. ‘I love you as one,’ I added.

‘I am, of course,’ the gaunt boy said, totally at loss. ‘Where are you going? What was the shooting about?’

‘We are going away and we might not see you again. I killed Gilbert, Florian.’

He stood there, his face astonished, and I cried as I hugged him once more and left him there. He was crying as well, bitter, child-like tears.

‘If I find you alive, if my master here dupes me, I will be terrible, Jeanette, like a Greek monster in those stories we enjoyed. I’ll kill you, then string your corpse up for the crows to feast on.’ (Gilbert to Jeanette.)

CHAPTER 5

The convent was just one of the many fabulous old religious houses near our former home. I knew the way, for we had visited it that one time with Gilbert. It was placed in a curiously empty lot south of de la Odeon. On our first visit, I had missed most all of the fine details. It was a two-story stone building framing a central courtyard, sporting excellent galleries complete with pock marked colonnades. The central building, the old church, housed a large, dank meeting hall, decent rooms for us and others useful to the Cordeliers and the whole place looked sturdy and clean. We had a room on the second story of secondary building framing the courtyard. It was a nice room, and a few broken mirrors, a sturdy bed, a rough table and wide chairs adorned it, and it was warm, much warmer than our old room.

At first, I spent many an hour at the
crumbling fountain in the middle of the overgrown yard.

The water was fetid and dirty, true, but there was peace
there, unusual in Paris, and I needed peace. I was a child; I had killed, and seen people I should have been able to trust mistreat us cruelly, with little regard to blood-ties and humanity. I had lived with them for all my life. Now, they were dead, even if it was almost us who died. We should have died. So, I was fearful and suspicious and I needed space around me. I cried a lot, cursing out fate and shook in fear for what had passed and what could have passed, had it not been for luck. I praised luck and cursed it, but I did not understand it then, that few would have managed what I had done. Yet then, sitting at that moldering place amidst innocent frogs I was afraid and felt utterly helpless, wondering how we survived, and dead faces haunted my dreams and waking hours.

I knew mother
desperately needed privacy as well. She had much to think about, and so I sat by the fountain, until Camille Desmoulins spotted me the day after we arrived. He came forward awkwardly, sat next to me and patiently let me cry, and then he held me. I struggled, he let me go, but I let him stay close, and I took great comfort in his patient presence. He reminded me of Florian, the gangly, awkward boy who was my friend. That is how I spent some of the first days, and Camille helped me, for he was not judging, but not lying either. He wrote calmly, keeping me company.

Then,
long days after arriving, mother took ill, and a harried doctor fetched by urgent Danton tried to help her recover. He thought it was a strange sexual disease, a severe case of malnutrition, tiredness of the soul and ache of the heart that had worn her down, and I gathered myself and looked after the twins as the doctor administered various methods of letting her blood. Finally, Georges drove him away, and had a maid give her soup, bread, and wine, and she slept for two days straight. I took the twins, pushed my fears to the background, and looked around the convent.

The convent housed the Club Cordeliers. It was a club devoted to more radical changes than
the great Mirabeau, famous Villeneuve and others in the National Assembly were planning, and thus, housed also the most wretched and desperate souls of Paris, unlike the Jacobins Club, which was not at first as radical in it’s views, having been created to Breton house representatives for the Estates General. Danton’s club held few restrictions with a modest entry fee and here, in the hall they all met, you could see busts of the stern Brutus, of fierce Tell, Rousseau, Mirabeau and others, framing the newly penned version of the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen. It was just a draft then, not the real one that was to follow, but impressive, nonetheless. I read it repeatedly, though I barely understood it, but that room, Marie, was like a conjuring chamber for the darkest of wizards, out to change the world.

While mother was recovering and the siblings were asleep, I recovered enough to accept an invite by Camille to help them with various arrangements in the Club. I helped Georges and Camille place stools for t
he meetings, mainly, and served cheap wine. I stayed on to listen to them speak, sitting at the back of the room, looking on as people argued and let their passions loose. Danton was a formidable speaker. Just like he, a giant of a man, had charged to our rescue, he forced himself to people’s heart by his overpowering rhetoric, his thundering voice. He was a coming man, I saw. He was not ready, he was still testing his many limits and strengths, for I saw him glancing about, gauging his power, desperate for praise, knowing that one day he would either die, or rule men like this. This was his splendid place to spring forward; the place where he trained in famous oratory, in cruelly efficient management, and Camille was his nervous and zealous friend. There were others, dear, but I did not pay attention to them, though I knew Camille had a friend who would be famous, Maximillien Robespierre and his brother, Augustin. They were amongst the men who sometimes would come and listen to the Cordeliers speaking, though usually both sat still, quiet, as if sucking up influences, formulating their own severe thoughts, which would not match those of Cordeliers.

One evening I was cleaning up, when Georges came to me. ‘How are you, Jeanette? Are you happy with us?’ He was tired, I saw it, but I appreciated his
kind care.

‘I am, recovering? Mother? I do not know. I think she would be happy with our family? Can we leave soon?’

He looked troubled, opening his cravat. ‘No. Sara, the woman your uncle was married to? She was not there.’

I was confused. ‘I heard a shot,’ I said neutrally.

‘It was an accident,’ he told me, rumbling and waving his hand. ‘I shot at the floor as I forced open the door. No, she is alive and she told the police about you. They are looking for you. Even in Lyons. We have to think about it. Be happy here, for a while longer. Tell me, dear, how much did you know of Colbert’s life? His home, his ways?’

‘Not much
more than you already know. Some, perhaps. Why?’ I asked. He smiled, his eyes gauging my honesty, trying to see if I lied, and I did not understand it. Finally he smiled while shaking his head and went to talk to others.

So, we stayed and I helped.

Often, when I returned to our room, having listened to the fantastic arguments in the club, I could not sleep and I feared the nightmares anyway. The hard to grasp dreams of liberté, égalité, and fraternité resounded in my mind, and when I told mother what they had argued about, she but shrugged as she returned to nonchalance. She would pat the twins in their sleep, staring at the wall, and she would look out of the window at nothing, not even reacting to a pretty birds staring back at her, her eyes devoid of life. We were both savagely hurt and I cried alone on my side of the bed, and mother did not notice.

One day, she wrote a letter,
looking fiercely determined and gave it to a man, who took it forward.

Next day
, Georges opened the door, grabbed the surprised twins, twirling them in the air, both of them shrieking with joy. Mother sat up, her face grave. ‘How are you, fair Henriette?’ said the large man, sitting next to her, letting the disappointed toddlers loose. She twitched at his proximity and he raised his hands. ‘I mean no harm! No harm at all. I just wanted to see how you are and I agree you both should start building a life again. Camille is also worried.’

She shrugged. ‘We are… fine. Building one’s life means one is free to do so. We are fugitives, Jeanette tells me. Sara….’

He took her face gently between two of his massive fingers. ‘In that case, you should smile more. There are worse fates out there that to be a fugitive with friends like us. At least your children have not starved, for many do, in your situation.’

She opened her mouth, but closed it, for there was something ominous about his words. I perked up. ‘We are grateful, but she is no whore. If you mean, she should pay back…’

Georges rolled his eyes. ‘She was a whore indeed, girl. She let men between her legs, and took money for it, and that, you know very well, defines that profession. Moreover, just for your knowledge, that is not something I hold against her. She survived, took care of you, sacrificed all, like we will all do, soon. She is like us, in spirit and mind, and we need people like that. If she joins us, she has a place here.’

‘And in your bed too, no doubt?’ Henriette asked, acidly, but not as angrily as she wanted to. Georges was both ugly and loud, but he was deceptively charming, and he had saved us, even if he also took Colbert’s money and our
precious watch. I did not ask him about the watch, even if it bothered me greatly. I had given him back his pistols, minus the two shot after all, and he had no doubt made himself rich from Colbert’s estate.

‘Perhaps,’ Georges said playfully, holding his hands in the air, and then she was smiling at him
, and her healing began, for first time in weeks and weeks, she was treated kindly, a seeming mistress of her own fate, appreciated and perhaps, even loved, and I took the twins out, cursing her and Georges both. I was afraid mother was protecting us again, and Georges was another Colbert. He was not, I thought and hoped, but I was afraid nonetheless.

Later, we were playing in the courtyard, where Camille found us. He was reading
intensely, making notes at some pamphlet of his. He saw us, smiled uncertainly, and strolled over like he was approaching a royal. ‘So, young vixen. You are not crying? This is a happy place? Hmm?’

‘Not crying presently,’ I told him. ‘I make no promises.’

He smiled benignly as he sat down on the edge of the old fountain, rubble detaching from the cracks. ‘I heard you can shoot well,’ he said, pulling at his dirty neckerchief.

‘I hoped,’ I confided in him, ‘to hit the bastard in the balls.’

‘You missed?’ he asked, mischievously.

‘Too small a target, much smaller than I imagi
ned,’ I told him lightly, trying to forget the sight of Adam shrieking his life away on the floor. He saw my face losing color and looked sheepish and apologetic. ‘Not your fault, I have nightmares,’ I confided in him. He nodded and scowled as he heard Georges laugh upstairs. His face clouded in anger as he located the source of the laughter to be our window.

‘He there?’ he asked, sourly. ‘With your
willing mother?’

‘I don’t know,’ I lied.

‘I will,’ he told me, softly hissing, ‘have to warn you that he is married. He is a goat, true, and a married one. And she is not the only one.’

I nodded. I had seen Antoinette Gabrielle Danton, and at least two children around. ‘But he is a better man than any I have met lately.’

He laughed bitterly. ‘I am insulted!’ His voice fell a few notes, trembling as if he had lost something precious. I saw his face betray real, raw emotion. He really was offended. Had he not sat with me here for two days? Did I not appreciate it? These were his thoughts, and I placed a hand on his.

‘You are a friend, too, and I thank you just as much as I do Georges,’ I comforted him, and again saw his face light up with happiness. It was easy to move him.

He gestured towards the upstairs window. ‘I have seen her. Your mother. She is a beautiful woman, a dazzling one. Smart, gentle. Moreover, her voice is as pretty as her face. Her voice is like a beguiling poem. I like her laugh.’

‘She does not laugh much,’ I said acidly. ‘In fact she has not laughed while here. Perhaps you confuse her with someone else?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Of course I have not heard her laugh. It was just a compliment. I imagine she would laugh prettily, that is what I meant.’

‘She should laugh, one day. Now she is just miserable.’

He nodded. ‘On account of her losing her husband, home, and being made a whore,’ he said. ‘Can you blame her?’

I twitched in anger as I realized I was still angry with mother. ‘I will never do something like that. I thank her for it, but I will not let men touch me if I do not want them to. It is not right,’ I said
venomously. ‘I doubt I could sacrifice all like that. I would fight! Or run!’

‘Right or wrong,’ Camille said, patiently ‘many things are forced on us. Perhaps you should not be so hasty.’ He looked up to the window again, angry. ‘Georges got her then? It is best she stays here. Police are looking for her. However, I think she also likes Georges. Most women do. He has some kind of an animal like scent to attract them, some trick of mind, for certainly they do not love his meaty face!’ He sounded like he had a rotten plum in his mouth.

‘Are you married, then?’ I asked him, and he shrugged.

‘Hopefully, one day soon, but her family does not like
struggling journalists!’ he told me. ‘I like her, Lucile, just fine. But am I in love? I don’t know. Sometimes I think we are expected to marry women who are like Lucile, docile, plain, and pleasant, but I think, that a man’s heart is always pulled to women like your mother, not so docile, certainly not plain, but pleasant in so many ways. Excuse me for being so blunt.’ He had a dreamy look on his face. ‘A man is pulled to the gorgeous, goddess like ones, lulled by their smiles. Especially if they act like heroines.’

‘Lucile is a lucky woman,’ I said sarcastically. Camille was not very handsome, and a bit too nervous, and I was irritated by his over romantic musings and his general attitude, fatalistic and depressed
, then suddenly full of energy, leaving one constantly one step behind while talking with him.

He glanced at me, understanding his weaknesses and smiled. ‘Pardon me. I am a poet. Maybe I will wait for you to grow up
, and it should not be long, since you seem like an adult in your thinking, and the looks is sure to follow soon? Hmm? I shall dazzle you with my insipid musings and you will love me with burning passion!’ I blushed and he laughed an odd, squealing laughter, mocking himself for a fool. He eyed his writings, and sighed to himself. ‘I am trying to fathom a way to hurt the queen. A safe, subtle way. One has to be careful when insulting royals, and she is the lioness in their family, with claws that actually maim and kill, while her husband is foppish and complacent fool.’