Season of Light (37 page)

Nevertheless, the queue pressed forward, and there were loud protests when someone tried to push in. When Asa reached the door to the old Manège, the vast riding school previously used by the royal family, she had to show her papers. Her head was high as she removed them from her bodice, but her heart still missed a beat when the official’s eye flicked from the page to her face. ‘Julie Moreau,’ he said with a wink. ‘Sweet name. In you go, Julie,’ and she was nodded through to a steep staircase.

As she climbed, the air grew hotter until she emerged at last into a cramped gallery furnished with narrow wooden benches and facing a vast hall with seats arranged in tiers, each occupied by a man in a dark coat. At first it seemed to Asa that every person in the hall must have noticed her arrival. Of course, in reality people were coming and going all the time and amid the general clamour a woman called Julie Moreau was insignificant.

Nonetheless, it was many minutes before she felt sufficiently calm to look about her. This, then, was the heart of the Revolution: hundreds of deputies in dark frock coats, most wigless and with their hair cropped in the new, Roman style, others wearing it neatly rolled above the ears and tied in a ribbon at the back. All were waving papers to attract the attention of the chairman or talking to each other sotto voce, or writing memos; doing anything, apparently, but listening to the speaker who was bellowing at the top of his voice. Asa scanned the faces again and again but could not see Didier. Surely she would recognise him, even from behind. She grew calmer when she realised he wasn’t there, but her spirits plunged.

Meanwhile in the gallery women with fierce, intent faces hushed each other so they might hear what was being said and then proceeded to talk loudly about the speaker’s appearance. Other spectators sucked oranges, spat out pips or read a news-sheet. Many were dressed in what Asa had begun to recognise as the uniform of the so-called sans-culotte – loose breeches and open-necked, collarless shirts with perhaps a cravat at the neck but always the tricolour somewhere. A few carried or wore a red cap, a symbol of the most militant. The hubbub and the heat made it infuriatingly hard to focus on what was being said, until one of the women hissed: ‘Shut it. Couthon’s going to speak. About bloody time.’

A wheelchair was manoeuvred into the centre of the hall by its occupant, who had a blue rug folded neatly across his legs. He held up his hand and stilled the crowd. ‘My friends. I cannot hide the truth from you. The enemies of the Revolution are closing in on us from all sides.’

Silence descended upon the gallery. Beside Asa a man finished devouring a chunk of bread and wiped the crumbs from his mouth. ‘An army has left Caen, in Normandy, and is preparing to march on us here, in Paris,’ continued Couthon. ‘Two days’ march, that’s all it would take. Not that they’ll succeed because they’ll be intercepted by our brave men. But it sickens me that our own people are prepared to shed the blood of fellow Frenchmen.’

Shouts of: ‘Shame on them. Death to them.’

‘The Vendée, as we know, is seething with traitors and insurrectionists and we have just heard from our deputy, Didier Paulin …’
Didier Paulin
. He was here, then. Where? ‘… that the people of Toulon are actually negotiating with the British – yes, I repeat, our enemy, the British – for supplies of food.’ A deathly hush. ‘This cannot go on.’

‘Oh yes,’ cried someone in the gallery, ‘and how are you going to stop it?’

Couthon raised his head and gave the heckler a long, slow stare. ‘We are taking steps. But it’s hard, when our feet are shackled – and my God, citizens, I know how that feels – by the very people who are supposed to be on our side. Yesterday our colleague Danton relinquished his place on the Committee of Public Safety. Yes, there he sits, with his head down. He had served his time, he said, but do you know what I think? I think he’s running scared. Well, I say to you, to be a member of that committee you need to have the guts to administer the harshest of medicine. At times like these, there’s no such thing as choice or scruple or doubt for those who lead. Those things are the luxuries of the past, of academics in their universities and poets in their salons. We are the men who know there is work to be done. We must roll up our sleeves and labour with our bare hands. Let’s win the war against our enemies, not seek a truce. Let’s keep a tight grip on the economy so that money is wrenched from those businessmen, the bourgeoisie, who have made themselves the new aristocracy by bleeding our citizens dry. If you think a neighbour of yours is growing too fat, you tell us, citizens. Let’s pull together and silence, once and for all, the voices of dissent.’

He paused as if expecting tumultuous applause but there was only a nervous hush. Then came the soft tap of a man’s footsteps – a new speaker had entered the arena.

‘If I may, Deputy Couthon …’

The voice plucked at Asa’s heartstrings – she almost cried out his name.

Couthon grinned. ‘Aha. The man himself.’

A few more footsteps and the newcomer came into view, though his back was to Asa: a tall man with a rim of white cravat showing above the high collar of his coat, and dark hair sprung loose from its ribbon. His voice, though light, was penetrating enough to demand attention.

‘You mentioned Toulon. What I witnessed there was indeed disturbing. But then the citizens of Toulon are hungry and when a person is hungry, as we all know only too well, they cannot think straight. I pity the citizens of Toulon because they face invasion from the English, and their own supplies of food are being consumed by our French troops. They are my brothers and I came away all the more determined to put things right for them.’

Pulse racing, Asa edged along the row of seats until she could lean her elbows on the rail of the gallery. He wore, exactly as in her memory, a dark blue coat with brass buttons, and light brown breeches. As he spoke he crossed to the very centre of the floor and made a slow, assured rotation so that with each phrase he looked directly at a new section of his audience. When he faced Asa she saw that his cravat was tied precisely under his chin, its ends tucked into his waistcoat. Despite the heat of the day and his close-fitting clothes he contrived to seem cool. He had become very lean and the bones in his face were more prominent. From time to time, exactly as in the old days, he raked his fingers through his hair so that it stood up a little at the front.

He might have been arguing with his father. ‘The days of laissez-faire are over. The new France needs firm, principled hands at the tiller. And our first priority? To feed our people. How do we do that? Price controls. It’s simple. A child could tell you that it is the price of grain that is crushing the people of Toulon and the loyal citizens of Paris. Friends, citizens, I arrived back in Paris half an hour ago and came straight here because I wanted to support Couthon in his demand for price controls. Brissot and his cohorts were all for allowing the markets to fix their own prices. I’m afraid to say they didn’t care if a minority of France grew fat while the rest starved.’

The crowd in the gallery hissed and yelled but Didier smiled, raised his hand and spoke soothingly. ‘We have purged ourselves of the Girondins, never fear. The poor of Paris, who after all have brought the Revolution into being by their self-sacrifice and tireless courage, deserve to be fed every bit as much as those in grain-rich regions such as Normandy. Caen, as you all know, is my home town. And the people of Caen, by and large, are good people, or were, until they were corrupted by the Brissotins who have encouraged them to use their stashes of grain as a bargaining tool. Well, they must learn that everyone in France has to stand together. No more hoarding, no more selling at extortionate prices. Our first priority is to feed our people.’

By now the crowd was roaring and stamping their approval. From somewhere came the shout: ‘The provinces will revolt – in fact they are already revolting. [Howls of laughter] Look at Brittany, look at the Vendée, and now your Calvados, Paulin. You seem to have been spawned by a bold little place, but it has one foot in the past. Your people are saying that it’s unjust that Paris should govern their consciences as well as the contents of their bellies. They say that they want to go back to the old ways.’

‘All I hear is that word
unjust
when what we have worked for incessantly is justice,’ Didier replied. ‘I am a lawyer and I know how easy it is to twist the word
justice
. Is it
just
, for instance, that one town in France, our beloved France, should have stocks of grain while others starve? And is it
just
that Paris, which has already borne the brunt of the Revolution – the turmoil, the pain, the bloodshed – should send thousands of its sons to fight against royalist hordes and at the same time be made to starve for it? It is quite clear to me that everyone has to pay equally for the Revolution. That is justice.’

He was, as ever, utterly compelling. His face was grey with exhaustion and he scarcely had the strength to push back a lock of hair, yet here he was, a blue-eyed son of Caen recognising the needs of starving Paris. ‘There is no going back, citizens,’ he said softly. ‘We must all pull in the same direction. You must trust us.’

The assembly yelled with joy. Asa was on her feet, propelled by the sheer momentum of the crowd. As she watched Didier, the shape of his head, the fall of hair on his brow, the precision with which he moved his hands, a thread tightened between her heart and thighs so that she ached to be kissed, and was lying with him again on crumpled sheets, watching the sleeve of the shirt he’d flung on the screen flutter in a draught from the open window. And she thought, with an uprush of delight: This is what I have been waiting for, this is how it was in Paris. No certainty or thought of convention, just a seizing of the moment by the throat.

Meanwhile the spectators, who had lost interest in the debate, were talking among themselves, vociferously indignant that the provinces should begrudge them cheap bread and, by the way, had anyone been able to afford a bar of soap since the spring?

One woman put her hand on Asa’s arm, making her jump. ‘Is this your first time? I’ve not seen you in the gallery before.’

‘No. I’m visiting from the provinces.’

‘I can tell by your accent. You’re not from the Vendée, I trust? No, of course not. But you must be quite overwhelmed. If you like I could point out a couple of people so that when you get back you can say you’ve seen our famous men in the flesh. That man in the wheelchair is Georges Couthon.’

‘And I recognised Didier Paulin.’

‘Paulin, yes, he’s a good speaker, very quick witted compared to some. But he’s often away. They give him the difficult tasks because he’s a good negotiator. On the other hand there’s Robespierre.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Between you and me, he’s a bit long winded. And that untidy one over there with the big face is Danton. I think he’s sulking because he was voted off the Committee yesterday. Marat would normally be here, but he’s sick, as I expect you know. Skin disease. He’s the best speaker of the lot, a hell-raiser, makes the rafters shake.’

‘Do you think he’ll be here if I come tomorrow? I’d like to see him in action.’

‘I doubt it. I’ve heard the disease is very bad this time. No wonder. They all work too hard, sometimes twenty hours a day. It’s not natural, in my opinion.’

‘I suppose they’d say it was necessary?’

‘Maybe. But everybody needs to sleep at night and have a good laugh once in a while, don’t you think?’

It was time for a break in proceedings. Deputies were bundling out of the door, including Didier, who carried a sheaf of papers under his arm and was deep in conversation. Either the force of Asa’s attention was irresistible or he looked up quite by chance, scanning the public gallery, at first casually, then with more deliberation. He seemed not to have noticed her, he was moving on, but then he looked back and this time his eyes met hers.

Such was the intensity of her reaction, the lurch of her heart, that she thought: Perhaps it’s true, then. I am still in love with him, despite everything.

He gave a little shake of his head, as if to dismiss something from his mind, then was gone. By the time she had elbowed her way down the stairs and outside there was no sign of him.

Didier now lodged in a second-floor apartment on the Place Vendôme, barely a quarter of a mile from the Tuileries and therefore convenient both for meetings of the Convention and for the more intimate gatherings of the Jacobin Club, where most of the men who now ruled the country thrashed out their ideas. This, as his father had pointed out, was a much smarter address than his former lodgings on the rue du Vieux Colombier, though it had suffered the same vandalism – or revolutionary fervour – as other grandiose sites in Paris. She remembered the square being dominated by a statue of Louis XIV mounted on his horse, but now there was just an empty plinth.

Asa spent a long time loitering in the shade before she plucked up the courage to approach number 12. After all, if she was right, if Madame had come to Paris looking for Didier, she might be here too. However, it was a high-complexioned, rather aggrieved-looking young woman who opened the door.

‘Yes?’

‘Is Monsieur Paulin at home?’

‘No.’

‘May I ask when he’ll be back?’

‘Couldn’t say. You can leave your name, I suppose. People do all the time.’

‘Do you think he’ll be in later today?’

‘I don’t know.’

Asa produced a few écus. ‘It would be very helpful if you could be more definite.’

The woman looked scornful but more coins produced an answer: ‘He’s out of town.’

‘But I saw him only a couple of hours ago speaking at the Convention.’

‘Did you indeed? What are you? Some kind of follower?’

‘Please, I just want to know when he’ll be home.’

‘He’s been called out of Paris again,’ said the girl sulkily, ‘some police matter in the district of Sens. Said he’d be back Saturday night.’

At breakfast the next day Asa said to Citoyenne Maurice: ‘I did as you suggested and visited the Palais Royal. And I saw Didier Paulin speak at the Convention. It was extremely frustrating; when I called at his apartment he’d already left and he won’t be back until tomorrow. So today I shall try to find the graveyard where my friend is buried. Mademoiselle Paulin gave me a map. Perhaps you’d look at it with me and mark a few places.’